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Philosopher Huston Smith of Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of many authorities who see the occult revival as a response to the failure of science and reason, a movement spurred by the conviction that technology has failed to make the world better, as Americans long believed it would. Dean J. Stillson Judah of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley suggests that today's young people "cannot live as so many of us do, without the depth of myth and symbol and the richness of mysticism that existed before the rise of the empirical scientific attitude."
In his 1970 book What About Horoscopes? Evangelical Author-Editor Joseph Bayly lays much of the blame at the door of traditional Christianity. "Another age might have turned to the church in its anxiety and desire for a mystical element in life," writes Bayly. "But to many people, today's church seems impotent because it is identified with the problems it should be solving. They see the church as a mere authenticator of the Establishment. The individual is a unit to be counted in large church meetings, his money rung up, just as he is counted by business, university and government for their purposes. Beauty's holiness, or holiness's beauty, fades before pragmatism and expediency. But the desire for mystery will be satisfied."
Magician Playmate. Mixed with the desire for mystery, though, is undoubtedly a desire for mere novelty. Jesuit Theologian John Navone of Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, who held a "Devil Day" at the Gregorian recently to discuss the theology of the Devil, so far is not seriously alarmed by the recrudescence of Satanism. In modern Devil cults, he argues, the Devil "is more often a type of magician playmate, the product of a Playboy culture rather than the malign personal being found in Scripture. These cults tend to use the Devil for a type of arcane amusement, whereas the unamusing Devil that appears in Scripture manages to use men for his dark purposes."
Sociologist Truzzi argues somewhat similarly in a recent issue of the Sociological Quarterly. "If we fully believed in demons," Truzzi writes, "we certainly would not want to call them up." For most occultists, he says, the occult arts and practices are just a form of "pop religion," more healthy than dangerous. "It shows a playful contempt for what was once viewed seriously by many, and still is by some." Mass interest in the occult indicates "a kind of victory over the supernatural, a demystification of what were once fearful and threatening cultural elements. What were once dark secrets known only through initiation into arcane orders are now exposed to everyman."
There is a danger, of course, in taking the Devil too lightly, for in doing so man might take evil too lightly as well. Recent history has shown terrifyingly enough that the demonic lies barely beneath the surface, ready to catch men unawares with new and more horrible manifestations. But the Devil taken too seriously can become the ultimate scapegoat, the excuse for the world's