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The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. By Michael F. Brown. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997. xiii + 236 pp. n.p.
In The Channeling Zone, anthropologist Michael Brown provides an engaging, compelling, and lucid account of the New Age practice of channeling. Broadly described in the preface as "the use of altered states of consciousness . . . to experience spiritual energy captured from other times and dimensions" (viii), New Age channeling is an eclectic combination of elements from nineteenth-century Spiritualism and contemporary self-help and alternative spirituality movements. Brown describes the book as his attempt to combine a respectful and detached analysis of the New Age practice of channeling with reflection on the implications of its beliefs. While channeling is less widespread and more easily caricatured than other New Age practices, Brown consistently resists the tendency to trivialize, marginalize, or patronize the practice and its adherents. In fact, part of what makes this book "work" is that Brown is not ax-grinding. His own critical reflections are complemented by his representation of the diversity of opinions, personalities, and practices in channeling, his appreciation of the "improvisational" and playful aspects of channeling as a spiritual practice, and his identification of the "unruly enthusiasms . . . restless curiosity . . . exuberance and creativity" of channels and their clients as "precious commodities" in our anxious and uncertain society (186).
In the first chapter of The Channeling Zone Brown provides background information and introduces the themes and questions that he explores in detail in subsequent chapters. The book is arranged thematically, with chapters on the theology of channeling, gender, community...