(4 of 11)
All in all, the New Age does express a cloudy sort of religion, claiming vague connections with both Christianity and the major faiths of the East (New Agers like to say that Jesus spent 18 years in India absorbing Hinduism and the teachings of Buddha), plus an occasional dab of pantheism and sorcery. The underlying faith is a lack of faith in the orthodoxies of rationalism, high technology, routine living, spiritual law-and-order. Somehow, the New Agers believe, there must be some secret and mysterious shortcut or alternative path to happiness and health. And nobody ever really dies.
Like other believers, many New Agers attach great importance to artifacts, relics and sacred objects, all of which can be profitably offered for sale: Tibetan bells, exotic herbal teas, Viking runes, solar energizers, colored candles for "chromotherapy," and a Himalayan mountain of occult books, pamphlets, instructions and tape recordings. Some of these magical products are quite imaginative. A bearded Colorado sage who calls himself Gurudas sells "gem elixirs," which he creates by putting stones in bowls of water and leaving them in the sun for several hours, claiming that this allows the water to absorb energy from the sun and the stone.
Most New Agers prefer the stones themselves, specifically crystals of all sorts. These are not only thought to have mysterious healing powers but are considered programmable, like a computer, if one just concentrates hard enough. (The most powerful crystals are buried deep under New England, some New Agers believe, because New England was once connected to Atlantis, the famous "lost continent.")
Tina Lucia, a self-styled therapist in Stone Mountain, Ga., uses crystals to treat patients, because "physical problems are manifestations of spiritual problems." Gallbladder ailments, she says, come from a bitterness toward God, and lung trouble from a hatred of one's own body. "All you have to do is release these problems," she says. She uses amethyst, rose and blue quartz, and even black onyx and obsidian. One of her satisfied customers is Annette Manders, who wields a crystal wand that Lucia gave her. "I healed a fungus under my toenail with my wand," says Manders, "and I had a stomach problem that doesn't bother me anymore. The energy is subtle. It's not like you're being zapped."
Another favorite New Age cure for the misfortunes of the body is the . therapeutic touch, again an ancient method newly back in fashion. While nobody knows exactly how these quasi-medical techniques work, people generally turn to them because conventional medicine seems so impersonal, costs so much and fails so often. Greg Schelkun, for example, graduated from Dartmouth and was working for a Boston publisher when he got a chance to go to the Orient with his mother, who was suffering from chronic chills and fevers. In the Philippines she met a healer who laid his hands on her and cured her. The healer also cured Schelkun of migraine headaches, which he had suffered for 15 years. "At the time, I didn't know what was going on," says Schelkun. "All I knew was that the headaches stopped."