Has the Occult Influenced Science Fiction?

Yes. The simple answer is Science fiction has been soaking up occult ideas for well over a century. By “occult” here I mean hidden or specialist systems of magic and spirituality such as ceremonial magick, Theosophy, spiritualism and modern chaos magic. Science fiction means stories that lean on imagined technology, science or futures. Put them together and you get psychic star pilots, secret orders in space, ancient alien gods and “energy fields” that look suspiciously like magic rebranded.

Key points

• Occult movements shaped early fantastic fiction, feeding in underground races, psychic forces and cosmic hierarchies that later writers recycled as science fiction.
• Mid-century SF rebranded classic occult abilities as “psionics”, so telepathy and astral-style projection suddenly had control rooms and instrumentation.
• Theosophy, spiritualism and contactee lore inspired plots about ancient astronauts, elder races and higher dimensions that dominate big space sagas.
• Modern chaos magic and New Age ideas mesh neatly with cyberpunk, where belief, symbols and code are treated as tools for hacking reality.

What Do We Mean By Occult And By Science Fiction?

If you strip away the stereotypes, the occult is about two things: hidden knowledge and trained practice. It covers grimoires, secret societies,occult rituals, divination systems and personal spiritual experiments. It also includes newer currents like chaos magic and some strands of New Age thought.

Science fiction is supposed to be the sensible cousin, interested in technology, future societies and speculative science. Yet SF constantly asks questions that sound very familiar to occultists: what is mind, what sits behind physical reality, and can focused will change anything?

So it is no surprise the two mix easily. If you already accept magick in ritual circles, it is not a big leap to accept telepaths, astral explorers or “quantum consciousness” in a distant galaxy.

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The Coming Race, Public Domain, Link

Occult Roots In Early Fantastic Fiction

Late 19th century Europe and America were packed with séances, “spirit photography” and new occult lodges. Spiritualism promised chats with the dead. Theosophy offered vast cosmic timelines and hidden masters. Ceremonial magic orders like the Golden Dawn taught complex ritual systems. That culture soaked into early “scientific romances”.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race imagined an underground civilisation powered by a mysterious energy called vril, directed through thought and trained discipline. The book mixed speculative tech with something that looks a lot like life-force. Later occult and fringe groups even treated vril as if it were real.

Theosophical writing layered in root races, Atlanteans and spiritual evolution. Lost continents, psychic elites and cosmic destiny quickly became standard furniture for adventure fiction. These ideas paved the way for SF settings full of hidden races, ancient technologies and secret energy sources.

Pulp Magazines, Weird Tales And Arcane Science

In the pulp magazine era, horror, fantasy, SF and occult-flavoured stories shared the same pages. Writers could throw laboratory jargon and grimoires into one short story and nobody blinked.

H.P. Lovecraft, personally hostile to occultism, still filled his fiction with cults, forbidden books and rites that open doorways to alien beings. Those rites feel like twisted lodge ceremonies conducted in a universe run by cold cosmic maths. Later SF picked up that tone: spells and theorems blurred together.

The familiar “mad scientist” figure is basically a sorcerer dressed as a researcher. Devices behave like talismans. Experiments follow ritual patterns. Energy beams and rays stand in for forces older writers would have happily called astral or spiritual. For many readers, that era cemented the link between secret texts, dangerous knowledge and strange technology.

Theosophy, Cosmic Evolution And Space Mysticism

Theosophy added a sweeping cosmic storyline. Humanity moves through vast cycles, with different “root races” on different continents, under the supervision of hidden masters. Reincarnation, karma and subtle bodies sit at the centre of it.

Modern SF often keeps the skeleton of that story and changes the clothes. Advanced “elder races” guide younger civilisations. Ascended beings observe from higher dimensions. Whole species are said to be “evolving” into a new level of consciousness. The vibe is pure occult spirituality, even when the dialogue name-drops quantum fields.

There is a darker side. Theosophical models built clumsy racial hierarchies into their cosmic ladder. Some SF repeats that uncritically; better writers twist it, showing “superior” races as morally bankrupt, or granting moral authority to the groups earlier systems pushed down the ladder.

Mid-Century SF: Psychic Powers, Psionics And New Age Currents

In the mid-20th century, parapsychology tried to test psychic claims in labs. Experiments with Zener cards and guessing tests made “ESP” a household term. Science fiction pounced and gave that material a new label: psionics.

Psionic powers in SF often match long-standing occult claims about telepathy, telekinesis and clairvoyance. The difference is packaging. Instead of initiations in candlelit lodges, you get training programmes, military units or academy courses. Characters who would once have been called magicians show up as “psi-operatives” or “telepaths”, scanning minds from starship bridges.

In my view, this period made magic safe for readers who wanted everything to sound scientific. The trick was simple: keep the abilities but describe them using measurements, control panels and genetic mutations.

By Derived from a digital capture (photo/scan) of the book cover (creator of this digital version is irrelevant as the copyright in all equivalent images is still held by the same party). Copyright held by the publisher or the artist. Claimed as fair use regardless., Fair use, Link

Ancient Astronauts, Space Gods And Astral Realms

Occult and fringe writers did not stop with hidden masters in the Himalayas. By the mid-20th century, contactee movements claimed to channel “space brothers”, benevolent aliens passing along spiritual lessons. Soon after, books like Chariots of the Gods? argued that alien visitors influenced ancient monuments and myths.

Historians are not impressed, but the effect on science fiction has been enormous. Space sagas are full of star-gods who seeded humanity, relics from “first civilisations” and aliens mistaken for angels or demons. It is Theosophy and spiritualism rewritten as cosmic archaeology.

Astral planes also slipped quietly into SF as higher dimensions. Where occultists spoke of travelling in subtle bodies, authors wrote about projections into subspace, hyperspace or energy fields. The underlying picture remains the same: consciousness can step out of ordinary space and encounter other beings.

Occult Orders, New Religions And Science Fiction

Sometimes the traffic runs both ways. Science fiction writers influenced by occult circles go on to build spiritual movements.

The clearest example is L. Ron Hubbard. Before founding Scientology, he was a busy pulp SF author and moved in occult company, including time spent with rocket scientist and ritual magician Jack Parsons, who shows up in discussions of Aleister Crowley and Thelema. Later, Scientology presented a system of spiritual development loaded with space opera style galactic history.

Other groups, usually smaller, treat favourite SF stories as sacred myths or use alien contact narratives as the backbone for their beliefs. It is an extreme version of something plenty of fans do casually: reading big space epics as modern myths about power, salvation and meaning.

The Invisibles Cover to (vol. 2) #1, art by Brian Bolland. Clockwise from top left: Jack Frost, Lord Fanny, Boy, King Mob, Ragged Robin
Fair use, Link

Cyberpunk, Chaos Magic And Postmodern SF

By the late 20th century, chaos magic brought in a new attitude. Rather than guarding ancient secrets, chaos magicians treat belief as a tool and borrow symbols from pop culture, comics and film as happily as they borrow from grimoires. Results matter more than lineage.

That attitude pairs perfectly with cyberpunk and related SF. Hackers in cyberspace feel a lot like sorcerers working on a digital astral plane. Sigils become code. Spirits turn into autonomous software or strange AIs. Narratives like Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles openly treat comics as long-form spells, a “hypersigil” designed to feed back into the writer’s life.

This is where the occult/SF mix feels most honest. Instead of pretending magic is secret physics, it treats magic as a way of handling information, symbols and psychology, then imagines how that might work inside virtual reality, social networks and future tech.

If that blend of dark aesthetics, tech and mysticism appeals, it sits nicely alongside the steampunk and cyberpunk strands in goth subcultures.

Occult Symbolism And Structure In Film And TV Science Fiction

You do not need to read novels to see this influence. Film and TV science fiction are packed with occult cues.

Look at how often you see:

• Circular chambers that double as ritual spaces.
• Symbols that echo tarot, astrology or alchemy, repurposed as insignia and control icons.
• Secret orders of warrior-monks and priest-engineers with initiation rites and strict hierarchies.

A lot of this is visual shorthand. Directors know that arcane patterns, hand signs and robes instantly signal hidden knowledge. Underneath, the same structures described in articles like How Do Occultists Use Symbolism in Their Rituals? are doing the heavy lifting, just with more LEDs.

Narratively, many SF epics follow a pattern shared with occult initiation: a calling, training, trials, death-and-rebirth moment, and finally some sort of higher knowledge or power. Swap the temple for a starship and the shape barely changes.

Why Occult Thinking Fits So Easily Inside Science Fiction

Occult systems and science-heavy stories might look far apart, but they share some instincts.

Both claim that everyday reality sits on top of deeper structures. For occultists that might be subtle energies, spirits and planes. For SF, it might be exotic physics, advanced AI or alien mathematics. In both cases, specialists learn to work with those hidden layers.

Both focus on transformation. A magician changes themselves through ritual and practice; an SF hero upgrades body, mind or social position through technology, training or strange experiences. Either way, the story lives or dies on whether that change feels earned.

For me, occult ideas give science fiction emotional depth. Gadgets are fun, but they do not automatically say anything about purpose or morality. Add secret teachings, initiation and prophecy, and you suddenly have something closer to myth that still looks like SF on the surface.

How To Spot Occult Influences In Your Favourite SF

If you want to play detective, here are simple clues:

• Does the story feature hidden orders or lodges with grades and oaths, even if everyone is in uniforms instead of robes?
• Are there rituals disguised as tests, trials or training sequences?
• Do characters use symbol sets that resemble tarot, astrology or alchemical signs, recast as military patches or alien writing?
• Is there a big focus on prophecy, enlightenment or contact with higher intelligences?
• Do powers like telepathy, foresight or out-of-body travel behave like streamlined versions of occult divination and astral projection?

If you can tick off several of those, you are reading SF with strong occult DNA, even if the cover art screams “hard science”.

Conclusion: So, Has The Occult Influenced Science Fiction?

To circle back to the question: yes, the occult has left clear fingerprints on science fiction. Occult movements handed writers ready-made ideas about cosmic history, hidden energies, secret schools and drastic inner change. Science fiction then dressed those ideas in spacesuits and lab gear.

The trade works both ways. SF gives occult themes fresh imagery. Occult thinking gives SF emotional charge and a sense that something larger is at stake than just shiny tech. Next time you rewatch a space saga or pick up a new novel, keep an eye out for magicians hiding in plain sight as scientists, hackers or telepaths. Once you see them, you cannot unsee them.

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