{"id":4015,"date":"2012-03-25T10:05:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-25T16:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4015"},"modified":"2012-03-25T10:23:34","modified_gmt":"2012-03-25T16:23:34","slug":"of-new-agers-nazis-and-vin-chaud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4015","title":{"rendered":"Of New Agers, Nazis, and Vin Chaud"},"content":{"rendered":"

People described variously as “hippies” and “New Agers” apparently view a mountain in the French Pyrenees as some sort of a refuge from the upcoming apocalypse<\/a> (you do have that on your calendar, don’t you?).<\/p>\n

A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers \u2013 or esoterics, as locals call them \u2013 have descended in their camper van-loads on the usually picturesque and tranquil Pyrenean village of Bugarach. They believe that when apocalypse strikes on 21 December this year, the aliens waiting in their spacecraft inside Pic de Bugarach will save all the humans near by and beam them off to the next age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, no one actually interviews any of them. That would require work, and this is just one Oliver Pickup of The Independent <\/em>free-associating at his keyboard.<\/p>\n

For decades, there has been a belief that Pic de Bugarach, which, at 1,230 metres, is the highest in the Corbi\u00e8res mountain range, possesses an eery power. Often called the “upside-down mountain” \u2013 geologists think that it exploded after its formation and the top landed the wrong way up \u2013 it is thought to have inspired Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth<\/em> and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind<\/em>. Since the 1960s, it has attracted New Agers, who insist that it emits special magnetic waves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s see, the travelers in Journey to the Centre of the Earth<\/em> enter lava tubes in an Icelandic volcano<\/a>, and Close Encounters<\/em> is set at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, but hey, when you’re Oliver Pickup, one mountain is as good as the next.<\/p>\n

There should be something here for researchers into new religious movements though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People described variously as “hippies” and “New Agers” apparently view a mountain in the French Pyrenees as some sort of a refuge from the upcoming apocalypse (you do have that on your calendar, don’t you?). A rapidly increasing stream of New Age believers \u2013 or esoterics, as locals call them \u2013 have descended in their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,95],"class_list":["post-4015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-france","tag-journalism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-12L","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":425,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=425","url_meta":{"origin":4015,"position":0},"title":"The juice and the buildingsMichael\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"The juice and the buildingsMichael Strmiska draws my attention to an article published 10 years ago on the transformation of the Unitarian church: \"Strained Bedfellows: Pagans, New Agers, and 'Starchy Humanists' in Unitarian Universalism.\"According to the author, sociologist Richard Wayne Lee, the denomination had been a heavily rationalist group in\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1888,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1888","url_meta":{"origin":4015,"position":1},"title":"Spiritual Tourism Drops in Sedona","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"An only slightly snarky article (it is the New York Times, after all) reports on a decline in \"spiritual tourism\" in Sedona, Arizona.. Local New Agers seem divided as to whether the economy or the James Arthur Ray sweat lodge deaths are more to blame. After all the sweat lodge\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":964,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=964","url_meta":{"origin":4015,"position":2},"title":"Where’s the Wall? I Need to Hit It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Forgive the melodramatic headline, but I have been grading tests and research papers for about six hours. At least \"the big class\" is done, and what lies ahead will be more pleasant reading--essays by better student writers.So to make up for the lack of blogging, some odds and ends:\u2022 A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4317,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4317","url_meta":{"origin":4015,"position":3},"title":"My Son “Was No Zombie”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"So says the mother of the man shot by Miami police while eating the face of his victim. But catch what the girlfriend says: \" ' That wasn\u2019t him, that was his body but it wasn\u2019t his spirit.\u00a0 Somebody did this to him,' WFOR quotes her as saying.\" Isn't that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=442","url_meta":{"origin":4015,"position":4},"title":"Taos Notes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 23, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I got in the new Jeep, headed up the \"secret cutoff\" and came over the mountains and down to Taos for a couple of days.There is always a nostalgia component for me here, dating back to the summers in college when I worked on what you might call\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"New Mexico\"","block_context":{"text":"New Mexico","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-mexico"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3557,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3557","url_meta":{"origin":4015,"position":5},"title":"2012 Is Coming!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"So what better Yule gift for your loved ones than Mystic Mayan Protection Cloaks? (Link probably NSFW.)","rel":"","context":"In \"apocalypse\"","block_context":{"text":"apocalypse","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=apocalypse"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4018,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions\/4018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}