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New Age Embarrassment?
Here’s another funny personal question: when you go to the bookstore, do you ever feel sort of embarrassed or at least self-conscious when you’re standing there looking at the New Age section? I used to feel really awkward about it, but it’s mostly gone away. Every once in a while though, it still creeps back up on me. Fortunately, most of those sections are tucked away in some back corner, so the freaks and weirdos can cavort away from the normals. It’s different if I’m at a used bookstore though. Because used bookstores have that cool creepy vibe where it’s almost like you SHOULD be seeking out the most obscure and bizarre tome that the place possibly has. Anyway, does this feeling of self-consciousness happen to anybody else or am I just a wingnut?
August 24th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Ha! I was thinking the exact same thing about used bookstores before I even read that part! But yeah, I still feel embarassed in the new age section.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
it`s that catholic upbringing, not letting you go too far without feeling the leash of dogma. i was in discussion about my master`s degree in divinity studies at starbucks and a lady came up and said she wished she could take her masters but she felt embarassed and i realised afterwards that the feeling she is experiencing is in reference to those around her who hold positions of power in the church and work(she was a teacher at a catholic school). for her to have her doctorate would create a power shift in her work and she would have to be prepared for some issues as a result, hence the embarassement.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
I don’t get embarrassed if they have any good books, but if it all turns out to be “Teen Witch”, I feel pretty silly. Like getting caught reading Cosmo.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
First of all, there’s a lot of important information to be found in Cosmo. Never feel bad about reading it.
Secondly, it’s not so much the “Teen Witch” books that embarrass me, but the sizing-up looks one gets from the teens looking at the teen witch books.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
yeah, it’s kinda embarrassing if you look for something and see Chicken Soup for the Witch’s Soul or like you said ‘Teen Witch’. I usually just browse through it as I walk by because they tend to not have much of interest to me since I pretty much know what they have anyway.
By the way, have any particularly interesting occult book recommendations, or maybe an occult book club? I’m looking to broaden my knowledge on any number of subjects.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
Definitely a little weird, standing there at Borders, where the New Age section is literally three feet across an aisle from the “Lef Behind” Series. Personally, I get a kick out short circuiting conservative brains, so BRING IT ON!
Anyhow people should be far more embarassed about reading Harry Potter, if you ask me, and nobody gives even a second glance to the army of freaks that float around the Potter display in costume.
All in all, “prunes” has a good point - sometimes you show up in a New Age section and all you find is “How to cast spells with things you find under your sink.” THAT feels kinda silly.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
damn Tim, I was just looking at your pictures section, and you should make some web-comics. haha, that would be great! Doctor Future and the Holy Robot and the others.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Ha, there’s nothing wrong with Harry Potter. Everybody’s gotta work within the language that feels comfortable to them, I think.
Alistair, you’re right - my parents ingrained a very heavy programming against the New Age and occult. It’s taken me years to dismantle it and sometimes still gets the better of me.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
Thanks Daniel. I do have plans to get back in the illustration game sooner or later, but I have a lot of other projects on my plate at the moment.
August 24th, 2005 at 3:37 pm
This is funny. I’ve noticed the same thing. However, in the Barnes and Noble near me, the occult/new age section is an aisle over from the Gnostic section, which is directly across from and actually runs right into the Christian fiction section. Then again, if you read some of the recent theology books popping up on biblical myth versus Christian literalism, you could almost argue in favor of categorizing the entire Christian section as being fiction (said with a hint of sarcasm).
August 24th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
heh he, i tend to avoid big-box bookstores like the plague. thankfully seattle is chock-full of awesome used bookstores, and close enough to portland for an occasional pilgrimage to powells, which is the best bookstore EVER and reason enough to live in this area, imho. plus there’s always amazon. give me a tiny used bookstore or the massive and categorized powells any day!
i think it says a lot about the dippiness of the newage movement that people get embarassed trying to wade through that crap.
August 24th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Yes! Not for what I read, but for what people might think I’m reading! LOL Of course,. living where i do, there are several awesome ued/antiquarian shops, and one amazing Occult bookstore that actually caters to magicians rather than new agers or Pagans. Our Borders has a “magical studies” section that seperates the good stuff from the rainbow stuff, but at the other, you have to dig through ‘channeled’ books, gods from outer space, sitchin, all that sort of crap, which I get embrassed even watching ppl read.
August 24th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
At one time, they kept some of Pagels books (at my local Borders/Books in a Box) in the “New Age” section.
It always does feel a bit weird being in that section (unless it’s at the neat used bookstore downtown which has now been all but consumed by Scientologists).
I feel just as weird in the Chrstian Fiction section, though.
August 24th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
shopping for occult books is like a guy shopping for lingerie. it’s all averted glances and feigned disinterest, lest people get the wrong idea. “don’t worry, people, i have a legitimate reason for being here!”
it’s even worse in those new age crystal incense bookshops. should i happen upon a choice nugget, something “heavier” than the “love and light” crap, i often get the evil eye from the “spiritual” type behind the counter when i go to buy it, even though they’re selling it!
it’s like: who does this guy think he is, some kind of magus?
but browsing through this “new age” stuff is kind of like admitting to the world that you’re a lost child, and you’re in there going “mommy? daddy? hello?” and when someone notices you react defiantly “oh i’m not lost, just browsing, i’m in charge of my own destiny.” it’s like superman getting busted half-naked in a phone booth “don’t look at me until i’m fully dressed!”
August 24th, 2005 at 10:48 pm
Ah, god! That’s hilarious.
August 24th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
my own embarrasment has kept me off the spiritual path for many years. it`s remarkable how much power we give to others out of this embarassement. it is another social control mechanism, much like guilt and it has a way of sneaking up on one when we least expect it.
August 24th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
Yeah it’s really true Alistair. Embarrassment is just this big stupid thing that zaps you because you think somebody else is looking. When the fact of the matter, nobody else is really looking. Or if they are, they don’t care. And if they do care, they might even be envious of you for actually being brave enough to do what they are too embarrassed of. Funny how it works out like that!
August 25th, 2005 at 11:22 am
i heard someone characterize embarassment as the realisation that you had gone too far. now i accept that i have journeyed this far and that there is no point turning back. i grew up with a catholic father. he was going to be a jesuit priest until he met my mother. he and i argued dogma back and forth until i realised that there was this stuff behind the wall of dogma that i know now as spirituality. i was nine when i read “i`m o.k., you`re o.k.” and i discovered my mind as a semantic reality, i have come full circle back to the jesuit language patterns that my father used and realised that the jesuits are nlp masters(or maybe it`s the other way `round.)
for years i was emmbarassed to challenge my father about dogma and i realise that feeling pervades into the community at large. but the time is right for my voice in my work and the responsibility i feel to my clients and the guidance they desperately need. the embarassment is fading.
August 26th, 2005 at 2:49 am
I feel a certain degree of self-consciousness when I go into Adyar, which is the big new age shop here in Sydney. Kind of like going into a sex shop; I always wonder “did anyone see me come in here? Who will see me leave? What do the staff think of me?” and so forth. My biggest “what the hell am I doing here?” moment actually came a week or two ago when I was in the shop and there were these two men having a very animated discussion (well, one was animated and the other gave the impression of wanting to flee from this idiot) about genius and light radiating from you and so forth. Good grief, I thought, do I really want to associate with fluffballs like this by coming in here?
That said, I felt more self-conscious when I found myself in a couple of Christian bookshops recently. A much greater feeling that I shouldn’t be there.
August 26th, 2005 at 10:22 am
Heh, no, you’re not alone.