More Wiccans Than Presbyterians?

A movie about women and spiritual forces opened earlier this month and is so far the highest grossing movie of the month. The link is a Christian post alarmed at this interest in the occult. According to this review the movie focuses on women's grievances and on the enemies of women. 

For several years I have read about the growing industry of making and selling items of what can be called the occult. Now, perhaps, we are seeing the size of this phenomenon in a movie. While I don't know much about the items of the occult, I think of them as beads and the great one that made Superman, kryptonite. Kryptonite is a fictional material that was a creation of a story author who knew of an actual element in space called Krypton. 

Learning about the growth of a new version of witchcraft which I will use interchangeably with Paganism is especially entertaining because it reflects the long history of what goes on in humans' heads. Paganism thrived when every community was quite isolated from most others. Over thousands of years, local areas developed their own myths about themselves, their origins and unseen forces that caused, for example, weather. Perhaps a gazillion religions have had an angry god that made the sound of thunder.

No one knows where the Jews came from but it seems like they were early in organizing a society into under one god. One god made it easier for the political leaders to control people. Along came the Middle Ages with larger populations under one king and the need for one god was elevated. When the industrial revolution came along, one god was even more useful. 

The computer, however, left the gate open to escape from one god for everyone. It is allowing a return to the isolated communities of antiquity. All that is needed is an enemy that drives people to look for kryptonite. The religious right is playing that role perfectly. Just today the head of the Southern Baptist Convention declared the hammer must come down on definitions of gender. 

He is the perfect enemy for a revival of the Wiccans.