Metaphysical

The philosophical word

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that the word metaphysics derives from a collective title for fourteen books by Aristotle. Aristotle did not know the word; at least a century after his death an editor, in all probability Andronicus of Rhodes, titled the books Ta meta ta phusika, "the ones after the physical ones". The entry says the title was probably a warning to students to attempt those books only after mastering the books on nature, and that the impression that metaphysics goes beyond physics is mistaken.

The same entry reports that the field was long defined by its subject matter, such as being as such, first causes and things that do not change, and that from the seventeenth century many problems, including the relation of mind and body and free will, were reassigned to metaphysics, which became a catch-all category. It does not describe the field as concerned with spirits or healing.

The mind-and-spirit current in America and Europe

A different usage grew up in religious history. The religious studies scholar Catherine Albanese uses the phrase American metaphysical religion for a cultural world that, in a university summary of her 2007 book, runs from the fifteenth-century Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum through Renaissance Europe and England to America, where it is described as flourishing from colonial days to the twenty-first century. In her account, the mind's powers are mediated as flow and energy and work in healing ways.

The summary lists Freemasonry, early Mormonism, Universalism and Transcendentalism among its forms, followed by Spiritualism, Theosophy, New Thought, Christian Science, reinvented Asian ideas and the New Age movement. Albanese describes the current as combinative, taking in differing beliefs and practices, and as overlapping with traditional religions and with African, Native American and other cultural elements.

Two named movements

Britannica describes New Thought as a mind-healing movement based on religious and metaphysical presuppositions that began in the United States in the nineteenth century. It names Phineas P. Quimby (1802-66) of Portland, Maine, who practiced mesmerism and held that physical illness is a matter of the mind, as the usual earliest proponent, and says the Swedenborgian minister Warren F. Evans systematized Quimby's ideas in works such as Mental Medicine (1872).

For Theosophy, Britannica gives the founding of the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Olcott and William Judge. It reports that the society helped bring Eastern teachers and ideas such as reincarnation to the West, and that a 1884 accusation that some reported phenomena were faked was investigated by a member of the Society for Psychical Research, who concluded the accusation was true.

Two senses that should be kept apart

In academic philosophy, metaphysics is a branch of inquiry whose topics include existence, universals, free will and the relation of the mental and the physical, and the Stanford entry notes that even denying a metaphysical thesis is itself a metaphysical position. In religious studies and everyday speech, metaphysical instead names the movements described above, in which the focus is mind, spirit, energy and healing. The two senses share a word and a long history of overlap, but the philosophical field does not depend on the religious movements, and the sources reviewed do not treat one as evidence for the other.

How Machipedia uses the label

Machipedia uses Metaphysical as an editorial label for practices that point to something beyond the physical world. It is a descriptive label about what a practice says about itself, not a judgment about whether the claims are true or false, and a practice may carry more than one label. The label is also applied to concepts such as Karma and to traditions such as Theosophy, New Thought and Spiritualism, as well as to practices.

Difference from Alternative, Complementary and Holistic

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) defines the other labels by how an approach relates to conventional care: a non-mainstream approach used together with conventional medicine is complementary, one used in place of it is alternative, and integrative health brings the two together in a coordinated way. NCCIH describes whole person health as improving health across biological, behavioral, social and environmental domains. Holistic is therefore about scope, and Alternative and Complementary are about position relative to conventional care.

Metaphysical differs because it concerns the claimed subject matter of a practice, not its place in the health system. The classification on the NCCIH page sorts complementary approaches by nutritional, psychological and physical input and has no metaphysical category, so a practice such as mediumship can be metaphysical in Machipedia's sense without being described that way in health-agency terms.

Healing and energy practices

Machipedia's records currently carry the Metaphysical label across a wide spread of practices, concepts and traditions. The site describes Reiki as a family of hands-on and non-contact energy healing practices, Energy Healing as biofield-based touch and non-contact practices, and Crystal Healing as a crystal and gemstone-based energy practice. Faith Healing and Distance Healing are described as religious or prayer-based healing directed at a person, in the second case one who is not physically present.

Divination, spirit communication and ritual

Divinatory and spirit-communication practices include Astrology, Tarot Reading and Mediumship, which the site describes respectively as interpretive celestial-sign practice, card-based divination and reflection, and spirit communication and trance. Shamanic Healing is described as spirit-centered healing and ritual led by practitioners in altered states, and Spiritual Direction as one-to-one spiritual accompaniment and contemplative listening.

Contemplative systems and traditions

Meditation and contemplative systems such as Transcendental Meditation, described as a mantra-based technique taught in a standardized course, also carry the label, as do the traditions Theosophy, New Thought and Spiritualism. These descriptions come from Machipedia's own practice pages and show breadth of the label, not shared methods or shared evidence.

Why people turn to these practices

Albanese's account, as summarized by her university, treats healing as a central theme of the current: from the mid-twentieth century she describes interest shifting toward the pursuit of spiritual energy, especially under the metaphor of healing, with chakras becoming a major element of the New Age movement. Britannica reports that New Thought adherents hold that human disorders are basically matters of incorrect thinking and that people can live in oneness with God in love, truth, peace, health and plenty.

Theosophists, according to Britannica, emphasize direct contact with a deeper spiritual reality through intuition, meditation or revelation. Britannica also notes that New Thought, unlike Christian Science, does not avoid medical science. These are the claims and positions of the traditions as reported by the sources, and the sources reviewed do not test them.

Meaning, connection and coping

A review of religion and spirituality research describes mechanisms by which religious and spiritual involvement may influence mental health, including coping resources such as strongly held beliefs that give meaning, social support from shared gatherings, and teachings about how to live. This review concerns religion and spirituality broadly and not metaphysical movements specifically.

No evidence base for the label as a whole

Searches for systematic reviews and trials of metaphysical practices as a group, and for open-access scholarship that tests the label's effect on health, found none in the sources reviewed. Evidence differs by practice, and individual practice pages should be read for what trials and reviews show about each. Nothing here supports or refutes a metaphysical claim, and the sources reviewed do not state that the category as a whole is effective or ineffective.

How common related practices are

Survey research on complementary health measures a narrower set of approaches. In the 2017 National Health Interview Survey, 14.3% of U.S. adults reported using yoga and 14.2% meditation in the past 12 months, up from 9.5% and 4.1% in 2012, with higher use among women and among non-Hispanic white adults than among Hispanic and non-Hispanic black adults for yoga. NCCIH reports that in a 2012 national survey more than 30 percent of adults and about 12 percent of children used health approaches outside typical conventional care.

These surveys report on yoga, meditation and chiropractic care, not on practices such as mediumship or divination, so they should not be read as a count of people who use metaphysical practices.

Religion, spirituality and wellbeing

A systematic review of peer-reviewed quantitative studies published from 1872 to 2010 reports that 256 of 326 studies (79%) found only positive associations between religion or spirituality and well-being, and three found an inverse association. The review also reports mixed results for some outcomes, for example 10 of 43 studies on psychosis showed a positive relationship with psychotic symptoms, and its author states that religion and spirituality do not always enhance mental health. The findings are associations, concern religion and spirituality broadly, and cannot be applied to a particular metaphysical practice.

Delay or replacement of medical care

NCCIH distinguishes use together with conventional care from use in place of it, and notes that most people who use non-mainstream approaches also use conventional health care. The main category-level concern in the sources reviewed is replacement. A 1998 case review in Pediatrics examined 172 child deaths between 1975 and 1995 in families that relied on faith healing instead of medical care. The authors estimated that 140 of the deaths were from conditions with expected survival above 90% with medical care. The study covers faith-healing sects, not metaphysical practices in general, and the sources reviewed do not give rates for other practices.

Power, control and belief

The religion and health review states that religion can also be used to gain power and control over vulnerable individuals, as seen in cults, and can foster anxiety, fear and excessive guilt. The review is about religion broadly, and the sources reviewed do not quantify these harms for metaphysical groups or practitioners.

When to talk to a clinician

A qualified clinician should be consulted for new, worsening or persistent symptoms, for pregnancy, for children, and before stopping or changing prescribed treatment. The sources reviewed describe New Thought as not avoiding medical science, and a practice can be used alongside conventional care. Metaphysical practices should not delay or replace necessary medical assessment or treatment, and anyone in crisis should contact emergency services or a local crisis line.