Welcome to this deep dive. It is March 5, 2026.
And today we have a truly fascinating mission.
We really do. We have a massive stack of research
today. Yeah, a massive stack of historical accounts,
sociological data, basically everything surrounding
the New Age movement. And we are completely breaking
it down for you. Right. And our goal today isn't
just to talk about crystals and astrology. No,
not at all. We want to unpack the actual history,
the specific demographics, the... and the really
intense controversies of a cultural phenomenon
that fundamentally changed how the Western world
thinks about spirituality. It really shifted
everything. Okay, let's unpack this, because
while you and basically everyone else have heard
the term New Age, almost no scholar can actually
agree on what it is. No, they can't. And ironically,
most people who practice... The core tenets of
this movement absolutely hate the label. I mean,
it is a massive paradox right out of the gate.
Yeah. The New Age isn't just a quirky trend from
the 1970s involving incense and mood rings. Sociologists
often refer to it as a cultic milieu, which is
a somewhat academic way of describing a loosely
connected underground network of shared. unorthodox
ideas. It's not a church you can just join. Exactly.
It isn't an institution. It is a zeitgeist. It
represents a fundamental shift in Western religion
toward what is now called self -spirituality.
Which is a huge concept. It is. Yeah. And over
the course of this deep dive, we're going to
trace its surprising historical roots, explore
its core beliefs, examine the massive commercial
boom in the 1980s, and finally... Look at the
intense political and cultural backlash it faced
from... almost every direction. Exactly. I want
to start with the absolute chaos of just trying
to define this thing. Because when you look at
the historical data, historians tend to see the
New Age as a perennial tradition, meaning they
view it as the modern continuation of ancient
mystical ideas that just always been around.
Right. The long view. But then sociologists look
at the exact same data and label it a new religious
movement. A completely different categorization.
Yeah. Yeah. And psychologists sometimes just
dismiss the whole thing as a form of collective
narcissism. It seems like a highly eclectic supermarket
spirituality where seekers just wander the aisles
and mix and match beliefs from around the world.
So how did this smorgasbord approach actually
begin? Well, what's fascinating here is that
the movement did not start at a 1960s music festival
or in a California commune. That's the stereotype,
right? It is. But its roots stretch way back
to 18th and 19th century occultism. You have
to look at figures like Emanuel Swedenborg. The
Swedish scientist. Yes, an 18th century Swedish
scientist and mystic. He claimed he experienced
a profound spiritual awakening, which allowed
him to freely visit. heaven and hell, and communicate
directly with angels and spirits. Wow. His writings
heavily influenced alternative spiritual thought.
And then there's Franz Mesmer. Right, we still
use the word mesmerized today. But his actual
theories were quite literal. Right. Mesmer was
a German physician in the 18th century who promoted
the idea of animal magnetism. Right, this invisible
fluid. Exactly. He believed there was an invisible
magnetic fluid running through the human body
and the entire universe. If you were sick, it
was because this fluid was blocked. And you could
just fix it. A practitioner could manipulate
this magnetic force to heal you. It sounds like
science fiction now, but at the time, it was
a massive craze that blurred the lines between
medicine and mysticism. And those ideas fed directly
into the spiritualism movement of the 1840s,
where people were holding seances to speak to
the dead and later the Theosophical Society.
Yes, the 1800s were huge for this. Theosophy
always seems to pop up when we discuss alternative
religions. Helena Blavatsky founded it in the
late 19th century, and she claimed she was receiving
telepathic messages from ancient hidden masters
in Tibet. The ascended masters. Right. And she
emphasized a focus on comparative global religions.
trying to synthesize Eastern mysticism with Western
esoteric traditions. Precisely. Those are the
actual foundational building blocks. Swedenborg's
angels, Mesmer's invisible healing forces, and
Blavatsky's blending of global religions. That
is the DNA of the New Age. It's all right there.
But to see how it evolved into the modern movement,
we have to look at what historians call the proto
-New Age of the mid -20th century. Okay, picture
being in the 1950s. The atomic bomb has just
been invented. The Cold War is terrifying everyone.
And some people start looking up at the sky,
literally waiting for extraterrestrial salvation.
UFO cults. Yeah, UFO religions like the Aetherius
Society, predicting a coming age of peace brought
about by highly evolved aliens. It's a wild jump
from 19th century seances to 1950s flying saucers.
It is a jump, but the underlying sentiment is
exactly the same. the same. The belief that higher
wisdom is available to save humanity from itself.
From those UFO groups, this energy bleeds seamlessly
into the 1960s counterculture. Which brings us
to California. Right. You had the Eastland Institute
springing up in California in 1962, focusing
heavily on the human potential movement. The
idea that humans have vast, untapped psychological
and spiritual capabilities. And then across the
world, you have the Finehorn Eco Village in Scotland.
The records show they started as a tiny group
of three people in a caravan park in 1962. Just
three people. Yeah. And they claim... they were
communicating with the spirits of plants, which
they called devas, to grow these massive impossible
vegetables in terrible sandy soil. Which got
them a lot of attention. A ton of attention.
By 1972, their population had grown six -fold,
booming into this massive countercultural hub
for spiritual seekers worldwide. Findhorn is
a perfect example of how these older esoteric
ideas were passed down to the countercultural
baby boomers. But having all these disparate
groups, You know, UFO watchers, human potential
advocates, people talking to plant spirits. It
doesn't automatically make a cohesive movement.
Right. They need a glue. Yes. To understand how
they formed a single cultural force, you have
to look at the core theology that binds them
together. Which brings us to their view of the
divine. They reject traditional concepts of God,
particularly the Christian dualism of matter
versus spirit. Can we unpack that dualism concept
for a second? Certainly. Traditional Christian
dualism often draws a hard line between the creator
and the creation. God is up in heaven, perfectly
divine, and the physical earth down here is fallen,
messy, and separate. A clear division. The New
Age. completely rejects that separation. They
accept a holistic form of divinity, often describing
it using terms like an ocean of oneness or a
universal principle. Okay. They believe the universe
is intricately connected, and more importantly,
that the physical world itself is infused with
the divine. So if the universe is an ocean of
oneness, that means humans aren't just splashing
around in the water. We are the water. That is
the crucial pivot. They believe humans possess
an inner godhead or a higher self. And that shifts
the power dynamic of religion completely. How
so? Well, if you possess a divine essence, then
the individual becomes the ultimate spiritual
authority. It is a radically democratic worldview.
It actively rejects traditional religious dogma,
external authority, and the Christian concepts
of original sin and guilt. And replaces it with
what? It replaces all of that with a focus on
personal growth, positive thinking, and the absolute
freedom of the individual to find their own truth.
But wait, if the self is the ultimate authority
and there are no traditional priests or ancient
scriptures to guide you, how do people actually
receive spiritual guidance? Doesn't that just
lead to a free -for -all where anyone can claim
to speak for the universe? That is exactly what
happens. And it leads to one of the most prominent
practices of the movement channeling. Channeling
is fascinating. It's the idea that a human being
can act as a conduit for non -human entities.
A person might go into a deep trance or sometimes
remain completely awake and conversational and
just let spirits, angels, or even extraterrestrials
speak through them. We see this a lot in the
literature. Yeah, we have famous historical examples
like Jane Roberts, who in the 1960s and 70s channeled
an entity she simply called Seth. The Seth material
became foundational reading for the movement.
And it didn't stop in the 70s. You have J .Z.
Knight, who built an entire empire around channeling
an entity named Rompha. Oh, Rompha. He's described
as a 30 ,000 -year -old warrior from the lost
mythical continent of Lemuria. Quite the origin
story. Right. And thousands of people would pay
significant money to sit in an auditorium and
listen to Jay -Z Knight speaking in a distinct
accent, dispense life advice and spiritual wisdom
from this ancient warrior. And people took it
very seriously. They really did. And then there
is Helen Schickman, a clinical psychologist who
channeled a wildly popular text called A Course
in Miracles. She claimed the inner voice dictating
the text to her was actually Jesus Christ. what
stands out to you think about how these modern
channeled texts are treated by practitioners
they aren't just read as interesting self -help
books they are treated with the exact same reverence
that mainstream religions reserve for ancient
scriptures it was a profound democratization
of revelation in traditional faiths revelation
is historical it happened thousands of years
ago to specific chosen prophets on mountain talks
right it's in the past but in the new age Revelation
is ongoing, immediate, and theoretically accessible
to anyone sitting in their living room. But this
brings us to another foundational concept, which
gives the movement its actual name. the way they
view time and history. Right, because New Age
isn't just a catchy marketing term. They rely
heavily on astrological cycles to understand
human history. The overarching narrative is that
humanity once lived in a golden age of spiritual
wisdom, often associated with those lost continents
like Atlantis or Lemuria. But then we fell into
a dark period of spiritual decline and rigid
dogma, which they call the Age of Pisces. And
the Age of Pisces is associated with the last
2 ,000 years of history. heavily tied to the
dominance of traditional institutional religions.
Here's where it gets really interesting, because
the entire animating force of the movement is
the belief that the age of Pisces is finally
ending. We are supposedly entering the age of
Aquarius, this promised utopian era of universal
love, peace, abundance, and spiritual harmony.
The dawn of a new era. Yeah, but looking at the
historical timelines, nobody can agree on when
the VIP doors to this new age actually open.
The dates are incredibly fractured. Some prominent
writers, like David Spangler, claimed it started
back in 1967. You even see it popping up in 1960s
pop culture, like the famous song from the musical
Hair. Right, the Age of Aquarius. Exactly. Others
said it kicked off during a massive, globally
synchronized meditation event called the Harmonic
Convergence in 1987. Some pushed the date. to
12, tying it to the Mayan calendar, and others
argue mathematically that, astronomically speaking,
it won't happen for centuries. And while they
wait for this new age to fully arrive, practitioners
try to bring it about by merging their spirituality
with modern science. The new age draws heavily
on the new physics. Authors like Fritjof Capra,
who wrote the massive bestseller The Tao of Physics,
argued that the discoveries of quantum mechanics,
the way subatomic particles behave in seemingly
impossible interconnected ways, perfectly mirror
ancient Eastern mysticism. They also heavily
adopt James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. Yeah.
Lovelock proposed the scientific idea that the
Earth's biological and physical systems act together
as a self -regulating system. Like a single entity.
Exactly. The New Age takes that ecological science
and pushes it further into theology, claiming
the Earth isn't just a system, it is a conscious
living organism. Now, the academic and scientific
establishments largely dismiss new age science
as pseudoscience or misunderstanding of quantum
mechanics. But for the practitioners, that dismissal
doesn't matter. They believe they are at the
forefront of a major paradigm shift that will
eventually replace outmoded rationalist dogmas
entirely. So if the age of Aquarius is supposedly
dawning, who exactly is standing at the welcome
gates? Let's talk about the demographics of these
practitioners. There was a major sociological
study done in the UK called the Kendall Project,
conducted by scholars Paul Helas and Linda Woodhead.
A very important study. They went into an English
town to map out the spiritual landscape, and
they found that of the people actively participating
in New Age activities, 80 % were female, and
73 % were over the age of 45. Those numbers are
incredibly revealing, and they map to trends
in North America as well. Heelas and Woodhead
analyzed why this specific demographic, middle
-aged women, dominated the movement. And what
did they find? Their conclusion was tied to the
deeply entrenched cultural values and divisions
of labor in Western society. Women have traditionally
been accorded the primary responsibility for
the care and well -being of others, children,
aging parents, husbands. And they noted that
when a woman reaches middle age, Often the children
are growing up or leaving home. She is suddenly
freed from the intense daily demands of those
child rearing duties, but she has spent her entire
adult life encumbered by societal expectations
of caregiving. Exactly. And then here comes the
new age with its intense focus on the self, personal
healing, discovering your inner voice and prioritizing
your own inner development. It's a complete shift
in focus. It is. It offers a highly attractive
culturally sanctioned space for these women to
finally focus on themselves without feeling selfish.
It frames self -care as a profound spiritual
duty. The demographic data also shows this is
largely a white middle class to upper middle
class movement. Most active participants have
a university or college degree, which brings
us to a really fascinating tension of money.
Because this wasn't just happening at small weekend
mind, body, spirit fairs and local community
halls. The commercialization of the new age was
massive. Well, it became an industry. A huge
one. In the 1980s, you had massive multinational
corporations. We're talking IBM, AT &T, General
Motors. bringing in new age seminars to train
their workforce. They called it transformational
training. Mystics, basically. Yeah. They were
bringing in concepts derived from human potential
movements to teach positive thinking, visualization,
and self -actualization. Why? Because they were
hoping these personal growth techniques would
break down psychological barriers and boost employee
productivity, sales, and corporate efficiency.
This raises an important question, doesn't it?
The new age was born out of the 1960s counterculture.
The early days at Eastland or Finehorn were inherently
anti -establishment, anti -consumerist, and focused
on communal living. Yet by the 1980s, it had
evolved into what sociologists term New Age capitalism.
You had a booming global market. People were
buying shelves of paperback books, booking expensive
crystal healing sessions, paying for high -end
alternative therapies, and fueling a massive
music industry. Think of ambient music pioneers
like Brian Eno. The soundtrack of the movement.
Right. His relaxing electronic styles essentially
became the soundtrack for this multi -million
dollar industry. You have a movement supposedly
focused on egalitarianism suddenly colliding
with capitalistic private enterprise where spiritual
and Enlightenment is packaged, marketed and sold
as a consumer lifestyle product. And some early
New Age authors like David Spangler actively
criticized this shift. He argued the movement
was losing its social conscience, abandoning
its goal of changing the world and just becoming
a tool for personal narcissism. And that tension
between focusing inward on personal growth versus
focusing outward on societal change pushes us
right into the politics of the new age. And just
as a quick note to you listening, whenever we
hit politically charged topics like this, we
are not endorsing any side. We're just impartially
reporting the facts and viewpoints straight from
our sources. So keeping strictly to the data,
new age politics does not fit neatly into any
traditional boxes. Scholars note that standard
labels like left, right, liberal or conservative.
just missed the mark. A prime example of this
political philosophy is Mark Satin, who wrote
a highly influential book in 1979 called New
Age Politics. He argued for a radical middle
or a third force. A completely different approach.
Yes. Instead of just focusing on economic policies
or institutional symptoms, which is what traditional
politicians argue about, Satin believed society
needed to focus on the psychocultural roots of
our problems. You can't just pass a law to fix
poverty. You have to shift human consciousness
to value cooperation over competition. It's a
much deeper change they were after. Exactly.
New agers typically advocate for environmentalism,
holistic thinking, and global unity. Interestingly,
some favor extreme decentralization, moving power
away from nation states to local communities,
while others advocate for the exact opposite,
a centralized global government. to manage planetary
resources. The most prominent contemporary example
of New Age politics in action is Marianne Williamson.
She's a longtime bestselling New Age author who
ran for seat in the U .S. Congress and then ran
for the Democratic nomination for the U .S. presidency,
first in 2020 and again for the 2024 election,
ending her most recent bid in July 2024. A very
public figure for the movement. Very. Her political
platform heavily pushed a vision of spiritual
politics. She talked about aiming to fix the
country with tough love and specifically addressing
what she viewed as a swerve away from America's
ethical and spiritual center. And just as New
Age politics drew intense public scrutiny, the
movement as a whole faced severe cultural and
religious backlash. On the Christian front, mainstream
denominations largely rejected it. By the 1980s,
evangelical Christian groups viewed the New Age
as a very real, very significant spiritual threat.
Yeah, there was a best -selling novel by Frank
E. Peretti called This Present Darkness. It sold
over a million copies and heavily shaped evangelical
views by framing the New Age movement as part
of a literal demonic conspiracy to overthrow
Christianity and establish a secular global order.
And the pushback wasn't just limited to evangelical
circles. The Vatican formally weighed in as well.
In 2003, they published a 90 -page document explicitly
warning Catholics against engaging in New Age
practices. 90 pages. Yes, it was comprehensive.
They called out things like yoga, feng shui,
and crystal healing. The Vatican's theological
concern was pantheism, the idea that God is in
everything. They warned that the euphoric, peaceful
states achieved through these physical practices
should not be confused with the actual presence
of the Holy Spirit or genuine grace. But the
criticism didn't just come from mainstream monotheistic
religions. Modern pagans or neo -pagans also
push back incredibly hard. Now, outsiders often
confuse pagans and New Agers because they both
utilize alternative spiritualities. But within
those communities, the divide is sharp. Why did
the pagan community reject them so fiercely?
The core of the pagan critique is about balance.
Pagans criticize New Agers for focusing exclusively
on light, peace, higher consciousness, and positive
vibrations, while completely ignoring the darker,
savage realities of the natural world. Right.
Nature isn't just sunshine. Exactly. Paganism
often embraces the full cycle of nature, which
includes decay, death, and destruction. They
viewed the New Age approach as superficial and
deeply unbalanced, a form of toxic positivity
before that term existed. In fact, many pagans
actually used the term New Age as an insult within
their own communities to describe someone they
think as being spiritually shallow. So what does
this all mean? We have Christians calling it
a threat and pagans calling it shallow. But the
most severe critique came regarding cultural
appropriation. New Asians have a well -documented
tendency to borrow spiritual practices from other
cultures, whether it's adopting Hindu yoga, Chinese
feng shui, or South American ayahuasca ceremonies.
This eclectic mixing drew severe, organized criticism
from indigenous communities who accused the new
age of cultural imperialism and the exploitation
of their sacred intellectual property. For indigenous
American leaders, this wasn't just an academic
debate. It was an active threat to their cultural
survival. Elders councils from the Lakota, Cheyenne,
Navajo, Hopi, and others gathered and issued
a formal declaration of war against exploiters
of Lakota spirituality. A literal declaration.
Yes. They reached a unified consensus to actively
reject the expropriation of their ceremonial
ways by non -Native people. They strongly condemned
individuals they termed plastic shamans or plastic
medicine people. These are outsiders who have
no genuine lived connection to the culture or
the community, but who appropriate... trivialize
and then financially profit from sacred indigenous
ceremonies. It's a very serious accusation. They
pointed out the deep irony and harm of white
practitioners paying thousands of dollars to
sit in unregulated sweat lodges, while historically
native people were legally banned by the government
from practicing those exact same ceremonies.
The indigenous leaders stated clearly that this
behavior exploits their ways for selfish gain.
It is a profound critique that highlights the
major blind spots of supermarket spirituality.
When you truly believe the individual is the
ultimate spiritual authority, entitled to any
practice from anywhere in the world that aids
their personal growth, you can very easily ignore
the cultural context, the historical trauma,
and the communal boundaries of the traditions
you are borrowing from. You just take what you
want and leave the rest. Exactly. It forces us
to look critically at the legacy of the New Age.
Today, this specific label New Age has largely
fallen out of fashion. Practitioners increasingly
reject the term because it is seen as pejorative,
associated with 1980s commercialism and shallow
crystal healing. Some sociologists in the late
1990s even declared the movement dead. They did,
but modern analysis strongly disagrees. If we
connect this to the bigger picture, the movement
as a specific labeled group may have faded, but
the sentiment has completely won out. It has
entirely permeated the sociocultural landscape
of the West. It's just everywhere now. It is.
Practices that were once considered radical fringe,
like alternative medicine, mindfulness meditation
in schools, corporate wellness retreats, and
the broad concept of everyday spirituality, are
now standard, multi -billion dollar societal
norms. The incredibly common modern demographic
of people who confidently identify as spiritual
but not religious is the direct descendant of
this exact cultural shift. which leaves us with
a fascinating reality to ponder i want to thank
you for joining us on this deep dive today but
before we go i want to leave you with one final
thought based on everything we've unpacked about
this historical shift let's hear it the absolute
core of new age thought is that the self is the
ultimate authority that you alone curate your
own reality your own truth and your own distinct
spiritual path Now look at the world we live
in today. We live in an era where personalized
algorithms, self -curated media feeds, and custom
-tailored echo chambers completely dominate our
daily reality. So, has the new age actually ended?
Or has its ultimate goal, a world built entirely
around the absolute authority of the individual
self, just seamlessly evolved into the foundational
blueprint of our modern digital lives? Something
to think about. We'll see you next time.