The latest religious trend in America is hard to believe
According to an op-ed piece last week in The New York Times, “we’re living in the middle of a religious revival” in this country. But before you shout “praise the Lord,” you need to know the author contended that the revival consisted of increased interest in astrology and witchcraft.
Citing a 2018 Pew poll, columnist David Brooks noted that 29 percent of Americans say they believe in astrology, which is “more than the number of members in mainstream Protestant churches.” And research showed that Wicca was “the fastest growing religion in America.”
The column took me by surprise and not just because it was an op-ed piece in The New York Times that didn’t troll Donald Trump. Maybe that’s because I’m a skeptic. My introduction to the occult came years ago during a trip to Atlantic City, where I paid $5 for a session with a palm reader on the boardwalk. With her special powers, she divined that there was travel in my future that would take me over a body of water. Which might have made me a believer if not for the fact that, at that moment, I was a tourist in a city located on an island.
Astrology is a total mystery to me. I don’t understand, for instance, why my grandtwins are entirely different, even though I’m pretty sure they were born on the same day. Or what the late Hank Williams Sr., former basketball coach Phil Jackson and I have in common, other than our birth dates. According to one horoscope, having been born on Sept. 17 means we are characterized by our “sensitive, artistic and reserved nature,” all of which obviously is true in my case. But another horoscope declared that we “will have some difficulty staying humble,” which is ridiculous. I don’t know about Hank and Phil, but I’m universally loved and admired for my humility.
I’m equally ignorant about witchcraft, although I think if you dump water on them they’ll shrivel up and die. But maybe that’s only if you hang around with scarecrows, tin men and cowardly lions.
Years ago I interviewed a wizard (that’s what male witches prefer to be called) who insisted that witchcraft was a peaceful religion and claimed that a bunch of them even got together to cast a spell that ended the war in Vietnam — which is just one more thing Richard Nixon neglected to tell us — and when they’re not ending wars, Wiccans have an even more important interest.
“Sex is about 50 percent of witchcraft,” the wizard told me. “There’s no such thing as a virgin witch. That’s why we don’t have any tense and cranky witches.”
Do I hear a “hallelujah?”