Book: Sceptical spirituality

This is how spirituality works

And honestly, there is no other way, sorry

Forget your imaginings and concentrate instead on the facts

(Disclaimer/trigger warning: if you’re big into New Age positivity, then please don’t read what follows: these short articles are for those who are sure there’s got to be more to spirituality than grooving over some idiotic guru or trendy teaching.)

These days — in the 2020s — we’re still very much affected by a religious revival — ‘New Age’ spirituality — that had its origins in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and which reached critical mass in the late 1960s, and worldwide ubiquity by the 1980s. By rights — meaning according to the dynamics of fashion — it ought to have begun either to fade or to mutate into something else by now, but our current state of global capitalism, economic development and general social ethos has seen New Age spirituality continue to thrive, and perhaps even to expand.

The dynamics of its maintenance and perpetuation do not concern us in any way — who knows, New Age may be on its last legs, although it certainly doesn’t feel like it right now. But there are several key characteristics of New Age spirituality which, in their own sweet way, are highly pernicious and misdirecting, and, if you’re not careful, and not well-informed, and perhaps not lucky enough to have…