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From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@get2net.dk>
Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1999 19:16:23 +0100 (MET)
Fwd Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1999 15:16:00 -0500
Subject: Of Spirits And Wider Reality In Sedona


[List only]

Source: The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/038/nation/Of_spiri
ts_and_wider_reality_in_Arizona+.shtml

Stig

***

Of spirits and wider reality in Arizona

By Leo W. Banks, Globe Correspondent, 02/07/99

**

SEDONA, Ariz. - The UFO gift shop, Starport Sedona, is buzzing
this morning. Over here is a conversation between two
middle-aged women, each detailing her own tale of abduction by
space aliens. Over there is a silver-haired fellow, apparently
of considerable means, studying a wall map pinned with the
latest UFO sightings.

Down on Main Street, leaflets posted everywhere tout come-ons
from psychics, pyramid builders, angels, and a bearded fellow
named Joa, who promises to read your soul for $1.25 a minute.

"We live in the land of the woo-woos," said Thom Stanley, editor
of Sedona Excentric, a monthly publication that pokes fun at
things New Age. "We started this newspaper because we'd go into
restaurants and bars and everybody was talking about crystal
crunchers. But nobody was writing about them."

Before 1989, Sedona could not have supported a publication like
Stanley's. Then, the town was little more than a pretty village
in central Arizona's red rock country, a gas and gift stop
populated by well-off retirees and artists.

Now, it's a six-stoplight tourist mecca that attracts 4 million
visitors a year, many drawn by a belief in the concept of a
vortex, a place in the Earth said to emit healing energy. New
Agers say that four such vortexes exist in the area, and that
they make it easier for humans to communicate with spirits, to
get in touch with dead relatives, or to find their own past
lives.

But Sedona's crystal revolution hasn't been all insight and
inner peace. Some of those who have hung out spiritual shingles
are on the distant fringe of reality. Robert Shapiro, who
describes himself as a trance channeler, teaches expanded
perception, and claims to have instructed a young woman how to
become invisible so she could visit her lover in prison.

This summer, visitors might have attended a seminar by Gabriel
of Sedona. If you can understand the topics covered, you
probably did not need to attend. They included: planetary divine
administration, complementary relationships among ascending sons
and daughters, ascension science and inter-universal physics,
and the repercussions of the Lucifer Rebellion. The seminar
closed with a chat by the Bright and Morning Star of Salvington,
head administrator of our universe.

Many locals are not enamored of the reputation Sedona has
earned, and they see other down sides to Sedona's popularity.

"The only vortex I ever felt was all the money being sucked out
of my wallet," says painter Rand Carlson, who lived in Sedona
for two years before returning to Tucson.

Spiritual living is costly. Because the rents paid by shop
owners are so high, the price of goods is high as well. Even
food shopping is affected. Some residents, including the retired
writer Alan Caillou, drive to a neighboring town for groceries.

"You can't buy a sweater in Sedona for less than $150," Caillou
said. "I drive to the Wal-Mart in Cottonwood and get a
sweatshirt for $30.

Sedona's economy is either Mercedes rich or back-breakingly
poor. High housing costs force workers to live elsewhere.
Waitresses, maids, and store clerks, whose standard wage is
around $7 an hour, cannot afford to buy or rent here. They live
in apartments and trailers in Cottonwood, 18 miles from Sedona,
and Cornville, 12 miles away.

The Chamber of Commerce president, Frank Miller, says that
growth - a modest 2 to 3 percent a year - would run higher,
except that the US Forest Service controls much of the land
surrounding Sedona.

Even so, development is a divisive issue, and it is not the
construction of homes on acre lots that causes the upset. It is
the boom in time-sharing apartments, in which buyers purchase
one week a year for the privilege of living among the red rocks.

"Time shares are freaking everybody out," Stanley said. "Instead
of one home and two cars on the lot, you've got 150 people and
150 cars."

And traffic. Although refugees from such cities as Los Angeles
and Boston chuckle at the grousing about congestion, longtime
Sedonans are horrified by it. The joke here is that old people
have to shop one side of Highway 89 one day, and the other side
the next because the traffic is so bad they can't get across.

Blaming the New Agers for Sedona's problems happens in part
because they are a handy scapegoat, and because the two have
been inextricably tied. The publicity the town receives, in
travel magazines and on television, invariably portrays it as a
Shangri-la for the soul.

The CBS News program "48 Hours" aired a segment on Sedona in
which fairies were discovered inside buildings. Producers also
found a real estate agent who checks to make sure that the aura
of a home matches that of the buyer.

Such publicity brings visitors who buy the pitch. The chamber,
which used to ignore the New Age influence, has given in to it
and now trumpets "mystical Sedona" on its Web site. Even Gabriel
of Sedona, who runs a compound populated by followers who think
he's god, is a dues-paying member of the Chamber.

"People who snickered at the vortexes are now painting their
Jeeps in dazzling colors," said a resident, Jim Bishop. "I think
more people are selling the New Age here than living it, to be
honest."

Those who do live it are raising angry hackles. The Forest
Service in particular isn't thrilled by the unauthorized use of
its land for religious ceremonies.

An example is the construction of medicine wheels on federal
property. These large circles of loosely stacked rocks are
considered symbols of the Earth's energy and a focal point for
meditation and prayer. But the Forest Service says that
disturbing natural features of the landscape is illegal and
constitutes vandalism.

The latest craze is burying crystal at prehistoric rock art
sites, or leaving blue cornmeal as an offering to the Earth -
both illegal if the site is designated an archeological dig.

"A lot of them don't follow leave-no-trace practices," said Bill
Stafford, a Forest official in Sedona. "But that's everybody,
not just New Agers. We have worse problems with litter and
people driving helter-skelter with four-by-fours."

Pete A. Sanders Jr., an informal spokesman for spiritual Sedona,
believes in vortex power, based on his studies of physics while
a student at MIT, from which he graduated in 1972. He has taught
medicine wheel etiquette to New Age pilgrims, and he recommends
that rather than disturb the landscape, they build wheels in
their minds.

Sanders says he's troubled by New Agers out to make a buck, and
those who "enslave people as devotees." But he also believes
that elements within the Forest Service and the town at large
are prejudiced against New Agers.

"I don't support all the things people here believe," said
Sanders, author of four books, including "You Are Psychic." "But
I allow people to have their own beliefs. People come here on
spiritual pilgimages the same way they go to Mecca or Lourdes."

But others are bothered by the use of Native American ceremonies
by New Age adherents. Medicine wheels are not a product of
Navajo or Hopi cultures, and the sweat lodges that operate in
Sedona are not run by legitimate medicine men. What happens at
these rituals often has only passing connection to any real
tribal custom.

Margo Running, a masseuse and teacher in training whose former
husband was a Lakota Sioux, has tried to raise awareness and
respect among tour operators, spiritual guides and
schoolchildren.

In tribal cultures, the needs of the medicine man were met by
those he helped. But in Sedona, Running says, money is the new
buffalo robe.

"We took your land, killed your culture, and cut off your hair,
and now we want your spirituality, too," Running said. "To most
Indians, this town is a joke. It's a matter of showing respect."

**

This story ran on page A08 of the Boston Globe on
02/07/99.

=A9Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.