What Does New Age Mean In 2024?
Are we moving forward or backward?
I have a friend, who perceives me as a New Age kind of guy. He asked me how I would describe The New Age 2024.
It was an interesting question. Back in the 1960s, I was sort of a wannabe hippie. In the 1970s, I was a political activist (I actually had lunch with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin). Then I slide into alternative medicine — herbs, homeopathy, Somatics, Qi gong, etc. Next, I got an Indian Guru. That lasted from 1973–2001 when I discovered game theory and went on my own Space Odyssey.
Now, in 2023, I have become a predictive futurist, using data, AI, and forecasting to recognize unfolding patterns.
I imagine one might define the New Age as a very wide and loose range of beliefs and spiritual or religious practices that grew and spread in Western society during the early 1970s.
There is really no strict definition here, It is a highly eclectic and unsystematic structure. Although many, clue-less so-called scholars consider the New Age to be a religious movement, this is a vain attempt to give a specific meaning to something that has no specific meaning.
There are many descriptions that might be applied here:
· A philosophy concerned with unifying Mind-Body-Spirit,
· A form of spiritual, though not religious Western esotericism.
Theologically, the New Age typically accepts a holistic form of divinity that pervades the universe, including human beings themselves, leading to a strong emphasis on the spiritual authority of the self. This is accompanied by a common belief in a variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate, particularly by channeling through a human intermediary. Typically viewing history as divided into spiritual ages, a common New Age belief is in a forgotten age of great technological advancement and spiritual wisdom, declining into periods of increasing violence and spiritual degeneracy, which will now be remedied by the emergence of an Age of Aquarius, from which the milieu gets its name. There is also a strong focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine and an emphasis on unifying science with spirituality.
The dedication of New Agers varied considerably, from those who adopted a number of New Age ideas and practices to those who fully embraced and dedicated their lives to it. The New Age has generated criticism from Christians as well as modern Pagan and Indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the New Age became the subject of research by academic scholars of religious studies.
The roots of the New Age draw heavily upon mystic and esoteric traditions such as:
- The occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
- The writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer,
- …And Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy.
From the 1960s onward it drew off of the counterculture and the Human Potential Movement.
“One of the few things on which all scholars agree concerning New Age is that it is difficult to define. Often, the definition given actually reflects the background of the scholar giving the definition. Thus, the New Ager views New Age as a revolutionary period of history dictated by the stars; the Christian apologist has often defined new age as a cult; the historian of ideas understands it as a manifestation of the perennial tradition; the philosopher sees New Age as a monistic or holistic worldview; the sociologist describes New Age as a new religious movement (NRM); while the psychologist describes it as a form of narcissism.”
— Scholar of religion Daren Kemp, 2004
Olav Hammer the respected historian of religion termed it
“a common denominator for a variety of quite divergent contemporary popular practices and beliefs” that have emerged since the late 1970s and are “largely united by historical links, a shared discourse and an air de famille”. Hammer added, this New Age was a “fluid and fuzzy cultic milieu”.
Michael York, a sociologist of religion called the New Age
“an umbrella term that includes a great variety of groups and identities” that are united by their “expectation of a major and universal change being primarily founded on the individual and collective development of human potential.”
Wouter Hanegraaff, a scholar of religion took a different perspective by asserting that the New Age, was
“a label attached indiscriminately to whatever seems to fit it” and that as a result it “means very different things to different people”. He was against the idea that the New Age could be classified as “a unified ideology… “, although he agreed that it could be considered a “more or less unified ‘movement’.”
Other academics have proposed that the New Age is too diverse to be a singular movement.
One of the most important works describing the concept of the New Age was The Aquarian Conspiracy a 1980 book by Marilyn Ferguson.
The title does not actually refer to any type of factless conspiracy. Rather, it spoke of The Aquarian Conspiracy to describe a new consciousness evolution and revolution, One involving a leaderless collaborative network of highly aware individuals who through their every thought, word, and deed would bring about sudden, and radical change in modern culture, based on an expanding concept of human potential, self-development, and personal growth. The book’s subtitle was Personal and Social Transformation in the 1980s. In her introduction, Ferguson explains the choice of the term “conspiracy,” which she applies in a positive sense.
Here is a musical illustration of what she was talking about here.
In 1975 Ferguson created a newsletter, Brain/Mind Bulletin. Its focus was on research and theory in the fields of:
- learning,
- health,
- psychiatry and psychology,
- varying states of consciousness,
- meditation, and related subjects.
Through the newsletter, she became aware of a transformative movement involving social change stemming from the personal transformation of individuals in all walks of society.
In her editorial, “The Movement that Has No Name.” Ferguson claimed that the conspiracy had flowed into…
“medicine, education, social science, hard science, even government with its implications. It is characterized by fluid organizations reluctant to create hierarchical structures, averse to dogma. It operates on the principle that change can only be facilitated, not decreed. It is short on manifestos. It seems to speak to something very old. And perhaps, by integrating magic and science, art and technology, it will succeed where all the king’s horses and all the king’s men failed.”
So Where Are We Now?
Much of this decentralized “New Age” movement had fragmented even more since the 1970s. Many proponents have become evangelical Christians, while others have discarded intellect and critical thinking, depending only on intuition and the inner voice of subjective spirit. Some have even embraced what can only be described as New Age Fascism. Think of the Q Anon Shaman, who sought to overthrow the U.S. Government in the Jan. 6 Riots at the U.S. Capital.
The Takeaway
This brings us back to my friend’s initial question “Where is the New Age, in 2024?”
For me, New Age means no single thing, however, I do keep two things in mind day to day:
1. Stay spiritually aware, and live a life based on love, kindness, community, compassion, empathy, wisdom, goodness, appreciation of beauty, competence at some level, gratitude, patience, and surrender.
2. Live a simple and generous life with a daily spiritual routine that minimalizes dogma, rites, rituals, ceremonies, the clergy, churches, temples, mosques, or so-called Holy books.
Here is a Medium story on this subject @mitch-horowitz-nyc
Here is one from the archives @LewisCoaches
Learn more about my philosophy and extensive teachings here
To learn more about studying directly with me, just email me at [email protected]. I will respond personally.
Author: Lewis Harrison is a Manifestation Coach, and a blog and copywriter for hire.
He is the creator of the Ask Lewis Mentoring Method as well as HAGT — Harrison’s Applied Game Theory. He is the Executive Director of the International Association of Healing Professionals an educational organization that offers programs around the world in Intentional Living. He is also Independent Scholar, with a passion for knowledge, personal development, self-improvement, creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. You can read all of his Medium stories at [email protected].
For a decade, Lewis was the host of a humor-based Q & A talk show on NPR (National Public Radio) affiliated WIOX FM in NY.
To learn more about studying with me, email me at [email protected]
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