More than a few folks, from theologian John Calvin to philosopher William James to French theologian and historian Louis Auguste Sabatier, have noted that humans are “incurably religious” creatures. In other words, religion is native to the human heart.
In the history of the world, the wholesale rejection of the supernatural is a quirk of Western secularism. At the same time, it will not ultimately survive the human longing for transcendence and communion with the supernatural, no matter how far technology advances.
Evidence for this analysis was on display last year in Dortmund, Germany. An art exhibition, titled “Technoshamanism,” was highlighted in the New York Times article “Space Pagans and Smartphone Witches: Where Tech Meets Mysticism.”
Josie Thaddeus-Johns described the exhibition, which featured the work of 12 artists and collectives, as an exploration of the “connections between technology and esoteric, ancestral belief systems.” Visitors were welcomed by quotations from French artist Lucile Olympe Haut’s “Cyberwitches Manifesto,” which urges readers to, among other things, “use smartphones and tarot cards to connect to spirits” and “manufacture DIY devices to listen to invisible worlds.”
According to the Times, the exhibition is an example of the rising interest in pagan and occult practices among “‘spiritual’ but not ‘religious'” Westerners. The new development, reported Thaddeus-Johns, is how frequently these practices are being combined with technology: “Spirituality is all over our feeds: The self-help guru Deepak Chopra has co-founded his own [non-fungible token] platform, witches are reading tarot on TikTok and the AI-driven astrology app Co-Star has been downloaded more than 20 million times.”