What occultism is

There are misconceptions about what occultism is.

To make it short: "Occult" simply means "hidden".

It comes from the latin word "occulere" meaning "to hide", "keep secret" or "to conceal something".

Most people will think of occultism being evil, which is not necessarily true, but also not necessarily false. It really depends on the motives of the person who hides something. So occult does not directly mean evil, but it often implicates evil, since in many cases when someone tries to hide something, there is more or less evil motives behind it, otherwise he would not have to hide it. There are also legitimate cases where someone wants to hide something, may it be for privacy reasons or for security reasons to avoid harm from others.

Many occult sciences involve cultivating secret knowledge with the purpose of gaining power over people or harming them directly, this is probably where occultism got its bad reputation from. On the other hand many ordinary people fear occult sciences and therefore could become dangerous to the ones practicing occultism, in that case the ordinary people would be the evil ones and not so much the occultists.

These were some basics about occultism and what it is, to help people get an idea about it and making them able to see it from a preferably neutral perspective.