ABSTRACT
This book is an historical ethnography of ‘New Age’ spirituality in Anglo-American culture between the 1930s and the 1990s. My first contact with this polyvalent expression ‘New Age’was in the mid-1970s when I bought a second-hand copy of a book by Alice Bailey, grandly entitled A Treatise on Cosmic Fire. I remember the sombre, plain, midnight-blue jacket – the house style of the Bailey books – and the sheer bulk of the book. Although its 1,283 pages of text defeated me, I was intrigued to find in the endpapers the following invitation:
Training for new age discipleship is provided by the Arcane School. The principles of the Ageless Wisdom are presented through esoteric meditation, study and service as a way of life. [Emphasis in original]
Then in 1982, I was hitch-hiking to Southampton one evening to visit a friend when I met an older traveller, heading north. He told me his destination was Findhorn. I was surprised, for I knew Findhorn was at the other end of the British mainland and it seemed late in the day to be starting out so far. But the hitchhiker made light of this, confessing a long-standing attraction to Findhorn. ‘We’re all searching for something, aren’t we?’, he said, as we parted.
