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By Virato, Editor, Asheville Magazine
...with contributions from others

People Mystically Being Drawn
to the small southern town of Asheville, NC

How I Got Here   To Be...    The Vortexes   Native Americana   Science or Mystery?
Who's Here?   Back to Eating   New Age Shopping   New Age Consciousness
Holistic Health   Natural Living Media & Networking Space & Beyond So, What Is Happening?

here is a speeding up, time seems to move faster here...and I can feel it." ... "I don't know why I'm here." ... "I felt magically or mystically drawn to this area." These are some comments people in a 35 mile radius of Asheville, North Carolina can be heard making.

It happened to me the first time I drove here from Philadelphia. Heading southwest on Interstate 40, I "felt it" about 20 miles northeast of Asheville, as I approached Black Mountain, and I felt it again around Waynesville, and Maggie Valley, about 40 miles to the southwest...it's a feeling of lightness and love that seems to permeate the physical body. I felt like crying...like I had come home. Mystics say these are the vortex entrance portals...some say it is the cradle high valley between the mountain ridges...still others speak of extraterrestrials, and a heritage to Atlantis, whose people are said to have landed here after their demise...stories abound.

On the East and West, the area is embraced by two loving arms of the Appalachian range--The Blue Ridge Mountains and The Great Smoky Mountains. The mountains are considered the oldest range on the planet (over 4 millions years old), and thought to have once been as high as the Himalayas.

In fact, Mt. Mitchell, outside of Asheville-rising to over 6,684 ft, is the highest elevation east of the Mississippi River, and easily available as a landing base.

Both the Appalachian Trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway go though Asheville.

People who have spent time in the Rockies, the Himalayas, and other mountain ranges have said that although those other mountains are indeed majestic, they did not get "the nurturing feeling" they do from this area.

There is something quite powerful, mysterious and wonderful happening in this area...and it's happening fast! CBS News, Eye On America did a feature on the area, calling us "America's New Age Mecca." Like most TV programs, it covered more of the tinsel, but the program did reach over 43 million people.

Rolling Stone Magazine did a piece on Asheville in 2000, the New York Times did a feature on Asheville on September 8, 2002, and US TODAY did a 2 page feature in October 2003. The noted channeled entity Kwan Yin also talks about Asheville.

People from other so-called new age places like Sedona, Arizona; Santa Cruz, CA and Marin county, CA; Boulder, CO; Maui, HI; Seattle, WA, Ashland, OR, as well as many from Florida, and from all over the country, are flocking to the mountains of Asheville. Really flocking…

In fact, since I've moved here, I would say that about half of the people I meet have been here less than a year, with many arriving a few weeks or days ago. In fact, it's the thing most everyone around here has in common.

For those who saw the science-fiction classic, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, you know what I am talking about. People indeed are being "drawn" here.

How I Got Here

Starting with myself, Virato, if you had said that I would be living in North Carolina, I would have told you you were nuts! Me, a Brooklyn-born-boy in the bible-belt, no way! That was in October 1994. What transpired from then is indeed part of the mysterious and magical dance taking place in this....America's most powerful vortex, and the doorway to another dimension of Universal existence. I had been seeking to move out of Philadelphia for some time. I visited places like Santa Cruz, Boulder, Gainesville, Great Barrington for a week or more at a time, yet never moved.

As if directed by some unseen force, in a one week period, in that memorable October of 1994, I received over 20 pieces of correspondence from North Carolina. I think only one piece was from Asheville itself. At the time I was Editor & Publisher of New Frontier Magazine. These letters were inquiring about advertising in the magazine, or about subscriptions, or about writing for the magazine, etc.

After phoning all of the people and companies, I was stunned to learn that they were all from the Asheville, North Carolina area. Every last one of those pieces of correspondence. This was way beyond coincidence. I shared this with a number of people in our Philadelphia office. I even had a mystical experience with a magical fellow I met in Philadelphia only a week before I was to leave that city. He was from Magee Valley, near Asheville! He was one of the most interesting people I had ever met in Philadelphia. And he was born and raised here

Like wanderers to a Promised Land, spiritually-minded people are being drawn inexplicably to the breeze- swept city of Asheville and it surrounding mountains. For many, it invokes a sense of coming home...

Now let's journey through this
magical & mystical area...

When CBS News blazoned the words "New Age Religion Comes To Bible Belt" a decade ago, conscious and new thought spiritual people across America took note of Asheville, North Carolina.

There's plenty here to attract aware folk...

The temperate climate (society and geology), and the peaceful strength of the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains have to some extent permeated the consciousness of both native and immigrant alike, rendering the place, as well as the culture, fertile ground for transformation. And, underlying the potent spirituality exuded by the place itself is a power that seems to reach far beyond these ancient mountains to draw kindred souls home.

There is rarely anyone, even peripherally involved in New Age consciousness here, who does not have a story of remarkable synchronicities culminating in a move to Asheville. Few seem to have "moved" here, so much as they have "ended up," here as a result of serendipity, fluke or coincidence.

And with few exceptions, they are people whose lives are at an apogee of creative and spiritual flux. They seem to arrive at a time when their spiritual energy is high and their creative juices are flowing. Perhaps that at least partly explains why in the last few years there has been a phenomenally prolific and largely successful surge of spiritual and creative endeavor, not excluding New Frontier Magazine's move to the area in 1994..

I met a woman at a Unity Sunday service, an active participant in the new community who moved here a few years ago. She, like many others I have chatted with over the past years gave a similar story: "Everywhere I looked, I saw something about Asheville.

Word on the 'metaphysical street' hinted that Asheville was fast becoming the new spiritual Mecca," she shared.

Living in Sedona, Arizona at the time, she read an article in Arizona's major new age paper by the noted psychic and author, Page Bryant discussing the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville. Soon after reading the article by Bryant, she attended a conference in Colorado where prophecy futurist Gordon-Michael Scallion related an experience of flying over Asheville and seeing its future as one of the pivotal 'Cities of Light' for the new Millennium.

Native Americana

The summit of Looking Glass Rock is composed of pure quartz crystal, and has long been held sacred by the native Cherokee Nation. In fact, the town of Cherokee, which is also the largest Native American Nation in the East, is just outside Asheville.

Unfortunately, most of the Cherokee culture has been usurped by Pizza Huts, Burger Kings, Saturday night Bingo, and now America's Big time gambling casino Harrah's. However, herbal medicine, the oral tradition of storytelling, ceremonial dancing, sweat lodges as well as shamanic practices also permeate this wondrous area.

The Cherokee have said that one cannot have a true sense of self without simultaneously having a true sense of place. Other Native Americans have discovered the sacredness of the area. Joseph Rael, also known as Beautiful Painted Arrow, has selected a "sounding cave" near Linville Gorge as one of several sacred sites in the world. He makes pilgrimages here every year, and brings others with him to experience the healing force of the site. He is also a part of the Peace Chamber in Swannanoa (in greater Asheville)

Add to the native Americans the pagan culture, which also permeates greater Asheville. You can hardly go into any shop and not see a drum for sale, or hear of a drumming circle nearby. I have also heard that their are many witch covens, with thousands of witches here, right amongst a Baptist churches located just about every half mile or so. Pure magic!.

Science or Mystery?

Some have said that because this area's mountains are filled with quartz (several trillion tons of it!), a piezoelectric effect in the mountains acting as a psychic magnet drawing people. Others say the land is divinely blessed and that the Atlantians once lived here, after fleeing their dying continent, maybe embedding some element(s). The native Americans of course see this land as sacred. What is true is that people are coming.

There is rarely anyone involved in mysticism who does not have a story of remarkable synchronicities culminating in a move to Asheville

If personal and social transformation is about anything, it's about rising above appearances and assimilating the truth of one's own being, as well as that of the intricate web of consciousness that exists among individual place and culture.

Around 400 BC, Hippocrates was practicing a kind of "relocation therapy," treating both mental and physical afflictions by prescribing a change of natural environment.

The modern science of biometeorology has so thoroughly confirmed and expanded upon what the ancient Greek doctor knew (as well as shamanic and natural healers throughout history) that the profound connections between place and consciousness are no longer seriously questioned.

Not always on deeply subtle levels, what is essential about a place will become essential in the individual and collective psyches of the people who inhabit it. The land, climate and topography will find expression in the hearts and minds of the people who come to resonate with it, and it will attract such people to itself.

Who's Here?

So what has this area attracted? Newcomers are thrilled with the smorgasbord of events and places to choose from. While many restaurants in the Asheville area offer a vegetarian choice, new agers find themselves attracted to a few special places such as Cafe Terra in Asheville's largest natural foods store, Earth Fare, with two Asheville locations, and over 62,000 square feet of food space for a conscious consumer. Another large natural foods supermarket, Green Life Grocer downtown with about 30,000 sq. ft. is now owned by Whole Foods, the largest natural food supermarket chain in America.

New Age music legend, Steven Halpern conducted an event here in 1997, then bought a resort in nearby Magee Valley, where he frequently travels. Other New age musicians that have relocated to these mountains include Patrick O'Hearn, Richard Shulman, and cellist Ron Clearfield, Dr. Robert Moog, pioneer of electronic music made this home for a number of years, and a legacy to him in the form of national museum in his name will soon go up in town. We even have our own "mad scientist," Dr. John Blackwell and his North American Institute for Psychoacoustic Research and recording studio doing research on, and piping in sound for local musicians, trance dances, raves, etc..

At Laughing Seed Restaurant on Wall St., you can also enjoy their own homebrew beer. You might also meet actress Andie MacDowell, who makes Asheville her home, or me, Virato, and my beloved wife Dhiraja or Academy Award recipient (Best Actor) Robin Williams purchased property in Asheville and Andie MacDowell can often be seen shopping at Earth Fare natural foods supermarket and restaurant. Tiger Woods has also moved to the area with a multi-mega-buck championship gold course condominium complex. In 2008 President Obama came to the city, and again in April of 2010, Barak Obama his wife Michelle, took a weekend vacation here.

Back to Eating…

Bravo, an Osho sannyasin who is also a trained Viennese Master chef, offers a regional vegan catering service called The Organic Gourmet. And for the best salsa I have ever tasted, see Hector of Salsa's near Pack Square. The owner says that the place is a spiritual place. He says he eats a certain kind of mushroom atop one of the mountains and goes into a spiritual, creative state in which he makes his sauces, recipes and food combinations. Be sure and tell him "the swami" sent you. There are three vegan/vegetarian eateries in the area, For a pleasant veggie fair, there's Rosetta's and Green LIte Cafe on Lexington Avenue.

There are several food cooperatives in the area, the two in Asheville are French Broad Food Cooperative and Haywood Road Market in West Asheville. West Asheville has become the defacto new age section of the city. One favorite place is the West End Bakery on Haywood Rd. When owners, Cathy and Krista hatched the idea for their business back in 1999, they were inspired by the growing vibrant neighborhoods of West Asheville and the need for community-oriented walkable businesses. They both share a passion for healthy eating and a commitment to providing a welcoming atmosphere where families and neighbors can relax. West Asheville also has several yoga and holistic health centers, and two herbal school

Another unique spot in West Asheville is A Cup of Tea, which is not a cafe, but rather a holistic, new age learning salon.

New Age Shopping?

Sure, why not?

Looking for things new age from books to incense and environmentally appropriate gifts? Then you'll surely want to check out the stones and minerals at Silver Armadillo (right near Earth Fare, also loaded with goodies for the conscious shopper); A Far Away Place has a special energy (with a large photo of Sai Baba on the wall), and there's Crystal Visions in Naples, (about 20 minutes from downtown Asheville), also offers a potpourri of lectures. Earth Guild, Karma-Sonics Music. Lexington Avenue and Biltmore Avenue have also become the streets for the young at heart with shops to please any card-carrying "new ager."

At night, if you aren't at a metaphysical or spiritual gathering, Firestorm Cafe; Asheville Pizza Co. & Brewery, Melllow Mushroom and Barley's offer socializing and entertainment, and, at the rate this area is attracting new age folk, you can expect many more places to open soon.

For the Haight-Asbury crowd, Lexington Avenue offers Instant Karma, Octopus Garden, Izzy's coffee shop, and be sure to sniff out Wonderland on Patton Ave., downtown. At last count Asheville had 7 head shops. There's also Points of Light, a large crystal shop on Merrimon Ave., and another in West Asheville called Armadillo's

New Age Consciousness

It's impossible in this small space to list all the holistic, metaphysical and spiritual organizations that are in the Asheville area. There are hundreds of meditations, UFO, paranormal and other groups that seem to meet daily.

One worthy of mention is the Unity Center, about 12 miles from downtown Asheville, in Fletcher. Chad O'Shea, the minister, is a mix between a Southern Baptist preacher and George Carlin. In fact, this center has become the area's meeting place every Sunday, with over 500 attending services there each week.

A visiting representative from Unity headquarters in Lee's Summit, Missouri described it as being "like a seven-foot Japanese man; it shouldn't be, but there it is." His reaction of delightful surprise at the size, energy and vitality not only of the Unity Center, but of the whole flourishing New Age movement in the Asheville, area was fairly typical. there's now another Unity group that meets at Earth Fare each Sunday morning, and another one on Shelburne Rd.
"Living in Asheville has proven to be an enriching, healing and life-enhancing experience for thousands who have been called
to this area."

Then there's Jubilee; The Church of Religious Science; The Light Center (housed in a geodesic dome located right on a vortex in nearby Black Mountain); the Center For Creative Living; Center For World Servers; and Samasati Center, are some other open-minded, spiritual places.

And if you think it is all "sit-down," over 200 hundred people sweat there prayers, Sunday morning in an ecstatic dance participation, loosely based upon the transformational work of Gabrielle Roth. Offered by The Asheville Dance Collective, it's a shoes off, free form trance experience.

There are hundreds of spiritual and metaphysical retreats and centers popping up all over the area! Stay tuned to this City of Light feature in Asheville Magazine and be kept up to date

Energy Vortexes in the Asheville Area

ince moving to Waynesville, NC, not far from Asheville, Page Bryant (who was spiritually told to leave Sedona to come here) has written the definitive metaphysical book about the area, The Spiritual Reawakening Of The Great Smoky Mountains. According to Bryant, there are many vortices (bioelectric energy points) spread across the planet. These vortices could be compared to acupuncture points on the human body. They are junctions of crossings of ley lines, or meridians, that cover the earth's surface. Some of these vortices are dormant, much the same as dry river beds, while some are awake or awakening. There are twenty-four active vortices between Black Mountain and Waynesville, and many more power spots. This is one of the most concentrated number of vortices and power points anywhere in this country...over 24 major ones!

Holistic Health

The famed herbal extract and tincture company, Gaia Herbs, Inc. has chosen to move from up in Massachusetts to nearby Brevard, NC, Red Moon Herbals is in nearby Black Mountain, and this is the home of master herbalist, Corey-Pine Shane, and several herb schools. Many Wiccan folk have their own cottage industry herb businesses. This is ideal plush country for growing all sorts of herbs.

American Miso Company has been near here for 24 years (now a part of Great Eastern Sun, also located near Asheville. We even have the Kava Bar downtown Asheville, that indeed gives a "buzz." There are a number of dome structures going up all over the Asheville area, which seems to be in keeping with Gordon-Michael Scallion's (Earth Changes Report) predictions of the area. He foresaw many such domes housing healing centers, and saw people from all over the world would come here to be healed or to heal.

The Grove Street Healing Arts Center; Appalachian School of Holistic Herbalism, Moving Forward Alternative Health; The North Carolina School of Natural Healing; the Society of World Healers, Energy Medicine Clinic; The Source For Healing; The Lighten Up! Yoga Center, The Center for Effective Living and Biltmore Yoga Center are only a few of the many other healing centers in the area. From Black mountain to Waynesville, holistic health places seem to be opening weekly!

There are hundreds of individual practitioners offering just about every possible healing modality, from massage to psychotherapy, acupressure to Zen. Asheville's The AHA Directory includes nearly 600 listings of them. One particularly interesting place is A Cup of Tea located in West Asheville, rn n my wife and I and the thousands of devas of the region.

The climate of this area has long made it a place people come for healing. The town of Hot Springs, just minutes from Asheville, is fed directly from the earth's center with healing volcanic hot waters.

Dr. Paul Fleischer, a transpersonal psychologist, came to this area from San Francisco. Others like him have followed. He and his wife were drawn to Asheville because of its reputation as being “the San Francisco of the South,” and because of the aura of the mountains. “We wanted to live in a place that has great natural beauty and a strong progressive community; Asheville was at the top of the list!”

Natural Living

If you are into getting back to basics, there's the Mountain Barter Partners Network; Transformative Adventure Vacations; Earth Green Medicine Lodge; Southern Dharma Retreat; World's Edge Springs; The Organic Gourmet; and countless others All have a spiritual metaphysical atmosphere and essence.

However, just five minutes outside of Asheville, in any direction, will place you in the loving embrace of nature on some mountaintop. Many new age seekers have moved into log cabins with no telephone, television or other connection to the grid. There are still some Cherokee who live on the land in tents, urts, lean-tos, and yes, even teepees.

The rainbow nation is also deeply entrenched in these mountains, or finding a crash pad downtown. Some, like Burton Smith, a former Krishna devotee, who spent a winter in his teepee at Gypsy's End, a former witch hang-out in nearby Weaverville. Many, many dormant gurus live in mountain cabins, some as small as a single room, and some quite luxurious. They are beginning to come to town of late…

Media & Networking

As for the media, not only did New Frontier Magazine relocate to the area in 1994, but there's also Natural Awakenings, Asheville Magazine, Unity News, Asheville Holistic Alternatives , and other progressive publications in town. There are several local new age publishers. Ironwood Productions, an award-winning film and video company and a few other film companies have nested in Asheville as well.

Within a year after I arrived in the mountains, I hosted New Frontier On The Air, a new age talk radio program in Asheville on WSKY, a 3000 watt AM station, and got rave reviews until the owners decided to sell to a conservative fundamentalist Christian coalition ; however, I also came back and had a new age radio show on Clear Channel Broadcasting's "progressive" 880 AM The Revolution called VIRATO LIVE! five continuous years from 2005-2010, with three or more guests weekly. With streaming online, in addition to the 5,000 watt signal in the Asheville area, it is was heard by nearly 1/2 million people nationally every week! The revolutionary "people's" radio, WPVM, while only 10 watts has loyal listeners, as does URTV, the "people's" TV Channel 20 on local Charter Communications cable. And for movies, it has also been dubbed the Indie Movie Capital of America. For a few months in 2010, I was producer and host of VIRATO LIVE! on television, at URTV, broadcast on Charter Cable in Asheville.

Space & Beyond…

For the space and metaphysical folk, CSETI, The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence; the Human Dimensions Institute; The Star Foundation; the Council of the Empyreum; and Dr. Colette M. Dowell, leading international researcher on Crop Circles, have relocated to this area.

Colette Dowell, author of Circular Times has been seen on Fox's Sightings, Encounters, NBC's The Other Side and other national TV programs. In addition to here Crop Circle work, Dr. Dowell also claims to be an alien abductee, and MRI scans have shown an implant in the center of her brain.

Another interesting person is Ma Deva Dhiraja who lives simply in West Asheville and has some interesting energy, and is also my wife. Another is Ra who claims to come with a message, and leads tours of the vortexes.

Most others are quite quiet about their UFO and "other dimensional" work in this area as well. Nearby Brown Mountain has been internationally examined for its "Brown Mountain Lights." Mysterious balls of lights that seem to come of the ground and move around. These have also been documented on shows such as Sightings.

And the radio program Speaking of Strange the paranormal show is also broadcast here on Saturday nights on WWNC in Asheville., and heard nationwide to an audience of over 5 million people every week

So, What Is Happening?

What's happening in Asheville goes beyond what has been termed by the traditional media as a subculture of consciousness.

Where business and political leaders of an Appalachian mountain town are being offered--and availing themselves of--such things as meditation classes, Sufi-based conflict mediation and primary and secondary education at the Odyssey School, or group consciousness training via drumming circles, dance and ritual, things have progressed beyond the transitory self-interests of a subculture, into the community at large, and that is the bright glint of a shifting paradigm, and why we have become a City of Light...

Evolution isn't always gradual and steady. It's sometimes a sequence of relatively sudden mutations alternating with protracted periods of adaptation. Those mutations almost invariably occur in hospitable environments, in places where successful adaptation is most likely. This holds in biology as well as in social structures and matters of individual and collective consciousness. That which is approaching its time of mutation, or transformation if you prefer, will be attracted to a place conducive to that process. Asheville is such a place, a spiritually potent context in which many are making the transformation from what seems to be to what is: Esse Quam Videre.

Living in Asheville has proven to be an enriching, healing and life-enhancing experience for thousands who have been called to this area. You are invited to listen with your heart and soul.

Participate in our forums and be a part of our Asheville Magazine Yahoo Group.

Special thanks to Walker Mozingo who wrote the infrastructure and much of the original article above.

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This is a living article and may change from time to time as the area grows, changes, transforms.

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