Spiritual texts (depending on how you define spiritual) seem to have been misinterpreted or interfered with before the middle ages, during the middle ages, or during the age of enlightenment, heavily affecting the social sciences and philosophy. Alternatively, there may just be conflict of interest and also potential Hellenocentrism and Eurocentrism.
Examples: Commonalities and patterns between alchemy, astrology, Chinese Medicine, Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, four humors, Greek philosophy, Ayurveda, and Jungian psychology
A more specific example: The Chinese zodiac is very similar to the Chinese energy clock in Chinese medicine and four seasons which seem to relate to chronobiology. It doesn't seem to have to do with astronomy or months of the year. The zodiac signs seem to be archetypes or symbolic of organs.
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=chinese%20energy%20clock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_element
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Symbols
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_rhythm
Alternative medicine also seems to be heavily mistreated in the scientific community. I know alternative medicine may seem like pseudoscience, and some of it is, but most of it isn't pseudoscience. Most of it isn't what its branded as either. The skeptical movement seems to be involved to some extent with regards to its branding and possibly research interference with a lot of bias in that community.
This seems to possibly be a consequence of current science policy and infrastructure and may be worth looking into further as it could have massive implications for a massive variety of areas including but not limited to psychology, philosophy, and medicine.
Some of this may not be scientific, but it's worth noting. Also, I realize my username may suggest potential bias which is worth noting too.
I've actually had some experiences with things like this as well. I first got into meditation by having someone hypnotize me, as an example.
I think that most things like this have a little bit of truth to them, but that because there's so much extra attached to the concepts that it's hard to separate them out.
To use a personal example, the other day I was wiki diving and I discovered chaos magic (link below.) I proceeded to pretty much immediately make a sigil. I don't believe in chaos magic by any means, I really think this is just an application of the placebo effect/some positive thinking to my wall. An example of the "nugget of truth" that I was talking about.
But it was fun, so I did it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_magic
All this said, I don't think this type of activity really has a place in EA. It's just something that I thought was kind of crafty and fun to burn a bored afternoon on. With regards to this forum though I would recommend posting things like this somewhere else. EA is really focused on trying to do our best, which means that people tend to dislike that type of science-adjacent thinking.
I've never really gone looking for groups devoted to practicing or debunking ideas like this, really just something I see every now and then in my endless wiki reading. I do think it would be interesting if you could try to pull those "nuggets" out of the ideas though, because it is an interesting way to look at stuff like that.
Typing up and talking about how to use that kind of information might be kind of fun!
Thanks! To clarify, I posted it in the EA forum due to EA's interest in science policy and infrastructure. I felt it might serve to suggest it might be worth prioritizing higher or looking into further.
I don't believe ancient spirituality (depending on how it's defined) is scientific due to wording in the area, but I do believe most concepts in the area seem to be true or have truth to them. There seems to be misinterpretation of what various terms and motifs reference, though.
A good example is a Reddit post titled: TIL Not long after Julius Caesar was assassinated, a comet shone for seven successive days. This signified Julius Caesar's ascension to Godhood, and propaganda for Caesar's nephew. The comet was described as: "To make that soul a star that burns forever, Above the Forum and the gates of Rome." It seems an awful lot like images that appear when "Ida, Pingala, Sushumna" is image searched with seven referencing something with chakras, the comet referencing spirit, the soul referencing the psyche, gates referencing nadis, Godhood referencing Buddhahood or something with enlightenment, and death referencing ego death.
As for alternative medicine, to my surprise, when I looked into it, much or most of it is scientific. It's just poorly branded, and there appears to be conflict of interest. Some good examples are functional medicine, holistic medicine, and naturopathic medicine. The fields use engineering principles such as whole systems thinking and root cause analysis and tend to use natural products more but are not opposed to using synthetic products if they work best.
Dr. Jeffrey Bland, Dr. Frank Lipman, the Institute for Functional Medicine, and Dr. Will Cole seem like good sources on the subject. It's worth noting Wikipedia's medical pages seem to have strong bias.
I downvoted this because it contains large claims which are vague and probably false, and also because I don't see any relevance to the EA movement. To single one out, "The skeptical movement seems to be involved to some extent with regards to its branding and possibly research interference" sound like how pseudoscientists claim that controlled experiments interfere with their supernatural powers. Will reverse this vote if there's evidence I'm wrong.
There are efforts to promote geographic diversity in EA, as well as translate and integrate EA ideas to other cultures and do cross-cultural moral research. Furthering any one of these would reduce the effect of any Eurocentric bias the EA community has inherited, and I think they're all better places to look than alternative medicine.
Dr. Jeffrey Bland provides a good explanation. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dr.+jeffrey+bland The skeptical movement and conflict of interest from certain industries such as the biotech industry and sex industry appear to be at least partially responsible for the replication crisis and appear to have a large or widespread influence or impact in academia and the scientific community.
Some stuff that seems "woo" does seem to be pseudoscientific. I'm not denying that. However, there appears to be bias towards and conflict of interest regarding much of it which has implications for philosophy and many social sciences such as anthropology, political science, medicine, and archeology. Also, I'm not claiming these interpretations are scientific, but there does seem to be a lot of evidence to support them.
I have some more examples:
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=alchemy
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=egyptian%20mythology%20brain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_spark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pineal_gland
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2005290113002082
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9cTJef4gzE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inward_light
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/85/08/0d/85080d85bb8a79251c65dd36d47a6fe6.jpg
To add to these, it's said the eyes are the window to the soul.
There's evidence to suggest the “monster under the bed”, “boogie monster”, “monster in the closet”, and the “monster is just a tree branch” meme are occurrences of sleep paralysis. There's also evidence to suggest the Bloody Mary ritual is related to their third eye and hallucinations.
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=halo%20crown%20chakra
https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=crown%20chakra%20enlightenment
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/kg5usd/til_not_long_after_julius_caesar_was_assassinated/
If you look at verses about "God", "God" could possibly refer to the universe (sometimes in a general sense), an enlightened individual or guru, or the holy spirit, the father, and the son, depending on context.
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SahajaSubtleSystem.svg#mw-jump-to-license
http://sutrajournal.com/images/2016/jan/alchemy.jpg
https://www.royalartsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/aqua-vitae-alchemy.png
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/22/34/9f/22349f8c66132882a15ec4cd5ce178ff.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b7/1d/45/b71d45dbb63347f0eca868ee4a1df32b.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptids (these seem to be Jungian archetypes which seem to be evolutionary)
It seems like more than a coincidence that Roman deities are referred to as planets, "planets" are involved in astrology and, if I recall correctly, alchemy, and there's a practice in Taoism called the microcosmic orbit.