NEW SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: The Rise of Progressive Occultism — Or why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez felt compelled to share her birth chart.
For an increasing number of left-leaning millennials—more and more of whom do not belong to any organized religion—occult spirituality isn’t just a form of personal practice, self-care with more sage. Rather, it’s a metaphysical canvas for the American culture wars in the post-Trump era: pitting the self-identified Davids of seemingly secular progressivism against the Goliath of nationalist evangelical Christianity.
There’s the coven of Brooklyn witches who publicly hexed then-Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh to the acclamation of the thousands-strong “Magic Resistance”—anti-Trump witches (among them: pop singer Lana del Rey) who used at-home folk magic to “bind” the president in the months following his inauguration.
Although “progressive occultism” isn’t an entirely new development — Sally Quinn, then-married to Washington Post maximum editor Ben Bradlee, was playing with “Ouija boards, astrological charts, palm reading, talismans,” and casting spells she believed to be lethal since the late 1960s.