New Age Movement

The New age movement is a large collection of differing beliefs and practices, which all share a desire for spiritual growth and personal development. Practices often include a mixture of astrology, reincarnation, tarot card reading, crystal ball gazing, acupuncture, meditation, Eastern mysticism, and many others. An early influence on the growth of the New Age movement was the founding of the Theosophical Society by Madame Blavatsky in 1875, but it gained most popularity in the 1960s, when its followers looked forward to the dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the passing of the Age of Pisces which they saw as dominated by Christianity.^[1]

The New Age Movement does not use strict dogmatic teachings. Jonathan Adolph says that the New Age Movement "has no religious doctrine or teachings of its own."^[2] A notable characteristic of New Age is its drawing of cross-religion and cross-culture elements—a typical New Age believer can sometimes comfortably mix Christian crosses and/or angels with ancient Egyptian, Wiccan, Native American, Greek or Celtic symbols, making no distinction between them. The "Christian" aspects of their belief systems are often based on what they only think Christianity teaches, drawing from pop-cultural osmosis or from what they half-remember from Sunday school.

The Stanford Research Institute estimates than as much as 5 or 10% of the population identified themselves as New Agers.^[2]

See also[edit]

• Alchemy
• Christian mysteries
• Cosmic Humanism
• Bogomil: Bogomilism
• Great Apostasy
• Liberal Catholic Church
• Religion

References[edit]

1. ↑ The Age of Pisces, Greek "fishes", signified by the astrological Zodiac sign of two fish swimming in opposite directions, is seen by New Agers as evident in the early Christian use of the acronym ΙΧΘΥΣ IChThUS, Greek for "fish" ιχθύς ichthys (origin of the word for the scientific study of fish Ichthyology), as representing Ίησούς Χριστός Θεός Ύίός Σωτέρ – Ίησούς (Iesous), Χριστός (Christos), Θεός (Theos), Ύίός (hUios), Σωτέρ (Soter) – "Jesus Christ God's Son Savior".
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Jonathan Adolph, "What is New Age?" New Age Journal (Winter 1988)

External link[edit]

Holy Order of MANS - Wikipedia article example of an esoteric New Age Christian order (no longer in existence)