This is the text of a talk I gave at Medicine festival in August 2022, summarising research I and others have done in the last three years on conspiracy thinking in New Age spirituality.
I’m going to talk about ‘conspirituality’ — the overlap between new age spirituality and conspiracy thinking, especially during the pandemic
Read MoreIf spirituality is a new religion which arose in the 19th century, then right now feels like the Reformation. It’s a moment of disenchantment, scepticism, criticism, iconoclasm and denunciation. Within the last three years, many people within New Age spirituality have spoken up against some of the problems within the culture, from conspirituality to grifting to psychedelic abuse.
Read MoreLast week I drove to Sedona, in Arizona, to find out how conspirituality has affected the New Age capital of the United States.
Why did this little town of 10,000 people become such a New Age Mecca? It’s in a gorgeous location, hidden away beneath giant red-rock sandstone protrusions, like alien vessels from an ancient civilization.
Read MoreThis is an interview with Eileen Dunn, a life coach who moved to Tulum in October 2020 with her partner Alba, to run a yoga studio. She tells me about her experience of living in Tulum, one of the New Age capitals on the global wellness circuit, during the COVID pandemic.
Read MoreLast week, we looked at how Trump strategists — particularly Roger Stone and General Michael Flynn — mobilized the world of conspiracy culture to attack the Clinton campaign and win the 2016 US presidential election. In this article, we look at how the far-right tapped into the world of New Age conspirituality.
I’m going to focus, in this story, on one well-known New Age influencer, called Sacha Stone.
Does it matter if Qanon emerged organically from the infosphere, or if it was synthesized in a lab as a weaponized political meme? I don’t know. I don’t know if we can ever find out exactly who was behind Qanon. When people have posted about it all being a psyop (psychological operation) led by shadowy intelligence agents, it’s sounded like, well, a conspiracy theory.
Read MoreA new book came out recently called Our Moment of Choice. Produced by an organization called ‘Evolutionary Leaders’, it announced that mankind was on the brink of an extraordinary evolutionary leap, from the chrysalis of homo sapiens to a whole new species of unlimited potential.
Read MoreLast week’s rallies in London, Berlin, and Los Angeles against lockdown measures attracted both New Agers and far-right groups. We’ve seen before this overlap between the spiritual movement and the fast-spreading conspiracy theory, QAnon, which insists that an evil cabal of Hollywood celebs and liberal politicians (led by Tom Hanks and Hillary Clinton) are child-eating Satanists who control the world.
Read MoreConspiracy theorist David Icke has been banned from YouTube and Facebook for peddling his usual nutty narratives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This has already backfired. He’s trending on Twitter, he’s in the international news, and the platform that first interviewed him — London Real — has raised $1 million to host a live interview with him on Daily Motion.
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