Blog/Apologetics: I Went to a New Age Expo (Stranger in a Strange Land)

For some reason, writing this introduction reminds me of the end of a My Little Pony episode, in which Twilight Sparkle writes to Princess Celestia about what she learned about the power of friendship that episode. This is probably due to the fact that this was my first time ever going to one of these events. So, here’s my “Dear Princess Celestia,” letter about what it was like going to this New Age expo and what I learned.

The first thing I noticed about this expo was that it was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Back in April, we had considered going to what we found out was the biggest one in the state, but because that was the weekend we had dedicated to standardized testing and the event center it was held in usually has peanuts (little blobs of death) all over the floor from other events held there, we didn’t go. However, there were still a lot of interesting people there for my family to talk to in our quest to learn about world religions.

The second thing I noticed was that almost everyone was a white female, usually appearing to be from the LGBTQ+ crowd. There were very few guys there, and my dad totally stuck out like a sore thumb. Never before have I so understood the jokes about white women, essential oils, and crystals. Now, it all makes sense.

The third thing I noticed going into the expo was the fact that the booths were really split into five main groups: crystals (including salt) and metals, physics/mediums/astrologers, mushrooms, CBD, and weird “healing” rituals. That was pretty much all the vendors were selling, with a few outliers, such as a guy who was just there to sell his cool-looking woodwork, and the Hare Krisha dudes (more on them in a second). Weird, but having seen entire stores dedicated to this stuff being as common as Dunkin’ Donuts shops on the East Coast in some towns in my state, I wasn’t super surprised. At least the crystals were pretty and there was this ridiculous sign that was the first thing we saw walking in:

No, that’s not two planets right before disaster. Those are salt balls…very intentionally placed salt balls. They’re heated and you’re supposed to hold them because the heated salt will somehow help cleanse your soul or something. Personally, I have a salt lamp that used to get warm before the light bulb died and I have never once felt cleansed by having it on. My main thought has usually been, “Do I really want to lick this when I don’t remember the last time I dusted it?” (I can confirm it is real salt.)

Anywho…

We walked around for a little bit, checking out the stands and what people were selling and came to our first mushroom stand, where we were immediately offered a cup of ‘shroom coffee. Because there’s nothing like ruining the sacred bean juice with brain-bending fungi. Yummy.

We politely passed on the ‘shroom coffee and my mom started asking the guy helping run the stand about the mushrooms and what they were about. He told us that they weren’t like the psychedelic mushrooms that we were taught to say “no” to but were a milder form of mushrooms that wouldn’t mess with your brain, but actually would because it could help with memory, intelligence, ADHD, anxiety, depression, allergies, and a million and one other things by messing with the brain. So, in other words, they were, in fact, mind-altering mushrooms that were meant as a cure-all, even though they’re as unscientific as other supposed cure-alls. And, for a price of $99, you could get an entire mason jar of mushroom caps!

But wait! There’s more! To top it all off, the stand was actually run by a lady name Uri, who is – according to her bio – a “high priestess of the Temple of Sedona, certified hypnotherapist, certified RTT therapist, counselor, past life regression practitioner, breathwork facilitator, Vortex Breathwork™creator, certified CHEK holistic life practitioner, holistic health expert, Universal Tao instructor, priestess trainer, Divine Code channel, Moon and Star Ceremonialist,” whose sessions can cost you anywhere from $222-$5,555. And the Universal Tao instructor thing also involves practicing “sexual Kung Fu” for healing, which I doubt involves learning how to kick someone in the nuts. So, yeah…I trust her.

After checking out the mushroom stand, we moved around some more, looking over some other stands, scoping out the area, looking for someone we could chat with. Mom went off to talk to someone and I decided it was time to move out of my comfort zone and do the same. Thus, I moved over to a stand selling a whole slew of pebble-sized crystals and minerals and began looking over them. To be fair, they were pretty, and I might’ve taken one home just for that reason if they weren’t ridiculously overpriced and it wasn’t a New Age expo.

Noticing that I was looking over the crystal pebbles, the lady running the booth walked over (or, rather, turned around) and asked how I was doing and what brought me to the expo. I was not entirely sure how to answer this question as I hadn’t really been expecting it. On one hand, I wanted to say I was a Christian, but on the other hand I didn’t want to scare this woman off, because, as we would later see with the Hare Krishna guys, sometimes when you say you’re a Christian, people’s guards immediately go up due to bad experiences with Christians, fear of being judged, or fear of being exposed as a grifter.

Looking back on it, I should’ve been upfront and said I was a Christian, but instead I said I was just there to check things out and learn about other worldviews, which was technically true, but still. “Are you new to all of this?” she asked.

“Yeah, this is my first time,” I said.

“Has anything weirded you out?”

I laughed. “A little bit. To be honest, the whole swoosh swoosh thing is a bit odd.” I was referring to the stall across from hers that was performing energy healings with bowls placed on the person’s stomach while the “healer” was waving her hands over the person while making swooshy noises.

She laughed as well and assured me that the energy healing from that healer was actually awesome and informed me that at some point, I should get one since expo events have the lowest prices. She then asked if I had any questions, gesturing to the wide array of crystal pebbles. Time for my mad beginner-Christian-apologist skills to kick in.

“Um…I guess, how do these all work?” I asked. Off to a good start.

She then went on to explain that all the crystals come from the earth and are pushed up through the rock, and thus have vibrations from the earth that can help us balance our vibrations (because everything has a vibration in the New Age) and promote balance in the Force – sorry, the chakras, which are color coded with the rocks for your convenience. Red, brown, and black rocks can be used to help with the red chakra at your feet, which is for grounding; yellow ones are for the yellow chakra at your stomach and can be used for creativity; light blue rocks are for – you guessed it – the light blue chakra, etc. None of this actually works, of course, but it’s a great money-making scheme. And you apparently get a rock friend (not played by Dwayne Johnson) from it, because you form a relationship with the rock. I always wondered what was with that one Sesame Street character and her pet rock….

However, there’s a weakness in the color-coded spirit pebbles, and that is: technology. Apparently, if you put your magic rock collection around your T.V., near your phone, your laptop, etc. the bad vibes from the technology will totally make the pebbles no longer rad, man. In other words, if it doesn’t work, don’t blame me. Blame the T.V.

All this talk about vibrations and stuff then led me to ask, “If everything has a vibration that’s so powerful that it can promote healing and stuff, then why don’t more hospitals use this to cure people?”

To give the woman credit, she admitted it’s because it hasn’t been scientifically proven to help with anything, – so it’s all a placebo. Unfortunately, the conversation had to end there since she had other customers to attend to, but she gave me her business card and I, having successfully talked to a person, decided to find another person to talk to.

The next person I talked to was a professional astrologer, who, for $30 would read your horoscope and give you an astrological prediction. I asked how she got into astrology, and she was saying that she got into it because it’s a very scientific and mathematical thing that’s super accurate (it’s not). I don’t remember the entire conversation as some of it was a bit repetitive, but three highlights were that:

1. We somehow are born in alignment with our random moon/sun/star/which-star-trek-character-are-you? sign and it’s a mystery to literally everyone how that happens.
2. Astrology is compatible with everything because it’s how God/god(s) communicate with us and our divine selves (which, if you’ve read your Bible recently, especially Deut. 18:10-12, Lev. 19: 26, 31, Isaiah 47:13-14, or Jeremiah 10:2, you’ll know that any sort of interpreting omens, divination (including astrology), etc. is forbidden by God.)
3. Much of what she was learning was from psychologists, including disciples of Carl Jung, which means that not only is there an occultic element, but also a psychological element, which is problematic on many levels, but especially when you’re looking at the big picture, you’re not going to be able to do that in 20 minutes. For some people, it can take years to break down someone’s past to figure out what’s troubling them.

After that, I walked around, talked to a few more people, discovered that somehow wearing a copper circle on your head is supposed to be good for you because ions exist and we’re “copper beings” who desperately need more copper in everything, including water bottles (although copper is illegal if there’s more than 5 parts per billion in your water), and Renewal by Andersen will go anywhere if it means getting your permission (and money) to replace your windows and doors. Interestingly, I didn’t see many people willingly going over to be hassled by salesmen. Renewal by Andersen should’ve just said that their glass was a special type of glass that could heal your super-powerful transparent chakra or something. They would’ve been much more successful.

After more wandering, I finally managed to find my dad talking to a woman who was trying to sell energy healings while my brother looked bored out of his skull as he watched the random baby goat walk around the area (I did mention this was a weird event, right?). I had walked in on the conversation and didn’t really know what they had been talking about before, but it soon turned into a debate on sin, why people suck, and karma. Her main argument was that we have freewill to do good or evil things and that that is determined by lived experiences from this and previous lives, the cultures we grow up in, and leftover bad karma from past lives or something. This, of course, makes no sense, as it fails to explain where original sin comes from, especially since she also believed that all are born pure with no sin. When I brought this up, she suggested that it came from past lives, but once again, this doesn’t explain anything, since, as I pointed out to her, that means that someone, at some point, needed to have sinned in a way that affects everyone else in the human race.

She then went on to deny this, and we continued to run in circles for several minutes, debating sin nature, morality, and where “energy” comes from. She said that our spiritual energy comes from the stars, which she can pull down for us plebs to make us better in our karma journeys. I then asked her where those stars come from and almost got her to admit the existence of God, but she stopped herself before that happened, only vaguely acknowledging the existence of a creator. To give her credit, at least the debate was polite, and she raised some interesting points, though none of them made sense and she constantly skirted around the question.

Now for the super interesting part of the Expo – the Hare Krishna cult. No, these are not Hindu bunnies hopping around being cute and fluffy. These guys are a group that popped up in the 60’s as the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and became an interesting part of the larger hippie movement due to the counterculture’s fascination with Eastern religion and philosophy. However, while this group was pretty popular in the 60’s and 70’s, it started losing popularity in the 80’s, which only sped up in the 90’s, especially as more allegations of child abuse came out. As of 2000, there are estimated to be, at most, 900 members of the cult, with the majority of them being Indian.

But, despite the cult’s relatively small following, we somehow managed to run into them, with my dad being unable to talk much to them after he had told one of the guys that he was a Christian (they didn’t like that much). Me and my mom, who hadn’t blown our cover yet, were able to talk with them and talked to a monk who I’ll nickname Jay. Jay was somewhat new, having only been in the cult for a year and was desperately trying to get us to take a book set.

Jay was probably the saddest person to talk to as he was pretty young – early college age, maybe – and was trying to turn a new leaf in his life by joining the Hare Krishnas. He didn’t seem quite convinced in what he was trying to sell us on, but he was dedicated, though his beliefs made absolutely no sense. Being based in Hinduism, the Hare Krishnas believe in panentheism, the belief that we’re all part of God/god. Jay explained how Krishna is just another name for God, how we’re all just a tiny drop of him, and all religions are different branches of the bigger tree trunk, ultimately leading to the same place though they all contradict each other. It made no sense.

However, though Jay was wrong on who he thought God is, he did say some things that I could agree with, like how God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, God cares about mankind, God created the world, etc. The problem was that the god he’s associating these traits to isn’t the God of Christianity, but is Krishna, a blue-butted, schizophrenic frat boy. I wish I had asked him if he had studied any other religions, but sadly, I didn’t. Oh well.

So, what did I learn from this? Mainly, if you pick up a rock off the ground and say that it’ll help your butt chakra, you can sell it to random people for an exorbitant price. But more than that, I learned that a lot of people are desperate and being scammed, and that’s the biggest tragedy of the entire thing.

Until next time,

M.J.