In Thohoyandou, South Africa, a series of rapes and murders in 2014 sparked panic, with local stories attributing the violence to demonic forces—a claim the accused himself confirmed, saying he was possessed. Based on 22 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article describes how state criminal justice sites in South Africa grapple with the occult in ambivalent ways. Spirit possession is difficult to reconcile with legal methods of determining criminal liability in courtrooms, yet when imprisoned people are paroled, the state entertains bewitchment in public reconciliation ceremonies. The article proposes the concept of mens daemonica ("demonic mind") to describe a hijacked selfhood, contrasting it with mens rea ("criminal mind") in law.
Invocations of history in Western astrology form an 'astrological historicity'—a temporal orientation guided by archetypal principles from New Age metaphysics and psychodynamic self-theories. While this reinforces therapeutic spirituality, it also enables social and political awareness, including critical recognition of racial and social injustice linking past, present, and future. Astrological historicity emulates modern historicism with linear temporality and developmental themes yet relies on nonlinear frameworks of recurring cycles, correspondences, and synchronicities, creating a complex heterotemporality for world-historical circumstances. This occult knowledge production reveals astrology's cultural appeal as an intellectual resource for expressing frustration with reigning political-economic systems.