• WE live in a country where, I am 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 “booming” paganism and occult shops in Covent Garden is anything to go by (Young people put faith in the power of crystals, August 18), belief in one sort of nonsense is being replaced by belief in other nonsense.

The person quoted in the story who claims that mysticism is “underpinned by scientific research that we’re all fields of energy” obviously slept through their physics lessons at school if they make such a ridiculous connection. Certainly none of my students, when I was a physics teacher, would have spouted such nonsense.

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

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

ALBERT BEALE
Little Russell Street, WC1