Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
In this "unflinching and wildly entertaining" investigation of the modern New Age movement in America, a journalist aims to understand how women like Amy Carlson (the leader of Love Has Won) and others become devoutly invested in their beliefs (Talia Lavin, author of Culture Warlords ).
Today, tarot cards, astrology and crystals are everywhere -- on Instagram and TikTok, and sold at upscale boutiques and pricey wellness retreats. Journalist Leah Sottile turns her investigative eye toward the recent surge of New Age influencing American Culture. She looks at self-professed gurus like Love Has Won's Mother God and the mysterious channeler Ramtha, who have built devout followings based on their teachings. 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, and 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--helping us sort through the crystals to find true clarity.
"An investigation of the New Age movement in America 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, sold at 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"-- Provided by publisher.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
Journalist Sottile (When the Moon Turns to Blood) offers an ambitious study of Love Has Won, a spiritual group and alleged cult. The narrative tracks the rise of the group's leader Amy Carlson, a former McDonald's manager who claimed to be "a reincarnated... queen of a continent called Lemuria" (as well as a reincarnated Jesus and Marilyn Monroe). "Spending more and more time online" following her 2005 divorce, Carlson mainlined conspiracies about angels and aliens, Sottile writes, eventually seeing herself as "a major player" in America's coming "spiritual upliftment" and building a personal following. Sottile doesn't shy away from Love Has Won's intrinsic shock value, including Carlson's claim she spoke to deceased "Masters" like Prince and Robin Williams and the sensational 2021 discovery of Carlson's mummified and enshrined body, which had turned blue due to her intake of colloidal silver (the group touted the substance as "one of the highest medicines on the planet"). But Sottile also provides a meticulous ideological genealogy of Carlson's new age influences, including 19th-century medium Helena Blavatsky--who likewise communed with "Masters"--and the long-held new age fixation on the lost civilization of Lemuria (derived from a 19th-century theory about lemurs). Leaving no crystal unturned, Sottile unearths intriguing similarities across disparate fringe groups (near-constant antisemitism, frequent female leadership) that bolster her thesis that cults are a feature, not a bug, of American spiritual life, functioning as an outlet for repressed women enmeshed in patriarchal belief structures. It's a must-read for cult obsessives. (Mar.)
Booklist Review
From the Rosetta Stone to QAnon, Sottile expertly guides readers through the centuries to reveal that behind all-American conspiracy theories and New Age movements lies the dense and convoluted evolution of spiritualism. Sottile combines a conversational tone with an impressive body of academic research in this deep dive into the Love Has Won cult and its spiritualist lineage. Amy Carlson, founder of Love Has Won, was an ordinary mom when she abandoned her family to embrace her new beliefs, including claims of being God, Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Joan of Arc. Sottile offers fresh insights and information for readers and viewers of the Love Has Won HBO docuseries, showing how the cult's rise is tied to a legacy of trauma and exploitation. She humanizes Carlson and others involved, exploring the psychological and cultural factors that drive people to embrace such extreme ideologies. Throughout, Sottile critiques the toxic undercurrents of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia that almost always accompany these movements. The book ends with a poignant quote from Cole, Carlson's son: "Why wouldn't you buy into it? Somebody comes along and says, 'Hey, this world sucks, right? But you know what? I'm gonna build a new world. Come follow me.'"
Kirkus Book Review
A disorienting journey to the outré fringes of the New Age. "The aliens are coming. The Earth is ending. The aliens will take us to a new planet, and we can build a new society. How awesome does that sound?" So says, mockingly, the abandoned son of Amy Carlson, who called herself Mother God and surrounded herself with followers in a group called Love Has Won. Not only was she God--and Jesus, and Marilyn Monroe, and Cleopatra--but she also had, in a previous incarnation, ruled the lost continent of Lemuria, the invention of a 19th-century quack that just won't go away. Given that, as journalist Sottile documents, about half of Americans believe in ghosts and the onetime existence of Atlantis, to say nothing of space aliens, Carlson found easy pickings among lost souls. The New Age, as Sottile writes, stretches back into olden times (one landmark, by her lights, being Norman Vincent Peale'sPower of Positive Thinking), and charlatans have been around forever. But Carlson tapped into something different: Apart from swilling down vast quantities of colloidal silver, supposedly a miracle cure, while chugging tequila, she linked her oddball metaphysics to other cultural threads, including QAnon. (Not for nothing did the "Q Shaman" of Jan. 6, 2021, fame declare that the riot altered "the quantum realm.") So it was that she traded in tropes such as anti-vaxxing and 9/11-as-inside-job and performed psychic "surgeries" for a bargain-basement price of $77.77, declaring that she was guided by Robin Williams, the late comedian, an ascended master in the spirit world. (She also advised looking directly at the sun, "one of Our most powerful healing tools.") Things ended badly for Carlson: Her diet killed her, and by the time authorities found her she was starting to mummify. Her followers are still out there, though, plying their eldritch trade. A fascinating look into the fun-house mirror of cults and the occult. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
TextPublisher: New York : Grand Central Publishing, [2025]Description: 296 pages ; 24 cmContent type: