Exposé of Over 50 Years of The Parasitic Occult
Abstract
For over half a century, occultism has metastasized from countercultural curiosity into a pervasive parasite infecting politics, psychology, education, and public life. Cloaked in the language of “hidden wisdom,” movements ranging from astrology and Wicca to Scientology and “energy healing” have masqueraded as profound while peddling incoherence, exploitation, and fraud. This paper traces occultism’s expansion from the 1970s to the present, examining its corrosive influence across domains, its hypocrisy in so-called “secret societies,” and the devastating consequences of its normalization. Far from ancient or profound, the occult is a cultural malignancy that thrives on ignorance, trauma, and cowardice in confronting reality.
1. Introduction: The Lie of “Hidden Wisdom”
Occultism presents itself as esoteric truth, accessible only to initiates. In reality, it is a recycling bin of plagiarized myths, pseudoscience, and authoritarian theater.
The word “occult” (Latin occultus, meaning hidden) suggests concealed profundity; what it conceals, however, is vacuity.
Over the past 50 years, occultism has not remained on the margins. It has entered:
Politics (e.g., Nancy Reagan’s astrology, Putin’s occult nationalism, QAnon).
Mental health (e.g., Satanic Panic, energy healing, cult suicides).
Science and education (parapsychology, New Age medicine, astrology apps).
Secret societies (Freemasonry, Golden Dawn, Ordo Templi Orientis, Church of Satan, Scientology, Wicca, Neo-Paganism, Satanic Temple).
This essay examines the trajectory of occultism’s infestation, its hypocrisies, and its social costs, using examples that expose its intellectual rot.
2. From Counterculture to Market Commodity (1970s–1980s)
Astrology Normalized: By the 1970s, astrology columns appeared in nearly every Western newspaper. Millions planned marriages, jobs, and even surgeries by zodiac charts. No controlled study has ever validated astrology’s claims.¹
Occult Toys for Children: Parker Brothers marketed the Ouija board as a harmless game in the 1970s, commodifying spiritualism for children.²
Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb (1983): A bestseller that promoted reincarnation, astral projection, and channeling, effectively mainstreaming occult superstition.³
Rajneesh Movement: In Oregon (1980s), the cult weaponized New Age spirituality into authoritarianism, culminating in the largest bioterror attack on U.S. soil when they contaminated salad bars with salmonella to sway an election.⁴
Occultism here proved its first hypocrisy: marketing liberation while delivering authoritarian control and exploitation.
3. Occultism in Politics
Nancy Reagan’s Astrology (1980s): First Lady Reagan consulted astrologer Joan Quigley for Ronald Reagan’s scheduling after his 1981 assassination attempt.⁵ The fact that nuclear decisions were potentially timed by horoscopes is a historical disgrace.
Putin’s Mysticism: Ideologue Aleksandr Dugin has infused Kremlin strategy with occult Traditionalist mysticism, portraying Russia as a civilization of apocalyptic destiny.⁶
QAnon as Digital Occultism: Cryptic “Q drops” function like esoteric revelations; followers decode “hidden truths” in ritualistic fashion. QAnon blends apocalyptic prophecy, numerology, and conspiracy myth—classic occultism in digital dress.⁷
Occult Fascism: Neo-fascist groups recycle Blavatsky’s Theosophical racism and Aryan myths, using occult pseudohistory to justify authoritarianism.⁸
The pattern is clear: occultism consistently provides authoritarian movements with mythic propaganda to anesthetize reason and sanctify power.
4. Occultism and Mental Health: Exploitation Disguised as Healing
The Satanic Panic (1980s–1990s):
Sparked by Michelle Remembers (1980), co-authored by psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder.⁹
Children were coerced into fabricating tales of ritual abuse; parents were imprisoned without evidence.
Therapists employed “recovered memory” techniques—later discredited as suggestive coercion.
Energy Healing and “Alternative Therapy”:
Reiki, crystal therapy, and past-life regression remain unmeasurable, undefined, and scientifically incoherent.
Patients abandon effective treatment for occult placebo, often with lethal consequences.¹⁰
Cult Suicides:
Heaven’s Gate (1997): 39 dead, deceived by a grotesque New Age-astrology-UFO hybrid.¹¹
Order of the Solar Temple (1994–97): Over 70 members murdered or coerced into suicide in France, Switzerland, and Canada.¹²
The occult in mental health is not neutral spirituality; it is predation on trauma and despair, weaponized by fraudulent “healers.”
5. The Hypocrisy of Secret Societies and Mystical Orders
Freemasonry:
Rituals invented in the 18th century, masquerading as “ancient.”
“Secrets” amount to passwords, handshakes, and plagiarized Biblical allegory.¹³
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1887):
Collapsed under infighting; rituals plagiarized from French occultists.¹⁴
Its “magical” claims influenced 20th-century occultism despite proven fraud.
Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.):
Under Aleister Crowley, promoted “Do what thou wilt.”
Crowley, hailed as prophet, was an addict, fraud, and serial exploiter.¹⁵
Church of Satan (founded 1966):
Anton LaVey’s “Satanism” was largely theatrical atheism dressed up as ritual pageantry.
LaVey denounced hypocrisy while building a personal cult of hypocrisy—charging money for “priesthood” titles.¹⁶
The Satanic Temple (founded 2013):
Claims to be atheistic activism but couches itself in ritualized Satanism to provoke outrage.
Simultaneously denies “belief” while trading on Satanic imagery for spectacle and profit.¹⁷
Bricket Wood Coven and Wica (1940s):
Gerald Gardner concocted Wicca from scraps of folklore, Masonic ritual, and ceremonial magic, falsely claiming ancient survival.¹⁸
The spelling “Wica” was Gardner’s invention, not an ancient tradition.
Neo-Pagan and Heathen Revival:
Often justified by fabricated “ancient” rituals.
Frequently co-opted by nationalist movements (e.g., Norse pagan groups tied to white supremacists).¹⁹
Scientology (1950s–present):
L. Ron Hubbard turned science fiction into “religion.”
Employs occult-adjacent rituals of auditing and secrecy.
Exposed repeatedly for psychological abuse, financial exploitation, and violent harassment of critics.²⁰
Each of these “orders” thrives on secrecy and myth, yet their “hidden wisdom” is consistently revealed as plagiarism, fraud, or exploitation. The hypocrisy is universal.
6. Occultism in Science and Education
Parapsychology: Despite over a century of research, no reproducible evidence supports telepathy or psychokinesis.²¹
Alternative Medicine in Academia: Medical schools now teach “integrative medicine,” where unproven occult practices (acupuncture, “energy healing”) are taught alongside anatomy.²²
Children and Superstition:
Astrology apps like Co-Star and The Pattern normalize superstition for younger generations.²³
Schools often fail to challenge pseudoscience, hiding behind cultural relativism.
Here occultism reveals its parasitism: it survives not through discovery but by infiltrating education and eroding intellectual standards.
7. Pop Culture: Glamourizing the Irrational
Tarot, Witch Aesthetics, Astrology on Social Media: Marketed as “empowerment,” but merely commodified superstition.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop:
Promoted jade “yoni eggs” (linked to bacterial infections), “psychic vampire repellents,” and “energy stickers.”²⁴
Occult pseudoscience rebranded as luxury wellness.
Occult Symbolism in Media: Horror films, music, and video games normalize occult imagery, blurring lines between entertainment and belief.
The result: a society where occultism is consumed as style, not recognized as parasitism.
8. Conclusion: The Cowardice of Tolerating Delusion
Occultism is not “alternative spirituality.” It is a parasite.
It drains money, sanity, and institutional credibility.
Its survival depends on secrecy, fraud, and cultural cowardice—the refusal of governments, universities, and media to ridicule it as it deserves.
From fraudulent therapies to political superstition, the occult’s record is not wisdom but exploitation, authoritarianism, and sometimes tragedy.
If society continues to indulge occultism as harmless, it will continue to breed delusion, erode reason, and justify authoritarian abuse. Occultism must be recognized not as hidden wisdom but as cultural vandalism.
Even Feminism is rooted in the Occult
Modern feminism claims to be a movement for rational emancipation, equality, and the dismantling of patriarchal power. Its roots lie in rigorous intellectual traditions: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) grounded women’s equality in reason; John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) argued for women’s political and educational enfranchisement as a matter of justice and utility.[1] Early feminists positioned themselves within Enlightenment rationalism, appealing to universal principles rather than esoteric mysteries.
Yet, beginning in the late 1960s, feminism became entangled with occultism. The countercultural ferment of that era produced a hybrid of radical politics and mystical revival. Groups like W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) fused protest theater with occult symbolism.[2] Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna Budapest reinvented witchcraft rituals for women’s spirituality, founding a Dianic Wicca tradition centered on goddess worship.[3] Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1979) codified feminist neopaganism, packaging ritual magic as ecological and political liberation.[4]
This drift into mysticism did not represent empowerment but a collapse of rational discourse into esoteric spectacle. While the rhetoric promised liberation, the practices tethered women to crystal-sellers, cult leaders, exploitative movements, and consumer industries profiting from “spiritual empowerment.” What was once an intellectual and political struggle for equality became entangled with rituals of grievance, invented mythologies, and occult symbolism masquerading as rebellion.
The sections that follow trace this corruption across five dimensions:
Witchcraft as Feminism: The Fraud of Empowerment — how witchcraft and goddess spirituality were repackaged as tools of liberation.
The Dark Alchemy of Feminism: From Suffrage to Sorcery — the intellectual decline from Enlightenment rational feminism to neopagan mysticism.
The Astrology of Liberation: Occult Pseudoscience as Feminist Gospel — the rise of astrology, crystals, and “witchy self-care” as substitutes for material politics.
The Satanic Feminine: From Lilith to The Satanic Temple — feminism’s embrace of Satanic archetypes and its hypocrisy.
The Price of the Goddess: How Occult Feminism Became a Market — the commercialization of “spiritual feminism” into a billion-dollar industry.
This essay does not argue against feminism as such, but against its corruption by occultism. Just as Enlightenment feminists sought liberation through reason and law, so too must modern feminism be rescued from the parasitic mysticism that has led it into irrationality, consumerism, and cultural irrelevance.
1. Witchcraft as Feminism: The Fraud of Empowerment
The late 1960s marked a pivotal shift in feminist self-presentation: the adoption of witchcraft as both symbol and practice. What began as theatrical protest quickly metastasized into a new religious and cultural current that masqueraded as empowerment but tethered women to irrational superstition.
W.I.T.C.H. and the Politics of Spectacle
The Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.), founded in 1968, pioneered this fusion of feminism and occult imagery. Dressed in black, members hexed Wall Street, carried broomsticks into protests, and declared that “all women are witches.”[1] While superficially clever, this appropriation of witchcraft betrayed feminism’s intellectual heritage. Rather than arguing for legal equality on rational grounds, W.I.T.C.H. indulged in occult theatrics, reducing feminism to parody. The use of witchcraft as a banner did not dismantle patriarchal structures but trivialized feminist demands into esoteric performance art.
The Rise of Dianic Wicca and Zsuzsanna Budapest
By the 1970s, theatrical witchcraft morphed into serious religious practice. Zsuzsanna (Z) Budapest, a Hungarian immigrant, claimed to have inherited ancient European traditions of goddess worship—though these were largely invented or reconstructed.[2] She founded Dianic Wicca, a women-only sect, in 1971. Dianic rituals elevated goddess archetypes, rejected male participation, and framed witchcraft as a feminist spiritual rebellion.
Yet the empowerment promised by Budapest’s movement was hollow. Its rituals lacked historical authenticity—academic historians of religion, from Ronald Hutton to Cynthia Eller, have documented that the supposed ancient matriarchal religions invoked by Wicca were inventions of twentieth-century occultists, especially Robert Graves.[3] Far from restoring suppressed wisdom, Dianic Wicca created a fantasy past in which women could imagine power, while in reality retreating into superstition.
Starhawk and the Mainstreaming of Feminist Witchcraft
The most influential voice of feminist witchcraft was Miriam Simos, known as Starhawk. Her book The Spiral Dance (1979) became a manifesto for feminist neopaganism, blending goddess spirituality, ecology, and social activism.[4] Starhawk framed magic not as superstition but as a “psychic and political” force for liberation.
Yet this rhetoric merely cloaked mysticism in progressive jargon. Starhawk’s rituals drew heavily on Jungian archetypes and modern occult invention, not historical continuity. The supposed “ancient wisdom” was, again, a twentieth-century bricolage. Worse, The Spiral Dance functioned less as political philosophy than as an initiation manual into occult practices—tarot, ritual magic, seasonal festivals—which tethered feminism to irrational metaphysics.
The Irony of “Empowerment” through Irrationality
The adoption of witchcraft as feminism’s symbol was deeply ironic. On one hand, feminists rightly protested patriarchal depictions of witches as dangerous, subversive, and demonic. On the other, by embracing witchcraft literally—as ritual, religion, and identity—they shackled themselves to the very superstitions Enlightenment feminists had worked to transcend.
Mary Wollstonecraft sought women’s liberation through education, rationality, and universal rights. Zsuzsanna Budapest and Starhawk offered instead broomsticks, goddesses, and ritual chants. What was presented as empowerment was in fact regression: from rational agency to magical thinking, from political clarity to esoteric theater.
Exploitation under the Banner of Liberation
Finally, the “feminist witchcraft” movement opened fertile ground for exploitation. Women, often disillusioned with patriarchal religion, were drawn into covens, retreats, and goddess workshops where leadership structures often reproduced the very hierarchies they denounced. Leaders like Budapest positioned themselves as priestess-figures dispensing access to hidden knowledge—for a price. Ritual kits, workshops, and books transformed feminist rebellion into a profitable industry of pseudo-spiritual commodities.
Thus, the witchcraft-feminism nexus was less about liberation than about creating a captive market of women drawn into irrational practices. Rather than freeing women from patriarchal superstition, it ensnared them in new forms of magical bondage—disguised as empowerment.
2. The Dark Alchemy of Feminism: From Suffrage to Sorcery
The history of feminism can be divided, with some justice, into two epochs: an early phase rooted in rational Enlightenment argument and political reform, and a later phase that abandoned reasoned discourse for mystical symbolism and occult revival. The contrast is stark. Early feminists appealed to law, logic, and universal justice; later feminists invoked goddesses, rituals, and invented myths. This drift represents not progress but decline—a transformation of feminism from philosophy into sorcery.
Enlightenment Rationalism and Feminist Origins
Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) remains a landmark of rational feminism. She argued that women’s supposed inferiority was not innate but the product of denied education. Only through reason, literacy, and civic participation could women achieve equality.[1] A century later, John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869) extended this argument, contending that legal barriers to women’s rights were arbitrary and unjust.[2] Both figures stood within the Enlightenment tradition, which understood liberation as a matter of law, education, and rational argumentation—not mystical revelation.
The Turn to Mysticism
By the mid-twentieth century, however, strands of feminism increasingly abandoned rationalism for esotericism. The “goddess revival” of the 1970s exemplifies this shift. Writers such as Robert Graves (The White Goddess, 1948) promoted a fabricated myth of an ancient, universal goddess religion suppressed by patriarchy.[3] This idea, though historically baseless, proved attractive to feminists seeking symbols of female power.
The irony is profound: while earlier feminists fought to dismantle superstition, later feminists embraced it wholesale, invoking rituals and archetypes as substitutes for argument. Goddess spirituality replaced philosophy with liturgy, and neopagan rites replaced legislative reform with seasonal festivals.
Ritualized Grievance: The “Red Tent” Phenomenon
One of the more bizarre expressions of this esoteric turn has been the so-called “Red Tent” movement, inspired by Anita Diamant’s novel The Red Tent (1997). These gatherings, framed as revivals of ancient menstrual rituals, encourage women to share experiences in quasi-religious settings that often include menstrual blood offerings, chanting, and ritualized grievance.[4] The practices, however, are historical fantasies: there is no evidence that ancient cultures engaged in such rituals in the manner imagined. The “red tent” is not continuity but invention, a projection of contemporary desires onto a mythical past.
The Loss of Intellectual Rigor
This turn from suffrage to sorcery represents an intellectual collapse. Where Wollstonecraft called for education in reason, modern “feminist spirituality” calls for immersion in invented myths. Where Mill appealed to the utilitarian value of justice, Starhawk appealed to the “energies” of ritual. In both style and substance, the transition represents a regression from rational discourse to magical thinking.
The consequences are serious. By substituting goddess myths for arguments, occult feminism rendered itself intellectually impotent. It no longer spoke the language of law, science, or politics, but of archetypes, chants, and blood rituals. It traded the universality of reason for the provincialism of invented rites.
Sorcery in Place of Suffrage
The suffragists of the nineteenth century demanded the vote as a rational right. The feminists of the late twentieth century demanded empowerment through goddess circles and invented matriarchal histories. What was once a project of universal emancipation became a sectarian cult of symbolism. This is not evolution but alchemy: the transmutation of reason into superstition, of philosophy into ritual, of suffrage into sorcery.
3. The Astrology of Liberation: Occult Pseudoscience as Feminist Gospel
If the second-wave feminists of the 1970s rebranded witchcraft as empowerment, the third wave and its millennial heirs embraced astrology, crystals, and “self-care witchcraft” as substitutes for politics. What began as a fringe esoteric hobby has metastasized into a mainstream phenomenon, especially among younger feminists, who treat occult pseudoscience not only as entertainment but as a form of identity and liberation.
The Rebirth of Astrology
Once relegated to the back pages of newspapers, astrology has undergone a striking revival since the early 2000s. Pew Research Center surveys indicate that nearly 30% of American adults, and nearly half of young women, say they believe in astrology.[1] Online platforms like Co-Star and The Pattern—astrology apps with millions of users, primarily female—market horoscopes as tools for self-knowledge, empowerment, and even political solidarity.[2]
This represents a profound irony. The feminist movement, which once fought for women’s access to science, technology, and higher education, now presides over a generation where astrology—a pre-scientific divination system—has been reframed as a feminist practice of resistance and self-expression.
Crystals, Energy, and the Marketplace of Nonsense
Astrology’s rise is inseparable from the explosion of crystal healing and “energy work.” Retailers like Urban Outfitters and Goop aggressively market crystals, sage bundles, and tarot cards as feminist self-care tools.[3] Workshops and retreats promote the use of stones to balance “energies” or “align chakras,” with women as the primary consumer base. The language of empowerment is inseparable from consumerism: one is not liberated by education or law, but by buying the right quartz.
In practice, this is a predatory market disguised as feminism. Women are invited to reject patriarchal rationalism while embracing overpriced, spiritually useless commodities. The effect is dependency, not empowerment: the consumer must continually purchase talismans to sustain her identity.
“My Truth” and the Collapse of Objectivity
Perhaps the most insidious effect of astrology and occult pseudoscience within feminism is its epistemological relativism. Modern feminist rhetoric often emphasizes “my truth” and “lived experience” as absolute categories of authority. This mirrors the relativism of astrology and occultism, in which subjective resonance replaces objective fact.
Where Enlightenment feminists appealed to universal truths—that reason, justice, and equality are for all—the astrology-feminism nexus collapses truth into private experience. The cosmos is consulted not through science but through birth charts; reality is mediated not by evidence but by intuition. This epistemic collapse undermines feminism’s claim to intellectual seriousness, aligning it with mysticism rather than reason.
The Gospel of Pseudoscience
Astrology, crystals, and witchcraft rituals function within feminism as a pseudo-religion, a gospel of liberation that substitutes occult determinism for rational agency. The irony is staggering: in rejecting patriarchal religion and rationality, many feminists have embraced pre-scientific determinism cloaked in cosmic rhetoric. The stars dictate destiny, the crystals heal, and the tarot guides—all of it unverified, all of it irrational, all of it marketed as feminist freedom.
The result is not liberation but enslavement: to superstition, to consumer industries, and to the erosion of objective truth.
4. The Satanic Feminine: From Lilith to The Satanic Temple
If astrology and crystals represent the soft underbelly of occult feminism, then its harder, more theatrical edge has been the embrace of explicitly Satanic and demonic archetypes. Here, feminism has not merely borrowed from pre-scientific mysticism, but has openly aligned itself with figures of rebellion and destruction — Lilith, the witch, the succubus, and Satan himself. This embrace of darkness is marketed as empowerment, but in reality it reveals the intellectual bankruptcy of a movement that substitutes shock-value and inverted symbols for reasoned critique.
Lilith: The Mythologized Rebel
In Jewish folklore, Lilith was a demonic figure, often portrayed as a child-killer and succubus.[1] Yet in the 1970s, feminist writers rebranded her as a symbol of female independence and resistance against male domination, since she allegedly refused to submit to Adam in sexual relations. Lilith became a patron saint of feminist witchcraft, invoked in feminist journals like Lilith Magazine and in rituals designed to celebrate “unruly womanhood.”[2]
This is historical revisionism bordering on absurdity. Feminism, in reclaiming Lilith, embraced a mythological demon — a figure of destruction, not liberation — as its archetype. To elevate such a symbol demonstrates the degree to which occult feminism abandoned rational history in favor of manufactured mythology.
The Witch as Mascot of Defiance
Closely tied to Lilith is the archetype of the witch, which feminist movements in the 1960s and beyond embraced as a mascot of defiance. Groups like W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) explicitly used the witch as a theatrical symbol of rebellion against patriarchy and capitalism.[3] Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance (1979) codified witchcraft not just as religion but as political praxis.[4]
Yet the witch is not a liberator; historically, the witch was a figure of superstition, feared for alleged pacts with the demonic and practices of malefic magic. To turn this into a positive feminist archetype is less about liberation than about deliberate provocation — rebellion for rebellion’s sake, dressed in occult trappings.
The Satanic Temple: Politics as Performance Art
In recent years, the most theatrical fusion of feminism and Satanism has come through The Satanic Temple (TST), a political activist group founded in 2013. TST promotes abortion rights under the banner of Satan, using imagery of Baphomet statues and “Hail Satan” chants at protests to frame reproductive rights as acts of Satanic rebellion.[5] Women are often placed at the forefront of these spectacles, functioning as mascots for male-run leadership and media exploitation.
The hypocrisy is glaring: feminism claims to empower women, yet here they are deployed as shock troops in an occult-themed theater troupe whose leadership is overwhelmingly male. Moreover, the reliance on Satanic imagery trivializes legitimate debates about law and morality, replacing argument with blasphemous spectacle.
The Fetish of Inversion
The feminist embrace of Satanic symbols represents not reasoned critique but fetishized inversion. Patriarchy is symbolically Christian; therefore, feminism must embrace the demonic. Religion is patriarchal; therefore, feminism must embrace anti-religion. This logic is childish, parasitic, and wholly dependent on the very structures it claims to subvert. By making Satan a feminist symbol, the movement proclaims itself incapable of defining liberation positively — only as a mirror-image of what it hates.
The Result: A Politics of Nihilism
What emerges from this Satanic feminism is not liberation but nihilism. To embrace Lilith, witches, and Satan as feminist archetypes is to revel in destruction rather than construction, to glorify grievance over reason, and to enshrine provocation over progress. This is not feminism as Mary Wollstonecraft envisioned it, rooted in rational equality, but feminism as occult rebellion: a theater of darkness masquerading as empowerment.
5. The Price of the Goddess: How Occult Feminism Became a Market
If feminism’s occult turn promised mystical empowerment, its final form is not liberation but consumerism. What began as a countercultural rebellion has metastasized into a billion-dollar marketplace, where empowerment is packaged, priced, and sold back to women under the guise of goddess spirituality.
From Ritual to Retail
By the 1990s and 2000s, the goddess spirituality of Zsuzsanna Budapest and Starhawk was no longer confined to ritual circles. It had become an industry. Bookstore shelves filled with “women’s spirituality” manuals, tarot decks designed for “feminist intuition,” and goddess-themed self-help guides. By the 2010s, the New Age economy had fused with lifestyle brands: “red tent” menstrual retreats, $400 crystal sets marketed by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, and astrology subscription apps promising “daily empowerment.”[1]
The rhetoric is always hyperbolic: a crystal will “heal your divine feminine energy,” a tarot reading will “unlock your true power,” a weekend retreat will “transform your womanhood.” The promises expand endlessly, yet remain conveniently unmeasurable. What cannot be disproven can always be resold.
Corporate Appropriation of Witchcraft
Far from resisting capitalism, occult feminism has become one of its most pliable markets. In 2017, Sephora attempted to launch a “Starter Witch Kit” retailing for $42, complete with tarot cards, sage, and rose quartz. It was marketed as feminist empowerment, “everything you need to release your inner witch.”[2] Urban Outfitters sells astrology-themed décor; TikTok influencers peddle “manifestation oils” at exorbitant markups; Etsy hosts an endless parade of goddess altars and “handcrafted hexing kits.”
The irony is grotesque: movements once claiming to overthrow patriarchy and capitalism now serve as captive markets for both.
The Exploitation of Women as Consumers
The primary victims of this commodified occult feminism are women themselves. Instead of equipping women with rational tools — education, political organization, professional training — the movement encourages them to buy crystals, attend moon ceremonies, and download astrology apps. Liberation becomes a purchase, empowerment a subscription.
Even worse, this consumerism is layered with false hope. Women are told that patriarchy can be undone not through structural reform or rational discourse but through candles, chants, and stones. The hyperbole is constant, the reality nonexistent.
Dependency, Not Liberation
This cycle creates dependency. Women must continually buy new products, attend new retreats, seek new rituals to sustain the illusion of empowerment. What should be self-sufficiency becomes a revolving door of consumption, as exploitative gurus and corporations grow rich on women’s insecurities.
In this sense, occult feminism replicates the very structures it claims to resist: hierarchical, parasitic, and exploitative. It replaces one patriarchy with another — a patriarchy of consumerism and cult leadership, cloaked in goddess imagery.
Ultimate Irony
The ultimate irony of occult feminism is that its goddess is not a liberator but a merchant. Beneath the incense, tarot decks, and empowerment mantras lies the most banal truth of all: this is not revolution but retail. Women are not freed from oppression; they are simply resold new chains at boutique prices.
Conclusion: From Liberation to Illusion
Modern feminism began as a rational call for equality, rooted in Enlightenment ideals of reason, law, and universal rights. It sought to free women from ignorance, superstition, and imposed dependency. Yet in its entanglement with occultism, feminism has betrayed that legacy. What began with Wollstonecraft’s rational appeal to justice has devolved into tarot-card manifestos, goddess rituals, astrology apps, and Satanic theater.
The tragedy is not merely intellectual but moral. The occult-feminist nexus has replaced hard-won tools of liberation with soft cages of mysticism and consumerism. Women are not encouraged to pursue reason, science, or political organization; they are instead encouraged to buy crystals, chant at the moon, and recite grievances in invented rituals. This is not empowerment but infantilization, marketed with incense and hashtags.
Worse still, this regression is defended with an arsenal of loaded political words stripped of meaning. Anyone who dares to confront the deception of occult feminism is branded a “fascist,” “patriarchal oppressor,” or “colonizer.” These words, once serious descriptors of historical atrocities, have been reduced to empty talismans hurled at dissenters. Like magical incantations, they are meant not to engage in debate but to silence it. This rhetorical inflation mirrors the hyperbole of the occult marketplace: just as a crystal supposedly unlocks “divine feminine energy,” so too does the word “fascist” supposedly unlock automatic moral victory. Neither claim withstands scrutiny.
Yet perhaps the most damning indictment lies with academia itself. Gender studies departments, “women’s spirituality” courses, and peer-reviewed journals have repeatedly given scholarly cover to occult pseudoscience — publishing uncritical paeans to goddess worship, Lilith rituals, and “witchcraft as resistance” while ignoring historical accuracy or rational critique. Robert Graves’s invented goddess myth was treated as history; Starhawk’s ritual handbooks as philosophy; astrology and “sacred menstruation” as anthropology. The very institutions tasked with cultivating reason have instead amplified irrationality, dressing superstition in the language of scholarship. This is not merely intellectual sloppiness — it is academic malpractice.
The result is a movement incapable of self-critique, addicted to spectacle, and hostile to rational inquiry. Feminism, once the vanguard of reasoned emancipation, has in its occult iteration become a parody of itself — a theater of grievance, a marketplace of nonsense, a shrine to relativism.
To confront this sickness is not to reject feminism itself, but to rescue it. Women deserve liberation rooted in knowledge, dignity, and reason — not in Lilith invocations, overpriced crystals, pseudo-academic mysticism, or Satanic posturing. If feminism is to survive as a serious intellectual and political force, it must excise the occult parasite that has corrupted it from within — and hold accountable the scholars who enabled it.
The choice is stark: rational emancipation or mystical enslavement. One liberates women into full humanity; the other chains them with charms, rituals, and empty words, sanctified by the incompetence of scholars who should have known better.
Main Footnotes
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Blanche Barton, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey (Los Angeles: Feral House, 1990).
Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple Is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).
Hugh B. Urban, The Church of Scientology: A History of a New Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
Ray Hyman, The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1989).
Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial (New York: Norton, 2008).
Kaitlyn McClure, “Astrology Apps Are Having a Moment,” The Atlantic, July 10, 2019.
Kate Shepherd, “Goop’s Pseudoscience Problem,” The Washington Post, January 30, 2020.
Occultism and Feminism Footnotes
Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 221–230.
Tanya M. Luhrmann, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 45–48.
Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 33–62; Cynthia Eller, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won’t Give Women a Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979).
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (London: J. Johnson, 1792).
John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869).
Robert Graves, The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (London: Faber and Faber, 1948).
Anita Diamant, The Red Tent (New York: Picador, 1997); see also Cynthia Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993).
Pew Research Center, “New Age Beliefs Common Among Both Religious and Nonreligious Americans,” October 1, 2018.
Kaitlyn Tiffany, “The Astrology App That Dominates Your Phone and Your Life,” The Atlantic, March 2019.
Elise Loehnen, Goop Clean Beauty (New York: Grand Central Life & Style, 2016); also see Kaleigh Rogers, “Crystals Are the New Self-Care,” Vice, July 13, 2017.
Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), pp. 221–243.
Susannah Heschel, “Feminism and Jewish Identity,” Lilith Magazine, Fall 1976.
W.I.T.C.H. manifesto, 1968, reprinted in Barbara Love, ed., Feminists Who Changed America, 1963–1975 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979).
Joseph P. Laycock, Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Kaleigh Rogers, “Crystals Are the New Self-Care,” Vice, July 13, 2017; Tansy Hoskins, “Witches, Feminists and Capitalism,” New Left Review 114 (2018).
Samantha Schmidt, “Sephora’s ‘Witch Starter Kit’ Pulled After Backlash,” Washington Post, September 6, 2018.
See Judith Butler’s frequent use of “fascist” to describe critics of gender theory in New Statesman, Oct. 2019; also, Starhawk’s labeling of opponents as “patriarchal fascists” in Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1982).
