The Occult
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50 free The Occult trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The word occult simply means hidden, and for centuries it covered everything people believed lay beneath the surface of the ordinary world: reading the future in cards and stars, turning lead into gold, speaking with the dead, and guarding secrets inside closed societies. Presidents' wives, prize-winning poets, rocket engineers and rock stars have all been drawn in. This quiz covers the whole field. Expect questions on tarot, astrology and other kinds of fortune-telling, on alchemists and their strange discoveries, on grimoires and magical symbols, on séances and the people who exposed them, and on the occultists and orders that shaped modern magic. It is written for curious beginners as much as for seasoned readers of the esoteric. You do not need to believe any of it to enjoy the history, and every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it straight through or print the questions for a quiz with friends.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which bodily fluid was alchemist Hennig Brand boiling down in 1669 when he accidentally discovered phosphorus?
Urine
Urine fascinated alchemists, and Brand heated its boiled-down residue until glowing fumes filled his flask. He had been hunting for a substance that would turn base metals into gold.
Q 02Which toy company owns the Ouija trademark, having inherited the famous talking board from Parker Brothers?
Hasbro
Hasbro sells Ouija as a board game, and it was seen as a harmless parlor pastime until medium Pearl Curran began using one as a divining tool during World War I.
Q 03Which English scientist's secret alchemy papers were bought at auction by economist John Maynard Keynes?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton's alchemical notes went under the hammer at Sotheby's in 1936, and Keynes also took home the scientist's death mask.
Q 04Which rock guitarist bought Boleskine House, Aleister Crowley's former home on the shore of Loch Ness?
Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin collected Crowley memorabilia and thought the decaying house would be a good atmosphere for writing songs.
Q 05Which First Lady organized séances in the White House while grieving the loss of her young son Willie?
Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Todd Lincoln turned to mediums after Willie died of typhoid fever in 1862, and President Abraham Lincoln himself sat in on the sessions.
Q 06Which escape artist attended séances in disguise during the 1920s to expose fraudulent spirit mediums?
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini took a reporter and a police officer along, and sat on a Scientific American committee offering a cash prize to any medium who could show real powers.
Q 07Which British author championed the 1917 Cottingley Fairies photographs as genuine evidence of the supernatural?
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the coldly logical Sherlock Holmes, used the pictures in a 1920 Strand Magazine article. In the 1980s the two cousins admitted using cardboard cutouts.
Q 08Which First Lady secretly consulted astrologer Joan Quigley after a 1981 attempt on her husband's life?
Nancy Reagan
Nancy Reagan kept the White House astrologer a secret until 1988, when ousted chief of staff Donald Regan made the arrangement public.
Q 09In which country did tarot cards first appear in the 15th century, as packs for trick-taking games?
Italy
Italy saw the first packs in Ferrara and Milan. Using the cards for fortune-telling began some three centuries later, after French occultists made unfounded claims about their origins.
Q 10Which French astrologer published a 1555 book of verse prophecies and won the patronage of Catherine de' Medici?
Nostradamus
Nostradamus first worked as an apothecary, and was expelled from the University of Montpellier when that manual trade came to light.
Q 11Which adviser to Queen Elizabeth I used an Aztec obsidian mirror, now in the British Museum, for his magic?
John Dee
John Dee was the queen's court astronomer and is credited with coining the term British Empire. He spent years trying to speak with angels through a crystal-gazing partner, Edward Kelley.
Q 12Which Russian-born mystic co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875?
Helena Blavatsky
Helena Blavatsky later moved to India with co-founder Henry Olcott, where the society tried to ally itself with a Hindu reform movement.
Q 13Which Irish poet joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890 and took a Latin magical motto?
W. B. Yeats
Q 21Which tarot card, numbered zero in the Rider–Waite deck, shows a young man walking toward the brink of a precipice?
The Fool
The Fool is drawn with a small dog at his heels, and in almost every earlier deck the card carried no number at all.
Q 22Which traditional playing-card suit is called Pentacles in the Rider–Waite tarot deck?
Coins
Coins appear as Pentacles in the Rider–Waite deck, each disc marked with a five-pointed star, although the name has no basis in the suit's long history in ordinary card games.
Q 23Which part of the body does a practitioner of chiromancy study in order to tell a person's fortune?
The palm
The palm is the subject of chiromancy, better known as palmistry, which Renaissance writers listed among seven forbidden arts alongside necromancy.
W. B. Yeats shared the magical society with actress Florence Farr and revolutionary Maud Gonne, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Q 14Which religion did Aleister Crowley found on The Book of the Law, a text written in Cairo on his honeymoon?
Thelema
Thelema takes its name from a Greek word for will. Crowley maintained that the text was dictated to him by a bodiless being named Aiwass.
Q 15Which modern pagan religion did retired English civil servant Gerald Gardner bring to public attention in the 1950s?
Wicca
Wicca drew media attention after Gardner moved to London in 1945 and began writing about it, and a plaque on his gravestone calls him the father of the faith.
Q 16In which US city did Anton LaVey found the Church of Satan in 1966, at a home called the Black House?
San Francisco
San Francisco gave the group its start, and LaVey's book The Satanic Bible became its scripture. Members do not believe Satan literally exists, treating him as a symbol of personal freedom.
Q 17Which Siberian faith healer won influence over Russia's last tsarina by treating her son's hemophilia?
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin stayed illiterate well into adulthood, yet his sway at court so alarmed a group of noblemen that they assassinated him in December 1916.
Q 18Which German doctor's theory of animal magnetism was tested in 1784 by a royal commission including Benjamin Franklin?
Franz Mesmer
Franz Mesmer believed an invisible natural force passed between all objects, and the practice built on it became known as mesmerism. A Scottish doctor later reworked the technique as hypnotism.
Q 19Which goat-headed winged figure did French occultist Éliphas Lévi draw in 1856 as the Sabbatic Goat?
Baphomet
Baphomet was named in the 14th-century trials of the Knights Templar, when the order was accused of worshipping it as an idol.
Q 20Which secret society did law professor Adam Weishaupt found in Bavaria on 1 May 1776?
Illuminati
Illuminati members were outlawed by Bavaria's ruler within a decade, along with other secret societies, yet conspiracy theories have kept the short-lived group famous.
Q 24Which ancient Chinese divination text is consulted by sorting yarrow stalks to build one of 64 six-line figures?
I Ching
The I Ching calls each six-line figure a hexagram, and lists them in an order known as the King Wen sequence.
Q 25Which Norse god won the secret of the runes by sacrificing himself to himself, according to the poem Hávamál?
Odin
Odin is also said to have given up an eye for wisdom, and his verses credit the runes with powers of divination, healing and raising the dead.
Q 26Which constellation, known as the Serpent-bearer, has been proposed since 1970 as a thirteenth sign of the zodiac?
Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus was put forward by Steven Schmidt as part of a 14-sign zodiac, but astrologers kept twelve signs by dividing the Sun's path into equal parts.
Q 27Which planet's retrograde spells, when it seems to reverse in the sky, do astrologers blame for miscommunication?
Mercury
Mercury only appears to move backward, an optical illusion caused by its speed relative to Earth as both orbit the Sun. It happens three to four times a year and lasts about three weeks.
Q 28Which king of Israel, having expelled magicians from his land, secretly sought out the Witch of Endor?
Saul
Saul wanted her to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel for advice on fighting the Philistines, after his attempts to consult God had failed.
Q 29Which Greek thinker from Samos gives his name to the numerology method that scores letters from one to nine?
Pythagoras
Pythagoras founded a tradition that, Aristotle wrote, added up the number values of Greek letters, a forerunner of Hebrew gematria.
Q 30Which zodiac sign is the only one of the twelve represented by an object instead of an animal or a person?
Libra
Libra's scales are based on the Scales of Justice held by Themis, the Greek personification of sacred law.