Anima Noira: The Occult Aspects of the Failed State

A conversation about Lucifer, conspiracy theories, and the new magickal revival

Anima Noira is an artist and occultist from Prague, currently living in Las Vegas. She’s a Luciferian. Unlike frequent Failed State Update guest Lucien Greaves of The Satanic Temple, an atheist who sees Lucifer as a powerful metaphor for its core principles, Anima Noira talks to Lucifer. And he talks back.

Americans’ increased belief in conspiracy theories goes hand-in-hand with an increase in New Age beliefs. A 2018 poll by the Pew Research center found that roughly 6-in-10 Americans hold one New Age belief, including astrology, reincarnation, the efficacy of psychics, or that physical objects can contain spiritual energy. Not surprisingly, the majority of the believers are Christian (and the majority of those are Catholic). Atheists and agnostics don’t have use for psychics any more than they do for Jehovah, it seems.

In another poll, conducted by YouGov and The Economist in 2021, church-going adults were more likely to rate QAnon favorably than those who slept in on Sundays:

White evangelicals, the most religiously devout group among those surveyed by YouGov, are particularly susceptible to supporting QAnon and believing other conspiracy theories. They also tend to attend church frequently. Twenty-two percent of evangelicals who know about QAnon view it favourably, according to YouGov’s numbers—compared with 11% among the rest of the adult population. At the other end of the spectrum, 24% of evangelicals rate QAnon as “very unfavourable”, compared with 58% among other people. But it is not clear whether those who have a favourable opinion of QAnon do so because they want membership of a social group, as Mr Sasse and others claim, or because they are merely more susceptible to conspiratorial thinking.

My purpose here isn’t to weigh in on the reality of conspiracy or occult beliefs as much as to point out that they’re on the rise, a result of the fact that so many of our institutions are failing before our very eyes.

Anima Noira has something to say about that too — she was born in the Czech Republic as the Soviet empire unraveled, and she’s moved to the United States just in time to see our empire go through a similar process.

It’s a good interview, and I hope you check it out. And be sure to follow Anima Noira on social media:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anima.noira/

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnimaNoira

• website: https://animanoira.com/

Living with Bipolar Disorder… and Satan

While you’re at it, you should check out this short doc I did with a local Satan worshipper in 2018:

More stories on Failed State Update:

• Lucien Greaves discusses fire bombings, activism, and modern-day witch hunts

• The Witches of TikTok: The rise of the occult on social media