The Re-Enchantment of the West challenges those theories that predict widespread secularization beyond traditional institutional religiosity. Spiritualities are emerging that are not only quite different from the those forms of religion that are in decline, but are often defined over against them and articulated and passed on in ways quite different from those of traditional religion. In particular, it is argued that such contemporary Western spirituality is fed by a constantly replenished reservoir of ideas, practices, and methodologies, which is here termed 'occulture'. Moreover, such occultural ideas both feed into and are resourced by popular culture. Indeed, popular occulture is a key feature of the re-enchantment of the West. Demonstrating the significance and ubiquity of these ideas, this book examines, for example, healthcare and nursing, contemporary environmentalism, psychedelia and drug use, the Internet and cyberspirituality, belief in UFOs and extraterrestrial life, demonology and the contemporary fascination with the figure of Satan, the heavy metal subculture, popular apocalypticism, and millennial violence.

The expectation of an end to time and the yearning for a millennial paradise have been recurring themes in Western religious thought. But when we speak of expectation of the world's end we are mindful of the fact that generation after generation of millenarians have been disappointed. Their endtime hopes and prophecies have not come true. What happens, one might ask, when prophecies fail? Does failure spell the end of the very movements that embrace such expectations? The aim of this anthology is to gather together in one volume the essential research from the fields of sociology and psychology that seeks to answer this intriguing question as first raised by Festinger in his 1956 work, When Prophecy Fails. Cross-cultural and comparative, this collection chronicles forty years of research into failed prophecy and response to the attending cognitive dissonance it produces that is at once timely and informative.