Definitions

Question 1

Arminianism

Answer 1

belief that all humans potentially had ability to reach salvation

Question 2

Occult, Truzzi (sociologist)

Answer 2

• Difficulty of providing a simple definition of the occult lies in its status as a floating concept that varies depending on who is using it, and time and place in which it is used
• A common denominator for most perspectives labelled occult is that they have in some way concerned themselves with things anomalous to our generally-accepted cultural storehouse of ‘truths’. That is, we are here dealing with claims that contradict common-sense or institutionalized knowledge. The contradiction of accepted beliefs is the very thing which makes the occult somehow strange, mysterious and inexplicable. It is the very character of the occult that it deals w dissonant or contradiction knowledge claims

Question 3

Fischer, steep decline of spirit photog in UK

Answer 3

after Buguet’s trial, 1875

Question 4

Occult, Owen

Answer 4

Term occult encompasses such a broad spectrum of beliefs, ideas and practices that it defies precise definition.
Oft applied w/o qualification to activities as diverse as divination, sorcery and black magic, and various kinds of necromancy or spiritualist-related practices.
Diversity is underpinned by implicit acceptance of the idea that reality as we are taught to understand it accounts for only a fraction of the ultimate reality which lies just beyond our immediate senses.
Is this hidden reality that the psychic, medium or magician claims to access.

What united many of these diff trends and factions was a loosely Neoplatonic belief in an occluded spirit realm and a broadly conceived sense of an animistic universe in which all of creation is interrelated and part and expression of a universal soul or cosmic mind

Occultism was generally understood to refer to the study of a hidden or veiled reality and the arcane secrets of existence.

Question 5

Mysticism (Owen)

Answer 5

experience of and onenness with a variously conceived divinity

Question 6

Disenchantment (Saler)

Answer 6

in its broadest terms, maintains that wonders and marvels have been demystified by science, spirituality has been supplanted by secularism

Question 7

Science (Oppenheim)

Answer 7

Ppl thought about science from widely different perspectives. For some, was restricted to lab research. For others, included every realm of knowledge and every form of technical expertise. Infinite number of intermediate positions. Spiritualism and psychical research outside the former, but within the latter