Tara Isabella Burton - Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World

I T S THE END OF 2018 . T HREE IN THE MORNING . I N THE MIDDLE of a rave. Were in the McKittrick Hotel, equal parts warehouse, performance art space, bar, and party venue in the heart of Manhattans Chelsea neighborhood. Ten or twenty years ago, this used to be a different sort of nightclubpopulated by freaks and crackheads, as one regular put it, in the heart of New York Citys Club Row.

But the place is different now. You might even say a little bit more sacred.

Its still a party. People are still drunk. One or two may still be having sex in the bathrooms. Some are definitely making out on the dance floor. One of the performers onstage, dressed in a baroque costume thats equal parts Marie Antoinette and diabolical siren, is singing God Is a Woman, and everyone is screaming along in joyous collective effervescence, because they, and she, really believe this. The theme of the party is vaguely inspired by The Odyssey, and by sirens and their call to self-defeating decadence. Because of this there is candy everywhere, streaming from the false-cobwebbed candelabras, for guests to eat: a playful riff on the idea, ubiquitous from the Greek myth of Persephone to the book of Genesis, that eating something illicit traps you in the world of death. Almost every single person in this buildingand there are about a thousandis taking a selfie.

But in the middle of all this revelry is something profound. Whether its participants are fully aware of it or not, they are in the middle of a religious ritual. More than that, it is one of the most representative religious rituals of our so-called secular age: a place where faith and fantasy, art and irony, capitalism and creation converge. We are at the holy of holies for the religiously unaffiliatedthe fastest-growing religious demographic in Americathe spiritual but not religious, the religious mix and matches, the theologically bi- and tri-curious who attend Shabbat services but also do yoga, who cleanse with sage but also sing Silent Night at Christmastime. Throughout America, already the religiously unaffiliated make up about a quarter of the populationand almost 40 percent of young millennials. Here, in the middle of hipster New York, those numbers are wildly higher.

B UT HERE, AT THIS RAVE, WE AREN T JUST WATCHING THE RISE OF THE Nones, as this phenomenon is often called. Rather, its a collective celebrationwhat the sociologist mile Durkheim once termed the collective effervescence that defines religionof a new, eclectic, chaotic, and thoroughly, quintessentially American religion. A religion of emotive intuition, of aestheticized and commodified experience, of self-creation and self-improvement and, yes, selfies. A religion for a new generation of Americans raised to think of themselves both as capitalist consumers and as content creators. A religion decoupled from institutions, from creeds, from metaphysical truth-claims about God or the universe or the Way Things Are, but that still seeksin various and varying waysto provide us with the pillars of what religion always has: meaning, purpose, community, ritual.

Let me explain: Back in 2011, you see, the British theater company Punchdrunk took over the space that would become the McKittrick. They transformed the lattice of warehouse rooms into a 1930s hotel, a forest, a cemetery, a speakeasy. Dead flowers hang from the walls of an apothecary. Taxidermy moose heads overlook teak floors. Most of the time, the space serves as the home of Sleep No More, the companys near-wordless, dance-based, Hitchcock-inflected retelling of Macbeth. Masked audience members are free to wander the space in silence: rummaging through drawers, prowling around corners. If youre lucky, you might be singled out for a one-on-onea coveted, intimate, often sexually charged encounter with a character in one of the productions secret locked rooms. (Lady Macduff, for example, might ask you to pray with her for the fate of her imperiled son; shell whisper Bible verses into your ear and press salt into your palms as a good luck charm. The sultry witch Hecate might try to seduce you on a mission to reclaim a lost magical ring and leave a diabolical kiss on your mask, or even your neck.) Its equal parts video game, voyeurism, and religious pilgrimage.

Youre encouraged to look around, to explore, to find hidden connections. To figure out how it all fits together: What the mysterious nurses in the insane asylum on the fifth floor (where Lady Macbeth tries to scrub out, of course, that damn spot) have to do with the lonely taxidermist on floor two. How Hecate and her three subservient witches who hail Macbeth as a would-be kingpresaging his prideful downfallhave left their mark (or lipstick kiss) on nearly every room. The McKittrickas even the elevator bellhops remind you on your way inis an enchanted place.

Everything here, you see, has meaning. The shows creators have gone on record as claiming that