… Demonic vexation, teleportation, increased interest in religious practice — thosephenomena are all signs that life feels, to many, increasingly charged with unseen forces. You might say it has been re-enchanted. There’s a widespread feeling that the material explanation is no longer sufficient; that something uncanny, maybe even numinous, is diffused into the texture of ordinary American life.
Pew found in 2024 that 30 percent of Americans consult astrology, tarot cards or fortune tellers at least once a year. New age practices are even more popular among some demographics, like younger women and L.G.B.T.Q. adults. During my first pregnancy I received a reiki, or energy healing, treatment for my unborn son. It’s now offered at major hospitals across the country
What is going on? Why is the world re-enchanting itself now?
In 1917, the sociologist Max Weber argued that a long process of rationalization, culminating in modernity, was eliminating “mysterious incalculable forces” from the world. Science would explain; technology would master; and magic would disappear. For a brief stretch of modern history, he seemed right: The enduring human instinct to believe in the otherworldly declined as empiricism, common evidentiary standards and, for the shortest period of all, mass media produced a rough consensus about what was real. Now we seem to be sliding back…
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/17/opinion/supernatural-religion-reality.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
