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Two years ago, Christine Wicker was less likely to think that vampires, voodoo or hoodoo could be real. Then the award-winning journalist began a nationwide tour to promote her new book about Lily Dale, N.Y., called the world's oldest community of spiritualists.

"Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead" ($25, HarperSanFrancisco) became a New York Times best-seller and attracted a diverse audience, whose asides to Wicker didn't match stereotypes.

Conservative Christians, while asking for autographs, told her about relatives who had a sixth sense, or who could predict death by reading tea leaves. She saw pendants, to fend off evil, pulled from under blouses. Emotional stories about ghosts and hexes came from average-looking people.

So Wicker, a former religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News who now lives in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield, began a new line of research and has a new book: "Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic Is Transforming America." It is full of real-life acknowledgements of what Harry Potter and Endora on "Bewitched" have tried to teach us.

"American spirituality is so ignored right now," says the author in a telephone interview. She contends organized religion chased away magic from public acceptance. The tradition of "an individualized, magical spirituality is old - everybody brought their magic," when ethnic groups migrated to this country.

What are we talking about? The line between Pentecostal talking in tongues and Wiccan mantras may not be that thick; these are the fastest-growing faiths in America.

"I don't believe in magic, of course," Wicker writes. "Hardly anybody does, but we all live by it. It permeates our lives every day, and we wouldn't give it up for all the science on Earth."

It is the tendency not to walk under a ladder, or to avoid crossing a black cat's path. It is the batter who spits, shifts or fidgets the same way before every swing.

It is the perceived and real powers of prayer and persuasion, rituals and results that more typically get labeled as meaningful coincidences, superstitions, premonitions or positive thinking.

"Belief in the great faiths is collapsing," Wicker quotes Milwaukee theologian Daniel Maquire as saying. "People are looking for something to replace them, much as they did in the first century as Christianity began to rout paganism."

On the darker side are more extreme Goth gatherings that involve blood letting as well as flogging.

"You can call it religion, you can call it spirituality, you can call it magic," Wicker writes of all these things. "Maybe what you call it doesn't matter."

What is magic? "It is the study of the ways in which natural forces, energies and gods can be compelled or induced to help us."

Wicker figured this book would begin in Salem, Mass., and concentrate on Wiccan rituals and culture - then decided the net should be cast wider because of her findings.

About 75 percent of Americans believe in angels, she notes, and a slight majority believes in psychic and spiritual healing. This is a world that contains more than middle-aged women and teens and extends from Wisconsin to Louisiana.

Research took her to Mount Horeb's Circle Sanctuary, which she calls "one of the oldest, most respected Wiccan communities in the U.S," but it is not specifically mentioned in the book.

"Most startling to me have been how common (mystic) experiences are in people's lives," Wicker says. "The quirks of the mind, our habit of trying to find meaning out of patterns, may be so we can have guidance about what path to follow" in life.

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