Editor’s note – Manifestation has moved from self-help shelves into TikTok trends and bank commercials, and this piece traces where the idea actually comes from and where it leads. The author walks through New Age philosophy, talismans, and scrying using the grief-driven plot of a graphic novel, “Next Stop”, as a case study. We’re running it because the contrast it draws matters: manifestation asks the universe to bend toward the self, while Christian prayer asks God to be trusted regardless of the outcome. That difference is worth understanding clearly, especially for young readers drawn to stories like this one.
What Is Manifesting?
Manifesting is the idea that you can shape reality by focusing your intentions, beliefs, and visualizations on an intended outcome.
It has its roots in occultism and New Age spirituality along with self-help, prosperity teaching, and positive thinking culture. It’s based on the conviction that the mind, through aligning with specific energies and vibrations in the universe, has power over matter.
It’s become an increasingly common view since the publication of Rhonda Byrnes book, “The Secret” in 2006. While cosmic rather than individual in focus, Helena Blavatsky’s esoteric book “Isis Unveiled” was the first book to use the “Law of Attraction” in print when it was published in 1877.
Today, 1 in 4 Americans now believe in the “power of manifestation” according to this 2024 report from Talker Research.
We’ll look a closer look at manifestation in this article, along with talismans, scrying, and necromancy.
They all feature prominently in “Next Stop,” a graphic novel for middle grades, described as “sensitively” exploring grief while celebrating “friendship and new experiences.”
Manifestation in Pop Culture
The idea that we can somehow manifest specific outcomes is now mainstream.
Burger King ran a TikTok campaign earlier this year instructing fans to “comment to manifest the delicious Burger King chicken fries you deserve.”
Personally, I wouldn’t recommend making a habit of those chicken fries (a Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich would be more tempting!).
Neither is a personal manifestation practice likely to bring satisfaction and contentment. In fact, experts warn that believing in manifestation can have significantly negative effects on mental health.
But words of caution seem few and far between.
Cambridge Dictionary even made “manifest” their word of the year for 2024 due to spiking online search interest and cultural significance. And since that time, global interest as measured by online search demand has only increased.
For another example, check out this 2026 ad from Ally Bank that is even more on-the-manifesting-nose.
In the 15-second spot, a young woman sits at her kitchen table reciting a mantra for attracting money:
“Money flows to me. Easily … and effortlessly. I have a wealthy aura.”
Then her phone notifies her that she’s just received an early deposit in her Ally account.
It’s all a joke.
But not really. Because many people are actually engaged in these types of practices. This is pretty close to what many followers of New Age spirituality believe.
Editor’s note – It’s worth pausing on how casually this shows up now – a fast-food ad, a bank commercial, a dictionary’s word of the year. When a spiritual practice gets marketed as a joke, it still shapes how people actually think about God, desire, and control, even if nobody involved would call it worship.
New Age Philosophy
New Age belief is wide ranging and eclectic, but is often linked with monism and especially pantheism.
Monism is the idea that “all is one” and doesn’t require any belief in God.
Pantheism is a subset of monism that does have a theological view. It holds that God and the universe are identical. Pantheists generally believe in a divine, but impersonal, energy flowing through everything and everyone.
In many New Age traditions, the ultimate objective is “God-consciousness” or the realization that the individual self is actually divine.
This is the philosophical underpinning for why energy and intentions are so central to New Age manifestation, otherwise known as the “Law of Attraction” in action.
If everything is one and interlinked through energetic connections, the practice of putting focused intentions out into the universe is thought to attract the corresponding result.
It’s a Westernized synthesis of concepts found in Eastern religions and philosophies. Which is why it’s not surprising that ideas like universal consciousness, chakras, and karma have become common in the New Age.
A Note About Magic and Witchcraft
Ceremonial magic and witchcraft also share similarities with New Age manifestation.
Both involve intense focus about a desired outcome.
In the New Age, the end result is thought to be “manifested” out of the energy of the universe. In witchcraft and magical practices, the “energies” of the universe (or nature or external spirits) are thought to be conformed to the will of the magician / witch / sorcerer through the ritual.
This Target tweet demonstrates how these more “occult” practices are no longer quite so hidden in the world today.
Editor’s note – The line between New Age manifestation and old-fashioned witchcraft is thinner than most people assume. Scripture doesn’t rank these practices by how modern or harmless they sound; it simply warns against seeking power or knowledge apart from God (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
Manifestation in Next Stop
The plot of Debbie Fong’s graphic novel, “Next Stop,” advances through the suggested idea that manifestation and related supernatural practices might actually work.
It’s a tantalizing possibility for someone like main character Pia Xing who is dealing with intense grief and family trauma.
Last week we saw Pia embark on a cross-country journey to a “magical” subterranean lake that she hopes will help heal her family.
Pia’s story is heart breaking.
Her mother blames her for the death of her younger brother, Ben. Relationships in her family are disintegrating, and Pia desperately wants to make things better.
As the page below shows, her circumstances continue to worsen as the book progresses.
[Note: There is research that connects New Age adherents with unreliable or emotionally fragile parents. Believing in manifestation holds out a promise of control and power in a life that has been unstable and unpredictable.]
After the call with her father ends, we see Pia take a small figurine out of her backpack and clutch it while she says this to herself:
“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll fix everything.”
What is the figurine?
We later learn it’s a toy from her deceased brother. Pia had taken it from his room and has been carrying it with her throughout the trip.
The book never offers an explanation for what purpose it serves. But from the supernatural lens of the New Age and occult, the toy serves as Pia’s magical talisman for attempting to manifest her dead brother.
Editor’s note – Pia’s grief is real, and the pull toward anything that promises control over an unbearable loss is understandable. That’s exactly why this matters pastorally: false comfort dressed up as spiritual power will eventually fail the very people it claims to help.
Supercharging Intentions with Talismans
The word “talisman” has roots in the Greek word telesma which means “consecration” or “completion of a religious rite.”
A talisman may be inscribed with specific runes or astrological symbols, but in this case is “charged” with Pia’s intention about her brother.
Because New Age belief holds that everything is made of energy and vibration, some believe that physical objects can be “charged” through intentions.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work:
The practitioner holds the charm and focuses intensely on the feeling of their goal already being accomplished. He or she imagines energy flowing from the universe into their body, and out into the object. A specific mantra may be recited.
There are specific beliefs about astrological timing, sound vibrations, and synergy with crystals that some in the New Age believe can charge up the spiritual battery even more.
The Intention Amplifier
In the viewpoint of true believers, the talisman can amplify the intentions of the person attempting to manifest a specific outcome.
The basic idea is that the talisman gets “programmed” through the focused intention of the practitioner. In this way, the practitioner brings the voice and the talisman brings the volume to project into the universe.
Further, the toy seems to psychologically connect Pia to her dead brother. As her conversation with her father shows, she believes it can somehow help to accomplish her desires.
This resembles what is known as a “sympathetic connection” in occultism. The idea is that the toy remains linked to Ben and functions as a kind of spiritual beacon connecting the two.
It seems she expects she can use her thoughts, grounded in the toy, to somehow “think” him back into reality. This is magical thinking in action.
And she believes the manifestation is somehow made possible by the subterranean lake, the ultimate destination of her trip.
Scrying
By the time Pia arrives at the lake, she’s already had an introductory lesson in the occult practice of scrying.
From the old French word “descrier” (to announce or proclaim), scrying is a method of divination that relies on gazing into a reflective or shifting surface to receive visions or other spiritual messages.
Nostradamus used bowls of water for his visions, and Renaissance era occultists like John Dee used black obsidian mirrors to allegedly contact spirits. The surface of the magical lake performs the same function.
Pia is planning to combine occult scrying with her New Age talisman to supercharge her attempt to contact her brother on the “other side.”
The lines between reality and fantasy are blurring as she kneels by the edge of the water and places the figurine / talisman in the lake.
Pia then places the toy into the water as she peers intently into the surface of the water.
She waits.
Nothing seems to happen.
But then, as Pia stands up, something does happen.
One of the children on the trip, the young girl Pia had previously evangelized about the magical power of the lake, leans out over the water and points to Pia’s floating talisman.
As Pia looks on, the girl (Lily) falls in.
She can’t swim.
It’s setting up to be a replay of her young brother’s drowning death. Is Pia about to feel responsible for the death of two young children?
Pia dives in after her.
Fortunately, she is able to recover the drowning girl. And as she grabs on to Lily, she sees a vision in the water.
It’s Ben.
Her brother hasn’t come back physically, but her talismanic manifestation seems to have connected her with him. Although, as with much of the book, precisely what happened is left rather mysterious and unexplained.
This looks like something called necromancy.
Necromancy is a type of channeling, or contacting a nonhuman entity. It may be more commonly called mediumship or spirit communication. It’s not about restoring a dead person back to life (which seems to be what Pia had hoped for most), but attempting to communicate with them.
Editor’s note – Necromancy carries a direct Biblical warning; King Saul’s visit to the medium at Endor (1 Samuel 28) shows how badly this ends even when something does seem to happen. Whatever Pia experienced in that lake, seeking contact with the dead is not a neutral practice Scripture leaves open to interpretation.
Wrapping Up
Manifestation can look superficially similar to Christian prayer, in that both involve honestly reckoning with our human desires.
But at the root, they function in precisely opposite ways.
Jesus gave His model of prayer to His followers. For Jesus, prayer means honoring God and seeking His glory while asking for our material and spiritual needs. And trusting Him with the results by perpetually surrendering to His will.
Manifestation, on the other hand, puts the Self in the place of God. And, if the universe and God and the self are truly the same force as many in the New Age believe, that sounds like a defensible idea.
One way to check is to see if the practice bears fruit. The Bible promises that the prayer of righteous person is “powerful and effective.”
Is the same true of manifestation?
For Pia, something clearly seems to have happened. She believes she made contact with the spirit of her dead brother.
Was it effective? Did that manifested result bring new hope and healing to the brokenness in her family?
We’ll see next week.
A Word from the Editor
Manifestation offers a shortcut that Christian prayer never promises: certainty that reality will bend to what we want, if we only focus hard enough. But Jesus taught His disciples to pray “your will be done” (Matthew 6:10), not “my will be manifested.” The comfort of prayer isn’t control – it’s the confidence that we’re heard by a Father who is good, even when the answer isn’t the one we asked for. Pia’s story isn’t finished yet, and neither is the question every reader has to answer: will you trust the universe to answer to you, or will you trust the God who made it?
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: There is a sharp line between manifestation and Christian prayer, and you show that the real difference is who sits on the throne of the heart.
This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.