Salt Lake City and Utah are not the first places that come to mind when Jonathan Adolph, executive editor of The New Age Journal, probes his mental map of America's alternative spiritual communities.
The holistic, metaphysical approach to life that his magazine promotes has flourished in places like Sedona, Ariz. - dubbed by one East Coast writer as "the Vatican City of the New Age movement" - Santa Fe, N.M., and Boulder, Colo. Each had some mystical or metaphysical attraction, or a pre-existing counterculture, that fostered their emergence as beacons to those searching beyond the realm of traditional religious belief structures.Yet Utah is also home to a burgeoning New Age community, which has mirrored growth in alternative thinking, teaching and practices throughout the nation and the world.
Along the Wasatch Front in particular, seekers can find a wide range of alternative viewpoints and practices to experiment with - everything from yoga, therapeutic massage, holistic medicine and organic agriculture to Zen meditation.
"If you look at those types of broad categories and interests, you can find them almost anywhere," says Adolph, whose Massachusetts-based magazine recently celebrated its 20th anniversary and its largest circulation with 200,000 subscribers. "You can find a yoga class taught at the local high school, an adult education class on meditation. They are increasingly a part of the mainstream fabric of life."
The Salt Lake area also is home to concepts and practices that are more on the fringe.
"A lot of the ideas of this movement, if you want to call it a movement, really cross political boundaries," Adolph says. "It's not just a bunch of old hippies who just got out of their microbuses. It's a cultural shift. It represents a new synthesis of values - individual pursuits, libertarian ideas, social issues, environmental and ecological sensibility, and the idea of responsibility to future generations."
This new way of thinking and living is so diverse, and individual pursuits within it so varied, that Adolph and others struggle to define it, and resist labeling it.
Even the term used to name his magazine is practically taboo. New Age, thanks in part to Shirley MacLaine and a host of $300-an-hour "gurus" who have capitalized on the trend, has come to represent more of a commercial and marketing phenomenon than a spiritual lifestyle.
"To me, New Thought is really just taking a look at ancient information and utilizing all of the wonderful truths that we find in a lot of different places," says Patricia Robbins, minister of the Independent New Thought Center, 1888 S. Roberta, since 1991. "We gather from other philosophies, and I don't know that we're New Thought so much as old thought revisited.
"We definitely support that there is a God, a higher power, and we work on our relationship with that."
One thing the church's 45 members agree on, Robbins says, is that spirituality "doesn't do a lot of good unless you can use it and see that it makes a difference in your daily life." The church "is based on a combination of spiritual psychology and practical living."
The church offers classes on topics ranging from meditation and yoga to stress reduction and healing. It emphasizes the importance of daily meditation and encourages members to "listen to the body . . . look for God in nature" and "realize whatever you say about yourself becomes a reality," Robbins says.
Such interest from Utahns doesn't surprise Joy Hoban, owner of the Jeweled Maidens bookstore, 1721 W. 4160 South. Hoban, who's been in business for five years, says her clientele is increasing.
"What I find is that people are awakening to earth spiritually, to being responsible for this gift of a body, this gift of a planet," Hoban says. "I think (Salt Lake) is equal to a lot of other `metaphysical communities' in terms of growth.
"I do think the broader community in general probably considers us a fad like crystals were a fad. They think we'll fade away like the Hula-Hoop or something. Not gonna happen."
Hoban's store is one of several businesses that serve as gathering places for spiritual explorers to network and connect. Golden Braid Books has operated for years at 213 E. 300 South and soon will move to a larger facility.
"I think people are looking for something beyond the traditional explanation of life," says Scott Mulvay, who runs Homeward, 1088 S. 1100 East, along with his companion, Sheradon Bryce.
Mulvay says Bryce channels, or "articulates," information on a variety of subjects ranging from psychic cosmology to the origin of the universe.
"What we're trying to do is to get people to develop their own personal cosmology, their own mythology or theory about existence and what their life is all about, whereas traditional religion attracts people who are perhaps not quite ready to make those kinds of decisions for themselves and to have that kind of freedom in their lives," Mulvay says.