The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age PDF
Preview The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age
THE CHANN BROWN MICHAEL F. CHANNELING ZONE THE CHANNELING ZONE THE American Spirituality in an Anxious Age BROWN MICHAEL F. HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1997 Copyright © 1997 by Michael F. Brown All rights reserved Printed in the United States ofAmerica Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, Michael F. (Michael Fobes), 1950- The channeling zone American spirituality in an anxious : age / Michael F. Brown, cm. p. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-10882-5 — — — 1. Channeling (Spiritualism) United States History 20th century. 2. Brown, Michael F. (Michael Fobes), 1950— — — 3. United States Religion 1960— I. Title. BF1286.B76 1997 133.9T0973—dc20 96-38375 5 CONTENTS" Preface vii Into the Channeling Zone 1 1 Up 2 Linking 15 3 Channeled Theology 38 4 Mastering Self-Expansion 70 5 Toward Sacred Androgyny 93 6 Dreaming of Community 1 1 7 Spiritual Commerce 142 8 Being Multiple 174 Notes 193 Bibliography 215 Index 231 — PREFACE During the winter of 989, was one ofseveral visit- 1 I ing anthropologists at the School of American Re- search, an institute for advanced study in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The snug adobe house provided by the School offered a view of the Sangre de Cristo and Jemez Mountains and the great sweep ofsky between them. Standing on the patio at night to watch the un- familiar western stars wheel overhead, I sometimes heard drumming from the house of my neighbor not an American Indian, as it turned out, but an Anglo woman who regularly performed all-night healing rituals for friends and clients. Her impromptu cere- monies served notice that had landed in an epicenter I ofthe New Age, a diffuse social movement ofpeople committed to pushing the boundaries of the self and bringing spirituality into everyday life. Although the New term Age shunned by some, accurately con- is it veys the optimism and perceived urgency of their quest. Ethnographic curiosity overpowered discretion, and began to attend spirituality workshops at the I Santa Fe Public Library and several of the town’s PREFACE viii personal-growth centers. Questions posed to people participat- ing in these meetings evoked tales of vision quests and personal Amazonian transformations that made the oral histories of the Indians about whom was then writing seem almost suburban I by comparison. After several months of casual study, I began to take a more systematic look at the social and cultural dimensions my of this flamboyant spiritual activity. Eventually research interest narrowed to one of the most controversial expressions of alternative spirituality, channeling, which can be defined as — the use of altered states of consciousness to contact spirits or, as many of its practitioners say, to experience spiritual energy captured from other times and dimensions. My journey into the world of channeling ultimately encom- passed four years of episodic interviewing and approximately eight months of full-time research, including participation in workshops and weekend seminars. All told, interviewed or ob- I served forty practitioners ofchanneling and hundreds ofordinary people who attended channeling sessions for enlightenment or entertainment. Much ofmy fieldwork was conducted in the vi- cinity of Santa Fe, a town where urban cowboys from Houston belly up to the bar next to past-life regression therapists from A Marin County. mecca for artists and health-seekers since the early 1900s, Santa Fe is today one of the nation’s foremost cen- ters of alternative spirituality, much to the chagrin of the local American Indians and Hispanics, who find themselves pushed to the margins as the city experiences unprecedented growth. Like the smaller community of Sedona, Arizona, about 400 miles to the west, it has become a magnet for Americans in search of forms ofspiritual understanding that they see as more authentic than those offered by mainstream religions. PREFACE IX For a broader perspective on channeling, also explored my I own backyard, western New England. In the eighteenth and New New nineteenth centuries, England and upstate York spawned many movements of religious renewal, ranging from the Great Awakenings of the 1740s and early 18(J0s to the uto- pian communes of the Shakers and the Oneida Community. Today the wellspring of American spiritual innovation has moved farther west. Nevertheless, New England offers an abundance of channeling workshops and counseling services New which, while less exuberant than their Mexican counter- My parts, still attract a diverse clientele. investigation also took me on short trips to Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Virginia. In the pages that follow, offer an assessment of channeling I that tacks between the views of its advocates and my own first- hand observations at a range of channeling events. The latter presented special difficulties. In intimate workshop settings where it would have been impossible to remain a bystander tak- ing notes in the corner, faced the choice of either pretending I to participate or actually throwing myself into the channeling experience as best I could. The second course proved simpler and more forthright. Participant-observation ultimately offered glimpses of the world behind channeling’s public face: subtle struggles over spiritual turf, tensions between autonomy and de- pendence, conflicting notions of gender, vexing issues of money, and a lively sense of humor often absent from channel- ing books and magazines. After months of involvement in the world of spirit commu- nication, came to the conclusion that most practitioners of I — who channeling as a rule refer to themselves as “channels” in
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