In increasingly confusing times it feels like new trends are being made and dying on the very same day. With so much happening who can really keep up? One of these things that I am particularly interested in is the rise of new age spirituality. It seems like an increasing number of people are being more and more drawn into this confusing sub-genre which combines astrology, crystals and manifesting. It seems as time goes on the larger the number rises of people who follow this as does the number of people who are confused by this equally. I am one of those people. I don’t even know how to refer to this group of people as they have made it very clear that this is not a religion. This is something different.
The first thing to note about new age spirituality, which is what I will call it due to the lack of a proper name, is that it is not a religion. Barely anything in this belief is structured. A lot of active practitioners practice alone in their home. There is so much mystery that enshrouds it that I tried to see who created this new wave and I couldn’t even find that out. What these new age spiritualists believe in is their zodiac signs and that paired alongside with them, certain crystals can help and contain different properties. Some crystals are more powerful with people of certain zodiacs and that when combined help to strengthen your intuition, attune your soul and harness the vibration of your intentions. Whilst I do not know what this exactly means, I can guess they believe it brings good fortune and that it’s meant to amplify and bring to reality their manifestations. To add some more spice to the mix they also have aspects of mysticism and “earth ritualism” thrown in for good measure.
To many not only does it sound weird but all of these aspects seem to have a very loose correlation to each other. This is not lost on the new age spiritualists who are very well aware of this. Many say they dabble and go into and take what works for them as following religion has alienated them. Many of the practitioners of this have grown up in a very social and politically aware climate with many believing that neither religion or the government have their best interests at heart so it would only make sense for them to go to other places when trying to look for answers to life’s meaning.
I still do not fully understand the ideas of the new age spiritualism or even what they practice and why. However many seem perfectly content with it. Through the eyes of a Muslim you could say that it dabbles with black magic and the practice itself has zero correlation to any religion. The practice isn’t a religion though. Many of the practitioners are just as confused as many of us are with it, however it seems to give them a sense of peace.
It has recently become more of a trend due to its increasing popularity on social media. They sell many of these crystals at a very high mark-up and the idea that it all allows manifestation of what you want is simply putting an aspect of belief within these people as they believe the stones will allow them or make it easier to get their want or desire. While I believe it gives practitioners peace many companies who sell things related to spirituality make an extremely high profit off of it and I believe many are simply capitalizing off of the social media boom. This paired along with companies such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop who are so blatantly taking advantage of their customer base leaves a lot of unanswered questions about spirituality.
New age spirituality seems harmless. Whilst it seems that there are more questions than answers when talking about it, maybe it’s better that way? Ignorance is bliss after all.
