My mother's been abducted by Fruitcakes and has assigned herself Head of the Fruitcake Committee. She's recently gotten into spirituality � in the generic sense - and threw in some conspiracy theories to make it interesting. She watches Oprah, reads Deepak, and claims to be an Old Soul.

"Old Souls don't brag about being Old Souls," I point out, which throws her off for about a minute, then gets her rolling in another direction� to convince my younger siblings that their father is half alien (not the hostile kind). My dad swallows his food and looks around the table with an amused smile; well, at least he's being entertained. The kids, accustomed by now to my mother's dinner diatribes, respond with a blank but unsurprised stare.

She goes on to insist that the Big Bang theory is a lie, and that the mother ship will one day land and save us all. After dinner she loads me up with fruity literature: A Course in Miracles, The Celestine Prophesy, The Ways of the Wizard, Blah Blah Blah. I drop the books to the floor and hightail it out the door.

She calls later to assault me: "You know, Rania, these books are very spiritual. They might help you."

"With what?"

"They might help you just be a better person."

"You're implying that you, my mother, don't love me exactly as I am?"

"Don't be silly- "

"MOM. Old Souls don't force information on younger, more vulnerable souls."

I don't tell her the truth � which is that I already read them about ten years ago, when they all came out. And they're just as much bullshit now as ten years ago.

"Maybe you're just not spiritually ready to understand them yet," she concludes before we hang up.

Maybe she's right. But maybe not, because lately whatever sits in for spirituality casts a corporate shadow in the corner while you do your laundry, or watch Oprah, or do Pilates while watching Oprah. If you're alive, you will find yourself crossing paths with someone who was once devoutly religious or abused (whether sexually, emotionally, or mentally) getting 'reformed' into the world of New Age spirituality. And if they weren't abused or religious, they'll be joining the trend in order to not feel left out.

These days, a bad experience or two send people raiding the self-help section to arm themselves with ways to diminish the blows from life. After finishing a few books by some self-made guru, suddenly everyone is an authority on self-betterment and spirituality. If you're into the mystical stuff, read a couple of books on Atlantis and Edgar Cayce, and put yourself in the fruity starring role of wise guru in your own community. Bug your friends, family, and nameless strangers to death with your newly learned wisdom, to convince them that they need some spiritual healing because they have old wounds. You are concerned for their well-being. You care for your fellow spiritual citizens. You must help them! They can start their healing tomorrow by listening to Anthony Robbins tapes and picking up a copy of Spirituality for Morons on the way home.

The New Age movement both interests and bugs me for the same reasons organized religion does. Both have rituals, which at first glimpse are fascinating but turn to spooky jargon after a few minutes - when you get a whole room of people chanting, it's just creepy, no matter what the cause. New Age mongers meditate manically, ravenously toward a White Light. Religion feverishly hisses and prays away the devil. Both sides have an engraved, stubborn, knee-jerk reaction to any kind of unfamiliar darkness � anything, for that matter, which doesn't immediately fit into the benign, milky category of 'good'. You'd think we've outgrown that weird recoiling from the unfamiliar because, well, maybe someday it won't be that weird. And even if it continues to, then that's okay too, but why, why do we have to try and trap every little experience and brand it into the Good versus Bad pile? We haven't really grown up after all. Maybe it's these damned groups that are keeping us sheltered from actually getting any personal experience...who knows?

Most spiritual groups claim to know best and want you to join their community or to come around to their way of thinking. If you don't want to, it's made clear that there's probably something wrong with you. New Agers sometimes arrogantly imply that perhaps you're not evolved enough to join their lifestyle, or that you have too many wounds to do so. Religious people just pray for your damned soul. Both claim authentic concern, but in the end it's a numbers game � how many people can I get to join my team? The essence of Spiritualism, of New Age, has followed me around my whole life. It's compelled me to zero in on the clich�s of the New Age movement, which is making a killing off ordinary people with no leisure to soul-search but who need immediate answers. Religion does this too, but it's been doing it forever, and that's old news.

I did some research on New Age movements and found out that it wasn't New Age at all; it's a recycled version of what society's elite dabbled in about two hundred years ago. It's the crude, current version of the Victorian craze that really arose during the Industrial Revolution: Spiritualism and mesmerism, catching fire in England, and then spreading with rash-like rapidity in America.

The very subtle beginnings of Spiritualism first emerged with the notable and accomplished Swedish scientist/philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, who later on in life, around 1747, abandoned all his impressive scholarly and scientific work to become something of a mystic, gravitating toward spirituality as a higher calling. He studied the bible meticulously and formed his theories mainly around Christianity, but also claimed to be in contact with angels and spirit guides.

Okay, it's a little fruity, but fairly harmless. Asides from a good number of 'divinely inspired' books, Swedenborg was pretty low-key. At least the guy didn't go around preaching and ranting, or trying to ram his beliefs down anyone's throat. But whether or not he would've liked it, after his death a group of followers got together and started the Church of New Jerusalem, also called the New Church, and based it on Swedenborg's teachings.

Also, after Swedenborg's death, around 1840, Andrew Jackson Davis came on the scene in America. He was a poor kid raised in New York by an illiterate, strictly religious mom, and a drunken, abusive daddy. Davis started to hear random voices in his head while he was growing up and found that he fell into trance very easily (not surprising, considering his home life). He claimed to have visitations from Swedenborg and that Galen, the Greek physician, gave him a magic staff and told him to go become a clairvoyant healer. So Davis, without hardly any teaching (and not at all low-key, but probably, on some deep psychological level, starving for attention and validation), went on to lecture and preach and prescribe remedies to cure sickness. He furiously spread the word of Spiritualism and wrote some hefty books on the subject, which won over many would-be spiritualists.

The fascination with pseudo-sciences like Spiritualism was a cultural craze that arose at a time of huge social upheaval. Victorians were receptive to theories that provided explanations for their lives. The chaos and sweeping social reform in the early nineteenth century caused by the Industrial Revolution brought in an era where people were torn between the new materialism and the old religiosity. The theory that the spirit world overlapped and coexisted with the material one, and that souls went through different lives before evolving and returning back to the divine source � God � helped bridge that gap.

Andrew Jackson Davis was dubbed John the Baptist of Spiritualism because of his big mouth, and from his big mouth came forth the first big group of true-blue Fruitcake converts.

The Fox sisters came onto the scene in New York around the same time. Three little girls showed the world that they could contact the spirit world and communicate with a code that involved knocking; the spirits would once knock for yes, twice for no - that kind of thing. The Fox sisters took the world by storm and Spiritualism caught fire. Suddenly everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and trying their hand at spirit contact. In their later years, one of the sisters publicly confessed that the whole thing was a sham, a game, and they'd faked the spirit knocks by popping their double-jointed toes under the table. Naturally, this was treated with I-Told-You-So indignation by the skeptics, but the true Fox followers believed them nonetheless, especially when that same sister recanted her confession later. She claimed that she'd been offered the money for the confession and had no choice since she and her sisters were very poor and needed the money.

For some time I thought the New Age movement was based on Paganism, 'The Old Religion'. It's not exactly. Paganism did make a comeback later in the 50's, in the form of Wicca, or Neo-Paganism. It seems the New Age movement is something of a hybrid between both Spiritualism and Wicca, though Spiritualism often referred to the bible and tried to incorporate some science, while Wicca identified more with nature, held magical practices and the incorporated the use of herbs. The New Age is hard to define or pin down as an individual category, though it did start getting very popular in the 70's. It's changed along the way, but has remained relentless in trying to lure believers in with promises of healing, harmony, and happiness. You know. Heaven.

The New Age movement can go from the mild to the insane. It's a slippery subject because it's supposed to be based on general self-betterment and anyone can argue, 'What the hell is so wrong with trying to make my life better?'. That's actually the exact problem with it. It can take the most basic form of self-concern and manipulate it for a very large cost. The cost can be money or identity, but it's sometimes a combination of both. Either way, the New Age movement takes human compassion and markets it. That's not all that admirable. Human compassion is individual. Market it, and you have a knock-off, a generic version of the real thing. Compassion can only be cultivated within a person, by that person alone. Some help is alright, but taking someone's hand and making him or her chant forgiveness and acceptance isn't authentic. It's a sale.

Even if a person goes from Catholicism/Islam/Judaism/Whatever and switches to New Age, they're still going to get boxed into a set of beliefs. They're going to do so unknowingly. They'll talk about how they detest the old rigid upbringing and then probably turn around and choose another, more colorful cage. To them it won't look like a cage, though � it'll look like freedom. And the bottom line is, no matter how free you think you are, you won't immediately be if you train-jump from one belief to another. You might find yourself in a group that's an antidote for what you were spiritually missing before � and that may be one of the reasons why women in particular are drawn to the New Age movement. It's not patriarchal, and it's always tipping the scale in another direction, by claiming women are more powerful and more connected with the earth. This is somehow supposed to heal the woman's lifelong wound, which for many years was between her legs, to make her believe that by simply being born female, she's enlightened and a priestess of the earth or moon or whatever.

The question is: are you changing sides because the other box is more appealing, or are you just doing some personal exploration? Because asides from some external differences, all spiritual groups are in fact just groups. Even atheists are a bunch of nonbelievers as opposed to being believers, and all sides are pretty much a contradiction of one another, even though, in the end, they have something very important in common � they're all just groups.

Human beings have a strange hunger to create a sense of community, and it often manifests through spirituality first. The communal pull, the desire to form a group, or family of people, isn't formed out of independence and confidence; people don't generally form spiritual groups out of happiness. They usually form them to fill a hole and connect with others through some kind of suffering. In connecting through suffering, the ultimate motive might be compassion. The longing is what creates the suffering and the hunger. But, paradoxically, the second you reach out to others in the same state and try to cement a bridge with compassion, you lose the suffering. If others in pain come into your sphere, you suddenly have the magical answer � join us to make this awful feeling go away. We have a set of rituals to make it all go away. Pretty soon you've lost the suffering, which is good, but have acquired a kind of immunity to it on another level, which may not be so good. You've also lost your ability to connect on that level, and maybe on the way to losing compassion. You've taken your hand and directly taken control of things that maybe you have no business controlling. Perhaps none of us are meant to be wholly happy or unhappy � perhaps we're meant to be an oil-and-vinegar combination of both in order to understand both.

In my own way I've strived to understand both. I've had my own share of cynicism � obviously still do- and managed to go off course. In fact, for the past 15 years I've read tarot and palms and found that I've a knack for the esoteric. I even made my living in New Orleans a while ago by being, gulp, a fortune teller � and found that I was pretty damn good at it. The longer I did it, the better I became at the art of 'divination'. I heard whispers, saw weird pictures in my mind's eye, and sometimes gave my customers a glimpse into the worlds of their deceased loved ones. But I was uncomfortable about it, self-conscious and reserved. What I could do didn't fit anywhere in my beliefs, or non-beliefs. It was a personal anomaly for me, and sheer, stupid luck that I could read tarot cards. I placed myself away from other psychics, more particularly the Fruity ones � the ones that liked to brag about their 'visions' and past lives, in which they were almost always some kind of royalty or native of the lost city of Atlantis. Or Egypt.

These were the psychics I steered far from but who somehow always found their way into my booth once they learned I was born in Egypt. Their introductory statement was always, "You know, I have such a connection with Ancient Egypt. I was there, you know."

"That's great," I always said. "I wasn't."

In truth, I was often embarrassed to say I worked with these people. I'm usually embarrassed for them because they sometimes can't even say they're upping the image for the sake of work � most did it because they felt a tug from beyond and had to exaggerate it in order to get their conscious minds to pay attention. They needed the validation from that other censor, the silent parent that may or not be alive, but had most certainly given them hell.

Maybe I even envy them since I don't have such special visions. I don't see much, at least not regarding myself. I've heard voices in my head giving the most practical and obvious solutions: Brush your teeth. Don't order another drink. Get some sleep.

No one ever told me what to do or not do.

For me, these voices are miraculous. I needed them, and they kicked in. My more fanciful personal reflections weren't any more romantic: Look at the sky. Look at the ground. What do you think?

Psychologists might call this phenomenon the development of 'self-parenting', or simple awareness, while those in the New Age movement call it help from a 'Spirit Guide'.

But as far as I'm concerned, it's too good and too personal to market or name.

References:
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/profiles/listalpha.htm - Unbiased site that lists the history and origins of about 200 religions, from standard Catholicism to Santeria. Also provides various interesting links on each group.
http://www.livingtruth.net/foxsister.html - One version of the Fox sisters story.
http://www.whatwasthen.com/foxsisters.html - Another version of the Fox sisters story.
http://psychicinvestigator.com/Occult/Mesmr.htm - Really interesting life story of Anton Mesmer, the father of 'Mesmerism' (eventually called hypnosis) and another key figure in Spiritualism.

Rania Zada's first book, on her experiences on the sex trade, is finished and has been purchased for publication, though it lacks a title. She was born in Egypt. Recently.