can be attributed in part to an overall lack of understanding its nature; when its history is taken into consideration and its persuasive element is exposed, we see that, contrary to the assumption that the New Age is a freer alternative to mainstream religion, persuasion is a very present part of the New Age.In that first quote by Newman, we must focus on the particular word “return.” While the New Age is called “new,” in fact, it is not new at all. Groothius (1985, as cited by Clark and Geisler, 1990) keenly observes that “the strands of the ancient wisdom…are now all aswirl, one virtually indistinguishable from the next, and all drawing on one another” (11). They conclude that “many new age themes are improvisations on ancient themes” (12). Teri McLuhan, author of The Way of the Earth, is quoted in MacLean’s Magazine (1994) as recognizing that “the new spirituality is the old spirituality. It is the golden thread that you can trace and link with the Vedic tradition in India which is 5,000 years old” (48).If there is little new about it, why is it called the “New Age?” What is new is its acceptance in the West. It seems that the “new” is in reference not to its existence, but to its rise in the American consciousness within the last thirty-five or so years (Clark and Geisler, 1990). In addition, although the New Age consists of a hodgepodge of idealistic parallels with “the occult, Gnostic, pagan and even native American religions,” (Clark and Geisler, 1990, p. 11), its adaptation to the American lifestyle — and the adaptation of the American lifestyle to it — is also new. One may compare the relative speed of its wash over society to that of the early Christian church of the 1st century AD, or any significant religious uprising since.This background awareness of the deep-running roots of the New Age demonstrat...
