ABSTRACT
In this book I have reconstructed the genealogy of a multivalent emblem,‘New Age’,within interconnected networks of ‘alternative’ spirituality from the 1930s to the 1990s. In the first part, called ‘Emblem’, I examined Peter Caddy’s career in the Rosicrucian Order, the activities of Sheena Govan’s group and the early years of the Findhorn settlement. I found evidence of other networks active in England, New Zealand and the US in the late 1950s and early 1960s – George Trevelyan, the Heralds of the New Age, the North American ‘subculture’ delineated by David Spangler – for whom ‘New Age’ was an apocalyptic emblem within a cocktail of occult, psychic and spiritualistic ideas and practices. In this early period the expression had objective historical status among communicants: a ‘New Age’ was imminent, its apocalyptic harbingers were on the horizon and groups had to prepare themselves spiritually in response.
