The term New Age describes a set of practices and beliefs; what follows is a brief history of new age, as well as a description of new age practices and beliefs.
The History of New Age
New Age grew out of the treatment revolutions of Emanuel Swedenborg, whose spiritualism became popular in the 1850s. Swedenborg claimed to communicate with spirits, and to travel through the spirit world. However, the language of New Age itself was more fully developed through the Theosophical Society, founded in 1875 by Madame Blavatsky. Much of this was borrowed from Eastern traditions, in particular Hinduism and Buddhism, but also Kabbalah. The Theosophical Society was founded to study spiritual phenomenon. From the techniques of Mesmer, Swedenbourg, G.I. Gurdjieff, and the more experiential teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the New Age developed its practices.
There were a number of factors at play to account for the increasing popularity of New Age. Darwinism, as well as the increasing acceptability of atheism and secularity, saw some in the west turning away from Christianity. With a literacy rate exponentially increasing each year, the sudden distribution of alternative ideas about mind, body, spirit and cosmos through pamphlets and books, enabled a sudden influx of alternatives to the Judeo-Christian paradigm.
More recently, Aleister Crowley and Alice Bailey developed their own theories and practices, influencing subsequent generations of spiritual seekers. Alice Bailey, in fact, coined the term New Age in the sense we tend to use it, in her book Discipleship in the New Age, written in the 1950's. With Aleister Crowley we can credit the term "Do What Thou Wilt Shall be the Whole of the Law", a battle-cry for freedom and liberty that wrung through two world wars, the 1960's counter-culture and can still be heard rallied out during Summer Solstice at Stonehenge.
New Age Practices
Sometimes repackaged with gleaming labels and obstreperous titles that even the most hardened semanticist would have difficulty penetrating, and sometimes manifest as sincere and integral expressions of religiosity without a buck or pound sign in sight, the vast majority of the practices and beliefs that make up the New Age are modern, largely Western, re-interpretations of ancient teachings and practices. Chakras, Shamanism, Meditation, Aromatherapy, Energy Healing and Visualisation are all staple parts of New Age belief and praxis whose roots expand into antiquity.
Who is "New Age"? Neo-Gnostics, Neo-Pagans, the practical Occultists, Environmentalists, Reiki practitioners and Urban Shamans, often appear under the New Age umbrella, yet would never refer to themselves as such. "New Age" has become an outsider term, used to group wide and varied practices under one simple heading.
The signs and symbols which make up the New Age are largely public; yet the meaning, interpretation and active understanding of these terms and the knowledge, and the practical experience of the techniques embodied within it, are the territory of the insider who may or may not (probably the latter) refer to themselves as New Age. In our pop culture, "New Age" has become an easy way to define a diverse range of practices and symbols without adequately making sense of their nuances and shared elements.
Encoded with indications of time and change, this term New Age, and its associated concepts -- the age of Aquarius, the Aeon of Horus or the Kali-Yuga -- seem to describe well the fierce and sudden changes incumbent upon our species, our consciousness and our environment. Whatever criticisms remain from a deeper analysis of the New Age 'movement', a fair assessment of its manifestations can reveal a body of doctrine and belief that is an expansive and coherent alternative to dominant paradigms and modern cultural narratives about the mind, the body, the spirit and the wider universe. This requires an open mind and sometimes an open heart. But through thinking for yourself, and questioning all authority, one can arrive at a strong sense that the dominant discourses describing the world are missing vital details that the New Age, and some of its more secret and subtle faces, can provide.
Tristram Burden - With grandparents who were practicing Christian Scientists, a grandfather who was a yoga enthusiast and who studied eastern mysticism, an ...
