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- The New Age movement united a body of diverse believers with two simple ideas. First, it predicted that a New Age of heightened spiritual consciousness and international peace would arrive and bring an end to racism, poverty, sickness, hunger, and war.
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Feb 18, 2021 · Although there are many branches of New Age thought – ranging from meditation to firewalking – they stem from an ancient stock. The roots of the New Age tree spread around the globe to...
- Overview
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- Birth of the movement
- Fundamental ideas
New Age movement, movement that spread through the occult and metaphysical religious communities in the 1970s and ʾ80s. It looked forward to a “New Age” of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal transformation and healing. Peruvian-born anthropologist and writer Carlos Castaneda was considered a father of the New ...
In the late 19th century Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, cofounder of the Theosophical Society, announced a coming New Age. She believed that theosophists (who embraced Buddhist and Brahmanic notions such as reincarnation) should assist the evolution of the human race and prepare to cooperate with one of the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood whose arrival was imminent. Blavatsky believed that, as the world’s hidden leaders, members of this mystical brotherhood guided the destiny of the planet. Her ideas contributed to expectation of a New Age among practitioners of Spiritualism and believers in astrology, for whom the coming of the new Aquarian Age promised a period of brotherhood and enlightenment.
Blavatsky’s successor, Annie Besant, predicted the coming of a messiah, or world saviour, who she believed was the Indian teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti. In the 1940s Alice A. Bailey, founder of the Arcane School (an organization that disseminated spiritual teachings), suggested that a new messiah, the Master Maitreya, would appear in the last quarter of the 20th century. Bailey also established the “Triangles” program to bring people together in groups of three to meditate daily. Participants in the program believed that they received divine energy, which they shared with those around them, thus raising the general level of spiritual awareness.
After Bailey’s death, former members of the Arcane School created a host of new independent theosophical groups within which hopes of a New Age flourished. These groups claimed the ability to transmit spiritual energy to the world and allegedly received channeled messages from various preternatural beings, especially the Ascended Masters of the Great White Brotherhood. For example, Scotland’s Findhorn Foundation believed that its purported contact with a variety of nature spirits produced spectacular agricultural feats, despite the poor soil and climate of the group’s settlement.
As expectations of a New Age increased in the 1960s, a new organization, the Universal Foundation, appeared. Its wealthy leader, Anthony Brooke, traveled widely beginning in the mid-1960s, predicting that an apocalyptic event would occur during the Christmas season of 1967. Although the event never took place, an international network of New Age groups emerged.
While esotericism grew, its major representative, theosophy, suffered significant setbacks. In the 1880s Blavatsky was accused of faking miraculous events associated with her contact with the Ascended Masters. In the early 20th century the Theosophical Society was hurt again, this time by a series of sex scandals involving its leaders, and Besant was personally embarrassed by the defection of Krishnamurti in 1929. Nonetheless, the society was a significant catalyst in promoting public acceptance of the notion of psychic reality and conducted a program to raise awareness of other religious traditions among its members and the predominantly Christian general public.
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In 1970 American theosophist David Spangler moved to the Findhorn Foundation, where he developed the fundamental idea of the New Age movement. He believed that the release of new waves of spiritual energy, signaled by certain astrological changes (e.g., the movement of the Earth into a new cycle known as the Age of Aquarius), had initiated the coming of the New Age. He further suggested that people use this new energy to make manifest the New Age. Spangler’s view was in stark contrast to that of Bailey and her followers, who believed that the new era would arrive independent of human actions. Spangler’s perspective demanded an active response and shifted the responsibility for the coming of the New Age to those who believed in it.
Returning to the United States in the mid-1970s, Spangler became the major architect of the movement. He presented his ideas in a set of popular books beginning with Revelation: The Birth of a New Age (1976) and attracted many leaders from older occult and metaphysical organizations to the growing movement. The collapsing psychedelic movement also provided new supporters, including spokespersons such as noted psychologist Richard Alpert, who, like Timothy Leary, was an advocate of the use of hallucinogenic drugs to achieve mystical experiences. Alpert, however, found enlightenment in India, and returning to the West as Baba Ram Dass, he disavowed the drug experience and advocated more traditional spiritual disciplines. Simultaneously, periodicals were published to disseminate information and to create a sense of community within the decentralized movement. As the movement grew, bookstores opened that specialized in the sale of New Age books, videos, and meditative aids.
The New Age movement united a body of diverse believers with two simple ideas. First, it predicted that a New Age of heightened spiritual consciousness and international peace would arrive and bring an end to racism, poverty, sickness, hunger, and war. This social transformation would result from the massive spiritual awakening of the general population during the next generation. Second, individuals could obtain a foretaste of the New Age through their own spiritual transformation. Initial changes would put the believer on the sadhana, a new path of continual growth and transformation.
Although most followers of New Age teachings believe that the new era is still to come, Benjamin Crème announced that a world saviour, or Maitreya, would appear in 1982. The initial interest stirred by that prediction waned when the Maitreya failed to appear, but Crème continued to use his organization, Share International, to foretell the saviour’s imminent arrival.
The term New Age came to be used increasingly widely by the popular media in the 1990s. Decline or transformation: 1990–present. By the late 1980s, some publishers dropped the term New Age as a marketing device.
Oct 1, 2018 · Just 22% of atheists believe in at least one of four New Age beliefs, compared with 56% of agnostics and eight-in-ten among those whose religion is “nothing in particular.”. Americans who consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious also tend to accept at least one New Age belief.
- Claire Gecewicz
Oct 31, 2018 · Analyst says ‘New Age’ beliefs more popular as fewer Americans follow traditional religions – The Hill. 10/31/18. Post. ... More. The growing popularity of “New Age” beliefs likely stems in...
The New Age Movement grew in popularity during the 1970s and 1980s through the teachings of David Spangler and other metaphysical religious groups, but it has existed in various forms since the...
Mar 15, 2018 · New Age theory is a movement that beckons to those of all religions, as well as to those that would classify themselves as “spiritual, but not religious”.
