Good Day World!
I remember back in the 1970s and 1980s when the expression New Age was birthed.
I wrote it off has some wacky philosophy that was trending in Hollywood and Arizona. Even if I would have read the "New Age Journal" by Mark Satin, I think my opinion would have remained the same.
I do recall trying to get through Marilyn Ferguson's best-selling "Aquarian Conspiracy," and losing interest half-way through it.
Then there was Shirley MacLaine, the spokesperson for the New Age movement. Other celebrities, and the public, looked at her as being slightly "off balance."
So, what has all of this got to do with the present?
As you probably suspected there's still plenty of New Agers out there practicing their philosophy.
Recently, there's been a shift to South America where New Agers, and curious tourists, are going to experience new-age healing retreats.
These retreats offer traditional, indigenous healers, known as curanderos. They offer up a psychoactive concoction that rivals LSD for their "patients," called ayahuasca.
It's really not totally traditional, because the curanderos were the ones who originally took it in order to diagnose their patients. In this modern version the patients get to get stoned themselves.
There's ayahuasca retreats springing up everywhere between Canada and Turkey. It's a largely unregulated export market.
However, this new favorite brew for New Agers is already having a supply problem.
The ingredients, found deep in the Amazon forest, are getting harder to obtain.
As a result, some of the necessary ingredients are being substituted with other plants that are similar, but with a nasty side-effect; some tourists have died from ingesting this modified ayahuasca.
I'm thinking that the New Agers probably should move on from this form of healing-therapy, and reconsider their foundation of using healing crystals.
At last count, no one ever died from them.
Time for me to walk on down the road...
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