о Нью-Эйдже и современном язычестве
О Нью-Эйдже и современном язычестве со мной заводят разговоры всё-таки в более подходящей обстановке. И могу вдоволь бороться со проблемой "Как сказать это словами через рот". Ну и на это тему я я больше читала статей, из которых можно спиздить слова для моих мыслей.
Например, есть такая штука: "Идеология и современная культура Нью Эйдж как кризис пост-христианской цивилизации" (больше о сходстве).
Но Рональд, свет, Хаттон и тут мне подкинул слов, фактов и идей (больше о различиях). По моему личному мнению, мировоззренческие позиций Нью-Эйджа и современного язычества практически взаимоисключающи.
Цитирование продолжается:
The Triumph of the Moon. A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, pp. 411-412
Can it [pagan witchcraft], then, be regarded as an integral part of the New Age Movement? Here there is a very clear division of viewpoint. Scholars who have specialized in studying the New Age have generally accepted Paganism, including witchcraft, to be an aspect of that movement.32 Those who have studied Paganism are insistent that it is not. In large part, this pattern merely reflects the views of the groups under study. I have myself met many New Agers who have considered pagan witchcraft to be a part of their movement; I have never yet encountered a pagan witch who did. There is a simple historical reason for according more credit to the latter view - that pagan witchcraft is a movement which
originated in the United Kingdom and attained its enduring form in the 1950s, and the New Age is one which attained its enduring form in the United States during the 1970s. The former therefore cannot possibly be an aspect or outgrowth of the latter, and what has happened is that the latter has to some extent attempted to appropriate the former. The big question that remains, therefore, is whether they are essentially similar phenomena, making a convergence and conjunction of them an easy matter.
Here the judgement of the scholars of British Paganism is clearly negative. Amy Simes has pointed out that Paganism in general is much more overtly religious and precisely defined than the New Age; that it emphasizes natural cycles, whereas New Agers emphasize karmic law and judgement; that it integrates plans of being within a concept of polarity, whereas they imply a hierarchy of planes with the spiritual one being superior; that it sees feminine as a divine force, while they see it as an inner self; and that it looks for links with the past, from which they cut themselves off. She agreed that British witches sometimes used the term ‘New Age’, but demonstrates that they did so in a different sense; to
signify a coming era, and not a current movement. Joanne Pearson’s critique has focused on the following characteristics of the New Age: that it is based on the premises that the modern world is not working and that rejection of that world is needed to create a better future; that it conceives of the physical world as inherently imperfect and representing a trapping of spirit in matter; that it perceives present existence to be marred by fragmentation, and humans as needing to seek wholeness as a part of their quest for perfection; that it locates authority wholly in the individual; that it suggests that specific courses of study or self-preparation need to be pursued for specific ends; and that therefore it regards people as free to draw any historical traditions which can assist them in the quest for transition to a better way of living. By contrast, the Wiccans whom she has studied cultivated a pragmatic middle way between acceptance and rejection of modernity. They treated perfection as an individual perception, aimed not to escape contemporary life but to enhance its positive aspects, and regarded matter and spitit as aspects of the same essential sanctity of the natural world. They accorded respect to deities and elders as well as to their own experience and initiation, and very much regarded
themselves as following a specific tradition.33
From my own research, it is clear that the two movements have some points of similarity and overlap. Both have drawn members from modern
countercultures, and both regard themselves as providing an enhancement of lifestyle, leading to better personal development and self-expression. I would also, however, endorse all the points of difference to which Simes and Pearson have drawn attention, and add to them. The New Age Movement is based largerly upon quest for common basis for world spirituality, while pagan witches tend to be instinctually pluralist and to stress the distinctive nature of their own religion and to accept that it is likely only to suit a minority in a world made up of many different faiths. As part of that eclecticism, the New Age draws far more wholeheartedly and explicitly upon both Eastern and Western concepts, pagan witchcraft being a Western tradition to which ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism are added only incidentally and marginally, and only in some groups. Despite its emphasis upon authority of the individual, the New Age is far more obviously built around guru figures and study courses. Pagan witches are much less likely to refer to ‘teachers’ or ‘guides’, and far more likely to value group dynamics. All told, the atmosphere of pagan witchcraft is much more practical and earthly than that of the New Age, with a stronger sense of history and weaker sense of the global context and of utopian ideals. One of the most celebrated claims of the New Age is that humans make their own reality; I have yet to meet a pagan witch who would agree. In essence, witchcraft is one of the religions upon which New Agers attempt to draw in their effort to create an ideal spirituality, but British witches do not generally collaborate in this process.
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32. Pre-eminently contributors to Perspectives of the New Age, eds J. R. Lewis and J. G. Melton (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992); and Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Michael York, The Emerging Network (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), associates the two without integrating them. Melton himself clearly distinguishes them in his Encyclopedic Handbook, as does Scott, Cult and Countercult/ On the other hand, the British government publication, Aspects of Britain: Religion (London: HMSO, 1992), lists Wicca only as a contribution to the New Age Movement.
33. Simes, ‘Contemporary Paganism’, 490-8; Joanne Pearson, ‘Assumed Affinities: Wicca and the New Age’, in Nature Religion Today, eds Joanne Pearson, Richard H. Roberts and Geoffrey Samuel (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 45-56.
Например, есть такая штука: "Идеология и современная культура Нью Эйдж как кризис пост-христианской цивилизации" (больше о сходстве).
Но Рональд, свет, Хаттон и тут мне подкинул слов, фактов и идей (больше о различиях). По моему личному мнению, мировоззренческие позиций Нью-Эйджа и современного язычества практически взаимоисключающи.
Цитирование продолжается:
The Triumph of the Moon. A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, pp. 411-412
Can it [pagan witchcraft], then, be regarded as an integral part of the New Age Movement? Here there is a very clear division of viewpoint. Scholars who have specialized in studying the New Age have generally accepted Paganism, including witchcraft, to be an aspect of that movement.32 Those who have studied Paganism are insistent that it is not. In large part, this pattern merely reflects the views of the groups under study. I have myself met many New Agers who have considered pagan witchcraft to be a part of their movement; I have never yet encountered a pagan witch who did. There is a simple historical reason for according more credit to the latter view - that pagan witchcraft is a movement which
originated in the United Kingdom and attained its enduring form in the 1950s, and the New Age is one which attained its enduring form in the United States during the 1970s. The former therefore cannot possibly be an aspect or outgrowth of the latter, and what has happened is that the latter has to some extent attempted to appropriate the former. The big question that remains, therefore, is whether they are essentially similar phenomena, making a convergence and conjunction of them an easy matter.
Here the judgement of the scholars of British Paganism is clearly negative. Amy Simes has pointed out that Paganism in general is much more overtly religious and precisely defined than the New Age; that it emphasizes natural cycles, whereas New Agers emphasize karmic law and judgement; that it integrates plans of being within a concept of polarity, whereas they imply a hierarchy of planes with the spiritual one being superior; that it sees feminine as a divine force, while they see it as an inner self; and that it looks for links with the past, from which they cut themselves off. She agreed that British witches sometimes used the term ‘New Age’, but demonstrates that they did so in a different sense; to
signify a coming era, and not a current movement. Joanne Pearson’s critique has focused on the following characteristics of the New Age: that it is based on the premises that the modern world is not working and that rejection of that world is needed to create a better future; that it conceives of the physical world as inherently imperfect and representing a trapping of spirit in matter; that it perceives present existence to be marred by fragmentation, and humans as needing to seek wholeness as a part of their quest for perfection; that it locates authority wholly in the individual; that it suggests that specific courses of study or self-preparation need to be pursued for specific ends; and that therefore it regards people as free to draw any historical traditions which can assist them in the quest for transition to a better way of living. By contrast, the Wiccans whom she has studied cultivated a pragmatic middle way between acceptance and rejection of modernity. They treated perfection as an individual perception, aimed not to escape contemporary life but to enhance its positive aspects, and regarded matter and spitit as aspects of the same essential sanctity of the natural world. They accorded respect to deities and elders as well as to their own experience and initiation, and very much regarded
themselves as following a specific tradition.33
From my own research, it is clear that the two movements have some points of similarity and overlap. Both have drawn members from modern
countercultures, and both regard themselves as providing an enhancement of lifestyle, leading to better personal development and self-expression. I would also, however, endorse all the points of difference to which Simes and Pearson have drawn attention, and add to them. The New Age Movement is based largerly upon quest for common basis for world spirituality, while pagan witches tend to be instinctually pluralist and to stress the distinctive nature of their own religion and to accept that it is likely only to suit a minority in a world made up of many different faiths. As part of that eclecticism, the New Age draws far more wholeheartedly and explicitly upon both Eastern and Western concepts, pagan witchcraft being a Western tradition to which ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism are added only incidentally and marginally, and only in some groups. Despite its emphasis upon authority of the individual, the New Age is far more obviously built around guru figures and study courses. Pagan witches are much less likely to refer to ‘teachers’ or ‘guides’, and far more likely to value group dynamics. All told, the atmosphere of pagan witchcraft is much more practical and earthly than that of the New Age, with a stronger sense of history and weaker sense of the global context and of utopian ideals. One of the most celebrated claims of the New Age is that humans make their own reality; I have yet to meet a pagan witch who would agree. In essence, witchcraft is one of the religions upon which New Agers attempt to draw in their effort to create an ideal spirituality, but British witches do not generally collaborate in this process.
-------------------------------------------------
32. Pre-eminently contributors to Perspectives of the New Age, eds J. R. Lewis and J. G. Melton (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992); and Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996). Michael York, The Emerging Network (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), associates the two without integrating them. Melton himself clearly distinguishes them in his Encyclopedic Handbook, as does Scott, Cult and Countercult/ On the other hand, the British government publication, Aspects of Britain: Religion (London: HMSO, 1992), lists Wicca only as a contribution to the New Age Movement.
33. Simes, ‘Contemporary Paganism’, 490-8; Joanne Pearson, ‘Assumed Affinities: Wicca and the New Age’, in Nature Religion Today, eds Joanne Pearson, Richard H. Roberts and Geoffrey Samuel (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 45-56.