Let’s travel out of the Valley — and maybe even out of this realm — to Sedona, which has been known for decades as the nation’s “New Age Capitol," where spiritual pilgrims come to explore supernatural vortex sites to find proof of the paranormal.
But, how did it get this storied, and scientifically questioned, reputation? Annette McGivney, a longtime Arizona journalist, traced its history and future in a new piece for Arizona Highways and joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
ANNETTE MCGIVNEY: Yes, good morning.
GILGER: So you, I know, have hiked to the Red Rocks for decades all over, but, but you finally decided to kind of find out what it is about Sedona that has earned this supernatural reputation we've all probably heard of. And you began by going on a UFO tour. Can you tell us about that and what you saw?
MCGIVNEY: Yes. So it was probably a lot of people that have visited Sedona and seen the signs or the vans that say UFO tours have wondered about it. And so I just finally decided to take the leap and contacted Sedona UFO Tours and met this guy named Michael in a parking lot with other Sedona visitors.
And we drove up to the top of Airport Mesa, and he put these stools out on the ground and we all sat there and he gave us night vision goggles and instructed us about what we were seeing up in the night sky and I had never used night vision goggles before, so I, I was surprised. I was surprised. There was a lot of activity up there that I was not aware of when I look at the stars with my naked eye.
GILGER: Right. So whether or not those are spaceships is up for debate, but an interesting tour nonetheless. Take us back in history a little bit here. This reputation for the paranormal is, is relatively new historically speaking in Sedona, like it used to be a sleepy ranching town in the ‘60s and then in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, it sounds like a psychic came there and kind of changed everything.
MCGIVNEY: That's right. You know, I, I think maybe, hippies in the 1970s had been coming to Sedona because of its beautiful landscape, but it was not until the 1980s when a psychic named Paige Bryant was visiting Sedona and she just declared that certain places were what she called vortexes, and there was no historic precedent for that.
She was not drawing from anything other than what she said she intuited from the land and she described these as places that had a spiritual or mystical type of energy emanating from specific spots in around Sedona. And, you know, coincidentally, she was not like a wilderness backpacker. So all the vortexes are conveniently almost like about within 1 mile from the road.
GILGER: OK. And, and these vortexes, vortices, right, like that it's only gotten more popular, more people on the trails, more tourists visiting millions every year who come to kind of hike out to these. And, and you write about how they kind of put public land managers in a kind of awkward position because from a scientific perspective, of course, there's, there's nothing there.
MCGIVNEY: Right. You know, how we experience the landscape is very subjective and, you know, for some people, they may be looking for scientifically proven species and things like that. Others may be looking for something that's far more transcendent. And, and so, the Forest Service isn't sure how to answer that question. So they don't give, you know, direct answers saying vortexes are not real, but they do try to encourage or support alternative uses on the Coconino National Forest in Sedona, which means that if people want to meditate, you know, that's as valid a use as, as mountain biking. But they do have to, you know, keep it from harming the resource.
So too much traffic of people going to visit vortexes, damages the environment or, you know, a New Age guide playing flute music can interrupt the experience of others. So the, the Forest Service has come up with a guiding permit system where new age or, you know, vortex type guides have to get a permit from the Forest Service to lead tours and the Forest Service tries to prevent the guides from saying anything that's like too out there, I guess, like saying that there, there's definitely like UFOs that have landed on Secret Mountain, like there's no the Forest Service is like that's that's too far, too far out there.
GILGER: OK, OK. And, you also write about another downside of all of this, like the appropriation of Native American spirituality, this idea of linking new age beliefs to Indigenous cultures and how it's downright offensive to some tribes.
MCGIVNEY: Right, that's right. You know, the UFO thing, it's like, all right, whatever, you know, it can be kind of funny or what, you know, like it's not proven, but it's not really harming anyone. But the part about the Sedona tourism industry that, you know, borrows or claims knowledge about Native American cultures, especially the Indigenous cultures of the Sedona landscape, which are the Yavapai and the Apache, is harmful to the Yavapai and Apache and more broadly to Native Americans.
Because appropriating their culture can lead people to believe that the Native American people that have lived there for 1,000 years are no longer there anymore, but they are like they were forced onto a reservation just south of Sedona and so history is obscured. And then the, the practice of selling or profiting from Native American cultural practices by non-Native people is also harmful to Native people because for them, you know, it would be like, someone selling communion to us, you know, like it's, selling spiritual practices. It's very offensive to Native American people.
GILGER: That's really interesting. OK, so we have about a minute left, and I just want to ask you lastly about your impressions coming away from this experience and what you heard from people, how you felt about this sort of metaphysical or, you know, spiritual supernatural side of Sedona. What draws people there? Is it the freedom to explore the possibilities?
MCGIVNEY: Right, I, I think, you know, I definitely in writing this story did not want to come across as judgmental about people who come to Sedona specifically to experience the vortexes or, you know, the mystical reputation of the landscape because, you know, they're not from the area and, and it's true, you know, when you see the sun set in Sedona, it is a transcendent experience.
And so I guess like I wanted to encourage people to appreciate that transcendent experience without harming Native cultures or perhaps being taken advantage of by, you know, some guide that's claiming things that are not true.
