Nothing so fantastical as that. There were sects of Christianity that followed more ancient traditions alongside their Christian beliefs. One popular set of kno

Nothing so fantastical as that. There were sects of Christianity that followed more ancient traditions alongside their Christian beliefs. One popular set of knowledge (Christianity) and one arcane (Gnostic/Hermetic). You had to be initiated into the knowledge by a mixture of ancient and adapted rites. There were a number of disparate groups working from a similar or similar range of corpora. The mystical timeline is parallel. There's a layer and then another layer. So what your common Catholic would have believed in 1500 was childish elementary mystical understanding to the arcane society member who knew the "real" or Gnostic truth. I'm doing a terrible job at actually explaining this well. I'm giving you the very-diluted roundabout explanation of what I meant. For a better understanding have a quick read through some Wikipedia articles. If your history of Christianity is not very thorough, then I recommend brushing up on that as well for a more rounded understanding. If you get into some of the reading, you'll understand 100% of those wacky conspiracy videos on YouTube and why people should read more, and how important context is. My references are generally western-centric, though some of these topics make inroads to China and India (which has its own gnostic traditions IIRC). --- Down the rabbit hole you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes_Trismegistus (read many of the links) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism (read many of the links) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Roman_mysteries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley And down the Judeo-Abhrahamic-Christianity path: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mysticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_mysticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufism and just keep going.