Supernatural

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.

[3] Dialogues from Neoplatonic philosophy in the third century AD influenced the development of the concept of the supernatural, which later evolved through Christian theology.

[7] 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.

[2] Peter Lombard, a medieval scholastic of the 12th century, explored causes beyond nature, questioning how certain phenomena could be attributed solely to God.

[9][10][11] 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.

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).

[16] 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.

[17][18] Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations.

In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth.

In fine art, angels are usually depicted as having the shape of human beings of extraordinary beauty;[53][54] they are often identified using the symbols of bird wings,[55] halos[56] and light.

For instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai.

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.

Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death.

[65][66][67] The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures,[68] and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato.

[72] 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.

[77][78] With origins in ancient India's Vedic civilization, the philosophy of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions (particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism[79]) as well as Taoism.

[81][82] 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.

In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka,[87] and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma.

[91] 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.

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.

[96] A demon (from Koine Greek δαιμόνιον daimónion) is a supernatural and often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore.

An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity.

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 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.

[not verified in body] British esotericist Aleister Crowley described magic as the art of effecting change in accordance with will.

[104] 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.

[106][107] 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".

[108] Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups.

Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role[110] and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.