Neo-Pagan is Not New Age

Posted on July 23, 2004 in Myths & Mysticism

When I use the term “New Age” I do not make the mistake of many journalists and New Agers of including other “new religions” such as the Neo Pagan movement. New Agers themselves want to co-opt these new movements just as they want to co-opt Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, occultism, and many other religions. I see New Age as a fundamentally imperialist movement, similar to later Roman state religion, where the conquerers expropriated the mythologies of the conquered. Neo-Paganism, on the other hand, is a sincere attempt to reconstruct northern European traditions which disappeared, first with the incursion of the Roman Empire, and later with the rise of Christianity in that region.

As I understand it, Neo-Paganism seeks, among other things, to promote harmony with the environment, which includes other people. Though the movement has its share of flakes with materialist impulses like the buying and selling of raccoon penis bones, most of the neo-pagans who I know sincerely seek to develop a great religious tradition. Neo-Pagans appear to have a Jungian focus: it’s not unusual to find ones who will tell you that the “gods” are actually mythologizations of the cosmos, in line with Jungian archetypes. There is also not the desire for power that you see in the New Agers or the insistance that their movement is “scientific”. Many participate for the love of the nature and the beauty of the ritual.

I have no problem with that. I get on fine with Neo-Pagans.

New Agers, on the other hand, are a peculiarly capitalist/materialist religion. They routinely steal anything which looks to them as if it will be useful in their attempts to “synthesize” a “new” religion. Ronald Reagan stands as a premier example of a New Ager: cloaking himself in a cunning optimism that talks about new ideals while actually promoting very old fashioned Greed. New Agers hunger for fame and recognition that they represent “the cutting edge”; much of their “theologizing” is little more than a bald attempt to style themselves as intellectual and spiritual powers. Foucault would have been impressed.

I often hear similar stories from New Agers: “Oh, I was a teacher. Or I was a hippie. Or I worked in the Peace Corps. But then I found this.” In other words, they entered these professions hoping for fame, found that it was not forthcoming, and chased hungrily off for something else such as a career in sales, management, corporate law, or channeling.

I reject the New Age as anti-spiritual, materialist, and lacking in the central themes of compassion which I find in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Neo-Paganism (as well as elsewhere). I reject its materialism. I reject its emphasis on “gurus” who can lead you to higher consciousness. It is like so many other twentieth century reformulations of religion in that it does everything it can to avoid commitment to any sort of nonmaterialist lifestyle by claiming that it can deliver the goods (literally). It stands as a kind of Fundamentalism, claiming to be founded on first principles while actually striving to avoid living the New Testament, the Four Noble Truths, and just plain old fashioned love and kindness towards one’s fellow human beings. “We know what is best for you” is the message that New Agers bear, which makes them little different from ecclesiasts and eastern gurus who depend on the unquestioning loyalty of their followers. It takes magical thinking (which is not the same as spirituality), coats it thickly with snake oil, and rolls it past the powerful in the hope that some of the flies will stick. It’s obsession with linking itself to the powerful betrays it as a fascist movement and, to achieve its end of “influence” it is not above selling out.

It is for these reasons that I reject the New Age.

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For some of the experience behind my feelings, this article tells of my enounter with “a gura”.