From spirituality to spiritualities

Abstract

Spirituality in the Narrative: A Detour Via GenealogyY oga, meditation, personal development movements, New Age esoteric practices, shamanic rituals, East or South Asian-based beliefs: Today, more and more activities are defined as "spiritual."While most of these activities are inspired by specific cosmologies that have their own representations of the world, derived practices are usually highly customized and often private.They are typically based on personal beliefs borrowed from a wide range of sources, such as the belief in an interconnected world or in a form of life after death, mindfulness activities, meditations, etcetera.A good number of them sustain the well-being industry and offer tools for self-exploration and realization.The current enthusiasm for spirituality as a popular narrative is generally attributed to contemporary religious reconfigurations generated by secularization processes and a certain disenchantment with religions considered authoritarian or institutions.However, the distinction between religion and spirituality is not obvious, and it would be wrong to limit spirituality to personal development movements or the reappropriation of certain traditions from Asia (Buddhism, Hinduism) or Indigenous Peoples.In particular, the modernity and dissociation between the private and the public, the scientific and critical approach to religious dogma, and a greater tendency towards relativism have contributed to disassociating the spiritual and the religious as two spheres of religiosity (Carrette and King 2004;Huss 2014).And yet most people who attend religious institutions consider themselves "spiritual."Implicitly or explicitly, spirituality was historically anchored in religious traditions such as transcendence practices and paths, sometimes ecstatic, Introduction to Theme Issue 1