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Shakespeare's "Othello" is an incredibly pervasive piece of literature, influencing audiences from the time it was first staged to modern day. One of the major components that shaped the Moor of Venice's lasting impact is its focus not only on the idea of the foreign "other", but on the themes of strangeness, mysticism, and the occult that was commonly paired with Moors during Shakespeare's time. This exhibit focuses on three major influences of the occult in Othello: exploration, science, and mysticism.

Due to the global focus on the newly explored during the time this famous piece was written, much of the occultism that surrounds Othello derives from his foreignness to the Venetians in the play. He is seen as strange because he is different and foreign – a commonly held misconception during this time due to the prominence of exploration in society.

Similarly, science was entering into its own sort of renaissance as more and more importance was placed on the scientific explanation of every day phenomena during this time. Science began finding any way possible to account for what the common people wanted to know – and namely what common people wanted to know was why differences in foreigners occurred. This desire for logic to explain what was then thought the unexplainable simply because of the vast amounts of unavailable knowledge at the time furthered the idea that those that were different from you were strange, and more importantly mystical.

Finally, much of "Othello" is firmly grounded in this idea of mysticism furthered by the emphasis on science and exploration during Shakespeare’s time. People wanted explanations for the “strangeness” they perceived in the “other” and thus often turned to magical elements to explain what science could not.