/əˈkʌlt/
[adjective] Relating to supernatural, magical, or mysterious forces and practices that are hidden from ordinary understanding. It can also describe something secret or known only to a small group of people.
The word 'occult' simply means 'hidden' — it was once used by astronomers when one planet passed in front of another.
The story of 'occult' begins with the Latin verb 'occulere', meaning 'to cover over' or 'to hide'. This verb was built from the prefix 'ob-', meaning 'over' or 'against', combined with an older root related to 'celare', meaning 'to conceal' — a root that also gives us the English word 'cell' (a small hidden room) and 'conceal' itself, via Latin 'celare' → Old French 'celer' → English 'conceal'. From 'occulere', Latin formed the past participle 'occultus', meaning simply 'hidden' or 'concealed'. This is the direct ancestor of the English word we use today.
The word entered English in the 16th century, and its earliest uses were remarkably practical and scientific. Astronomers used 'occult' to describe the moment when one celestial body passed in front of another and blocked it from view — the moon, for example, could 'occult' a star. This technical astronomical meaning survives to this day. An 'occultation' is still the correct term for when a planet or moon obscures a more distant object. There was nothing spooky about it; it was pure geometry and observation.
The shift toward the supernatural happened gradually. During the Renaissance, European scholars became fascinated with ancient traditions of secret knowledge — alchemy, astrology, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah — that claimed to explain invisible forces governing the world. These traditions were grouped together as 'occult sciences' or 'occult philosophy', meaning knowledge that was hidden from the general public, accessible only to initiates. The term was not necessarily a criticism; many serious thinkers of the time, including scholars like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, wrote respectfully about 'occult' learning as a legitimate field of study.
Over the 17th and 18th centuries, as modern science took hold and drew a sharp line between what was considered rational and what was considered superstitious, the 'occult sciences' fell on the wrong side of that divide. What had once been described as hidden or esoteric knowledge gradually became associated with the forbidden, the dark, and the suspicious. The word 'occult' drifted away from its neutral meaning of 'hidden' and began to carry the weight of fear and taboo that it holds for many people today.
Interestingly, the same Latin root 'occulere' left its mark on other corners of the English language. The word 'ocular', meaning relating to the eye, shares distant ancestry through the Proto-Indo-European root '*okw-', meaning 'to see' — making 'hiding' and 'seeing' two sides of the same ancient coin. Meanwhile, the verb 'to occult' is still used in astronomy, and medical professionals use 'occult' to describe bleeding or disease that is hidden and not immediately visible, as in 'occult blood in a stool sample'. The word has never fully lost its original, simple meaning: something is occult when it cannot easily be seen.