I used to shy away from the description, “New Age.” But I have come to believe that is what my practice is, and what I want it to be. Let’s dissect what New Age means and where it is beneficial.
The term New Age is a reference to aeonic thinking. Crowley can be seen as popularizing this with his aeonic schema, declaring that with the Book of the Law we have entered the Aeon of Horus. An era dominated by a child-like perspective and freedom. Others have come up with other aeonic schemes, the most popular being the Age of Aquarius which is seen as a dawning of a new enlightenment. My own magical motto – Epizeteo Eschaton – is a call for a new aeon of universal peace and understanding. Utopian aeonists run the gambit from the reserved, who see aeons as an ever-evolving and slow-moving process, to the more liberal who proclaim the New Age is here and now.
I’m sure this isn’t really what you have in mind when you think of New Age. Most people think of crystal wielders and reiki masters that have an only skin deep understanding of metaphysical principles. I say, “so what?” This is always how folk spirituality has been practiced. Look at hoodoo and New Orleans style Voodoo, and you will see a mish-mash of beliefs that are much more felt than categorized and understood. This is witchcraft in its truest form. What it has always been, a practice of the people.
Many complain that this leads to play-acting and weak, unfocused practices. “Do those people really believe that you can go bibbity-bobbity and make things happen? Real magick takes work!” For me, the only hallmark of “real magick” is results. If they’re getting them easier than you are, then isn’t it your practice that needs revision? Admittedly, a lack of recording and analysis makes determining regularity of results difficult to judge. But did you even bother to ask?
I think that what people are truly afraid of is losing the control mechanisms built into structured magical systems. Most are at their heart, religious systems, polluted by institutions that have colluded with the aristocracy and made it their business to keep the masses in check. I myself have gone to great lengths to purge Kabbalah from my own magick. I see it as stemming from a servile, misogynistic, monotheistic culture. It is an extension of that culture. A culture that refuses the truth of duality and demands that sacred knowledge be kept only by men, old married men to be specific. I want no part of it.
The same thing goes for the misguided reconstructionists. Why would I want to recreate a religious practice from a horribly war-like and bloodthirsty people? It amazes me that people do not see that the religious practices are thoroughly intertwined with the values of the culture and they were used as a means to perpetuate them.
So good riddance. Welcome the New Age. New Age is non-dogmatic, humanist, and spiritually focused. It was born out of a peace and justice movement, which I believe we could use a little more of. In the end, very few have the focus and determination to practice ceremonial magick. Who cares? I do what I do and let them do what they do. It does not take away from my practice. In fact, there will be the few that are attracted to the more complex systems that I enjoy, through the gateway of New Age beliefs.
The argument that they will create some kind of “spiritual pollution,” by “toying with forces beyond their power,” is to me, a form of classism/racism. Of course they have their own methods for dealing with negative magical repercussions. Have you not seen the plethora of cleansing candles and sprays? JuJu bags to drive away bad luck and bad spirits? Is it that they are so unprincipled, or that you have no respect for methods that are not your own?
“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” Do as thou Will shall be the whole of the Law.”
I add to this, “Your path is your path. Do not belittle others for following theirs.”
– Scroll of Thoth