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.