Each movement was decentralized, consisted of word-of-mouth, grapevines and networking. Neither movement has a national central organization. Neopagans are militantly against centralization and Wiccan covens closely resemble anarchist organizations. New Agers' interests span a larger number of disciplines and the whole movement is more of an eclectic mishmash with no center. Partly for these reasons, the precise number of people in each movement is hard to pin down. Both movements are located in the United States and, to a lesser extent in England. Both are critical of depicting change in a gradual, linear and inevitable way. Each sees change as happening in cycles, and when something new emerges it is the product of non-linear dynamics.
Summarizing the Commonalities:
- Point of origin: late 1970s
- Place: United States, England
- Economic conditions: decline of industrial to finance capital
- Religion: Rejection of Judeo-Christianity
- Authority: Distrust of religious, political and scientific authorities: value of personal experience
- Type of self: higher self (Jung) atman self (Hinduism)
- Outlook: optimistic
- No need for conversion or proselytizing
- No devils (evil is psychological or social)
- Organization: decentralized
- The shape of time: Both see the limits of linear time. Each sees change as happening in cycles, spirals and in non-linear ways.
Defining the New Age
Why Aquarian?
Many consider the book The Aquarian Conspiracy to be the "bible" of the New Age Movement. The title of the book locates the New Age within an astrological framework. Supposedly, we are coming out of the darker side of Age of Pisces, the age of spiritual decline, into the Age of Aquarius. Astrologically the Aquarian Age means the age of experimentation, innovation, light, healing and love. In what areas do we see these characteristics operating?
Ferguson tells us the spirit is operating in many fields: brain science and consciousness studies; the new science of general systems theory and physics; medical health with alternative medicine; in education and spirituality. The problem here is that by calling this movement, "Aquarian" or even "New Age", gathers people in these fields under an astrological umbrella. Some of schools of thought listed such as the complexity theory of Prigogine, the General Systems theory of von Bertalanffy or the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn would hardly be happy with astrological associations. Neither would Ferguson's heroes L. L. Whyte, Jan Smuts (Holism and Evolution), Alfred North Whitehead or Gregory Bateson. Let's accept this unfortunate start and let's say she is on to something regardless of its astrological associations.
Who are its heroes and heroines?
Besides those mentioned above, who are the rest of Ferguson's New Age heroes? In history we have Toynbee, De Tocqueville, and William Irving Thompson. In education, A.S Neill and Ivan Illich; in the globalization of society there is Marshall McLuhan, Teilhard de Chardin, Willis Harman, and H.G. Wells. In brain science there is Karl Pribram, in physics Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics) and David Bohm. Mystics of many ages are claimed as predecessors - Meister Eckhart, Jacob Bohme, Pico and William Blake, and closer to the present, the New England transcendentalists William James (Varieties of Religious Experience) and Bucke (Cosmic Consciousness). There are two humanistic astrologers who were especially important to the New Age: Dane Rudyhar and Marc Edmund Jones. Mythologists like Joseph Campbell and psycho-mythologists like Jung were enormously popular.
Very important to the New Age was the work of Ken Wilbur and Jeanne Houston. Wilbur's first book The Spectrum of Consciousness created a continuum link between psychology and spirituality. From there he went on to write spiritual books on social evolution (Up From Eden) and developmental psychology (Atman Project). Jean Houston also straddled the line between psychology and spirituality with what she coined "Sacred Psychology". She wrote books which showed how Greek mythology could be used for psychological growth. Her book Life Force described the history of the West based on five stages of self-development. These stages were based on the work of Gerald Heard. In the field secular psychology, the humanistic psychologists Maslow and Rogers, Rollo May and Erich Fromm were part of the human potential movement, not the New Age. But some of these humanistic psychologists were also interested in LSD and were influenced by Aldous Huxley and later by Stanislav Grof along with the popular shamanism of Carlos Castaneda.
Down with mechanistic, reductionist science!
The New Age is not just rebelling against organized religion. It is also reacting to conventional science with its overspecialization. This overspecialization keeps traditional science from seeing the big picture and having an interdisciplinary perspective. New Agers complain about mainstream's sciences tendency to reduce all complexity in nature to physics. It also rejects dualism involving separation of mind from matter and mind from body. It believes modern science is slow, plodding and preoccupied with gradually building things up. What this misses is that nature is full of surprises and qualitative leaps whether in scientific knowledge (Kuhn), physics (Bohm), the nature of subatomic participles (Capra), or biology (Gould's punctuated equilibrium). Change often does not happen in a linear way but in a non-linear manner as described by Prigogine. Lastly, conventional science sees nature as mechanistic and driven by external forces, rather than organic and self-regulating (Von Bertalanffy, general systems theory.)
Sharpening the boundaries of the New Age
One problem with the New Age is its fuzzy, overly inclusive boundaries. For example, its inclusion of the human potential movement within it. When we look at the practice of the human potential movement, the psychological boundaries of individuals were pushed much more aggressively than most of the practitioners of the New Age would be comfortable (with the exception of "Guru" groups like EST of Rajneesh). Secondly, the use of hallucinogenics in the early 70s had no official approval and the psychologists were treating those who came to Esalen as human experiments. Fritz Perls and Will Schutz got into raging fights. Perls slept with many of the participants at Esalen and took enjoyment in reducing them to tears. Many of the group therapy sessions were done in the nude with no structure, explanations or reasons. Group marathons were held all weekend, "opening people up", without offering any follow-up support. This method is hardly about bringing love and light to people that New Agers advocate.
The Human Potential Movement was primarily psychological with spirituality on the periphery. Yes, I remember books by Alan Watts and Dameon on the coffee table of hippie friends in Berkeley in 1970, but they were more the exception than the rule. The New Age was primarily spiritual with psychology on the periphery. Lastly, the New Age was much more supportive of petit bourgeois capitalism, whether it be small shops or decentralized economies (Small is Beautiful). The Human Potential movement was generally silent about capitalism.
Defining Neopaganism
"Monotheism is but imperialism in religion" - James Breasted
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