Ketamine clinics are booming across the US. According to psychedelic fund PsyMed, there were around 20 ketamine clinics in 2019. By the end of last year, there were reportedly over 600 independent ketamine clinics, as well as chains like Mindbloom, Field Trip and Delic with multiple clinics and home delivery services.
Read MoreLast week I drove to Sedona, in Arizona, to find out how conspirituality has affected the New Age capital of the United States.
Why did this little town of 10,000 people become such a New Age Mecca? It’s in a gorgeous location, hidden away beneath giant red-rock sandstone protrusions, like alien vessels from an ancient civilization.
Read MoreBy eugenics I refer to a programme, launched in 1883 by Francis Galton, to improve the genetic quality of human beings, through negative eugenics (preventing those deemed genetically unfit from passing on their genes, either through voluntary or involuntary sterilization, confinement, or extermination) and through positive eugenics (encouraging those deemed genetically fit to pass on their genes more, through breeding with others deemed fit, or through donating their seed to ‘genius sperm banks’).
Read MoreOn March 17 2020, a few days after the WHO had declared COVID-19 a pandemic and states had enforced lockdowns on their citizens, Oprah Winfrey’s name trended on Twitter.
Read MoreAs we’ve explored in previous newsletters, New Age culture has had something of a shocker during the pandemic. It has, in the words of Jamie Wheal, turned into a ‘rat’s nest shitshow’.
Read MoreRick Archer emerged from a troubled youth to become a leading teacher of Transcendental Meditation. 12 years ago, he left TM and started Buddha At The Gas Pump, a podcast where he interviews spiritual teachers. It now has millions of views and downloads. I talked to Rick about how spirituality has changed since he first started meditating in 1968, and how he thinks New Age culture has fared during the COVID pandemic.
Read MoreThis is an interview with Eileen Dunn, a life coach who moved to Tulum in October 2020 with her partner Alba, to run a yoga studio. She tells me about her experience of living in Tulum, one of the New Age capitals on the global wellness circuit, during the COVID pandemic.
Read MoreIn the autumn of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, Dr Emily Grossman and her partner decided to move to Totnes, a small town in Devon that is popular with eco-hippies. Emily looked forward to escaping the Big Smoke and being surrounded by like-minded spiritual activists. A friend encouraged her to join some Totnes online chat groups. It was a rude awakening.
Read MoreThe documentary maker Adam Curtis wrote in 2010: ‘In Mad Men we watch a group of people who live in a prosperous society that offers happiness and order like never before in history and yet are full of anxiety and unease. They feel there is something more, something beyond. And they feel stuck.’
Read MoreWellness has not exactly bathed itself in glory during the pandemic. Over the last 18 months, it’s probably made the COVID crisis worse, spreading misinformation, anti-vaccine propaganda and far-right conspiracy theories.
The pandemic has brutally exposed wellness for its irrationalism, hyper-individualism, and homicidal selfishness.
Read MoreHere’s an interview I did with Jamie Wheal, author of Recapture the Rapture and co-author of Stealing Fire. We talked about his life and work, and then got stuck into western spirituality and what’s wrong with it.
Read MoreThe space tourism industry blasted off this week, with Virgin Galactic sending the first billionaire ego into orbit, before Jeff Bezos’ ego joins Richard Branson’s in the stratosphere on July 20.
A giant leap for homo sapiens, or pigs in space? You decide.
Read MoreIn the third century BC, Qin Shi Huang, the emperor of China, was obsessed with attaining immortality, so he sent his advisors throughout China to discover the elixir of eternal youth.
Today, in California, Silicon Valley billionaires are happy to spend a similar amount to try and become immortal gods.
Read MoreAbraham Maslow was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, who helped create humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, and the human potential movement. He believed he’d forged an empirical spirituality which would save the world from the modern crisis of valuelessness and meaninglessness.
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