New Age or Old, Aura of Money Persists

I was in line to have my aura photographed when I finally met a skeptic. Margaret DeMaria reported suspiciously that someone had had his aura photographed twice in rapid succession, and it was completely different the second time around.

I agreed that all this aura stuff was far-fetched.

“Oh I believe in auras,” DeMaria said. “I just don’t believe you can photograph them.”

Naturally. At the ninth-annual Whole Life Expo here over the weekend, disbelief in auras was tantamount to heresy. The 120,000-square-foot Concourse Exhibition Center was packed with seekers drawn to what I fervently hope was the largest New Age exposition this town has seen.

You could feel the, uh, energy on the street outside, where the thumping rhythm of “Golden Eagle Prayer Drums” heralds your arrival and where you can get a flyer from a man with a placard that says “Jail Bush for the Murder of JFK! (See the Photos).”

But we shan’t dawdle. We’re here on business, after all, which is why we don’t have our aura photographed. (How would it look on the expense report?)

The funny thing is, most of the more than 350 exhibitors and 250 speakers seemed to be here on business as well. The New Age includes a lot of strange stuff, but one very familiar concept is as common as kelp, and that, of course, is money-making.

Normally, this is where I’d tell you how much Californians spend on psychics and seaweed, but if there is a New Age Chamber of Commerce, I haven’t found it, and the Commerce Department doesn’t record expenditures on goofy string music, aroma therapy and channeling.

Still, it’s a safe bet that California leads the nation in spending on the wacky amalgam of narcissism, superstition and hope of which the New Age movement seems comprised and that some of those at the three-day Expo, which ended Sunday, make an awful lot of dough at it.

Outside a back-alignment booth, a potential customer walked off but then wavered. “He’s coming back, he’s coming back,” one salesman hissed to another.

Holistic capitalism had run amok. Not far away, a harpist in a tie-dyed booth played behind a stack of cassettes, and nearby Ray Berry, who sells something called the Life Field Polarizer, explained that “it’ll balance the electrical energy in the body so it works the way God intended it to.”

Why we don’t come with built-in Life Field Polarizers as standard equipment remains a puzzle, but on to the next booth: “Psychic surgery, $25.”

“Hey, that’s pretty good,” said Jim Weissman, my Virgil through this Birkenstock inferno. “I’d expect to pay $400 or $500 at least.”

Sharon Kelly was selling Super Blue Green, which is algae grown in Oregon’s Klamath Lake. It had the rich, nutty flavor I’d imagine in concentrated pond scum.

“It has neuropeptides in it, so it, like, nourishes the cells in the brain,” Kelly said. She explained that Cell Tech Inc., which makes Super Blue Green, uses “network marketing.”

“We sell it to people, and if they like it we encourage them to order it wholesale,” she said. “We then get a fee from what they sell.”

That these pyramid-like network marketing schemes were common at the Expo shouldn’t be surprising. Like crystals, pyramids hold a special place in New Age iconography. Tiffany, nearby, was selling Pyramid Energy Kits in sizes from houseplant to human. They were said to improve coffee and keep razor blades sharp.

At Sally Moon’s booth, you can get your aura cleaned and fluffed. “She measures it with an instrument and then cleans it out for you,” a Moon retainer assured me. “She knows where it is.”

Ion generators, UFOs, rune casting, Inner Earth Beings, bilocation; you name it, the Expo had it. But it wasn’t all science. There were also sages.

Jack La Lane, Timothy Leary, Jerry Rubin (who has his own “multilevel marketing” program), Tommy Chong (sans Cheech Marin), Elizabeth Clare Prophet (who’s claimed that she was Queen Guinevere in a former life) and even Dr. Joyce Brothers were all on the agenda as well.

Cliff Dunning, program director for the Whole Life Expo in San Francisco, said that 30,000 people attended and that franchised Whole Life Expos are held in other cities too. Different expo operators have rights to the Whole Life Expo name in different places; Dunning said the expos do particularly well in California, where they’re also held in metropolitan Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose.

Over in the all-vegetarian Natural Food Dining Area, the Healing Moon Cafe offered Seaweed Surprise. Others hawked Nhot Dogs, sprouts, multigrain loaves and tofu veggie burgers. For dessert, try the Black Muslim Bakery, whose operators were very nearly the only blacks at the Expo.

Reassuringly, the longest food line was at a frozen yogurt stand run by some Vietnamese immigrants who did not seem to know a chakra from a potted plant. Better yet, the toppings included M&Ms.; After all the barley juice and herbal elixirs, a big dish was just what the guru ordered.