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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among contemporary spiritual practitioners in Greece, this paper examines conspiracy narratives as forms of lived spirituality. It explores how actors negotiate crises of authority, science, and care through spiritually elastic epistemological frameworks.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among contemporary spiritual practitioners in Greece, which has been conducted in the context of the research project ‘ReSpell: Religion, Spirituality and Wellbeing. A Comparative Approach of Transreligiosity and Crisis in Southern Europe (FCT grant reference: 2022.01229.PTDC)', this paper explores the entanglements of conspiracy narratives, spirituality, and religious imaginaries during the covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath. Rather than approaching conspiracy beliefs as forms of irrationality or misinformation, the paper examines how they emerge as culturally and affectively grounded responses to crises of authority, care, and trust surrounding health, science, and governance.

Focusing on alternative spiritual milieus marked by anti-vaccine attitudes, the paper traces how conspiracy narratives intersect with Orthodox Christian symbols, New Age cosmologies, and holistic understandings of healing and the body. These narratives operate as flexible sociocultural frameworks through which practitioners negotiate disruptions to religious and (spi)ritual rhythms, recalibrating boundaries between science, belief, and embodied knowledge.

By conceptualizing conspiritual beliefs as expressions of spiritual elasticity and lived religiosity, the paper situates them within broader negotiations over truth, authority, and politics in contemporary Greece. In doing so, it contributes to anthropological debates on belief, skepticism, science, and alternative epistemologies, showing how polarization around (con)spirituality, science, and healing is embedded in everyday practices rather than treated as epistemic failure.