• WE live in a world where, I’m glad to say, mainstream religion is (overall, despite some blips) slowly losing its grip on people’s minds and bodies.

But if your report about the plethora of paganism and occult shops in Covent Garden is anything to go by (Uncertain times with paganism & occult! August 12), belief in one sort of nonsense is being replaced by belief in other nonsense.

Yet superstition and “spirituality”, whatever that is, (belief in ghosts?) are as much of a threat to us all as any religion is.

The existential dangers we face in our current world require humankind to use our most highly-evolved faculties, our ability to use reason and rationality, if we are to survive.

Hence every peddler of fairy tales, whether in a cathedral or a crystal emporium, is a threat to our species.

ALBERT BEALE
Little Russell Street, WC1