Talk:Outline of spirituality

Initial organization
Categorisation of spirituality-related topics:

Possible Designations: Religious, Mystical, Spiritual, Occult, Esoteric, Magickal, New Age, Western, Eastern, Native.

Analysis of Designations:

SPIRITUAL: The most general designation. Used as an umbrella-term, not in its Mystical-NewAge sense.

WESTERN: Related to Europe, America, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Israel, etc. Not suitable for New-Age topics (New Age combines Eastern and Western ideas). Theosophy can be listed as a WESTERN movement, although it contains lots of Eastern-ispired ideas. Examples: Hermeticism, ancient egyptian mythology and egyptian mystery schools, Rosicrucianism, Alchemy, Ritual Magick

EASTERN: Related to Asia, China, Japan, India, etc. Examples: Yoga

NATIVE: Related to parts of the world where indigenous population lives. For example certain people or parts from Africa, Australia, South America, North America, Siberia, North Polar regions. Examples: African tribes, Native Americans (Indians), maybe some Shamanic traditions. I think Santeria and Hoodoo and similar topics can be categorized under the designation NATIVE.

MYSTICAL: This designation may be applied to any topic, organization or person which has some Mystical elements. Mysticism is defined as the pursuit for a higher goal in life and union with a higher consciousness (God, Higher Self, whatever). Can be mixed with the designations Western, Eastern or Native: so we have WESTERN MYSTICISM, EASTERN MYSTICISM, NATIVE MYSTICISM. Usually, Mysticism is right-hand-path. for left-hand path topics use the designation OCCULT.

Mysticist and Mystic: Mysticism is someone who is studying or practices Mysticism, with or without results. A Mystic is a mysticist who has achieved a mystical state of consciousness or is believed that he/she has done so.

ESOTERIC: Very similar to MYSTICAL. WESTERN ESOTERICISM is very similar with WESTERN MYSTICISM and INITIATORY TRADITION, but I place the following differentiation: MYSTICISM can be occult/closed/initiatory or open, while ESOTERICISM is usually only occult/closed/initiatory. INITIATORY TRADITION is always closed. So ESOTERIC is something which manages hidden knowledge. Examples of WESTERN ESOTERIC organizations are the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians. EASTERN ESOTERICISM refers to Eastern groups (usually Tantric or Tibetan Buddhist) where a teacher passes occult (hidden) knowledge to selected students. For more open Eastern groups, like most gurus etc, prefer the designations EASTERN MYSTICISM or EASTERN SPIRITUALITY.

INITIATORY: Use for groups like Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, etc. Use the designation as a sub-categorization for WESTERN ESOTERICISM.

OCCULT: Seems similar with ESOTERIC. Use this designation for persons or groups which place emphasis on Metaphysics (Paranormal phenomena) such as Magick and Divination. How to tell whether to list an organization under the designation MYSTICAL, ESOTERIC or OCCULT? -> Use OCCULT when the organization does not care much about the usage of the knowledge it passes or when the emphasis is on practical metaphysics and not on philosophy/spirituality/morality. Left-hand groups may be listed under a LHP subcategory of the OCCULT designation.

MAGICKAL: Subcategory of OCCULT. Divided into WHITE MAGICKAL (for good) and BLACK MAGICKAL (for destruction) and RED MAGICKAL (for sexual magick), CHAOS MAGICK (eclectic), PAGAN MAGICK etc etc. Use this designation for magickians and magickal organizations when their primary purpose is to study and use Magick but they don't place much emphasis on Spirituality/Mysticism. The purpose of a MAGICKAL ORGANIZATION may be to help its members understand and learn how to use Magick, without any consideration about its usage (black, white, etc). Religious etc groups which practice White Magick or Theurgy should be listed under another designation (Mysticism, Esotericism etc). Illusory "magic" has nothing to do with paranormal magick.

NEW AGE: Special designation for New-Age organizations. Only for modern movements (>1960). Theosophy, Thelema etc are not NewAge. Modern Alternative Medicine and especially ENERGY THERAPY can be listed under this designation.

QUESTION: Should we include UFOLOGY and UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA (crop circles, cattle mutilations, fortean phenomena) under the label SPIRITUALITY?

QUESTION: Where to put PARAPSYCHOLOGY and related subjects?

Optim 02:11, 20 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Write your comments here:

Thank you for the invitation to participate. At this stage I don't know if I have much time to devote to the idea though I see that there is much merit to it, I already spend an excess of time on Wikimedia related tasks. It is unfortunate that there are many who, in the name of science, relegate many of these topics to the dustbin of pseudoscience without ever having studied the subject. Good luck. &#9774; Eclecticology 11:49, 2003 Dec 21 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your kind words. Wishing you a happy Winter Solstice and Peace Profound. Optim 12:09, 21 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for your invitation, however, I regard lucid dreaming as a purely psychological phenomena, and not as part of spirituality.

If somebody is troubled by something in a lucid dream, they can usually wake up (although they may then be confronted by sleep paralysis). Knowing that you can wake up is part of lucid dreaming itself. r3m0t 12:09, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Ok thanks. Optim 18:19, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sufism/Tasawwuf
No mention of Sufism or any of the Muslim traditions of spirituality on either the main or the Talk pages?! Is there a taxonomical reason for this?--iFaqeer 00:02, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Where to put Parapsych
Not under spirituality, that's for sure. Having worked with Dr. Carol Nash back when he was in UPenn's parapsych division, and having studied the field extensively, I feel confident in noting that few, if any, legit parapsych researchers would consider their field "spiritual" in any way. Their's is an attempt to apply science to a group of phenomena that the other sciences ignore; whether those phenomena themselves have their origins in spiritual practice or not is immaterial to the researchers' efforts to study the phenomena objectively. For example, if I were conducting a parapsychological experiment on clairvoyance, it would not matter to me one whit if the subjects claimed this ability due to kundalini awakening, metitative absorption, psychic ability, or being bitten by a radioactive spider; all I would care about is double-blinding the tests, and teh statistical analysis of their results. Hope that's some help. --KGF0 ( T | C ) 01:37, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Notice that this particular list even has a collection of introductory topics under "Science." Maybe you have a better arrangement to list parapsychology.  Think of it more like comparing and contrasting with spirituality, not that a particular article is spirituality.    &mdash; RichardRDFtalk 02:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't Witchy Ouija be included in Divination section?
as it has been playing a significant role in channeling the spirits

Just found this is includeded in the hyper text of Divination. It's better to put Witchy Quija as bulleted list

About Christian polygamy and Esoteric Christianity
Dear friends, I think, that after BASIC term ESOTERIC CHRISTIANITY, and sub levels, Anthroposophy and Master Beinsa Douno's Teaching is very unclear why is Christian polygamy? This is not reasonable and I think that this term should be in another place. There is no normal link too. That's why I remove it from there and put it under Other Topics.

Razum 07:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Quick explanation of Wikipedia outlines
"Outline" is short for "hierarchical outline". There are two types of outlines: sentence outlines (like those you made in school to plan a paper), and topic outlines (like the topical synopses that professors hand out at the beginning of a college course). Outlines on Wikipedia are primarily topic outlines that serve 2 main purposes: they provide taxonomical classification of subjects showing what topics belong to a subject and how they are related to each other (via their placement in the tree structure), and as subject-based tables of contents linked to topics in the encyclopedia. The hierarchy is maintained through the use of heading levels and indented bullets. See Outlines for a more in-depth explanation. The Transhumanist 00:10, 9 August 2015 (UTC)