NEW AGE MOVEMENT

movement that spread through the occult and metaphysical religious communities in the 1970s and '80s. It looked forward to a New Age of love and light and offered a foretaste of the coming era through personal transformation and healing. The movement's strongest supporters were followers of modern esotericism, a religious perspective that is based on the acquisition of mystical knowledge and that has been popular in the West since the 2nd century AD, especially in the form of Gnosticism. Ancient Gnosticism was succeeded by various esoteric movements through the centuries, including Rosicrucianism in the 17th century and Freemasonry, theosophy, and ritual magic in the 19th and 20th centuries. Additional reading J. Gordon Melton, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly, New Age Encyclopedia (1990), is a comprehensive overview of the movement. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (1996, reissued 1998); Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity (1996); and James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton (eds.), Perspectives on the New Age (1992), offer examinations of the cultural, historical, and spiritual aspects of the New Age movement.