New age America is entranced by Obama's electoral aura

A curious side-story in this year's election campaign is that the new age movement in the US has embraced Obama even more fervently than most of his supporters. New agers are traditionally liberal, so it's no surprise that they're backing the Democratic candidate. But the question that's been gathering steam among them in recent weeks goes much further than that, and brings - shall we say - a whole other dimension to the race: could Obama be a "lightworker"?

"Many spiritually advanced people I know ... identify Obama as a lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who [can] actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford in a piece headlined "Is Obama an Enlightened Being?" On the higher astral planes of the blogosphere, the notion met with enthusiasm. "He may play a major role," one blogger wrote, "in bringing us to [what] the Hopi Indians call the Great Shift." The endorsement of Oprah Winfrey, increasingly involved in new age spirituality, underscored the point.

from the UK Guardian.