New Age spirituality

Theosophical and esoteric roots

Scholars place the ideas behind the New Age in the longer history of Western esotericism. Wouter Hanegraaff, writing in the Encyclopedia of Religion, traces a line through Swedenborg, Mesmer, Spiritualism, the Theosophical Society (founded 1875) and New Thought, and names the Theosophist Alice Bailey (1880-1949) as a key influence; she channeled a prayer called The Great Invocation in 1937. A 1992 article by L. F. Schulze likewise traces the movement to Theosophy and to symbolist currents of the 1880s, and names Bailey as a continuing channel of influence.

Hanegraaff dates the immediate roots of the movement to postwar UFO study groups of the 1950s, some of which expected a cataclysm that would usher in a new age. A review of a major scholarly handbook adds that one contributor, Steven Sutcliffe, uses the term narrowly for supernaturalistic, millennial movements led or inspired by Bailey from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Findhorn, Esalen and the 1960s and 1970s

The Findhorn community in Scotland dates its beginnings to 1962, when Peter Caddy, Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean settled in a caravan park after their hotel employment ended. The Foundation's own history describes a garden developed in sandy soil and spiritual practices based on inner guidance, notes David Spangler's arrival in 1970, and says the community was registered as a Scottish charity, the Findhorn Foundation, in 1972. Hanegraaff argues that communities such as Findhorn shifted the outlook from waiting for catastrophe to actively building a new age.

Esalen, in Big Sur, California, was founded in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Richard Price, and its own site calls it the birthplace of the human potential movement, a self-description. The same page says the founders drew on Abraham Maslow and Aldous Huxley and aimed to combine Eastern practices such as Zen and yoga with Western psychology. John Byrne, in a shorter reference entry, dates the New Age movement to the late 1960s, when Eastern religions gained popularity in the United States.

Spread and commercialization

The label became a catchall in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Hanegraaff names Marilyn Ferguson's 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy as a popularizer of the idea of a loose network driving change, and cites Shirley MacLaine's autobiographies (1983-1989) and James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy in the 1990s as examples of mass-market appeal. He describes a shift from community-oriented values toward individual growth and a so-called spiritual supermarket in which consumers assemble personal syntheses.

Two senses of the term

Hanegraaff distinguishes a New Age movement in a strict sense, active from the 1950s to the 1970s and marked by occultist and millenarian expectations, from a general sense in the 1980s and 1990s, a broad cultic milieu of overlapping interests. The Aquarian Age that gives the term its name is defined in one reference work through astrology as a cycle of roughly 2,150 years. Sources quoted in the same entry disagree on how far the strict and general senses can be separated.

Insider and scholarly use

A 2011 review of the Handbook of New Age (2007) reports that most contributors use the term but voice discomfort with it. Alternatives it lists include quest culture, popular religion, alternative spirituality, perennism and vernacular religion. Some authors defend the term for the whole alternative religious field, while others restrict it to a historical movement; Sutcliffe ties it to the Bailey groups, and J. Gordon Melton to the successor movement around David Spangler between 1976 and 1988.

The reviewer adds that the term carries pejorative connotations of superficiality and commodification, that James Lewis noted in 1992 that most participants had become uncomfortable with it, and that many scholars have avoided it since about 2000. Hanegraaff likewise reports that by the 1990s many participants rejected the label and preferred vaguer words such as spirituality, which he reads as adaptation rather than decline. The review does not give a count of participants who reject the label.

Confusable terms

New Age is often used loosely for any alternative practice, but the sources reviewed treat it as a milieu with specific historical roots, not as a synonym for Western esotericism, Theosophy or the human potential movement, which Hanegraaff and others place among its antecedents. Sutcliffe, as summarized in the review, argues that New Age is not one phenomenon but two class-bound streams: an institutionalized seekership among the middle and upper classes, and a stream of folk religion among lower classes.

Organization without a single institution

Scholars describe the milieu as diffuse and individualist rather than as a church. Hanegraaff argues that New Age individualism resists institutionalization, which suits it to a market of books, workshops and retail. Findhorn's own history gives an example of an organized community, describing no formal creed but a committed spiritual path. A cultural studies article on commodification (see the evidence section) describes cooperation and competition among New Age providers.

Practices associated with the milieu

Reference entries list meditation, holistic health, crystals, astrology, channeling and body therapies such as Rolfing and reflexology among practices associated with the movement. Findhorn's history describes meditative contact with plant intelligences and guidance received from an inner voice. Several practices with their own pages on this site are commonly connected to New Age thought, including Akashic Records, Light Language, Gene Keys, Karma, Soul Contracts, Soul Mates, Twin Flames, Starseed, Spiritual Growth and Ascension. The sources reviewed for this page do not describe each of those individually, and this page does not describe how any of them is performed.

Varied local forms

The handbook review notes that studies describe New Age ideas appearing within Christian congregations and Christian ideas within the holistic milieu. It also reports anthropological case studies of Glastonbury, Sedona and Hawaii, and an account in which New Age engagement in Latin America requires a genuine conversion because its values of individual autonomy sit at odds with communal ones.

Personal transformation and the higher Self

Hanegraaff and the reference entries he reprints describe common themes of monism, relativism and individual autonomy, and the view that ignorance rather than sin is the root of human problems. Hanegraaff notes that the symbolic center is often a higher Self rather than God, which Paul Heelas termed Self Religion. Adherents are described as seeking personal transformation, healing and spiritual growth through the practices above.

Community, ecology and a coming age

Early accounts tie the term to an expected new era. Hanegraaff reports that in the 1960s Findhorn and similar communities moved from awaiting catastrophe to building the new age, and Findhorn's own history presents gardening and community life as spiritual work. Reference entries also record positive readings, in which the movement encourages ecological and holistic thinking and shows people creating new religious forms.

Authenticity and the workplace

Hanegraaff's entry describes the milieu as organized around individual growth, with participants assembling their own syntheses of practices and teachings. The Handbook review notes that its contributors treat the milieu's values of individual autonomy and social circulation as distinctive. The sources reviewed here describe these aims as participants and scholars state them, and they do not test whether the aims are achieved.

Historical and sociological scholarship

Most research on the New Age is historical, sociological or anthropological. The handbook review reports that few quantitative studies exist, mostly from Britain and Sweden, and criticizes the field for measuring states more than processes. Scholars disagree about definitions, dates and whether the milieu is one phenomenon. This page does not treat the beliefs themselves as established or as refuted; no source reviewed claims either.

How common related beliefs are

A 2018 Pew Research Center short read reports that roughly six in ten U.S. adults accept at least one of four beliefs sometimes characterized as New Age: psychics, spiritual energy in physical objects, reincarnation and astrology. About four in ten endorse the first two, 33 percent reincarnation and 29 percent astrology; roughly three-quarters of people who are spiritual but not religious hold at least one, as do 65 percent of those who are both religious and spiritual and 45 percent of those who are neither. The page does not give field dates, sample size or question wording, and the label is an interpretive category, not a survey term.

Psychological studies

Two studies by Miguel Farias and colleagues, read at abstract level only, examined small samples. A 2005 study of 99 people from a general population found New Age practices and beliefs related to schizotypal traits, notably magical ideation, and more often among women, and unrelated to traditional religiosity. A 2013 study compared 114 modern spiritual individuals with 86 traditional believers and found unusual experiences and ideas the strongest predictor of involvement, with anxiety, depression and insecure attachment not significant predictors. The authors conclude that modern spirituality was linked to good mental health. Both are correlational and cannot show cause.

Commodification studies and clinical research

Guy Redden's 2012 article uses the self-help book and DVD The Secret to examine how freely available spiritual traditions become intellectual property in a self-help market, including debate over New Age use of Indigenous Australian knowledges. No clinical trial or systematic review of the New Age as a whole was found, and none would be expected for a movement; searches run for this page were general web searches for New Age with open-access, terminology and health terms. Evidence on individual practices belongs on their own pages and must not be carried across.

Care boundary for health decisions

No source reviewed documents harms caused by the New Age milieu as a whole. For health, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health advises against using unproven products or practices to replace or delay medical treatment for cancer, notes that delay can reduce the chance of remission, and states that no complementary health approach has been shown to prevent cancer or bring about remission. It recommends telling health care providers about any such approach in use. This page does not diagnose or advise, and it is not a substitute for medical or mental health care.

Cost, commercialization and critics

Critics cited in the reference entry argue that the movement attacks Enlightenment rationality, promotes pseudoscience, reflects narcissism and can drift toward apolitical escapism, and conservative Christian critics link it to the occult. Hanegraaff describes a market in which consumers assemble personal syntheses. The sources reviewed do not report prices, financial loss or coercive groups, so this page makes no claims about them.

Cultural attribution

Redden's article describes disputes over New Age commodification of Indigenous Australian knowledges, and the handbook review notes a study of how Hawaiian sacredness is transferred to Western teachers and souvenirs. Readers should look to the communities concerned, and their own organizations, for what they publicly share and who may speak for them; this page does not reproduce restricted material. Esalen's page states that its campus lies on land historically inhabited by the Esselen Tribe and is co-stewarded with the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County.