According to Mitch Horowitz, America is in some respects an occult nation. Essentially, it has been a springboard, a kind of laboratory for religious novelty and religious experiment.
The occult is considered heretical basically because of a fissure in human nature, which is that when a cultural or a social or political order is upended, it gets defined by its adversaries.
Yet when a lot of people follow a kind of religious novelty, Horowitz says they often get led to an extraordinary awakening.