Digital Spirituality: Technological Re-Enchantment in 2020/1?

An exploration of Witchcraft and Reality Shifting on TikTok as

(post)modern spiritualities existing in Wouter Hanegraaff’s
‘mirror of secular thought’

Independent Study Project in Religion, Culture and Society (157400023-A20/21)

BA (Hons) Religion, Culture and Society

SOAS University of London

By

Esmé Lily Katherine Partridge

Candidate Number: 659541

May 2021

Word count: 10872 (excluding title page, declaration and bibliography)

 Table of Contents

Declarations.............................................................................................................................................3

Abstract ...................................................................................................................................................4

Introduction.............................................................................................................................................5

Part I: Secular Modernity: A Historical Genealogy................................................................................7

Part II: Digitality and Spirituality: A Literature Review........................................................................11

I. Technology and (Dis/)enchantment..................................................................................11

II. Modern Spiritualities and (Dis/)enchantment...................................................................14

Part III: Spirituality on TikTok in 2020/1.............................................................................................18

I. ‘WitchTok’...........................................................................................................................18
II. ‘Reality Shifting’..................................................................................................................21
III. Digital Spirituality as Re-Enchantment, or a Reflection ‘in the Mirror of
Secular Thought’? An Analysis...........................................................................................23

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................28

Bibliography .........................................................................................................................................30

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 Abstract

Resurgences of spirituality in the contemporary West - though often appearing to embrace non-naturalistic
metaphysics and other remnants of a pre-Enlightenment worldview – have historically tended to reflect the
discourses of disenchantment, with the psychoanalytic and New Age movements being widely thought to
exist in what Wouter Hanegraaff has dubbed ‘the mirror of secular thought’ (1996: 412). New forms of
modern spirituality, however, have been evolving and potentially transgressing the boundaries of secular
modernity in tandem with the development of technology. The social media app TikTok in particular has
become home to two alternative spiritual movements, namely witchcraft (‘WitchTok’) and ‘reality shifting’.
Their rapid growth warrants an investigation into whether they too reflect secular modernity and thus
disenchantment, or whether they in fact indicate a revival of the sacred. That they have come into fruition
through the digital medium renders this question especially pertinent in light of claims that technology itself
has become imbued with the potential for re-enchantment, despite this contradicting Max Weber’s original
secularisation thesis in which technological advancement correlates with disenchantment. Also relevant to this
inquiry is the question of postmodernity and its implications for the secular modern. Drawing on a number of
case studies that represent the general trends of digital spirituality on TikTok in 2020/1, this dissertation will
critically evaluate whether the postmodern and potentially magical fluidity of cyberspace offers the potential
for transcending the limits of secular modernity, or whether it is destined only to reflect it.

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 Introduction

Shortly after the millennium, the scholar Christopher Partridge remarked that ‘the quickest way to take a dip
in the occultural reservoir of Western spirituality is to switch on your computer and connect to the internet’
(2004:161). The development of technology since then – particularly during the Covid-19 Pandemic, as a
result of which virtually all aspects of both professional and personal life have had to adapt to digital
environments – solicits a review of his comments in the context of 2020 and 2021. Indeed, upon ‘taking a
dip’ in the mainstream digital milieu,1 the rapid currents of new and alternative forms of spirituality can be
felt. Of particular prominence are two movements – namely Witchcraft and ‘reality shifting’ – flowing from
the tributary of TikTok, the social media app known for its algorithmic propulsion of ‘trending’ content that
has led these new spiritualities to attract unprecedented traction in cyberspace. Inevitably, these are
influencing how the so-called ‘online generations’ engage with spirituality, warranting a revision of the notion
that the modern West can be characterised by what Max Weber called ‘disenchantment’. In this context,
‘spirituality’ pertains to belief systems that invoke transcendent principles without necessarily adhering to
established traditions.2

For Partridge himself among other contemporary scholars, the fusion of technology and spirituality has the
potential to ignite the ‘re-enchantment’ of the West, with the ineffable and potentially mystifying quality of
cyberspace offering an alternative to the rationalist, materialist orthodoxy of secular modernity. However,
such a claim requires careful scrutiny; as Weber delineated in his original thesis, technological advancement is
likely to exacerbate the conditions of disenchantment, being inextricably linked to the rationalising and
individualising project of secular modernity. Yet, it has also – and more recently - been argued that
technology has now developed to such a degree that it transcends the disenchanted world, offsetting what was
otherwise a stable trajectory of rationalisation. From this arises a question that will be central to the following
investigation: is technology a disenchanting or re-enchanting phenomenon when utilised for spiritual activity?

To resolve this question, the origins of secular modernity must first be probed; this will be the task of the
subsequent section outlining the genealogy of regnant attitudes towards religion and spirituality in the West.
Moreover, careful attention must be paid to the quality of previous spiritual movements that were born out of
the modern context; most saliently, psychoanalysis and the new age movement. For Ernest Gellner, Paul
Heelas and Wouter Hanegraaff, these movements appeared to defy the naturalistic and rationalistic mores of
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1 That is, of the Anglosphere.
2 This is not to say that traditional religious elements are wholly absent from these systems; indeed, the new age
2 This is not to say that traditional religious elements are wholly absent from these systems; indeed, the new age

movement could itself be considered a tradition. However, given the generally fluid nature of such movements,
‘spirituality’ is a more appropriate term at least in comparison to ‘religion’, which generally connotes more regulated
modes of adherence. The origin of the somewhat tenuous religious-spiritual dichotomy is itself relevant to the discussion
of Enlightenment modernity and will be addressed in the subsequent section.!

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modernity but in reality existed ‘in the mirror of secular thought’ (199:412). In such cases, spiritual themes
were only cosmetically reworked into the Enlightenment worldview, potentially implying that all instances of
apparent re-enchantment in the modern West are destined for this same trajectory. Standing in contrast to
this is the view, espoused by Christopher Partridge, Erik Davis and Stef Aupers among others, that
technology marks the point at which this trajectory becomes radically offset, and an unprecedented shift
towards genuinely non-naturalistic metaphysics is impelled. The literature review will evaluate these
arguments.

Following this, an array of recent case studies from TikTok will be presented and subsequently analysed in
order to assess how they relate to this debate, and ultimately to evaluate whether digital spirituality is a
disenchantment-defying revival of non-naturalistic metaphysics or merely exists as an extension of the
(post)modern subject in Hanegraaff’s ‘mirror of secular thought’. This will also take into consideration the
nuances between modernity and postmodernity, entertaining the possibility that digital spirituality could be
considered a unique hybrid of the two. The undertaking of this investigation is especially relevant considering
the internet’s dominance in practical, social and spiritual affairs in the time of a global pandemic, and
moreover in light of the reality that what happens in cyberspace by no means stays in cyberspace; rather, it
has the potential to impact culture on a broader scale. Considering the influence that the internet now has on
younger generations’ engagement with the world, the following investigation will provide a much-needed
insight for understanding current forms of spirituality and potentially its future in the years to come.

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 Part I

Secular Modernity: A Historical Genealogy

In order to analyse approaches towards spirituality in the contemporary digital realm, the foundations of
secular modernity (and indeed postmodernity) must first be probed. Four historical developments are of
particular significance; the Protestant Reformation and the European Enlightenment of the 16th-18th
centuries, which sowed the seeds for contemporary secularism and individualism; the 20th century
Psychoanalytic movement, which reworked spiritual concepts into the Enlightenment worldview, albeit
arguably only cosmetically; the growth of industrial capitalism, which saw society (and in turn, spirituality)
become orientated around commodification and sensory experience; and, finally, Postmodernism, which
incited the rejection of all governing narratives and institutions, in some regards fulfilling the Enlightenment
pledge of spiritual individualism while exaggerating the conditions of modernity to unprecedented extents.

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century saw the first seismic shift in attitudes towards religion and its
position in public life in the Europe. The hierarchical structure of Catholicism was increasingly felt to be
dogmatic and liable to exploitation, with Protestantism emerging to counter its perceived errors. A
reactionary movement, it directly opposed both the doctrinal and political mores of the dominant religious
culture, ‘breaking the spell of priestly authority’ and ‘asserting for every human being the privilege of
exercising a free and unfettered conscience in things spiritual’ (Morison, 1843:491). In essence, it incited a
form of spiritual individualism that sought to liberate itself from the governing structures of the Catholic
church. In this regard, it can be understood to have prefigured the incredulity towards the very notion of
social institutions as calcified through the Enlightenment, fundamentally destabilising the foundations of
religious life in Europe; a trend which only intensified throughout the centuries to come, constituting the
foundation upon which contemporary spirituality can be thought to ground itself today.

Acclaimed in Western historical discourse as an era of ‘great transformation’ (Pagden, 2013:22), the 18th
century European Enlightenment was further responsible for a major overhauling of religion in the West and,
eventually, its ostracism from the public sphere. The rise of materialism and the election of empiricism as the
chief mode of knowledge - advocated by philosophers such as Berkeley, Hume and Locke - resulted in a
widespread intellectual incredulity towards religious truth claims in philosophical and scientific inquiry. That
this directly translated into secularism has been contested by claims it did not always give rise to irreligion but
rather to other forms of religion immune from the attacks of empiricism, such as deism: the recasting of God
as a mechanistic demiurge removed from the spatio-temporal world. Historians such J.S. Barnett, however,
have argued that the prevalence of deism in the Enlightenment milieu is often overstated, and that deist views
were in fact held by only a small minority of intellectuals (2003:17). This would render the conclusion that the
impact of the Enlightenment, in conjunction with the Reformation, was responsible for the eventual

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secularisation of Western modernity. This era arguably also foreshadowed the modern distinction between
(individual) spirituality and (institutional) religion, and the prevalent consensus, as articulated by Jane Shaw,
that the former is ‘good’ and the latter is ‘bad’ (2008).

Moreover, it can be asserted that the Reformation and the Enlightenment at least prefigured certain defining
characteristics of modern secularism if not the phenomenon itself.3 For example, the exclusive legitimation of
knowledge based on individual sense-perception can be thought to have sowed the seeds for the epistemic
and social individualism of the modern age. The Cartesian designation of the reasoning self as the sole locus
of epistemic certainty is widely thought to have initiated this, with Kant’s moral individualism extending its
applicability into practical affairs. His own definition of Enlightenment as ‘man's emergence from his self-
incurred immaturity’ (1794) is telling of the relationship between the Enlightenment and secularism, deeming
externally prescribed religious belief as ‘immature’ and legitimising solely that which originates from within (i.e.
within the capacities of human reason). It is because of this that scholars such as Rajani Kanth consider the
Enlightenment to be the ‘crucible within which the metaphysical mores of modernism were invented’
(2005:4); an assertion that appears to be particularly veracious where modern attitudes towards spirituality are
concerned.

Mainstream resurgences of seemingly non-empirical and non-naturalistic ideas following the Enlightenment
are valuable to the genealogy of spiritual developments within the context of regnant materialism. Of
particular significance is the psychoanalytic movement of the 20th century, which seemingly reintroduced
transcendent principles all the while keeping Enlightenment premises firmly in-tact. It has been widely
critiqued, for example, that despite Jung’s application of mythological nomenclature to his theory of the
Unconscious and its resident archetypes – giving the impression of an authentically spiritual schema - he
fundamentally remained an empirical scientist and a product of European thought (Gellner, 1985:193)
influenced by the ‘Naturalphilosophie that came from the same place as Enlightenment rationality’
(Hanegraaff, 1996:497). In this regard it is also notable that Jungian psychology retained the individualism
characteristic of Enlightenment thought (i.e. that of Descartes’ epistemic certainty of the subject and Kant’s
individualistic discernment of higher conceptual truths). Psychoanalysis thus illustrates the potential limits of
spiritual revival in the context of modernity, with its seemingly transcendent dimension arguably amounting
to a cosmetic veneer rather than to an authentic revival of a pre-Enlightenment worldview.

The rise of industrial capitalism in the 20th century exacerbated the trend of individualism that had been
promoted by the Enlightenment worldview and perpetuated through cultural movements such as

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3 Secularism will be broadly understood here as pertaining to any and all of the three definitions provided by Charles
Taylor, namely the removal of religion from public spaces; the general decline in personal belief; and the reduction of
religion to a choice rather than an obligation (2007:20).

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Psychoanalysis. It is worth noting that the capitalist economy itself arrived in tandem with the Protestant
work ethic and Enlightenment rationality, due to how, as Kanth has stated, ‘materialism was a natural
consequence of the fact that humans were considered purely material’, with greed being ‘the product of the
gregariousness attributed to the reductive Hobbesian state of the human condition’ (2005:33). The appeal of
psychoanalysis, too, arguably owed itself to the upper-class consumer culture of 20th century Europe, with
Gellner noting that it flourished ‘in an individualist, bourgeois society where every man is his own priest’,
offering ‘adjustable, customer-specific salvation’ (1985:135,215). Thus, capitalism cannot be thought of as in
any way secondary to the above, but rather as being itself interwoven in the fabric of modernity and
moreover into the fabric of modern spirituality.

Since the latter half of the 20th century, capitalism has engendered a particularly individualistic form of
consumerism, which the sociologist Christopher Lasch went as far as to liken to sociopathic narcissism
(Lasch, 1979). The economic, social and cultural preoccupation with the self as a consumer, free to choose
the commodities which validate its sense of identity, inevitably permeates into the realm of spirituality;
indeed, Lasch himself wrote that ‘in a dying culture, narcissism appears to embody - in the guise of personal
‘growth’ and ‘awareness’ - the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment’ (1979:235). It has been
demonstrated with regard to psychoanalysis how Enlightenment modernity permeated 20th century efforts
toward spiritual revival; such could also be said of capitalist modernity, with its hyper-individualism appearing
to pervade more recent modern spiritual movements such as forms of New Age belief popular in the 1990s.

In this regard, it is also worth considering industrial capitalism as being responsible for the climate of sensory
stimulation, which equally manifests itself in modern spiritualities and therefore compromises the extent to
which they can be separated from their secular capitalist context. Guy Debord, for example, referred to the
normalisation of capitalism’s orientation towards sensory experiences as ‘the society of the spectacle’ (1967)
which Christopher Lasch in turn associated with the culture of narcissism. For Lasch, the society of the
spectacle is epitomised by how ‘we live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back
in slow motion’, giving to much of modern life ‘the character of an enormous echo chamber’ (1979:235).
When examining spirituality in cyberspace – itself a ‘swirl of images’ – it is thus important to consider that,
historically, the quality of spiritualities that embrace society’s sensationalist tendencies cannot be detached
from modern capitalism. This would suggest that, in the same way that psychoanalysis was bound to the
naturalistic Enlightenment worldview, sensationalist forms of spirituality may be bound to the capitalistic 21st
century worldview.

A final historical development that requires consideration for understanding the present age and its
relationship with spirituality is postmodernity. While the Enlightenment advocated for the deconstruction of
certain institutions, it nonetheless upheld certain metanarratives pertaining to, for example, ‘progress’;

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postmodernity, however, advocated the rejection of all narratives wholesale. This is, at least, the
understanding of Jean Francois Lyotard, who defined postmodernism succinctly as an 'incredulity toward
metanarratives' (1979). This incredulity, he wrote, could be justified by a suspicion towards all claims of
objectivity, in turn pertaining to the more radical notion that extra-discursive, objective truths may not exist at
all. Without objective truth, individuals - including those with religious inclinations - are free to develop their
own truths, with postmodernity therefore arguably consolidating the sedimentary layers of sociological and
spiritual individualism laid down by Enlightenment modernity.

Considering that postmodernism was in many ways a product of a particular intellectual zeitgeist, caution
should perhaps be taken when applying the term to contemporary Western society as a whole. It can be
confidently asserted, however, that postmodernity has at least contributed to the dominant form of
consumerism. Stephen Crook, for example, observed what he described as ‘the collapse of cultural tradition
into an archive of styles’ (1992: 221) whereby all governing structures dissipate, giving rise to the possibility of
infinite ‘styles’ that can be freely assembled by the individual agent. This ‘archive of styles’ has self-evident
links to Debord’s ‘society of the spectacle’ in that it encapsulates a society orientated around the individual’s
senses and personal dispositions. Indeed, the sociologist Peter Berger has identified ‘choice’ to be a defining
characteristic of modernity (1980: 18), which can be comfortably extended to postmodernity in light of
Crook’s comments. In these circumstances, individuals are free to choose their own reality and, by extension,
their own spirituality.

Simultaneously, however, postmodernity could also be thought to transgress or even transcend modernity;
considering that it has been defined as an incredulity towards metanarratives, the possibility that
postmodernity could itself defy the metanarratives of materialism, individualism and ultimately secularism is
worth considering. That there is a distinction and potentially even a conflict between the two has been
purported by sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman, who distinguished between the conceptual solidity of
the former and the liquidity of the latter (1999:122-125). The implications of a more ‘liquid’ (post)modernity –
which could theoretically ‘melt’ the solid structures of secular Enlightenment modernity - will be considered
with regard to digital spirituality, whilst also remaining conscious of the reality that, particularly with regard to
spiritual consumerism and individualism, the postmodern remains a direct product of the Enlightenment
modern.

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 Part II

Digitality and Spirituality: A Literature Review

Having adumbrated the discourses of the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, psychoanalysis,
capitalism and postmodernism, literature addressing the implications that these have posed for both
technology and religion will now be evaluated. The two components of the phrase ‘digital spirituality’ each
warrant their own individual reviews in order to understand both a) the relationship between modernity and
digitality and b) the relationship between modernity and spirituality. The first section will therefore consider
the relationship between secular ‘progress’ and technological developments, particularly with regard to Max
Weber’s concept of disenchantment and the question of whether technology is an inherently disenchanting or
re-enchanting phenomena. The second section will then present approaches towards the types of spirituality
found on TikTok - with particular reference to New Age movements - and how these themselves relate to the
discourses of disenchantment.

I. Technology and (Dis/)enchantment: The Weberian Hypothesis and Its Refutations

Central to the forthcoming analyses is the disenchantment thesis of the 19th century German sociologist Max
Weber. Having written extensively on the sociology of religion and what he coined ‘the Protestant Ethic’,
Weber diagnosed occidental modernity as being ‘disenchanted’; that is, suffering from excessive
rationalisation and mechanisation whereby ‘there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play,
but rather one can, in principle, master all things by calculation’ (1917:8). He identifies secularisation as a
corollary of this, with the ‘mysterious incalculable forces’ integral to religion being made redundant. He posits
that the climate of disenchantment is a direct consequence of the Reformation and the Enlightenment
narrative of progress, specifically attributing ‘intellectualist rationalisation’ to the ‘scientifically oriented
technology’ incited by the latter (Ibid:8). Particularly significant here is Weber’s implicit correlation between
technological advancement and disenchantment; in his view, the former’s ‘infinite march’ of progress (Ibid)
can only intensify rationalisation and mechanisation as it proceeds, shedding any last residues of religious
thought along the way.

On the basis of Weber’s proposed correlation, it could be inferred that technology and disenchantment are
co-constitutive forces in the modern world. The technology that has evolved since Weber’s time now offers
unprecedented means of ‘mastering all things by calculation’, with the estimated three billion global
smartphone users being able to instantly obtain information from the internet;4 acquire foreknowledge about
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4Statista (September 2020), ‘Number of smartphone users worldwide from 2016 to 2023’, online at:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-
worldwide/#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20smartphone%20users,the%20100%20million%20user%20mark

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the weather at the click of a button; and quite literally calculate any mathematical sum in a matter of moments.
If disenchantment is inextricably linked to ‘rational calculation’ as Weber proposes that it is, then it follows
that modern technology should exaggerate the conditions of disenchantment and secularisation to
unprecedented extents. Such a claim can be assessed by reviewing the interplay between other aspects of
‘disenchanted’ modernity - the main developments of which have previously been reviewed - and technology.
Doing so requires an interdisciplinary approach that will invoke both qualitative and quantitative data
concerning technology in the contemporary context.

It was previously discussed how individualism (and, by extension with regard to Lasch, narcissism) is a
defining characteristic of modernity, owing itself to both Enlightenment thought and capitalism. In assessing
the relationship between this aspect of modernity and technology, the interplay between smartphones and
individualism is particularly significant. In their paper ‘Smartphone and Self-Extension’, Chang Sup Park and
Barbara K. Kaye provide an insight into how smartphones function as extensions of the self. They find, for
example, that a third of users agreed that their phone ‘gets them to think about who they are’, with a portion
of them claiming that they use it ‘to evoke a specific and consistent image of their self’ (2019:219-224). For
Parke and Kaye, this can be explained by how smartphones contain self-reflective tools - such as photos,
videos and diaries - which ‘help users construct a personal narrative of self’ and thus facilitate a sense of
ontological security (Ibid:219); that is, they affirm the user’s sense of being and identity. Interpreting their data,
then, smartphones can be thought to complement the individualistic dispositions of modernity, suggesting
that there is an interplay between the personal device and disenchantment.

It is also worth noting that the features of the smartphone described by Parke and Kaye once again pertain to
the Weberian notion of calculation; they enable the experience of life to be rationalised and compartmentalised.
Thus, the modern smartphone is conducive to both individualism and excessive rationalisation, with both of
these being defining characteristics of Enlightenment thought and disenchanted modernity. Such an
observation has lead scholars of Religion to affirm that digital developments and disenchantment are in fact
co-constitutive forces; for example, Bryan Wilson – alluding to Weber - asserted in the latter half of the 20th
century that ‘secularisation is in large part intimately involved with the development of technology, since
technology is itself the encapsulation of human rationality’ (1976:88). Although, being published fifty years
ago, some reservations perhaps ought to be employed in the extension of Wilson’s statement to the
technologies of the present day, Park and Kaye’s research appears indirectly to verify that his claims are in
fact applicable to modern devices, with the functions of the smartphone being rationalising, individualising
and thus inextricably related to disenchantment.

However, there also exists a wholly different perspective among other scholars; namely, that modern
technology is in fact countering the disenchantment of modernity and positively re-enchanting it. Forefronting

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this school of thought is Christopher Partridge who has studied digital spirituality since its advent in the early
2000s. Writing during the onset of virtual paganism in the cyberpunk subculture, Partridge was of the view
that technology is advancing to such an extent that it is actually transcending the mechanisation and rational
calculation that Weber and even Wilson were familiar with during their respective times. In his volume aptly
titled ‘The Re-Enchantment of The West’, he justifies his view with a range of qualitative data concerning
internet religion, ultimately concluding that cyberspace has become home to ‘a sacralization of technology, a
renaissance of the sacred, a re-enchantment of The West’ (2004:54). Interestingly, scholars advocating this
position have tended to relate digital spirituality to postmodernism, with David Lyon describing cyberspace as
‘both child and parent of the postmodern’ (2000:140). In light of what was previously said regarding
postmodernity’s potential transcending of modern discursive structures, it could be argued that the
postmodern qualities of cyberspace are themselves co-constitutive with re-enchantment in their ability to
‘melt’ the modern metanarrative of secularism. This claim finds itself supported by a personal testimony of an
individual involved in early digital spirituality, which evokes Bauman’s postmodern liquefaction of the
modern:

‘High technology and high magic are the same thing...we’re speeding up things, we are quickening our energies; time and space are
not as rigid as they used to be’ (Rushkoff, 1994:116)

More recently, Stef Aupers and Dick Houtman have presented a range of perspectives pointing to the
sacralisation of technology and, ultimately, re-enchantment. They refute the Weberian hypothesis that
technological advancement must necessarily entail further disenchantment, arguing that Wilson’s observation
are now outdated and that the internet ‘can no longer be understood in a typically modern, mechanistic
fashion since it ‘grows’ and ‘behaves’ in an organic fashion’ (Aupers, 2010:227). The technological
environment, they suggest, has now evolved to such an extent that it resembles ‘a virtual ocean brimming
with unknown and incalculable forces’ (Ibid, 237); such a view represents the inversion of the Weberian
correlation to the point where Dorien Zandbergen, in her contribution to the volume, postulates that there is
now a co-constitution between the digital and the sacred. Furthermore, she posits that technology has the
potential to transcend this world altogether, now imbued with the capacity to ‘bypass’ the ‘corrupting’
material and social forces of everyday life’ (2010:193). Considering the above, it could perhaps be added that
the postmodern nature of technology is now ‘bypassing’ the metanarratives of secular modernity.

In a similar vein, the scholar of esotericism Erik Davis has emphasised the mysterious and incalculable quality
of modern technology; a quality which has arguably only increased with its advancement throughout the
2010s. He has observed how the logic behind technology has ‘become invisible – literally occult’, and that
‘without the code, you’re mystified. And no one has all the codes anymore’ (1998:189). The semantics of
mystification here once again allude to the notion that technology now has an almost spiritual quality in itself,

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which Aupers et al elaborate on further. Davis’ phraseology is particularly striking, however, in that the
connotations of ‘literally occult’ suggest technology’s incomprehensibility and, moreover, its ineffability.
Interestingly, this quality of ineffability was associated by 19th century theologian Rudolf Otto with the
quality of being holy or ‘numinous’. In his conceptualisation, the holy is thoroughly non-rational, ineffable
and inexpressible (1958:5). On the basis of Otto’s theology then, digital developments are qualitatively
numinous and thus, it follows, not disenchanting but re-enchanting.

On the one hand, then, is the view - itself a logical continuation of the correlation that Weber himself
presents – that technology and disenchantment are co-constitutive forces, while on the other is the view that
technology and the sacred are in fact co-constitutive forces. The question of which approach is best
representative of digital spirituality in 2020/1 will be central when analysing contemporary case studies. Also
in need of review, however, is the type of spirituality that is being practiced on digital platforms. To do this,
literature pertaining to contemporary spirituality - most pertinently, New Age spirituality - and how it relates
to disenchantment must now be surveyed.

II. Modern Spiritualities and (Dis/)enchantment: ‘Mirroring’ Secular Thought?

It was previously delineated how the currents of empiricism - flowing from the wellspring of the
Enlightenment - were carried into modern spirituality via psychoanalysis. This is the focus of Ernest Gellner’s
study, referenced previously, in which he observes how the Jungian climate of opinion remained faithful to
the mores of modernist science while simultaneously offering a ‘natural transcendent’ located within the self
(1985: 192). For Walter Hanegraaff and Paul Heelas, this foregrounded the sacralisation of the self present in
late 20th century New Age spiritualities, which conceive of the self as a locus of (naturally) transcendent
mystery. According to Hanegraaff, these frameworks often consciously adapt psychoanalytic frameworks into
spiritual worldviews whereby the hidden dimension of the self is ‘emphasized to the point where it seems to
become a perfect semidivine being’ (1996:214). In his 2008 work ‘Spiritualities of Life’, Heelas theorised that
such a mentality was no longer exclusive to self-identifying New Age subcultures but had in fact permeated
into the language of theism more generally. He found, for example, that 37.2% of Britons agreed with the
statement that ‘I believe that God is something within each person, rather than something out there’ (2008:
74), reflecting the cultural internalisation of the self-sacrilising approach.

Heelas’ findings reveal the continuation of Enlightenment and psychoanalytic discourses within
contemporary attitudes towards spirituality in the West. Both himself and Hanegraaff understand the notion
of ‘The God within’ as a legacy of the Enlightenment worldview in which God cannot confidently be located
in the external universe due to a lack of demonstrable proof. As a corollary of this, God’s existence can only
be affirmed on the basis of His presence within the rational self - the only reliable episteme, at least according

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to Descartes - avoiding the issue of materially ‘proving’ God and risking regression from Enlightenment
modernity. Furthermore, this positive location of God within the self is concurrent with the psychoanalytic
notion that spiritual realities reside within the Unconscious (itself, as it has been suggested by Gellner and
Hanegraaff, a direct derivation of Enlightenment thought). In light of this, Hanegraaff perceives New Age
spirituality to exist ‘in the mirror of secular thought’, in that it does not depart from but rather perpetuates the
Enlightenment worldview, albeit in disguise. Similarly, Heelas regards it as a direct product of modernity,
stating:

‘Modernity has developed in a number of ways which point to the New Age, the New Age itself being the climactic summation of
long-standing cultural trajectories...in the context of our culture, it is impossible to think of a self more autonomous or free, more
perfect, more internalised, more expressivistic than that presented in various New Age discourses’ (1996:184)

In particular, Neopagan and occult spiritualities - of particular relevance here, being the main general
categories into which the TikTok case studies fall - have been widely critiqued as direct products of
Enlightenment modernity. Hanegraaff himself argues that the mystical thought espoused by contemporary
occult movements ‘adopted the characteristic arguments of the Enlightenment to attack conventional
Christianity’ and thus ‘cannot be characterized as a return to pre-Enlightenment worldviews’ (1996: 412). In
more recent scholarship, the thesis of a co-constitution between occultism and Enlightenment modernity has
been extended to that between occultism and postmodernity. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, for example, has
interpreted the personal relativism of Neopagan practices to mirror the scientific method of the
Enlightenment in that ‘it is all about experimenting and trying things for yourself’ (1989: 91) which is in turn
related to the postmodern incredulity towards institutions that ‘try things’ for you. It is notable here that,
contrary to the view presented previously, postmodernism and modernism are regarded as being practically
synonymous. Specifically with regard to Neopagan and occult movements, then, it has been argued that
contemporary spiritualities are inseparable from Enlightenment modernity.

Such is not strictly limited to Neopaganism and occultism, however; rather, it applies to modern approaches
towards spirituality more generally, as demonstrated by Heelas’ findings on the prevalence of self-sacralisation
in mainstream discourse. It is also worth discussing how this element in particular is also related to the
individualism espoused by capitalism, as discussed previously with reference to Lasch. Heelas elaborates on
this, observing how the improvement and maximisation of the self is ubiquitously present in modern Western
culture. He provides an abundance of examples, ranging from ‘child-centered education’ to ‘client-centered
therapists’ (2008:63), concluding - like several other sociologists before him, most prominently Charles Taylor
(2007:475) - that spirituality has too become yet another commodity or service for individual consumption.
This has been discussed more thoroughly by Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, who too locate the seeds of

! 15!
self-sacralisation in the Psychoanalytic movement but emphasise the role of consumerism in defining modern
spiritualities not merely as personal affairs but as a personal commodities, which have:

‘Become privatised to suit a western society that is oriented towards the individual as consumer and society as market...this
cultural translation opens up the space for the corporate takeover of religion’ (Carrette & King, 2004:122)

In this ‘corporate takeover of religion’, the psychoanalytic and New Age dispositions towards self-
sacralisation transmute into individualistic and almost entirely self-contained spiritual frameworks of their
own. In light of this, the sociologist Thomas Luckmann commented that ‘the span of transcendence is
shrinking’ (1990:138) with ‘self-realization, personal autonomy and self-expression becoming the dominant
religious themes’ (Ibid). Throughout the decades following this, it can be said with little hesitation that this
‘shrinking’ has only intensified, with religion being reduced to a commodity and an aid to and extension of
selfhood, fulfilling Émile Durkheim’s prophecy of a wholly individualised form of religion which he
predicted:

‘Would consist entirely in internal and subjective states, and which would be constructed freely by each of us’...’in [new religion],
the individual establishes for himself and celebrates by himself’ (1971:47)

It was mentioned previously that one aspect of the commodification of religion is the adaptation of
spirituality into a consumer-orientated experience. Heelas has identified this to be a common denominator
among most New Age practices, which offer ‘physiological arousal, heightened emotionality, unusual
sensations, and out-of-the-ordinary bodily experiences’ (1996:191). Arguably, this is inextricably linked to
commodification by way of providing a real-life experience; or, on commercial terms, a service. Moreover, in
appealing to the ‘society of the spectacle’, sensationally-orientated spiritualities are inextricably linked to
capitalist modernity and thus can also be considered as ‘the summation of long-standing cultural trajectories’
existing ‘in the mirror of secular thought’, to coalesce the theories of Heelas and Hanegraaff respectively.
Returning to Weber’s thesis of disenchantment and the question of re-enchantment, it is thus plausible to
generalise that the types of spirituality which find themselves encoded in the digital interface are inherently
products of disenchantment, and are thus more likely to perpetuate it than to reverse it.

However, taking into account the approach of Partridge et al, technology could alternatively be understood as
the point at which the linear progression of ‘long-standing cultural trajectories’ is disturbed, theoretically
marking a point whereby transgressing the secular modern becomes fully possible. This point of sudden
reversal is also relevant to the question of postmodernism’s place in the equation; if the postmodern mind is
free to abandon all metanarratives – including those of ‘cultural trajectories’ – then such a transgression might
suggest that postmodern possibilities are in fact co-constitutive with re-enchanting spiritualities. Moreover, if
technology itself is ‘literally occult’, as Davis put it, thus presenting its users with an Otto-esque numinosity,

! 16!
then it follows that the forms of spirituality generated by it may be capable of reviving the sacred. On the
contrary, the smartphone’s provision of rationalistic and individualistic ‘ontological security’ would suggest
the opposite, rendering the conclusion that digital spirituality faces the same limitations as other movements
of modern spirituality. Thus arises a central consideration: does technology truly reinstall the means of
enchantment, or does it amount merely to a new expression of disenchantment, now with an added software
update?

! 17!
 Part III

Spirituality On TikTok in 2020/1

I. WitchTok

Known as ‘WitchTok’, the phenomenon of witchcraft on the social media app TikTok is currently one of the
most ‘viral’ forms of digital spirituality. The movement attracted particular attention in the summer of 2020
when a coven of ‘baby witches’ allegedly attempted to cast a spell on the Moon. The incident soon found
itself ‘trending’ on Twitter and as the subject of articles in mainstream media outlets.5 Since then, the hashtag
‘WitchTok’ now has 10.5 billion views on the platform,6 with some of its most popular content creators
having an audience of over a million individual users. Although for reasons pertaining to data protection it is
not possible to precisely identify the demographic of these viewers, based on the following case studies it
appears that the vast majority of the creators identify as female and belong to the millennial or ‘Gen-Z’
generations.

Among the most popular crafts on WitchTok is that of ‘manifestation’; the practice of actualising one’s
desires through magical mediums such as scribing (writing down an ‘intention’ on paper and following a
particular procedure in order to effectuate it) or simply internally visualising the desires which one wishes to
manifest, often aided by the employment of ritual instruments such as crystals or burning incense sticks.
Consolidating a comprehensive definition of ‘manifestation’ and what it actually entails, however, is
problematised by the lack of a verified dictionary definition of the term in this context, and, most
significantly, the unregulated and unrestrained nature of TikTok whereby trends evolve swiftly and without
reference to established practices or definitions (a distinctly postmodern quality which will later be subjected
to analysis). Generally, when dealing with digital spiritualities that are not grounded in physical institutions but
are rather suspended in the intangible, fluxional realm of cyberspace, their tenets can only be comprehended
on the terms of those practicing it, however subjective, malleable and ultimately unreliable these may be.

Upon searching for the hashtag ‘manifestation’ on TikTok, one of the first results to appear is a video by the
popular WitchTokker @damnsatanchill, who has ninety-eight thousand followers. The frame is comprised of
the user wearing a crystal pendant and holding two burning incense sticks, performing a ‘manifestation’

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5 See, for example, Shadijanova, D. (21st July 2020), ‘We Asked Some Witches to Explain That TikTok Rumour About
Hexing the Moon’, Vice, online at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj4w35/witches-explain-tiktok-rumour-about-
hexing-the-moon and Lampen, C. (19th July 2020), ‘Have TikTok Witches Actually ‘Hexed The Moon?’, The Cut, online
at: https://www.thecut.com/2020/07/some-tiktok-baby-witches-apparently-tried-to-hex-the-moon.html (Acessed May
2021)
6 All data and statistics provided are accurate for March 2021.!

! 18!
whereby she closes her eyes and lip-syncs the following song lyrics (by placing the words on the screen, it is
implied that the lyrics themselves are the desires which she hopes to ‘manifest’):

‘I am healthy

I am wealthy

I am rich

I am thay b*tch

….

Im a queen

In a dream

I do what I wanna do

And I do what I wanna do

And Im who i wanna be

Cause I am

ME’ 7

Another popular video tagged with ‘manifestation’ comes from the WitchTokker @sawyermyc, who has over
two hundred thousand followers. Like @damnsatanchill, the user appears to be a late adolescent female, and
not only films herself practicing manifestation but also gives short tutorials guiding users on methods for
manifesting. In one video, she delineates the technique of ‘scribing’ as follows:

‘Go grab a journal...play pretend and write a journal entry from the perspective of you living your dream life...go into this as if
you have already created all of what you want to create in your life and how happy and how grateful you are’ 8

While much of WitchTok consists of practical tutorials such as these, it also rich with content that pertains
more explicitly to the discourses of contemporary spirituality and (its relation to) organised religion. The
tensions between witchcraft and Christianity, for example, are often presented through the utilisation of
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7@damnsatanchill (13th January 2021), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbY7QY/ (Accessed March 2021). Lyrics by Yung
Baby Tate. Punctuation and capitalisation copied directly from the on-screen text.
8 @sawyermyc (20th May 2020), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbuAkp/ (Accessed March 2021)!

! 19!
TikTok’s creative features, which allow users to take on two different characters and pretend that they are
engaged in a dialogue with one another. The popular Witchtokker @kawaiite does precisely this in one of her
viral videos where she pretends to be in conversation with (her impression of) a stereotypical Christian who is
accusing her practices of being satanic. She adopts hyperbolic facial expressions and vocal intonations to
present the Christian interlocutor as being somewhat hysterical and, as the dialogue progresses, ignorant
about the Christian religion itself. For example, she says to the Christian character:

‘You realise that paganism was a thing way before Christianity, right?’9

Following this, she animates the interlocutor to appear clueless and unaware of this information, as if to
suggest that Christians are uninformed about their religion and, more implicitly, that they do not possess the
same level of knowledge that she does. Sentiments akin to this can be found in other corners of WitchTok
which assume a similar polemical thrust. The user @lilith_unleashed, for example, creates videos where she
inserts screenshots of comments she receives - often from Christian users who are opposed to her practices -
and confronts them. In one of her many videos of this genre, she replies the comment ‘May God forgive you’
with the following succinct, albeit highly revealing, statement:

‘[Forgive me] for what exactly...critical thinking?’ 10

As it will later be elaborated on, such sentiments have particularly significant implications for the relationship
between digital spirituality and secular modernity as co-constitutive forces which appear to share their
foundations in Enlightenment rationality. At present, however, it is notable that WitchTok is characterised
not only by its outward rituals or praxis, but by a shared ideology (albeit a negative one) that stands in
opposition to the forces of institutional religion. More implicitly, by way of operating through the medium of
TikTok, it is free from any formal notion of organisation altogether, with individuality being a consistently
salient feature even among groups or networks of users. As the user @witchofthewater says in one her videos
addressing the different types of witches on WitchTok:

‘Pagans are allowed not to be the same thing!!’11

The individualism promoted by WitchTok appears to pervade both personal identity and belief, with
seemingly no restraints on how each subject can interpret their own spirituality. This often results in the
promotion of highly unconventional approaches to religion and the nature of God. One of such approaches,
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9 @kawaiite (3rd November 2020), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbdH2r/ (Accessed March 2021)
10 @lilith_unleashed (4th February 2021), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbsVsh/ (Accessed March 2021)
11 @witchofthewater (1st February 2021), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbqrhY/ (Accessed March 2021)!

! 20!
presented to an audience of over sixty thousand followers, is postulated by the Witchtokker
@blueberrylimeade:

‘So my angels told me that there is a Christian “god” but it’s its not *source*, its not *that*..its an entity with bad intentions
and it is are now imprisoned by angels...so that’s why that “god” never responds! Its cause they’re in PRISON...and their crime
was distracting humans from the one true source that lives within all of us...bibles like a mixed bag or something cause it does say
that Gods within us but then all that other stuff’ 12

II. Reality Shifting

Also on the platform of TikTok is another new, viral form of digital spirituality known as Reality Shifting
(henceforth RS). As with WitchTok, attempting to define an internet phenomena as amorphous as RS is
inevitably difficult. It can generally be understood, however, as the practice of naturally inducing altered states
of consciousness in order to perceive ‘alternate realities’. It bears phenomenological similarities with lucid
dreaming and certain shamanic practices such as astral projection, both of which entail the mind’s migration
into metaphysical planes beyond the mundane world. On TikTok, RS is considerably less popular than
WitchTok, with its hashtag yielding a total of 362 million views. Nonetheless, it has still made enough of a
mark on mainstream youth culture for popular media outlets such as I-D to report on the phenomena.13 In a
video which now has over 141 thousand views, a user going by the name of @sakeiya stands in front of her
smartphone camera - to which she has added a hallucinatory filter of flashing coloured lights - and discloses
the secret portal to alternate realities that is RS:

‘Congrats, you’ve been chosen to know about reality shifting, which 1% of humans know about out of 99%...when y’all gonna
talk about the fact this reality is a simulation and a reality out of infinite ones, and you can shift to any reality you desire as we
live in a multiverse. Fictional worlds are real...this is not the real world guys’14

Similarly, the user @fize_maybemalfoy has defined RS as ‘moving your subconsciousness from one reality to
another’15 and, along with a myriad of other young users, uses her platform to demonstrate the many ways of
doing so. Searching for the RS hashtag on TikTok generates hundreds of thousands of results, with many of
these delineating various means of ‘shifting’ such as ‘the raven method’, the ‘falling method’ or ‘the Alice and
Wonderland method’. As with the practices found on WitchTok, none of these ‘methods’ appear to be
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12 @blueberrylimeade (5th January 2021), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbewgn/ (Accessed March 2021)
13Smith, S. (28th September 2020), ‘’What is ‘reality shifting’ and why is it taking over TikTok?’, I-D, online at https://i-
d.vice.com/en_uk/article/y3z8vm/what-is-reality-shifting-and-why-is-it-taking-over-tiktok (Accessed May 2021)
14 @sakeiya (29th August 2020), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbHnTp/
15 @fize_maybemalfoy (4th November 2020), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbTECh/!

! 21!
derived from established spiritual traditions or sources, but are rather formulated by individual users as an
extension of their personal content creation.

As a corollary of the highly-individualised methods for attaining RS, the states of consciousness experienced
during ‘shifting’ also vary widely. Some users report almost hallucinatory experiences that bear no
resemblance to mundane reality and, on the basis of their accounts, resemble a psychedelic ‘trip’. Meanwhile,
for other practitioners - in fact, for the seeming majority of them - the ‘altered realities’ experienced during RS
are not supra-sensory but rather entail entering into the familiar fictional worlds of television programmes
and films. In this dominant type of RS, subjects report ‘shifting’ into the universes of, for example, fantasy
films such as Harry Potter, or even notably less-fantastical situation comedies such as Hannah Montana. One
user, @itslindseynicole, claims she has ‘shifted’ to every one of these universes and more, and makes videos
in which she rates the quality of her experiences in them out of ten.16

The above selection of case studies represents the most popular trends, but also the nuances, of digital
spirituality on TikTok in 2020/1. It is once again necessary to emphasise that all of the examples featured are
taken to be instances of ‘witchcraft’ or ‘shifting’ solely on the basis that the users claim they are (often by
means as tenuous as a hashtag in the video caption). Moreover, not only is there a lack of a rubric or
definition for verifying each practice, but there is also a lack of means to corroborate whether every example
is intended to be legitimately ‘spiritual’ or simply a form of entertainment. This ambiguity does not hinder,
however, an analysis of the general attitudes that are revealed through these forms of digital spirituality and
what they reveal about the discourses of religion in cyberspace. Such an analysis will now be undertaken,
taking into account the historical context and the reviewed literature.

III. Digital Spirituality as Re-Enchantment, or a Reflection ‘in the Mirror of Secular Thought’? An
Analysis

As it was previously discussed, the Protestant Reformation and European Enlightenment were formative in
shaping modern attitudes towards spirituality. Their cultural legacy was one which simultaneously promoted
individualism in spiritual affairs and a mechanistic understanding of the universe, eventually leading to the
absence of ‘mysterious incalculable forces’ that, for Weber, defined disenchantment. The extent that the
influence of the Reformation and the Enlightenment prevails over digital spirituality thus ought to be
assessed in order to determine whether it is genuinely conducive to re-enchantment or rather whether it only
two-dimensionally reintroduces spiritual themes without departing from the Enlightenment worldview. As it
has been suggested, this was the tendency of both the psychoanalytic and New Age movements, which for

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
16 @itslindseynicole (5th December 2020), https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMehbWEdD/

! 22!
Hanegraaff could not ‘be characterized as a return to pre-Enlightenment worldviews’ but rather existed ‘in the
mirror’ of secular modernity (1996:412).

On the surface, it would appear that both WitchTok and RS do indeed defy the Enlightenment worldview.
The metaphysic underlying ‘manifestation’, for example, is one that necessarily operates on the premise that
immaterial forces can impact reality, which in turn assumes that they must be a part of that reality. To the
same end, RS’ premise that the mind can ‘shift’ to alternate realities relies on the existence of such alternate
realities, again pointing to a metaphysic that transcends the Enlightenment worldview. On the basis of visual
aesthetics alone - a crucial element of the digital medium - it could be inferred that this is the deliberate
intention of the users. The hallucinatory effects adopted by RS content creators, such as the coloured flashing
lights filter used by @sakeiya, visually suggests that it is their intention to go beyond the reality of everyday
experience. More metaphorically, perhaps, it also indicates a departure from the mundane materialism of the
Enlightenment worldview, theoretically corroborating Lyon’s claim that cyberspace is a ‘child and parent of
the postmodern’ and Bauman’s notion of postmodernity as a liquefying force capable of melting the
metanarratives of secular modernity.

Both WitchTok and RS thus appear to pose a potential challenge to the materialism of disenchanted
modernity. Such an interpretation would be coherent with the hypotheses of Partridge et al, who assert that
technology offers a means of supramundane experience by its very design and mysterious inner workings
which are, to quote Davis, ‘literally occult’ (1998:189) and thus potentially ‘numinous’ according to Otto’s
mystical theology. Echoing Aupers’ comment that cyberspace has become ‘a virtual ocean brimming with
unknown and incalculable forces’ (Aupers, 2010:237), it could be said that the very interface of TikTok itself
constitutes a form of distorted reality in which sound and simulacra pulsate at intoxicating speeds akin to
Lasch’s ‘swirl of images’, amplifying ‘the enormous echo chamber’ of modernity to volumes so
unprecedented that it is actually transcended or, in Bauman’s parlance, liquefied. Being itself an almost
otherworldly environment, then, it might be plausible to suggest that digital technology is in fact being
embraced as a medium for otherworldly phenomena. This is coherent with Zandbergen’s proposed co-
constitution between the digital and the sacred, and moreover her conclusion that digital forms of spirituality
are thus conducive to re-enchantment.

That such a conclusion is representative of all forms of digital spirituality, however, requires careful scrutiny.
Whilst certain aspects of the clips discussed do espouse metaphysical concepts that defy the materialistic
worldview, others only appear to affirm it. For example, it is notable that every instance of manifestation on
WitchTok is world-orientated, with the most dominant theme being the desire to manifest a ‘dream life’
consisting of money, material possessions and more generally becoming, as @damnsatanchill explicates
‘healthy’, ‘wealthy’ and ‘rich’. It follows from this that they are also, as it will be later elaborated on, concerned

! 23!
primarily with the individual; another feature of secular modernity that came in tandem with Enlightenment
materialism. Thus, although embellished with seemingly transcendent nomenclature and visual aesthetics,
these practices are generally not concerned with transcendent goals; they do not seek to directly encounter the
Divine, supramundane realities or salvation. This chimes with Luckmann’s ‘shrinking transcendence’ and
ultimately the verdict that digital spirituality is merely disenchantment with an updated interface.

It could be argued that RS diverges from WitchTok in this respect, with the objectives of ‘shifting’ typically
being to encounter supramundane experiences on the premise that, as @sakeiya affirms, ‘fictional worlds are
real’. Being considerably more transcendent in its objectives, it is perhaps this particular form of digital
spirituality that resonates with Aupers’ comments pertaining to cyberspace as an ocean ‘brimming’ with the
unknown. However, this too requires scrutiny. In one example of an RS content creator provided, the
‘fictional worlds’ accessed amounted to no more than the settings of popular films and television shows.
These ‘fictional worlds’, it can be argued, were in fact those of previously internalised memories; such would
deem ‘shifting’ to be no more than an excursion into the subconscious mind and thus an exercise perfectly
within the realms of natural cognition. The underlying naturalism here - whereby the hidden dimension of the
subject’s own consciousness becomes sacralised - is resonant of the psychoanalytic movement and what
Gellner called ‘the natural transcendent’ postulated by Jung as a seemingly mystical entity but nonetheless one
that conformed to the Enlightenment worldview. The extension of this phenomenon to modern spirituality is
integral to Hanegraaff’s ‘in the mirror of secular thought’ thesis, and thus in this instance can be taken as a
negation of the view that RS is a genuinely re-enchanting phenomenon.

Furthermore, some of the ideological stances of the Enlightenment - and indeed disenchantment - appear to
permeate other aspects of spirituality on TikTok in a more explicit manner. For example, @kawaiite’s video -
in which she enacts a dialogue between herself, a witch, and a Christian - is clearly imbued with an anti-
(institutional) religious sentiment, whereby she subtly implies that Christians lack an awareness of their own
religion. A similar polemical thrust against Christianity can be found in the WitchTokker @lilith_unleashed’s
video where she suggests that she, unlike Christians, partakes in ‘critical thinking’. This rather strikingly
resembles the attitudes which lead the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent philosophical
developments of the Enlightenment. In particular, the legacy of Kant - who encouraged individuals to free
themselves from ‘self-incurred immaturity’ by pursuing their own reason - appears to persist here. Moreover,
the emphasis placed on individual reason in turn somewhat fulfils Weber’s criteria for disenchantment as the
predicament of ‘rationalisation’, in turn affirming the Weberian correlation between technology and
disenchantment.

@Blueberrylimeade’s video exhibits a similar refutation of traditional religion. In her rather unconventional
theology, she purports that ‘there is a Christian “god” but it’s its not *source*’ (presumably meaning it is not

! 24!
the true originator of the world), and that it in fact has ‘bad intentions’. Following this, she remarks that the
bible is ‘like a mixed bag’ because ‘it does say that God’s within us, but then all that other stuff’. Her claims
appear to have two notable implications for the relationship between digital spirituality and modernity. Firstly,
she shares with @kawaiite and @lilith_unleashed an incredulity towards religious claims, viewing the bible as
a ‘mixed bag’ and obtaining from it only what she perceives to be rational, again emulating the Enlightenment
approach. Secondly, she appeals to the notion of ‘the god within’ as popularised within the New Age
movement, with this being, as discussed, a direct ancestor of Enlightenment thought mediated through the
psychoanalytic movement, once again potentially alluding to a natural transcendent. Hanegraaff’s comment
that modern spirituality ‘adopt[s] the characteristic arguments of the Enlightenment to attack conventional
Christianity’ (1996:412) is thus pertinent to all of these examples, further suggesting that digital spirituality
indeed exists ‘in the mirror of secular thought’.

More generally, the expression of individualism that appears to be ubiquitous across the various forms of
digital spirituality should also be considered. In some cases, the personalised approach to religion is made
explicit - for example, in @witchofthewater’s statement - while in others it appears merely as an underlying
premise attributable to the social media format in which every user exists as an individual entity with its own
distinctive aesthetic. As it was shown in Parke and Kaye’s paper, smartphones often serve as extensions of
the self, providing a sense of ‘ontological security’ and thus complementing each individual’s awareness of
who they are. It could be said that this is applicable to digital spirituality, whereby each individual is
encouraged to have both a unique spirituality and a unique identity. This finds itself to be related not only to
Enlightenment rationality, but also to the capitalism and individualism that, as delineated by Lasch, demand
preoccupation with selfhood.

Once again this finds itself relevant to Luckmann’s theory of ‘shrinking transcendence’ whereby ‘self-
realization, personal autonomy and self-expression’ become the dominant religious themes as a result of
spirituality’s adaptation to the consumer model and overall commodification. Although TikTok is not a
marketplace as such, and is thus not strictly an environment for ‘the corporate takeover of religion’, it does
fulfil Carrette and King’s prophecy of a form of religion ‘oriented towards the individual as consumer’. It
emphasises the individual self as the cultivator of its own highly subjectivised spirituality akin to a personal
brand, doing so through the medium of the smartphone which, as Parke and Kaye’s research shows,
guarantees ontological security through technologically advanced, rationally calculated means. It thus appears
to be the case that the digital spirituality is the summation of Enlightenment individualism quantified by both
the consumerist mentality and the capacities of technology; an equation which finds itself to be almost
perfectly in-line with the Weberian hypothesis, according to which technological advancement can only
exacerbate disenchantment.

! 25!
Yet, it could be argued that the ‘selves’ of TikTok are not exclusively a product of individualism in the secular
modern context, but are in fact attempts to revive a more creative, fluid and potentially even mystical
ontology of the self. Partridge relates this to postmodernism, which he perceives as a potentially positive
force towards re-enchantment. He writes that, in cyberspace, ‘selfhood becomes a postmodern project’
whereby individuals espouse ‘flexible identities’, ‘recyclable selves’ and ‘the ability to reincarnate between
virtual worlds’ (2004:142). This could potentially be applied to the highly creative nature of TikTok content
creators, with their idiosyncratic ‘flexible identities’ - signified by spiritual symbols and even filters which
distort their appearances - actually representing a departure from the kind of mundane ‘self’ addressed in
Parke and Kaye’s research. In such a view, the individualism inherent in digital technology is being utilised
not for mundane ontology security but for ontological transcendence that liberates the subject from the
trappings of their worldly self and, thus, is conducive to re-enchantment. This in turn finds itself intertwined
with the postmodernism of the digital milieu, where no authorities or institutions are required in the
formulation of these ‘selves’ which thus become, theoretically, liberated from the materialistic worldview of
secular modernity.

In such a view, postmodernity - particularly its cyberspatial manifestation - represents a derivation from
disenchantment in a manner akin to Bauman-esque ‘melting’ of modern metanarratives. Although it inherits
many of the features of modernity, most saliently individualism, the postmodern approach can actually
subvert them in a way that frees the subject from all limitations, including the limiations set by a disenchanted
world. However, when assessing the extent that this phenomenon itself exists ‘in the mirror of secular
thought’, certain critiques must be considered. As Eilberg-Schwartz explored, the postmodern approach
found in witchcraft - which appears to be a deviation from modernity by way of being fluid and unrestrained
- actually finds itself to be imbued with the same Enlightenment critiques of religious institutions which, for
Hanegraaff, invalidate their quality of being truly re-enchanting. As Eiliberg-Scwartz states, these spiritualities
‘stand in a tradition’ - with it being notable here that he considers postmodernism itself to be a form of
tradition - ‘that flows from the Enlightenment critique of religion’ (1989:80). If one adopts the Weberian
conception of disenchantment as a development of the Enlightenment view, then it follows that the
postmodern spirituality of TikTok is not truly a departure from disenchantment but rather a continuation of
its ideological mores. Such an interpretation would be corroborated by the previous analyses of its overtly
anti-institutional religious stances and other inheritances from modernity, which are – slightly paradoxically –
simultaneously modern and postmodern but to the same effect of subverting religious authority.

A further condition of this modernity, previously discussed with reference to Lasch and Debord, was the
phenomenon of the ‘society of the spectacle’ and the modern disposition towards sensation. Heelas and
Hanegraaff both address this in the context of spirituality, positing that the appeal of many of its modern
forms lies in the promise of not only self-gratification but also self-gratifying experiences. Such appears to be

! 26!
coherent with what has been said regarding ‘manifestation’ and ‘shifting’ which, also in-line with Heelas and
Hanegraaff’s comments, operate on a fundamentally naturalistic worldview and serve primarily to stimulate
and entertain, apparent in how the ‘dream lives’ manifested by @sawyermyc and @damnsatanchill appear to
be centred around bodily, material wealth and how @itslindseynicole rates the enjoyment of her RS
experiences out of ten. This is perhaps unsurprising considering the digital format itself; belonging to the
genus of social media, the design of TikTok is one that offers an intense degree of sensory stimulation, with
aesthetics playing a major part in its appeal. In this regard, it is an ideal platform for sensational forms of
spirituality which in turn complement the consumerist disposition in a Debordian ‘society of the spectacle’
where sensation is prioritised over salvation. It thus once again appears to be the case that digital spirituality is
a reflection of the modern climate, mirroring its qualities in a manner akin to New Age religion but now with
the added veneer or filter, as it were, provided by the digital interface.

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 Conclusion

Evidently, digital spirituality is an amorphous phenomenon – with the malleability of its forms likely being
itself a symptom of postmodernity – that, in various distinct regards, indicates both the possibility of re-
enchantment and the underlying persistence of disenchantment. Notions of sacralisation and other allusions
to non-naturalistic metaphysics appear to be ubiquitously present across both WitchTok and RS content, with
supramundane concepts (and visual aesthetics) being consciously adopted by the users. Yet, upon closer
inspection, it becomes apparent that these concepts scarcely transgress the naturalistic worldview, with
aspirations toward transcendence being generally limited to the sacralisation of the self and the mystification
of the subconscious; tendencies which, as it was discussed in the literature review, were definitive in the
classification of both the psychoanalytic and New Age movements as products of modern disenchantment
existing ‘in the mirror of secular thought’. In general, digital spirituality appears to fulfil the criteria of
Luckmann’s ‘shrinking transcendence’ and the orientation towards sensation typical of Debord’s consumerist
‘society of the spectacle’, with both of which being inextricably linked to capitalist society and in turn the
disenchantment that, according to Weber, gave rise to it in the first place. It may thus be plausible to regard
digital spirituality as a continuation of Heelas’ ‘summation of cultural trajectories’, and to regard it as being
thus virtually identical to the modern spiritual movements that preceded it.

There is, however, a crucial difference between these prior forms of modern spirituality and digital spirituality,
and this lies in the distinctively postmodern quality of the latter. Regarding psychoanalysis, it is worth
considering that although the movement partly emerged from the Enlightenment thrust against religious
institutions, it was fundamentally itself an institution; in fact, Gellner went as far as to describe it as a kind of
‘church’, with psychoanalysts being akin to bishops and patients to (their own) priests (1985:79,135). In this
sense, psychoanalysis can be comfortably categorised as a modern movement which retained certain
institutional infrastructures. Although the same cannot be asserted quite so confidently with regard to the
New Age movement - which was considerably more de-institutionalised and comprised of an even more
eclectic ‘picking and mixing’ of spiritual doctrines and practices – it too was fundamentally an established
movement, with its own canon of popular literature and even physical communities. Digital spirituality,
however, represents the most intensified form of de-institutionalisation and, thus potentially, the
deconstruction of modernity vis-à-vis the deconstruction of disenchantment itself.

The thesis that digital forms of spirituality can and have transgressed modernity altogether would be
supported by the views of Aupers et al, who see the ‘incalculable forces’ of cyberspace to be imbued with the
potential for a radical revival of the sacred. The implication here that the trajectory of disenchantment can in
fact be offset is itself relevant to the discussion of postmodernism, which could be conceived of as a version
of modernity that has become so saturated by its own premises that it transmutes into something else entirely,

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as encapsulated by Bauman’s theory of ‘solid’ and ‘liquid’ modernity according to which the latter is spaceless,
timeless and virtually transcendent (with this, of course, being co-constitutive with the unfettered capacities of
modern technology) (1999:122-125). It could be, then, that the distinctly postmodern and ‘liquid’ elements of
digital spirituality are precisely what allow it to transcend disenchantment as a discourse or metanarrative of
‘solid’ modernity.

Of course, this does not account for the many features of digital spirituality that appear to be, implicitly or
otherwise, modern in the more – somewhat ironically – traditional sense of the term. The overtly naturalistic,
individualistic, capitalistic and sensationalistic elements of WitchTok and RS appear to remain faithful to the
Enlightenment project and the aspects of modernity that derive directly from it. Indeed, it has been suggested
particularly with regard to occult spiritualities that postmodern approaches can be equally grounded in
Enlightenment attitudes. Eilberg-Schwartz’s analysis on witchcraft touches on the dynamics of this apparent
paradox, revealing how modern and postmodern approaches can co-exist and orientate themselves towards
the same objective of deconstructing established traditions. That this is an inherently disenchanted or
disenchanting phenomena is of course contestable, and cannot be determined without committing to
potentially erroneous or biased generalisations regarding what is or isn’t spiritually ‘authentic’; in any case, it is
not within the scope of the present investigation to do so. What is significant here is merely that modernity
and postmodernity – and the forms of spirituality that they respectively engender – do not necessarily exist as
a fixed binary. In other words, digital spirituality could be simultaneously modern – and inextricably linked to
certain trappings of disenchantment – whilst also postmodern, probing the possibilities of forces beyond the
hardwired institutions of ‘solid modernity’ and into the buoyant and boundless realms beyond it.

Finally, it is also worth considering that regardless of the intentions behind those engaging in digital
spirituality – be those ‘authentic’ efforts towards re-enchantment or otherwise – the exterior conformance of
any religious or spiritual system to the paradigms of secular modernity is virtually inevitable. As it has been
observed by several sociologists of religion, most notably Talal Asad, belief systems in the contemporary
West are coerced into ‘bending’ and ultimately reshaping themselves to fit the mold of modernity; a process
incentivised by the powers of the secular modern and the hegemony of the Enlightenment narrative of
‘progress’ that persists to this day (2003:183). Extending Asad’s theory, it could be argued that digital
spirituality itself represents how transcendence can be sought in modern society only through the acceptable
medium of an individualised, rationalised and detraditionalised system. Even if this process were not
consciously being undergone as a result of direct coercion on behalf of ‘the powers of the secular modern’, it
might be plausible to claim that modern subjects – especially millennials and Gen-Zs, few of whom will have
ever experienced traditional, collective forms of religion – have no choice but to imitate– or rather, mirror –
secular, modern, disenchanted paradigms, simply because they have never known anything else.

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