Healing crystals move from poor villages to first world consumers along a trail of death, ecological destruction, and capitalistic concentration of wealth.
New Age Medicine
Appropriation in the Land of Enchantment
In New Mexico, cultural appropriation by newcomers is fueling Indigenous activism over colonialism and property rights.
The Healing Crystal Community Needs to Confront Its Connection to Dubious Mining Operations
Maybe healing your body and Mother Earth with crystals extracted by environmentally dubious means isn’t the best approach to healing.
How Wellness and Self-Care Became a Sinister Ideology
The gospel of yoga, mindfulness, and organic-everything didn’t come out of nowhere. In a world in which once-cherished social safety nets rapidly disappear, taking care of oneself has become an increasingly privatized—and increasingly expensive—endeavor. At The Baffler, Laurie Penny unpacks the ascendant ideology of self-care, and explains why it’s so hard to find an alternative […]
Author Porochista Khakpour on New Age Treatments for Lyme Disease, and ‘Mind Over Matter’
As someone who’s twice been diagnosed with Lyme Disease, I’ve read an awful lot about it. The more I read, the more confused I am; for every long, boring article about antibiotic treatments, there are two or three about widely varying alternative cures. The Last Illusion author Porochista Khakpour has been living with Lyme for […]