Theoretical and Epistemological Questions for the Study of Contemporary Spirituality in Catholic Italy on Nature, Well-Being, and Mystery

Abstract

In this article I present the main findings of an empirical study about contemporary spirituality in Italy begun in 2017 by reasoning about the analysis of twelve case studies which are particularly eloquent concerning the different spiritual worlds emerging in Catholic Italy. I argue that three main narratives—the spirituality of nature, wellbeing, and mystery—are useful to synthesize the heterogeneousness of groups, communities, festivals, and organizations engaged in the Italian “holistic milieu”. In order to address this reflection, firstly I will trace the international sociological debate that has accompanied the concept of contemporary spirituality and the relationship between spirituality and religion, a couple which I have named “frenemies”. Then, I will extend the analysis to the concept of the secular, examining the intertwining of the spiritual, religious, and secular spheres. After illustrating the landscape of contemporary spirituality in Catholic Italy more broadly, I shall focus on the case studies taken as examples of the spirituality of nature, the spirituality of health and wellbeing, and the spirituality of mystery. In the Discussion and Conclusion, I shall raise some fundamental questions that the study of contemporary spirituality poses for the sociology of religion with reference to secularisation, one of its most classic and yet contested paradigms. I shall claim that future research paths could further contribute to strengthening the idea, raised in this article, that secularisation can also be understood not only as an antithetical force to religion but as the process in Western history that has led to the emergence of a secular social space in dialogue with the religious sphere.

1. Introduction

To tackle the contemporary religious landscape—more specifically the question of religious change—the scientific community of the sociologists of religion has produced competing theories that can be divided into three ideal-typical meta-narratives (Popp-Baier 2010, p. 34), which have framed the recent debate in this field: (a) a narrative about decline, which is articulated by variations of the classical secularisation theory maintaining that modernisation has led and still leads religion to decline in magnitude and importance; (b) a narrative about transformation, which is often linked to concepts such as “invisible religion”, “implicit religion”, “believing without belonging”, “vicarious religion”, and, in recent years, more prominently with “spirituality”, maintaining a metamorphosis of the social form of religion in the context of the more general cultural and societal changes relating to individualisation and subjectivisation (Heelas and Woodhead 2005; Houtman and Aupers 2007; Steensland et al. 2022); (c) a narrative about resurgence, which is most eloquently articulated by the rational choice or religious economies approach linking religious vitality to religious pluralism and a market of competing religious organizations. This perspective stresses the supply side of religion, implying that a basic religious demand is an anthropological constant and that people act as religious consumers, shopping for religious commodities, weighing costs and benefits (Iannaccone 1991; Stark 1999). Equally effective, Day (2020, p. 38) describes those narratives in terms of the “Three Rs”: 1. Retreat; 2. Reinvention; 3. Resurgence.

Building on this debate, in the article I present the main findings of an empirical study about contemporary spirituality in Italy begun in 2017 (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a, 2021b) by reasoning about the analysis of twelve case studies which are particularly eloquent of the different spiritual worlds emerging in Catholic Italy. I argue that three main narratives—the spirituality of nature, wellbeing, and mystery—are useful to synthesize the heterogeneousness of groups, communities, festivals, and organizations engaged in the Italian “holistic milieu”. Studying this topic in Italy is heuristically useful because here the Catholic Church has exercised a decisive religious and cultural influence, to the extent that it is arguable that the country is a privileged observatory in order to understand how today’s spirituality is related with institutional religion. I also want to extend this inquiry to the nexus between the spiritual and the secular. In other words, my aim is to illustrate the case studies analysed in our research, showing each spiritual stream’s ambivalent relations with mainstream culture, both religious and secular. I claim that is not possible to understand contemporary spirituality without exploring its relationships with both the religious and secular spheres. Based on this thesis, I argue that the analysis of the “enchanted worlds” of contemporary spirituality in Italy (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a)—those connected with the sacralisation of nature; those concerned with health and wellbeing; and those which are fascinated by mystery—clearly shows that the dividing line between the religious, spiritual, and secular spheres has porous and poorly marked boundaries. In short, in order to understand contemporary spirituality, we cannot avoid looking at the secular because the saeculum has become the new source of production of the sacred and of re-enchantment: it is in this secular sphere, where nature, wellbeing, health, popular culture, consumer practices, art, the professions, sport, tourism, etc. are located, that today’s spiritual imaginaries are rooted, and which rather than supplanting the previous, traditional symbolic universes, integrate, modify, and update them. This analysis suggests rethinking secularisation as a multifaceted process that is not reduced to the decline of the religious but, more broadly, relates to the different ways in which Western society has elaborated the public space of the secular. In the end, the study of contemporary spirituality in Catholic Italy offers material to rethink secularisation as no longer—or not only—a force antithetical to religion, but rather as the historical path, already undertaken at the origins of Western society, of the ‘making of the secular’, which, is the construction of a secular public space alongside, and in relation to, the religious space.

In order to address this reflection, in the next section I will trace the international sociological debate that has accompanied the concept of contemporary spirituality and the relationship between spirituality and religion. In Section 3, I will extend the analysis to the concept of the secular, examining the intertwining of the spiritual, religious, and secular spheres. After illustrating the landscape of contemporary spirituality in Catholic Italy more broadly (Section 4), I will focus on the case studies taken as examples of the spirituality of nature, the spirituality of health and wellbeing, and the spirituality of mystery (Section 5). In the Discussion (Section 6) and Conclusion (Section 7), I shall raise some fundamental questions that the study of contemporary spirituality poses for the sociology of religion with reference to secularisation, one of its most classic and yet contested paradigms.

2. Frenemies. Narratives about the Religion-Spirituality Nexus

The debate accompanying the entry of the spirituality concept into sociology is still going on. In this section, I shall synthesise it in three narratives which I define as ideal types because I believe that they exemplify its main directions1. These narratives insist upon the religion–spirituality relationship, a controversial binomial—antagonists, or two sides of the same coin?—which, since the mid-1980s, has interested researchers (Spilka 1993; Turner et al. 1995). In those years, in the words of Zinnbauer et al. (1997), “Unfuzzying the Fuzzy” was necessary, which is to say drawing the borders between the two concepts in order to explore their reciprocal relations. This was the start of a research path which is still being abundantly trodden today and in which I can identify three phases corresponding with the three previously mentioned narratives. To do this, I suggest some metaphors from photography which seem to be particularly effective in communicating the epistemology underlying each narrative: 1. “In focus” (distinguishing the concepts); 2. “Countershot” (contrasting the concepts); and 3. “Out of focus” (fusing the concepts).

The temporal succession of the three narratives reveals the dissolution of the religion-spirituality borders because one goes from considering them as two distinct (whether separate or not) entities to perceiving them as a single one. Although these narratives belong to a certain historical phase of the debate, they continue to fuel evolving, overlapping debates in the academic literature (Steensland et al. 2022). The narratives have defined the terms of reasoning and even if their spokespersons have, over time, refined, revised, and integrated their ideas, I shall present them in their original forms which structured the debate.

I shall use the term Frenemies to define the religion–spirituality relationship because their interactions, sometimes called pacific, ambiguous, or conflictual, are in any case intimate and inextricable.

2.1. Narrative 1: In Focus

The pioneer studies of the late 1990s, albeit intending to outline religion–spirituality differences, interpreted them as compatible concepts, which is to say distinctive but not alternative. Apart from the work of Zinnbauer et al. (1997), the best examples of this narrative come from two North American scholars, Roof (1993) and Wuthnow (1998, 2001). They explored faith transformations in the US from the 1950s, both arguing that the category of spirituality is more suitable than that of religion to observe these transformations, and they aim to outline the differences between the two. In A Generation of Seekers (Roof 1993), Roof investigates the anxieties and desires of baby boomers growing up between the Vietnam War, Watergate, cultural revolution, and struggles for human rights recognition. According to the author, the most significant change witnessed by this generation is expressed by the need to seek autonomously the meaning of one’s own existence, without considering the heredity of previous generations. In the religious field, this translates into both a decreasing number belonging to traditional religions and an increase in alternative itineraries. But even those who remain within the cocoon of religion claim the freedom to build for themselves systems of ready-made meanings. Therefore, it is not religious institutions’ offer which governs relations with the sacred, but the subjects’ free seeking for sense based on experiences of their daily lives. The spirituality category—and this is Roof’s thesis—is quick to take this turning into account because it demonstrates the importance of a human being’s free relationship with the sacred, as opposed to religion which anchors the relationship in the well-trodden paths of traditional institutions.

This difference is splendidly expressed in the words of a Wuthnow interviewee in After Heaven (Wuthnow 1998, p. 56): “I somehow felt freer … free of the angry God and hypocritical church experiences of my childhood”. Wuthnow says that the most radical change in American religion can be summed up in the transition which came about starting in the mid-twentieth century from “dwelling” to “seeking” spirituality. Whereas the former has characterized religion in traditional social contexts (i.e., relationship with the sacred is guaranteed by religious institutions and their dogmatic certainties), the latter expresses contemporary-faith dynamics (relationship with the sacred is centred on the subject, does not have safe borders and is open to exploration of various cultural traditions). Yet this distinction is not an opposition; nor can it be explained by the “traditional dwelling society” versus “today’s seeking” dichotomy. According to Wuthnow, “dwelling” and “seeking” should be understood as two spiritual orientations which have always been present, yesterday as well as today, in past and present societies. They may coexist in the biographies of individuals who have adopted them contemporaneously (“A majority of the public has retained some loyalty to their churches … yet their practice of spirituality from Monday to Friday often bears little resemblance to the preachments of religious leaders”, ibid., p. 13) or who alternate them seasonally (“Places become boringly the same, stifling imagination to the point that a person feels compelled to move on”, ibid., p. 6). Neither Roof nor Wuthnow sees religion and spirituality as alternatives.

2.2. Narrative 2: Countershot

If the work of the North American scholars mentioned earlier endowed validity on the idea of religion and spirituality as two compatible categories, a few years later on the other side of the Atlantic, opposing contributions made their appearance. The most emblematic is The Spiritual Revolution by Heelas and Woodhead (2005): based on an empirical survey in the English town of Kendal aimed at classifying the social and organizational forms of the “congregational domain” (historical churches and traditional faiths) and the “holistic milieu” (cults, Neo-Paganism, and New Age), they hypothesize a clear opposition between religion and spirituality. But the research findings suggest to them above all the provocative thesis of the “spiritual revolution”, according to which religion is gradually giving way to spirituality in the West. Heelas and Woodhead see these concepts as not only distinct but also reciprocally exclusive, which is to say in a “zero sum” (inversely proportional) relationship where when one increases, the other decreases. Their thesis is inspired by Charles Taylor’s (1991) reflections on the “subjectivist turning of modern culture”, and this is what gave them the idea of the distinction between “religion of life as” and “spirituality of subjective life”: the former sacralises conformity with a transcendent authority and with tradition mediating its will; the latter sacralises the personal experience of meeting one’s deepest self. The concept of a spiritual revolution has its defenders also outside Britain: Houtman and Aupers (2007) propose the thesis of a “spiritual turn” to support the argument of the success of so-called “post-Christian” spiritualities in northwestern European countries. According to the authors, these “new”, “alternative” forms—“free from the moorings of the Christian religion”—attract the “spiritual but not religious” category; for them, neither truth nor divinity exists outside the individual, but within, closed in the inner self (Houtman and Aupers 2007, p. 54). Based on a statistical analysis of EVS (European Values Study) data, they assert that between 1981 and 2000 there was a clear growth of “post-Christian” spiritualities at the expense of church religions.

This process was particularly evident in the Netherlands, France, and Sweden as well as Great Britain. Nevertheless, Houtman and Aupers—as distinct from Heelas and Woodhead—are not convinced that the spiritual turning will continue in the future.

2.3. Narrative 3: Out of Focus

Differently from the narratives mentioned earlier, that which dominates contemporary sociological debate considers the religion and spirituality concepts neither as distinct (Narrative 1) nor as alternatives (Narrative 2). On the contrary, by insisting on the heuristic usefulness of an epistemology which “blurs the borders” (Ammerman 2013), this narrative considers the two concepts as overlapping and interchangeable. This is particularly supported by an approach which at the moment enjoys some popularity in scientific reflection, that of “lived religion” (Orsi 2003; Ammerman 2016; McGuire 2008; Neitz 2011). Lived religion aims to focus on “individuals’ practices in everyday life” (McGuire 2008, p. 16)—such as gardening, walking, or domestic work—in order to show how religion overflows traditional banks to enter daily-life activities. In accordance with these premises, the examples which we gave of this narrative reject the religion/spirituality dichotomy in favour of the “lived religion” synthetic category. Ammerman, one of the most authoritative voices on the subject, in Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes (Ammerman 2013) explores (by means of complex research combining photo-elicitation interviews with diaries) how her specimens (95) of Americans use the concepts of religion and spirituality in daily life—at work, at home, in sport, and in religious spaces. Her findings lead her to many reasons why religion and spirituality coincide analytically: 1. In America most people define themselves as being “religious and spiritual”. 2. While it is true that it is mostly church attenders who use the language of spirituality, it is also true that even those who do not go to church use it. The latter speak mainly about “extra-religious spirituality”, which also regularly attracts church attenders. 3. even though some interviewees profit from this label to distance themselves from religion, many others do so for the opposite reason. For example, some Protestant conservatives interviewed by Ammerman declared themselves “only spiritual” in order to criticise conventional religiosity which ignores personal, direct relationship with the divine (“finding Jesus”), whereas others, barely practising, used the label to indicate that they felt closer to God than to churches. Ammerman concludes that what is “spiritually religious” and what is “religiously spiritual” are indivisible.

Bender agrees with Ammerman: in a 2003 study which turned out to be seminal for lived religion, she hypothesises the necessity to explore religion in daily life. She calls into question the possibility of distinguishing between religion and spirituality, arguing that these are not personal entities or properties but relational identities used interchangeably according to daily-life circumstances. For example, the canteen volunteers for the AIDS-afflicted whom she meets in her ethnography (Bender 2003) alternate, depending on her interlocutors, between introducing themselves as “religious people” (when they speak to the author they refer explicitly to their churches’ theological principles) or as spiritual people (when they speak with other volunteers or with the afflicted). Bender uses this same layout in a 2010 ethnography dedicated to the “New Metaphysicists”, which is to say practitioners in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, religious-spiritual milieu. She argues that the spirituality field is not autonomous but is inserted into the city’s social life: it evolves through interaction with the various institutional contexts with which it comes into contact because the latter influence the form that spirituality adopts within them. Even the practice of yoga—to give but one example from the many in the book—when hosted by churches (religion) assumes different characteristics from when it is practised in alternative health centres (secular). In the first case, the practicants tend to model themselves on religious canons (with meditation and chanting), and in the second on medical-health repertoires (emphasizing the bodily benefits of the exercises).

The collection of contributions edited by Fedele and Knibbe (2013) belongs to this narrative; it reflects upon the relationship among women, religion, and spirituality in southern European countries. Writing favourably of the lived religion approach, Fedele and Knibbe reject the spirituality/religion distinction. When they are studied ethnographically, according to the authors, they reveal themselves to be more similar than their affiliates believe. Although in practitioners’ discourses they seem different—fixed, authoritarian, patriarchal religion hostile to the body versus flexible, egalitarian, gender-sensitive spirituality friendly to the body—if broken down into the practices and relationships which characterize them, they resemble each other. This is particularly true with regard to gender and power relations because spiritual forms often adopt the hierarchical and patriarchal (typical of religions) structures which, in theory, they claim to reject.

3. Extending the Analysis. The Spiritual–Religious–Secular Nexus

Based on these narratives, in this section, I shall present my hypothesis concerning spirituality–religion. In addition, I shall show how my hypothesis differs from the narratives previously illustrated. My idea is that it is useful to distinguish between spirituality and religion on the theoretical–analytical level, although they are in practice dialectically related. I use Weber’s ideal-type tool to distinguish between them: reasoning along the lines of polar opposites, I assert that spirituality is a relationship with the sacred governed by the subject (personal and interior), whereas religion is a relationship with the sacred governed by institutions which, by virtue of tradition, regulate beliefs and practices (orthodoxy and orthopraxis). Some examples intuitively restore the distance between the two polar opposites of the continuum: the believing, practising Catholic who takes part in parish activities and identifies as a member of the Christian community, lives a religious experience mediated by the institution (religion) which does not overlap with that of the spiritual seeker who in solitude seeks mystical contact with nature, eclectically uniting Zen meditation with channelling and reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (spirituality). In comparing these situations, we recognise that, although they are both experiential modalities of the sacred, they are different paths in terms of contents, modalities, and sense horizons. The usefulness of this distinction is validated not only on the theoretical but also on the methodological level: religion and spirituality, to the extent to that they are ideal types, are heuristic tools which are useful for recognizing different empirical ways of religious action and experience of the sacred. What is the spirituality–religion relationship in the light of these definitions? I exclude the two extremes described in the previous section, taking my distance both from the second narrative, which conceives them as distinct, alternative categories, and from the third, which interprets them as coincident categories. With regard to the second narrative, although I defend the necessity of distinguishing between religion and spirituality, I am very far from the idea that they are two independent, mutually exclusive spheres. At the same time, arguing from ideal types leads me to distance myself from the conviction that the two concepts are analytically indistinguishable—which is what the third narrative would like us to believe2. It is true that lived religion originates with the intention to supply a bottom-up interpretation of the religious phenomenon aimed at compensating the top-down one, which dominates the sociology of religion; but it is equally true that—as Sutcliffe and Gilhus (2013, p. 11) have pointed out—substituting the top-down approach with the bottom-up means passing from one kind of one-sidedness to the other.

I, on the other hand, agree with the first narrative, which says that religion and spirituality are distinct but not independent. However, it behoves us to notice an aspect which is there but only hinted at: the reciprocal influence between religion and spirituality. My approach responds to Roof’s (2003) exhortation to move forward the exploration of religion–spirituality integration. I accept this invitation because of my conviction that there is an interrelationship—or, rather, a dialectical relationship—between the two. My thesis is that spirituality and religion define each other and so it is not possible to define one in the absence of the other. Spirituality interacts with religion and vice versa: they fertilise each other by means of meetings, clashes, and assimilations, generating continuous innovation and change. In line with Roof’s intuition, I further argue that investigating this relationship is not enough: if we studied only “religious spiritualities”—i.e., spirituality as a dimension of religion—it might suffice to limit oneself to the spirituality–religion pair, but it would not be enough for contemporary spirituality, which is specifically aimed at maintaining important relationships also with the secular sphere. Therefore, to understand the phenomenon of contemporary spirituality it is necessary to extend further the object of analysis and also take into account the interactions which link it to secular culture, a field which early contributions almost totally ignored. Various empirical studies show reciprocal religion–spirituality influence (Sutcliffe and Bowman 2000; Droogers 2007; Versteeg 2007; Woodhead 2011; Possamai 2003; Woodhead and Vincett 2016), but very few include the secular. In this context, we may cite, among others, Taylor (2007) on the role of Enlightenment and nonbelieving figures: Van de Veer (2009) on the convergence of contemporary spirituality with the values of modern secularism; Bender (2010) on the interrelationship between religious and secular spiritualities; and Fedele and Knibbe (2019) on the meanings which religion, spirituality, and secularism derive from their relations with one another. Thus, since contemporary spirituality is specifically aimed at maintaining important relationships with secular spheres, in the following sections, I shall apply this approach to the study of the Italian spiritual landscape.

4. Studying Contemporary Spirituality in Catholic Italy

The field of contemporary spirituality in Italy has still received little scholarly attention and thus remains relatively unexplored (Giordan 2006, 2016). Quantitative research carried out so far records that more and more Italians, from the 2000s onwards, prefer to describe themselves as “spiritual” rather than “religious”, in contrast to what happened in the previous decade (Palmisano 2010; Berzano 2017). Approximately 70% of the population also shows familiarity with spiritual topics, participating in courses and seminars in the holistic milieu, performing practices or reading texts on these topics—especially an audience made up of women and adults mainly concentrated in the northern and central regions of Italy (Garelli 2020). In spite of this interest in the environment of spirituality, Italy cannot be said to be marked by that “spiritual revolution” hypothesized for the context of continental Europe by Heelas and Woodhead (2005), but still retains a traditional religious imprint linked to Catholicism (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a, 2021b). The reasons for this resilience of historical religion are to be found principally in the presence of a substantial part of the population, around one fifth, of convinced and active believers (Garelli 2020). Moreover, attraction to the holistic milieu is often motivated by intellectual interests or mere curiosity and not by deep-rooted spiritual convictions. Finally, it is worth noting how Catholicism remains as a “prototypical” model of religion capable of influencing the beliefs, values, and representations of the divine even of young people who more openly declare themselves distant from the Church (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a). Indeed, the younger generations construct a personalised Christianity, borrowing elements from different sources, without definitively severing the link with the religion of birth (Giordan and Sbalchiero 2020). This aspect is also visible, for example, in the women’s spirituality groups to which women come who, while abandoning the Catholic religion because they are dissatisfied with the Church’s answers on sexuality and patriarchy, show that they do not renounce their faith of origin: Christianity is reinterpreted in a spiritual frame, as happens for the cult of Mary Magdalene (Fedele 2013) or for the Stregheria italica, which some authors have described as a sort of “Pagan Christianity” (Magliocco 2000; Tagliaferri 2014).

Although a spiritual revolution is not taking place in Italy, it is evident that new spiritual currents are increasingly emerging and gaining popularity. The data provided by those studies, however, do not allow us to accurately outline all the currents qualifying Italian spirituality in recent years. This was the reason that drove me (Palmisano 2020; Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a, 2021b; Castagnetto and Palmisano 2021) to explore the variegated and changing world of contemporary spirituality in Italy by means of a qualitative study based on interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. The data collected allow me to outline a picture in which the multiple spiritual currents may be divided into three ideal-typical strands centred on three corresponding narratives whose themes are nature, well-being, and mystery. The first includes spiritualities that sacralise nature because they see in it the manifestation par excellence of the divine, or spiritualities that, while not calling into question the sphere of the transcendent and the divine, consider deep contact with the natural environment to be the ideal opportunity to embark on a journey of inner quest. The second narrative looks at wellbeing and human potential. These are spiritualities that emphasize self-care and the development of the individual’s latent, dormant capacities. They conceive of health in a holistic sense, as a harmonious balance of body, mind, and soul. The third narrative trespasses into the realm of mystery. For these spiritualities, ordinary reality, perceived by the five senses, is only an appearance behind which the true essence of things is hidden. This hidden dimension is accessed through arcane knowledge and confidential knowledge drawn from magic, esotericism, occultism, and alternative sciences.

In the following section, I shall deepen these narratives in the light of twelve case studies gathered while searching for “spiritual virtuosi” throughout Italy (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021b). By this term I refer to people animated by a profound need to give meaning to life, for whom the search for the sacred is not a passing fad, nor is it reduced to a mere intellectual curiosity or commercial interest, but a qualifying and central motif of their biographical experience.

5. Voices from the Fieldwork. The “Enchanted Worlds” of Nature, Well-Being, and Mystery in Italy

The geography of contemporary Italian spirituality is still little-explored territory. There is no list, even an approximate one, of the numerous groups, associations or events that populate it. It is a territory that presents itself, therefore, as a still elusive object of study. There are many reasons for this knowledge gap. Spirituality is often a path lived outside institutionalised churches that is expressed in unstructured organizations. To this difficulty must be added the extreme mutability of the territory in which we operate. New spiritualities quickly take the place of others in a succession of changes that, while denoting the great vitality and creativity of the phenomenon, also make any definition of its boundaries necessarily provisional. As happens when one moves through an impassable and relatively unexplored territory, in order to orient oneself within it, it is useful to have points of reference, a compass that can indicate the direction to follow. The strategy which I have adopted to bring order to this complex panorama has been to identify the main themes around which the discourse of contemporary Italian spirituality is framed. What we can glean from our descent into the field—an analysis of twelve groups engaged in the holistic milieu, along with consultation of portals on “spiritual activities” (events, fairs and festivals, courses, internships, experiential weekends, trips, wellness centres, spiritual coaches of the most diverse genres), and natural documents (websites, books, publications and information material produced by the groups themselves)—is the recurrence of three fundamental themes, directions towards which today’s spiritual currents are pointing. As I mentioned above, these streams are nature, wellness and health, and mystery. In order to give an account of this world inhabited by the “spiritual virtuosi”, I carried out ethnographic research (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a, 2021b). This method allowed me to immerse myself within the examined groups by means of two main instruments: in-depth interviews and participant observation3.

In what follows, I shall analyse the narratives related to the spirituality of nature, wellness and health, and mystery, focussing on the twelve case studies of spirituality—located mainly in Northern and Central Italy—that I have examined; each stream is represented by four case studies.

1. The first narrative is typical of spiritualities that orient themselves towards what surrounds the human being, constituting the original habitat to which one feels “a sense of belonging” with nature. The sanctification of nature emphasizes feelings of peace, harmony, balance, and identity derived from the “connection”—a key concept in this narrative—with the environment. Being spiritual means experiencing a profound connection with nature and deriving moral values from it, such as the virtues of generosity, the joy of self-giving, and the celebration of the cycle of life, exemplified by activities such as drinking by a waterfall, lighting a fire, enjoying the gifts of the forest, and observing the changing seasons. Specifically, four cases studied illustrate different conceptions of nature: Neo-Druidism, Neo-Witchcraft, Ecospirituality, and the practice of “Forest Bathing” (shinrin-yoku). For the Druids of the Great Bear Clan, nature is a kind of “enchanted garden”, a place hosting spiritual forces, and a tangible manifestation of the divine with which a mystical connection is possible. The sanctification of nature for the Clan is a spiritual path rooted in a specific tradition, that of the Celtic people, and in a specific territory, the Aosta Valley where they usually gather. The return to nature is inseparable from this cultural legacy, which today’s Druids consider themselves heirs to. Neo-Witchcraft (Castagnetto and Palmisano 2021) presents itself as a “natural religion” based on the idea that divinity is inherent in nature, and all living beings are sacred. Practitioners interviewed in Piedmont commemorate the natural cycle of seasons represented by the “wheel of the year” by celebrating the eight “sabbats” linked to the movement of the sun. Similarly, for the Dreamland Foundation, a Piedmontese branch of Eco-spirituality, nature is imbued with the divine. Recognizing the profound connection that ties humans and every living form to nature, it becomes a powerful symbol of cultural identity. Unlike Neo-Druidism, the sanctification of nature here does not reference an exclusive historical–cultural tradition but draws from a plurality of traditions within what it terms “eco-spirituality” inspired by the philosophy of “Indigenous Peoples” in contact with Mother Earth. While the Great Bear Clan and Dreamland Foundation associate a metaphysical and transcendent value with nature derived from past spiritual traditions, “Forest Bathing” expresses a distinctly secular tone. Nature is not inhabited by deities or elemental spirits but is, more secularly, an ideal environment for personal experiences of inner transformation and the pursuit of a harmony not achievable elsewhere. Practices like shinrin-yoku foster this connection, which also carries a mystical quality without translating into a doctrinal or transcendent language.

2. The second narrative is typical of spiritualities that orient themselves towards the innermost aspects of human beings, their profound selves, indicating a path of developing their potential to succeed in the world and achieve well-being and healing in a holistic sense—health of the body, mind, and spirit. Exploring one’s inner forests, navigating through shadows, resolving blocks and conflicts through the exploration of personal archetypes become, in these paths, conditions to bring light, heal soul wounds, move beyond the illusion of the mind, and authentically know oneself. This spiritual work aims to understand one’s life purpose in connection with “the purpose the soul has chosen in this incarnation” or with “one’s inner child”. One of the most recurring words in this narrative is “awareness”, the starting and concluding point of a personal transformation journey. Being spiritual in this context means recognizing, through the enhancement of the mind and consciousness, the divine or transcendent as part of oneself, a unity with the individual soul. This is the common thread linking four other cases: the Lumen Community, Mindfulness, Family constellations, and Feminist Spirituality. These cases illustrate variations on the theme, describing ways to awaken the new awareness necessary for healing.

In the Lumen community in Emilia-Romagna, the pursuit of awareness is intertwined with that of spirituality. Lumen members offer themselves and their followers a program based on meditation, diets, naturopathy, “Fourth Way exercises”, and Gurdjieff dances, all aimed at “awakening”. The awareness gained through these practices allows those who choose this path to become aware of the deep-seated causes of their psychophysical discomforts, connecting the health of the body with that of the mind and spirit. The inner growth nurtured by this journey leads Lumen members and their associates to explore “higher energies”, “nameless and formless”, in a spiritual quest not aligned with any religious tradition but rather seeking, in a perennialist sense, “what unites rather than separates”.

The concept of well-being advocated by Mindfulness is rooted in the Buddhist tradition, particularly Vipassanā meditation. Through Mindfulness, this religious legacy transforms into a clinical protocol offering the opportunity to embark on a non-denominational spiritual journey that can help practitioners strengthen any pre-existing religious faith. Beyond being a mere relaxation practice, Mindfulness promotes a state of well-being through mental awareness and bodily participation in the present moment. For Family Constellations, individual health cannot be separated from the family history one belongs to. Psychological suffering, traumas, and current life blocks are seen as a destiny that repeats across generations, transmitted along the branches of one’s family tree. Family Constellations aim to bring forth this unconscious inherited memory and, through this awareness, resolve present-day problems.

In Goddess movements spirituality is primarily a gendered experience. Well-being requires an awareness of distinctive aspects of women’s identity, especially related to blood—menarche, the menstrual cycle, maternity, and menopause. Participating in a circle, aside from being a social occasion to recreate sisterhood bonds, facilitates contact with the healing energies of the divine feminine, activating the process of personal purification centred in the womb, both physically and symbolically. Unlike Mindfulness, awareness of one’s identity here is expressed with a typically theological—or rather, “thealogical” (Goldenberg 1979)—and metaphysical vocabulary: the worship of the Mother Goddess and practices of meditation and visualisation of female archetypes are distinctive elements of this spiritual experience.

3. The third narrative is characteristic of spiritualities oriented toward the invisible and arcane dimension hidden within the folds of ordinary reality perceivable by the five senses—the mystery. In the mystery narrative, spirituality involves acquiring reserved and occult knowledge transmitted in the form of a secret. It is lifting the “veil of Maya” that deceives our eyes, preventing us from seeing the true nature of things. It involves entering a world of subtle energies and enigmas connecting the infinitely small to the infinitely large, the microcosm to the macrocosm. The central word in this narrative is “knowledge”. Being spiritual in this realm means following the path of seeking such knowledge, which unveils magical powers, esoteric revelations, and aspects of reality commonly rejected by official science. This theme unites four other cases: the Damanhur community, dark tourism, esoteric festivals, and ghost hunting.

Damanhur, in Val Chiusella (Piedmont), is a community founded on secrecy (Palmisano and Pannofino 2023). What is secret is not the union of individuals but the set of magical activities they perform. The initiatory process involves members in gradually learning about these practices and how they intertwine, in accordance with the goals of the Horusian doctrine, maintaining discretion. This knowledge profoundly transforms their lives because inner change is an essential part of magical action. However, personal transmutation is only a prerequisite for collective transformation, as alchemy here serves social rather than individual purposes. As Damanhurians emphasize: “Alchemical transformation comes as a gift to those who undertake a path of personal growth within the community and put it in the service of others”. The initiatory levels of Damanhurians are evident in the celebrations of common rituals, during which they wear ritual robes of different colours depending on the degree attained in the esoteric hierarchy: white, yellow, red, or blue.

Dark tourism (Palmisano and Pannofino 2021a) stages mystery as part of an activity primarily geared towards entertainment. The tourist exploration of the magical aspects of the city of Turin aims to intrigue visitors, suggesting the existence of an alternative and less-known history of the Piedmontese capital. While the tourist experience is designed for entertainment, it lends itself to additional interpretations that add an esoteric dimension regarding the occult symbolism of the city. This takes the visitor along a spiritual itinerary from darkness to light, from the realm of black magic to that of white magic. The “Esoterica” festival, the third largest of its kind in Europe, is, like dark tourism, a commercial event that brings visibility to the theme of mystery and introduces it to a wide audience. Those attending the festival, driven by simple curiosity, have the opportunity to delve into the world of esotericism by participating in cultural events such as conferences and workshops or by purchasing books and merchandise at the stands. It also allows for direct experimentation with practices performed by operators at the event who sell services to a potential clientele. Reflecting the variety of paths and the eclecticism of actors in the esoteric milieu, the festival offers a broad range of disciplines, including magic, holistic therapies, and diverse occult sciences. Unlike the strict path outlined by Damanhur, the festival, like dark tourism, provides the opportunity to access esoteric knowledge, even if only temporarily. It does not require adhering to the constraints of formal initiation, rather inviting experimentation with multiple paths simultaneously.

Ghost hunting ventures to the threshold between the world of the living and the afterlife, using technical tools to empirically test the existence of ghosts and other paranormal entities (Pannofino 2021). This investigation, conducted with a rational approach aspiring to the rigor of scientific method, can have profound spiritual implications by providing answers to fundamental questions about humanity’s destiny and the survival of the soul after physical death.

6. Discussion

The analysis of the “enchanted worlds” of contemporary spirituality clearly shows that the demarcation line between the religious, spiritual, and secular realms has porous and faint boundaries (Knott 2013). On the other hand, modern spiritual exploration has historically defined itself as a function of the secular in the same process of constructing liberal societies in Europe and America, sharing a secular and non-dogmatic approach critical of the authority and hierarchies of organized and institutionalised churches (Van der Veer 2009). The expression “spiritual but not religious”—frequently used by the “spiritual virtuosi”—precisely indicates this quest for an encounter with the sacred or the transcendent outside the established confines of historical churches (Fuller 2001; Mercadante 2014). For this reason, the secular sphere has become the new source of the sacred and re-enchantment: it is in this secular realm, encompassing nature, health, popular culture, consumer practices, art, professions, sports, tourism, etc., that contemporary spiritual imaginaries are rooted. Instead of replacing previous traditional symbolic universes, they integrate, modify, and update them (Ostwalt 2003). Consider spiritual currents such as Celtic Neo-Paganism, Wicca or ecovillages (like the magical-esoteric community of Damanhur) examined in the previous section. They simultaneously sanctify nature and incorporate ecological concerns increasingly prevalent in the environmentalist awareness of the external society, where “green” and “organic” have become household words and institutional agenda slogans. Also, think of spiritual currents focussed on well-being and health, such as mindfulness, alternative and complementary medicines, yoga, and other meditation techniques. These practices are increasingly present in schools, companies, and healthcare settings, testifying to an open dialogue where the spiritual dimension becomes a resource for human potential development, motivational aspects in professional performance, and holistic care models (Di Placido et al. 2022).

Finally, on the mystery spirituality front, the commercial success of practices like dark tourism and esoteric festivals serves as a “showcase” for themes traditionally reserved for small circles of occult enthusiasts but are now attracting interest from a broad, diverse audience. The analysis of these spiritual currents shows how the dialogue between new spirituality and the surrounding society, based on specific convergences, occurs, blending spiritual imaginaries with the majority culture.

Regarding the interweaving of the religious, the spiritual, and the secular, these examples suggest a reconsideration of secularisation as a multifaceted process that extends beyond a decline of the religious. More broadly, it relates to the various ways Western society has developed the public space of the secular. Specifically, these examples reflect a “transitive” conception of secularisation (Costa 2022), where the process involves not eroding the religious but circulating its knowledge, symbolism, and practices within secular spheres, adopting and adapting to their logics. This perspective aligns with a reinterpretation of secularisation as religious change already developed by Parsons (1977). For him, interpreting secularisation as “transformation” (Gorski 2003) following Durkheim, it does not eliminate religious values in their integrative function for society but transfers and disseminates them within the secular moral sphere.

In other words, the study of contemporary spirituality in Catholic Italy offers insights to rethink secularisation not solely as an antithetical force to religion but as a historical process, beginning with the origins of Western society, of “becoming secular”. This involves constructing a secular public space alongside and in relation to the religious space.

7. Conclusions

The study of contemporary spirituality in Catholic Italy has shed light on the relationship between the religious, spiritual, and the secular because, without understanding this interweaving, one cannot comprehend the emerging spiritual explorations examined in the foregoing pages. As observed, these are experiences of the sacred that cannot be neatly placed within a distinct realm separate from the secular but continually spill over into the various secular spheres of society, combining eclectically and innovatively with diverse sources of meaning and languages. Due to this social circulation, it becomes less effective to confine the sacred within the boundaries of religion, sharply distinguishing it from the secular. Instead, it is a kind of “wandering” sacred, continually moving through different social contexts, following the dynamism of spiritual exploration. In short, the religious, the spiritual, and the secular are domains marked by porous boundaries, not (necessarily) opposed to each other (Knott 2013).

In light of this research, I believe that the theory of secularisation should be reframed. Each historical period has witnessed the coexistence of the secular and religious spheres, with cultural impulses toward secularisation and revitalisation of the religious, establishing varied relationships depending on social and geographical contexts (Asad 2003; Taylor 2007). Contemporary religion, therefore, is neither declining due to the secularisation process nor returning in spite of it. It is rather transformed—as the case studies above described demonstrate—entering into a reciprocal dialogue with the secular space of society, exchanging influences in both directions. The secular space thus defines new ways of being religious or spiritual: to claim religiosity or spirituality today means doing so under conditions different from the past, conditions that inevitably consider the secular framework of the present time. Consequently, the idea of a past society being more religious that gradually became less religious due to secularisation being a kind of myth. Primarily, it is a myth contributed to by the human and social sciences, born in modern Western society between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which took this society as its study object, exercising a secular, rational, and scientific view of it and its religious phenomena (Josephson-Storm 2017). This perspective has not only legitimized a secular language but also initiatives aimed at producing “modern ways” of action in social reality.

In light of this investigation, future research paths could further explore the ways in which the secular space qualifies as a privileged locus for the production of new religious and spiritual imaginaries. This sensitivity might contribute to strengthening the idea, raised in this article, that secularisation can also be understood as the process in Western history that has led to the emergence of a secular social space in dialogue with the religious sphere.