I’d be surprised if many of these people who believe themselves subversive in their occultism weren’t massively overlapped with the ‘progressives’ who haven’t worked out that if you’re spouting the same socio/cultural/political talking points as the billionaire heads of globalist corporations, that you are not “The Resistance”, you’re the useful idiots.
That’s an excellent point, agreeing I think with recent observations about the complete disconnect between progressive, would-be Socialist liberals and the blue-collar protesters against mask mandates etc. to whom the progressives would have pledged their loyalty in the past, as part of resistance movements against the Establishment.
R Wright
2 years ago
Like mask wearing, ‘witchcraft’ is little more than posturing by narcissistic hysterics who need to get married and have children before they inevitably become cat ladies.
And what is wrong with being a cat lady”? I have know such people, they were delightful and without them their communities would have been much the poorer as, not having children, they were able to give more time to do those things that others wanted doing but had no time for. Your answer to women doing something that you find strange (and I admit I find strange too) is to get laid, is it?
It is also a sign of hysteria to be comparing some thing that you don’t like (mask-wearing) with something else you don’t like (“witches”) when there is absolutely no connection, except perhaps in your own mind.
“[…] is to get laid, is it?”
No, I specifically said get married and have children, or at least aim to do so. The same people that mask posture are the same people that profess to practice withcraft. Both issues symptoms of the same deeper malaise – an atomised society where few young people have serious ties and substitute cult practices for self-actualisation as human beings.
The same people that mask posture are the same people that profess to practice withcraft
No they are not, I know people of both types and they no more overlap than they do with the general population the general population.
I’m with Linda on this one. My ex is a crazy cat lady, and also firmly in the camp of resisting face masks, lockdowns, covid hysteria in general.
As an aside, I have always remarked, during the many protest rallies I have attended on covid measures, how diverse the crowds are. Impossible to find a ‘type’ among them. Really.
If being a cat lady was her choice, then I see nothing wrong with that. She has failed in her basic biological function, but each to his own. The problem is when such cat ladies arrive at that point because they made stupid life choices, and now they live miserable lives. That is the case with most cat ladies. Maybe not your friend, but with most. And the same miserable cat ladies, because misery loves company, try to esnare others into the same predicament.
You could be right. But it’s sad if you’re young and bored, even during lock-down in our modern society there was plenty to do, although I expect for poorer people this may have not been so. However, I’m pretty sure that most of these TikTok witches don’t come under the heading of poor.
Hersch Schneider
2 years ago
Tiktok is something humanity will look back on and cringe
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
” swathes of millennials and Gen-Zers are turning to online occultism and ritual magic”
I have been around a lot – seen a lot, hung with the outlandish, in outlandish lands – and am not surprised our utterly degenerate society is moving in this direction – because what I have found from an odd life is occult and witch-craft is satanism.
Useful Idiots mostly messing about mostly – but it is NOT healthy. It is not a plaything – it is a slippery slope – learn where it is going before playing with it….
Bad Things come from this stuff… I am telling you this truthfully – this is not good…. (I did not read the article, I leave this Cr*p alone, get away from it… I have seen a lot of the world – this is not for decent folk, there is no good in it, no good witchcraft….)
White Witches (like my late wife) are not, in accordance with their credo, allowed to use their powers for personal gain nor are they allowed to hurt others except in the defence of themselves and immediate family. My Wife had a lot of prescience, some of which has been passed down to our son and daughter. I used to find odd plants sometimes on coming home on leave. One bush had fruit which was poisonous to humans but enjoyed by Corvids. I didn’t ask about the Belladona plants and others which occasionally appeared in our ‘wilderness garden.’ She was also afraid of her powers and refused several requests by the town’s Spiritualist Church to go up to London to be assessed for further training for “Hands-on Healing.”Galeti – Yes, witch-craft does have it’s dangers so mock ye not.
Jon Redman
2 years ago
Esmé Partridge is a writer who works at the intersection of faith, politics and civil society.
She’s what?
She’s probably to modest to include her PhD in witchcraft tiktok intersectionality, her Applied Diploma in toad-whispering and her boxset of Charmed.
J Bryant
2 years ago
An excellent essay that made an uninteresting (for me) topic interesting.
I’ve always liked witchcraft. Not in a Dennis Wheatley sense but in the form of a wise woman, a healer, a practical psychologist, an interpreter of the natural world. A witch, for me, mediates between us, nature and our own subconscious. I’m not sure how any of that is compatible with TikTok although my sense is the TikTok witches are more interested in hexing Republicans than connecting with the deeper parts of human experience.
Penny Mcwilliams
2 years ago
“When TikTok users sift through various magical practices to find which one works for them, they are undergoing the same procedure of experimentation to arrive at empirical proof as in scientific inquiry. That is to say, they are not really “superstitious”, but committed to the principles of modern science and rationality.” Choosing from a menu of what makes you feel more empowered is hardly ‘scientific method’
Wilfred Davis
2 years ago
‘… the founding principle of the modern age: Man’s domination over nature.’
Genuine question: does anyone in reality advocate or attempt domination over nature?
Isn’t scientific enquiry and scientific practice about studying nature and then working with nature to our greater benefit?
All the thousands upon thousands of benefits we enjoy in the modern world – efficient agriculture, medicine, electricity, clean water, transport, the internet, and on and on – are from studying and co-operating with nature, not dominating it, aren’t they?
AC Harper
2 years ago
An interesting article but one that in the end struggles to provide any insight beyond ‘witches are not special’.
A deeper insight, glossed over somewhat, is that the tension between the individual and the collective Establishment has been played out for millennia. The Elite have always kept the Rude Mechanicals in their subordinate position using any means to hand. Religion, military force, economics, class attitudes, carefully calibrated democracy.
Witchcraft is one reaction against ‘knowing one’s place in society’, and like all subversive counter-Establishment ideas becomes ‘tamed’ and used by the Establishment.
In the Sixties wearing blue jeans was subversive. We all did it.
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
Human behaviours all have a bell curve. The vast majority of us sit somewhere in the middle. That’s how stereotypes exist. They identify behaviours that are recognisable in large groups of people sharing similar characteristics.
The outliers get smaller and smaller in number, the more outlandish their behaviour becomes.
Tiny numbers of nutters on the outer edges of the bell curve have nothing to teach us about overall human behaviour, and are rarely people of any interest.
Why does Unherd (by no means alone amongst the media) keep giving us these tales of the weird and the wacky in tones that imply they are trends that have some relevance to anybody but the weirdo’s concerned?
Dave Hopkins
2 years ago
Keep in mind that the word “occult” had a different meaning in Francis Bacon’s or Newton’s time. Gravity was an occult (“hidden”), mysterious force at the time. The “occult” medicinal powers of plants were linked to certain planets or to “correspondences” with their shape, which indicated their curative powers. Gravity may still be a bit of a mystery, but we have more insight into the medicinal powers of plants (turns out, for instance, that bioflavins or melatonin in plants serve similar functions in both our bodies and theirs), but these powers were considered “hidden” or occult, or linked to the stars or the form of the plant, in the Renaissance. If we know more now, it is thanks to the experimental method developed by Francis Bacon, Boyle, and others. Not to dismiss the intuitions of alchemy and astrology, for they may have hinted at truths yet to be discovered, but the analogical and associative thinking of these early efforts to know the universe will never get us there by themselves. I think the author, however, is on the verge of flipping over a much more interesting stone: for “manifesting” and the expectation that we can shape our destiny (or body, or events) with will power has had effects on much “woke” thinking, including WitchTok. Again, imagination is a powerful force, but the reality-testing of real-world experience (or experiment) is critical.
Howard Clegg
2 years ago
But sometimes ceremonial magic appears to work. But it’s unprovable. Spooky. That’s why I stopped, the cognitive dissonance is a killer and you just go round and round and round. But is undeniably sexy when you’re in it. It feels… consequential. And fairly haluciagenic when done properly. Hence its popularity. Yo!
Howard Clegg
2 years ago
But sometimes ceremonial magic appears to work. But it’s unprovable. Spooky. That’s why I stopped, the cognitive dissonance is a killer and you just go round and round and round. But is undeniably sexy when you’re in it. It feels… consequential. And fairly haluciagenic when done properly. Hence its popularity. Yo!
Terence Fitch
2 years ago
It’s not very adult is it?
Ian Cooper
2 years ago
Excellent article. Patrick Deneen couldn’t have said better. Tik Tok and Bacon do seem counter intuitive but the use of science and magic in the lame project of ‘liberal’ self -realisation are pretty spot on. Perhaps my only criticism is that Bacon’s occult interests were pretty different from those that obscenely killed about 60,000 ‘witches’ in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries eg Matthew Hopkins from Suffolk. Not very enlightened.
john zac
2 years ago
Thank you it is exactly what I needed
SULPICIA LEPIDINA
2 years ago
Just for the record this year marks the 300th anniversary of the last Witch burning in the UK, performed in June, 1722.
As you may have guessed it was in Scotland, far to the north in the little town of Dornoch. The unfortunate Witch, a retarded women in this case, was stripped naked, smeared in pitch, taken to the edge of the town and incinerated*alive, much to the joy of the local populous.
(* Earlier in 17th England the normal method of execution for Witches was hanging.)
RD Richards
2 years ago
Insightful piece, thanks Esmé. This is a useful linkage to make in the overall scheme of things.
Interesting piece.
I’d be surprised if many of these people who believe themselves subversive in their occultism weren’t massively overlapped with the ‘progressives’ who haven’t worked out that if you’re spouting the same socio/cultural/political talking points as the billionaire heads of globalist corporations, that you are not “The Resistance”, you’re the useful idiots.
That’s an excellent point, agreeing I think with recent observations about the complete disconnect between progressive, would-be Socialist liberals and the blue-collar protesters against mask mandates etc. to whom the progressives would have pledged their loyalty in the past, as part of resistance movements against the Establishment.
Like mask wearing, ‘witchcraft’ is little more than posturing by narcissistic hysterics who need to get married and have children before they inevitably become cat ladies.
Often, and rather oddly, the older they get, the keener they are on holding their get-togethers “sky clad”.
And what is wrong with being a cat lady”? I have know such people, they were delightful and without them their communities would have been much the poorer as, not having children, they were able to give more time to do those things that others wanted doing but had no time for. Your answer to women doing something that you find strange (and I admit I find strange too) is to get laid, is it?
It is also a sign of hysteria to be comparing some thing that you don’t like (mask-wearing) with something else you don’t like (“witches”) when there is absolutely no connection, except perhaps in your own mind.
“[…] is to get laid, is it?”
No, I specifically said get married and have children, or at least aim to do so. The same people that mask posture are the same people that profess to practice withcraft. Both issues symptoms of the same deeper malaise – an atomised society where few young people have serious ties and substitute cult practices for self-actualisation as human beings.
The same people that mask posture are the same people that profess to practice withcraft
No they are not, I know people of both types and they no more overlap than they do with the general population the general population.
I’m with Linda on this one. My ex is a crazy cat lady, and also firmly in the camp of resisting face masks, lockdowns, covid hysteria in general.
As an aside, I have always remarked, during the many protest rallies I have attended on covid measures, how diverse the crowds are. Impossible to find a ‘type’ among them. Really.
Probably because they are that rare thing these days; Normal human beings.
If being a cat lady was her choice, then I see nothing wrong with that. She has failed in her basic biological function, but each to his own. The problem is when such cat ladies arrive at that point because they made stupid life choices, and now they live miserable lives. That is the case with most cat ladies. Maybe not your friend, but with most. And the same miserable cat ladies, because misery loves company, try to esnare others into the same predicament.
I think you mean, ‘familiar ladies’. Yuck, yuck, yuck…
Everybody is just bored.
You could be right. But it’s sad if you’re young and bored, even during lock-down in our modern society there was plenty to do, although I expect for poorer people this may have not been so. However, I’m pretty sure that most of these TikTok witches don’t come under the heading of poor.
Tiktok is something humanity will look back on and cringe
” swathes of millennials and Gen-Zers are turning to online occultism and ritual magic”
I have been around a lot – seen a lot, hung with the outlandish, in outlandish lands – and am not surprised our utterly degenerate society is moving in this direction – because what I have found from an odd life is occult and witch-craft is satanism.
Useful Idiots mostly messing about mostly – but it is NOT healthy. It is not a plaything – it is a slippery slope – learn where it is going before playing with it….
Bad Things come from this stuff… I am telling you this truthfully – this is not good…. (I did not read the article, I leave this Cr*p alone, get away from it… I have seen a lot of the world – this is not for decent folk, there is no good in it, no good witchcraft….)
White Witches (like my late wife) are not, in accordance with their credo, allowed to use their powers for personal gain nor are they allowed to hurt others except in the defence of themselves and immediate family. My Wife had a lot of prescience, some of which has been passed down to our son and daughter. I used to find odd plants sometimes on coming home on leave. One bush had fruit which was poisonous to humans but enjoyed by Corvids. I didn’t ask about the Belladona plants and others which occasionally appeared in our ‘wilderness garden.’ She was also afraid of her powers and refused several requests by the town’s Spiritualist Church to go up to London to be assessed for further training for “Hands-on Healing.”Galeti – Yes, witch-craft does have it’s dangers so mock ye not.
Esmé Partridge is a writer who works at the intersection of faith, politics and civil society.
She’s what?
Right? What a strange address.
She’s probably to modest to include her PhD in witchcraft tiktok intersectionality, her Applied Diploma in toad-whispering and her boxset of Charmed.
An excellent essay that made an uninteresting (for me) topic interesting.
I’ve always liked witchcraft. Not in a Dennis Wheatley sense but in the form of a wise woman, a healer, a practical psychologist, an interpreter of the natural world. A witch, for me, mediates between us, nature and our own subconscious. I’m not sure how any of that is compatible with TikTok although my sense is the TikTok witches are more interested in hexing Republicans than connecting with the deeper parts of human experience.
“When TikTok users sift through various magical practices to find which one works for them, they are undergoing the same procedure of experimentation to arrive at empirical proof as in scientific inquiry. That is to say, they are not really “superstitious”, but committed to the principles of modern science and rationality.”
Choosing from a menu of what makes you feel more empowered is hardly ‘scientific method’
Genuine question: does anyone in reality advocate or attempt domination over nature?
Isn’t scientific enquiry and scientific practice about studying nature and then working with nature to our greater benefit?
All the thousands upon thousands of benefits we enjoy in the modern world – efficient agriculture, medicine, electricity, clean water, transport, the internet, and on and on – are from studying and co-operating with nature, not dominating it, aren’t they?
An interesting article but one that in the end struggles to provide any insight beyond ‘witches are not special’.
A deeper insight, glossed over somewhat, is that the tension between the individual and the collective Establishment has been played out for millennia. The Elite have always kept the Rude Mechanicals in their subordinate position using any means to hand. Religion, military force, economics, class attitudes, carefully calibrated democracy.
Witchcraft is one reaction against ‘knowing one’s place in society’, and like all subversive counter-Establishment ideas becomes ‘tamed’ and used by the Establishment.
In the Sixties wearing blue jeans was subversive. We all did it.
Human behaviours all have a bell curve. The vast majority of us sit somewhere in the middle. That’s how stereotypes exist. They identify behaviours that are recognisable in large groups of people sharing similar characteristics.
The outliers get smaller and smaller in number, the more outlandish their behaviour becomes.
Tiny numbers of nutters on the outer edges of the bell curve have nothing to teach us about overall human behaviour, and are rarely people of any interest.
Why does Unherd (by no means alone amongst the media) keep giving us these tales of the weird and the wacky in tones that imply they are trends that have some relevance to anybody but the weirdo’s concerned?
Keep in mind that the word “occult” had a different meaning in Francis Bacon’s or Newton’s time. Gravity was an occult (“hidden”), mysterious force at the time. The “occult” medicinal powers of plants were linked to certain planets or to “correspondences” with their shape, which indicated their curative powers. Gravity may still be a bit of a mystery, but we have more insight into the medicinal powers of plants (turns out, for instance, that bioflavins or melatonin in plants serve similar functions in both our bodies and theirs), but these powers were considered “hidden” or occult, or linked to the stars or the form of the plant, in the Renaissance. If we know more now, it is thanks to the experimental method developed by Francis Bacon, Boyle, and others. Not to dismiss the intuitions of alchemy and astrology, for they may have hinted at truths yet to be discovered, but the analogical and associative thinking of these early efforts to know the universe will never get us there by themselves. I think the author, however, is on the verge of flipping over a much more interesting stone: for “manifesting” and the expectation that we can shape our destiny (or body, or events) with will power has had effects on much “woke” thinking, including WitchTok. Again, imagination is a powerful force, but the reality-testing of real-world experience (or experiment) is critical.
But sometimes ceremonial magic appears to work. But it’s unprovable. Spooky. That’s why I stopped, the cognitive dissonance is a killer and you just go round and round and round. But is undeniably sexy when you’re in it. It feels… consequential. And fairly haluciagenic when done properly. Hence its popularity. Yo!
But sometimes ceremonial magic appears to work. But it’s unprovable. Spooky. That’s why I stopped, the cognitive dissonance is a killer and you just go round and round and round. But is undeniably sexy when you’re in it. It feels… consequential. And fairly haluciagenic when done properly. Hence its popularity. Yo!
It’s not very adult is it?
Excellent article. Patrick Deneen couldn’t have said better. Tik Tok and Bacon do seem counter intuitive but the use of science and magic in the lame project of ‘liberal’ self -realisation are pretty spot on. Perhaps my only criticism is that Bacon’s occult interests were pretty different from those that obscenely killed about 60,000 ‘witches’ in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries eg Matthew Hopkins from Suffolk. Not very enlightened.
Thank you it is exactly what I needed
Just for the record this year marks the 300th anniversary of the last Witch burning in the UK, performed in June, 1722.
As you may have guessed it was in Scotland, far to the north in the little town of Dornoch. The unfortunate Witch, a retarded women in this case, was stripped naked, smeared in pitch, taken to the edge of the town and incinerated*alive, much to the joy of the local populous.
(* Earlier in 17th England the normal method of execution for Witches was hanging.)
Insightful piece, thanks Esmé. This is a useful linkage to make in the overall scheme of things.