Esoteric and Divinatory Fields of Practice

This category treats the esoteric and divinatory disciplines as fields in their own right: Western and Chinese astrology, the I Ching, numerology, tarot, Kabbalah, alchemy, palmistry and the rest. Unlike a religion, a discipline belongs to no single faith (astrology and alchemy were practised across Christian, Muslim, Jewish and pagan settings alike), and is defined instead by its subject matter and method.

Each entry describes what the discipline does, where it comes from, how it developed, and its relation to the neighbouring fields, giving the reader a way into the practice as a whole before meeting its individual terms elsewhere in the atlas.