Why do you have a series of posts devoted to the occult, Gilligan? Are you a satan worshiper?
Nope. But if you study the psyche of the seventies - mainly the latter part of the sixties and early part of the seventies - you can't help but take note of the unusually high levels of occult interest among the public. I've theorized before as to why this was true, but trying to track why certain things fall in and out of fashion is often an exercise in futility. Our collective consciousness is a complicated beast to pin down.
War may be to blame. There was a sharp rise in occult enthusiasm during WWI, and the seventies occultism coincides perfectly with Vietnam. Perhaps it was a way for many to come to terms with mass casualties, often friends and family. This theory sounds good on the surface, but it doesn't account for the times of war when there was no widespread interest in the occult. For instance, WWII didn't bring about any such event. So what gives?
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A few theories... more than one may be true..
- Perhaps it was a collective guilt manifesting itself in interests in the afterlife and the beyond.
- Perhaps it was just a passing fad that started inconspicuously, but grew and grew over the years. No concrete reason - a sort of cultural butterfly effect.
- Perhaps the Boomers' inclination to rebel against social constructs also translated to religion, where both atheism and occultism constituted a rebellion against traditional organized religion.
- Perhaps it was an offshoot of sexual liberation; traditional morality didn't condone the hippie/swinger lifestyle, but occultism did.
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