Occult and the Esoteric

When we speak of the occult, we enter a word that has long dwelt in shadow—reviled, misunderstood, and yet quietly luminous beneath its layers of misrepresentation. Its syllables hum with secrecy: occultus, the Latin for “hidden,” “concealed from sight.” The occult is not merely what is dark; it is what is unseen. It concerns those properties of existence that cannot be weighed or measured yet reveal themselves to the attentive soul: the magnetism in the lodestone, the virtue of a leaf, the resonance between the movements of planets and the stirrings of the human heart. In the Renaissance, philosophers and natural magicians spoke easily of these “occult virtues,” meaning forces not evident to the senses but present in the secret sympathies of nature. To study the occult was not to flee from light, but to seek the deeper light—the illumination hidden behind appearance.

The word esoteric offers a kindred vibration, though it turns inward rather than downward. From the Greek esōterikos, “inner” or “belonging to the within,” it names the knowledge meant for initiates, the teachings whispered beyond the temple’s outer gate. In the ancient mystery cults of Greece and Egypt, such knowledge was never forbidden—it was simply safeguarded, veiled in symbol so that only those prepared by experience might apprehend it. The Eleusinian initiate did not learn the mystery; they became it. Thus the esoteric points toward the architecture of understanding, while the occult points toward the practice of unveiling. One is the map of the inner cosmos; the other is the journey through it.

Together they form a pair of mirrors. The occult is the art of working with hidden forces, the esoteric the philosophy that interprets them. Both demand reverence, study, and transformation. Both depend upon secrecy, not out of arrogance, but out of respect for the potency of the unseen. To rush the unveiling is to destroy the very conditions by which mystery nourishes meaning.

Throughout history, cultures have known and named their hidden arts. In Kemet, priest-magicians preserved the sciences of divination and the soul’s passage, writing of them in hieroglyphs meant to conceal as much as to reveal. In India, the Upanishads were the “sitting near,” reserved for those ready to hear what could not be spoken to the many. In Celtic lands, the druids wove their wisdom into triads, riddles, and songs, carried mouth to ear across generations. In each tradition the pattern holds: there is knowledge exoteric, given to all, and knowledge esoteric, given in trust. The boundary between them is not elitism but initiation—the testing of the heart’s readiness to hold what cannot be uttered lightly.

In the craft we practice, these terms are not relics of dusty scholarship but living symbols. To call something occult is to acknowledge the sanctity of the hidden, the necessity of shadow in which power germinates. Witchcraft itself was once the folk expression of the occult—those quiet arts of healing, blessing, and banishment that thrived in hedgerows and kitchens long before they were named by theologians. The cunning woman, the wise man, the midwife, the herbwife—each tended to the unseen threads binding body and spirit. They practiced the occult in its purest sense: working with the invisible harmonies of life.

The esoteric, meanwhile, lives in the coven’s circle as the pattern that informs our practice—the web of correspondences, symbols, and mythic frameworks that lend meaning to our rites. When we trace the pentacle, we echo ancient diagrams of microcosm and macrocosm. When we call the quarters, we reenact a cosmology of elements that is both philosophical and embodied. This is the esoteric heart of the craft: not a dry system of signs, but a living grammar of the sacred. We inherit these languages from Hermeticism, from Kabbalah, from the philosophers who sought to map the invisible worlds; yet we weave them into our own practice, translating intellect into invocation, symbol into song.

We, as witches, dwell where the occult and the esoteric meet. Our art is neither pure scholarship nor pure instinct, but a rhythm between them. We study the correspondences, the planets, the sigils, the sacred alphabets—but we also kneel in the soil, feeling how the unseen pulse of the earth answers the movement of our own breath. The occult without the esoteric can become superstition; the esoteric without the occult can become sterile abstraction. Together they form the twin pillars between which the witch walks.

Modern Wicca stands precisely upon this threshold. It is both religion and craft, both inherited and invented, both ancient in soul and modern in form. Its founders drew from ceremonial magic—the esoteric frameworks of Hermetic and Rosicrucian lore—and from the older, earthbound witch-traditions of Europe. In the Great Rite and the Wheel of the Year, in the Goddess and the God, we find mythic structures that are at once mystical and philosophical: the interplay of polarity, balance, and return. Yet within this architecture burns the living fire of the occult—the casting of circles, the raising of power, the transformation of energy through will. Wicca’s genius is that it united these streams: the scholar’s geometry of spirit and the witch’s visceral dance with it.

To reclaim the words “occult” and “esoteric” is to reject centuries of fear. For too long they have been bound to the imagery of heresy and horror—the devil’s pact, the black mass, the blasphemous book. But the true current beneath those words is luminous. To be occult is to seek the hidden life of things; to be esoteric is to perceive the inner law that orders the cosmos. Both are paths of reverence, not rebellion. The witch who gathers herbs by moonlight and the philosopher who writes of emanations and spheres are companions upon the same road: each tending to a different face of the invisible.

The hidden is not the forbidden. It is the fertile. Every seed germinates in darkness before it rises into light. So too the knowledge we call occult or esoteric must root in the depths before it can bloom into wisdom. To walk this path is to honor what cannot be spoken in haste—to understand that secrecy is not deceit, but devotion to the mystery that sustains us.

We, who call ourselves witches, children of the moon and students of the hidden art, move beneath the veil not to flee from the world, but to love it more completely. For the world is veiled only from the unseeing. To those who walk in wonder, every stone, every wind, every heartbeat is occultus—hidden, yes, but radiant to those who know how to look. And in that seeing, we find our craft: the living bridge between the unseen and the seen, between the mystery that dreams and the life that answers it.

“That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.”
— The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

Some Notable Occult and Esoteric Orders

A selective lineage of hidden societies and their echoes in modern witchcraft. (Inclusion ≠ endorsement.)

Order / Society	Founded / Origin	Key Figures	Core Focus / Teachings	Major Works / Texts	Overlap with Witchcraft / Wicca
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn	1888, London (UK)	W. W. Westcott, S. L. MacGregor Mathers, W. B. Yeats, A. Crowley	Hermeticism, Qabalah, ritual magic, Enochian currents	The Golden Dawn (Israel Regardie); “Flying Rolls” (internal papers)	Circle casting, elemental quarters, degree structure and ritual grammar echoed in early Wicca
Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.)	c. 1906, Germany/UK	Aleister Crowley, Karl Germer	Thelema, ceremonial magic, esoteric sexuality, liturgy	The Book of the Law (Liber AL); Gnostic Mass (Liber XV)	Liturgical cadence and some Thelemic philosophy influenced syncretic Wiccan lines
Argenteum Astrum (A∴A∴)	1907, UK	Aleister Crowley, G. C. Jones	Individual attainment, Qabalistic pathworking, yoga/magick synthesis	The Equinox; Magick in Theory and Practice	Interior training models, graded work, and diary discipline adopted by some Wiccan covens
Theosophical Society	1875, New York (USA)	H. P. Blavatsky, H. S. Olcott, Annie Besant	Comparative mysticism, karma, reincarnation, esoteric evolution	Isis Unveiled; The Secret Doctrine	Popularized Eastern ideas that permeated modern pagan/Wiccan cosmologies
Rosicrucian Currents (incl. S.R.I.A., AMORC)	17th c. (manifestos), later revivals	Mythic C. Rosenkreuz; R. Fludd; modern: W. W. Westcott, H. Spencer Lewis	Christian Hermeticism, alchemy, symbolic reform	Fama, Confessio, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz	Hermetic-alchemical worldview feeding the occult revival that shaped Wiccan symbolism
Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A.)	1920s, Los Angeles (USA)	Paul Foster Case	Tarot–Qabalah synthesis, color and pathworking	The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages; B.O.T.A. lessons	Modern tarot symbolism and meditative practice widely used by witches
Fraternitas Saturni	1926, Germany	Gregor A. Gregorius	Saturnian initiation, astro-magical rites, Thelemic inflections	Magie der Eingeweihten (Gregorius)	Influences planetary/astrological magic strands in occult witchcraft
Martinist Order	late 18th c., France	L.-C. de Saint-Martin; M. de Pasqually	Esoteric Christianity, reintegration of the soul	Treatise on the Reintegration of Beings (Pasqually); Saint-Martin’s letters	Mystical interiority adopted by some witches in contemplative work
Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor	late 19th c., UK/Europe	Max Théon; (influence) P. B. Randolph	Practical occultism, astral/psychic training	The Light of Egypt (T. H. Burgoyne)	Methodological precursor to Golden Dawn; techniques echoed in ritual witchcraft
Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (S.R.I.A.)	1865, England	Robert Wentworth Little, W. W. Westcott	Rosicrucian Kabbalah, Christian Hermetic study	Collectanea (S.R.I.A. papers)	Shared personnel/ideas with GD; part of the ritual genealogy Wicca drew upon
Alpha et Omega (GD offshoot)	1903+, UK	S. L. M. & Moina Mathers	Continuation of GD initiatory and ritual corpus	Ritual manuscripts (private); surviving papers published in parts	Carried GD current forward into 20th-century occult revival
Order of the Temple of the Rosy Cross	1890s–1900s, France/UK	Stanislas de Guaita, Joséphin Péladan	Symbolist occultism, ceremonial aesthetics, Kabbalah	de Guaita’s La Haute Magie; Péladan’s La Décadence Latine cycle	Influenced continental occult aesthetics informing eclectic witchcraft
Order of Nine Angles (O9A)	1970s, UK	“Anton Long” (pseud.)	Extreme LHP, transgressive esotericism	NAOS; Hostia (controversial texts)	Outside Wicca; referenced only for context; studied critically, not as lineage
Temple of Set	1975, USA	Michael Aquino	Setian philosophy, self-deification, ritual psychology	The Book of Coming Forth by Night; Aquino’s works	Minimal overlap with Wiccan ethics; relevant in comparative esotericism
Alice Bailey / Lucis Trust (Arcane School)	1919–1930s, USA/UK	Alice A. Bailey	Theosophical-derived esotericism, spiritual psychology, “rays”	A Treatise on Cosmic Fire; Discipleship in the New Age	Diffused metaphysical ideas (energy centers, planetary hierarchy) into New Age & eclectic witchcraft