The Rise of Progressive Occultism
”Progressive occultism ~ the language of witches and demons, of spells and sage, of cleansing and bad energy, of star and signs ~ has become the de facto religion of millennial progressives.”
@JohnPhilpin I did not know this. Interesting.
I have noticed an upsurge, in recent years, of "magical thinking", which is disturbing.
@bradenslen if by ‘magical thinking' - you mean ‘no thinking’ - because i just ‘know’ that ‘to be’ … right with you.
@JohnPhilpin They are perhaps related. Magical thinking runs something like this: the name represents the thing. To say the name (or draw a picture of it) is to make the thing manifest. Therefore, to say squirrel is to manifest the squirrel or to name a devil is to manifest that devil. See Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter for literary examples.
In modern usage I see it in our educational system usually tied to "zero tolerance" policies. So you get news reports about 7 year olds who drew a picture of a gun with his crayons. It might of been a squirt gun or a ray gun, nobody could tell, but it was definitely a gun of some sort.
Now everybody knows that a drawing of a gun, in crayon on paper, by a seven year old cannot cause immediate harm or loss of life. Stay with me this is where we get into magical thinking. But, apparently, to the teachers and administraitors, the picture of the thing is the thing made manifest. To draw a picture of a gun, or any weapon, is to make that gun manifest.
So they called the police. Who handcuffed the lad who was now understandably upset. The school administraitors didn't have to think about the situation or use their own judgement. The school had zero tolerance of all weapons. Except there was no real weapon. Interrogation by police commenced without the child's parents being present and IMHO institutionalized phychological child abuse, and bullying, initiated and condoned by the school commenced while said authorities hid behind the unquestioned acceptance of magical thinking and their zero tolerance policies.
There are other examples but I won't belabor the point.