How New Age Spirituality Leads Women To Disturbing Rituals Like Building An Altar For Their Abortion

Tesla spoke this aphorism centuries ago, yet it ominously predicted our society’s current freefall into absurdism and hysteria. Of all the horrors our culture faces at the moment, the majority of them are of our own creation. He wasn’t making this grand pronouncement on politics, religion, or even the situation average citizens now find themselves in, where the future of their families, homes, jobs, and incomes are in jeopardy. Yet his words have never rung truer the more we observe the current state of our country.

Man-made horrors, as Tesla called them, inspire the large majority of delusions we’re afflicted with. Whether it’s the “trauma” of simply living everyday life or a self-prescribed chronic victim mentality, most of our oppression – be it due to the religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, race, gender, or perceived bigotry of others – is of our own making. In recent memory, men fought against authoritarianism and tyranny. Now, all of our problems come from the glossary section of a sociology textbook.

Some would characterize religion as a man-made concept, and argue that the majority of society’s issues point back to its prevalence. These criticisms are usually pointed toward a Judeo-Christian concept of religion, and never to modern iterations like new age spiritualism. But it’s new age spirituality and not more traditional dogmas that lead its acolytes, the majority of whom are women, to disturbing rituals like building an altar for their at-home abortions.

The Rise in New Age Spirituality

New age spiritualism, like so many scourges attributed to the baby boomer generation, originated in the ‘70s. What began as a fascination with eastern religions soon morphed into a buffet-style appropriation of core tenets of Buddhism and Hinduism, mixed with traits of humanism and popular self-help teachings.

New age spirituality, or “spirituality” in general, is hard to pin down because its only dogma is subjectivity. What’s spiritual to you isn’t necessarily spiritual to me, but far be it from either of us to decry the other’s beliefs. Nevertheless, there are hallmarks of new ageism found throughout its congregants – practicing meditation or manifestation, belief in reincarnation and egalitarianism, and a focus on energies or vibes in place of deference to an omnipresent, omnipotent God.

New age spirituality is hard to pin down because its only dogma is subjectivity.

New age practices rely on the presupposition that all supernatural elements are benevolent beings that work for our advantage and our benefit. Because potentially negative unintended consequences are never an issue, spiritualists heavily rely on using mediums or psychics, reading tarot cards, using crystals or other talismans, and other attributes ascribed to divination, astrology, or energy healing.

It’s not an outrageous claim to theorize that new age spiritualism has largely maintained its popularity, especially today, not only because of its worship of self, but also because of its aesthetic appeal. Even people who were raised in traditional modes of worship and have since left still seek the grounding, comforting experiences found in ritualistic belief. Burning smudge sticks or using crystals to cleanse a space or align your chakras looks as attractive on social media as it feels when actually practicing it. New age spiritualism is ideal for the girlboss Instagram age and the influencer class – it’s as much a brand as any pair of leggings they’re selling or sponsorship they promote.

A Contradicting Message about Abortion

Some would say building an altar to your abortion qualifies or is indeed definitive of a man-made horror. Not only is it disturbing, to say the least, and shockingly lacking in self-awareness, but it’s also indicative of the moral straits we now find ourselves in.

The altar in question comes from a video belonging to a “self-guided abortion” YouTube channel (which most teenagers, adolescents, and even toddlers have access to). The nearly three-minute video is nausea-inducing, but describes the “cathartic process” of building the altar, which includes a vessel for the aborted baby’s remains and a place for abortion pills.

“It’s a really beautiful way to give reverence to the experience,” says the unnamed woman in the video, surrounded by incense, soft neutral furniture, candles, tapestries, and rugs. It has all the makings of a place of worship, where the sacred deity being worshiped is the egomania motivating the murder of an innocent baby.

There are subtle, hidden messages within the video though that are more puzzling than they’re clarifying. The obvious one being, if an abortion is not a big deal or a serious process, and the aborted child is not a baby but a clump of cells or a parasite, then why memorialize it at all? Why commemorate its murder if no attention at all should be given to it?

Secondly, the woman lays an empress tarot card on the altar, which symbolizes “fertility” and “femininity,” which in today’s culture are widely discouraged and the antithesis to abortion. It’s also odd that the woman feels the need to symbolically “cleanse the space” and herself (with palo santo, of course) if abortion is an empowering decision worthy of pride and admiration.

If abortion is not a big deal and the aborted child is only a clump of cells, then why memorialize it?

Humans Can't Escape Religion

You don’t have to subscribe to faith in the traditional sense to be religious. This disturbing play of power and sacrifice has taught us this much.

Most of us, whether we’re religious or not, want to believe in something higher than ourselves. Even if we would never say that we believe in a Judeo-Christian God or a higher power, we still crave intimacy with a being that is not human and a reason for the things we can’t pin down or conclusively explain. And even if we couldn’t possibly subscribe to an oppressive religion followed by white or cisgender or heteronormative people, we still find other modes of worship, other beliefs, other faiths, other religions. And we give in to them wholeheartedly, even when they offend our most basic, fundamental sensibilities.

New age spiritualism is especially adept at drawing congregants into this kind of vacuous, superficial worship. When you are “one with the universe” or with nature, you exist on a higher plane above the normal and the everyday. You’re more enlightened than everyone else. And what’s more, you get to worship yourself and your own existence and call it spirituality.

Closing Thoughts

We all have religions. For some, it’s an iPhone, food, pornography, fitness, or their job. If you worship abortion, then your religion is “consequence-free” sex, a deity you view as hallowed and sacred, even if it unintentionally results in an unwanted inconvenience like pregnancy. If there is something out there that you believe to be blameless and deserving of reverence, you worship it. Our only error is thinking that because we don’t worship a God, we have no religion at all. 

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