New Age Religion And Western Culture

Download or read book New Age Religion and Western Culture written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.

Download or read book New Age Religion and Western Culture written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the first systematic analysis of the structure and beliefs of the New Age movement, and the historical emergence of "New Age" as a secularized version of Western esoteric traditions.

Download or read book New Age Religión and Western Culture written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive analysis of the belief structure and historical background of the New Age Movement. "New Age Religion" emerges as a thoroughly secularized form of western-esoteric traditions which can be traced back to the period of the Renaissance.

Download or read book Perspectives on the New Age written by James R. Lewis and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1992-11-03 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book begins with a comprehensive historical section that places the New Age within the context of its predecessor movements. It then focuses on specialized aspects of this subculture, from essays on the convergence of New Age spirituality with women's spirituality, to an essay on how Evangelical Christians have responded to the movement. The book also examines the international impact of the New Age.

Download or read book Esotericism and the Academy written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The neglected history of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have approached ideas of the occult which challenged biblical religion.

Download or read book New Age Spirituality written by Steven J. Sutcliffe and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Age and holistic beliefs and practices - sometimes called the "new spirituality" - are widely distributed across modern global society. The fluid and popular nature of new age makes these movements a very challenging field to understand using traditional models of religious analysis. Rather than treating new age as an exotic specimen on the margins of 'proper' religion, "New Age Spirituality" examines these movements as a form of everyday or lived religion. The book brings together an international range of scholars to explore the key issues: insight, healing, divination, meditation, gnosis, extraordinary experiences, and interactions with gods, spirits and superhuman powers. Combining discussion of contemporary beliefs and practices with cutting-edge theoretical analysis, the book repositions new age spirituality at the forefront of the contemporary study of religion.

Download or read book Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times written by R. van den Broek and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume introduces what has sometimes been called "the third component of western culture". It traces the historical development of those religious traditions which have rejected a world view based on the primacy of pure rationality or doctrinal faith, emphasizing instead the importance of inner enlightenment or gnosis: a revelatory experience which was typically believed to entail an encounter with one's true self as well as with the ground of being, God. The contributors to this book demonstrate this perspective as fundamental to a variety of interconnected traditions. In Antiquity, one finds the gnostics and hermetics; in the Middle Ages several Christian sects. The medieval Cathars can, to a certain extent, be considered part of the same tradition. Starting with the Italian humanist Renaissance, hermetic philosophy became of central importance to a new religious synthesis that can be referred to as Western Esotericism. The development of this tradition is described from Renaissance hermeticists and practitioners of spiritual alchemy to the emergence of Rosicrucianism and Christian theosophy in the seventeenth century, and from post-enlightenment aspects of Romanticism and occultism to the present-day New Age movement.