The Background of the New Age

New Age spirituality is Anti-Christian
Part 2 of a series
by Phil Johnson



he expression "New Age" refers to a belief that earth's history is currently in a major transition pertaining to the signs of the zodiac. As a matter of fact, the position of the earth relative to the constellations does actually shift slightly over time, owing to a kind of slow wobble in the earth's axis. This phenomenon is known to astronomers as "the precession of the equinoxes," in which the position of sunset at the vernal equinox gradually moves in a westward circle, at a rate that would make a full rotation approximately every 25,800 years. As the shift occurs, the backdrop of the sun at sunset moves almost imperceptibly from one constellation to another, in rhythmic transitions that occur roughly every 2,000 years.

One such transition occurred around 4,000 BC, as the location of sunset at equinox moved out of Gemini and into Taurus, the bull. Then around 2,000 BC, Taurus gave way to Aries, the ram. About 2,000 years later, the backdrop of the equinox moved out of Aries and into Pisces, the fish. And a similar transition is currently underway as the precession of the equinoxes moves the sunset-point from Pisces to Aquarius.

New Agers generally believe that this movement through the constellations marks the ages of human history and religious belief. During the age of Taurus, the bull (which lasted from antediluvian times until the era of Moses), calf worship was popular. The shift to the age of Aries, the ram, supposedly accounts for the rise of Judaism, with its stress on the ritual sacrifice of rams and sheep. And the dawn of Pisces, the fish, corresponds to the start of the Christian era. That is supposed to explain why the fish has always been one of the church's favorite symbols and remains so today. In the words of one New Age writer, "Our theology is not played out so much in books and literal earthly dramas, but rather in the heavens as the Sun makes it's [sic] passage through the signs of the Zodiac."

So the most basic of all New Age ideas is rooted in astrology—specifically, a belief that human history is now at the dawn of a whole new era: the Age of Aquarius. That, of course, was the message of the opening song of the 1967 Broadway musical, Hair, a song that became, in effect, the anthem of the New Age and first introduced millions to the concept.

New Age spirituality is a postmodern phenomenon with gnostic, pagan, and metaphysical roots. It is impossible in such a short blogpost to trace all the spiritual tributaries to such a diverse movement, but it should be noted that the New Age is a direct successor to some of the metaphysical cults that became popular in the nineteenth century, including New Thought, Swedenborgianism, Theosophy, Science of Mind, and Christian Science. New Age practitioners liberally borrow language and ideas from all those sects, freely adapting and reshaping them according to personal preference.

Jungian philosophy is another major factor in the popularization of New Age spirituality. Jung, of course, coined the concepts of "the collective unconscious," "the god within," and mind-expansion techniques. Wouter Hanegraaff wrote that Jung "sacralized psychology, by filling it with the contents of esoteric speculation. The result was a body of theories which enabled people to talk about God while really meaning their own psyche, and about their own psyche while really meaning the divine. If the psyche is 'mind', and God is 'mind' as well, then to discuss one must mean to discuss the other." [Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 513.]

Wouter Hanegraaff's reference to "esoteric speculation" hints at another major stream of New Age influence: gnosticism. The fundamental idea that unites all gnostic and New Age thought is a belief that the key to real understanding lies in some mysterious, ancient body of hidden knowledge available only to enlightened minds. Normally, the way to gain enlightenment is by being initiated into whatever group claim to be guardians of the secret knowledge.

Add a distinctly postmodern brand of subjectivity to this eclectic blend of astrological, metaphysical, psychological, and gnostic influences, and you can begin to get a sense of the milieu in which New Age spirituality has flourished. It would probably be fair to characterize the rise of the New Age movement as the spiritual side of the postmodern paradigm shift.

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