4 ms·

Interesting how occult concepts like astral travel (reality shifting) and familiars & daemons (tulpamancy) are getting recycled without the Victorian baggage.

spats1990 5y ago
i think in the last 5-6 years we've seen in western/anglosphere culture a growing surge of interest in both occult stuff, like you say, or occultish New Age stuff (astrology) as well as renewed interest in the old organised religions among younger people. at the very least there is a willingness to hold a "live and let live" attitude toward the spiritual beliefs of others. of course this is just a hunch and other people's anecdata might say otherwise, but i tend to think it could be a swing of the pendulum or "backlash" from New Atheist influence in the discourse in the 2000s and early 2010s.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  The mystical stuff cycles around about every 25 years, but comes in from a different direction each time. The last boom was around the millennium. As for the traditional religion, my guess is it's traditionalism in response to the increase in cultural warfare we've seen recently.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I interact very often with young people both online and in reality (barring the article's mention of several such things), and I see the same trends you mention. Some of it has always been mostly the purview of youth, such as interest in exploring known religions and inventing "new" ideas about the whys and hows of existence. Specific topics such as renewed interest in tulpamancy, dream interpretation, and chaos magic[k] I think can be traced roughly to a reflection of modern society: a desire to make sense of and control a world in which you have increasingly less control. As populations and communications grow, the signal to noise ratio that any given person experiences increases, leading to less sense of "I know what is what".
noah_buddy 5y ago
It's funny because those things were couching certain phenomena (chiefly, being able to imagine things and, perhaps to an extent, hallucination due to external factors) into terms compatible with the dominant beliefs of the time (magicks of all sorts) while this is somewhat couched in the ideas of rationality and science, at least "reality shifting."
- bencollier49 5y ago
  The Tulpa stuff has been reinterpreted in materialist terms too (apparently 80% of people treat it this way, from some study or other). Of course, interpreting these things in just one way is a category mistake.
ineedasername 5y ago
Except now they're picking up pseudo scientific baggage. I'm not sure there's a net gain in that.

spats1990 5y ago

i think in the last 5-6 years we've seen in western/anglosphere culture a growing surge of interest in both occult stuff, like you say, or occultish New Age stuff (astrology) as well as renewed interest in the old organised religions among younger people. at the very least there is a willingness to hold a "live and let live" attitude toward the spiritual beliefs of others. of course this is just a hunch and other people's anecdata might say otherwise, but i tend to think it could be a swing of the pendulum or "backlash" from New Atheist influence in the discourse in the 2000s and early 2010s.

bencollier49 5y ago
The mystical stuff cycles around about every 25 years, but comes in from a different direction each time. The last boom was around the millennium. As for the traditional religion, my guess is it's traditionalism in response to the increase in cultural warfare we've seen recently.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
I interact very often with young people both online and in reality (barring the article's mention of several such things), and I see the same trends you mention. Some of it has always been mostly the purview of youth, such as interest in exploring known religions and inventing "new" ideas about the whys and hows of existence. Specific topics such as renewed interest in tulpamancy, dream interpretation, and chaos magic[k] I think can be traced roughly to a reflection of modern society: a desire to make sense of and control a world in which you have increasingly less control. As populations and communications grow, the signal to noise ratio that any given person experiences increases, leading to less sense of "I know what is what".

noah_buddy 5y ago

It's funny because those things were couching certain phenomena (chiefly, being able to imagine things and, perhaps to an extent, hallucination due to external factors) into terms compatible with the dominant beliefs of the time (magicks of all sorts) while this is somewhat couched in the ideas of rationality and science, at least "reality shifting."

bencollier49 5y ago
The Tulpa stuff has been reinterpreted in materialist terms too (apparently 80% of people treat it this way, from some study or other). Of course, interpreting these things in just one way is a category mistake.

ineedasername 5y ago

Except now they're picking up pseudo scientific baggage. I'm not sure there's a net gain in that.