Word: occultation
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...simpler times, suffering like Beauregard's would have been attributed to evil influences. While early man had no trouble comprehending acute pain caused by injury, chronic pain was relegated to the occult realm of medicine men, sorcerers and shamans. Ancient Egyptians believed that chronic pain was caused by spirits, gods and the dead, but by the 16th century B.C. they had discovered a corporeal way to treat it. Opium is recommended as an analgesic in the Ebers Papyrus, an early reference work listing nearly a thousand prescriptions used in the times of the Pharaoh Amenhotep. Egyptians and some Eastern...
...arrogantly prided itself on its ability to master the universe, and with few exceptions, has historically regarded the rituals of near eastern civilizations with a good deal of contempt. Americans, in particular, seem skeptical of the mystical nature of Eastern beliefs, in part because they consider them backwards and occult, but more fundamentally, because few truly understand the meaning of such beliefs...
...blessing." She invests him with a slightly seedy spirituality by surrounding him with motley religious remnants: an 18-ft.-high statue of the Buddha (flotsam from the hurricane) that he has stashed in his yard; a nuns' shrine to St. Francis that he tends on his island; an occult Mexican medal that dangles from his neck. Spencer's handling of these images leaves the reader conscious at every moment of a high skill and intelligence - indeed, perhaps too conscious. Individual scenes are admirable, as when Arnie's hapless rival Lex, visiting the sanctum of Arnie...
...Warner's version, occult occurrences are almost taken for granted--they appear in almost every scene. But the significance of these scenes is cheapened by Warner's reliance on flashy costumes, anachronistic props, and the original music by Peter Melnick. These external ornaments overshadow the plot, and the three-and-a-half-hour production gathers most of its strength from the attempt to destroy our conceptions of how a Shakespeare play should be performed...
...England and the U.S., a small army of mediums appeared to read the future, speak with deceased relatives and pocket very material fees. With a detached, only faintly ironic tone, Brandon notes some of the more bizarre assurances offered by these experts in the occult: one seer reported that alcohol and cigars were present in paradise; Doyle, after consultation with psychics, wrote that in heaven, "nutrition is of a very light and delicate order." Golf, he thought, was likely to be played...