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New Age (New Age Movement and New Age Spirituality) is a decentralized western social and spiritual movement that seeks Universal Truth and the attainment of the highest individual human potential. It combines aspects of spirituality, cosmology, astrology, esotericism, complementary and alternative medicine, various religious practices, humanism, collectivism, nature, and environmentalism. New Age Spirituality is characterized by an individual approach to spirituality, while rejecting religious doctrine and dogma.

The New Age Movement first appeared as an entity in the 1960s and 1970s, although elements can be traced back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It gained momentum in the 1980s and strengthened with the Harmonic Convergence event of 1987. New Age practices and philosophies are found among many diverse individuals from around the World.

The New Age Movement includes elements of older spiritual and religious traditions ranging from atheism and monotheism through classical pantheism, naturalistic pantheism, and panentheism to polytheism combined with science: particularly ecology, environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, and psychology. New Age practices and philosophies sometimes draw inspiration from major world religions: Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, and Sufism; with particularly strong influences from East Asian religions, Gnosticism, Neopaganism, New Thought, Spiritualism, Universalism, and Western esotericism.¹

New Age Spirituality has led to a wide array of literature on the subject and an active niche market: books, New Age music, crafts, and services in alternative medicine are available at New Age stores, fairs, and festivals.²³⁴⁵

Additional phrases are used to describe The New Age Movement: Self Spirituality, New Spirituality, Mind-Body-Spirit,⁶⁷ Cultural Creative, Everyone Is Equal, New Paradigm, and All Is One.

Contents 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Contemporary usage 2 Beliefs 2.1 Philosophy and cosmology 2.2 Religion and science 2.3 Other 3 Lifestyle 3.1 Terminology 3.2 Holistic health 3.3 Music 4 Criticism 4.1 Cultural thieving 4.2 Racial bias 4.3 Scientific skepticism 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

History

Origins

Some of the New Age Movement's constituent elements appeared initially in 19th century metaphysical movements: Spiritualism, Theosophy, and New Thought; also, alternative medicine movements chiropractic and naturopathy.⁶⁷ These movements in turn have roots in Transcendentalism, Mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, and various earlier Western esoteric or occult traditions, such as the hermetic arts of astrology, magic, alchemy, and kabbalah. Some of the popularisation behind these ideas has roots in the work of early twentieth-century writers, such as D. H. Lawrence and W. B. Yeats. The first known use of The New Age in this context was in Madame Blavatsky's book, The Secret Doctrine, which was published in 1888⁸ although the phrase had been used earlier to refer to a belief in a spiritual and artistic "New Age" by William Blake in around 1809 in his preface to Milton: a Poem, and was originally coined by fellow Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg in the 18th century.⁹

A weekly Journal of Christian liberalism and Socialism called The New Age was published as early as 1894.¹⁰ In 1907, it was sold to a group of Socialist writers headed by Alfred Richard Orage and Holbrook Jackson. Other historical personalities were involved: H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and William Butler Yeats; the magazine became a forum for politics, literature, and the arts.¹¹¹² Between 1908 and 1914, it was instrumental in pioneering the British avant-garde from vorticism to imagism. After 1914, publisher Orage met P. D. Ouspensky, a follower of G. I. Gurdjieff, and began correspondence with Harry Houdini, becoming less interested in literature and art, with an increased focus on mysticism and other spiritual topics; the magazine was sold in 1921. According to Brown University, "The New Age helped to shape modernism in literature and the arts from 1907 to 1922".¹³

In the early-mid 1900s, American mystic, theologian, and founder of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Edgar Cayce, was a seminal influence on what later would become known as the New Age Movement; he was known in particular for the practice some refer to as "channeling".¹⁴ The British neo-Theosophist, Alice Bailey, published a book titled, Discipleship in the New Age, in 1944 and used the term, New Age, in reference to the transition from the Astrological Age of Pisces to the Astrological Age of Aquarius. Another early adopter of the term, was the American artist, mystic, and philosopher, Walter Russell, who spoke in an essay of "…this New Age philosophy of the spiritual re-awakening of man…", also published in 1944. The Findhorn Foundation, an early New Age intentional community in northern Scotland founded in 1962, played a significant role in the early growth period of the New Age Movement and is still active today. The movement in Russia has been heavily influenced by the legacy of Nicholas Roerich and Helena Roerich, who taught in the Theosophical tradition. Another former Theosophist, Rudolf Steiner and his anthroposophical movement, is a major influence, especially upon speakers of German. In Brazil, followers of Spiritist writer, Allan Kardec,¹⁵ blend with the Africanized folk traditions of Candomblé and Umbanda.

Contemporary usage

The subculture that would later take on the descriptive term New Age already existed in the early 1970s, based on and continuing themes originally present in 1960s counterculture. Widespread use of the term New Age began in the mid 1970s, reflected in the title of a new monthly periodical, the New Age Journal, and was taken up by several thousand small metaphysical book and gift stores that increasingly defined themselves as "New Age bookstores".¹⁶¹⁷

As a result of the large scale activities surrounding the Harmonic Convergence, in the mid 1980s, the term was further popularized by the American mass media to describe the alternative spiritual subculture, including activities all the way from meditation, channeling, reincarnation, crystals, psychic experience, to holistic health or environmentalism, or belief in anomalous phenomena, or for other “unsolved mysteries” such as UFOs, Earth mysteries and crop circles. By the late 1980s, a range of new publications had appeared to serve the marketplace of these ideas, including Psychic Guide Magazine (later renamed Body, Mind & Spirit), Yoga Journal, New Age Voice (a New Age music specialty magazine) and trade publications such as New Age Retailer, NaPRA ReView ("New Age Publishing and Retailers Association"), and others.

Diverse activities of this subculture include: participation in study or meditation groups, attendance at lectures and fairs; the purchase of books, music, or different products such as crystals or incense; healing or energy pyramids; or patronage of fortune-tellers, healers, and spiritual counselors.^{citation needed}

There were several key moments in raising public awareness of this subculture: the publication of Linda Goodman's best selling astrology books Sun Signs (1968) and Love Signs (1978), Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical (1967) with the opening song "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" and its memorable line "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius", the Harmonic Convergence (1987) organized by Jose Arguelles in Sedona, Arizona, and the broadcast of Shirley MacLaine's television mini-series Out on a Limb (1987). Also influential were the claims of channelers Jane Roberts (Seth) and J.Z. Knight (Ramtha), as well as revealed writings A Course In Miracles (1976) by Helen Schucman, The Celestine Prophecy (1993) by James Redfield, and Conversations with God (1995) by Neale Donald Walsch. Relevant works also include the writings of Eckhart Tolle, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, John Holland, Gary Zukav, and Wayne Dyer, not mention "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne, which was based on the writings of Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks. Many of these authors claim inspiration from an infinite intelligence which is referred to by different authors by various names. Wayne Dyer refers to this as "The Source" or "Great Masters of the Universe". Louise Hay describes it/them as "some of the best teachers on the planet today". The Hicks' refer to this same source as "Abraham", Esther describing it as "infinite intelligence" and Jerry saying that "They are the purest form of love I have ever experienced".

While J. Gordon Melton, Wouter J. Hanegraaff, and Paul Heelas have emphasised the mentioned personal aspects, other authors, including Mark Satin,¹⁸ Theodore Roszak,¹⁹ Marilyn Ferguson,²⁰ and Corinne McLaughlin²¹ have described the New Age as a values-based sociopolitical movement.

The American writer Ken Wilber posits that much New Age thought falls into what he calls the pre/trans fallacy.²² According to Wilber, a person's psychological development moves from the pre-personal, through the personal levels of development, then to the transpersonal — being the arena of the spiritually advanced or enlightened beings. He claims that 80% of New Age Spirituality is pre-rational (pre-conventional) and that it relies primarily on mythic-magical thinking, in contrast to post-rational (includes and transcends rational), genuine world-centric consciousness.

Beliefs

There is no unified belief system, though many practices and philosophies are common in New Age Spirituality.

Philosophy and cosmology

• Theism - There is a pantheistic idea of God, which can be understood in many ways; including through the form of a Goddess or through forms of polytheism.^{citation needed}

• Afterlife - Consciousness persists after death as life in different forms; the afterlife exists for further learning through the form of a spirit, reincarnation and/or near-death experiences.²³ There may be a belief in hell, but typically not in the traditional Christian or Islamic sense of eternal damnation. Universalist views of the afterlife are common.

• Astrology - Horoscopes and the Zodiac are used in understanding, interpreting, and organizing information about personality, human affairs, and other terrestrial matters.^{citation needed}

• Teleology - There is a belief that there is a purpose to life. This includes a belief in synchronicity — that coincidences have a spiritual meaning, and contain spiritual lessons to teach those that are open to them. Everything is universally connected through God, participating in the same energy.²⁴ There is a cosmic goal and a belief that all entities are (knowingly or unknowingly) cooperating towards this goal.

• Psychic energy - Certain geographic locations emanate psychic energy, sometimes through the form of ley lines, e.g., Stonehenge and were considered sacred in pagan religions throughout the world.²⁵

Religion and science

• Eclectic spirituality - Every person should follow their own individual path to spirituality, not dogma. Different religions and philosophies from around the world offer different practices that can be adopted.^{citation needed}

• Anti-Patriarchy - Feminine forms of spirituality, including feminine images of the divine, such as the female Aeon Sophia in Gnosticism, are deprecated by patriarchal religions.⁷

• Science - Quantum Mechanics and the Gaia hypothesis have been used in quantum mysticism to validate spiritual principles.²⁶ Due to this approach, western science tends to reject the validity of alternative therapies: parapsychology, meditation, and holistic health.⁷

• Quantum Mechanics - Authors Deepak Chopra, Fritjof Capra, Fred Alan Wolf, and Gary Zukav have linked quantum mechanics to New Age Spirituality, which is presented in the 2004 film, What the Bleep Do We Know!?; also, in connection with the Law of Attraction, which is related to New Thought and presented in the 2006 film, The Secret. They have interpreted the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, quantum entanglement, wave function collapse, or the many worlds interpretation to mean that all objects in the Universe are one (monism), that possibility and existence are endless, and that the physical world is only what one believes it to be.

Other

• Age of Aquarius - The current time period is one of great transformation for the Earth and human consciousness. Certain dates have a special significance in these changes, e.g., the Harmonic Convergence in 1987 and the Harmonic Concordance in 2003; one of the most important alignments is expected between 2011 and 2012.²⁷²⁸²⁹

• Spiritual beings - Angels, Ascended Masters, elementals, ghosts, faeries, Spirit guides and Extraterrestrials can spiritually guide us, if we open ourselves to their guidance.³⁰
• Ancient civilizations - Atlantis and Mu existed and left behind relics and monuments such as crystal skulls, the Great Pyramid, and Stonehenge.

• Intuition - An important guide for life that has been replaced in the modern world by rationalism, scientific skepticism, and the scientific method.^{citation needed}

• Mathematics - An appeal to the language of nature and mathematics, as evidenced by numerology, Kabbala, Sacred Geometry, and gnosticism to discern the nature of God.³¹

• Human potential - The human mind has much greater potential than that ascribed to it ^{32 33 34} and is even capable of overriding physical reality.³⁵

• Interpersonal relationships - are opportunities to learn about one's self and relationships are destined to be repeated until they are healthy. ³⁶

• Indigo children - are being born today with a more highly developed spiritual power than earlier generations.³⁷³⁸

• Positive thinking - A positive attitude supported by affirmations will achieve success in anything.³⁹ A certain critical mass of people with a highly spiritual consciousness will bring about a sudden change in the whole population.⁴⁰ Humans have a responsibility to take part in positive creative activity and to work to heal ourselves, each other and the planet.⁴¹

• Eastern Practises - Meditation, yoga, t'ai chi ch'üan, Qi Gong, reiki, and other Eastern practices can assist in realizing one’s potential.^{citation needed}

• Spiritual Healing - Humans have potential healing powers, such as therapeutic touch, which can be developed to heal others through touch or at a distance.^{citation needed}

• Diet - Food influences the mind as well as the body. It is generally preferable to eat fresh organic vegetarian food which is locally grown and in season⁴²⁴³ Fasting can help achieve higher levels of consciousness.⁴⁴

Lifestyle

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People who embrace New Age lifestyle or beliefs are included in the Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) demographic market segment, currently in a growth phase, related to sustainable living, green ecological initiatives, and generally composed of a relatively affluent and well-educated segment.^{45 46} The LOHAS market segment in year 2006 was estimated at $300 billion, approximately 30% of the USA consumer market.^{47 48} According to The New York Times, a study by the Natural Marketing Institute showed that in 2000, 68 million Americans were included within the LOHAS demographic. Author Paul H. Ray, who coined the term Cultural Creatives in his book by the same name, explaines that "What you're seeing is a demand for products of equal quality that are also virtuous."⁴⁹⁵⁰

Terminology

• Forces - commonly held that there exist certain forces, independent of spiritual beings or agencies, and also distinct from forces as defined by science, e.g., gravitation, electro-magnetism, etc. These forces are elemental in nature; and are held to operate in an automatic fashion as part of the natural order, e.g., the force which causes seeds to sprout, grow, and bloom.

• Power - the "forces", and everything else, are energized by a mystical power that exists in varying degrees in all things. Power is transferable, through physical contact, sensory perception, or mere proximity. Power may be accumulated or depleted in a person or object through a variety of mechanisms, including fate and esoteric practices. This power is held to be physically observable as "auras" and "psi energy"; and when encountered in great concentration, may even be dangerous.

• Energy - in some belief systems, "forces" and "power" may seem to merge, e.g., in the concept of "vital force" that exists in so many traditional belief systems, and finds its expression in New Age concepts such as the "energies" in Therapeutic Touch or Reiki and ideas of flowing streams of power in Earth, like "leylines" in Britain and Europe and Earth energies addressed in the Chinese geomantic system of feng shui.

• Spirit - all beings (particularly sentient beings) are accompanied by a specific, intentional "energy" which corresponds to their consciousness, but is in some way independent of their corporeal existence. This energy typically is more primary than the physical entity, in the sense that it remains in some form after the physical death.

Holistic health

New Age Spirituality may use alternative medicine in addition to, or in place of, relying on "conventional" medicine.³⁵¹

Some branches of New Age medicine focus on holistic health of patients, rather than the symptomatic focus of conventional Western medicine.^{citation needed} Some conventional physicians have embraced aspects of or the complete approach of holistic medicine.^{citation needed}

Some scientific professionals question the efficacy of the methods of "alternative or complementary medicine," and some writers have referred to these methods as quackery (Norcross et al 2006;Singer and Lalich 1996). There are increasing numbers of double blind tests of alternative medicine methods, but such testing has rarely resulted in corroborating results. However, it is difficult to apply double-blind testing methods to some alternative medicine techniques because in many of these techniques, the relationship with the practitioner is part of the process, and that relationship cannot be practically "blinded" in a testing protocol. See the main article on Alternative medicine for a deeper discussion of these points.

Skeptics of the New Age approach to medicine point out it is possible that direct harm can result from a treatment such as acupuncture (bruising, dizziness, infection),^{citation needed} from poorly prescribed herbal medicine or from an untrained person self-administering herbal medicines. Indirect harm may result when a patient declines proven scientific treatment in favor of unproven alternative treatments and thereby misses the benefit that may have accrued from the mainstream treatment.⁵²

Critics of New Age medicine state that without scientific testing, it is not possible to determine which techniques, medicinal herbs, and lifestyle changes may contribute to increased health and which treatments have no effect or may be dangerous. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland began a program of research to determine which alternative medicine practices may be useful in support of conventional medical practice.⁵³

Music

Main article: New Age music

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New Age music is peaceful music of various styles that is intended to help people feel good while listening. When it first started in the early 1970s, it was mostly instrumental; there were both acoustic and electronic styles. Over the years, many more styles of New Age music appeared with the advent of less expensive equipment; now there is everything from spacey electronic, to acoustic instrumentals using western instruments, to spiritual chanting from other cultures, like Kirtan with Sanskrit lyrics or Native American flutes and drums.

This music has its roots in the 1970s with the works of such free-form jazz groups recording on the ECM label as Oregon, the Paul Winter Group, and other pre-ambient bands; as well as ambient performers such as Brian Eno and classical avant-garde musicians like Daniel Kobialka. The Greek artist Yanni uses synthesizers and instrumental "world music" sounds.

Some New Age music albums come with liner notes encouraging the music's use in meditation, and many albums have been recorded with specific design for this purpose. Studies have determined that New Age music is an effective component of stress management programs.⁵⁴

Criticism

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Cultural thieving

Some adherents of traditional disciplines from cultures such as India, China, and elsewhere, a number of orthodox schools of Yoga, Tantra, Qigong, Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and martial arts, e.g., traditional Taijiquan families, and groups with histories reaching back many centuries in some cases eschew the Western label New Age and see the movement it represents as either not fully understanding or deliberately trivializing their disciplines, or as outright distortions.⁵⁵

Much of the strongest criticism of New Age eclecticism has come from American Indian writers and communities. The Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality⁵⁶ is one of the strongest statements of opprobrium from traditional tribal religious leaders.

Racial bias

Some writers have identified racist bias in the movement's early Theosophical sources, especially the writings of Alice Bailey on the Jews ^{57 58 59} and comments of Rudolf Steiner on specific ethnic groups including black people, though Steiner, at least, emphasized racial equality as a principle central to anthroposophical thought and humanity's further progress.⁶⁰⁶¹ Any racially charged elements present in such influences have not remained part of the ongoing evolution of the Anthroposophical Society and have either not been taken up or have been repudiated by modern members of the movement. ^{62 63}

Scientific skepticism

Adherents of scientific skepticism criticize New Age beliefs, stating that one should question the veracity of all claims, and especially paranormal or extraordinary claims, unless such claims can be empirically tested. Most scientifically rigorous research has been unable to determine sufficiently robust evidence of paranormal activity (sufficiently robust, for instance, to warrant overturning well-established alternative theories of physics or cognitive psychology), or to find ground for New Age beliefs; and skeptics, e.g., Victor Stenger,⁶⁴ take issue with the use of scientific terminology, in what they deem to be a pseudoscientific context, to promote spiritual beliefs.⁶⁵

See also

• Astronomy
• Earth
• List of New Age topics
• New Age communities
• New religious movement
• Simple living

Notes

References

• Hammer, Olav Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the New Age Brill Academic Publishers, 2003 ISBN 900413638X
• Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought Brill Academic Publishers, 1996 ISBN 9004106960
• Heelas, Paul The New Age Movement: Religion, Culture and Society in the Age of Postmodernity Blackwell Publishing, 1996 ISBN 0631193324
• Kemp, Daren. New Age, a Guide: Alternative Spiritualities from Aquarian Conspiracy to Next Age Edinburgh University Press, 2004
• Kemp, Daren and James R. Lewis, eds. Handbook of New Age Brill, 2007.

External links

• New Age at the Open Directory Project

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