Hello again. I apologize for taking so long to get another post up. Life takes time to live it. Other things and other people just won't let us live in a vacuum. And I'm thankful that they won't. Otherwise I probably would live in a little cabin in the forest of British Columbia. The trees grow so tall there you can hardly see the tops of them. Yep, just me and the critters.

This first installment is about the beginnings of the New Age Movement. At this point I don't know where in the book the different sections will go. I'm still researching. I may or may not used all the material I have written about the New Age Movement (NAM). I have written quite a bit about some of the beginning personalities of the NAM because I wanted to show the home life they came out of, and how some of that contributed to what I will call dysfunction later in life. So bear with me. Give me your honest feelings about what you read. I'm depending on feedback to help make those final decisions. The main one being, should I really try to publish this work.

I don't know that I would call it enjoyable reading. The material doesn't lend itself to enjoyment. Can one enjoy reading about the occult? I find it interesting, I don't know about enjoyable. I'm not writing this for my enjoyment at all. So, you be the judge.


The New Age Movement (NAM) happened over a period of time. I say “happened” because there is no distinct time in history when it began. Plus there is nothing new about it except the name. Ironic isn’t it: a new name for a bucket of old Satanic stuff. New Age teachings became so popular when they did in North America probably because of the failure of Secular Humanism to provide the needed spiritual and ethical guidance to keep the overall movement going.
The New Age Movement as we know it today is a mixture of Eastern mysticism, Secular Humanism, Spiritual Humanism, the occult and every evil act that falls from their tables. It resembles a mother chicken with a flock of chicks under its wings.
To get some idea where the NAM came from, it is important to have some sense of its historical roots. Occultism and Eastern mysticism in the West reach back as far as one cares to go. 112..21
Transcendentalism. English translations of Oriental scriptures began to show up among the American public early in the nineteenth century. Shapers of American culture, particularly literary men and women, artists, and philosophers, were taken by the wisdom of the East. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalism’s brightest lights, are good examples. In their hands, or, from their pens, the East came to America. They borrowed what suited them and did their best to Americanize it. Thoreau and Emerson were the forerunners of those who now compose the NAM in America. 112..21
Two popular alternative-reality traditions, Spiritualism and New Thought, were also products of the 1800s. Spiritualism is communicating with departed spirits. Those occults who do it say they are trying to prove the reality of the unseen world and humanity’s immortality. Yeah, okay. 112..21-22
The influence of Spiritualism encouraged the scientific investigation of the psychic and paranormal: the ability to read minds, travel out of the body, bend spoons with thought, walk over burning coals, and so forth. Spiritualists saw these proceedings as signs that pointed to humanity’s capacities for re-creation. They actually thought it was possible for humanity to fashion the new man with his own hands, as God did with Adam. 112..22
From the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), the NAM adopted the tool of trance. Mesmer suggested that trance states could be used for healing, using a current of energy that passed from healer to patient. He called his discovery “animal magnetism”. 112..22
Mesmer was a key player in the nineteenth-century occult renaissance. He gave us the word mesmerism. The evolution of Mesmer’s ideas and practices led James Braid (1795-1860) to develop hypnosis in 1842.
Phineas Quimby, an American psychic healer, suggested that it was not animal magnetism that healed, but powers of the mind. Mary Baker Eddy agreed with Quimby’s views. Eddy was the founder of Christian Science, and other mind-science organizations. The power-of-positive thinking movement also grew out of the New Thought influence. Terry Cole-Whittaker, the priestess of prosperity, comes directly from the New Thought tradition. 112..22
New Thought’s premise behind its emphasis on the mind’s power is: all that exists is the Mind of God, which is in the mind of men. Man’s mental orientation produces his own circumstances. For instance, poverty is only a state of mind, not real at all. And prosperity is only a “right thought” away. This is why Terry Cole-Whittaker could say, “You can have exactly what you want, when you want it, all the time” [Terry Cole-Whittaker, How to Have More in a Have-not World (Fawcett Crest, 1983). 112..22-23
The New Age Movement, — or cult, as it is properly designated –— sort of rolled out of the Theosophical Society, another strain of occultism. {112..23} The Theosophical Society was founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) in the latter part of the 19th century. Blavatsky promoted spiritism, seances, and basic Hindu philosophy. From the beginning she was antagonistic toward Christianity. 18-408
Blavatsky was born in Russia around 1831. Her father, Peter von Hahn was an officer in the Russian army. Shortly after he married Helena Andreyevna, a novelist, he was called into war and Helena returned to her parent’s home when little Helena was born. She died when Helena was twelve.
Legend has it that on the night of her birth servants carried Helena around the house and stables while sprinkling holy water on her and repeating magical incantations to appease the
domovoy, a goblin. This goblin lived behind the stove and played tricks on the household when he wasn’t happy. Every house had one.
Little Helena grew from a sickly baby into a problem child, subjected to hysteria and convulsions. She displayed neurotic behavior by walking and talking in her sleep at four, exhibiting morbid tendencies, and loving the weird and fantastic. She was cared for by servants who believed in many of the superstitions of Old Russia, and apparently encouraged her to believe that she had supernatural powers. As a child she talked about a phantom that formed a shield of protection around her. Blavatsky was indeed an exceptional storyteller, so good that she could make a story appear so real that her playmates would hallucinate listening to her.
It wasn’t that the servants thought that Helena was special, she actually showed it. She recalled later that family members noticed her “abnormalities” and they had her exorcised many times, but the rituals had no affect. Even scolding and punishments failed to change her outrageous behavior. Naturally she didn’t change as a child because she was enjoying all the attention she was getting. She thought she was powerful, even invulnerable, and believed that supernatural forces would carry out her wishes. This belief permeated her entire life.
Her only happy childhood memories were between six and twelve in her father’s army camps. She was petted and spoiled as the enfant du regiment. While being pampered she managed to pick up a little knowledge about shamans and magic which she put to good use later in life.

We will continue with more of Blavatsky next time. She was quite a woman.