The term New Age refers to a wave of religious enthusiasm
that emerged in the 1970s and swept over the West through the
1980s only to subside at the end of the decade. As with other
such enthusiastic movements, however, it did not just simply
go away, but like a storm hitting a sandbar, it left behind a
measurably changed situation among those elements of the religious
community most centrally impacted.
The New Age has frequently been cited as among the most difficult
of contemporary religious phenomena to comprehend. Two obstacles
slowed study of the movement and the appreciation of its significance.
First, the movement hit just as the field of New Religious Studies
was struggling to establish itself as a valid sub-discipline
within the larger world of religious studies. Scholars of New
Religions, the people to whom we would ordinarily turn for some
interpretation of the New Age, had specialized in very different
forms of religious life. The average New Religious Movement had
come into the West from other parts of the world, existed as
a discrete entity with very visible boundaries, and primarily
recruited young adults in the 18-25 age group. In contrast, the
New Age Movement had emerged essentially within Western culture
and had the appearance of an amorphous decentralized social phenomenon
that contrasted sharply with the more prominent New Religions
such as the Unification Church, the Divine Light Mission, or
the Hare Krishna. In visiting New Age organizations, one saw
some young adults but were struck by the distinctly middle-age
make-up of adherents.
Second, but equally important, the New Age was seen as having
some relationship to the older world of the occult. Historically,
the world of occultism was not one to be understood, but denounced.
Much of the history of Western scholarship has been shaped by
the desire to move beyond magic and occultism, which was equated
with the crudest forms of superstition and supernaturalism. In
one sense we already understood gullible people who were attached
to occult superstitions, and our primary response to the continual
presence of occult organizations was the passing of laws to prosecute
individuals who used occult beliefs to con people out of their
money. This perspective has now been institutionalized in the
anti-pseudoscience movement. 1
A related perspective, that denounces the New Age as a competing
supernatural worldview, can be found in the writings of the Christian
counter-cult movement. 2
Thus it was that only as the New Age peaked and began to fade
that studies outlining the New Age movement's place in the rapidly
changing religious scene in the modern West were published. However,
beginning in the 1990, a series of books on the New Age have
appeared from which some overall perspective can be constructed.
3 This paper will attempt to
summarize our present understanding of the New Age, its origins,
its basic nature as a social movement, the significance of its
appearance and demise, and the post-New Age world.
Toward a Definition of the New Age
It is a more-than-helpful exercise to confront a few of the
issues that emerge in gaining some common perspectives on the
New Age. First, we need to make a sharp distinction between the
New Age and that class of religious groups that are variously
termed New Religions, cults or sectes. As a whole, New Religions
are small relatively new religious organizations distinguished
by their intrusion into a dominant religious community from which
they make significant dissent. A New Religious Movement brings
people together around a singular history, belief, practice,
and leadership. The great majority of New Religions are sectarian,
that is, they are new variations on one of the older major religious
traditions. Hare Krishna is a sect of Hinduism, the Divine Light
Mission (now known as Elan Vital) is one of the many Sant Mat
groups; and the AUM Shinrikyo was a Buddhist organization. Many
New Religions are Christian sects that adhere to the great majority
of traditional Christian beliefs but either dissent on one or
two important doctrines and/or champion a different lifestyle
(communalism, separatism, high-pressure proselytization, sexual
freedom, etc.). Most of the remaining groups attempt to create
a synthesis of two or more of the older religious traditions,
the Unification Church being the most notable example.
In sharp contrast, the New Age Movement was never a single
organization, but originated as an idea spread by a group of
theosophical organizations that shared a common lineage in the
writings of Alice A. Bailey. Movement leaders never challenged
the integrity of these organizations or of anyone's attachment
to them. In this regard, in its earliest stages, the New Age
movement was much like the Christian Ecumenical Movement prior
to the formation of the World Council of Churches. Without attacking
the integrity of the various churches, Ecumenism looked for a
Christian community that could give a more visible expression
to the shared Oneness among Christians in the object of Christian
worship. As the New Age movement grew, some theosophical groups
became enthusiastic supporters, some were mildly accepting, some
indifferent, and a few were quite hostile. A similar spectrum
was presented by different Christian denominations to the Ecumenical
Movement.
Much of our confusion about the New Age also derives from
the different ways we use the term "movement." As applied
to New Religions, "movement" generally refers to the
dynamic and informal nature of many first generation religious
organizations that are still in the process of rapid change and
the creation of the structure that will carry them into the next
generations. As applied to the New Age, however, "movement"
refers to its likeness to broad social movements such as the
Civil Rights movement or the Peace Movement. These movements
include a bewildering array of people devoted to the cause but
very diverse in their institutional affiliations, definition
of particular goals, and adherence to variant strategies on reaching
common ends.
As the New Age developed it reached out from its beginning
among the Baileyite groups of the United Kingdom, to speak to
the hundreds of Theosophical groups and soon invited the entire
spectrum of magical, metaphysical, Spiritualist, and other occult
groups to consider its basic vision. In the process of its spread,
many individuals not previously associated with any of these
older groups became excited about the New Age ideal and formed
entirely new organizations to add their energy to the cause.
Thus, it is best to see the New Age, not an organization itself,
but as an effort to bring older organizations and the people
associated with them together and constitute a new sense of oneness
among them. As the New Age movement matured through the 1980s,
it could also be compared to contemporary Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism
exists as a number of conservative Protestant denominations that
doctrinally represent a spectrum from Presbyterianism to Pentecostalism.
Some of these denominations are quite small and some Evangelical
groups consist of but a single congregation (there being a strong
anti- denominational theme within Evangelicalism). The Evangelical
movement is also served by a number of schools, missionary agencies,
specialized ministries, ecumenical associations, and publishing
houses that are independent of any one denomination while trying
to work with all of them or at least a particular set of them.
In like measure, the New Age consists of many different groups,
some large international bodies, some smaller, and many consisting
of but a single center. The movement as a whole was served by
a number of schools, publishing houses, specialized organizations,
networking services, and outreach groups that attempted to serve
New Age adherents across their allegiance to a particular occult/metaphysical
"denomination." Because of the movement's minority
status and anti-institutional biases, New Age organizations tend
to be far more fragile than similar Christian organizations in
the West.
The New Age in Historical Perspective
It was an important clue to unraveling the nature of the New
Age movement to note that all of the primary elements constituting
the "New Age" had been around for a century or more
prior to the emergence of the movement. That is, there was very
little about the New Age that was new. Astrology predates any
written records we have. Meditation is integral to all religious
traditions. Channeling, under different names, is present in
the ancient records, including the Bible, and has continually
popped up generation by generation. We are all familiar with
the practice of assigning occult meanings to crystals through
the now thoroughly secularized practice of giving and receiving
birthstones.
Most New Age health practices (chiropractic, naturopathy,
etc.) were products of eighteenth and nineteenth century science,
though some, such as herbalism and Chinese medicine, are rooted
in prehistory. Even the idea of a "New Age" has been
around for at least two centuries, it having emerged prominently
among Rosicrucian and Masonic groups who supported the French
and American revolutions. From Masonry, it actually made its
way onto the seal of the United States. Early in the twentieth
century, it became integral to the thelemic magick of Aleister
Crowley in his proclamation of the "New Aeon" of Horus
the Crowned and Conquering Child.
Taking seriously the fact that there was little new in the
New Age was the first step in understanding what was distinctive
in this new movement. The second step has come in the assembling
of the history of Western Esotericism, a religious alternative
that has continually reappeared under variant modes generation
by generation in Western culture. In recent centuries, the religious
history of the West has been dominated by the study of the Christian
movement, its rise to dominance and its contribution in building
the culture of Europe and North America. The displacement of
Christianity as the single word on the religious life of the
West in this century, however, has allowed a fresh look at Western
intellectual history, both in terms of the radical divisions
within the Christian community and the diversity of religious
life. A most important insight in this new view of Western history
has been the definition of Western Esotericism and the various
esoteric perspectives that were offered as alternatives to orthodox
Christianity through the centuries. 4
Western Esotericism can be traced to the various Gnostic groups
of the second century of our Common Era (C.E.) and to various
groups that emerged through the first millennia of the Christian
Era (such as the Manicheans and Bogomils). Prior to the break
up of Western Christianity at the time of the Reformation, the
history of these groups is broken, as they were frequently suppressed
out of existence, and the relationship of various esoteric currents
and groups to one another remains a matter of intense debate.
However, beginning with the emergence of Christian Cabalism at
Wittenberg during the Reformation, there has been an unbroken
presence of different esoteric currents that was spread in the
writings of outstanding proponents, such as Paracelsus (1493-1541)
and Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), and by a handful organizations,
such as the original Rosicrucian groups formed in the seventeenth
century and through Speculative Freemasonry, that emerged to
prominence in the eighteenth century.
During the Enlightenment, Esotericism warred with the new
science, the latter challenging traditional occult notions just
as it did religious ones. However, in the wake of the Enlightenment
and contemporaneous with the rise of science and technology,
a new form of Esotericism emerged with several trained scientists-the
Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1733-1815) and Swedish
metalurgist Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)- taking the lead in
articulating its perspective. Much of the older Esoteric thought
(at least in its popular manifestations) died with the Enlightenment,
but we now can trace the steps by which a new "scientific"
Esotericism was born through the 19th century. The post-Enlightenment
Occult Revival culminated in the formation of a spectrum of new
organizations that went under names such as the First Church
of Christ, Scientist, the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn, and the National Spiritualist Association,
to mention only a few of the more prominent.
Through the nineteenth century, a number of outstanding thinkers
would supply the intellectual dimension of the now rapidly growing
tradition. Building on Mesmer and Swedenborg would be writers
such as Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803), Eliphas Levi
(1810-1875), Pascal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875), Helena Blavatsky
(1831-1891), Emma Hardinge Britten (1823-1899), and Gérard
Encasse (1865-1916). These thinkers operated on a spectrum between
those like Franz von Baader (1765-1841) who tried to emphasize
the similarity of esoteric thought with Christianity, to Henry
Steel Olcott (1832-1907), president of Theosophical Society,
who formally converted to Buddhism.
While having many differences, the modern esoteric thinkers
tended to agree on several points that distinguished them from
orthodox Christians. First, they tended to view God primarily
in impersonal terms rather than as a Father. In speaking of the
Divine, they were more comfortable with ideas of principle and
law, rather than love and community. Also, the Divine was ultimately
so transcendent as to be unknowable. Hence, on a practical level,
they shifted the emphasis away from God and possible interaction
with Him/Her/It to the beings that inhabited the realms that
were located between this lower physical world and the ultimate
Divine reality. These beings went under a variety of names from
gods/goddesses to angels to spirits to Ascended Masters. They
also emphasized the means by which we could interact with these
realms either by visiting them (astral travel), communicating
with their inhabitants (channeling/mediumship, meditation), or
controlling them (magic).
As it developed in the latter-half of the 19th century, Esotericism
was recast in light of Newtonian science and its emphasis on
natural law and Darwinian evolution. One can see both operating
in the "Declaration of Principles" adopted in 1899
by the National Spiritualist Association, which affirmed that
"the phenomena of Nature, both physical and spiritual, are
the expression of Infinite Intelligence" and that living
in accord with such expression constitutes true religion.
The tiny esoteric community expanded internationally as a
succession of popular movements swept across the western world.
Enthusiasm for Swedenborg's thought led to the founding of the
Church of the New Jerusalem. Then the Magnetist movement introduced
the idea of a subtle power that underlay and gave life to the
cosmos. The direct apprehension of that power is possibly the
most commonly shared experience within the larger esoteric community
and is now referred to under a host of names from cosmic light
to holy spirit to odic force to orgone energy to, most recently,
tackyon energy.
The Magnetist movement gave way to Spiritualism, which became
the seed ground for both Theosophy and Christian Science. As
Theosophy grew, it also divided into numerous factions. At the
same time, it provided initial training for a host of new teachers
who would go on to found their own movements, most prominently
Guy W. Ballard (1878-1939) and Alice A. Bailey (1880-1949). Christian
Science would give birth to New Thought that in typical fashion
also divided into a spectrum of denominations from the very Christian-oriented
Unity School to Religious Science, which stripped itself of uniquely
Christian language.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, Western Esotericism,
heretofore carried by a relatively small number of organizations,
developed a numerous organizational expressions that represented
the differing currents of Esoteric thought. Through the 1880s
and 1890s, these organizations made a significant leap forward
in opening space in Western culture for occult thought.
During the first seven decades of the 20th century, we can
now trace the growth of the esoteric community as each of its
major components spread across North America and Western Europe.
Spiritualism, for example, had jumped the Atlantic and would
enjoy notable success in Great Britain and France. From its headquarters
in India, Theosophy established centers in all the major European
cities. Rosicrucianism flourished through a variety of independent
groups, and the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis would
grow into possibly the largest esoteric group in the world. Alice
Bailey's Arcane School spread through the English-speaking world,
and following the death of its founder, gave birth to several
dozen new groups. The "I AM" Religious Activity founded
by Guy Ballard also parented numerous groups, among them several
1950s flying saucer groups.
The majority of the several hundred splinter groups that formed
out of the relatively few esoteric groups that existed at the
beginning of the 20th century were built around what today we
call channeling. Within Spiritualism, channeling was called mediumship.
Madame Blavatsky received her monumental work, The Secret Doctrine,
from the Mahatmas. Alice Baliey served as the spokesperson for
Djwhal Khul, the Tibetan Adept. Guy Ballard was the messenger
of St. Germain, Jesus and a host of Ascended Masters. George
King, George Van Tassell, and Truman Betherum received communications
from various inhabitants of the flying saucers who seemed remarkably
similar to the theosophical masters. 5
The orientation on channeling, to some extent, also accounts
for the continued splintering of the esoteric community. As adherents
to various movements emerge as channels, they tend to leave (or
be pushed out of) the group in which they discovered their channeling
abilities and found a new community constructed around their
immediate experience.
The orientation of most modern esoteric groups upon a single
channeler and her/his channeled information from otherwise hidden
realms also accounts for another dominant attribute of the esoteric
tradition, its tendency toward ahistoricity. Esoteric groups
lack a sense of history. History tends to begin anew for the
participant with the contact that s/he or a particular teacher
makes with the higher invisible realms, and all that preceded
that contact is dismissed as irrelevant. There is little appreciation
by most teachers of participating in the flow of a stream of
belief and practice that originated in the ancient past or having
received their overall worldview from more mundane preexisting
sources such as a previous generation of teachers.
The esoteric community also supported and nurtured all the
various forms of the divinatory arts. Through Protestantism and
then the Enlightenment, the older forms of divination were dealt
an almost-fatal double blow. Many went out of existence altogether
and others almost disappeared. However, astrology began a comeback
through the 19th century as a set of stargazers learned the language
of astronomy and mathematics and integrated the evermore-exacting
measurements of planetary and stellar movements in preparing
horoscopes for their clients.
On the heels of astrology, palmistry and tarot card-reading
found new life. Palmistry found its scientific anchor in medical
and anthropological studies of physiological variations, and
the acceptance of fingerprinting as a police tool. The Tarot
had been integrated with Kabbalistic thought by Eliphas Levi
and became an integral part of the magical system of the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn. Numerology found new life in the scientific
quest to quantify all data. While many of the early attempts
to relate esoteric thought and practice to science may seem naïve
to us today, they were quite in keeping with the spirit of the
times and paralleled similar efforts in the Christian community
to incorporate insights from biology, psychology, and sociology.
Just as the Christian dialogue with science has reached new levels
of sophistication decade by decade, so has that within the esoteric
community.
The point of this brief excursion into history is to emphasize
that as the 1970s began, a healthy, if relatively small, community,
the product of the various currents of Western Esotericism, had
spread across the West. It was present in all the major urban
centers with particular strength in places such as Los Angeles,
Chicago London, Paris, Milan, and Geneva (site of the European
headquarters of the Arcane School). What would become the New
Age movement was born within a select number of esoteric groups
and would first broadcast its message to this community of Western
esotericists. The New Age spread quickly because there already
existed an audience who had accepted the basic worldview upon
which the New Age movement was constructed and who were open
to the new vision that it brought.
So What's New about the New Age?
Twentieth century esoteric thought had been graced with a
sense of optimism. Though small by the world's standards, it
exuded a belief that its day had come. Christianity had begun
as a very small community in the Mediterranean Basin, and had
subsequently enjoyed two millennia of success. But its day was
over, and at the beginning of the new century many were confident
that they were watching its death throes. Esoteric teachings
would now arise to take its place. One symbol of that shift from
the older Christian era to the arrivakl of a new Savior figure.
That idea especially came to the fore in the Theosophical Society
during the presidency of Annie Besant, who placed her faith in
Jiddu Krishnamurti as the vehicle of the World Savior. Her vision
crashed to the ground when in 1929 Krishnamurti resigned his
exalted state. Subsequent attempts to name a new Messiah and
prepare a community to receive him would lead to the current
effort of Benjamin Crème to make us pay attention to Maitreya
(a Buddhist figure that had been united with Jesus in Theosophical
thought).
A second symbol of hope had been the Aquarian Age. The idea
that humanity was entering a new astrological age symbolized
by Aquarius somewhat paralleled the idea of a coming Messiah.
As the new Savior signaled the end of the reign of Christianity,
so the coming Aquarian Age would supersede the Piscean Age, symbolized
by the movement that had taken a fish as its symbol.
The New Age movement would begin with a variation on the hope
for the coming Aquarian Age. When initially announced in the
mid 1970s, the New Age was seen as a vision of a coming new era
defined by the transformation of our broken society-characterized
by poverty, war, racism, etc.-into a united community of abundance,
peace, brotherly love, etc. The energy to make the change, which,
it was believed would occur over next generation, was a new release
of cosmic energy. This influx of cosmic energy was caused by
(or at least signaled by) the changing stellar configuration
at the end of the twentieth century. Less understood about the
original vision of the New Age as articulated by David Spangler,
the movement's primary architect/theoretician, was the role of
work. For the New Age to appear, groups of people would have
to receive the cosmic energy and actively redirect it to their
neighbors and a ever-increasing population of people would have
to unite their efforts to create the coming New Age. 6
The New Age vision could be seen as a positive progressive
millennialism. It offered to the larger occult community the
hope that early in the 21st century, a new society dominated
by occult wisdom would arise. It is this single idea that gave
the movement its name and proved powerful enough to energize
previously existing Spiritualist, New Thought and Theosophical
adherents to work together groups, and to bring large numbers
of people with no previous relationship to the occult to their
cause.
As the movement progressed, Spangler's simple idea, that the
New Age would soon arise as energized people worked for it, came
under some scrutiny. Through the 1980s, people were aware that
in spire of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people identifying
with it, they were still a miniscule segment of the whole. They
might constitute the largest segment of the alternative religious
communities in the West, but were still small compared to, for
example, contemporaneous Christian revival movements. They seemed
to be making little impact upon the growing forces of secularization.
While Christian groups were building multiple cable television
networks, the New Age had only a minimal presence in either television
or radio. Also, while possessing global aspirations, New Age
leaders were very wary of building global institutions, or for
that matter, any organizations that had the power to bring about
the changes they sought. Sociologically, their organizational
phobia operated as a built-in self-limiting mechanism.
The New Age would not come by any ordinary means,. Then how?
One writer, Ken Keyes, drawing on what we now know to be a false
report of what some anthropologists had reportedly seen while
observing monkeys on an isolated Japanese island, suggested that
if we could assemble a representative sample of the population
who possessed a better, higher idea, then that idea would as
if by magic quickly spread through the general population. If
a critical mass of people who possessed, for example, a peace
consciousness could be assembled, then the idea who explode around
the world.
Keyes' idea, was spread in a small booklet called The Hundredth
Monkey, 7 of which more than
a million copies were printed and distributed between 1982 and
1984. It would lead to a variety of mass events, the most famous
and successful being the Harmonic Convergence of 1987 when New
Agers gathered at selected sacred sites around the world. Those
calling for the gatherings looked for a symbolic 144,000 who
would be the critical mass needed for a collective shift in consciousness
on the planet. The Harmonic Convergence would turnout to be the
largest single coordinated event expressive of the New Age.
On a lesser note, the progressive millennialism of the majority
of New Agers was challenged by several more classic apocalyptic
visions. For example, Ruth Montgomery, whose series of books
of channeled material were bestselling New Age titles, offered
a vision of widespread destruction as the instrument pushing
the New Age to the fore. In her 1985 book, Aliens Among Us, she
suggested that a Golden Age would only be realized following
a massive shift of the earth's magnetic poles that she predicted
would occur in 1999. The pole shift would destroy civilization
as we know it (along with a third of the world's population).
It was her belief that a number of space beings had taken over
the bodies of humans, and that these aliens would build the New
Age on the ruins of the old. 8
By 1999 Montgomery's prediction had long since been discarded.
Whatever the mechanism of its arrival, the New Age transformation
of the whole society would be heralded by the personal transformation
of individuals and their adoption of a life-style of continued
transformation into a total spiritual being. Such transformed
people would provide the leadership for the coming New Age. Questions
naturally arise, of what does such transformation consist, and
how may it be obtained, and how may transformation be sustained?
These questions were answered in a multitude of ways, however,
some general directions were offered.
For some, transformation begins with physical or psychological
healing. New Age literature has abundant examples of such healings,
and the stories follow much the same spectrum from the mundane
to the spectacular that are found in Roman Catholic and Pentecostal
literature. (I am currently monitoring a colleagues research
into stories from a "New Age" community in the state
of Washington that has produced a particularly rich set of healing
stories.) For others, possibly the majority, transformation began
with a spiritual awakening and/or the adoption of a radically
new worldview. These accounts are very similar to Christian stories
of conversion and mystical encounters.
New Age groups provided a social context promoting transformative
experiences and provided the means by which these could be facilitated.
Across the movement the initially transformed individual could
find a range of what were termed "tools of transformation."
For example, for those suffering from various forms of physical
and mental problems, the movement offered a range of alternative
therapies. These included various alternative medicines (homeopathy,
naturopathy), body work (chiropractic, massage), diets (vegetarianism),
and psychotherapies (Jungian, Past Life Therapy). These therapies,
led by professionals who were seeking recognition within the
larger society, evolved into a parallel and overlapping movement,
the holistic health movement, that sought legitimization of these
different therapies with government and medical authorities.
The heart of the New Age has been interaction around the different
tools of spiritual transformation. Organizations great and small
invited participation in a spectrum of spiritual practices designed
to produce altered states of consciousness that are the precondition
for a variety of unusual spiritual experiences. These tools ranged
from the ingestion of psychedelic substances, at one end of the
spectrum, to kundalini yoga, intense breathing exercises, and
chanting, to the most popular single tool, meditation. These
psychoactive practices provided most people with a more intense
spiritual experience than that available in the average synagogue
or church service.
The movement also provided mediated experiences for those
who for whatever reason wished to have more content in their
spiritual life than that provided by their own spiritual highs
produced by meditation and yoga. Channels and those who practice
the various older occult arts-astrology, tarot, palmistry, etc.--provide
such mediated experiences. For those who have made their own
initial contacts with spiritual reality through meditation, a
broader picture of the spiritual world and some guidance in spiritual
development can be added by sitting at the foot of a channeler,
who is in contact with evolved spiritual beings. These evolved
beings are considered to speak authoritatively about the larger
spiritual world, in which they reputedly reside, and provide
overall spiritual guidance for the believer. One alternative
teaching accepted by most New Agers is a belief in reincarnation.
For those who need more immediate insight about a very personal
or particular problem, the old divinatory arts are readily available
and appear to actually have led in the acceptance of the New
Age within the larger society. Once we began surveying the public
in the 1970s, we discovered that upwards of 20 to 30 percent
of Westerners had a positive attitude toward astrology.
While it utilized and promoted the older forms of occult practice,
the New Age at the same time had a profound effect upon them.
It changed them from simple divinatory arts into tools of transformation.
The change is not simply cosmetic. For example, astrology was
lifted out of the older deterministic context in which it had
previous resided and placed in an open system. Rather than going
to an astrologer to divine the future, astrology is now used
as a tool in self-understanding. Rather than show what will necessarily
occur, one's fate in the stars, one now learns about talents,
potentials, and auspicious forces in the psyche which may be
utilized in creating one's future. Mediums, that used to make
contact with deceased relatives, are now approached for guidance
on significant life decisions.
The New Age in effect transformed the whole occult world.
It also gave occultism an entirely new and positive image in
society and to did away with popular notions tying it to Satanism
and black magic. It is significant that we no longer talk about
the occult, but about the New Age. At the same time it is significant
that we identify the New Age as another competing religious system,
not the special world of anti-Christian activity.
However, in spite of its success, by the end of the 1980s,
the New Age had come to an end as the vision upon which it had
been built dissolved back into the ethers from which it had emerged.
The death of the New Age was not a spectacular event and it was
several years before its obituary was written and eulogies delivered.
The Death of the New Age
The New Age movement had received a significant boost in the
fall of 1987, only weeks after the Harmonic Convergence, when
actress Shirley MacLaine's autobiographical book, Out on a Limb,
was brought into millions of American homes via TV. The bestselling
book had described her entrance into the New Age and the two-part
made-for-television movie vividly portrayed all of her psychic
adventures including a memorable out-of-the-body experience.
MacLaine went on to teach a set of well-attended and expensive
New Age classes, the income of which was used to set up a still
vital New Age village at Crestone, Colorado. 9
However, even MacLaine could not relieve the general feeling
that signs of the transition into the New Age had failed to appear.
Whatever people might say about the success of events like the
Harmonic Convergence in changing affairs in invisible realms,
there was no indication that any of the hoped-for changes were
occurring in the visible world. The first widespread admission
of the loss of the New Age vision occurred in 1988. In the spring,
without significant fanfare, a number of prominent spokespersons
of the movement, seemingly without prior consultation with each
other, published statements confessing their loss of belief that
the New Age was imminent. No less a personage than David Spangler,
the person who had originally projected the vision of a New Age
authored several articles announcing his loss of faith. Not long
afterwards, the bottom fell out of the crystal market, and prices
dropped radically as investors tried to recover part of their
loss. Possibly the most visible sign of the demise of the movement
was the disappearance of references to a "New Age"
in the literature that continued to be put out by former New
Agers.
By 1990 it was noticeable in the United States that the spirit
had departed and that disappointed believers were looking for
a new direction. Having missed the demise of the New Age, we
also failed to document the ferment accompanying the revision
of the New Age worldview. However, in hindsight, we now see that
it progressed in very typical fashion, and can be fruitfully
compared to the Millerite movement. In the 1830s William Miller
announced that Christ would return in 1843. Christ did not return,
and several immediate attempts were made to adjust his calculation
and suggest that he was off by six months or a year. However,
when 1844 passed with no visible Christ, a wave of disappointment
swept through the movement that had spread across North America.
While a few people, including Miller himself, abandoned their
faith, the great majority sought for the kernel of truth in what
Miller and his colleagues had taught. They were not ready to
simply abandon the new life they had found. Over the next two
decades various segments of the community suggested different
courses of action. One part of the community persisted in revising
Miller's calendar and projecting new dates for Christ's appearance.
As each date failed, and a new denomination emerged as part of
the community abandoned date-setting. While most of these groups
remain small and unknown outside of the United States, one, the
Jehovah's Witnesses, has become an organization of some global
significance.
A second part of the Millerite community claimed that Miller
was essentially correct. In 1844, Christian had indeed taken
the first step in his reappearance on earth. He had left heaven,
but had been delayed with a task that had to be completed on
the way to earth, the cleansing of a heavenly sanctuary. Once
that task is completed, in the very near future, He will visibly
appear. The Seventh-day Adventists adopted this view and gradually
settling into a more conventional church life, also in the 20th
century beconing a world church of note. 10
In the wake of the disappointment of the non-appearance of
the New Age, through the 1990s, we can see the same two reactions
to the disappointment that occurred among the Millerites in the
1840s. It is estimated that three- to five-million people identified
with the New Age during the 1980s, the great majority of them
being new adherents, not previously identified either with theosophy,
New Thought, astrology, or related phenomena. They did not simply
abandon their faith, but looked for ways to cope. At the same
time, thousands of people had adopted a New Age career as a channeler,
holistic health practitioner, publisher/editor/writer, or workshop
teacher. The disintegration of the movement would place all of
these people out of work. They had every reason to perpetuate
the movement.
An immediate reorientation for New Age believers had been
offered by Spangler, New Age publisher Jeremy Tarcher, and others
in 1988. They suggested that what had held them in the movement
through the previous decade of waiting for the New Age to appear
had been the personal transformation they had experienced. They
now realized that their own personal spiritual enlightenment
and new self-understanding was the valuable asset that they had
received from participation in the Movement, ultimately of such
worth as to make the loss of the New Age vision of relative unimportance.
Even though their was little reason to believe that a New Age
would appear as a social phenomenon, there was every reason to
continue personal processes leading to healing, awareness, and
mystical union. The great majority of professionals in the movement
were practitioners of various occult arts concerned with facilitating
individual growth and healing.
They appeared quite willing to fall back into older occult
metaphysical systems that utilized more spatial metaphors rather
than evolutionary historical ones. At the personal level, the
appropriation of psychic experience was very like psychic awakenings
at any point in time. It is apparent in the post New Age era
that many are content with this approach. It is also apparent
that as occurred in the Post-Millerite era, new leaders not ready
to abandon millennialism in toto have arisen to suggest new directions.
Post New Age Millennialism
Among the more prominent new date-setting schemes is that
being promoted by Solara, a guru/teacher now residing in Montana.
She appeared in the late 1980s with a new post- Harmonic Convergence
program that would lead people, not into the New Age but to Ascension.
As we shall see, Ascension is the new symbol that has replaced
the New Age as the goal of post-New Age believers. She called
people's attention to a new symbol, "11:11." Eleven-eleven,
she described as the insertion point of the Greater Reality [God]
into human existence. As she called attention to 11:11, people
began to see it everywhere, from calendars (November 11) to digital
clocks. When 11:11 appears to you, she suggested, it is a divine
wake-up call to your soul.
The 11:11 symbol was becoming more prominent in the late 1980s,
however, because it was calling attention to a massive event
of importance to all humanity. 1992, she asserted, would be the
beginning of a 21-year period during which humanity could take
a step forward in evolution, a step into the Greater Reality.
We can move from our life now, trapped in the illusion of duality
and ascend into Oneness. According to Solara, more than 144,000
people worldwide joined with her and some 500 followers gathered
at the Great Pyramid in Egypt at 11:11 PM (Greenwich Mean Time)
in activities coordinated to open a Doorway or Bridge between
our world of duality and the Greater Reality. During the period
between 1-11-1992 and 12-31-2011, these two realms will overlap.
11
Within the Doorway, there are eleven Gates. The Gates are
likened to locks on a canal. By passing through each gate one
is gradually lifted to a higher level of consciousness. The opening
of each successive Gate occurs periodically through the years
of the existence of the open 11:11 Doorway. As one enters each
gate, specific experiences occur, that is each gate symbolized
a specific identifiable change in one's individual consciousness.
Upon entering the first gate, which was made possible on January
1, 1992, we experience a healing of our hearts (emotions). The
second gate, symbolic of a fusion of our deepest desires with
our spiritual aspirations. It opening occurred on June 5, 1993,
again accompanied by a massive coordinated global ritual. The
third Gate was opened with three distinct rituals in 1997 and
the fourth Gate in 1999. The remaining openings will be spread
out over the next decade.
Many of the people who have adopted the 11:11 symbol are associated
directly with Solara and her Star-Borne Unlimited organization.
However, after learning of the 11:11 program, many have assumed
a role in the 11:11 program in independent parallel organizations.
One such group, the Star-Esseenia Temple of Ascension Mastery,
headquartered San Pedro, California, describes itself as a "full
service 11:11 Ashtar Command Ascension Center sponsored by the
Angels of Light, the Ascended Masters and the Ashtar Command
for the purpose of facilitating accelerated mental, emotional
and spiritual growth for Earth based Lightworkers dedicated to
the Ascension path." It is headed by Commander August Stahr.
Stahr, a Reiki healer had an unusual experience in 1991 during
a solar eclipse that included her receiving a message to abandon
Reiki for a new form of healing deigned to bring in the energies
needed for planetary ascension. She subsequently developed healing
modalities to assist people handling the changes accompanying
the opening of each 11:11 Gate. As her program grew, she developed
the Star Team Mastery Program to train facilitators who could
work with the growing audience. 12
Commander Stahr's Star Esseenia Temple is but one 11:11 group.
A cursory Internet search onbut a single search engine yielded
more than 2,000 hits for "11:11+ascension." Through
the Internet, not to mention more mundane means, the 11:11 concept
has spread internationally and provided an alternative vision
for those who gave up on the New Age.
Ascension
As noted above, through the 1990s "Ascension" is
the term that superseded "New Age" as the symbol around
which former New Agers reoriented their hopes of the future.
Like "New Age," Ascension is a symbol to which many
conflicting images can be attached, however, the new term indicates
a subtle but very real shift in thinking. 13 As New Age was basically a collective symbol
indicating vast changes in society, but carrying implications
for the individual, Ascension is the opposite, basically a personal
symbol, with possible broader social implications. In terms of
the occult world, it emerged early in the New Thought movement
and then was adopted by Guy Ballard as a major emphasis of the
"I AM" Religious Activity. 14
In Ballard's Christianized theosophy, there was little place
for resurrection since embodied existence was a lesser state,
and the story of Jesus' death and resurrection were largely ignored
in favor of a total focus on his Ascension. The goal of "I
AM" practice is the gradual raising of the consciousness
and refining of the body so that one can escape death and consciously
ascend.
It was assumed within the "I AM" Movement that Ascension
would be limited to those who engaged in the spiritual exercises
that Ballard advocated. However, through the "I AM"
and the organizations that grew out of it, such as the Church
Universal and Triumphant, teachings on Ascension entered the
larger occult community. It is of particular importance that
in the 1950s, several people integrated "I AM" teachings
with interest in flying saucers. Several groups channelling messages
from a reputed hierarchy of extraterrestrials, provided a new
conduit for occult teachings in general, and the idea of Ascension
in particular, to spread among the general public.
Through the 1980s, channels oriented on both the Ascended
Masters and extraterrestrials became a defining element of the
New Age. The original New Age vision had been derived from and
shaped by channeled messages, and thus it is not surprising that
channelers would take the lead in redefining the post-New Age.
The most prominent group of channelers who have come to the fore
in elevating the idea of Ascension are those loosely associated
with the periodical Sedona: Journal of Emergence. This magazine
began in 1989 in Sedona, Arizona, a revered location among New
Agers as a sacred site of global significance. During the decade
many New Age practitioners had relocated to Sedona, and the magazine
presented their common message. 15
Initially, Ascension is a personal goal. In the "I AM"
teachings, it is a sign of personal accomplishment. Ballard believed
that individuals could ascend instead of die, and included an
episode in one of his early books describing an ascension he
claimed to have witnessed. 16
This belief led to an adoption of vegetarianism and to live
a celibate life as a necessary discipline preparing the body
for the Ascension process. Ballard's own premature death led
to a revision of that belief. Now, almost all "I AM"
groups teach that Ascension is of the soul at the time of bodily
death. As Ascension teachings spread in the late 1980s, teachers
emphasized the soul's self-understanding, spiritual awakening,
and personal development all of which led to an attunement with
the cosmos.
But channelers also began to suggest the possibility of a
global or planetary Ascension. Integrated through the many and
variant offerings from the hundred or more channelers who contribute
to the Sedona Journal, is a belief that a large group of people
(though certainly a tiny minority of the world's population)
are in the midst of a significant transformation of consciousness.
The transformation is described variously, but essentially will
lift them to a new way of seeing the world in its essential unifying
and loving reality. As these people attain this new state they
will be a magnet through which the whole world will ascend, eventually
come to the truth of this higher consciousness.
What is evident in this post-New Age message is the lack of
a timetable by which the planetary ascension will occur, though
everywhere there is the hint and hope that it will occur in this
century. Second, there is the realization that for the presence
only a relative few will be engaged in activity focused upon
their ascension, though the work of this group will ultimately
have planetary implications.
A statement of this new vision, has been offered in the mission
statement of New Heaven/New Earth, an Arizona-based post-New
Age online newsletter created in 1994:
We also believe that our planet is passing through a time
of profound change and are seeking to create a global community
of like-minded people that can safely pass through whatever changes
may come our way and help give birth to a new way of life on
our planet. 17
What one finds in the post-New Age is the successful shift
of those who abandoned the millennialism of the 1980s to a post-millennial
perspective which has now projected the long-term gradual spread
of the higher consciousness that has been the perennial goal
of occult activity.
This transition from the "premillennialism" of the
New Age to the contemporary Ascension/spiritual emergence movement
that has followed it, is nowhere better demonstrated than in
the international bestselling books by James Redfield. Redfield,
a psychological counselor had been attracted to the New Age during
the 1980s, and became an avid reader of New Age and human potentials
books. By the end of the 1980s he had become so absorbed in this
material that he quit work and concentrated upon creating a synthesis
of everything he had learned. The result was a novel, The Celestine
Prophecy, self published in 1992. The book would win no awards
for either plot or character development, but was a hit with
people previously attracted to the New Age. Picked up by a major
publisher, it soon topped the News York Times nonfiction bestseller
list, and was subsequently translated into a number of languages.
Sequels appeared annually through the remainder of the decade.
In The Celestine Prophecy, Redfield laid out his perception
that a growing (if unspecified) number of people are engaging
in a new spiritual awakening that is permeating the population.
A critical mass of people are coming to view their life as a
spiritual journey. They are gaining some psychic awareness and
making contact with the universal energy that under girds the
universe. At some time in the near future all of these people
will gain a collective understanding of what is happening to
them and arrive at a common vision of the course of humankind
in this century. Eventually whole groups of people will experience
the higher vibratory states that others call ascension (though
Redfield himself does not use the term). In his second novel,
The Tenth Insight, Redfield poses the goal of spiritually evolved
individuals cooperating on the creation of a new global spiritual
culture. 18
Conclusion
Through the 1990s, what was called the New Age Movement in
the 1980s made a transition from the premillennial vision of
an imminent golden age of peace and light to a postmillennial
vision of a small group of people operating as the harbinger
of the future evolution or Ascension of humanity into a higher
life. The New Age Movement led to a dramatic growth of the older
occult/metaphysical community, recast the older occult practices
in the light of contemporary psychology, and created a much more
positive image for occultism in Western culture. The transition
of the 1990s, in the wake of the disappointment that the New
Age had failed to make an appearance, has allowed the gains of
the 1980s to be consolidated. Under a variety of names, the older
occult community has been established as an alternative faith
community (or more precisely, a set of alternative communities)
which share a common hope for their own prosperity in the next
century as well as their meaningful role in the evolution progress
of humanity.
The New Age may have died, but the community it brought together
continues to grow as one of the most important minority faith
communities in the West. While showing no signs of assuming the
dominant religious role in the West, it is reclaiming and resacralizing
a small part of the secularized world. In the future, it will
add its strength to those causes that it shares with other faith
communities (peace, environmentalism), and as the religious community
becomes ever-more pluralistic have an increasing role in inter-
religious dialogue and cooperation.
This paper by J. Gordon
Melton, titled "Beyond Millennialism: The New Age Transformed,"
was presented by the author at the conference on "New Age
in the Old World" held at the Institut Oecumenique de Bossey,
Celigny, Switzerland, July 17-21, 2000. It appears here with
the kind permission of the author. Copyright. J. Gordon Melton.
All rights reserved
Footnotes
- Recent literature representative of the anti-pseudoscience
movement's appraisal of the New Age would include: Michael Shermer,
Why People Believe Weird Things (New York: W. H. Freeman
and Company, 1997; Martin Gardner, The New Age: Notes of a
Fringe Watcher (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988); Henry
Gordon, Channeling into the New Age: The Teachings of Shirley
MacLaine and Other Such Gurus (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books,
1988), and Robert Basil, ed., Not Necessarily the New Age:
Critical Essays (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1988)..
- Evangelical Christian appraisals of the New Age range across
a wide spectrum from a more sober critique from a doctrinal perspective
represented by Karen Hoyt and the Spiritual Counterfeit Project,
The New Age Rage (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company,
1987) and J. Yutaka Amoto and Norman L. Geisler, The Infiltration
of the New Age (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1989)
to the more extreme Santanic conspiracy theories seen in Texe
Marrs, Mysteries of the New Age: Satan's Design for World
Domination (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988) or David
N. Balmforth, New Age Menace: The Secret War against the Followers
of Christ (Bountiful, UT: Horizon Publishers, 1996).
- Cf: J. Gordon Melton, James R. Lewis, and Aidan Kelly, eds.,
The New Age Encyclopedia (Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company,
1990), J. Gordon Melton, James R. Lewis, and Aidan Kelly, eds.,
New Age Almanac (Detroit, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1991);
James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, Perspectives on the New
Age (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992);
Richard Kyle, The New Age Movement in American Culture (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 1995); Pauil Heelas, The
New Age Movement: Celebrating the Self and the Sacralization
of Modernity (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996); Wouter J. Hanegraaff,
New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror
of Secular Thought (Leiden Brill, 1996); Michael F. Brown,
The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); Jon Klimo,
Channeling: Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal
Sources ( rev. ed.: Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1998);
and John Saliba, Christian Responses to the New Age Movement:
A Critical Assessment (London/New York: Geoffrey Chapman,
1999).
- Helpful in defining Western Esotericism are Antoine Faivre,
Access to Western Esotericism (Albany, NY: State University
Press of New York, 1994); Antoine Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination,
Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism (Albany, NY: State
University Press of New York, 2000); and Antopine Faivre and
Jacob Needleman, eds., Modern Esoteric Spirituality (New
York: Crossroad, 1992).
- A start on organizing the chaotic mountain of channeled material
that has been produced over the last two centuries has been made
by Joel Bjorling in Channeling: A Bibliography (New York:
Garland Publishing, 19--).
- Integral to understanding the beginning of the New Age are
David Spangler's several books, The New Age Vision (Forres,
Scotland: Findhorn Publications, 1980); Revelation: The Birth
of a New Age (San Francisco: Rainbow Bridge, 1976); and Towards
a Planetary Vision (Forres, Scotland: Findhorn Foundation,
1977).
- Ken Keyes, The Hundredth Monkey (Coos Bay, OR: Vision
Books, 1982).
- Ruth Montgomery, Aliens Among Us (New York: Putnam's,
1985).
- Shiley MacLaine, Out on a Limb (New York: Bantam Books,
1983).
- Franci D. Nichol's The Midnight Cry (Tacoma Park,
MD: Review and Herald, 1944) remains an excellent survey of the
events surrounding the Millerite enthusiasm.
- The 11:11 program may be tracked through Solara's several
books such as The Star-Borne: A Remembrance for the Awakened
Ones (Charlottesviile, VA: Starborne Unlimited 1989) and
How to Live Large on a Small Planet (Whitefish, MT: Starborne
Unlimited, 1996), or from her website at http://www.nvisible.com.
For an alternative map to the future with a different chronology
see "The Children of Light" proposals at http://www.childrenoflight.com.
- See the Star esseenia Temple webpage at http://www.star-esseenia.org.
- The literature on Ascension is now vast, however, ithas been
extensive and comprehensively surveyed in the multi-volume series,
The Easy-to-Read Encyclopedia of the Spiritual Path, by Joshua
David Stone. The initial volume, The Complete Ascension Manual:
How to Achieve Ascension in This Lifetime (Sedona, AZ: Light
Technology Publishing, 1994) is a helpful starting point. A sampling
of Ascension titles include: Tony Stubbs, An Ascension Handbook:
Channeled Material by Serapis (Livermore, CA: Oughten House
Publications, 1992); Aileen Nobles, Get Off the Karmic Wheel
with Conscious Ascension and Rejuvenation (Malibu, CA: Light
Transformation Center, 1993); MSI, Ascension (Edmonds,
WA: SFA Publications, 1995).
- See particularly, Godfre King [pseudonym of Guy W. Ballard),
The Magic Presence (Chicago: Saint Germain Press, 1935)
- Sedona itself has become part of the post-new Age worldview
and the subject of a growing literature. See: Tom Dongo, The
Mysteries of Sedona (Sedona, AZ: Color Pro Graphics, 1988;
Richard Dannelley, Sedona Power Spot, Vortex, and Medicine
Wheel Guide (Sedona, AZ: R. Dannelley with the Coopertion
of the Vortex Society, 1991); The Sedona Guide Book of Channeled
Wisdom (Sedona, AZ: Light Technology publishing, 1991); Dick
Sutphen, Sedona: Psychic Energy Vortexes (Malibi, CA:
Valley of the Sun Publishing, 1986).
- Ibid. pp. 270-94
- New Heaven/New Earth may be contacted through their Internet
site at http://www.newheavenneweath.com.
- See James Redfield's several titles: The Celestine Prophecy
(New York: Warner Books, 1994); The Celestine Vision:
Living the New Spiritual Awareness (New York: Warner Books,
1997}; The Tenth Insight (New York: Warner Books, 1996);
The Secret of Shambhala: Search for the Eleventh Insight (New
York: Warner Books, 1999).
- Paper uploaded: 01/02/01
