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Love Has Won, False Prophets and the Fever Dream of the American New Age
by Leah Sottile
Book Reviewed by:An investigation of the New Age movement in America that aims to understand its appeal to women and the self-proclaimed prophetesses, like Love Has Won's Amy Carlson, who've created kingdoms for themselves within it.
Known for deep dives into true crime, extremist ideologies and fringe subcultures, journalist Leah Sottile turns her investigative eye toward American New Age culture. Today, tarot cards, astrology and crystals are everywhere — from Instagram and TikTok, to upscale boutiques and pricey wellness retreats. Sottile investigates how the recent surge of interest in New Age ideas speaks to a culture that is woven into the very fabric of America, and how self-professed gurus like Love Has Won's Mother God and the mysterious channeler Ramtha have built devout followings because of it. For more than a century, this pastel-colored world of love, light and enlightenment has been built upon a foundation of conspiracies, antisemitism, nationalism and a rejection of science.
In Blazing Eye Sees All, Sottile seeks to understand the quest for New Age spirituality in an era of fear that has made us open to anything that claims to bring relief — from war, the climate crisis, COVID 19, or the myriad of other issues we face. At the same time, she attempts to draw a line between truly helpful, healing ideas and snake oil. The new New Age is everywhere, and Sottile helps us sort through the crystals to find true clarity.
Blazing Eye Sees All is especially illuminating when illustrating how the American New Age movement is connected to the far right. New Age belief is often coded as left-wing and hippie-ish... But in fact, various New Age movements throughout the past century are not unlike what might be referred to as the "alt-right" today. Sottile draws a line from Love Has Won and QAnon back to the 19th century with Helena Blavatsky, whose belief system was rife with race science and inspired Nazi occultists...continued
Full Review
(729 words)
(Reviewed by Joe Hoeffner).
Amy Carlson, the leader of the Love Has Won cult, claimed to have been many different figures in past lives—Jesus, Cleopatra, and Marilyn Monroe, to name just a few—but one of her most eyebrow-raising claims was that she was once the Queen of Lemuria, an ancient, hyper-advanced kingdom that originated the human race before being destroyed in a war against Atlantis that caused both kingdoms to sink to the ocean floor. Perhaps surprisingly, this "woo-woo" theory has a long history independent of Carlson. And it all originated from a scientific article about lemurs.
In 1864, a zoologist named Philip Sclater had a theory. Lemurs mostly live on Madagascar, an island off the coast of southern Africa. But while lemur fossils had ...
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Jeff Guinn, author of Manson, The Road to Jonestown, and Waco
I have never read a better - or more entertaining - analysis of so-called New Age Spirituality and its self-anointed prophets than Lisa Sottile's Blazing Eye Sees All. In this book, even the infamous Love Has Won cult doesn't win, but readers do. See for yourself.
