There are many ways to spend a weekend. You could take a nap. You could clean your gutters. You could alphabetize your spice rack. Or, if you hate yourself and have an extra $500 burning a hole in your pocket, you could attend something like The Ascension Gathering, a weekend festival devoted to raising your vibrational frequency, unlocking your divine blueprint, and spending an extraordinary amount of money on crystals, dreamcatchers, and “spiritually activated” granola.
I attended the Ascension Gathering under the noble banner of research and the less noble banner of morbid curiosity. The event was held in a field outside a town that looked like it hadn’t had a new idea since 1973. There were tents. There were booths. There were people wearing linen pants so aggressively wrinkled it was practically a cry for help.
Workshops promised enlightenment in easy, digestible bites: “Awaken Your Lightbody in Three Simple Steps,” “Channeling Your Galactic Ancestors for Fun and Profit,” and my personal favorite, “Advanced Crystal Programming — No Experience Necessary.” The crystals, apparently, were already smarter than the average attendee.
I sat through a “Quantum Frequency Activation” session where a man named Orion (not kidding) waved a copper tuning fork around my head and assured me that my aura was “opening beautifully.” My aura, for the record, felt exactly the same — except slightly more annoyed and fifty dollars lighter.
The vendor stalls were a parade of regret: hand-poured candles promising “prosperity,” bottled “moon water” from suspiciously terrestrial rivers, energy mats made of recycled yoga pants, and books self-published by people who think spell-check is a tool of the Illuminati. You could get your chakras realigned, your third eye cleansed, and your inner child “reintegrated” with a therapy goat, all before noon.
By the second afternoon, the festival dissolved into a swirling cloud of sage smoke, amateur didgeridoo performances, and arguments over the proper ethical sourcing of Himalayan salt lamps. Someone passed out from “vibrational overload” (translation: dehydration and poor life choices), and the emergency tent staff responded by frantically waving Reiki energy over their prone body.
Final thought: the Ascension Gathering offers enlightenment for cash, and you get exactly what you pay for. If salvation really could be purchased at a folding table with a Square reader and some ethically questionable lemur feathers, the world would look very different right now.
Next time, I’ll stay home and raise my vibration the old-fashioned way — by ignoring people.