Spiritualism opposes reasoning with the force of its conviction, its facts, its miracles, its supernatural. It is the religion of the 19th century, w… - Cecilia Gatto Trocchi

C. G. Trocchi, Le sette in Italia, III. Le sette di matrice cristiana, p. 50.

The complex process that has led to the current spread of magic and esotericism is constituted on the one hand by secularisation and secularism, and on the other by the alternative gnosticisms heavily advocated by secular, ‘disenchanted’ and progressive thought. Such is the humus on which thrives the new magism, as weel as the "supermarket occultism" of our times that journalists and mass communicators ennoble and repropose in the dominant cultural vacuum.

While Positivism was founding the social sciences (proclaiming the death of theology) and Marxism was instigating the proletariat to leave institutional religion branded as the ‘opium of the people’, thousands and thousands of people were attempting to communicate with the spiritual worlds through mediums and seers.