New Age describes a broad movement characterized by alternative approaches to traditional Western culture. The New Age movement is particularly concerned with spiritual exploration, holistic medicine and mysticism. Although no rigid boundaries actually exist, the term New Age covers general perspectives on history, religion, spirituality, medicine, lifestyles, and music.
Until the late 1960s, the term New Age movement referred specifically to followers of Alice Bailey's ideas about a coming New Age. Since then, however, the term New Age has come to have a broader meaning. It no longer represents a single belief system, but is instead an aggregate of beliefs and practices (syncretism), some of which come from established myths and religions. Inside the New Age category one may find individuals who use a "do-it-yourself" approach, other groups with established belief systems resembling religions, and still other fixed belief systems, such as clubs or fraternal organizations.
Meanwhile, some individuals whose beliefs may be labeled New Age (including neo-pagans) may feel this is inappropriate because it might link them with other beliefs and practices. Any broad category can appear meaningless or misleading; one use of New Age may be: not a mainstream Christian church.
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2 History 3 Philosophy 4 Religion 5 Spirituality 6 Medicine 7 Music 8 Lifestyle 9 Related Topics 10 External Links |
As well as its diurnal rotation upon its axis, the Earth also has a precessional motion involving a slow periodic shift of the axis itself; approximately one degree every 70 years. (A similar phenomenon can be observed in the motion of a toy gyroscope or spinning top.) This motion, which is caused mostly by the Moon's gravity, gives rise to the precession of the equinoxes whose exact dates shift gradually with time.
The Solar Age is defined by the constellation in which the Sun appears during the vernal equinox. Since each sign of the zodiac subtends (on average) 30 degrees, each solar age lasts approximately 70 x 30 = 2,100 years. Thus the current solar age (Pisces), which began around the time of Christ, is due to end some time in the 21st. Century Common Era, and will be replaced by the "New Age" of Aquarius.
Astrology associates the Age of Pisces with the yang, i.e. rationality and materialism. Aquarius, on the other hand represents the yin, with its emphasis on spirituality and intuition. The New Age Movement sees itself as the harbinger of this future change-over of values.
Although the idea of a new age has clear precedents in Jewish apocalypticism, New Age people may derive their beliefs from religious and philosophical traditions originally outside the Western mainstream, including the occult and Hinduism and Buddhism. Most of the phenomena listed below under Related Topics can be traced to less common practices in Europe and North America over the past few centuries. For example the Theosophical Society of the mid-19th century espoused many principles, whose roots may be linked to present time New Age ideas:
At the onset of its most recent waxing, the New Age movement emerged as a disorganized coalition out of the 1960s counter-culture movement or "happening" in North America and Europe, perhaps only tangentially informed by Alice Bailey's neo-theosophy. In a manner similar to the grass-roots political and life-style movements of that time, New Agers dissatisfied with the then widely-accepted norms and beliefs of western society offered new interpretations from a spiritual viewpoint of science, history, and the religion of the Judeo-Christian establishment. An important center for the New Age movement during the twentieth century was the Findhorn Foundation in northern Scotland.
In 1967 the successful musical Hair with its opening song "Aquarius" and the memorable line "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius" brought the New age concept to the attention of a huge world wide audience.
These recent populist origins may indeed help characterize the New Age approach, which emphasizes an individual's choice in spiritual matters; the role of personal intuition and experience over societally sanctioned expert opinion; and an experiential, rather than primarily empirical, definition of reality.
Many adherents of belief systems characterised as New Age rely heavily on the use of metaphors to describe experiences deemed to be beyond the empirical. Consciously or unconsciously, New Agers tend to redefine vocabulary borrowed from various belief systems, which can cause some confusion as well as increase opposition from skeptics and the traditional religions. In particular, the adoption of terms from the parlance of science such as "energy", "energy fields", and various terms borrowed from quantum physics and psychology but not then applied to any of their subject matter, have served to confuse the dialog between science and spirituality, leading to derisive labels such as pseudoscience and psycho-babble.
This phenomenon is additionally compounded by the propensity of some New Agers to pretend to esoteric meanings for familiar terms; the New Age meaning of the esoteric term is typically quite different than the common use, and is often described as intentionally inaccessible to those not sufficiently trained in the area of their use. This is usually intended as a means of protection for the uninitiated against the danger inherent in the power of the underlying idea (as noted below).
While the term New Age covers a large number of beliefs and practices, certain modes of thought are fairly commonly held:
Within this context of relativism, one still finds many commonalities regarding the nature of the world:
The New Age movement has evolved in the so called Western and industrialised countries, which have inherited a Judeo-Christian tradition. As such then Jesus has been reinvented by the New Age movement as a guru.
However, in keeping with its relativist stance, New Agers believe they do not contradict traditional belief systems, but rather fulfill the ultimate truths contained within them, separating these truths from false tradition and dogma. On the other hand, adherents of other religions often claim that the New Age movement has a superficial understanding of these religious concepts, leaving out that which may not seem "negative" or contradict contemporary Western values and that New Age attempts at religious syncretism are vague and self-contradictory. The New Age movement have been particularly interested in Buddhism, Sufism and Taoism.
Many individuals are responsible for the recent popularity of New Age spirituality, especially in the United States. James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy and other New Age books, provides an open-ended, spirituality-based, life system derived from his own macrocosmic philosophy concerning mankind's state of spiritual evolution. Marianne Williamson updated A Course in Miracles when she penned her work A Return to Love. The spirituality of the New Age coexists and correlates with each individual's fundamental paradigm shift.
The gnostic approach of experiential insight and revelation of truth may be closer to the New Age methodology of prayers and spirituality. Due to the personal individualist nature of revealed truth, New-Agers often walk down the old road of gnosis, paved with modernized eclectic stone. In Experiential Spirituality and Contemporary Gnosis Diane Brandon writes:
Many people have adopted alternative methods of medicine that incorporate New Age beliefs. Some of the techniques in this list are herbal medicine, Ayurveda, acupuncture, iridology, and the use of crystals in healing therapy. Users of these techniques find them helpful in treating illness; at the very least, their personal involvement in their own treatment increases. Some rely on New Age treatments exclusively, while others use them in combination with conventional medicine.
It should be noted that, when considered purely as medical techniques, most of these systems of treatment are viewed with extreme skepticism in scientific circles. When tested using the same types of regimens as those applied to pharamaceutical drugs and surgical techniques (for example, double blind clinical studies), these systems typically do not yield demonstrable improvements over standard techniques, and may even produce harm in a greater number of cases.
However, one benefit of New Age medicine's popularity, and its criticism of conventional medicine, has been to encourage many medical practitioners to pay closer attention to the entire patient's needs rather than just her or his specific disease [1]. Such approaches, termed "holistic medicine", are now becoming more popular. Conventional medicine has recognised that a patient's state of mind can be crucial in determining the outcome of many diseases, and this perception has helped recast the roles of doctor and patient as more egalitarian.
While a broader understanding of the patient's health is clearly useful, this requires communication between patient and doctor: relying on New Age treatments exclusively carries the risk of neglecting a treatable condition until too late. Patients using herbs and other unconventional approaches need to be sure their doctors are aware of what they're doing. Herbal remedies can interact in a variety of ways with prescription drugs or mask symptoms of the underlying disease.
Critics of New Age medicine continue to point out that without some kind of testing procedure, there is no way of separating those techniques, medicinal herbs, and lifestyle changes which actually contribute to increased health from those which have no effect, or which are actually deleterious to one's health. Even seemingly "innocent" techniques such as Therapeutic Touch may potentially cause physical, spiritual, and religious harm (see Therapeutic Touch: What Could Be the Harm?, The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine). Yet some hospitals, such as St. Mary's Hospital in Amsterdam, New York, offer patients Healing Touch or Therapeutic Touch therapies which complement traditional medicine (see St. Mary's Center for Complementary Therapies).
Some motion in this direction has occurred; for example, there is one noteworthy trial study in San Francisco on breast cancer in women [1], [1]. Dr. Yeshe Donden, former physician to the Dalai Lama, prescribed Tibetan herbs for treatments in a double blind trial. The Phase I trial involving 11 patients closed November 2000. On March 13, 2002 Debu Tripathy, M.D., Director of the CAM program at UCSF Breast Care Center, commented on the study findings at a breast cancer research forum:
A large percentage of New Age music is instrumental, and electronic, although vocal arrangements are also common. Enya, who won a Grammy for her new age music, sings in a variety of languages, including Latin, in many of her works. Medwyn Goodall, not as widely known, relies mainly on electronic keyboard effects, and includes acoustic guitar as well. To understand this musical category may help shed light on the New Age perspective.
Arguably, this music has its roots in the 1970s with the works of such free-form jazz groups recording on the ECM label such as Oregon, the Paul Winter Group, and other pre-ambient bands; as well as ambient performers such as Brian Eno.
Music labeled New Age often has a vision of a better future, expresses an appreciation of goodness and beauty, even an anticipation, relevant to some event. Rarely does New Age music dwell on a problem with this world or its inhabitants; instead it offers a peaceful vision of a better world. Often the music is celestial, when the title names stars or deep space explorations. Ennio Morricone wrote the entire score for the movie Mission to Mars, and while the credits flash we hear All the Friends, New Age orchestral style.
The titles of New Age music are often illuminating, because the words used by the artists attempt to convey their version of truth, in a few short words. On listening to the music, one may understand the idea within the title. Examples of titles: Bond of Union, Sweet Wilderness, Shepherd Moons, Animus Anima.
The following subjective description of a New Age lifestyle illuminates the sociological dimension of the New Age movement. Note the references to the "inter-connectedness" of all things: "...people feeling somehow, mysteriously, they have met before or known each other from a distant time..." and an implicit cosmic goal "...two people meet and sense there may be a hidden meaning, or reason why...". Rather than reliance on social forms such as regular church attendance, New Agers "recognize" each other through their mutal perception of shared values, and the shibboleths of New Age terms and usages:
Origins
History
The degree of acceptance with which these beliefs and practices have been viewed by society at large has waxed and waned over time.Philosophy
This relativism is not merely a spiritual relativism, but also extends to physical theories. Reality is considered largely from an experiential and subjective mode. Many New Age phenomena are not expected to be repeatable in the scientific sense, since they are presumed to be apparent only to the receptive mind; for example, telepathy may not be achievable by a skeptical mind, since a skeptical mind is not pre-conditioned to expect the phenomenon to exist.
In contrast to the scientific method, the failure of some practice to achieve expected results is not considered as a failure of the underlying theory, but as a lack of knowledge about (hidden) extenuating circumstances. This stance has led some skeptics to pronounce the New Age movement to be primarily anti-intellectual in nature.
In addition, many "New Age" practices and beliefs may make use of what may be termed "magical" thinking (as defined in, for example, The Golden Bough by James Frazer). Common examples are the principle that objects once in contact maintain a practical link, or that objects that have similar properties exert an effect on each other.Religion
Spirituality
Medicine
Music
Lifestyle
Related Topics
External Links