People adopt conspiracy theories not only because of cognitive or emotional weaknesses but also as an aesthetic practice. During Italy's COVID-19 lockdown, the relationship between New Age spirituality and conspiracy theories, termed conspirituality, illustrates this. Drawing on Jacques Rancière's thought and studies of contemporary Paganism and Western esotericism, the article argues that conspiracy-believing expresses dissensus by a community of sense seeking full acknowledgment and legitimization of their participatory or magical way of inhabiting the world, rather than mere visibility.
Though Eros and magic have long been connected in Western esoteric traditions, a substantial body of literature on sexual magic emerged only in the nineteenth century. This article examines the rise of sexual magic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries within the context of Victorian-era American and British discourse on sexuality. Focusing on the teachings of Paschal Beverly Randolph, Aleister Crowley, and Pierre Bernard, and following Michel Foucault, the author argues that this literature was part of a broader Victorian explosion of discourse on sex, particularly its deviant forms. Sexual magic both reflected and subverted mainstream Victorian sexual values, while these figures also foreshadowed the modern American obsession with sex and its liberation.