. There are people all over Instagram drawing tarot and offering blessings, spells, virtual aura readings and “cures”. Astrology never went away, but it’s in rude health: “Chaos awaits as Mercury retrograde spins into Venus,” reads my latest unsolicited email. What next? Perhaps alchemy is due a reboot? God knows we could all do with some free gold.
I’m gripped, for various reasons. First, it’s just deeply, fascinatingly odd. There is also something perverse about how the internet has become the delivery mechanism for so much that is anti-rational: we took this creation forged from the, sage smudged it and popped a crystal on the top. It’s interesting – perhaps inevitable – that this is happening now Upheaval leads this stuff to re-emerge; when reality is hard to face, people find alternatives.
The current age of superstition feels a bit fin de siècle , except this time I suppose it’s more a fin-du-monde vibe. We are drawn to spooky signs and portents – does the reappearance of theOn an individual level, it’s interesting, too. Is – particularly if you are gen Z? I don’t think people are necessarily taking this stuff seriously. I hope not.
But are there real believers? Maybe it’s not that unlikely. Even if we leave the small matter of continued survival on this planet aside and confine ourselves to the nearer future, the life young people would like is probably utterly out of reach. A US magazine costed the not especially ridiculousrecently , showing just how impossible they were. If what you want doesn’t look accessible through the conventional channels , some will turn to the unconventional, I suppose.