The Problem With Our Problem With New Age
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
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New Age = Folk Magic. It's a practice that is accessible to the people. When you look at the history of the Western Esoteric Tradition, it is cycles of folk magic influencing the establishment, them taking it and making it inaccessible, and the folk practitioners taking it back and making it available for the lower classes.
No. New age is rooted 8n commercialism, 19th century romanticism and apropiated eastern religions
Actually it originated from the positive thinking movement within American Protestant Christianity. Then it became an umbrella for which eastern thinking people became homogenized into this movement. To say it appropriated eastern religions is a joke. People from eastern religions came and joined with the movement.
That is probably true but it is not the whole story.
The biggest problem I have with New Age is best illustrated with a story: I got to know a guy who is very into New Age stuff. He *labels himself* as a shaman, which is a big no-no where I come from. That is firstly an appropriated and insensitive term to be using (I think), and secondly, a societal "status" that is given to you by your peers because of your contributions to the community. He is "learning to be a shaman" from a school that, upon doing some research, has been critiqued from multiple directions for being an appropriation of Native American indigenous cultures. I am from Hålogaland in Norway, where we have a very long and messy history of Norse-Sámi intermingling, and Sámi erasure. This guy I got to know grew up down south, but he's got a lot of family from Finnmark. And I'm just left thinking... why *on earth* would you appropriate Native American indigenous cultures, when you can instead revive your own Sámi indigenous noaidi practices?! Why appropriate and enforce oppression of another indigenous culture when you can instead fight against the oppression of your own indigenous culture? And how can you do that and still call yourself "a shaman" in good conscience? No. Nope. It does not make sense.
When New Age people claim to be "spiritually awakened" while appropriating practices from oppressed people, or furthering the oppression of marginalized people, or actively contributing to species extinction and the destruction of the Earth (White Sage and crystals, need I say more?), which is something I see *a lot* of... then something's not right. The cognitive dissonance is too big.
This makes me emotional and upset, clouding my rational thinking, so I'm unable to extract some kind of simplified more general critique from this story. Perhaps someone else can help me out.
The trend that bothers me the most is that of young white people who are able and capable of holding a job, who charge exuberant amounts of money for spiritual services. Capitalizing on "expertise" that I don't believe they have yet, when there are other options available to them of having their financial needs met. This probably stems from me growing up in a culture where charging money for performing healing arts on someone else is seen as taboo, and where spiritual healers are mostly elderly people with decades of experience who offer their services for free, in a hush-hush way. The only way of getting their help is by having word-of-mouth reference; a relative telling you "hey, I know this person who can help, here's their number", and you call them, and they help you. I suspect this hush-hush tendency is a remnant of the persecution of Sámi people in my area; we've had to keep quiet about these things in order to survive.
To summarize, I think my own issues with the New Age movement are mostly that: my own issues. I think you bring up a lot of good and valid points in this video, and I'm thankful you've made it! :)
At some point none of it matters.
Thank you for mentioning the commercialization of spirituality. On one hand, its often practitioners trying to make a living within their interests, other times its businessfolk preying on the trend. On the other hand, most of the things on offer generally are not needed for the practice in question, unless you want to build the prettiest altar for Instagram with your shelves full of esoteric books in the background. It distracts from the point.
Most of my friends who are new-age types seem to point to the 1999 movie 'The Matrix' as the catalyst for starting down that path. They say it got them thinking about how there is a reality that is hidden from us by the overlords of our society but they can access it through their rituals and meditation etc.
interesting! Yes, indeed the movie has had a similar impact on me, but before I also found myself inspired with terms like "Reality Creation" and ... whatever that meant to me those days: Metaphysics. And I also was a late victim of the so called human potential movement.
Who are these "overlords"
Rune, I've been watching for years, and I've finally started making my own videos! I made one yesterday talking about witchcraft and witchery, and how it ties to Seidr. But I ALSO, praised new age paganism and movements, especially for being female dominant. There seems to be some bond women have with the spiritual, and they lead the charge on new age paganism, witchcraft, etc. I think a lot of criticism of it is misogynistic as well, not always, but often. Love your work Rune, just letting you know you inspired my spirituality, and my creative process 😁
There is so much to this! it´s really about the keys to unlock our spirituality on to life itself.
One of the most important problems with New Age, I think, is that people come from a place where the fundamental concept of sacredness deos not exist. Modern Westerns only know about holiness, which of course comes from the other, separating tradition that puts thing on a piedestal. As they don´t understand the much more horizontal concept sacredness, where the sacred thing - the child, the fire, the sweatlodge etc - exists in the same plan as we do and not in a higher ideal world, they also haven´t learned about respect. To them, respect is connected with fear, and blasfemy is a way of tearing down oppressive vertical structures. But in the animistic spiritual universe there is no authority to be afraid of or to oppose, the centre of the right ways, is the sacred. You show it respect by not invading it, by not cross horizontal lines, not by bend your back in front of it. This is a fundamental concept, I think, that New Age just tend to get wrong, and the consecuencies are horrible. Without the sound concept of respect and sacredness we end up violating other cultures, as you mention in the video. And we don´t learn to contend ourselves, there is no discipline, we become rebellious children that do whatever we want, believing that we are liberating ourselves from a patriarcal God existing in a vertical, hierarchical reality. Also most New Age-people are rebels and don´t understand that when they enter a new, horizontal spiritual space they must stop acting as a rebel and start to behave constructively, to build.
As a sidnote, for us as Scandinavians, it's also strange to note that we don´t even have a world for sacredness. The word "helig" has a double meaning, but tend to lean more towards the vertical understanding of spirituality.
6:30 Hey, Rune! Feminist woman here. I'll say something down here, maybe some other feminists can hop in and we can have a back-and-forth down here. :p
A major problem I have with the New Age stuff that I've encountered is that a considerable number of men in a lot of these hippy, 'New Age' spaces use this sort of 'love and light' rhetoric to run cover for behaviours they exhibit that could be termed 'abusive' in many cases. "Positive vibes" are a great rhetorical weapon to pull out when your girlfriend is mad at you for being shitty (or even abusive) towards her in order to shut down her complaints. "I know I hit you last night, but you're *totally* bringing the vibe down by being mad about it" kind of thing. Happens enough to make me wary of most hippies despite being one myself, lol
I do think that your follower who made that comment about "New Age" being a female-coded thing had a good point. I actually watched a video a while back that made a similar point, which was the video on Manifestation from Let's Talk Religion. If you haven't watched it yet, I think you may like it, judging from what I've seen of your work.
Thanks for this. Women being better at trance states is seen in many contexts. Though I don't address it I very much recommend my video on "the phallus and the wild goddess"
There is a lot of toxic 'feel good positivity' in many New Age folks I've run across.
I think my problem with new age is needing a definition- an explanation- and distancing. Growing up in Alabama and North America I had to constantly Define what was different and then distant myself from it. Because there's always something different about me and I was constantly have to standing up for myself and people like me. So when I see a lot of people describing themselves as new agers and their appropriating and generally adding it to their version of Christianity. And then claiming that their way is the true way and everybody else is a devil worshiper. Or putting out false information. For example one new Ager said that Thor was the god of fire and had a red in black dragon that he rode around on. Another example with saying that manifestation was the pagans way of manifesting the devil. But you can still do what she called Magic and all the Appropriations she did from Buddhism but only if you did it her way. And that was generally through "God". I just never want to be associated with people like that so I didn't see them from me like they were something completely different. In a way they are. But just because they're around using the term new age does it mean that all new agers are like that.
…also, many people in America have mixed roots from all over the place. The adaptations of New Age or eclectic practices makes sense because it incorporates the values/traditions of all their ancestors into a new way.
Look, at the end of the day, the smug sense of enlightenment from New Age people interferes with my own smug sense of enlightenment.
Got me there Bro! :-D
@NordicAnimism seriously, though, thank you for the insight. I have done a loooot of thinking and growing since I started following.
Before you even began speaking my first thought as to why New Age is so despised was: because its female dominated. So thanks for voicing that. Many aspects of new age are absolutely problematic at times but the thing I like about it as a movement (and another reason it's despised) is that it's accessible to the uneducated. Its only in the past few decades that regular (non higher education) folks have been able to educate themselves thoroughly on such a variety of topics with information from scholars and thinkers all over the world. How could I have taught myself about queer identities, colonisation from the perspective of the colonised, history of the esoteric using the gOvErNmEnT ApPrOvEd volumes in my small town library pre-internet? But my mate can do me a tarot reading, and we can crack open a few tinnies and marvel together that when we cut the deck to ask the universe a question, it turns to look at us and gives us an answer
Rune, I'm 76 years old. I never defined myself as "New Age" and neither did my friends. We were just living our lives and working and hoping for a better world! Yes, we were aware of the various winds of change swirling around us. Like a smorgasbord we would taste but not allow it to define us! Others may have made the leap to one form or another! Anyway, Thanks for your take on the phenomenon! I guess it is still playing itself out in this current generation! Peace and Love and all best wishes for 2024.Edit: btw enjoy the colour of youth! My hair was as red as yours. Now I'm mistaken for old Nick! lol
This grounded assessment is putting to words a critique of the online discourse , and the signaling. This helps me in my own thinking and I’m going to watch these two videos again to absorb these thoughts. Thank you
This is great. It's a subject that has been on my mind alot. The idea of relation cosmology and how much our culture reinforces dualism. "It's either this or it's that."Being a person who has always seen clear relationships in nature and between different subjects, I struggle greatly with the paradigm of dualism. At University, I saw the connections between Environmental Geography, Medieval Studies, Folklore, and Scandinavian Studies, but I had to choose, of course.
And I do think there can be a gender dominated aspect to this way of thinking. Indigenous peoples in our country had systems of equality in place wherein women were central to the function of society and politics. That was decimated through 400 years of colonial domination. But it still lives! I have recently learned about the Thanksgiving Address of the Haudenosaunee nation of the Eastern side of our country: an agreement between peoples and all other relations that is recited in schools and in ceremony. What would our culture look like if we adopted this wonderful agreement of reciprocal existence? To honor and uphold the responsibility humans have of extending reciprocity? Sigh...a girl can dream....
Thank you for your knowledge. 🙏
Just a note: pendulums and the art of dowsing has been around for a millennia some reported on cave wall paintings in a massive system of caverns known as the Tassili Cavesas 8,000 years old. So using pendulums or L-rods for dowsing is certainly not new age, but some of the ways dowsing is being used may very well be new age. But what exactly is it? raising your awareness, intention, and ability to interpret your bodies reaction to the energies around you. Cause that's how it works. Sound familiar? This is being done in so many ways by so many different names for so many reasons. People always had to find water. Dowsing was also used for locating ley lines, power places. it was used for finding lost things, and location copper, other metals, or really whatever you needed to look for. As far as Radionic or dowsing used for healing, doing dream work, opening portals, measuring anything, kinesiology for checking which vitamins, minerals, foods, or anything whether or not it would be good for you is also not new age. It's also used in gardening, soil testing, allergy clearing. And, it works. it did become popular amongst new age-ists but they didn't invent it and that's not where it originated from. But instead of rewriting something that already exists, if you are interested in the history of dowsing this is a good place to start... dowsers.org/dowsing-history/
Love this path of Counter-Education… 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
It can be overwhelmingly discouraging when the ignorant, arrogant, and commercial aspects of new age are so dominant. Even people who agree those are problems often don’t want to be associated with criticizing it. The critic is judged as the troublemaker. Does there come a point where the patients are running the asylum?
Loving the wisdom ! Having a good time listening in.
As a Gaelic animist you make lotsa good points. Thanks for making me think and feel and face my own prejudices. great work!
I like that you mention focusing on specific problems rather than making lots of general statements and criticisms. Agree!
One of my issues about the New Age is that they rename old practices, my best guess is to differentiate themselves from witches and or pagans/neopagans, and possibly rooted from "we don't want to be associated with that stuff". Kind of like how Wicca started off. The Gender argument somewhat makes sense because archtypally the Feminine is receptive, free flowing, intuitive, like she is in the High Priestess card while Masculine is projective, rigid, logical like the Hierophant, he is conforming to a planned out doctrine. Over the past 4ish years I have been trying my best to deconstruct my spiritual/magickal practices to try and find there origin. That goes for etymological origins as well, I have a mild interest in etymology....it's another way to find/add depth. I like that you mentioned consumerism, I also think the "products" should be harvested(?), made and sold by actual practitioners.
💫
Thank you!
Very interesting and informative 😮 loved the video!
There is some truth to this but not like what they told us. A lot of nonsense.
i really appreciate your open skepticism! i grew up in a fundamentalist christian sect that was all about the denigrating of new age (among many other things). but open skepticism led me out, question by question as i saw the incompatible relationship between the teachings of the Christ and things like neoplatonism and cartesian materialism. i had to humble myself and approach new age stuff with a beginner's mind, slowly understanding how and what to deconstruct and what could guide me into ancestral wisdom.
Question: What do anti-nationalists think and would do about people invading your lands and taking your homes and resources? How do you rationalize when to push back?
I address this question in this place:
ruclips.net/video/AV3l3yzbSNI/видео.html