DEFINING THE NEW AGE
George D. Chryssides
“Always start by defining your terms,” students are often told. Dictionary
definitions are seldom attention-grabbing, and the meaning of one’s
key terms may already be obvious to the reader. Indeed, any reader
who purchases a volume about New Age must plainly have a working
knowledge of what the term means—so why bother to define it?
There are a number of important reasons to start with definitions.
First, as Socrates, whose life’s work consisted largely of attempts to
formulate definitions of key concepts, ably demonstrated, there is a
world of difference between knowing what a concept means and being
able to articulate a definition. Second, there is a difference between
a dictionary definition and the defining characteristics that emerge
through scholarly discussion: key concepts in a field of knowledge are
usually more complex and subtle than can be summarised in a few
dictionary phrases. Third, attempting a definition—in this case of ‘New
Age’—enables us to bring out the various salient features of the movement,
and to help ensure that key aspects are not neglected. Fourth,
there are important comparisons and contrasts to be made between
New Age, alternative spirituality, New Religious Movements (NRMs) and
New Social Movements (NSMs), and hence an attempt to define one’s
subject matter is a useful exercise in conceptual mapping, enabling us
to draw conclusions about what belongs to the field of New Age studies
and what lies outside. Finally, discussing definitions is important where
a term’s meaning is contested: as will become apparent, the expression
‘New Age’ admits of different meanings, and indeed some writers have
suggested that the concept is not a useful one, since it lacks any clear
meaning whatsoever.
At an intuitive level, many readers would claim to recognise the
‘New Age’ when they see it. It manifests itself in shops that specialise
in Tarot cards, crystals, incense, alternative remedies and books on ley
lines, the paranormal, astrology, and eastern and esoteric spirituality.
It appears in the form of magazines such as Kindred Spirit, Caduceus
and Resurgence, and in local directories providing advertisements and
addresses for the services of Reiki healers, yoga teachers and various
6 george d. chryssides
psychic consultants. It has its centres, either in practitioners’ owned or
hired premises, or in renowned towns such as Glastonbury or Totnes.
There are also characteristic events, such as Mind-Body-Spirit festivals
and psychic fairs.
How can one find a definition of ‘New Age’ that will serve to bring
so many different features together? One major difficulty in defining
‘New Age’ is that different writers draw different boundaries. Paul
Heelas, for example, includes a significant number of what he calls
the ‘self religions’: groups like Landmark Forum (also known simply as
The Forum, formerly est or Erhard Seminar Training) and Programmes
Limited (formerly Exegesis). Some writers trace the New Age back to
William Blake (1757–1827); others see it as originating in the ‘hippie’
counter-culture in the USA in the 1960s, while the scholar of the New
Age, Wouter Hanegraaff, places it later still, regarding it as beginning
in the second half of the 1970s. Some authors claim that, if there ever
was a New Age Movement, it is now finished, while others aver that
it is still with us.
A further problem relates to the supposed constituents of the New
Age. If it supposedly includes homoeopathy, eastern religions, ley lines,
deep ecology, angels, channelling, Tarot cards, astrology and NeuroLinguistic
Programming, what do such interests have in common? If
there is no common essence, do they at least have a relationship? If
they have common or related features, what is the point in conjuring
up a term to refer to them collectively?
The Scope and Diversity of the New Age
Although the Theosophical Society is not normally considered to be
part of the New Age Movement, its eclectic ideas have significantly
contributed to the development of the New Age phenomenon. In particular,
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), Alice Bailey (1880–1949), Jiddu
Krishnamurti (1895–1986), and Dion Fortune (1890–1946), all of whose
writings still feature significantly on the Mind-Body-Spirit shelves of
bookshops, were at one time Theosophists, although all except Fortune
abandoned the Theosophical Society.
Bailey’s ideas relate on the one hand to Theosophy’s founder-leader
Helena P. Blavatsky’s ‘Ascended Masters’—advanced spiritual beings
who are now free from the cycle of reincarnation and who continue to
guide humans on Earth from their celestial abodes. In particular, Bailey
defining the new age 7
claimed contact with a spiritual guide by the name of Djwahl Khul,
whom she claimed to be the ultimate author of many of her writings.
On the other hand, Bailey was influenced by Christianity, although
she developed her own idiosyncratic interpretation in the two-volume
Discipleship in the New Age (1944, 1955), and The Reappearance of the Christ
(1948). The first bears obvious noteworthiness for Bailey’s use of the
expression ‘New Age’; the second develops ideas of a spiritual evolution
towards a new world religion in which the teachings of Buddha
and Christ would be fused. Christ would return some time towards
the end of the twentieth century, enabling the Ascended Masters to
draw closer to humanity, thereby ushering in a new era of heightened
spiritual awareness.
Krishnamurti, Steiner and Fortune demonstrate in different ways
the diverse interests of the subsequent New Age Movement. Having
rejected the Theosophical Society’s endeavours to present him as new
world teacher Maitreya and avatar, Krishnamurti claimed to be bound
by no tradition, and preached a message of non-violence, teaching
that peace was not achievable by socio-political means, but only by a
transformation of the self, cultivating the virtues of goodness, love and
compassion. Krishnamurti saw the importance of education in selfdevelopment,
and established numerous schools in India, Britain and
the United States. Steiner, even more than Krishnamurti, is associated
with education, and the Steiner school emphasises a holistic approach to
education, stressing the importance of the development of the spiritual
and physical aspects of the individual, as well as his or her intellect.
The Anthroposophical Society, founded by Steiner, promoted a form of
‘Christian occultism’ (as Steiner himself called it), whereby individuals
were encouraged to rediscover the divine powers, which they had lost.
Jesus Christ, Steiner taught, showed humanity the way in which this
can be accomplished.
Dion Fortune’s ideas were less Christian-centred than Steiner’s: for her
Jesus Christ was only one of a number of Ascended Masters of whom
she claimed to have visions. An esotericist, Fortune combined occultism
and magic with Tarot, Kabbalah and neo-Paganism. Particularly
significant is her association with the town of Glastonbury, which she
visited regularly, and where she contemplated the Celtic underworld
that allegedly lived beneath the Glastonbury Tor. Her Avalon of the Heart
(1934), re-issued as Dion Fortune’s Glastonbury, remains in print.
More recently, the New Age became associated with the 1960s ‘hippie’
movement, which began in the USA and percolated into Canada and
8 george d. chryssides
Britain. The hippies were the youth counter-culture, coming initially
from US college campuses, and rejecting ‘The Establishment’. Set
against the background of US involvement in Vietnam, a favourite
hippie slogan was ‘Make love, not war,’ and the twin values of ‘love’
and ‘peace’ were declared in preference to the materialism and perceived
authoritarianism of the West’s dominant culture. They attracted
publicity for their unconventional dress, which was in keeping with
their ‘psychedelic revolution’, involving bright colours and ‘flower
power’ designs. Men grew long beards and women typically wore long
dresses. Their interests included drug-taking—particularly cannabis
and LSD—rock music, eastern philosophy and religion. Their lifestyle
was typically either communal or nomadic. Significantly, the hippies’
interests extended to the environment, and their celebration of Earth
Day in 1970 received media publicity. The hippie movement was shortlived,
however: although a few neo-hippie groups remain, the movement
virtually disappeared in the early 1970s. The younger generation of
the 1970s and later seemed more interested in a conventional lifestyle,
forging careers and seeking material prosperity.
Some mention should be made of the ‘New Age’ travellers, if only
to highlight the fact that they have really little bearing on the ‘New
Age’ movement discussed here. The New Age travellers took their
rise from free music festivals in the 1970s, for example the Windsor
Park Free Festival, and other festivals at Glastonbury and Stonehenge.
They journeyed between one festival and another, using vans, buses,
caravans and lorries, and pitching improvised tents in which to spend
the night. Their activities attracted considerable opposition from local
communities, and there were many arrests. Their interests, however,
were predominantly musical rather than spiritual.
Much more influential in the development of the New Age Movement
was the Findhorn community. Established in 1962 by Peter and Eileen
Caddy on the banks of the Moray Firth, the community began as a
horticultural experiment. When the poor soil and climate nevertheless
succeeded in producing remarkable crops (some cabbages weighed as
much as 40 pounds), this success was attributed to supernatural beings,
known as ‘devas’. Particularly important in the development of New
Age philosophy were Sir George Trevelyan (1906–1996) and David
Spangler, both of whom had leading roles in shaping Findhorn.
Trevelyan’s interests were varied. He founded the Wrekin Trust in
1971, but is almost equally significant for his role in establishing the
defining the new age 9
Teilhard de Chardin Society, the Soil Association, and the Essene
Society. He preferred the term ‘Aquarian Age’ to ‘New Age’, a preference
that was reflected in the title of his book A Vision of the Aquarian
Age (1977). The Wrekin Trust was a centre for ‘spiritual education’, and
Trevelyan’s vision was, as he put it, ‘a vision of wholeness’ entailing
‘the essential unity of all life’.
When David Spangler later joined the Findhorn community in
1970, the programme of seminars commenced, spanning a range of
topics including yoga, personal development, creative writing and healing,
among many others. Spangler’s own philosophy was essentially
Christian, although he tended to reject institutional religion. In common
with Christianity, Spangler proclaimed an eschatological hope, but
he expected a transformation in the physical world, when there would
be a new evolutionary stage in the life of the universe, with renewed
self-discovery and personal development. In contrast with Alice Bailey’s
Christian-derived New Age philosophy, Spangler believed that this New
Age would not arrive inevitably, but required human awareness and
effort to bring about.
An important landmark in New Age philosophy was the publication
of Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy (1982). This book was
important for a variety of reasons. First, it is unmistakably utopian:
Ferguson argued for a ‘paradigm shift’ which she believed was about
to take place in the human mind and brain, in human spirituality, and
with a new emergent culture. Ferguson perceived a need for a transition
in spirituality from its past emphasis on tradition, authority, faith and
ritual, to a new spirituality that relied on direct knowledge, experience,
‘adventure’ and human wholeness, a spirituality which would emphasise
meditation, healing and recognition of one’s inner divine nature. Not
only would such changes take place in the individual, but they would
be accompanied by social and political transformation.
Ferguson’s importance lies not only in her utopian agenda but in
her analysis of how she perceives the operation of this movement.
Like Trevelyan, she prefers the term ‘Age of Aquarius’ to ‘New Age’,
but the concept is much the same. The word ‘conspiracy’ in the title
is significant, because for her it connotes ‘breathing together’—the
original meaning of the term. The ideas of the Aquarian Age are not
to be found in any single organisation or ideology, but are to be found
in various sources that breathe together symbiotically. For Ferguson,
the New Age is not another religion or a new single movement, but a
10 george d. chryssides
Segmented Polycentric Integrated Network (SPIN), or more accurately,
a SPIN of SPINs. The ideas come together at various junctures: in
books, in magazines, in special interest groups, and at various events
and festivals.
Objections to the Term ‘New Age’
The preceding outline of the history of term ‘New Age’ highlights the
range of interests that the movement espouses. Yet it is precisely this
diversity that has caused some critics to take the view that these interests
are too diverse to be encapsulated profitably by a single concept.
I propose to consider a number of objections that have been made to
the use of the term ‘New Age’ in order to determine whether or not
it should have currency.
‘The New Age is a Hotchpotch of Disparate Ideas’
The first line of criticism is that the term ‘New Age’ covers too great a
variety of concepts to be of use. Critics such as Peter Lemesurier, Lowell
Streiker and Rosalind Hackett variously describe it as “an extraordinary
mish-mash of ideas... having little connection with each other”,
a “hodgepodge”, and “very eclectic, drawing on the (often contradictory)
ideas and teachings of a host of (alternative) Western traditions...
as well as of teachers from Eastern religious traditions” (Lemesurier
1990; Streiker 1990:46; Hackett 1992:216; cited in Heelas 1996:2). It
is as if a beachcomber devised a collective noun to designate, say, all
the objects that he or she had found in the course of a day: one might
come up with a noun, but unless there is purpose to the grouping of
such objects, or unless they bear some common set of features or at
least a family resemblance, the use of any such term seems pointless.
As Steven Sutcliffe argues, ‘New Age’ is a construct—that is to say, a
term created by outsiders to bring together artificially a number of
disparate ideas that may not be linked by their exponents. It is therefore
a term that “lacks predictable content... and fixed referents” (Sutcliffe
2002:29). Thus, Heelas wishes to include Human Potential organisations
such as Landmark Forum (formerly est—Erhard Seminar Training)
and Exegesis; Wouter Hanegraaff (1996) notes that Transcendental
Meditation, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness
(ISKCON) and the Osho organisation have at times appropriated the
label ‘New Age’, as has the UFO-religion The Aetherius Society.
defining the new age 11
‘New Age Cannot be Defined as Alternative Spirituality’
A further line of attack on definitions of New Age comes from Jeremy
Carrette and Richard King in their book, Selling Spirituality: The Silent
Takeover of Religion (2005). Carrette and King’s polemical attack is
predominantly a critique of New Age practices, and this aspect of
their book falls outside the scope of this chapter. For the purposes
of the present discussion, I shall consider their critique of the notion
of ‘spirituality’, for, if they are right in claiming that such a concept
is too nebulous to be of value, it follows that the incorporation of
‘spiritual’ as a descriptor of New Age is inappropriate.
Carrette and King complain, quoting Mick Brown, the author of
The Spiritual Tourist (1998), that ‘spirituality’ is “a kind of buzz-word
of the age”. Echoing Dorothy Rowe (2001), they contend that it is “a
Humpty Dumpty word” (Carrette & King 2005:32), a concept without
any clear unambiguous fixed meaning. Following Walter Principe, the
authors trace the history of the term ‘spiritual’, identifying four key
stages of its development. First, there is “early biblical” usage, entailing
making sense of life morally, and disciplining one’s carnal nature;
second, early Christian Hellenism used the term ‘spirit’ as being diametrically
opposed to ‘matter’ in a metaphysical dualism; third, there
is a use in ecclesiastical parlance, which distinguished between ‘matters
temporal’ and ‘matters spiritual’—terms which defined ownership and
jurisdiction; finally, following the Protestant Reformation, there arose
a tendency to equate the ‘spiritual’ with the inner life of the soul in
contrast with the authority of the Church: the doctrine of the ‘priesthood
of all believers’ entailed the possibility of finding the divine
within oneself, rather than communicated through intermediaries such
as priests, saints or the Church.
Carrette and King perceive the present-day use of the term ‘spirituality’
and its accompanying ‘privatisation of religion’ as emerging from
the Romantic movement. Theologians like Friedrich Schleiermacher
laid emphasis on ‘feeling’ as the key characteristic of religion: an inner
awareness, rather than blind faith in ecclesiastical authority. The authors
see the inner quest for the divine as subsequently manifesting itself in
the exploration of oriental religions, and subsequently taken over by
capitalism, by selling of books, tapes and spiritual paraphernalia, as
well as the use by capitalist organisations of spiritual techniques for
managerial training—for example the use of the I Ching in decision
making, or meditative practices for stress relief.
12 george d. chryssides
‘New Age is Neither an Emic Nor an Etic Category’
A third line of objection is Steven Sutcliffe’s contention that ‘New Age’
functions neither as an emic nor an etic piece of terminology. Etically,
it is a construct, but emically it is not readily found as a self-description
by those who are within the movement. Sutcliffe notes, for example,
that in the bibliography of Wouter Hanegraaff’s important and detailed
book on the New Age Movement, only six out of several hundred titles
actually use the phrase ‘New Age’.
Sutcliffe does concede that there are some instances of emic use of
the term, for example by Alice Bailey, George Trevelyan and David
Spangler, the 1960s ‘New Age travellers’, and in the celebrated musical
Hair, which affirmed the ‘dawning of the Age of Aquarius’. However,
as Sutcliffe points out, the important emic uses of the term ‘New Age’
lie well in the past, and do not typically reflect what is currently to be
found in so-called ‘New Age’ circles. The New Age no longer consists
of some neo-Christian expectation based on William Blake or Alice
Bailey. Even Spangler, who was closely associated with the origins of
the Findhorn community, and wrote Revelation: The Birth of a New Age
(1971), came to recant on the notion that some new paradise was around
the corner. Sutcliffe concludes that emic uses of the term ‘New Age’
are “optional, episodic and declining” (Sutcliffe 2003:197). The use of
the term itself has declined, and indeed—as he insists—“there is and
has been no New Age Movement” (Sutcliffe 2003:208).
‘The New Age has Disappeared’
A further line of attack is the suggestion that the ‘New Age’ phenomenon
itself has disappeared. As has been shown, the movement took its
rise in the US counterculture of the 1960s, when hippiedom, ‘flower
power’, freedom from authority and utopian expectations were all the
rage. Today, the shelves in bookstores that promote the ideas associated
with New Age are labelled ‘Mind-Body-Spirit’, and the latter term is
used for the various festivals that are currently held in British cities
and elsewhere. The hippies are passé, and so is their ideology. They
were politically left-wing, rejecting the capitalist system and becoming
society’s ‘drop-outs’ in the belief that by so doing they could bring
about a new social utopia. Few hippies are still around, and the New
Age, far from being in opposition to a capitalist system, has become a
multi-million dollar industry, to the extent that critics such as Jeremy
Carrette and Richard King (2005) have criticised it for its support of
defining the new age 13
capitalist ideology. The ‘radical common sense’ advocated in Marilyn
Ferguson’s Aquarius Now (2005) is more of a recipe for personal material
prosperity than for any spiritual journey.
New Agers no longer seem to expect a dawning Age of Aquarius,
which will accompany the planetary transition from Pisces—the age
of Christianity—to Aquarius—the New Age. Even David Spangler
retracted his utopian claims, stating that the New Age was “an idea,
not... an event” (Spangler; cited in Sutcliffe 2004:114), and that
its importance lay not in the destination, but in the journey (Kemp
2003:3).
A Defence of ‘New Age’
I shall now consider some possible rejoinders to the criticisms stated
above. It should be observed that, because of his sustained attack on
the concept ‘New Age’, Sutcliffe endeavours to avoid directly using
the term, always placing it in quotation marks, in order to indicate his
disapproval of the term as a coherent designator. However, although
the substitution of “‘New Age’” for “New Age” serves to indicate the
problematical nature of the term, Sutcliffe nonetheless appears to use
the expression ‘New Age’ with no obvious difference from those writers
on the topic who employ it without any quotation marks, and Sutcliffe
appears to have no difficulty in identifying the subject-matter that is
typically associated with the term ‘New Age’. This being the case, why
not simply drop the quotation marks, and continue to talk about New
Age instead of ‘New Age’? The only possible reason for doing so would
be that the removal of the quotation marks would serve to contradict
the author’s thesis that ‘New Age’ is an unintelligible concept. Yet his
ability to use the expression ‘New Age’ (with quotations) implicitly
acknowledges that the concept is perfectly capable of being understood.
If this is indeed the case, then we ought to be able to move towards
some kind of definition.
Certainly the concept ‘New Age’ is a theoretical construct. However,
the term’s nature as a construct does not necessarily undermine its usefulness
or employability. Scholars continue to write about Hinduism, for
example, usually in the full knowledge that the term is a western etic
piece of vocabulary imposed by nineteenth-century westerners to cover
a number of vastly different spiritual practices focused on different forms
of deity. While it is useful to remember that the term is a construct, it
14 george d. chryssides
has become so embedded in western thinking that it would be difficult
to change it, and there is a clear advantage in having a term that draws
together a set of religious worldviews that bear family resemblances to
each other, and which serves to differentiate a cluster of religious ideas
and practices from Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam.
I turn now to the issue of spirituality. Are Carrette and King right
in regarding this concept as being too vague to be used in the context
of New Age and Mind-Body-Spirit? The fact that a concept is nebulous
does not necessarily entail that it is useless, and indeed Carrette
and King grossly exaggerate the fluidity that pertains to the notion of
spirituality. They cannot seriously believe that it is a Humpty Dumpty
concept meaning literally anything at all: this is simply false, and to
point out that its meaning has developed over the centuries is an
observation that could be made about many words that are in current
usage. They may well be right in claiming that the concept is in need
of much further analysis, but that in itself is no reason to discard it as
being devoid of meaning.
Clearly, it is not realistic within the scope of this chapter to propose
a concept of spirituality that can be guaranteed to withstand academic
scrutiny, but it is possible to make some remarks about the term that
will serve to show that it at least contains some substantial content.
Most importantly, those who use the term ‘spirituality’ imply that
there is something (or maybe Someone) that exists beyond the empirical
realm—whether it is God, Brahman, buddhas and bodhisattvas,
or some kinds of spiritual beings such as Ascended Masters or devas.
Additionally, spirituality requires more than simple belief in the existence
of such beings: in some sense they are capable of being experienced,
and interact with human beings, whether by being ‘channelled’, or
through the practitioner’s personal experience. Spirituality typically
expresses itself in ritual, and the New Age is renowned for its multiplicity
of ritual acts, whether these are prayers, meditations, spell-castings, or
Tarot readings. Finally, spirituality is about finding meaning in one’s life:
receiving guidance for life, obtaining answers to questions about why
we are here, what the purpose of life is, and what may happen after
we die. All these proposed components of spirituality no doubt need
further discussion and clarification, but they constitute an important
part of what the spiritual life entails, and it is simply false to suggest
that the term ‘spirituality’ can genuinely mean whatever one wants it
to mean, or—less sweepingly—that it is devoid of clear meaning.
Having said this, one must be wary, however, of simply using the
defining the new age 15
expression ‘alternative spirituality’ or, worse still, ‘alternative religion’
as a synonym for, let alone a definition of ‘New Age’. The word
‘alternative’ raises the question, ‘Alternative to what?’ If it were to be
suggested that ‘alternative spirituality’ is to be understood as spiritual
ideas and practices that constitute alternatives to traditional mainstream
Christianity, then such a term would have to encompass other major
world faiths such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.
While it is certainly the case that books and paraphernalia relating to
certain forms of Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufism frequently occupy
shelf space in the Mind-Body-Spirit section of many book stores, neither
those who have been brought up in these traditions nor western
converts to them can be regarded as ‘New Agers’. By contrast, the New
Ager is better characterised by an eclecticism that commits him or her
to no one specific expression of spirituality; religions typically offer firm
answers to spiritual questions, whereas the New Ager is often described
as a ‘seeker’ who perhaps derives more spiritual nourishment from the
search itself than from what, if anything, he or she actually finds.
I shall now turn to the ‘emic/etic’ line of objection. It is surely
evident that the term ‘New Age’ has been used both ‘emically’ and
‘etically’. Emically, significant numbers of spiritual seekers have adopted
the designation ‘New Age’ as a self-description. Thus, in a Canadian
census in 1991, some 1200 people accepted the label ‘New Age’; in
a similar census in New Zealand, 1212 citizens adopted the label.
(531 described themselves as ‘Other New Age religions not classified
elsewhere’, and a further 681 accepted the designation ‘Spiritualism
and New Age not further defined’, where ‘Spiritualism’ was given as a
separate category).1
Two authors cite a survey carried out in Maryland,
which claims that 6 per cent of Maryland’s population identifies with
New Age ideas2
(Naisbitt and Aburdene 1990:280). These may constitute
a sizeable proportion of each country’s population, but these are
self-descriptions by individuals.
Etically, the term is applied by various external commentators on
the New Age, including Christian evangelical critics and by academics.
1
Data taken from New Zealand national censuses, based on self-identification, down
to denominational level. Total 1996 population: 3,616,633. Listed in table as “Other
New Age religions not classified elsewhere.” From VisionNet Census 1999; original
source: Statistics New Zealand; cited at www.adherents.com.
2
See also www.adherents.com.
16 george d. chryssides
Examples include Wouter Hanegraaff and Michael York, and university
courses incorporating the term ‘New Age’ are run in various British
and US institutions.
The above points effectively rebut the idea that the New Age is passé.
New Age shops continue to survive—that is to say, specialist retail
outlets that market literature and artefacts relating to the themes that
I have identified above as pertaining to the New Age. Their proliferation
is such that Carrette and King can refer to the phenomenon as
an “explosion” and a “cultural addiction” (2005:1). Major bookstores
may have renamed their shelves ‘Mind-Body-Spirit’, but the subjectmatter
is the same.
However, the fact that the New Age has changed in the past few
decades remains an unconvincing argument for denying it an identity.
Many movements change over time: one only has to consider Britain’s
major political parties as cases in point. The New Age emphasis on
spiritual quest positively lends itself to change and innovation. Equally,
the absence of a unified or agreed worldview need not deter us from
regarding the New Age as a coherent concept. Many organisations
and movements thrive on debate and disagreement. A university is
an obvious example, where debate and competing hypotheses are the
very essence of academic life. Movements such as the feminist movement,
although less institutionalised, admit of competing opinions:
thus there are feminists who advocate positive discrimination rather
than strictly equal opportunities; there are ‘separatists’ who believe in
setting up exclusively female environments for women to build confidence,
while other feminists hold that women should be able to relate
to men on equal terms; there are ‘unadorned’ feminists, while others
believe that women may legitimately maintain a feminine identity with
traditionally female attire and cosmetics. Yet the presence of all these
divergent positions within feminism does not entail that ‘feminism’ is
not a movement or a useful concept. If it is argued that ‘New Age’
differs from feminism in that the latter is a single unified movement,
this is not the case. Different feminists have different interests, spanning
women’s suffrage, women in the workplace, women in education,
anarcho-feminism, separatist lesbian feminism, eco-feminism and ‘difference
feminism’. (The last of these celebrates the gender differences
between male and female.)
defining the new age 17
The New Age as a SPIN
Of course, the New Age Movement is a much wider complex than
the feminist movement—which can be construed as forming merely a
part of ‘New Age’ thought—which is why writers like Ferguson have
employed the notion of SPIN as a characterisation. Although it has
been argued that the New Age Movement lacks a unified worldview,
ideology and organisation, I believe that, not withstanding criticisms of
such notions, the various concepts of cultic milieu, SPIN and web, proposed
respectively by Colin Campbell, Marilyn Ferguson and Dominic
Corrywright, offer an instructive means of understanding the New Age
phenomenon. Campbell defines his notion of the “cultic milieu” as the
“sum of unorthodox and deviant belief systems”. These are espoused
by a “cultural underground”, and the overlapping structures of these
ideas find outlets in magazines, books and meetings among others.
Campbell was writing in 1972, considerably before the New Age
became a topic of academic interest. It is perhaps unsurprising, therefore,
that his idea of a “sum of unorthodox and deviant beliefs systems”
is proposed somewhat uncritically, and is somewhat of an overstatement.
If we were to take “sum” to mean ‘totality’ of unorthodox beliefs and
practices, this would include belief in the Earth’s flatness (there still
exists an International Flat Earth Society), Holocaust denial, or sadomasochism.
Campbell, however, qualifies the cultic milieu’s parameters
by stating that they emphasise first-hand spiritual experience (sometimes
popularly labelled “the mystical”), a rejection of established religion, an
absence of dogma, which encourages seeker-ship, and a preparedness
to combine such ideas with the non-religious. The notion of “belief
systems” in this context also needs critical examination: in most cases,
Campbell’s “cultural underground” does not offer grand systems,
but—more often than not—artefacts (such as crystals), services (healing,
meditation), ideas (‘Jesus lived in India’), or technologies.
Marilyn Ferguson takes the notion of the cultural milieu rather further
in the concept of a SPIN of SPINs. The Segmented Polycentric
Integrated Network (SPIN) is a concept devised by Luther P. Gerlach
and Virginia H. Hine (1970). The SPIN’s ‘segmentation’ lies in the fact
that there are different areas of interest within the New Age: Ferguson
specifically discusses the areas of religion, medicine and health care,
and education. The Findhorn community, influenced by Trevelyan’s
multifaceted interests, has promoted a similar range of topics, spanning
ecology, horticulture, spirituality and education. These areas of
18 george d. chryssides
interest each have their own organisational segments: for Trevelyan these
included the Soil Association, the Essene Society and the de Chardin
Society, among others. It is possible, of course, simply to pursue in
isolation one or two of the interests commonly associated with the New
Age: parents may simply send a child to a Steiner school, or a spiritual
seeker might find solace in a Buddhist meditation group. Such people,
according to the SPIN definition, are not New Agers, since they do
not make use of the polycentric network: they are simply supporters
of alternative education and a minority religion respectively.
These single organisations in themselves do not merit the description
‘New Age’, since they lack the feature of integration. As we have
seen, Trevelyan emphasised the notions of ‘wholeness’ and ‘unity of
life’—ideas that are typically associated with the New Age, and which
very much lend themselves to the kind of integrated networking that
goes on within it. Thus ‘spiritual education’ is not something that can
be isolated from specific religious writers and spiritual groups such
as de Chardin or the Essenes. Both these forms of spirituality have
implications for humanity, how to care for our planet, and the future of
humankind upon it. This in turn links with ecology and organisations
like Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the Soil Association.
As Corrywright (2004) points out, there are various ‘network hubs’,
‘nodes’ or ‘gateways’ that help to integrate and promote such ideas.
He cites the journal Resurgence, and points to organisations such as
Schumacher College and the Findhorn Foundation. Other ‘links’
can be topographical, for example the town of Glastonbury. Part of
Corrywright’s ‘web’ also involves organisations that may lack the diversity
of New Age beliefs and practices, but which promote one particular
type of spiritual that may be of interest to New Age seekers. He cites
Sharpham House as an example: this is a Buddhist community situated
near Totnes, which provides lectures, courses, meditation sessions and
retreats, but does not limit its programme to committed Buddhists.
Sutcliffe, however, emphatically rejects any such attempt to encapsulate
the movement, pointing out first, that the New Age’s early stages
did not consist of such any such network, and that Gerlach and Hine’s
examples were Pentecostalism and Black Power, both of which are
“clearly-demarcated social movements” (Sutcliffe 2003:199). Sutcliffe’s
argument here is less than convincing, however: the fact that New Age
did not begin as an integrated network does not entail that it has not
become one now, and if Gerlach and Hine chose clearly-defined social
defining the new age 19
movements as examples of SPINs, it does not follow that more complex
and seemingly nebulous movements cannot be thus defined.
Towards a Definition of New Age
We are now in a position to move towards a possible definition of New
Age. In endeavouring to understand the phenomenon, it is important to
distinguish the New Age from several phenomena that it plainly is not.
The New Age is certainly not a religion. Paul Heelas writes: “Some
see the New Age Movement as a New Religious Movement (NRM). It
is not. Neither is it a collection of NRMs” (Heelas, 1996:9). Somewhat
paradoxically, Heelas is inclined to talk about “New Age movements” as
if they are clusters of individual spiritual and self-improvement groups.
Thus, he identifies (a) an “est family”, (b) groups offering specialised
trainings but do not belong to this family, and (c) trainings “which do
not appear to have such strong connections with particular New Age
movements” (Heelas 1996:63). The first category includes some of
Scientology’s enterprises; the second embraces Rajneesh (now Osho),
the Emissaries of Divine Light, and Transcendental Meditation; while
the third relates to business organisations that have been inspired by
ideas associated with New Age. This classification is somewhat puzzling,
since The Forum (formerly est), Rajneesh/Osho, and Scientology tend
to be self-contained, avoiding links with New Age networks.
The tendency to regard the New Age Movement as an NRM or a
cluster of NRMs no doubt stems from the brief history of the academic
study of both areas. The term ‘NRM’ remains somewhat unsatisfactory,
and is still imprecisely defined, encompassing a range of disparate
spiritual groups of different vintages and backgrounds, and academic
study has largely gone along with the Anti-Cult Movement’s concepts
of ‘cult’ and ‘New Age’. Thus FAIR News states,
The umbrella term “New Age” covers a vast range of groups some of
which seem to have little to do with the actual ushering in of the New
Age of Aquarius. Many have ecological traits, others deal with alternative
medicine, and most of them belong to the “fringe” rather than to the
category of destructive cults. (FAIR News 1989:8)
As I have argued, New Agers’ interests travel wider than any single
religion, and indeed the New Ager is typically characterised by a
rejection of the notion that any single religion can claim monopoly
20 george d. chryssides
of answers to spiritual questions. This is especially true of two types
of religion. The first is Paganism and its associated phenomenon of
‘goddess spirituality’. Mind-Body-Spirit stores may stock their quota
of books on the present-day revival of these traditions, but those who
espouse Paganism frequently take exception to being labelled as ‘New
Agers’. Although it assumes a variety of forms, individual Pagans follow
the practices that pertain to their chosen tradition, in contrast with the
variety of spiritual practices that are taken up by New Agers, such as
crystal therapy, Tarot, I Ching, and the many others.
Secondly, and importantly, much of the New Age Movement tends
to reject Christianity, at least in its traditional institutionalised forms.
A cursory glance at the Mind-Body-Spirit bookshelves will confirm an
interest in Buddhism, Hinduism, philosophical Taoism, western Sufism
and neo-Paganism, but not in the Bible or the traditional Christian classics.
No doubt this is partly due to the Judaeo-Christian notion that their
God is a “jealous God” (Exodus 20:5) who demands total allegiance,
and for whom any New Agey quest is unnecessary and reprehensible.
Having said this, it is noteworthy that one important feature of New
Age interest lies in the alternative ‘gospels’ and their commentators.
Christianity’s canonical gospels may not be of great interest to New
Agers, but books like Levi H. Dowling’s The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the
Christ (1985) and Holger Kersten’s Jesus Lived in India (1986) have been
best-sellers. At the time of writing, the present author was interested
to note that several Glastonbury booksellers were promoting various
new titles on Mary Magdalene, no doubt prompted by Dan Brown’s
novel The Da Vinci Code (2003).
It is not difficult to see why these alternative lives of Jesus Christ
should be popular in New Age circles. Some of them, such as Dowling’s
Aquarian Gospel and Helen Schucman’s A Course in Miracles (Anonymous
1985), are supposedly channelled. They purport to provide esoteric
knowledge, yielding new information about Jesus that the Christian
Church either does not know, or—if writers like Dan Brown are to be
taken seriously—wilfully withholds. The notion that Jesus might have
had a female disciple in Mary Magdalene lends obvious support the
New Age celebration of the feminine, and simultaneously questions
the presumed celibacy attributed to Jesus by the Church. Thus these
alternative lives of Jesus assume an anti-establishment anti-authoritarianism.
In addition, the suggestion that Jesus may have had exchanges
with Hindu and Buddhist sages underlines the eclectic nature of the
New Age, placing these various religions in a syncretistic blend.
defining the new age 21
Reciprocally, mainstream Christianity has typically rejected the
ideas of the New Age Movement. Norman L. Geissler, writing from
a Protestant evangelical standpoint, asserts that the New Age is “the
most dangerous enemy of Christianity in the world today” (Geissler
1984; cited in Berry 1988:3). Part of the concern about the New Age
no doubt lies in its nebulous nature: since it is never totally clear where
the boundaries of New Age lie, some Christians fear that New Age
ideas and paraphernalia can invade their faith by stealth. The author
recently attended a counter-cult meeting at which some attendees
voiced disquiet about a woman who was wearing a skirt bearing a ‘sun’
design. Was the pattern simply decorative, or was it a New Age symbol?
Concern has been expressed about the well-known ‘Trinity knot’, often
regarded as a traditional Christian symbol, and which appears on the
front of the New King James Version of the Bible. Constance Cumbey
notes that it is used on the cover of Marilyn Ferguson’s The Aquarian
Conspiracy (1982), and contends that it is gnostic rather than Christian. A
Christian author on the Internet points out that it features on Dorothy
Morrison’s The Craft: A Witch’s Book of Shadows, as well as on Aleister
Crowley’s ‘Hierophant’ Tarot card. The design can also be construed
as three interlocking sixes, as in the ‘number of the Beast’.
More soberly, the official Christian critiques of New Age philosophy
tend to be negative. Responses from mainstream churches in recent
times have come from the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of
England, the Methodist Church and the Church of Scotland, among
others. While acknowledging commendable features such as the care
of the Earth, they find a number of problems with the New Age.
These include its panentheist tendencies and its location of divinity
within the self, thus precluding notions of alterity, divine grace and
sin. The preoccupation with eastern religions, pre-Christian spirituality
and extra-biblical documents, it is claimed, runs counter to Christian
revelation and to its identification of Christ with the historical Jesus
to whom the canonical gospels testify. The New Age’s relativism and
interest in Esotericism also attract criticism.
Having said this, it is worth noting that there exist some Christians
who view the New Age more positively, maintaining that it is possible
to learn from and engage in dialogue with it. Examples include
New Age Catholics, the Christaquarians, and Christians Awakening
to a New Awareness (CANA), all of which seek to attract Christians
who are either finding it difficult to belong to traditional institutional
Christianity, or who believe that New Age spirituality can enhance
22 george d. chryssides
one’s understanding of the Christian faith. Individual authors who
have sought to explore the New Age within a Christian framework
include Daren Kemp, Adrian B. Smith, Don MacGregor, and of course
Matthew Fox, whose Creation Spirituality (1991) has become a religious
classic. Some individual Christian churches have sought to build bridges
with the New Age: one notable example is St James, Piccadilly, in
London, where prominent New Age speakers are regularly invited, and
spiritual practices such as circle dancing, Zen meditation and labyrinth
walking are encouraged.
In my Exploring New Religions (1999), I attempt to identify a number of
salient features which can be associated with the New Age, and which
serve to define it. There is an optimistic view of the self, even to the
extent of identified the self with a ‘God within’, allied to which there
is a belief in the desirability of self-improvement or ‘empowerment’,
which manifests itself in a variety of ways. One such manifestation is the
emphasis on health and healing—physical, mental and spiritual—which
expresses itself in alternative medicine, as well as spiritual practices
such as various types of meditation. Belief in the self’s potential also
incorporates the development of personal skills such as positive thinking,
assertiveness and methods of wish-fulfillment. There is a questioning
of traditional authority, particularly the long-established authority of
the male-dominated Christian Church. The questioning of traditional
religion results in an eclectic approach to a variety of forms of religious
expression, ranging from eastern spirituality to neo-Paganism
and shamanism, as well as an uptake of practices such as divination,
mediumship and witchcraft, of which the Church has characteristically
disapproved. In place of obedience to authority, there is a heightened
emphasis on activities associated with the ‘right hand side of the brain’:
intuition, creativity, imagination, compassion, healing, the celebration
of the feminine, and so on.
While it must be acknowledged that the so-called ‘New Age
Movement’ is not a single movement, but more of a counter-cultural
Zeitgeist or, in Gerlach and Hine’s terminology, a SPIN, I have argued
that the term possesses both emic and etic currency, and that New Age
(or its cognate Mind-Body-Spirit) is still alive and active. The New Age
will no doubt continue to change, and even, in time, die out. Academic
study of the New Age Movement will no doubt change too. As has been
the case with New Religious Movements, academic research has become
increasingly specialised, and the same may happen with the New Age
defining the new age 23
Movement. However, to study it in its various components would run
the risk of ignoring the ways in which its elements interconnect and
overlooking the holism that it so constantly emphasises.
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