In religion, transcendence is the aspect of existence that is completely independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws. This is related to the nature and power of deities as well as other spiritual or supernatural beings and forces. This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways. In religious experience,
transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of
physical existence, and by some definitions, has also become independent
of it. This is typically manifested in prayer, rituals, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal visions.
It is affirmed in various religious traditions' concept of the divine, which contrasts with the notion of a god (or, the Absolute) that exists exclusively in the physical order (immanentism), or is indistinguishable from it (pantheism).
Transcendence can be attributed in knowledge as well as or instead of
its being. Thus, an entity may transcend both the universe and knowledge
(is beyond the grasp of the human mind).
Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Some theologians and metaphysicians of various religious traditions affirm that a god is both within and beyond the universe (panentheism); in it, but not of it; simultaneously pervading it and surpassing it.
In Jewish Kabbalisticcosmology, God is described as the "Ein Sof"
(literally, without end) as reference to God's divine simplicity and
essential unknowability. The emanation of creation from the Ein Sof is
explained through a process of filtering. In the Kabbalistic creation myth
referred to as the "breaking of the vessels," filtering was necessary
because otherwise this intense, simple essence would have overwhelmed
and made impossible the emergence of any distinct creations. Each
filter, described as a vessel, captured the emanation of this creative
force until it was overwhelmed and broken by the intensity of God's
simple essence. Once broken, the vessel's shards, full of absorbed
"divine sparks," fell into a vessel below. This process ultimately
continued until the "light" of Godliness was sufficiently reduced to
allow the world we inhabit to be sustained without breaking. The
creation of this world, however, comes with the consequence that Godly
transcendence is hidden, or "exiled" (from the immanent world). Only
through the revelation of sparks hidden within the shards embedded in
our material world can this transcendence be recognized again. In Hasidic thought, divine sparks are revealed through the performance of commandments or "mitzvot," (literally, the obligations and prohibitions described in the Torah).
A Kabbalistic explanation for the existence of malevolence in the world
is that such terrible things are possible with the divine sparks being
hidden. Thus there is some urgency to performing mitzvot in order to
liberate the hidden sparks and perform a "tikkun olam"
(literally, healing of the world). Until then, the world is presided
over by the immanent aspect of God, often referred to as the Shekhinah or divine spirit, and in feminine terms.
Christianity
The Catholic Church, as do other Christian denominations, holds that God transcends all creation. According to Aquinas, "concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him."
Anthropomorphic depictions of God are largely metaphorical and reflect
the challenge of "human modes of expression" in attempting to describe
the infinite. St. Augustine observed "...[I]t is only by the use of such human expressions that Scripture can make its many kinds of readers whom it wants to help to feel, as it were, at home." The "sense of transcendence" and therefore, an awareness of the "sacred", is an important component of the liturgy. Thus, God is recognized as both transcendent and immanent.
Tawhid is the act of believing and affirming that God (Arabic: Allah) is one and unique (wāḥid).
The Qur'an asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that
transcends the world; a unique and indivisible being who is independent
of the entire creation. According to the Qur'an, as mentioned in Surat al-Ikhlas:
1. Say: He, Allah, is Ahad
(the Unique One of Absolute Oneness, who is indivisible in nature, who
is unique in His essence, attributes, names and acts, the One who has no
second, no associate, no parents, no offspring, no peers, free from the
concept of multiplicity, and far from conceptualization and limitation, and there is nothing like Him in any respect).
2. Allah is al-Samad (the Ultimate Source of all existence, the uncaused cause
who created all things out of nothing, who is eternal, absolute,
immutable, perfect, complete, essential, independent, and
self-sufficient; Who does not need to eat or drink, sleep or rest; Who
needs nothing while all of creation is in absolute need of Him; the one
eternally and constantly required and sought, depended upon by all
existence and to whom all matters will ultimately return).
3. He begets not, nor is He begotten (He is Unborn and Uncreated, has no parents, wife or offspring).
4. And there is none comparable (equal, equivalent or similar) to Him.
According to Vincent J. Cornell, the Qur'an also provides a monist
image of God by describing the reality as a unified whole, with God
being a single concept that would describe or ascribe all existing
things: "God is the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward; God is the Knower of everything." [Qur'an 57:3]
All Muslims have however vigorously criticized interpretations that
would lead to a monist view of God for what they see as blurring the
distinction between the creator and the creature, and its
incompatibility with the radical monotheism of Islam.
In order to explain the complexity of unity of God and of the
divine nature, the Qur'an uses 99 terms referred to as "Most Beautiful
Names of Allah" (Sura 7:180)[12]. Aside from the supreme name "Allah"
and the neologism al-Rahman (referring to the divine beneficence that
constantly (re)creates, maintains and destroys the universe), other
names may be shared by both God and human beings. According to the
Islamic teachings, the latter is meant to serve as a reminder of God's immanence rather than being a sign of one's divinity or alternatively imposing a limitation on God's transcendent nature.
Tawhid or Oneness of God constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession. To attribute divinity to a created entity is the only unpardonable sin mentioned in the Qur'an. Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of Tawhid.
Baháʼí Faith
The Baháʼí Faith believes in a single, imperishable god, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe.
In the Baháʼí tradition, god is described as "a personal god,
unknowable, inaccessible, the source of all Revelation, eternal,
omniscient, omnipresent, and almighty."
Though inaccessible directly, God is nevertheless seen as conscious of
his creation, with a mind, will, and purpose. Baháʼís believe that God
expresses this will at all times and in many ways, including through a
series of divine messengers referred to as Manifestations of God or sometimes divine educators. In expressing God's intent, these manifestations are seen to establish religion in the world. Baháʼí teachings state that God is too great for humans to fully comprehend, nor to create a complete and accurate image.
In Indian religions
Buddhism
In Buddhism, "transcendence", by definition, belongs to the mortal beings of the formless realms of existence. However, although such beings are at 'the peak' of Samsara,
Buddhism considers the development of transcendence to be both
temporary and a spiritual cul-de-sac which, therefore, does not
eventuate a permanent cessation of Samsara. This assertion was a primary
differentiator from the other Sramana teachers during Gautama Buddha's own training and development.
Alternatively, in the various forms of Buddhism—Theravada,
Mahayana (especially Pure Land and Zen) and Vajrayana—the notion of
transcendence sometimes includes a soteriological
application. Except for Pure Land and Vajrayana, the role played by
transcendent beings is minimal and at most a temporary expedient.
However some Buddhists believe that Nirvana
is an eternal, transcendental state beyond name and form, so for these
Buddhists, Nirvana is the main concept of transcendence. The more usual
interpretation of Nirvana in Buddhism is that it is a cessation—a
permanent absence of something (namely suffering), and therefore it is
not in any way a state which could be considered transcendent.
Primordial enlightenment and the dharma are sometimes portrayed
as transcendent, since they can surpass all samsaric obstructions.
Hinduism
In the Bhagavad Gita,
transcendence is described as a level of spiritual attainment, or a
state of being open to all spiritual aspirants (the end goal of yoga
practice). In this state one is no longer under the control of any
materialistic desires and is aware of a higher spiritual reality.
When the yogī,
by practice of yoga, disciplines his mental activities and becomes
situated in transcendence — devoid of all material desires — he is said
to be well established in yoga.
The exact nature of this transcendence is given as being "above the modes of material nature", which are known as gunas (ropes) that bind the living entity to the world of samsara (karmic cycle) in Hindu philosophy.
Transcendence is described and viewed from diverse perspectives in Hinduism. Traditions such as Advaita Vedanta, in transcendence, view God as the Nirguna Brahman (God without attributes) - the absolute. Other traditions such as Bhakti yoga, in transcendence, view God as being with attributes (Saguna Brahman), the Absolute being a personal deity (Ishvara), such as Vishnu or Shiva.
Sikhism
Waheguru (Punjabi: ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ, Vāhigurū) is a term most often used in Sikhism
to refer to God, the Supreme Being or the creator of all. It means
"Wonderful Teacher" in the Punjabi language, but in this case is used to
refer to the God in Sikhism. Wahi means "wonderful" (a Middle Persian borrowing) and "Guru" (Sanskrit: गुरु) is a term denoting "teacher". Waheguru is also described by some as an experience of ecstasy which is beyond all descriptions.
Cumulatively, the name implies wonder at the Divine Light
eliminating spiritual darkness. It might also imply, "Hail the Lord
whose name eliminates spiritual darkness." Earlier, Shaheed Bhai Mani Singh, Sikhan di Bhagat Mala, gave a similar explication, also on the authority of Guru Nanak.
Considering the two constituents of "Vahiguru" ("vahi" + "guru")
implying the state of wondrous ecstasy and offering of homage to the
Lord, the first one was brought distinctly and prominently into the
devotional system by Guru Nanak, who has made use of this interjection,
as in Majh ki Var (stanza 24), and Suhi ki Var, shloka to pauri 10.
Sikh doctrine identifies one panentheistic god (Ik Onkar) who is omnipresent and has infinite qualities, whose name is true (Satnam),
is the Creator (Karta Purkh), has no fear (Nirb hau), is not the enemy
of anyone (Nirvair), is beyond time (Akaal), has no image (Murat), is
beyond birth and death circulation (Ajunee), is self-existent (Sai
Bhang) and possesses the grace of word guru (eternal light) we can meet
him (Gurprasaad). Sikhs do not identify a gender for Ek Onkar, nor do
they believe it takes a human form. In the Sikh tradition, all human
beings are considered equal regardless of their religion, sex, or race.
All are sons and daughters of Waheguru, the Almighty.
In 1961, Christian theologian Gabriel Vahanian published The Death of God.
Vahanian argued that modern secular culture had lost all sense of the
sacred, lacking any sacramental meaning, no transcendental purpose or
sense of providence. He concluded that for the modern secular mind "God
is dead", but he did not mean that God did not exist. In Vahanian's
vision a transformed post-Christian and post-modern culture was needed
to create a renewed experience of deity.
Paul Van Buren and William Hamilton both agreed that the concept
of transcendence had lost any meaningful place in modern secular
thought. According to the norms of contemporary modern secular thought,
God is dead. In responding to this denial of transcendence Van Buren and
Hamilton offered secular people the option of Jesus as the model human
who acted in love. The encounter with the Christ of faith would be open
in a church-community.
Thomas J. J. Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon William Blake,
Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a
form of poetry in which the immanence (presence) of God could be
encountered in faith communities. However, he no longer accepted the
possibility of affirming his belief in a transcendent God. Altizer
concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his immanent
spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead. It is
important that such ideas are understood as socio-cultural developments
and not as ontological realities. As Vahanian expressed it in his book,
the issue of the denial of God lies in the mind of secular man, not in
reality.
Critiquing the death of God theology, Joseph Papin, the founder
of the Villanova Theology Institute, noted: "Rumbles of the new theology
of the 'Requiem for God," (theologians of the death of God) proved to
be a totally inadequate foundation for spanning a theological river with
a bridge. The school of the theology of the "Requiem of God," not even
implementing a "Requiem for Satan," will constitute only a footnote to
the history of theology. . . . 'The Grave of God,' was the death rattle
for the continuancy of the aforementioned school without any noticeable
echo." Professor Piet Schoonenberg
(Nijmegen, Netherlands) directly critiqued Altizer concluding: "Rightly
understood the transcendence of God does not exclude His immanence, but
includes it."
Schoonenberg went on to say: "We must take God's transcendence
seriously by not imposing any limits whatsoever, not even the limits
that our images or concepts of transcendence evoke. This however occurs
when God's transcendence is expressed as elevated over the world to the
exclusion of his presence in this world; when his independence is
expressed by excluding his real relation and reaction to the world; or
when we insist upon his unchangeable eternity to the exclusion of his
real partnership in human history."
Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin supernaturalis, from Latin super- (above, beyond, or outside of) + natura (nature). Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world.
The supernatural is hypernymic to religion.
Religions are standardized supernaturalist worldviews, or at least more
complete than single supernaturalist views. Supernaturalism is the
adherence to the supernatural (beliefs, and not violations of causality
and the physical laws).
Etymology and history of the concept
Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, antecedents of the modern English compoundsupernatural enter the language from two sources: via Middle French (supernaturel) and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin (supernaturalis). Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latinprefixsuper- and nātūrālis (see nature). The earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue (orcherd of Syon, around 1425; Þei haue not þanne þe supernaturel lyȝt ne þe liȝt of kunnynge, bycause þei vndirstoden it not).
The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of
its use. Originally the term referred exclusively to Christian
understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can
mean "belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of
divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal
some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature;
occult, paranormal" or "more than what is natural or ordinary;
unnaturally or extraordinarily great; abnormal, extraordinary". Obsolete
uses include "of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics".
As a noun, the term can mean "a supernatural being", with a
particularly strong history of employment in relation to entities from
the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
History of the concept
The ancient world had no word that resembled "supernatural". Dialogues from Neoplatonic philosophy in the third century AD influenced the development of the concept of the supernatural, which later evolved through Christian theology. The term nature had existed since antiquity, with Latin authors like Augustine using the word and its cognates at least 600 times in City of God. In the medieval period, "nature" had ten different meanings and "natural" had eleven different meanings. Peter Lombard,
a medieval scholastic of the 12th century, explored causes beyond
nature, questioning how certain phenomena could be attributed solely to
God. In his writings, he used the term praeter naturam to describe these occurrences. In the scholastic period, Thomas Aquinas
classified miracles into three categories: "above nature", "beyond
nature" and "against nature". In doing so, he sharpened the distinction
between nature and miracles more than the early Church Fathers had done. As a result, he had created a dichotomy of sorts of the natural and supernatural. Though the phrase "supra naturam" was used since the 4th century AD, it was in the 1200s that Thomas Aquinas used the term "supernaturalis". Despite this, the term had to wait until the end of the medieval period before it became more popularly used.
The discussions on "nature" from the scholastic period were diverse and
unsettled with some postulating that even miracles are natural and that
natural magic was a natural part of the world.
The metaphysical
considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to
approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any
dependencies on its antithesis, the natural,
will ultimately have to be inverted or rejected. One complicating
factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural"
and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religiousspirituality and occultism or spiritualism.
For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal and partly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseasesnature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of.
And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others (more relative), as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill; so it is said that water, kept suspended in a sucking pump, is not in its natural place, as that is which is stagnant in the well. We say also that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; that cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought by Christ and his apostles were supernatural.
— Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
Nomological possibility is possibility under the actual laws of nature. Most philosophers since David Hume
have held that the laws of nature are metaphysically contingent—that
there could have been different natural laws than the ones that actually
obtain. If so, then it would not be logically or metaphysically
impossible, for example, for you to travel to Alpha Centauri
in one day; it would just have to be the case that you could travel
faster than the speed of light. But of course there is an important
sense in which this is not nomologically possible; given that the laws of nature are what they are. In the philosophy of natural science,
impossibility assertions come to be widely accepted as overwhelmingly
probable rather than considered proved to the point of being
unchallengeable. The basis for this strong acceptance is a combination
of extensive evidence of something not occurring, combined with an underlying scientific theory,
very successful in making predictions, whose assumptions lead logically
to the conclusion that something is impossible. While an impossibility
assertion in natural science can never be absolutely proved, it could be
refuted by the observation of a single counterexample.
Such a counterexample would require that the assumptions underlying the
theory that implied the impossibility be re-examined. Some
philosophers, such as Sydney Shoemaker,
have argued that the laws of nature are in fact necessary, not
contingent; if so, then nomological possibility is equivalent to
metaphysical possibility.
The term supernatural is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural—the
latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which
appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of
physics. Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable.
Parapsychologists use the term psi
to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they
study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" (1948: 311) and "which are non-physical
in nature" (1962:310), and it is used to cover both extrasensory
perception (ESP), an "awareness of or response to an external event or
influence not apprehended by sensory means" (1962:309) or inferred from
sensory knowledge, and psychokinesis (PK), "the direct influence exerted
on a physical system by a subject without any known intermediate energy
or instrumentation" (1945:305).
— Michael Winkelman, Current Anthropology
Views on the "supernatural" vary, for example it may be seen as:
indistinct from nature. From this perspective, some events occur according to the laws of nature, and others occur according to a separate set of principles external to known nature. For example, in Scholasticism, it was believed that God was capable of performing any miracle so long as it did not lead to a logical contradiction.
Some religions posit immanent deities, however, and do not have a
tradition analogous to the supernatural; some believe that everything
anyone experiences occurs by the will (occasionalism), in the mind (neoplatonism), or as a part (nondualism) of a more fundamental divine reality (platonism).
incorrect human attribution. In this view all events have
natural and only natural causes. They believe that human beings ascribe
supernatural attributes to purely natural events, such as lightning, rainbows, floods and the origin of life.
Cross cultural studies
Anthropological
studies across cultures indicate that people do not hold or use natural
and supernatural explanations in a mutually exclusive or dichotomous
fashion. Instead, the reconciliation of natural and supernatural
explanations is normal and pervasive across cultures.
Cross cultural studies indicate that there is coexistence of natural
and supernatural explanations in both adults and children for explaining
numerous things about the world, such as illness, death, and origins. Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and
how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations.
The coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in individuals
may be the outcomes two distinct cognitive domains: one concerned with
the physical-mechanical relations and another with social relations. Studies on indigenous groups have allowed for insights on how such coexistence of explanations may function.
A deity (/ˈdiːəti/ⓘ or /ˈdeɪ.əti/ⓘ) is a supernatural being considered divine or sacred. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as "a god or goddess (in a polytheistic religion)", or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton
defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary
humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways
that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life." A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess.
Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheisticreligions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God), polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic
religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities,
considering them as equivalent aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and are reborn just like any other being.
Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God. A deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent or eternal, The monotheistic God, however, does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms,while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous and gender neutral.
Historically, many ancient cultures – such as Ancient India, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Nordic and Asian culture – personified natural phenomena, variously as either their conscious causes or simply their effects, respectively. Some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living being's body, as sensory organs and mind. Deities have also been envisioned as a form of existence (Saṃsāra) after rebirth, for human beings who gain merit through an ethical life, where they become guardian deities and live blissfully in heaven, but are also subject to death when their merit runs out.
An angel is generally a supernatural being found in various religions and mythologies. In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings and carrying out God's tasks. Within Abrahamic religions, angels are often organized into hierarchies, although such rankings may vary between sects in each religion, and are given specific names or titles, such as Gabriel or "Destroying angel."
The term "angel" has also been expanded to various notions of spirits
or figures found in other religious traditions. The theological study of
angels is known as "angelology".
In fine art, angels are usually depicted as having the shape of human beings of extraordinary beauty; they are often identified using the symbols of bird wings, halos and light.
Prophecy involves a process in which messages are communicated by a god to a prophet. Such messages typically involve inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of divine will concerning the prophet's social world and events to come (compare divine knowledge).
Prophecy is not limited to any one culture. It is a common property to
all known ancient societies around the world, some more than others.
Many systems and rules about prophecy have been proposed over several
millennia.
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.
A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision. Direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity, or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation. The Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient.
In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will and his divine providence to the world of human beings. In secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays a less important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.
Although the majority of denominations within Christianity and Islam
do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within
these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the
mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Cathars, Alawites, the Druze and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions, have been the subject of recent scholarly research. Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teaches reincarnation.
Karma (/ˈkɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: कर्म, romanized: karma, IPA:[ˈkɐɽmɐ]ⓘ; Pali: kamma) means action, work or deed;
it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where
intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that
individual (effect).
Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and future
happiness, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and
future suffering.
In Catholic theology, the supernatural order is, according to New Advent,
defined as "the ensemble of effects exceeding the powers of the created
universe and gratuitously produced by God for the purpose of raising
the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and
destiny." The Modern Catholic Dictionary
defines it as "the sum total of heavenly destiny and all the divinely
established means of reaching that destiny, which surpass the mere
powers and capacities of human nature."
It is not possible, in process
metaphysics, to conceive divine activity as a "supernatural"
intervention into the "natural" order of events. Process theists usually
regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a
by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process
thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to
that which is supernatural. On the other hand, if "the natural" is
defined more neutrally as "what is in the nature of things," then
process metaphysics characterizes the natural as the creative activity
of actual entities. In Whitehead's words, "It lies in the nature of
things that the many enter into complex unity" (Whitehead 1978, 21). It
is tempting to emphasize process theism's denial of the supernatural and
thereby highlight that the processed God cannot do in comparison what
the traditional God could do (that is, to bring something from nothing).
In fairness, however, equal stress should be placed on process theism's
denial of the natural (as traditionally conceived) so that one may
highlight what the creatures cannot do, in traditional theism, in
comparison to what they can do in process metaphysics (that is, to be
part creators of the world with God).
— Donald Viney, "Process Theism" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana.
Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the
tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld.
The underworld is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld, often for some heroic
purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the
underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the
ancient Greek story of the recently dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld.
A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of
the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead
needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river
to reach this destination.
Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art.
The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most
important myth for Modernist authors".
A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity; such as a ghost, fairy, jinn or angel. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit.
Historically, it was also used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed
to "gross" material substance, as in the famous last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.
Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing supernatural forces.
Belief in and practice of magic has been present since the earliest
human cultures and continues to have an important spiritual, religious
and medicinal role in many cultures today. The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what it is.
Scholars of religion have defined magic in different ways. One approach, associated with the anthropologistsEdward Tylor and James G. Frazer, suggests that magic and science are opposites. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologistsMarcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity. Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic and it has become increasingly unpopular within scholarship since the 1990s.
The term magic comes from the Old Persianmagu,
a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which
little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC,
this term was adopted into Ancient Greek,
where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious
rites that were regarded as fraudulent, unconventional and dangerous.
This meaning of the term was then adopted by Latin in the first century BC. The concept was then incorporated into Christian theology during the first century AD, where magic was associated with demons
and thus defined against religion. This concept was pervasive
throughout the Middle Ages, although in the early modern period Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to establish the idea of natural magic.
Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in
Western culture over the following centuries, with the former largely
influencing early academic usages of the word.
Throughout history, there have been examples of individuals who
practiced magic and referred to themselves as magicians. This trend has
proliferated in the modern period, with a growing number of magicians
appearing within the esoteric milieu. British esotericist Aleister Crowley described magic as the art of effecting change in accordance with will.
Divination (from Latin divinare "to foresee, to be inspired by a god", related to divinus, divine) is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual.
Used in various forms throughout history, diviners ascertain their
interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs,
events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a supernatural agency.
Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to
organize what appear to be disjointed, random facets of existence such
that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to
be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine.
Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for
personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and
religion.
Divination is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition. In the 2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, "Alexander the false prophet",
trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous
incantations, charms for your love-affairs, visitations for your
enemies, disclosures of buried treasure and successions to estates".
Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally and thus can be difficult to define with precision, and cross-cultural
assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should be
applied with caution. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.
A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader.
Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterise any
beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the
laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a
"wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other
such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal,
escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.
A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon,
leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as
physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws
of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by
their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be
ruled out). The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence,
God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work
without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability
of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God.
Skepticism (American English) or scepticism (British English; see spelling differences) is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of putative knowledge or belief. It is often directed at domains such as the supernatural, morality (moral skepticism),
religion (skepticism about the existence of God), or knowledge
(skepticism about the possibility of knowledge, or of certainty).
