In the US new age spirituality is called 'woowoo'.
Writer Julie Hill travelled to the Mecca of new ageism - Sedona, Arizona - to talk to the new age adherents who believe in the power of crystals, witches, angels, UFOs, goblins, astral planes and energy vortexes.
She has created an exhibition about her experiences, called Woo Curious, which is showing at the Audio Foundation in Auckland.
Sedona is considered the most New Age town in the US.
Hill says she’s a natural sceptic, but also has hippy tendencies and so describes herself as ‘woo curious’.
She travelled to Sedona, where the small population of 10,000 people swells to 4 million each year - most of whom are looking to get in on the new age scene.
The town is said to have several ‘vortexes’ of energy, which are said to also be found at the Taj Mahal in India and Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
“You’re supposed to get an amount of amazing energy from them when you’re near them.
“The minute you said that, bam! Sedona became the most new age town.”
Hill compares Sedona with the American version of New Zealand’s Nelson, with bogans and hippies both living there.
“It is Nelson times a squillion.”
Hill says her first impression of the town was that it looked like Mars but with cacti.
“Everything is pink.”
The trip was part of a woowoo discovery tour for Hill, who says it’s easy to mock the people involved but she decided to approach them without cynicism.
She went to see a psychic reader called Rima Thundercloud.
“Straight away she said to me, you’re a writer, you don’t have kids and listed a lot of my personality traits, where I am in my life and where I come from, that were really accurate.”
Hill says she tried not to give Thundercloud any visual clues, and initially she was very impressed by her findings.
Until about two-thirds of the way through the reading she was told she would live until about 200.
“At that point I thought, oh okay, that’s slightly less believable than the other information, but you know I still thought she was pretty good, I recommend.”
She visited one place in Sedona called Angel Valley, which had its own UFO landing pad.
Locals there told her of the goblins and fairies and that lived nearby.
“A friend of mine calls them Sedonuts – people who have grown up in Sedona or are all about this new age culture.”
There are meant to be four main rocks where the vortexes are, which can be masculine or feminine and affect people in different ways, she says.
Hill, who was working on a writing project at the time, says she was struck with inspiration after walking up one of the sandstones and felt like she had had several coffees while walking up another.
“Enlightenment is possibly not the pleasant experience you thought it might be.”
The mix of influences in the town, including Native American, Christian and pagan, feel appropriated, she says.
Despite mentions of virgins, angels and arch angels, any hint that the new age movement was linked to organised religion was staunchly denied.
“[They said] Religion is manmade, spirituality is of the earth.”
Hill says the exhibition she has created is about trying to understand the people involved and see where they’re coming from in a non-judgey way.
