page_title: Supernatural
section_title: Spirit
hierarchical_section_title: Supernatural / Spirit
caption_attribution_description: English: Bertalda, Assailed by Spirits c.1830
context_page_description: The supernatural encompasses all entities, places and events that fall outside the scope of scientific understanding of the laws of nature. This includes categories of entities which transcend the observable Universe, such as immaterial beings like angels, gods, and spirits. It also includes claimed human abilities like magic, telekinesis, precognition, and extrasensory perception.
  Historically, supernatural powers have been invoked to explain phenomena as diverse as lightning, seasons, and the human senses which today are understood scientifically. The philosophy of naturalism contends that all phenomena are scientifically explicable and nothing exists beyond the natural world, and as such approaches supernatural claims with skepticism.
  The supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal.
context_section_description: A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity; such as a ghost, fairy, or angel. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit.
  Spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality.
  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.
caption: Theodor von Holst, Bertalda, Assailed by Spirits, c. 1830
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