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68
New Age Spiritualities as Secular
Religion: A Historian’s Perspective
Wouter J. Hanegraaff

S
ome statements in the first chapter of Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of
Religious Life (Durkheim, 1995: 43–44) may serve to suggest the chal-
lenge of the New Age movement for the historian of religion. Having
defined “religion” as a social phenomenon, Durkheim mentions the alternative
possibility of “individual religions that the individual institutes for himself
and celebrates for himself alone”. Some people today, he writes, “pose the
question whether such religions are not destined to become the dominant
form of religious life – whether a day will not come when the only cult will
be the one that each person freely practices in his innermost self”. Could it
be true that we witness the emergence of a new form of religion, which will
“consist entirely of interior and subjective states and be freely construed by
each one of us”? Durkheim recognizes that if this were the case, his own
definition of religion would be in need of adaptation. But, he continues,
since such radically private religion remains as yet no more than an uncertain
future possibility, the scholar is justified for the moment in restricting him-
self to the religions of the past and the present. The implication is clear. Were
such a radical religious individualism to become a fact, this would represent
a radically new phenomenon: an unprecedented break with religion as we
know it from the past and the present.
I will argue that the new type of religion referred to by Durkheim has
indeed become a fact, and that the contemporary New Age movement is its
clearest manifestation. New Age exemplifies a new phenomenon which may
be defined as “secular religion” based on “private symbolism”. As such, it

Source: Social Compass, 46(2) (1999): 145–160.

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122 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

presents a challenge to sociologists as well as to historians of religion. The

challenge consists in trying to understand what the New Age phenomenon
can teach us about the processes of modernization and secularization, and
their significance with respect to the systematic study of religions.
For my basic understanding of “New Age religion”, I must refer the reader
elsewhere (Hanegraaff, 1996, 1998a). Since most studies of New Age had
been written from a sociological perspective, I decided to concentrate on
aspects which tend to be neglected in that literature. On the basis of a repre-
sentative selection of written primary sources, I analyzed the fundamental
ideas of New Age religion and interpreted these from a historical perspective.
I concluded that New Age religion can be defined as a form of “secularized
esotericism”: it is rooted in so-called western esoteric traditions which can be
traced back to the early Renaissance, but which underwent a thorough process
of secularization during the 19th century. The new phenomenon of a secu-
larized esotericism is best referred to as “occultism”; it had come to full devel-
opment by the beginning of the 20th century and was eventually adopted by
the New Age movement as it emerged during the 1970s. In the present article
I would like to further develop this distinction between secularized esoteri-
cism on the one hand (a phenomenon belonging primarily to the history of
ideas, and which had emerged during the 19th century), and the New Age
movement on the other (a social phenomenon, which has emerged during the
1970s and which has adopted and further developed a secularized esoteric
belief system).

Religion, Religions, and Spiritualities

My discussion of New Age as a form of “secular religion” presupposes a

more general theory of religion, which I have developed in some detail else-
where (Hanegraaff, 1999a). I define religion in terms of a critical reformu-
lation of the analysis proposed by Clifford Geertz in 1966:1

Religion = any symbolic system which influences human action by pro-

viding possibilities for ritually maintaining contact between the everyday
world and a more general meta-empirical framework of meaning.

Under the terms of this definition, New Age evidently qualifies as religion; but
this does not by any means imply that it is a religion. The class of “religions”
(sing.: a religion) can be defined as a subcategory of the general class of
“religion”; this subcategory is characterized by the fact that the symbolic
system in question is represented by a social institution.

A religion = any symbolic system, embodied in a social institution, which

influences human action by providing possibilities for ritually maintaining
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Hanegraaff z New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion 123

contact between the everyday world and a more general meta-empirical

framework of meaning.

In other words: religion may (and frequently does) manifest itself in the
form of religions, but need not necessarily do so. For example, the Dutch
Reformed Church is religion as well as a religion; the New Age movement,
however, qualifies as religion but not as a religion. But of course nothing
prevents a group of New Agers to organize themselves in some sort of insti-
tutional framework. The result will then be a New Age religion: the equivalent
of what is often referred to as a New Age “cult”.
Religion may also manifest as what I propose to refer to as “a spirituality”:

A spirituality = any human practice which maintains contact between

the everyday world and a more general meta-empirical framework of
meaning by way of the individual manipulation2 of symbolic systems.

This concept of a spirituality (plur.: spiritualities) is basic to my interpret-

ation of New Age, but in order to elucidate the different forms it can take, I
will first develop my understanding of “religion” in slightly more detail.

Collective Symbolism: Religious and Non-religious

Current theories of symbolism and the neighboring domain of myth show a

great complexity, but I will here bypass these discussions and restrict myself
to a very basic observation. So much has been written about symbol and
myth that one may easily forget that symbols are images just as myths are stories.
And reversely: not only images, but stories as well, may function as symbols
in the human imagination. Applied to the study of religions, symbols and
myths can therefore be discussed quite simply as images and stories which
have an important function in a certain religious context. They can have
such importance because their meaning is not restricted to the literal level.
The Christian cross is more than two pieces of wood put together; the life of
Jesus is more than a biography. But, as will be seen, even highly abstract dis-
cursive or scientific propositions normally do not get a hold over the popular
imagination, unless they are capable of being graspad as images.
A commitment to common symbols is essential to religions generally. As
formulated by Gershom Scholem: “one of the main functions of religious
symbols [is] to preserve the vitality of religious experience in a traditional,
conservative milieu” (Scholem, 1969: 22). Indeed, an implicit but crucial
assumption in my definition of religion is that the doctrines and theologies
of a given religion are ultimately far less important to preserving religious
community in space and over time, than the fundamental images and stories
shared by its members. For example, Christian doctrines and theologies
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124 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

have undergone tremendous changes and transformations between the first

centuries and the present day; indeed, the disputes of theologians appear
usually to have produced discord and discontinuity rather than maintaining
certainty and safeguarding the cohesion and continuity of Christianity as a
religion. But whatever their doctrinal opinions, both theologians and the
community of believers shared a commitment to certain powerful images
and stories, i.e., to a collective symbolism. Such collective images and stories
make a powerful moral appeal to the individual, who is stimulated by them
to conform to the community’s code of conduct. By providing access to a
more general framework of meaning, images and stories are supremely
important means of binding the adherents of a religion together in space
and over time.
But images and stories may function in a non-religious context as well,
as can be demonstrated by a comparison with the collective symbolism of
contemporary secular society. The point I just made about the importance of
images and stories for maintaining the cohesion of religions can be applied
equally to the prevailing wordview of secular society. On the popular level,
for example, few people have even a rudimentary understanding of Cartesian
philosophy or Newtonian science; but they immediately recognize the image
of the “world as a machine”. Likewise, the problem of the interpretation of
quantum mechanics is a highly technical subject involving subtle philosophical
problems; but the popular image of a subatomic particle which – paradoxi-
cally – is a wave appears to be so exciting to the imagination that one
encounters it everywhere on the popular level, sometimes in highly surprising
places. In fact, this latter image has become a supreme symbol of dissent: to
invoke it is to criticize the symbolism of an earlier, mechanistic worldview.
Nevertheless it remains a scientific symbol, not a religious one. And moving
from symbol to myth, we find the same thing. Few people will be able to
explain the differences between the philosophical, scientific and mystical
evolutionary theories of the German Idealists, Darwin, Lamarck, Teilhard de
Chardin, Sri Aurobindo, Ilya Prigogine, or Ken Wilber, to mention just a few.
No matter. What does matter is that the biblical story of creation has been
replaced, in their minds, by another and better story, which satisfies the
imagination of people who were brought up to respect the ultimate authority
of science. And, finally, the power of secular symbolism is not restricted to
physics and biology. In our days, for example, the economic concept of “the
market” appears to have become a highly important popular symbol; like
many religious or quasi-religious symbols, it is able to bind people together
in the conviction that they pursue a common cause, which is for the greater
good of humanity (Loy, 1997). In order to have that conviction, they need
not understand the economic theories involved.
Such is the stuff of the collective symbolism of contemporary secular
society. My point is that contemporary society is not based upon “science
and rationality” any more than pre-Enlightenment Christianity was “based
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Hanegraaff z New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion 125

upon” Christian theology. It is not science but popular mythologies of science

which provide society with its basic collective symbolism.

Spiritualities: With or Without a Religious Foundation

Now, within any symbolic system – religious or non-religious – “spiritualities”

may appear, and indeed, inevitably do appear. This is quite simply because
people may interpret the collective symbolism of a religion in individual
ways, but may do the same with non-religious symbolic systems. In trad-
itional pre-secular contexts, such spiritualities do not consist of a strictly
private symbolism and can not be seen as examples of the type of “religious
individualism” referred to by Durkheim. They can be correctly character-
ized, however, as private interpretations of collective religious symbolism.
This distinction is essential, as will be seen. I will demonstrate it by two
examples. One characteristic case of a private interpretation of collective
religious symbolism, leading to a spirituality rooted in a religion, would be
the theosophical system developed by the 17th century mystic Jacob
Boehme. Boehme earned his living as a cobbler in Görlitz, a small town on
the present border between Germany and Poland. Tormented by questions
about the origin of evil and suffering in the world, he finally experienced an
interior illumination which changed his life. He describes how God permitted
him a momentary gaze into the innermost “center of nature”, thus enabling
him to perceive all earthly things in the light of the divine mystery: the mystery
of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, divine Love and divine Wrath, and the
reconciliation of these opposites by Christ. Boehme would devote the rest of
his life to a continuing attempt to explain his interior experience in human
language, and develop the implications of his vision. His writings are the
work of a visionary genius, and were to become the foundation of a rich
spiritual tradition.
Boehmian theosophy is a characteristic manifestation of the complex of
traditions referred to under the general label of “western esotericism” (p. 146).
Now, it is evident that this perspective belongs to the domain of “religion”
in terms of my definition. Moreover (in spite of his problems with a local
minister who considered him a heretic), Boehme’s esoteric teachings are
undoubtedly rooted in a religion: Christianity as such, and the Lutheranism of
his time in particular. But we are evidently dealing here with “a spirituality”
as well. Boehme’s work is the product of an “individual manipulation” of the
various symbolic systems he had at his disposal: Christian symbolism in
general, the more recent symbolism of Lutheranism in particular, mystical
traditions in the line of Eckhart and Tauler, the nature-philosophical and eso-
teric symbolism of alchemy, and the teachings of Paracelsus. Using elements
of these various symbolic systems, he created a new synthesis: a new way of
understanding his native Christian faith. It is not necessary here to enter into
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126 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

the historical backgrounds of the traditions just mentioned; what concerns me

here is Jacob Boehme’s work as an example of a spirituality rooted in (the
collective symbolism of) a religion.
Now let us compare this first example of a spirituality with a second one,
characteristic of New Age religion. I have intentionally chosen an example
which displays certain similarities with Boehme, in order to make the differ-
ences stand out all the more clearly. On 9 September, 1963, the New York
science fiction writer Jane Roberts was suddenly “hit” by a powerful psychic
experience. She was quietly sitting at the table when, as she describes,
“between one normal minute and the next, a fantastic avalanche of radical
new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force, as if my skull were
some sort of receiving station, turned up to unbearable volume” (Roberts,
1970: 11). The experience included not only ideas, but also extreme and
unusual physical sensations and a sort of psychedelic experience of travel-
ling through many dimensions. When she regained her composure, she found
herself furiously scribbling down the words and ideas that had flashed
through her head. In an attempt to find out what had happened to her, she
and her husband started experimenting with spiritistic techniques. After
some time, they contacted a spirit, who eventually began to communicate
directly through Jane Roberts’ body. In this way, she developed into a so-
called trance medium or “channel” for a “higher entity” who referred to him-
self as Seth. Seth’s messages were published and have exerted an enormous
(and still underestimated) influence on the development of the New Age
movement. The core of his teaching is that we all “create our own reality”, in
a process of spiritual evolution through countless existences on this planet as
well as in an infinity of other dimensions. Few New Agers realize how many
of the beliefs which they take for granted in their daily lives have their his-
torical origin in Seth’s messages.
The intriguing phenomenon of channeling is not my subject here. I would
merely like to emphasize how strongly Seth’s messages appeared to fit within
Jane Roberts’ personal frame of reference. As may be checked by a comparison
with the books she published under her own name, this frame of reference
consisted of a highly eclectic combination of religious and non-religious
symbolic systems. They included the Romantic cosmology and evolutionism
of the American Transcendentalists, the “positive thinking” of the New
Thought movement and related traditions usually referred to as the American
“Metaphysical Movements”, spiritualism and parapsychology in the wake of
magnetism and American mesmerism; but also science fiction literature, popu-
lar science, and popular psychology. From the elements of all these symbolic
systems, Jane Roberts – or Seth – created a new, original synthesis.
The Seth teachings evidently qualify as “religion” in terms of my defin-
ition. But they do not constitute a religion, nor are they rooted in a religion,
as was the case with Boehme. They are clearly an example of a spirituality:
the product of individual manipulation of available symbolic systems
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(religious as well as non-religious). This sprituality fulfilled the function

which it still fulfills in the context of the New Age movement today: it influ-
ences human action by providing the possibility for maintaining contact
between the everyday world and a more general “meta-empirical” framework
of meaning. It is therefore undoubtedly religion.
I should add one important note. In both the examples just given, we are
dealing with the spectacular product of unquestionably gifted individuals,
whose published writings made such an impression on readers that their
spirituality (or elements of it) was adopted by others and took up a life of
its own. But when talking of “spiritualities” we should definitely not think
merely or even mainly of the comparatively rare phenomenon of “religious
virtuosi”. In principle we are dealing with an everyday phenomenon: every
person who gives an individual twist to existing religious symbols (be it only
in a minimal sense) is already engaged in the practice of creating his or her
own spirituality. In this sense, each existing religion generates multiple spir-
itualities as a matter of course; and it is only the more spectacular cases
which sometimes become the basis for a new spiritual tradition.
“Spiritualities” and “religions” might be roughly characterized as the
individual and institutional poles within the general domain of “religion”. A
religion without spiritualities is impossible to imagine. But, as will be seen,
the reverse – a spirituality without a religion – is quite possible in principle.
Spiritualities can emerge on the basis of an existing religion, but they can
very well do without. New Age is the example par excellence of this latter
possibility: a complex of spiritualities which emerges on the foundation of a
pluralistic secular society.

Secularization and the Autonomization of Spiritualities

In terms of the above discussion, secularization cannot be interpreted as a

process in which the social importance of religion, or even religion as such,
declines or vanishes altogether. But secularization can very well be understood
as a thorough transformation of religion under the impact of historical and
social processes, particularly since the 18th century. From a strictly empirical
and historical perspective, “secularization” can be defined as “the whole of
historical developments in western society, as a result of which the Christian
religion has lost its central position as the foundational collective symbolism of
western culture, and has been reduced to merely one among several religious
institutions within a culture which is no longer grounded in a religious system
of symbols”.
One might argue that, from the perspective of the history of religions, such
a process of transformation is nothing new. No religion has ever been station-
ary; all religions have always been in a process of change and transformation,
and the process of secularization might therefore be seen as merely another
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128 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

phase in the history of religions in western societies. However, I believe that

there is reason to consider the western process of secularization as a histori-
cally unique and unprecedented example of such a transformation: a deeper
and more fundamental caesura than any other change known to us from the
history of religions. The complicated historical, social and political causes of
this transformation are the subject of an abundant historical and sociological
literature, which we do not need to go into here.
I am concerned mainly with defining in which respects contemporary
western society is different from all other societies before the period of the
Enlightenment. As far as we know, never before has there existed a human
society, the common culture of which was not religious: i.e., a society whose
commonly-shared collective symbolism was not of such a nature as to provide
a framework for ritually maintaining contact with a more general, meta-
empirical framework of meaning. Precisely such a non-religious complex of
symbolic systems, however, is fundamental for contemporary society. In this
sense, secular western society can be regarded as a historical “anomaly”,
which breaks in an unprecedented way with previous human cultures. The
distinction between religions and spiritualities can be used as an analytic
instrument to get a grip on the secularization process in this sense.
Secularization by no means implies that religion declines or that religions
die out; but it does mean that religion is transformed in a crucial way. The
essence of this transformation is that religions are faced with increasing
competition by spiritualities which are themselves no longer based upon
and embedded in an existing religion but become wholly autonomous. This
process of autonomization may be described as the emergence of secular
spiritualities based upon a private symbolism in a strict sense.3
This is a crucial characteristic of New Age religion: it consists of a complex
of spiritualities which are no longer embedded in any religion – as was the
case with all spiritualities in the past – but directly in secular culture itself.
All manifestations of New Age religion, without exception, are based upon
what I called an “individual manipulation of existing symbolic systems”. In
this way, new syntheses are continually being created, which provide exactly
what religion has always provided: the possibility for ritually maintaining
contact with a more general meta-empirical framework of meaning, in
terms of which people give meaning to their experiences in daily life.
Spiritualities in a traditional religious context did not need to start from
point zero. The religion in which they were embedded already served to pro-
vide meaning; the primary function of new spiritualities was to clarify and
further develop existing religious symbolism, so as to “fine-tune” it to the
specific needs of the person in question. Hence, Jacob Boehme certainly did
not develop his esoteric system because he doubted that Christ had saved
humanity from sin; he did it in order to better understand what that meant.
New Age spiritualities, in contrast, do not grow on the soil of an existing
religion. They are based upon the individual manipulation of religious as
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Hanegraaff z New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion 129

well as non-religious symbolic systems; and this manipulation is undertaken

in order to fill these symbols with new religious meaning. As for existing
religious symbolic systems, New Age spiritualities generally concentrate on
whatever is not associated too closely with the traditional churches and their
theologies. Hence their preference for alternative traditions, from gnosticism
and western esotericism in their own culture to various religious traditions
from other cultures. As for their use of a non-religious symbolic system: by
far the most important area is that of the popular “mythologies of science”
to which I made reference above. In countless ways, New Agers give a spir-
itual twist to the symbolism of quantum mechanics and relativity theory
(Hanegraaff, 1996: Chs 3, 6), various psychological schools (Hanegraaff,
1996: Chs 8, 15), sociological theories (Hanegraaff, 1996: Ch. 5), and so on.
The common basis of New Age religion is therefore no longer the symbolic
system of an existing religion, but a large number of symbolic systems of
various provenance, bits and pieces of which are constantly being recycled
by the popular media. Since there is no longer a commonly shared source of
authority which indicates how all this information fits together within a religious
framework, one is left to one’s own devices to figure out the religious impli-
cations of available symbolic systems. At most, one may find assistance in a
continuing stream of popular literature (which, however, does not follow
one clear direction either).
As such, New Age is the manifestation par excellence of the seculariza-
tion of religion: religion becomes solely a matter of individual choice, and
detaches itself from religious institutions, i.e. from exclusive commitment to
specific “religions”. Even more: what is considered to be real religion accord-
ing to a New Age perspective is hardly compatible (if at all) with religious
institutions. Here, as in many other things, New Age religion reveals itself
as a characteristic heir of the Enlightenment. A consistent refrain in New
Age sources is that people have finally managed to free themselves from the
tyranny of religious power structures; “religions” are pictured as being
based upon blind acceptance of dogmas, by which the faithful have been
prevented from discovering the divinity that resides within themselves.

The Symbolism of the Self and the Myth of Its Evolution

Whereas traditional spiritualities consisted of private interpretations of

existing collective religious symbolisms, New Age religion exemplifies the
far more radical phenomenon of private symbolism. Only this latter phenom-
enon catches the essence of the new type of “religious individualism” foreseen
by Emile Durkheim at the beginning of the 20th century.
Now, in what respect does this view of New Age religion differ from existing
ones? We have seen that New Age religion initially looks like a strange mixture
of secular and non-secular elements. One certainly finds here a “mythology
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130 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

of science”, but defended for what seem to be essentially religious reasons;

and one finds various elements of traditional religious symbolism, but pre-
sented as compatible with and actually validated by avant-garde science.
Accordingly, some have perceived New Age religion as a direct product of
contemporary secular society, while others have described it as an attempt to
revive pre-secular religious traditions.4 The former option has been especially
popular among sociologists, who have tended to pay little attention to the
historical roots of New Age religion in western religious traditions. The latter
option is popular among critics who denounce New Age as a regression to
pre-scientific obscurantism, as well as among defenders who see it as a revival
of traditional wisdom; both of these perspectives have tended to neglect the
modernity of New Age. From a historian’s point of view, both interpretations
are one-sided: the specific modernity of New Age religion can only be under-
stood by situating the phenomenon in a historical framework. It seems to me
that a bridge can be built between existing disciplinary approaches by recog-
nizing that New Age religion is based neither on the collective symbolism of
one religious tradition or another, nor on the collective symbolism of secular
society which I referred to as a “mythology of science”, but on the character-
istically modernist tendency to move from collective symbolism to an eclectic
private symbolism.
The key to this phenomenon is the religious individualism and eclecticism
which is so fundamental to contemporary culture as a whole. New Agers do
not want to be told by others what they are supposed to believe. In principle,
they take this attitude not only to religious ideas, but to scientific ones as
well. Thus, they indignantly reject the so-called Cartesian/Newtonian para-
digm, because this materialist and mechanicist conception of the universe is
experienced by them as a stifling dogma which limits spiritual freedom. But
this sensitivity to overtly dogmatic authority hardly protects them from sub-
mitting to the more subtle hegemonic claims implicit in the “mythology of
science” as such. Accordingly, New Agers typically fight old science with new
science, arguing that quantum mechanics “proves” the truth of a new para-
digm which has room both for science and spirituality. It is highly uncharac-
teristic for New Age religion to suggest that science as such might have its
limitations, which might make it simply irrelevant to the domain of the
sacred.5 Specific mythologies of science (or paradigms) may be accepted or
rejected in truly eclectic fashion, but the basic assumption that spiritual truth
must be in harmony with scientific truth is hardly ever questioned. We are
thus led to an important observation: there is no type of collective symbol-
ism – be it religious or scientific – which New Agers as a group accept as
authoritative; but the mythical authority of “science” as such is nevertheless
strongly in evidence.
Now, the opposition of New Age against religious as well as scientific
authoritarianism and dogmatism still remains on the level of reasoning; but
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Hanegraaff z New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion 131

I have been emphasizing that the coherence of a religious perspective is

ultimately based on shared images and stories rather than on reasoned
beliefs. What, then, are the fundamental common images and stories basic
to the many private symbolic worlds found in New Age religion? For it is
true that, in spite of all their individualistic emphasis, these myriad manifes-
tations of private symbolism do have something in common. The solution to
what looks like a paradox is almost predictable (at least once one knows the
answer). Try to imagine a central, unifying symbolism that should be proper
to a secular religiosity based on religious individualism. What else could it
be, than a symbolism circling around that most individualistic of all concepts:
the Self? Indeed, the Self can be seen as the symbolic center of New Age reli-
gion (cf. Heelas, 1996); and its most universal story or myth describes how
this Self undergoes a process of spiritual evolution. Although the unifying
symbolism of the Self is basic to all forms of New Age religion, it cannot be
regarded as a collective symbolism. We saw that collective symbolism typi-
cally binds the adherents of a religious perspective together as a community.
The symbolism of the Self is perhaps a unique phenomenon, because when-
ever it is seriously made into the core and center of a religious movement,
it practically prevents this movement from functioning as a religious collec-
tivity! And this observation can be reversed as well: only a movement which
regards religious individualism and freedom as essential will adopt the Self
as its central symbol. It can therefore be no surprise that the so-called New
Age movement still shows no signs of becoming “a religion” (in the sense of
my definition) but remains an informal “network”.
In developing a wide array of private symbolic worlds centering around
the symbolism of the Self and the mythology of its evolution, New Age religion
makes eclectic use of whatever materials it can find. But the materials are
not selected at random: they have to be in accordance with an underlying
motivation. As I have argued elsewhere, the idea structure of New Age religion
is based upon a deep-seated culture criticism, which rejects various forms of
dualism and reductionism and seeks to develop holistic alternatives. A similar
pattern of culture criticism is found in some other movements, such as the
women’s movement and the ecology movement. The New Age movement
differs from them because its culture criticism is expressed in terms of a
secularized esotericism. For the complete argument I have to refer the reader
elsewhere (Hanegraaff, 1996: Ch. 16); here I merely wish to point out that
the centrality to western esotericism of gnosis – knowledge of the Self inter-
preted as knowledge of God – appears to provide a perfect foundation for
the individualistic symbolism of the Self in New Age religion.
I will illustrate the New Age symbolism of the Self with two examples. The
first is taken from the Seth messages already referred to. In an early book,
Seth describes how the universe sprang forth from God, who is referred to as
“All That Is”. He describes how, in a primary state of non-being, prior to all
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132 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

manifestation, all possible realities existed as unconscious dreams in the

mind of All That Is. These dreams, as Seth says, “yearned to be actual”:

All That Is saw, then, an infinity of probable, conscious individuals, and

foresaw all possible developments, but they were locked within It until
It found the means . . .
The means, then, came to it. It must release the creatures and proba-
bilities from Its dream. To do so would give them actuality. However, it
also meant “losing” a portion of Its own consciousness . . . All That Is had
to let go . . . With love and longing It let go that portion of Itself, and they
were free. The psychic energy exploded in a flash of creation. [All That
Is] found the way to burst forth in freedom, through expression, and in
so doing gave existence to individualized consciousness. Therefore is It
rightfully jubilant. Yet all individuals remember their source, and now
dream of All That Is as All That Is once dreamed of them. And they yearn
toward that immense source . . . and yearn to set It free and give It actu-
ality through their own creations. (Roberts, 1970: 264–268)

There are gnostic, neoplatonic, kabbalistic and theosophical echoes in this

“creation myth”; but it also provides a metaphysical background to the
extremely common New Age belief that we all create our own reality. Each
conscious individual, according to Seth, is the manifestation of a creative
Soul or Higher Self. And each Self is a spark of the great universal Self called
All That Is (who, by the way, may in turn be a spark of an even greater Self).
Thus, the Self is modeled on God; and the essence of both God and the Self
is limitless creative expansion. The result is a world-affirming perspective in
which each Self continually creates its own reality “as naturally as breathing”.
Thus, according to Seth, my own Higher Self is at this very moment creating
a reality in which I – Wouter Hanegraaff – am writing an article on the New
Age movement. And each of my readers lives in his or her self-created real-
ity, which happens to be one in which he or she is reading an article on New
Age. Now, it is basic to New Age religion that each self-created reality func-
tions as a “learning experience”. Our limited personalities have become
alienated from their own Higher Selves; and so they come to believe that the
worlds created by their own Higher Selves are the only real world. Many of
these “self-created” learning experiences are more or less painful and involve
a degree of suffering (including, no doubt, the ordeal of working one’s way
through articles in academic journals!), for it is only in this way that souls can
evolve and develop spiritually. The more they evolve, the more satisfying
will be the realities they create for themselves.
This is the basic outline of New Age symbolism of the Self and its evolu-
tion. The logic of this perspective inevitably leads to solipsism: each private
Self quite literally lives enclosed in its own private symbolic world. The actress
Shirley MacLaine, who became perhaps the most prominent representative
of New Age in the 1980s, managed to scandalize even many of her New Age
friends by openly drawing precisely this conclusion:
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Hanegraaff z New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion 133

. . . since I realized I created my own reality in every way, I must there-

fore admit that I was the only person alive in my universe . . . And human
beings feeling pain, terror, depression, panic, and so forth, were really
only aspects of pain, terror, depression, panic, and so on, in me. If they
were all characters in my reality, my dream, then of course they were
only reflections of myself . . .
Now, that truth can be very humorous. I could legitimately say that I
created the Statue of Liberty, chocolate chip cookies, the Beatles, terror-
ism, and the Vietnam war . . . I knew I had created the reality of the
evening news at night. It was in my reality. But whether anyone else was
experiencing the news separately from me was unclear, because they
existed in my reality too. And if they reacted to world events, then I was
creating them to react so I would have something to interact with, thereby
enabling myself to know me better . . .
If what I was proposing was true, would it also be true that I did noth-
ing for others, everything for myself? And the answer was, essentially,
yes. If I fed a starving child, and was honest about my motivation, I
would have to say I did it for myself, because it made me feel better . . .
I was beginning to see that we each did whatever we did purely for self,
and that was as it should be. (MacLaine, 1987: 171–173)

Shirley MacLaine indeed takes private symbolism to its logical conclusion.

This permits me to briefly touch upon the question of the ethical implica-
tions of New Age religion. In order to understand the momentous shift from
collective symbolism to the emergence of a private symbolism, and the new
type of religion which has emerged from it, this aspect is of central import-
ance. I noted above (p. 148) that “collective images and stories make a
powerful moral appeal to the individual, who is stimulated by them to conform
to the community’s code of conduct”. What, then, might happen to morality
when collective symbolism gives way to private symbolism?
I will not attempt to tackle all the ramifications and implications of this
question in the space of this brief article. The most important aspects of it may
be brought out by concentrating on the contrast between the private symbol-
ism of New Age, on the one hand, and the “private interpretations of collective
symbolism” found in western esoteric traditions, on the other. I was originally
inspired to explore the differences between collective and private symbolism by
a casual remark made by Gershom Scholem in an interview, which might be
put side by side with Durkheim’s remarks in the first chapter of The Elementary
Forms. As I have argued elsewhere (Hanegraaff, 1999b), Scholem’s remarks
about Jewish esotericism apply equally to its Christian parallels:

Modern man lives in a private world of his own, enclosed within himself,
and modern symbolism is not objective: it is private; it does not obligate.
The symbols of the kabbalists, on the other hand, did not speak only to
the private individual – they displayed a symbolic dimension to the whole
world. (Scholem, 1976: 48)
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134 The Comparative Sociology of De-secularization

The specifically “mystical” symbolism which Scholem saw as basic to trad-

itional esotericism was based upon the collective symbolism of Judaism; it
had its center in a divine mystery which radically transcended human
understanding but could nevertheless be experienced in the created world.
With respect to morality, traditional mystical symbolism clearly “obligates”;
it reflects the understanding that human actions in the world must find their
justification (or not find it) according to a normative system which is divinely
instituted and may therefore not be fully accessible to human understanding,
but the existence of which is not in any doubt. New Age, in contrast, has its
logical center not in God but in the Self of each individual; and in principle
there is no limit to the potential of the Self to unlock even the deepest mys-
teries of the universe. With respect to morality, New Agers claim that suffering
exists for the purpose of spiritual education, but there does not exist such a
thing as evil. This basic message is repeated over and over again: “evil is an
illusion”, the belief in which merely reflects spiritual ignorance (Hanegraaff,
1996: Ch. 10). Under such conditions, a concept of moral “obligation” to
anything but one’s own spiritual development becomes impossible ex principio.
The implications are shocking if formulated in all clarity. Even acts of the
most horrific kind, such as the rape and murder of a child, are not “evil” or
“wrong”: in essence, they constitute a learning experience for both parties,
which their higher Selves have “created” together and in mutual collabora-
tion. The victim participates in the crime no less than the criminal; and even
the bereaved parents should eventually learn to see the murder of their
child as a learning experience chosen by their own higher Selves.

Conclusion

In the end, the foundational myth of New Age religion – unlimited spiritual
evolution in which the Self learns from its experiences in many self-created
realities – must be recognized as deeply rationalistic.6 On the crucial
assumption that evil does not exist and “whatever is, is right”, this spiritual
evolutionism actually succeeds in providing a consistent, “reasonable” and
conclusive explanation of suffering. The unquestionable explanatory
strength of this foundational New Age myth is undoubtedly a main reason
for its attraction for many contemporary people who wish to make sense of
human existence. The hard core of fully convinced believers in its truth are
enabled to consider themselves part of an “invisible community” of like-
minded individuals, as distinct from the mass of human beings who have
not yet discovered the true meaning of existence. Those who are not con-
vinced, and must therefore consider themselves as belonging to the latter
category, may perhaps be permitted to wonder whether the proclaimed
arrival of the New Age would leave any room for common moral values.
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Hanegraaff z New Age Spiritualities as Secular Religion 135

Notes
This research was supported by the Foundation for Research in the Field of Philosophy
and Theology in the Netherlands, which is subsidized by The Netherlands Organization
for the Advancement of Research (NWO).
1. At first sight my reformulation may look rather different from Geertz’s famous five-
part definition of religion; for a detailed account, see Hanegraaff (1999a, forthcoming).
2. My use of the term “manipulation” might create misunderstandings. I do not intend to
make a statement about the extent to which an individual is capable of dissociating or
distancing him/herself from the various symbolic systems present in his/her cultural
and social context. I defend neither an extreme view of the “autonomous subject”
which is supposedly at full liberty to make its choices among the various symbolic systems
which are made available to it in the “religious super-market” of contemporary western
society, nor a (no less extreme) view according to which this so-called subject is merely
an exponent of supra-personal “collective forces”. Symbolic systems are products of
human beings, who are in turn products of symbolic systems. The power of existing
social structures is no less crucial than the capacity of individuals to make individual
choices. In this context, the term “manipulation” means merely the empirical fact that
people come up with personal and creative interpretations of existing symbolic systems.
The question of where precisely lie the limits of their freedom of interpretation can be
disregarded here.
3. Obviously, that religion is becoming more and more a matter for individual choice is
hardly an original statement. I merely refer to Peter Berger (1980) for the fundamental
point that, in contemporary western society, religion has become a subject of individual
choice rather than a matter-of-course dimension of the symbolism available in every-
day life, woven in the fabric of the common culture. We choose whether to become a
member of a religion or, if we are raised in one, whether to remain a member. Such a
religion may be a Christian church, but it may equally well be one of the innumerable
“new religious movements” which flourish in secular society. And of course any existing
(large or small) religion may spawn new spiritualities, some of which may in turn give
rise to yet other new religions. This is how all “religion” functions in a pluralist secular
society.
4. For a more detailed discussion, see Hanegraaff (1996: 406–410).
5. But there are occasional exceptions such as Ken Wilber, discussed in Hanegraaff
(1996: 176–181).
6. See my comparison between New Age and the Enlightenment perspective represent-
ed by the character of Settembrini in Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (Hanegraaff,
1998b). The relation between New Age and the Enlightenment is discussed in
Hanegraaff (1996: Ch. 15, Section 1, and passim).

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