SUPERNATURAL, THE. Mysterious occurrences and beings that habitually or occasionally impinge upon one's everyday experience are called "supernatural." It is commonly said that belief in the supernatural characterizes all religions...

The term supernatural (Latin: super "above" + natura "nature") pertains to entities, events or powers regarded as beyond nature, in that they cannot be explained by the laws of the natural world. Religious miracles are typical of such...

Joseph D. McInerney's March 11 letter "Conflating Science and Faith" was an attempt to justify the biology book produced by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, of which Mr. McInerney is director, that claims creationism is a pseudoscience. Since I am leading the effort in...

Exhibitions Moments of the supernatural Laura Gascoigne Painting Light: Italian Divisionism 1885-1910 Estorick Collection, until 7 September Italian light has inspired more painters than any other. For four centuries after Piero della Francesca first captured its luminosity in paint,...

After "Heroes" unexpectedly turned into one of its few successes this year, NBC said Monday it was betting on new fall series about a bionic woman, a time-traveling newspaper reporter and a computer geek with spy secrets embedded in his brain.The struggling network will also...

At the risk of blowing a good thing—you know, like when The New York Times runs a feature on a restaurant or neighborhood, thereby increasing its visibility and making it difficult for the rest of us to enjoy a good meal or even live in...

SOURCE : "Witchcraft," in The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance: A Study in Intellectual Patterns, University of California Press, 1972, pp. 60-107. In the following essay, Shumaker traces the course of the persecution of witches in Europe from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries.

SOURCE : "Magic, Science, and Witchcraft in Renaissance England," in Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age: The Occult Tradition and Marlowe, Jonson, and Shakespeare, University of Nebraska Press, 1989, pp. 73-112. In the essay below, Mebane provides an overview of the debate over rival theories of the natural and supernatural worlds in Renaissance England.

SOURCE : "Supernatural Intervention: Two Dramatic Traditions," in The Occult on the Tudor and Stuart Stage, The Christopher Publishing House, 1965, pp. 15-53. In the following essay, Reed demonstrates that the Elizabethan-Jacobean drama of supernaturalism evolved from the fusion of classical sources, and especially the plays of Seneca, with the medieval Christian theater.