From Paul Kingsbury at LiveScience:
Recent literature in the social sciences on paranormal cultures argues that despite the rise of a secular, post-religious society, paranormal discourses are becoming increasingly significant in people’s lives in the West.
Because the paranormal refers to “events or phenomena… that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding,” researchers have long acknowledged that the paranormal intersects with “normal” everyday life.
Recently, however, as a result of a paranormal influence in popular culture, the rise of new spiritualities and commodities associated with them — such as cauldrons, healing crystals and online psychic services — researchers have begun to question describing interest in the paranormal as subcultural or countercultural, rather than mainstream. More.
Well, if it is mainstream to believe, without evidence, in a multiverse and to divorce science from evidence (part of the shift to post-modernism), it’s hard to see why cauldrons and crystals should be discriminated against.
See also: Occult gaining ground among “sciencey liberals”
Does post-modern naturalism lead to a rise in superstition? Millennials are ditching monotheism for witchcraft. But then post-modern naturalism holds that whatever you evolved to believe in is the ultimate Cool for you.
and
Can science survive long in a post-modern world? It’s not clear.