If you think New Age alternative spirituality is solely the domain of lefty hippies, you don't know your history

Published April 23, 2017 1:00PM (EDT)

Ronald Reagan; Steve Bannon (AP/Getty/Saul Loeb/Shutterstock/Salon)

When my book “Occult America,” a history of supernatural religions in the U.S., appeared in 2009, I was surprised to receive an admiring phone call from a conservative documentarian and financier. He professed deep interest in the book’s themes, and encouraged me in my next work, “One Simple Idea,” an exploration of positive-mind metaphysics in American life. His name was Stephen K. Bannon.

Although the media have characterized Bannon as the Disraeli of the dark side following his rise to power in the Trump administration , I knew him, and still do, as a deeply read and erudite observer of the American religious scene, with a keen appetite for mystical thought.

Ronald Reagan, a hero of his, was not dissimilar.…