Shap Journal 2001/2002

Living Community

Living Communities: New Age

Ann Henderson

In a small market town (population 26,000)
researchers in 2001 have discovered 100 outlets
categorized as spiritual rather than religious/ In a
pretty commuter village, an ex-teacher bought a
gift/tea shop and has developed it into a New Age
centre. There customers can overhear conversations
about fire walking and Feng Shui, yoga and reiki; they
can commit themselves to one or more courses in
personal transformation. A Wren church in central
London provides information about New Age workshops
and holidays. Glastonbury attracts and supports people
on many different spiritual quests. Elsewhere, notices in
health foodshops or high street bookshops with a Mind,
Body, Spirit section point to the existence nearby of
individuals interested in the New Age. A local bookshop
in April 2001 displayed flyers for a Green Man course
and Colour Aura training. Local papers as well as
specialist New Age magazines carry advertisements for
Psychics and Mystics fairs and complementary health
events. A Midlands dentist has a copy of the channelled
A course in miracles in his surgery.

These, and many other examples, show that New Age
groups are alive in Britain and elsewhere.2 Their diversity
can be illustrated through listing some of the speakers
and stalls at a conference in 2000 subtitled 'Light, life,
love, liberty': traditions such as Gnostic, Sufi, Goddess,
Quaker, Qabalah, Wicca, Theosophy, Eckankar and the
Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids were all represented.
Each individual there may have trodden different paths:

one speaker provided the following summary of her own
background 'teaching Yoga and Meditation, Crystal and
Gem therapy, working with Flower remedies and
teaching reiki and other major Light Body Systems
drawn from Huna, Tibetan, pre-Daoist, Angelic, Stellar,
Egyptian, Kabbalistic and Hindu systems'. Yet certain

phrases tended to recur in presentations, literature and
web-sites: 'inner path', 'inner realities' healing'
'transformation'. People referred to perennial wisdom,
the Truth behind, a timeless tradition and the wisdom of
using insights from a range of sources to direct present
searches. At the end of the day, everyone was invited to
join in 'Dances of Universal Peace' devised by Samuel
Lewis who trained in different disciplines and believed
that 'at the heart of all religions is the same truth'.3
These dances use singing (of sacred phrases from
different religious traditions) to different instruments as
well as movement (usually in a circle) to 'help people
experience more of ourselves and more of others'.

A significant community? Nobody knows how many
people have been influenced by New Age ideas such as
these, or at what level. 'Membership' and 'movement'
may both be inappropriate words to describe so many
and so varied ideas and practices. The groups and
individuals operate together on one level as a network
with an effective grapevine. Each group could be studied
as a separate entity with its own insights and practices
and ethics. No organization speaks for them all and yet
they share an ethos.

Attempts have been made by people from both within
and without the New Age movement to identify this
ethos more clearly. It is optimistic in its emphasis on the
possibility of a new age of love and life: William Bloom
talks about 'a fundamental spiritual change in our
individual and mass consciousness'. It is positive about
people. While New Age practitioners often say in
Heelas's phrase 'Your lives do not work' they hold that
people can be healed, can change, grow and develop and
that everyone has the potential to become 'integrated,
fulfilled and completely loving human beings'.4
Experience, rather than formal religious traditions, has
authority for them. Some will follow wisdom channelled
from great teachers: others esoteric paths; others seek
metaphysical teachers. Holism and interconnectedness,
with others and with nature, are valued. Some hold the
belief that all life is interconnected energy. They often
have a strong sense of responsibility, holding that they
are creators of their own reality and thus responsible for
all that happens to them. The self (or soul) is valued.
Sometimes their ideas bring them into conflict with
western science and with other groups.

Individualistic? New Age has been criticized as
individualistic and the picture sometimes painted of
practitioners shows them as dilettantes moving from
group to group as though in a supermarket. Some New
Age literature, conversely, stresses the importance of
group membership within the spiritual path. Rarely
does it advocate the development of separate
communities (though some, such as that established at
Findhorn in north east Scotland, do exist.).5 Instead it
stresses the importance of involvement in existing
communities in order to transform them or work
through them. New Age practices in some accounts
attempt to change the individual, but also the world.

Living? The ideas are living in that they sustain
individuals. Individual practitioners exercise choice
within their quest. They are, literally, consumers with
the activity implied by that term. They are able to pick
and mix - to reject meaningless rituals and develop new
ones; to select ideas which work for them. They are
expected to work at incorporating what they believe into
their everyday life; and when/if these ideas die, to move
on and find new techniques and insights. The ideas are
living in the sense that they have permeated
'mainstream' thinking in business and medicine. They
live in the sense that they provoke controversy. Their
claims about healing have been heavily criticized.
Former nurses reacted with horror to one New Age
speaker who talked of his own serious accident which
left him flat on his back as an opportunity for him to
learn to receive love (and so, by implication, of himself
as the cause of his suffering). Some feminists, and some
pagans, have criticised New Age ideas as for example too
transcendental.

As far as schools are concerned, the New Age may seem
both near and far. Some New Age practices, which often
draw on techniques used in the Human Potential
Movement may have permeated some materials used in
PSHE and in some experiential RE.6 Some pupils may
identify themselves as interested in or as New Age - and
be aware that their beliefs have been ridiculed by
mainstream society." How are their beliefs to be
respected in school? A small research project based in
the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit in
2000-1 found little evidence that schools were including
work explicitly on New Age ideas/groups within the RE
curriculum. RE Advisers, when asked if they agreed
with the view that New Age/Human Potential
approaches have influenced materials produced for
schools about spirituality, were divided in their views.
Occasionally teachers have found ways to incorporate
sessions investigating New Age ideas as a stimulus for
discussion. The ideas themselves are provocative. For

example, New Age can be seen as a millennial
movement - with a positive emphasis. It has varied
perspectives about human beings and their potential;
about health; about 'reality' and 'truth'. In work on
'spirituality', examination of New Age approaches
focuses a range of questions for pupils; and questions
which are seen as up to date in part because of media
coverage (albeit often negative) and in part because of
free festivals. Perhaps New Age ideas are already present
in schools; and need to be articulated.

Endnotes

1. Comment heard in an interview Sunday R4 15/4/01.
The research itself, located at Lancaster University, is The
Kendal Project: Patterns of the Sacred in Contemporary Society.

2. Of the many books written about the New Age
movement, these provide information about groups in
Britain: Heelas, P. (1996) The New Age Movement: the
Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity
(Oxford: Blackwell); Storm, R. (1991/2) In Search of
Heaven on Earth (London: Aquarian); York, M.(1995)
The Emerging Network: A Sociology of New Age and Neo-
Pagan Movements (London: Rowman and Littlewood)

3. Flyer produced by one member of The British Network
for the Dances of Universal Peace

4. Bloom, W. (1991) The New Age: an anthology of
essential writings (London: Rider)

5. The story of the community, with its ecological
emphases and its commitment to providing opportunities
for personal growth through an extensive programme of
courses, can be found in Riddell, C. (1990) The Findhorn
Community (Findhorn Press). She includes also reference
to the experiences of the children who belong to the
community.

6. Hammond, J. et al. New methods in religious education
has been described as New Age in orientation.

7. Relatively little has been written about children from
New Age backgrounds within state schools. Fletcher, M
and Ota, C. (1997) Religious Identity and Children's
Worldviews' in Erricker, C. et al The Education of the
Whole Child (London: Cassell) 114-131 outlines work
done with a small group of such children.

Lindon, J. (1999) Understanding World Religions in Early
Years Practice (London: Hodder and Stoughton) includes
a chapter on New Age (including Celtic, Wicca and
Druid) groups.