New Age Atheist

BY STEFFAN HRUBY

J ust after dusk, I entered the sweat lodge with eight naked men in-
cluding my father. I was nine. The lodge was a small, hovel-like tee-
pee made with tree limbs and animal hides, and once inside we circled
around the rock pit and settled down into the dirt. My nude body re-
acted to the hot stones as my eyes might react to the brightness of the
sun, urging me to turn and shrink away. But I was the youngest to
attend one of these men’s retreats and I refused to whine or quit first.
Besides, my father had told me “a good sweat will cleanse the soul,”
and I wanted to feel pure. So I sweated, chanted, and passed the prayer
stick as a small wallow of sweat-mud began to form around my legs. I
even lay down to hug the cool ground, a skinny golden pig.
Presumably, we chanted as Native Americans did, though there
were none among us. A little confused, I crooned self-consciously
along with the group. My father, however, looked pretty serious about
his chanting as his heavy, unshorn head bobbed forward and back tug-
ging at his petite body like a peony, thick with petals, pulling at its
stem on a windy day. I tried to mimic his sincerity by squinting and
letting my jaw go slack in what was probably a hideous, buck-toothed
parody of spiritual intent.
Early that morning, to prepare the evening’s lodge, one of the men
dug a hole and built a birch and oak fire in the pit. Once the fire had
reduced itself to a heap of embers, twelve or fourteen stones the size
and shape of grapefruits were added to the glowing coals and covered
with a heavy, blackened board. It was a warm summer day in Southern
Minnesota, and around an hour before sunset the rocks were removed
from the fire pit and placed into a shallow impression at the center of
the lodge. I’d been in saunas before and outlasted most of the men,
but this was far more intense. The radiating rocks pounded on my
small body. I wanted it to be over. “Breathe,” my father said, noticing.
10 The Antioch Review

The scorched air burned my lungs so I turned toward the leather wall.
“He’s okay,” my father said, responding to the questions put to me.
My father is a doctor.
“I don’t want to leave,” I said.
It didn’t seem to matter that I was so young, but earlier that day
a short, acorn-bearded man had said, “Hey Richard, your kid is great,
but this is supposed to be about men. It’s kind of inappropriate.” We
were at a gathering inspired by Robert Bly’s men’s movement.
“That’s bullshit,” my father said, shaking his head and huffing
around.
Having spent about an hour in the lodge, we finally cast open the
cowhide flap, crowded outside, and ran whooping toward the cold,
black lake. A gentle wind tipped the tall grass as we beat down the dirt
path onto the beach and jumped, dove, or crashed into the water. A
little cold seizure of panic rolled through my flesh.

That night, we held a drum circle. Men toted in bongos, congas, and
djembe drums; African ashiko and Native American hoop drums;
drums with beads, feathers and red pictures of bears and eagles
painted onto the leather. Our drums were made by hand, bought or
borrowed. My father and I built his drum out of a wine barrel from
Stillwater. Over fifty of us played our instruments around a great bon-
fire that night. The rhythms were layered and complex and bounced
around my ribs and addled my brain with pleasure. As bizarre as the
whole experience was, I totally got it—the vitality and the brilliance
of it, the surrender and the vivid calm. In a crescendo of intoxication,
some man would leap inside the fire circle. Blown, black smoke would
shift around the fire as he danced wildly, waved his arms, clapped his
hands, and kicked up his feet. Once his movements slowed, he’d be
reabsorbed into the circle like a stranded, flopping fish thrown onto the
beach by a wave then picked up by a second. It was all beautiful and
strange and perfectly normal.

D uring the 1970s my parents were part of the generation

that began, in large numbers, to abandon their families’ spiritual tradi-
tions in order to explore new ones. For my parents this was a liberating
experience. They were free of the rigid beliefs and restrictive morality
 New Age Atheist 11

of their Catholic and Protestant childhoods. They dabbled in yoga and

altered states of consciousness. They were vegetarian, sencha-drink-
ing, Ravi Shankar hippies full of ideas about peace and the transmi-
gration of souls. Down with priests and purgatory! Down with Sunday
school and shame! Their generation was free and wouldn’t be tied
down to any one religion.
We were open to all, committed to none. I could worship or believe
what I liked. When I was around ten, my father and I went to Maui
where we went camping, hiking, and boogie boarding. We even went
to a nude beach where, not surprisingly, I was the only kid. I tried not
to show my embarrassment or to gawk at the women, especially since
I was the only one wearing a swimsuit. My father’s blue Speedos,
on the other hand, were in the sand faster than I could straighten my
towel. My humble, quiet father loves to be naked. “Ah, that feels bet-
ter,” he said. Later that day, however, he admitted that boogie board-
ing without a swimsuit isn’t something he would do again.
During one of our daily hikes we climbed around Mount Hale-
akala. We left the dense green to walk the hot black moon. I imagined
I could feel the lava rumble in the ground and warm the rubber of
my soles. At some point, I picked up a craggy piece of volcanic rock.
Inside, I noticed two shiny mineral flecks that resembled eyes. They
were faintly blue and silvery, plume dots of gasoline on wet asphalt. I
named this rock “Bright Eyes” and took him home.
After returning to Minneapolis, I placed Bright Eyes on my win-
dowsill and thought of what my father told me about the religious
significance of volcanoes to early native Hawaiians. I began to pray
to this solid piece of lava as to a personal deity. But I was as much
playing God as seeking God in my worship of Bright Eyes. Without
having been indoctrinated into any particular religion, I could fashion
whichever god I chose, with whatever characteristics I liked, such as
generosity. I would hold him in my hands and appeal for my own dart-
board, a Swiss Army knife, or the ability to run faster.
I lived in a world filled with magic, but I also recognized the im-
portance of fairness. So I began making sacrifices to Bright Eyes. I’d
clean my room or give away an old Star Wars action figure. I’d make
physical sacrifices and penance if I’d done something I thought would
displease my Vulcan god (such as neglect), or if I desperately wanted
something. I would wake up before anyone else at home, solemnly
touch Bright Eyes with my right hand, then jog two miles. I’d do push-
ups and sit-ups until it hurt. More darkly, I would cut myself with an
12 The Antioch Review

X-Acto knife, or my new Swiss Army knife, and offer my blood to

Bright Eyes. I would smear it across his uneven surface, while pe-
titioning to spend more time with my father or for the attainment of
super-physical talents.

I was raised New Age. In the early eighties, by the time I was six
or seven, my parents’ fascination with Eastern religion began to ex-
pand into astrology, crystals, and UFOs (my little sister still insists
she was abducted by aliens when she was six). I went to the Minne-
sota Waldorf School where we studied Greek myths as if they were
real, celebrated pagan holidays, and had festivals dedicated to angels
and saints. And while I might have known God variously as the Great
Spirit, Thor, Yahweh, or the Force—as a child, I believed it all. I be-
lieved I could channel Krishna’s warrior energy while practicing yoga
in the rose garden. I believed space aliens would save the chosen hu-
mans from the forthcoming nuclear apocalypse and that my family
would definitely be amongst the chosen. I believed in the power of
crystals, vegetable juice, and saying OHHHHMMMM. I believed the
soul could be cleansed during a sweat lodge, that it brought me closer
to “Mother Earth” and therefore to the animals in the forests, which I
dearly loved. And when told my power animal was a snake, my aura
was gold, and St. Francis was my guide in the spirit world—I believed
that, too.
I am my own tradition. And like so many New Agers before me, I
borrowed and took from religion what I wanted and called it my own.
From Buddhism, I took compassion; from Judaism, critical thought;
from Hinduism, the yoking of mind and body; from UFOs, weapons.

A n old joke in Northern Ireland has two men talking about

religion. One says he’s an atheist. The other replies, “Yes, but are you
a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?”
I no longer believe in God or anything supernatural, but that
doesn’t remove me from religious life. One would think atheism is
atheism, there is no God and it ends there. Instead, I find my person-
al philosophies entangled with memories of Native American sweat
lodges, pagan holidays, and the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, just
as a Catholic atheist might return to memories of First Communion,
 New Age Atheist 13

confession, or a favorite saint. Becoming atheist in a religious world is

like carving away pieces of yourself, of memory: it’s shaping the pres-
ent by chiseling at the past like a relief sketch. An image is fashioned
not by what is added, but by what is taken away.

I used to be an everything-is-connected, and everything-has-meaning,

especially-for-me kind of person. I was convinced the universe had a
plan for me and trusted this plan would show itself through signs and
symbols, which would reveal themselves during a conversation about
Meister Eckhart, or in book titles and advertisements I’d notice at just
the right moment. Years after believing such things, I watched a broad-
winged hawk seize a pigeon in midflight and pin it to the pavement,
all blood and beating wings. I instantly took this to mean I must seize
whatever opportunity lay before me. “That’s just New Age thinking
again,” I had to tell myself, as I have a hundred times since.
The worst part of being a New Age atheist is the superstitions.
One superstition I can’t seem to shed is the feeling that objects have
psychic energy or an imprint of the past. If I’m insulted, rejected, or
even have a bad day, I will want to remove all my clothes and cleanse
them in the washing machine and purify them in the drier before wear-
ing them again. It isn’t that my Batman shirt will remind me of bad
times, it’s that the shirt itself seems polluted with “negative energy.”
“Oh my God, Steffan, you’re such an idiot” energy really itches; it
has the spiritual residue of fiberglass. “A good sweat will cleanse the
soul,” my father had told me. But what about everything else? I’ve
used anything from sage to sunlight in order to purge something of its
dark vibrations. It’s always made me feel better, which is why I still
do it—why I have to do it.
Then there are my New Age hang-ups. My biggest hang-up is this:
illness as metaphor. Your dog doesn’t have tumors because it’s angry
at squirrels. Your sister doesn’t have breast cancer because she’s es-
tranged from her only son. My father used to attribute my unexplained
joint and muscle pain to such New Age irrational beliefs. I take strong
nerve blockers and narcotics everyday to cope, but my father, his psy-
chic wife, and their Sufi healer friends all thought it was because I
lacked a spiritual practice. Atheist arthritis? Godless gout?
To ascribe my physical pain to a spiritual defect demonstrates
deep spiritual judgment. And such ascriptions make me feel spiritu-
ally toxic, like I deserve whatever pain afflicts me.
14 The Antioch Review

I know my father and others like him speak this way from a per-
spective of compassion and helpfulness. I am also aware some people
find this approach comforting. It gives them hope because healing is
believed possible through faith and self-insight. But what if it doesn’t
work? Then we suffer doubly, body and mind.

I believe in life and that all living things die. And like Bertrand Rus-
sell, “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will
survive.” I believe the spark of life was chemical and chance. I believe
all living things, whether ferns, armadillos, or human beings, evolved
and were not designed. I believe any God who would create a world
in which one of its creations must hunt, kill, chew, and digest another
of its beautiful and perfect creations is either vicious or indifferent.
I believe morality is based on empathy, reciprocal altruism, kin se-
lection, and disgust—not the laws of God. I believe most, if not all,
religious feeling will be explained by neuroscience and evolutionary
psychology. I believe God without evidence is like a shadow without
a body or light.
I was around twenty-five when I became an atheist and haven’t
waivered these twelve years. I mourned my many imagined gods, my
magic world and childish devotions, but I have remained firm. So why
do these hang-ups and weird reflexive habits of mind cling to me?
Why do I still think in terms of karma, chakras, and Mind-Body medi-
cine? Such superstitions are a stain on my pure atheism.

E ight years ago my father married his third wife, Kimberly,

in Sedona, Arizona. They love Sedona and it wasn’t hard to see why.
The red rock landscape has a dominating beauty. Its austere, boulder-
ing magnificence polarizes the beautiful into power and delicacy, into
sun and desert flower. It isn’t surprising New Agers have made Sedona
into a kind of Mecca. The bluffs thunder with “spiritual feeling,” the
place is crawling with space aliens, and there are almost as many en-
ergy vortexes as gift shops. The boutiques teem with crystals, herbal
medicines, Hopi jewelry, and ethereal paintings of angels and dolphins.
I’ve never been offered so many psychic readings. And judging by all
of the helium eyes, bliss grins, and faces like daisies tilting toward the
sun, I’d say the mood of the place is emotionally psychotropic.
 New Age Atheist 15

I’d never seen so many New Agers in one place before and Kim-
berly seemed perfectly at home. Kimberly embodies New Age in a
way I’d never before witnessed. There’s all the usual stuff—crystals,
yoga, swimming with dolphins to absorb their spiritual energy—but
it wasn’t until meeting Kimberly that I learned psychics take many
forms and that Kimberly takes most of them. Angels and mysterious
voices speak to her. She’s a medical intuitive. She tells the future, com-
municates with animals telepathically, and reads people’s thoughts.
Kimberly is a cult unto herself and seems to accept only those who
share her lifestyle and believe she is magic.
I am not that person. I’m the jeering hyena, she the spiritual fawn.
It’s true—I’m quite furry and have a self-conscious, sneering smile in
pictures, while she is petite like a tiny wood elf and looks like Celine
Dion. But when I met Kimberly I empathized with her New Age magi-
cal illusions. I could feel them squirming in my bones like psychedelic
worms, but also like old friends.
Sedona and I had a similar relationship, though briefer and more
intense. Everyone was walking around grinning and looking enlight-
ened and talking about Mayan astrology in that proud, come-join-us
way some Christians talk about finding Jesus. I was just like this, I
thought to myself in horror. I felt humiliated. How could I have been
so brainwashed? But even then I could feel my old magical illusions
squirming. Suddenly I wanted to drop peyote in the desert to conjure
a spiritual vision. And every time I saw a familiar tarot deck or piece
of Native American jewelry, I’d remember something from my child-
hood. My mind seemed to fracture like a kaleidoscope as pieces of my
old self lit up and twisted away.
This must be what a Christian feels like walking into a church, I
thought to myself. That’s when I had my first real insight into New
Age atheism. As New Agers we didn’t have a formal gathering place
or bible, and there wasn’t a central religious figure like Jesus or Mo-
hamed. We were free to explore any religion, but amongst those who
called themselves New Age, there was definitely an undefined spiri-
tual confederacy. I’d grown up believing I was spiritually free and that
New Age was an alternative to religion. But it wasn’t until Sedona that
I realized the obvious truth—NEW AGE IS A RELIGION.
“Soylent Green is people!” I wanted to yell, feeling disillusioned
and alone in my dark knowledge.
16 The Antioch Review

T he wedding was held outside near a stream at sunset. The

burnt orange and dusky red cliffs were stunning against the deepening
blue sky. When we got out of the car, the sun was just above the cliffs.
We crossed the stream by walking on a series of well-placed rocks
and Kimberly, not accustomed to heels, almost slipped into the water.
She was wearing a white, tea-length, 1930s style wedding dress she’d
bought two years before my father proposed. “Just waiting for him to
catch up,” she told me. It was a beautiful dress and it suited her.
I felt like a prop and a fraud as we laughed and chatted. The wed-
ding made me feel like I was completely losing my father to his cultish
New Age wife and their cultish Sufi group. I’d never seen my father
so deep into New Age and I didn’t like the changes I was seeing: his
flaming rapture eyeballs whenever he talked about his Sufi teacher; the
way he was recruiting all of his friends; his Scientology-like “therapy”
sessions; how he would pray over my body; his shaved legs. And to
make matters worse, as I’d just found out, I was both the best man and
the maid of honor.
Leading us along the stream was Ibrahim Jaffe, the Sufi psychic
healer who would perform the ceremony. He had a bison-brown beard
and was wearing a burgundy frock along with an esoteric-looking pen-
dant. He was tall and his belly boomed forward in an arc of charisma
and vitality. Kimberly and my father were enrolled in his “Sufi Univer-
sity,” where they were learning to heal people with Sufi prayer. Jaffe,
who had been a traditional American doctor in California, travelled to
Jerusalem to acquire the healing arts of Sufi masters and bring them
back to America. I thought he wanted his own cult. He even brought
two devoted followers to the wedding, his ladies-in-waiting. Through-
out the entire evening, they looked brightly at him and exclaimed,
“How wonderful,” “Oh, wow,” or “Amazing” at everything he said.
They had little to say for themselves.
At dinner that night, Jaffe would tell us a story about a coyote. His
voice is smooth and deep with the occasional faint note of a handsaw
rising and falling. In his story, he was driving through the desert at
night when he noticed a dead coyote on the side of the road. Moved by
the sight, he pulled over, buried it, and said a little prayer to Allah. An
hour later he saw a white object in the middle of the road.
He said, “I slow down and realize it’s another coyote, but this
one’s alive. It has white fur, pure white fur that’s absolutely glowing
in my headlights.”
 New Age Atheist 17

The table murmured, impressed by the aberration. “Amazing,”

someone said.
“So I stopped about fifty feet away,” Jaffe continued. “There was
nobody on the road for miles so I just parked right in my lane. As soon
as I stopped moving, the coyote got up on its hind legs and started
dancing.” He paused for dramatic effect. “It took me a minute to real-
ize it, but he was doing this funny little dance, blessing me for bury-
ing one of his brothers. When this spirit animal was finished with his
dance, he looked at me for a long moment. Then he simply ran into the
desert.”
Jaffe’s calm, confident manner made it seem as if this kind of thing
happened to him every day. Needless to say, the table was astonished.
I thought his ladies-in-waiting might faint they were so excited.
Once we crossed the stream we found our place near a few gnarled
little trees. Patches of tall pale grass edged the stream and the sun
was just touching the high bluffs. Holding both rings, I took my place
behind my father who was, for the very first time, wearing a tux. His
large head looked like a shaggy balloon held on by a bow.
Jaffe began the ceremony with a prayer from the Koran in Ara-
bic. “We are here to join Rahim and Amina in marriage,” he said,
addressing them by their Sufi names. He spoke about marriage in gen-
eral, about love and Allah. There were references to nature and stories
personal to Kimberly and my father. He spoke quite beautifully. His
words were poetic and spontaneous.
A cool wind picked up off the stream as two birds played chase
around us. The sinking sun was bobbing behind the cliffs when Jaffe
turned to me and said, “You have a new mother now.”
I felt my entire being shrink to the size of a poppy seed. I was
floating and teetering, just draped over my bones. Jaffe was saying
something about a “special bond,” “flowering potential,” and “love,”
when I noticed that Kimberly was looking up at me with her tiny, ex-
cited, blue eyes all happiness.

T here could be any number of reasons why my New Age

background keeps affecting how I view and interpret the world. But
maybe a part of me just doesn’t want to let go. There are things I lost
and truly miss about New Age. Not unlike some ex-Catholics who
lost the luxuriousness of mass, I lost the bizarre sensuousness of drum
18 The Antioch Review

circles, group meditation, and making prayer sticks with blue-jay

feathers and bronze coins. I lost the belief that the universe had a plan
for me, that I was just one soundless swooping hawk and two (make
that one) turtle dove away from discovering my destiny. I lost the con-
viction I could relate to any culture through my “everything-is-one”
idea like I had a spiritual passport. I lost the carnival of the gods.
So what does it mean to be an atheist? I can write about drum
circles and Buddhism, but I’m not a Buddhist, I’m not anything. I just
am. Atheism isn’t a belief. Atheism is the monkey hair left in the cages
after the circus leaves town.
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