Processing Entities: Healing Practices and Body Conceptions in the New Age Group “Spiritual Technology”

Abstract

It is virtually impossible to conduct a holistic study of any religious phenomenon without considering its relationship with health, healing, and the body. In the case of New Age or self-denominated "Spiritual" groups, the role of health takes on an even more prominent role, acting as a soteriology or a cultural ideal. This paper focuses on the conceptions of the body, healing, and well-being held by members of the Serbian group "Spiritual Technology," founded by Živorad Mihajlović Slavinski in 1996, and their associated practices. Through an in-depth analysis of various texts authored by Slavinski, healing practices are considered as religious practices, divided into prevention and remediation practices, along with their subsequent stages (diagnosis, treatment, and prescription). Based on an energetic view of the body, where well-being and unwellness are concepts constantly renegotiated between healer and patient, the body is understood as composed of entities, which have been classified and divided in terms of their origin and their influences on humans. This research concludes that these ritualized practices contribute to the creation of ritual bodies as well as common narratives of corporeality, health, and even a shared worldview, serving as an interpretative framework to interact with the self and the surrounding world and, therefore, playing an important role in the formation of contemporary subjectivities.

Keywords

• body
• healing
• New Age
• new religious movements
• Serbia