New Age
Sign in to savespiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s
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The New Age is a collection of spiritual and religious beliefs and practices that emerged in Western countries starting in the 1970s, often blending ideas from various world religions, psychology, and alternative healing traditions. It matters because it has significantly influenced how many people in the West approach spirituality, wellness, and personal meaning-making outside of traditional organized religions.
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New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs that rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as a unification of mind, body, and spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.
As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age drew heavily upon esoteric traditions such as the occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as Spiritualism, New Thought, and Theosophy. More immediately, it arose from mid-20th-century influences such as the UFO religions of the 1950s, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement. Its exact origins remain contested, but it became a major movement in the 1970s, at which time it was centered largely in the United Kingdom. It expanded widely in the 1980s and 1990s. By the start of the 21st century, the term New Age was increasingly rejected within this milieu, with some scholars arguing that the New Age phenomenon had ended.