Nevermind the occult, some folks today think of philosophy as soft-headed, hippie-type, new-age superstition. Be this as it may, philosophy has achieved a measure of evolutionary respect in academic circles and among others of us who think and who think about that activity (thinking). It also makes for interesting conversation and exchange of ideas for those of us who tire quickly of college football; social networking;political campaigning and other cultural brouhaha.
But, all that said,fascination with the occult has stood the test of time. Why is this? Hard to determine with certainty, but I'll offer the simplest and perhaps most compelling opinion: maybe it is because we are soft-headed, new-age, superstitious hippie-types. Perhaps we still value mystery, intrigue and a sense of wonder about things we cannot rationally explain? Is this another example of historionic effect? Maybe so. Or maybe we have just gotten used to it---because that is one of the outcomes of historionic effect and one reason for its propensity to affect our will, cloud our minds and shape our cultures. It ties into and alters every aspect of who we are and what we do. More later...if the spirit moves me.

On the statement concerning the relationship of the occult to modern science: Hitler lost and Yogi Berra said: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. The discovery and control of fire enabled us to survive the elements and cook our food, which enabled us to live better, longer and more comfortably. Thinking caused us to invent the occult; the inability to think clearly caused our superstitions. For every fork in the road we have taken, we have prospered and suffered, and this is how it is, has been and will be. Prove me wrong if you will. It won't matter, because we will all be dead by then. My garage is looking better with new paint and all.
Philosophers will remain social anomalies, as they have always been. Don't you hate when that happens? I know I do.

Yesterday before the Colorado Buffaloes Oregon Ducks football game I asked people I encountered if when they got home they would try to find a stuffed duck or rubber duck and stick a pin in it for me. For personel reasons I dearly wished for a CO win. Alas either no one found a duck to stick or black magic doesn't work because the Ducks killed the Buffs in what some call a game.
Maybe you have to say a chant or something too, does anyone know?
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MJA

By chance I tuned in to the latter part of your program discussing science and the occult with Christopher Lehrich. I thought he was very well informed and well spoken.
A point that is often overlooked in such discussions is that the most basic forces of nature that are studied by science, such as gravity and magnetism, are themselves magical and miraculous. The only difference between these forces and levitation, for example, is that the former are commonplace and seemingly inevitable, while the latter is either uncommon or nonexistenent, depending on whether or not you seem to have experienced it. If you play with the similar poles of two magnets and feel that uncanny, elastic, repulsive force, it is as magical and occult as anything you can imagine. It is clearly impossible, yet there it is! Scientists can describe it and measure the "force field" mathematically, but they cannot actually explain it. It just IS. The same with gravity. We experience it every moment, we take it for granted and call it WEIGHT. Only the experience of astronauts in orbit can pierce that illusion of "normalcy." There is no reason at all why bodies floating in space should attract each other. They just DO.
Even matter, that most solid and "normal" basis of everyday life, evaporates into incomprehensible entities that are more like "force fields" or "packets of energy" the deeper you investigate and dissect it. "Energy" itself is incomprehensible and inexplicable. It is just a word we use to denote something that is elusive and phantasmal, yet commonplace and inevitable.
In this very real sense, then, science is just the investigation, description, and measurement of everyday occult and magical reality.

I have been more than ten years investigating on Abderrahman Ibn Khaldun's ideas and theories about supernatural perceptions, which come from the occult (al ghayb). It is in him a field very rich, with remarkable notes on methodology, reasoning, and philosophy of mind. Even if the perspective of him who approaches these themes in that author is not merely historical, it has something very interesting to say about the experiences in that field of a really strange reality. Among many things I have been struck with as curious on what he says about the supernatural, what is most astonishing is when he describes the behaviour and symptoms of people who will have supernatural revelations. Though he is talking about islamic people, and writes in the XIV century, many of the things he says could be acknowledged and approved by mystics and saints of many religions in the past and nowadays. The book in which he writes about these themes (in an incidental way, because he writes mainly about theory of history) is his famous Al-Muqaddima, at the end of the introduction, the 6th prefatory discussion.