Enter Spirit, a vibrational medicine shop in Dalkey, Co Dublin, and your senses awaken to colour and scent. Beautiful crystals compete for your attention with a rainbow of Auro Soma liquid essences - pink for self-love, turquoise for creative communication of the heart and red for grounding of purpose.
The New Age apothecary includes the alluring fragrances of goddess anointing oils and eight different ranges of flower essences, which believers are convinced will cure all kinds of mental, emotional and physical distress.
Air fresheners promise to evoke the presence of archangels. A sculpted rose quartz tortoise brings calm and protection to those in need of nurturing. In the background, a cascade of New Age music plays, altering moods and arousing emotions. If you are at all sensitive to colour, sound and scent, you soon find yourself intoxicated.
Richard Stone, shop manager, advises you to try anything with a vibrational energy that calls to you: a necklace of blue chalcedony, which enhances communication. A painted scarf in blue and lavender that has been prayed over and imbued with healing energy to strengthen the aura.
"The shop is full of vibrations," says Stone, a reflexologist and yoga teacher. Each item and substance has vibrational qualities, which according to the principals of vibrational medicine, are believed to harmonise with an individual's spirit to soothe anxieties, boost self-esteem, enhance the immune system and fine-tune the soul.
David Silverstone (31), owner of "Spirit" and himself a healer, says his wares are "not magic - they are tools to heal the spirit". He started the shop as a "support" to the hundreds of healers who are now working in the area of vibrational medicine, and as a means to help empower ordinary people to heal themselves.
Healers such as Silverstone see their work as complementary to conventional medicine - and complementary to conventional religion. They encourage people with physical complaints to follow their doctors' advice. They don't see themselves as promoting a particular religious system.
"The fundamental idea behind 'Spirit' is that you are in a physical body, but that this is only one level of your existence. Each of us has four levels - the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual," says Silverstone, who became interested in healing while working as an actor (he played the character Gary Maguire in Fair City for many years).
"The way that vibrational medicine works is based on the principle that all illnesses come from `dis-ease' of the spirit, and travel down into the body. You can catch illness at various stages before physical symptoms start," says Silverstone.
The idea that each of us has a spiritual body, or aura, with seven energy centres, or chakras, is an ancient one. In the Western world, the view that physical health reflects what is happening on the "soul plane" was first promoted by the 19th-century German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, who developed homeopathy. As Helen Graham writes in her book "Soul Medicine: Restoring the Spirit to Healing" (Newleaf, at £14.99), Hahnemann believed that diseases have vibrational patterns which first manifest themselves on a higher vibrational level than that of the physical body.
Silverstone is convinced that when used properly, flower essences, Aura Soma and crystals are powerful, if gentle, forces.
"It's not a placebo effect," he insists,. "If you are not spiritually aware, you could have a whole Aura Soma cabinet, but if you are not nice to people it won't make a difference."
The public is ready for such a message. In the first 10 days after it opened, "Spirit" had to restock its goddess anointing oils three times, sold out of every flower essence range it had and saw its bookshelves stripped of nearly every title.
This isn't just the latest south-side Dublin phenomenon. In Tallaght, people are taking to a spiritual outlook on health "like ducks to water", says Moira Griffith, a specialist in Bach Flower remedies with 50 years' experience treating disease on a "higher spiritual plane".
She advises in a Nature's Way shop in Tallaght, where two years ago people says people were afraid to walk in the door. Today, the shop is buzzing with local people "enthralled", she says, by the prospect of spiritual growth.
The 1980s and 1990s gym culture which promised toned muscles has been replaced by a New Age spiritual culture which holds that a well-honed aura is the secret to health and happiness.
One new book even advocates an "inner work-out". "Spiritual Fitness: A seven-week guide to finding meaning and sacredness in your everyday life", is written by Caroline Reynolds (Thorsons, £8.99UK in UK) - a "spiritual fitness trainer". She claims to have coined the term "spiritual fitness" to define the intense need for peace and sustenance. Today, she defines spiritual fitness as being "not about what you do, but who you are in your day-to-day dealings. That means you can read all the right books, wear all the right clothes, and have all the right guides, but if you don't know how to feel real love in your heart, bring a smile to the face of everyone you meet and ease the tears of a child, you're not yet ready to call yourself a spiritual master."
"Spirituality is not an interior design issue," asserts Marty Boroson, the author of "Becoming Me" (Frances Lincoln at £10.39 in UK), a spiritual book for children and adults which recently won the English Association Special Award.
"I think it's positive to include spirituality in our definition of fitness because it is such a huge part of our being that is often overlooked even by religious observers who may not be having spiritual experiences or achieving some kind of spiritual health," he says.
"But the whole fitness craze can be about appearances or faddishness and the same danger applies to spirituality. I don't think spirituality is something you can get at a weekend workshop and you can't buy it in a bottle. It's a lifelong process that is continually mind-blowing, ego-shattering and life-transforming and I think it involves facing hard truths not just about yourself, but about who and what we are as human beings."
Jacquie Burgess, a healer and author of "Crystals for Life" (Newleaf, £11.05Ir) uses crystals to balance and harmonise energies, enhance intuition and help induce light meditative states.
"Some people think of crystals - and other New Age paraphernalia - as decorative items with superstitious associations. That's not accurate. These things have energetic properties and if they are used with intention they will produce helpful results," she says.
Burgess sees the enormous interest in vibrational medicine as a response to the emptiness many people feel now that they have achieved material security. "I'm astonished at the way this whole area is flowering in Ireland. There is a real hunger for incorporating a spiritual perspective in everyday life. In the past, the churches told people what to believe, but today people want to achieve self-awareness and they want to be treated as themselves," she says.
Ben Neill, rector of St Patrick's Church in Dalkey and former Dean of Waterford Cathedral, looks benevolently upon the new shop that has opened in his parish. He believes the Irish are seeking to fill a spiritual vacuum.
"I believe that anyone who is seeking spiritual enlightenment in any way should be treated with respect. But I also have to say, as a Christian, that I want to encourage people to seek spiritual fulfillment in the Church.
"To believe in a higher power, however you understand it to be, is OK up to a point. But that has not been true on my own spiritual journey and because I have found meaning in Christ, I want to point people in that direction. People don't hear often enough that Christ urged us to love ourselves as our brothers, which means that he wanted us to have self-love."
In the Aura Soma cabinet at "Spirit", there is a row of bottles linked to spiritual masters. One of the most powerful is a red potion called "Christ". Perhaps vibrational medicine, which encourages self-love and seeks to fine-tune the soul, is not so far away from the Christian message after all.
Spirit, 42 Castle Street, Dalkey. Tel 01-2048444