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Occult   /əkˈəlt/   Listen
Occult

noun
1.
Supernatural forces and events and beings collectively.  Synonym: supernatural.
2.
Supernatural practices and techniques.  Synonym: occult arts.



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"Occult" Quotes from Famous Books



... headlong into the consumption of Wesleyan missionaries in the Sandwich Islands. Then she had to find her glasses, and considerable delay was incurred by putting them on upside down. All this while the Rector sat glaring at her as if in some occult way she were responsible for the disaster ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... it came to me that what he really sang for was not there only, Nor for his mate nor himself only, nor all sent back by the echoes, But subtle, clandestine, away beyond, A charge transmitted and gift occult for those being born. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... claimed possession of the secret of perpetual life was Joseph Balsamo, who called himself "Count of Cagliostro." He was born in Italy in 1743 and acquired a world-wide reputation for his alleged occult powers and acquisition of the "philosopher's stone." He died in 1795, and since then no one has generally inspired the superstitious with credence in this well-worn myth. The ill-fated Ponce de Leon when ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... this time you have protected your honor solely by the exertion of a power entirely occult. Hereafter the wheels of your conjugal machinery must be set going in sight of every one. In this case, if you would prevent a crime you must strike a blow. You have begun by negotiating, you must end by mounting your horse, sabre in hand, like a Parisian gendarme. You must make your ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... of the ethnologic method. It is open and easy when the facts are in our possession. There are no secret springs, no occult forces, in the historic development of culture. Whatever seems hidden or mysterious, is so only because our knowledge of the facts is imperfect. No magic and no miracle has aided man in his long conflict ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton

... which Mr Godwin thus mentions as some mysterious and occult cause and which he does not attempt to investigate, will be found to be the grinding law of necessity, misery, ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... a woman, who had followed her brandy from the house-caravan, afraid it might disappear in occult directions, "when did you have ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... savoury messes, spreads a table, and places them on it. She then departs, and all the family, leaving the door open, in silence retire to sleep. This table is covered for the Miri of the child, an occult being, that is supposed to have the care of its destiny. In the course of the night, if the child is to be fortunate, the Miri comes and partakes of the feast, generally in the shape of a cat; but if the Miri do not come, nor taste of the food, the child is ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... of good and bad luck in every man's life, which may be felt in advance by one sensitive to occult influences, if one will but keep good watch on one's intuitions and leave them untrammelled by will or reason. At this time "I felt it in my bones," as Betty would have said, that the day of our good luck ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... classified according to subject, though not chronologically. He wrote novels of society, of history, of mystery, and of romance. In all he was successful, and perhaps felt as much interest in one as in another. In his own life the study of the occult played a part; he was familiar with the contemporary fads in mystery and acquainted with their professors. "Ancient" history also attracted him, and he even wrote a couple of volumes of a 'History of Athens.' In all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... Cooper at one time amused himself in the study of the so-called occult sciences. Having advocated with apparent enthusiasm a belief in animal magnetism and clairvoyance, he caused public meetings to be held in the old Court House in Cooperstown, where, evening after evening, the mysteries of hypnotism were discussed. On one of these occasions a negro, who had ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... society?' asked Somerset; 'to stake one's life for others? to deracinate occult and powerful evil? I appeal to Mr. Godall. He, at least, as a philosophic looker-on at life, will spit upon such philistine opinions. He knows that the policeman, as he is called upon continually to face greater odds, and that ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... nature! In such sunlight as this it seems insanity to sit in a book-walled room and grow bloodless with dreaming over insoluble problems. And yet a friend of mine told me that these towns, and especially California towns, were filled with seers and prophets. The occult flourishes in the high, dry atmosphere, those of the faith say. Don't you permit Clarke to destroy your love of nature, Miss Lambert; you belong to the sane and sunny world, and he has no right to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... Such as the idea was—and that it suited Kate's own book she openly professed—he had only to see how things were turning out to feel it strikingly justified. Densher's reply to all this vividness was that of course Aunt Maud's intervention hadn't been occult, even for his vividness, from the moment she had written him, with characteristic concentration, that if he should see his way to come to Venice for a fortnight she should engage he would find it no blunder. It took Aunt Maud really to ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... of my jungle beach to attract and hold attention was not only direct and sensory,—through sight and sound and scent,—but often indirect, seemingly by occult means. Time after time, on an impulse, I followed some casual line of thought and action, and found myself at last on or near the beach, on a lead that eventually would take me to the verge or into ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... humor for occult things, so he cut in with: "Now listen here, Amos—what do you think of me asking Mrs. Herdicker to sit at one end of the table, eh? Of course I know what the girls will think—but then," he winked with immense slyness, "that's all right. I was talking to her about it, and she's going to ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... back room one evening when his watch was done sauntered Con. His professional curiosity had been stirred by these occult bartenders at whose bar none drank, and who daily drew upon Kenealy's store of liquors to follow their consuming ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... must be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... is so satisfactorily demonstrated that some wiseacre cannot be found to disprove it, . . hence it happens my friend..." and his face assumed its wonted careless expression ... "that we men whose common-sense is offended by priestly hypocrisy and occult necromantic jugglery,—we, who perhaps in our innermost heart of hearts ardently desire to believe in a supreme Divinity and the grandly progressive Sublime Intention of the Universe, but who, discovering naught but ignoble ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... correspondence with all the chief literary men of the day. With so conspicuous a reputation, he believed it necessary to do something in religion. So he gave up religion, and allowed it to be understood that he was a man of advanced views: a Positivist, a Buddhist, or something equally occult. Thus he became ripe for the highest employment, and was placed successively on a number of Special Commissions. He inquired into everything; he wrote hundredweights of reports; he proved himself to have the true paralytic ink flux, precisely the kind of wordy ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... from coppice, and now from moor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have you listened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard them prophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, as that you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed with the pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes visible ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... female population is resolved into what might be termed, in the parlance of the place, a committee of the whole on "calling." This etiquette rules the wives of important functionaries with a rod of iron. By some occult method of reasoning they have reached the conclusion that their husbands' popularity, and consequent lease of power, depend upon their own faithful performance of what is considered to be social duty, and they devote themselves to it with a zeal worthy of a better cause. On certain days of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... him in silent speculation. "So!" she spoke half to herself. "Jean's the woman reporter." And for some occult reason she smiled. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... restin' on nothin' at all, so fur as we could see. What material wrought out of the Occult World wuz piled ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... amount of occult symbolism in this section is enormous, and the key of it is the name of the letter I, which is IVD, Yod. This is a trinity of letters, and their numerical value is I 10, V 6, D 4, total 20, equivalent to double ...
— Hebrew Literature

... advance the times of famine in India. So important a conclusion as this is certainly not to be passed over lightly, and all the world, scientific and unscientific alike, will certainly watch with acute interest for the verification of this seemingly startling practical result of so occult a science as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... statement would need the most positive and uniform testimony; but it may be added to the curiosities of literature. The decrease of population among the inferior race, when harassed or licentious, is certain; but surely there is nothing occult in this, or requiring further explanation than is afforded by ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... in their respective and characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... the surprise of her costume. Fancy had pictured her to them as the usual gypsy, garbed in a rainbow of lively colors. This sinister vision, the cast of whose features a long black veil entirely concealed, seemed to be a creation of the very darkness itself. If pure uncanniness indicated occult power, then this veiled prophetess of destiny must surely be an adept ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... remained at home, and one evening when, during the course of a gay party, the conversation came around to the subject of mysticism and occult occurrences, I dished up my story of the enigmatical manuscript. The Unknown, the Occult, was the rage just then, and my story was received with great applause and called forth numerous quotations as to 'more things ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various

... Music as a means to carry further the spiritual evolution of the race, and believes that it has occult properties of which only a few enlightened people are aware."[31] There can be no doubt that this survival-value of Music lies in its power to assist spiritual unfoldment and progress, and if the serious practice of music involves a certain discipline ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... of priests of Celtic day, Ancient Druids, holding sway By smattering of Occult law And man's eternal sense of awe. Stonehenge They used Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain Reputed Prehistoric Fane; Note each megalithic boulder; ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison

... with as steady a gait as any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) that there was an occult sympathy between our temperance-reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking among the respectable classes in England. I remember a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustration of the very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... evening, my friends," the one Pash was saying, "a very remarkable lady—if I may use so democratic a term in the connection—to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature mutely confess themselves her attending slaves—" But at that moment the rolling drums of Kiang-ti's thunder drowned his words, although he subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or other articles of a bright ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... chair and paced the floor, one hand clasped to his forehead, his small grey eyes carrying a dream-look as though he were seeking an occult enlightenment; then he sat down wearily, and spoke as if interpreting something that ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... names, when they had any, being but a sort of incognito, a veil which those who would speak of them were careful to draw aside, so as to make themselves understood. Thinking that Beauty—in the order of feminine elegance—was governed by occult laws into the knowledge of which they had been initiated, and that they had the power to realise it, I accepted before seeing them, like the truth of a coming revelation, the appearance of their clothes, of their carriages and horses, of a thousand details among ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... my having been virtually left in the lurch with regard to these, to me, occult matters is not made by way of complaint. It is made because it illustrates with signal force how completely the relative importance of the Expeditionary Force as compared to the task which the War Office had to face had ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... person has begun life with a single-minded devotion to the science of experimental chemistry, very surprising in a young and handsome man with a brilliant future before him. A profound knowledge of the occult sciences has persuaded the Baron that it is possible to solve the famous problem called the "Philosopher's Stone." His own pecuniary resources have long since been exhausted by his costly experiments. His sister has next supplied him with the small fortune at her disposal: ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... regarded as the preparatory stage for future degrees of spiritual evolution. The conservation of the spiritual power of the soul and the eternity of that force might be stated in the words of the Jewish occult teaching in the book of Sohar, "Nothing in the world is lost, nothing falls into the void, not even the words and voice of man: everything has its place and purport." Personality was but a metamorphosis of the soul, which ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... (witch of a thousand tricks) is in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your affairs as you please ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... Accursed heaped the earth over him and left him to die of hunger. For this Maghrabi was an African of Afrikiyah proper, born in the Inner Sunset-land, and from his earliest age upwards he had been addicted to witchcraft and had studied and practiced every manner of occult science, for which unholy lore the city of Africa[FN97] is notorious. And he ceased not to read and hear lectures until he had become a past-master in all such knowledge. And of the abounding skill in spells and conjurations ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... elaborate and expensive enough for the most fastidious lady), and apparently enjoying the company of noted intellectual people as well as the best of them. And who knows, if he had spoken, what light he might have shed on what seemed to mere mortals as mysterious, abstruse, and occult problems? Perhaps, after all, he liked that "salon" because in reality he found so much to amuse him in the conversation; and perhaps he was, under that guise of friendly interest in noted scientists, reformers, poets, musicians, and litterateurs, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... a strange appeal beyond the reach of words. Those mysterious sharps and flats, and major and minor chords, are an alphabet that in some occult combinations forms another higher language than that of speech, a language which, as we listen, thrills ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult, irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made a beginning in the removal ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... (Don Nicolas Sandoval swore it was all perjured and paid for) indicated that but one quarter of the sheep found on the Rancho Palomar belonged to Loustalot, the remainder being owned by his foreman and employees. To Farrel, therefore, these sheep were awarded, and in some occult manner Don Nicolas Sandoval selected them from the flock; then, acting under instructions from Farrel, he sold the sheep back to Loustalot at something like a dollar a head under the market value and leased to the amazed ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... the peculiar gift, which developed into ever-increasing perfection as her hair grew whiter, of being able to express ideas by means of words which had no relation to them at all. Within three minutes, by three different remarks whose occult message no stranger could have understood but which forced itself with unpleasant clearness upon Edwin, Mrs Hamps had conveyed, "Janet Orgreave only cultivates Maggie because Maggie is the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... difficult task, while the fair original was close at hand; nevertheless, the infatuated pretty gentleman was deeply impressed with the gipsy narrative, and began to think that the practice and knowledge of the occult sciences may, after all, have been handed down to the modern representatives of the ancient Egyptians. He was still further impressed with this belief when the gipsy proceeded to tell him that he was passionately attached to the pomegranate-hearted young lady, but that his path of true love ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... That position, he argued, was not worth the life-long effort required. Withal, he could not bring himself to quite understand why he had married Mary Greenwater, unless that she possessed some occult power and gained control over forces of his nature which he did not understand. True, there was but little or no obligation to the ceremony. It held good in the Cherokee Indian nation, that government within a government. Outside that limited space of ground it was ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds

... Scott: He lived in the latter half of the thirteenth century; was a student of the "occult sciences," and also skilled in theology and medicine. He is referred to by Walter Scott as the "wondrous wizard, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... in money like pigs in mud. Till it scem'd to have entered into his blood By some occult projection: And his cheeks instead of a healthy hue, As yellow as any guinea grew, Making the common phrase seem ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... occult sympathy, Mary at once glanced up and discovered her husband. Her face was lightly flushed from stooping—and the least touch of colour was enough to give its delicate ivory an appearance of vivid health. She had grown fuller of late—quite fat, said Richard, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... so we'll make ourselves into a society. We'll have a star with seven rays for our secret sign. It has a nice occult kind of smack about it. When we chalk that mark upon anybody's desk, it means we've got to reform her, whether she likes it or whether ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... the question, "is there an existence after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to solve as one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount of energy to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran

... deny that there is magic in a mirror, a weird atmosphere imprisoned, between the metal and the glass, borrowing the occult powers of the gulf of space, and returning to us our own wraith and apparition at any hour of the day or night when we smite it with a ray of light,—reaching with its searching power into the dark places where we have hidden ourselves, and seizing and projecting them in open sight? Who doubts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... the miser; palsied, jealous, lean, He looks the very skeleton of Spleen! 'Mid forests drear, he haunts, in spectred gloom, Some desert abbey or some druid's tomb; Where hearsed in earth, his occult riches lay, Fleeced from the world, and buried from the day. With crutch in hand, he points his mineral rod, Limps to the spot, and turns the well-known sod. While there, involved in night, he counts ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... some occult reason (which I have entirely forgotten) I trusted fervently that a Hungarian or Polish name might be given after the satisfactory "Yes" had been spelt out, but, alas! nothing ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... streets—and the streets were soon full of people, as a pomegranate is full of seeds—was positive that something had happened of importance, or no less positive that something of importance was going to happen, or that something of importance was actually happening. In some occult manner it had leaked out that a number of the youths of Florence were absent from their dwellings. It gradually became known that all those that were thus absent were members of the same party, and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... but wouldn't it be possible, Godfrey, to explain all this by hypnosis, or occult influence, or ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... of achieving impossibilities; he is one of the most pleasant visionaries in existence; his spirit soars aloft from every-day matters, and delights in shadowy mysteries; a matter-of-fact is a gorgon to him; he abhors the palpable, and doats upon the occult and intangible; he loves to speculate on the doings of those in the dogstar, to discuss on immortal essences, to dispute with the disbeliever on gnomes—a paradox will be the darling of his bosom for a month, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 272, Saturday, September 8, 1827 • Various

... is advanced on the supposition, that 'one mind' could command an unlimited direction over any given number of 'limbs', provided they were all connected by 'joint' and 'sinew'. But suppose, through some occult and inconceivable means, these limbs were dis-associated, as to all material connexion; suppose, for instance, one mind, with unlimited authority, governed the operations of 'two' separate persons, would not this, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... operation of one of those laws of occult force, the power of which we feel while we are totally ignorant of its rules, we fix upon the noonday as the time for some ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce

... with bacteria of a hundred various kinds; that from without we are threatened with the invasion of microbes with every breath we draw, and from within by leucomaines, robes, aerobes, anaerobes, and what not. But Science never yet went so far as to assert with the Occult Doctrine that our bodies, as well as those of animals, plants, and stones, are themselves altogether built up of such beings, which, except larger species, no microscope can detect. So far as regards the purely animal and material portion of man, Science is on its way to discoveries that will ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... a most good-natured man, but of melancholy temperament, pottering, and timid, with a bent for everything mysterious and occult.... A half-whispered ah! was his habitual exclamation; he even died with this exclamation on his lips, two years ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... Abbe Troubert fled by as eagerly, laden with thoughts as anxious, harassed by despairs and hopes as deep as the cruellest hours of the gambler, the lover, or the statesman. God alone is in the secret of the energy we expend upon our occult triumphs over man, over things, over ourselves. Though we know not always whither we are going we know well what the journey costs us. If it be permissible for the historian to turn aside for a moment from the drama ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... Copernicus, who, at least partially, struck through the traditionary atmosphere in which nature was enveloped, and to his insight we owe the foundation of astronomical science; but otherwise the whole intellectual atmosphere was charged with occult views. In fact, the learned world of the sixteenth century would have found itself quite at home in the pretensions and fancies of our modern theosophist and psychical researchers, with their notions of making erstwhile miracles ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... occult book, and a remarkable one. About all creeds and faiths this side of Pagandom go to it for their authority. Read in the light of occult teachings, it becomes something more than the old battle ground of controversy ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... Ascaphim, or charmers, whose office it was to remove present, and to avert future contingent evils; to construct talismans, etc. The Mecaschephim, or magicians, properly so called, who were conversant with the occult powers of nature, and the supernatural world; and the chasdim, or astrologers, who constituted by far the most numerous and respectable class. And from the assembly of the wise men on the occasion of the extraordinary ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... MLKYM], that is, of angels or kings (angelorum sive regum); and the third the writing of the crossing of the flood."[50] There {50} are extant also, drawings of these letters preserved by Hern. Corn. Agrippa, in his work "De Occult. Phil. lib. iii. c. 30," the copying of which would be merely matter ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... in and through you, the same Infinite Power that creates and governs all things in the universe, the same Infinite Power that governs the endless systems of worlds in space. Send out your thought,—thought is a force, and it has occult power of unknown proportions when rightly used and wisely directed,—send out your thought that the right situation or the right work will come to you at the right time, in the right way, and that you will ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine

... met Edith Allen, it seemed as if inclination might happily blend with his lofty sense of duty, and he soon became Edith's devoted and favored attendant. And yet, as we have seen, our heroine was not the sentimental style of girl that falls hopelessly and helplessly in love with a man for some occult reason, not even known to herself, and who mopes and pines till she is permitted to marry him, be he fool, villain, or saint. Edith was fully capable of appreciating and weighing her father's words, ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... any rate, wrote his "Essays" on that easy principle. The logic of them is the logic of mere chance association in thought. But, with Montaigne,—whatever is true of Emerson,—the association at least is not occult; and it is such as pleases the reader, not less than it pleased the writer. So this Gascon gentleman of the olden time never tires us, and never loses us out of his hand. We go with him cheerfully where he so ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... Manomaya Kosha, third sheath of the divine monad, Vedantic equivalent for fourth and fifth principles. Mantra period, one of the four periods into which Vedic literature has been divided. Mantra Sastra, Brahmanical writings on the occult science of incantations. Mantra Tantra Shastras, works on incantation and Magic. Manu, the great Indian legislator. Manvantara, the outbreathing of the creative principle; the period of cosmic activity between two pralayas. Maruts, the wind gods. Mathadhipatis, heads of different ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... poem, and, at the same time, constitutes the unity of its parts. The ancients, whose representative types I introduce, knew and appreciated but two kinds of power, brute or physical, and spiritual, including all occult and supernatural efficacy, and strength of intellect and will. Virtue, triumphant by the aid of adventitious force, or relying upon unconquerable pride and disdain to resist it, was the highest reach of their dynamic conceptions. Moral power is properly a Christian idea. It is not, therefore, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... This allusion was too occult for Mrs. Graham. She smiled the smile of assent without apprehension, and asked if Flint had been at Bar Harbor this summer. He should have been; it was so pleasant. The young man felt a wild desire to set forth ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... start to finish. Curious because, in various forms, this was the third time he had seen her stand with hands outstretched, calling to him. He did not believe in dreams. He had neither patience for presentiments nor faith in anything that bordered on the occult. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... important in the reconstruction of the history of philosophy; and important in furnishing necessary data to psychology. No labor can be more fruitless than the search in mythology for true philosophy; and the efforts to build up from the terminology and narratives of mythologies an occult symbolism and system of allegory is but to create a new and fictitious body ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell

... magic-lantern—a more fantastic and more moveable shadow.) No privilege of the teller of tales and the handler of puppets is more delightful, or has more of the suspense and the thrill of a game of difficulty breathlessly played, than just this business of looking for the unseen and the occult, in a scheme half-grasped, by the light or, so to speak, by the clinging scent, of the gage already in hand. No dreadful old pursuit of the hidden slave with bloodhounds and the rag of association can ever, for "excitement," I judge, have ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... should be seen in the environment of a character, and that its operations should be clothed more or less in circumstance. And since love has its ingenuities, its fine-spun and far-flung threads of association, its occult symbolisms, Browning knows how to press into the service of the central emotion objects and incidents and imagery which may seem remote or curious or fantastic or trivial or even grotesque. In Rudel to the Lady of Tripoli love which cometh by the hearing of the ear (for ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... sufficiently sensitive to have some personal knowledge of the matter. The number is far beyond what it appears to be for two reasons. One is that the average person fears ridicule and keeps his own counsel about his occult experience. The other is the feeling that communications from departed relatives are too sacred and personal for public discussion. Tens of thousands of people have seen demonstrations at spiritualistic seances ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... nature. To the stagnant wits of Simiti she was one of them, but with singular characteristics which caused the more superstitious and less intelligent to look upon her as an uncanny creature, possessed of occult powers. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... is Costanza, not Portia, Minerva, or Penelope. That she is a servant in an inn, I cannot deny; but what can I do, if, as it seems, the occult force of destiny, and the deliberate choice of reason, both impel me to adore her? Look you, friend, I cannot find words to tell you how love exalts and glorifies in my eyes this humble scullery-maid, as you call her, so that, though seeing ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... saints not known to the Saxons—Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi, Cadwaladyr Vendigeid. And I thought that that was the first and last discussion of "The Bowmen". But in a few days from its publication the editor of The Occult Review wrote to me. He wanted to know whether the story had any foundation in fact. I told him that it had no foundation in fact of any kind or sort; I forget whether I added that it had no foundation in rumour but I should ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen

... in attempting to follow the course of early man in his efforts to bring plants into medicinal use. That some of the indigenous plants had therapeutic properties was often an accidental discovery, leading in the next place to experiment and observation. Cornelius Agrippa, in his book on occult philosophy, states that mankind has learned the use of many remedies from animals. It has even been suggested that the use of the enema was discovered by observing a long-beaked bird drawing up water into its beak, ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls. Old Jolyon could not bear a strong cigar or Wagner's music. He loved Beethoven and Mozart, Handel and Gluck, and Schumann, and, for some occult reason, the operas of Meyerbeer; but of late years he had been seduced by Chopin, just as in painting he had succumbed to Botticelli. In yielding to these tastes he had been conscious of divergence from the standard of the Golden Age. Their poetry ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... observant of much that might have been expected to escape him, he still kept as much locked up within as he so liberally gave out. Bulwer Lytton was at one time, as is well known, addicted to the study of mediaeval magic, occult power, and the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies; and among other figures he one day amused himself by casting the horoscope of Mr. Gladstone (1860). To him the astrologer's son sent it. Like most of such things, the horoscope has one or two ingenious hits and a dozen nonsensical ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... genius with good dinners. But come—solve for me this riddle in brown. My friend usually gives but little heed to the feminine conundrums that smilingly ask to be answered, but for some occult reason he is in a state of sleepless interest over this one, and I know that his waistcoat is selling with gratitude to me for having the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... now, what do we mean by this affirmation of absolute reality independent of the conditions of the process of knowing? Do we mean to ... affirm, in language savouring strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an occult substratum Matter? Our conclusion cannot be stated in any such form.... Our conclusion is simply this, that no theory of phenomena, external or internal, can be framed ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... (all paid for), and both Raleigh and Percy had each a garden to cultivate and walk in, and a still-room or laboratory in which to study and perform their ' magic.' Hariot was the master of both in these occult sciences. The ' furnace ' and the ' still' were at first Raleigh's chief amusement and study. Assaying and transfusing metals, distilling simples and compounds, concocting medicines, and testing antidotes, with exercises in chemistry and alchemy, were the studies of ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens

... magic in the shining name, A legacy that beauty yields to speech, Something more quick and subtle than her fame,— Who else had blown beyond our stunted reach. By what occult divining does the will Fashion the cryptic word whose sound and sense Evoke the trembling image, lovely still, Of something ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton

... associated with pancakes. The pancake bell is still rung in many places, and for some occult reason it is the season for some wild football games in the streets and lanes of several towns and villages. At St. Ives on the Monday there is a grand hurling match, which resembles a Rugby football contest without the kicking ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield

... casuist, A mystic and a cabalist,— Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device. He is versed in occult science, In magic and in clairvoyance, Oft he keeps his fine ear strained, And Reason on her tiptoe pained For aery intelligence, And for strange coincidence. But it touches his quick heart When Fate by omens takes his part, And chance-dropped hints ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... not relish having his big occult smoke blown away in this fashion; he looked at us with rather a sickish expression, as a boy might have if someone stuck a pin in his toy balloon. But it was such a relief to get back to practicalities ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... prompted Currado to such exceeding complaisance as he had shown in joining Giannotto with her in marriage. Madam Beritola, by reason of the words she had heard from Currado, began to consider Giannotto and some remembrance of the boyish lineaments of her son's countenance being by occult virtue awakened in her, without awaiting farther explanation, she ran, open-armed, to cast herself upon his neck, nor did overabounding emotion and maternal joy suffer her to say a word; nay, they so locked up all her senses that she fell ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... and, strangest of all, the light emitted by the circle, as well as by the designs round it, increased to a steady glow, casting their radiance upwards with the weirdest possible effect upon his features. Slowly, by the power of his voice, behind which lay undoubtedly a genuine knowledge of the occult manipulation of sound, this man dominated the forces that had escaped from their proper sphere, until at length the room was reduced to silence ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... the region they propose to search has been scientifically tested and thought to contain gold. They adhere to the miner's adage, "Gold is where you find it"; and they seem to have some occult power of divination for they have uncovered fabulous fortunes in regions which, like Cripple Creek, had been declared "barren of gold." Yet, as the old settlers say, "Prospectors never get anything ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills

... patronage they have received from the reading public, for which we return our sincere thanks. We hope the near future will give us the work referred to by the author in his preface, as doubtless it will be a great revelation of Occult laws that govern our little Earth in its relation to our Sun and solar system, of which it forms a part, and give much light on those subjects that have been ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... within the limits of half-blinded men. And in such a subject as we are to study to-day, certain grooves have been made, certain ruts as it were, in which the human mind is running, and I know that in laying before you the occult truth, I must needs, at some points, come into clash with details of a tradition that is rather repeated by memory than either understood or the truths beneath it grasped. Pardon me then, my brothers, if in a speech on this great topic I should sometimes come athwart some of the dividing ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant

... all this morning." And one minister of religion moved quite sharply in his chair when I told him (as he understood it) that I had to run upstairs and do what was wrong, but should be down again in a minute. Exactly of what occult vice they silently accused me I cannot conjecture, but I know of what I accuse myself; and that is, of having written a very shapeless and inadequate book, and one quite unworthy to be dedicated to you. As far as literature goes, this book is what ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... to an occult influence which weighs on the mind of William II, an influence which, while it points the way to action, blinds him to its consequences. The ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... quite a library of occult books, from which I endeavoured to glean a little knowledge, and great rubbish most of them were. Raymond Lully, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, and Van Helmont; they were all there, in French, German, Latin, and English. The Alchemists had two obsessions: one was the discovery of the Elixir of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... border between the natural and the preternatural, the explained and the unexplained. In this play, as in The Lady from the Sea and Little Eyolf, he shows a delicacy of art in his dalliance with the occult which irresistibly recalls the exquisite ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen

... should thrive the more in consequence of persecution, can excite no surprise in any one at all skilled in the history of human nature; but this is altogether inadequate to account for that preternatural eagerness with which men seek after this wonderful plant. In fact, there appears to be some occult charm connected with it—some invisible spirit, which, be it angel, or be it devil, has never yet been, and perhaps never will be, satisfactorily explained. To those who have never revelled in this ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... unanimously, that I was only relplum scalcath, which is interpreted literally lusus naturae; a determination exactly agreeable to the modern philosophy of Europe, whose professors, disdaining the old evasion of occult causes, whereby the followers of Aristotle endeavoured in vain to disguise their ignorance, have invented this wonderful solution of all difficulties, to the unspeakable ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... the characteristics of finance heretofore has been the cult of silence, some of its rites have been almost those of an occult science. ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn

... of the road is characteristic of the genuine tramp. There must be some occult reason for this peculiarity, since in a general way, it is far easier going on the margin. Perhaps it is because he commands a better view of either side, with a regard to the possible onslaught ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... was wanted to enable them to put their scheme in execution was a fair wind, which, however, the elements refused. In the interval caused by this detention Talleyrand had one of what he called his "presentiments;" and to its occult warnings, as he afterward declared, he owed the immediate preservation of his life, salvation from shipwreck, and that change in his "destiny" which led to all the future incidents of his eventful career. Disappointment and vexation preying upon an irritable ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... rid ourselves of a belief in the strange and occult! The Christian Science organization is an expediency. It is an intellectual crutch. The book is a necessity. It is a scaffolding. Yet he who mistakes the scaffolding for the edifice ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... ways have occurred to me of dealing with the matter," continued Dr. Cairn quietly. "One is to find that cavern and to kill, in the occult sense, by means of a stake, the vampire who lies there; the other which, I confess, might only result in the permanent 'possession' of Lady Lashmore—is to get at the power which controls this ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... told him many unknown facts about his career on earth, and incidentally revealed to him the whereabouts of the now-familiar fresco of Dante on the wall of the Bargello Chapel, where it had been hidden for ages beneath a coat of whitewash. In these occult researches, Kirkup, of course, had need of a medium, and he found among the Florentine peasants a young girl, radiantly beautiful, who possessed an extraordinary susceptibility to spiritual influences. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... lady of much wit, but of no occult pretensions, and wholly ignorant of the Oglethorpes, looked over Westbrook Place, then vacant, with the idea of renting it. On entering it she said, 'I have a feeling that very interesting things have ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... far prevailed, but that many from age to age have proclaimed and vindicated the eternal gospel of love, believing, as I also firmly believe, that any opinion which tends to keep out of sight the living and loving God, whether it substitute for Him an idol, an occult agency, or a formal creed, can be nothing better than a vain and portentous shadow projected from the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... according to others. Not quite legally elected, but sufficiently so. Eighty councillors, sixty of whom are quite unknown men. Who can have recommended them, or, rather, imposed them on the electors? Can there really be some occult power at work under cover of the ex-Central Committee? Is the Commune only a pretext, and are we at the debut of a social and political revolution? I overheard a partizan of the new doctrines say,—"The Proletariat is vindicating ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... shortly loaded with ponderous tomes, upon which the other would fall, tooth and nail, with famished voracity. I had no longer a doubt that I had happened upon a body of magi, deeply engaged in the study of occult sciences. The scene reminded me of an old Arabian tale, of a philosopher shut up in an enchanted library, in the bosom of a mountain, which opened only once a year; where he made the spirits of the place ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... chandler's son in the city of Westminster. He travelled into Holland for a month, in 1580, purposely to be instructed in astrology, and other more occult sciences; as also in physick, taking his degree of Doctor beyond seas: being sufficiently furnished and instructed with what he desired, he returned into England, towards the latter end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and flourished ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... newspaper editors are not catalogued in print at Paris, as in America; but their influence being more occult, is not the less powerful, and it is this feeling that leads people to pay more attention to this or that leading article than to mere news. The announcement of a treaty having been concluded between certain powers of Europe, may not lower the funds; but if an influential journal expresses an opinion ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... cravats, soiled collars and cuffs, but he never thinks it his duty to pick them up and to keep his possessions in order. About one man in a thousand is an exception to this rule, and thrice blessed is she who weds him. It goes without saying in the household that by some occult principle of natural adaptation, there is always a "time" for a man to scatter abroad and for a woman to gather together. Mother or sister attends to "the boy's things." Why has the boy any more than the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... denied that the investigation of her pet subject, the satisfaction of her curiosity concerning occult matters and her diligent inquiries into the mysteries of the supernatural did lead her into places and scenes not at all in harmony with Eunice's ideas ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells

... aughts," replied Sancho; and shaking his fingers he washed his whole hand in the river along which the boat was quietly gliding in midstream, not moved by any occult intelligence or invisible enchanter, but simply by the current, just ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... nature-study as a means of moral culture, I do not wish to make an overstatement, nor to claim for such study any occult or exclusive power. It is not for us to say, so much nature in the schools, so much virtue in the scholars. The character of the teacher is a factor which must always be counted in. But the best teacher is the one that ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan

... as I had been able to follow, Mrs. Veda Blair's story had dealt mostly with a Professor and Madame Rapport and something she called the "Red Lodge" of the "Temple of the Occult." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... Out of doors in foreign lands, as she ingeniously remarked, one seemed to see the right side of the tapestry; out of doors in England one seemed to see the wrong side, which gave one no notion of the figure. The admission costs her historian a pang, but Henrietta, despairing of more occult things, was now paying much attention to the outer life. She had been studying it for two months at Venice, from which city she sent to the Interviewer a conscientious account of the gondolas, the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, the pigeons and the young boatman who chanted Tasso. The Interviewer ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... a tumult many years ago, Accused—our learning's fate—of wizardry, Rebellion, to the setting up a rule And creed prodigious as described to me. His death, which happened when the earthquake fell (Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss To occult learning in our lord the sage Who lived there in the pyramid alone) Was wrought by the mad people—that's their wont! On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, To his tried virtue, for miraculous help— How could ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... Rites of the Firewalking Fanatics of Japan, by W. C. Jameson Reid, in the Chicago Sunday Inter-Ocean of September 27th, 1903, reveals so splendid an example of the gullibility of the well-informed when the most ordinary trick is cleverly presented and surrounded with the atmosphere of the occult, that I am impelled to place before my readers a few illuminating excerpts from Mr. Reid's narrative. This man would, in all probability, scorn to spend a dime to witness the performance of a fire-eater in a circus ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... writer brings his own gift, and if others satisfy our craving for destruction and beauty, and yet others our longing for simplification and rational form, the suggestions he brings of mystery and passion, of secret despairs and occult ecstasies, of strange renunciations and stranger triumphs, are such as must quicken our sense of the whole weird game. Looking back over these astonishing books, it is curious to note the impression left of Dostoievsky's feeling for "Nature." No writer one has met with has less of that tendency ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... some sense of the occult revealed my presence, for she turned swiftly, with a sharp gasp of the breath, and looked straight into my eyes. The recognition was instant, bewildering, a shock which left her speechless, choking back the cry of alarm which rose into her throat. ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... produce effect at the moment, there is hardly any crime so dark or desperate of which, in the excitement of thus acting upon the imaginations of others, he would not have hinted that he had been guilty; and it has sometimes occurred to me that the occult cause of his lady's separation from him, round which herself and her legal adviser have thrown such formidable mystery, may have been nothing more, after all, than some imposture of this kind, some dimly hinted confession of undefined horrors, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... one. This much is certain, she cannot have any sense that other people may not have, and the existence of a special sense is not evident to her or to any one who knows her. Miss Keller is distinctly not a singular proof of occult and mysterious theories, and any attempt to explain her in that way fails to reckon with her normality. She is no more mysterious and complex than any other person. All that she is, all that she has done, can ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... opposite the place where Hawthorne was accustomed to bathe. The cause of her suicide has never been adequately explained, but as she was a transcendentalist, or considered herself so, there were those who believed that in some occult way that was the occasion of it. However, as one of her sisters afterward followed her example, it would seem more likely to have come from the development of some family trait. She was seen walking upon the bank for a long time, before she ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... range included historical treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as In Tenebras and To the Soil of the Earth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... for Catholic emancipation, Toryism and High-Church principles were associated against Whigs and Dissenters. By that kind of dumb instinct which outruns reason, the Whig had learnt that there was some occult bond of union between the claims of a priesthood and the claims of a monarchy. The old maxim, 'No bishop, no king,' suggested the opposite principle that you must keep down the clergy if you would limit the monarchy. The natural interpretation of this prejudice ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... She sat, during the meetings, bolt upright, with folded arms, as if she were in school, her bright, beady eyes fixed unblinkingly upon Mrs. Arnold, whom she seemed to regard as a species of priestess in charge of occult mysteries. ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... of Mediaeval Thought," and the two essays on Alchemy, have appeared in The Journal of the Alchemical Society. In others I have utilised material I have contributed to The Occult Review, to the editor of which journal my thanks are due for permission so to do. I have also to express my gratitude to the Rev. A. H. COLLINS, and others to be referred to in due course, for permission here to reproduce illustrations of which they are the ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... recollect right—for it is a long time since we studied the occult sciences—Wierius, in his erudite volume "De Prestigiis Demonum," recounts the story which is celebrated in the following ballad. Something like it is to be found in the biography of every magician; for the household staff of a wizard was not complete without a famulus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps tremble continually With prayer sent up to God; And where each need, revealed, expects ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... Years ago I was an Indian Brachman, and versed in all those mysterious Secrets which your European Philosopher, called Pythagoras, is said to have learned from our Fraternity. I had so ingratiated my self by my great Skill in the occult Sciences with a Daemon whom I used to converse with, that he promised to grant me whatever I should ask of him. I desired that my Soul might never pass into the Body of a brute Creature; but this ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... for some reason, Mr. Samuel had decided to accept her claim; and that for some reason equally occult he meant to give the clergyman no choice but ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... o'clock in the day, nobody knew how the matter was going. It was supposed that the working-classes were in favour of Melmotte, partly from their love of a man who spends a great deal of money, partly from the belief that he was being ill-used,—partly, no doubt, from that occult sympathy which is felt for crime, when the crime committed is injurious to the upper classes. Masses of men will almost feel that a certain amount of injustice ought to be inflicted on their betters, so as ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... of a body of partisans known under the name of the Black Chasseurs, and commanded by Colonel Lutzow. In Prussia the still vivid memory of the late queen exercised a great influence over the new direction given to its institutions, in which she occupied the place of an occult divinity. During her lifetime she gave to Baron Nostitz a silver chain, which as her gift became the decoration, or we might rather say the rallying signal, of a new society, to which was given the name of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Gray," said Sir Lucien coolly, "we are men of the world—and we do not look for consistency in womenfolk. Mrs. Irvin has decided to consult a palmist or a hypnotist or some such occult authority before dining with you this evening. Doubtless she seeks to learn if the play to which you propose to take her is an ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... confiscated, and all meetings made impossible. It goes without saying that, as on various previous occasions, I must needs be held responsible for the act. Evidently the American police credit me with occult powers. I did not know Averbuch; in fact, had never before heard his name, and the only way I could have possibly "conspired" with him was in my astral body. But, then, the police are not concerned with logic or justice. What they seek is a target, to mask ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... watch," or anything. She, promptly detecting his disappointment at her coldness, tried to simulate the fervour of an initiate, but this may never be done so as to deceive any one who has truly sensed the occult and incommunicable virtue of the candy cane. For one thing, she kept repeating the words "candy cane" baldly, whenever she could find a place for them in her soulless praise; whereas an initiate would not once have uttered ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... the intelligence affected them. It was, however, unanimously agreed, that the Doctor's legacy had every symptom of being equal to what it was at first expected to be, namely, twenty thousand pounds;—a sum which, by some occult or recondite moral influence of the Lottery, is the common maximum, in popular estimation, of any extraordinary and indefinite windfall of fortune. Miss Becky Glibbans, from the purest motives of charity, devoutly wished ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... This proceeding in some occult way led to the purchase of a note-book and pencil, and that started the conception of an artist taking notes. That was a little game Mr. Hoopdriver had, in congenial company, played in his still younger days—to the infinite annoyance of quite a number of respectable excursionists at Hastings. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... the sailor's confidence in the tutelary deity of his island was absolute, and, certainly, the occult power, manifested until now in so many inexplicable ways, appeared to be unlimited; but also it knew how to escape the colonists' most minute researches, for, in spite of all their efforts, in spite of the more than zeal,—the obstinacy,— with which they ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... the greatest lion-tamer who ever lived, once told me that a man in love with a woman could not control lions; that when a man falls in love he loses that intangible, mysterious quality—call it mesmerism or whatever you like—the occult force that dominates beasts. And he said that the lions knew it, that they perceived it sometimes even before the man himself was aware that he was ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... the Galaxy, that has given it its fame, but quite as much the superstitious awe with which it was regarded by the early explorers of the South Seas. To them, as well as to those who listened in rapt wonder to their tales, the "Coal-sack'' seemed to possess some occult connection with the mystic "Cross.'' In the eyes of the sailors it was not a vacancy so much as a sable reality in the sky, and as, shuddering, they stared at it, they piously crossed themselves. It was another of the magical wonders of the unknown ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... have been able to recall in England concerning existing occult practices to which a questionable purpose might be attributed, appeared in a well-known psychological journal some few years since, and was derived from a continental source, being an account of a certain society then existing in Paris, which ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... of Odilon Redon, of whom he had never heard, in his feeling for the almost occult presence emanating from everything he encountered everywhere, and his simple letters to his friends hold touches of the same beauty his drawings and paintings and ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... the cruel leader whom she was plotting to destroy. Attracted by the scene she wandered out to breathe at her ease beneath the sky; and though her steps conducted her at a venture, she was surely led to the Promenade of the town by one of those occult impulses of the soul which lead us to follow hope irrationally. Thoughts conceived under the dominion of that spell are often realized; but we then attribute their pre-vision to a power we call presentiment,—an inexplicable power, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... a busy age there is the strongest possible temptation to seek a restorative by some occult method, rather than to give the rest and refreshment that nature demands. It is upon this that the whole trade ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... caviare or roe was really in those days "caviare to the general" multitude, the nose of the fish was not, it being greatly coveted by us small boys wherewith to make a ball for "shinny," which for some occult reason was preferred to any other. Old people of my acquaintance could remember when seals had been killed at Cape May below the city, and how on one or two occasions a bewildered whale of no small dimensions had found its way to ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... incense-burning, gong-banging, and other rites supposed to be propitiatory of the deity. He was also, however, greatly addicted to opium-smoking, and when under the influence of the drug, of which, as an old stager, he could consume great quantities without being stupefied, the idea of the occult power of the goddess, never absent from his mind, was turned completely upside down. When free from the fumes of opium nobody could have been more respectful to the Josses, but when intoxicated, and with the weather threatening, he openly poured upon them abuse, reviling, and suspicion. He usually ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... predictions or ensnared by magic;[150] princes were governed in their political movements by astral calculations;[151] a grave minister details with complacency, although without comment, various anecdotes of the operation of the occult sciences,[152] and even makes them a study; while a European monarch, strong in the love of his people and his own bravery, suffers the predictions of soothsayers and prophets to cloud his mind and to ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... subject he seemed to remember nothing of the matter; that whenever anybody of any weight has questioned him as to his devotion to these two persons, his replies have shown so complete an absence of ideas and of sense of his own interests, that there obviously must be some occult cause at work to which the petitioner begs to direct the eye of justice, inasmuch as it is impossible but that this cause should be criminal, malignant, and wrongful, or else of a nature to come under medical jurisdiction; unless this influence is of the kind which constitutes an abuse ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... movement towards a national unity which would embrace all classes and creeds to the forgetfulness of past wrongs, animosities and deep divisions. It seemed to have got into their minds that the appearance of the Irish Reform Association covered some occult plot between Lord Dunraven, Mr Wyndham, Sir Antony MacDonnell and Mr O'Brien. Mr Davitt declared that "No party or leader can consent to accept the Dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust." ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... all Light-Sparks," The Propator and Autopator would seem to represent different aspects of this claim. "Gnosis" was not the possession of a body of secret Doctrine in the sense of having a number of formal propositions containing occult information, but a vital knowledge of the processes of ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... all you know' or suspect. To begin, then, of what sort is the mystery—physical, mental, moral, historical, scientific, occult? Any kind of hint will ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... on his march against Scotland in the year 1296, when the Scottish regalia was captured, and the celebrated Crowning-Stone was brought to England and placed in Westminster Abbey, where it has ever since remained—a stone having an occult relation to the history of the British and American peoples of the highest interest to both, but as there is already an extensive literature on this subject I will not ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward

... is a fact which official records go to substantiate. Although the "Reports of the Territories" take no cognizance of ghosts and spirits and other occult influence, dealing rather with such mundane facts as the condition of crops and the discipline of the races, yet the reports of that particular year in this one district made gloomy reading both for Hamilton and for the Administrator in ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... scarcely necessary to say that I use the term Mystic, as applied to the larger portion of this volume, in its technical sense to signify my own initiation into some of the more occult phases of metropolitan existence. It is only to the Spiritualistic, or concluding portion of my work, that the word applies in its ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... were difficult of performance, and he ended by lamenting his ignorance of English or some European language, and that he had not learned our Ilm (science) also. Then we plunged into sympathies, mystic numbers, and the occult virtues of stones, etc., and I swallowed my mixture (consisting of liquorice, cummin and soda) just as the sun entered a particular house, and the moon was in some favourable aspect. He praised to me ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... the bottom of the business: this it was which had delivered me into the hands of Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, who, as now I am sure, was merely making use of me for his private occult purposes. He desired to consult the distant Oracle, if such a person existed, as to great schemes of his own, and therefore, to attain his end, made use of my secret longings which I had been so foolish as to reveal to him, quite careless of what happened to me in the process. [A bit narrow and ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... and her dulling in emotional response. This failure to deteriorate seems to stand in definite relationship to her system of ideas. That these have a constructive tendency is shown by the translation of her cruder thoughts into the setting of the occult with the suggestion of propaganda and in their pragmatic value. With her "new religion" she has provided herself with an argument in favor of a life of desultory prostitution and general vagabondage. She was advised to go to a hospital ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10



Words linked to "Occult" :   fate, causal agency, unseeable, invisible, causal agent, esoteric, pattern, hold back, destiny, conceal, supernatural being, theurgy, change, overshadow, hold in, practice, spiritual being, cause



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