![]() Ward and Voas defined “conspirituality” as a “politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions” - one core to conspiracy theories and the other rooted in New Age belief systems: “1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. “These worldviews make public and personal life respectively seem less subject to random forces and therein lies part of their appeal,” they wrote. Nothing is as it seems, and nothing is an accident. She and co-writer David Voas, a quantitative social scientist at University College London, noted an emphasis on patterns and connections in both conspiracy culture and alternative spiritual beliefs. Two years later, she co-wrote a paper titled “The Emergence of Conspirituality” in the Journal of Contemporary Religion. In 2009, Charlotte Ward, an independent researcher on alternative spirituality - religious beliefs outside of conventional groups - began to notice a hybrid of conspiracy theory beliefs and New Age culture cropping up online. This pipeline is one of unlikely connections and strange bedfellows, of mixed martial arts fighters and poets, evangelical Christians and yoga teachers. The idea of spiritual lineage is too generous to bestow on Chansley, but he represents a growing pipeline between New Age male spirituality, new masculinity movements and QAnon. It felt shocking and suggested serious flaws in a culture I thought I understood: a fine line between the kind of zeitgeist-y, sensitive New Age-guy version of masculinity, and something more nefarious. His spirituality is serving him well as he traverses the pending federal charges.” He added that Chansley has “a personal commitment to Ahimsa,” the principle (found in Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism) of doing no harm.Īs a devotee of QAnon - the sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology deemed a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI - and a freedom fighter for Donald Trump, Chansley was my ideological opposite yet there was also a lot about him that was familiar. The Facebook page for the venture, before it was taken down, read: “Star Seed Academy creates leaders of the highest order! We help people to awaken, evolve and ascend! Are you ready to be a leader? Are you ready to ascend?” Recently, Chansley’s lawyer, Albert Watkins, told me in a statement that his client “is deeply spiritual. ![]() It’s a cringeworthy and offensive display of appropriation that I don’t endorse, but it’s common in that world.Īfter the attack on the Capitol, news reports unearthed that Chansley was a founder of something called the Star Seed Academy (in a certain New Age vernacular, a star seed is a higher being). I’ve been around a lot of White people who have adopted a mishmash of pagan and Indigenous signifiers as a New Age aesthetic. ![]() But he was also, infamously, wearing a headdress fashioned from buffalo horns and coyote skin - elements associated with the American West that seemed to telegraph a pagan spirituality. He was bare-chested and covered in Nordic tattoos, at least one of which, the Valknot, is a Norse symbol sometimes associated with white supremacy. Like many others, I took note of the so-called QAnon Shaman: 33-year-old Jake Angeli, born Jacob Anthony Chansley, of Arizona. ![]() Capitol and the prominence of Confederate flags, nooses and other symbols of the far right. 6, along with the rest of the country, I followed the news of the insurrection at the U.S. I’ve greeted this all with professional curiosity, something between an open mind and a world-weary arched eyebrow. While on assignment I’ve gone to menstrual huts and tea ceremonies I’ve gotten massaged by boa constrictors and I’ve meditated at sound baths. I understood that world and had a lot to say about it. These ideas were taking off once again, especially among women who are White and middle-class, which I also am. In the past decade or so, my fluency in the world of New Age culture, wellness, woo-woo (whatever you might call it) became a professional boon as a journalist. It turns out that I didn’t entirely resist it. I rebelled - mildly - by eating Domino’s pizza at sleepovers and idolizing the nihilism of 1970s punk. Psychedelic accoutrements and people who self-identified as seekers were normal to me - and so I craved mainstream American culture. But I grew up in a college town in Northern California in the 1980s, where the ubiquitous Grateful Dead stickers, crystal shops and tarot card readers suggested that the 1960s ethos of self-discovery never ended.
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