Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00858)

Theosophy and the New Age are clearly a kind of socio-cultural 
phenomenon, a kind of self-organising system in itself. There have been 
some valuable attempts to analyse the nature of that system. One of 
them, Wouter Hanegraaff's, focusses on the content of New Age ideas, 
in order to establish its lineage and coherence and value. Another 
student of the phenomenon, Michael York, interestingly treats the New 
Age as itself a kind of emergent phenomenon, an "emerging network" of 
beliefs, values and practices - though he keeps the content of New Age 
thinking about such phenomena rigorously separate from its own, drily 
functionalist description. David Hess brings a cultural-anthropological 
viewpoint to bear, and impressively adds cultural and political factors to 
his study of the dynamics of the three cultures of science, New ge 
thought and the paranormal, in his 1993 book Science in the New Age. 
His model emphasises the cooperations and collusions as well as the 
hostilities between these three cultures. He believes it to be necessary 
to develop an inwardness with the way each culture sees itself and its 
adversaries. In order to grasp the complexity of the dynamics involved, 
he says, "we need to ask how the paranormal looks to those who 
embrace it" (For further details on these interresting books see Amazon)
Bri.