New Age Movement. The name popularly given to a constellation of ideas originating in the late 1960s and related to paradigmatic cultural changes in the last third of the twentieth century.Broadly, such changes may be characterized as the move from a modern to a postmodern worldview; from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics; and from mechanistic to organic understandings of reality. These shifts emphasized the resacralization of the cosmos; the interconnectedness of all things; change or process, rather than stasis, as the nature of reality; the emergence of a planetary culture; and the reintegration of such dualisms as spirit and matter, emotion and reason, and science and religion.

The origin of the New Age movement has been traced variously to the “occult explosion” of the 1960s; metaphysical movements and interest in alternative and Eastern religions in the nineteenth century; and even to ancient Gnosticism, alchemy, Renaissance magic, and the search for the “perennial philosophy.” Evaluations of the New Age movement are polarized, ranging from accusations of self‐serving foolishness, crass marketing of products, satanism, and idolatry to the conviction that the New Age will bring with it spiritual transformation and hitherto unknown global harmony and ecological responsibility.

With its fluid boundaries; eclectic sources, concerns, and practices; and multiple levels of sophistication and depth, the New Age movement helped give shape to a wide‐ranging cultural conversation related to the search for an adequate worldview for American culture as the twentieth century ended. This worldview, New Age representatives insisted, must recognize the realities of religious pluralism; discoveries in the physical and biological sciences; the efficacy of alternative healing methods; and the place of humankind within, rather than outside, nature. The New Age can also be seen as a reblossoming of America's persistent metaphysical tradition and as offering an arena outside established religions for spiritual speculation and experimentation.
See also Environmental Movement; Post–Cold War Era; Postmodernism; Sixties, The.

Bibliography

David Spangler , Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred, 1984.
James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, eds., Perspectives on the New Age, 1992.
Duncan S. Ferguson, ed., New Age Spirituality: An Assessment, 1993.

Mary Farrell Bednarowski

NEW AGE MOVEMENT

NEW AGE MOVEMENT. The New Age movement was an international cultural current that arose in the late 1960s, when Eastern religions became popular in the United States. It combined earlier metaphysical beliefs such as Swedenborgianism, mesmerism, transcendentalism, theosophy, and often primitivist beliefs about the spiritual traditions of nonwhite peoples. As expressed by Baba Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert), its first recognized national exponent, the New Age movement propounded the totality of the human body, mind, and spirit in a search for experiences of transformation through rebirthing, meditation, possessing a crystal, or receiving a healing.

Stressing personal transformation, New Agers envision a universal religion placing emphasis on mystical self-knowledge and belief in a pantheistic god as the ultimate unifying principle. The New Age movement is perhaps best known for its emphasis on holistic health, which emphasizes the need to treat patients as persons and offers alternative methods of curing, including organic diet, naturopathy, vegetarianism, and a belief in the healing process of crystals and their vibrations. New Age techniques include reflexology, which involves foot massage; acupuncture; herbalism; shiatsu, a form of massage; and Rolfing, a technique named after Ida P. Rolf, the originator of structural integration, in which deep massage aims to create a structurally well-balanced human being. Music is also used as therapy and as a form of meditation. While the term "New Age music" in the mid-1990s was a marketing slogan that included almost any type of music, true New Age music carries no message and has no specific form because its major use is as background for meditation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Melton, J. Gordon, et al. New Age Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale Research, 1990.

York, Michael. The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

John J.Byrne/f. h.

See alsoAsian Religions and Sects ; Cults ; Medicine, Alternative ; Spiritualism ; Utopian Communities .

New Age movement. A diverse set of organizations united by their enthusiasm for the creation of a new era of enlightenment and harmony in the ‘Aquarian Age’ (in astrology the era or cycle of c.2,150 years when the constellation and zodiacal sign of Aquarius will coincide, following on from the ‘Piscean Age’ during which the same is true for Pisces).

New Age ‘teachings’ are characterized by an emphasis on monism, relativism, individual autonomy, and the rejection of the Judaeo-Christian emphasis on sin as the ultimate cause of evil in the world. Instead, New Age posits lack of knowledge and awareness as the root of humanity's problems. It is eclectic in style, gathering in a wide range of people and teachings if they reinforce the central concern.