New Age Religion

The expression New Age, which alludes to an upcoming age of peace and harmony, indicates a “postmodern” (as Paul Heelas defines it) religious or spiritual movement whose beliefs and practices are highly variable. The New Age shifting of the locus of religious authority from established, and historically male-dominated, religious hierarchies to the individual seems to have offered a unique chance to women traditionally marginalized by such structures. However, Monica Sjoo has criticized the movement as antifeminist and patriarchal. The New Age holds the idea of an evolutionary “quantum leap” in consciousness that awaits the human species; each individual “seeker” collaborates to the arising of the global consciousness of the living planet Earth (Gaia) through an inner journey of self-understanding and a spiritual quest in search of harmony, healing, and happiness.

As scholars have noted, the New Age arises from a process of detraditionalization that took place in the past century and that allows practitioners to freely borrow beliefs and practices from Eastern and native religions, from previous religious movements (Spiritualism), and also from genre literature and cinema. Thus the New Age adopts concepts such as that of synchronicity; karma or the cycle of birth-death-rebirth; and a set of practices such as channeling, palm and crystal healing, divination systems, massage, visualization, yoga exercises, and “[neo]shamanic” practices. As New Agers have a holistic view of mind, body, and soul, such practices aim at bringing together mental focus, physical wholeness, and spiritual harmony.

Academic studies on the New Age agree on the complexity and diversity of its beliefs, rooted in [Page 1008]modern esotericism, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and several spiritual 19th-century movements. The New Age has been defined as self-religion, as its focus is on the self and inner life; all authority rests on the individual, who is able to decode “occult teachings” because of the divine spark hidden within each human being. The divine can be conceived as a personal god or in a pantheistic way, as in the New Age coexisting diverging views on the divine.

Scholarly criticism of the New Age has focused on its antimodernist attitude; on its beliefs on healing, which contrast with official medicine, on its millenaristic tendencies; and on its idea of a teleological development of human history. Several scholars read the New Age as the religious expression of consumerist capitalism, offering ready-made and rapidly changing spiritual teachings that avoid dealing with structural social issues (such as inequality, racism, and exclusion).

The absence of hierarchies and dogmatism, as well as the stress on self-improvement and alternative healing techniques, has been appealing for women, especially those belonging to the middle class. Some well-known spokespersons for the New Age have indeed been women—for example, Marilyn Ferguson or Shirley MacLaine.