Monte Verità and Glastonbury: New Romantic ?Cries? for ?Mother Gaia?. Analysis of ?New? Spiritualit(ies) within the 20th-century and the contemporary West

The communities of Monte Verità and Glastonbury are two representatives of the ?alternative wave?, or rather of the ?counterculture? that has been spreading throughout the West since the beginning of the 20th century. Rooted in 19th- century Romanticism, it nowadays survives within the so called ?New Age?. This ?new? cultural phenomenon, which has been emerging partly in the spiritual and partly in the political field, is characterized by an eclectic mixture of ways of expressions: naturism and homeopathy, that are often put in relation to ecologist discourses; mysticism, theosophy, paranormal research and spiritual healing; forms of revival of pre-Christian religions (e.g. New Paganism), getting intertwined with Eastern imports (e.g. yoga and Asian medicine traditions); movements of space-place-sacralization such as Ley-Lines Hunting and Feng-Shui. Despite the differences in their origin and in their implementation, all these proposed ?new? ways of life share the same countercultural goal: to restore the deficits of the modern industrialized, capitalized and medialized society ? amongst others by regenerating the substantial link between the human being and the forces of nature (particularly of ?Gaia?; the earth). As a result of the popularity of these movements, the Western society has been experiencing a translation in the relationship between the ?human? and the ?beyond? in the last two centuries, as well as in the conception of religion itself and of its collective role. Starting from two significant examples of ?alternative? communities in Europe, this paper develops a reflection about the relocation of traditional religious beliefs in the post-secularized West.