Talk:New Age/Archive 6

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archived section of partial discussion as left previously on main page

quoting intro "The term New Age describes a broad movement of late twentieth century and contemporary Western culture, characterised by an individual eclectic approach to spiritual exploration. Collectively, New Age has some attributes of an emergent religion, but is currently a loose network of spiritual teachers, healers, and seekers." Seems to me its important to adequately represent the broad and "loose network" of teachers, beliefs, orientations, etc. Ginar 00:03, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Returning to pre-Lumos version, which was clearer and more representative of actual New Age beliefs (as opposed to CSICOP). 19 March 2005

Vandalism

I have reverted the following edits made by Mew Xacata

>>>*Givne the New Age is athe religion of Manna, into which is based upon the pantheon of Wicca, it must be advised that the adherents of the religion tend to deny its own existience or the existience as an "underground" movement. Fortunately, that is an attribute that only a religion can profess, since only a religion can recognize another religion, therefore only a religion cna deny another religion, especially the denial of itself. Not only has the New Age religion of Manna denied its own existience, but there are youth in the religion that condemn it as a threat to Christianity or at least a world conspiracy. Of course, the denial cannot last forever, for the denial is based upon aquarian matrix, since it is based upon an entire pantheon and thus being part of anime. Just as an angel would deny his own existience, both the tExas Vertican and the reliigon of Manna would deny their dientities, ususally based upon the reality of politics.*<<<

Obvious trash, no need to explain why I removed it.

Is anyone interested in the following article nominated for deletion?

Looking for participants in the the discussion of List of religions once classed as cults 24.87.87.211 14:26, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

New Age/Revised Article - Deletion

• Hi there! Could someone inform me please what the deal is with New Age/Revised? Is that rewrite still valid? Or already incorporated? Or rejected for some reason? In the latter case, VfD'ing may be appropriate. Yours, Radiant_* 13:22, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

This article is a fork from the New Age article and was created after a major rewrite was attempted by an anonymous user which removed lot of existing good work. As I recall the rewrite itself had a lot of useful things in it and the "Revised version" was creatred as a place to keep them visible while they were incorporated into the main article. I believe this is now complete and the "Revised" fork should now be deleted. Lumos3 21:37, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have begun marking New Age/Revised for deletion. If anyone disagrees please comment here or on that article's discussion page. Lumos3 14:40, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The "fork" was a good idea, to avoid edit wars as well as to allow the anonymous user to have a visible sandbox. It may have served its purpose by now. The main article is OK ;-) I still need to get some NPOV New Age spin going for NA use of crystals. I use them but this would be a POV article, then. BF 22:31, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Merger with New Thought Movement

The New Thought Movement describes some movements that originated in the USA in the late 19th century. Some of which may now be described by some people as new age and others not. The New Age is the name of a late 20th century movement. There is no question they should be merged in my mind. Lumos3 21:36, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Crystals

There is a link to Crystals - but that leads to a mainstream physics/chemistry type article. It isn't really clear what the New Age connection to crystals is. Maybe someone could add a page for this?

New agers like crystals because they're pretty and shiny. Just like the newage "philosophies". Hope that helps.

I'll try to help out on this request. I removed the wiki link on crystals. BF 22:49, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comments - snake bites its tail

I have a problem with the introduction, once again. Over the life of this article everyone who showed an interest always changed the introduction! And the reason they did was, everyone writes differently. When we introduce a topic of length, the author(s)' style starts to smooth out everything for readability. I haven't said anything, really, since it seems petty to complain about "how" the article reads.

However, unless I am misreading, as the intro is now it shows a subtle shift that I don't like.

• The movement is most visible where its ideas are traded, in specialist bookshops, music stores and fairs.

There is no movement, period. It was once upon a time... as I wrote 3 years ago: the New Age silently, without any fanfare, changed western culture... one would think it had become the mainstream!(paraphrased). Generally, yes! Exchanging ideas(which is a better way to state the point than 'ideas are traded') is one way to make the individual visible to someone else.

• Typical activities of this subculture include participation in study or meditation groups, attendance at lectures and fairs; the purchase of books, music, and other products such as crystals or incense; patronage of fortune-tellers, healers and spiritual counselors.

These activities are not just New Age identifiers. Millions of people engage in them and the second half of the sentence after the semicolon is a misleading nonsequitur, and also grammatically incorrect. Teenagers buy music and incense, and other different age brackets do too. Does this imply there could be a teen subculture too? And if so, are some teens picking up the already-in-place New Age lifestyle from their parents? Healers and spiritual counselors are not specifically New Age derivative. They might appear to be, by those who live in a vault.

I have not decided if I want to clean the junk out of this article yet. It's tantalizing, but for now I watch it grow in size, and see the snake biting its own tail. BF 23:12, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

How do you "clean the junk" out of an article about junk? This article is already far more attention than this topic has ever deserved.

This is Wikipedia. The Encylopedia that anyone can edit. Emphasis on anyone. Anyone can just waltz right in, put their beliefs and ideas in, and then waltz right out. This is great when the beliefs are fact, and you can see things right in front of you, but when they require faith and ignoring whatever doesn't correspond with a selected worldview... you can imagine what happeneds.--Planetary 05:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Calling the subject "junk," O Anonymous One, is not only highly POV, it's downright inflammatory. Frankly, I dismiss a lot of the so-called "Newage" myself, but I also have the basic courtesy to recognize that many of the "New Age" beliefs are very important to their adherents. Let's face it, anything that isn't hard science will be held by some to be "junk," and whatever attention it gets considered "more than this topic has ever deserved." New Age beliefs and practices are a multimillion-dollar industry, so from that angle alone the New Age is worth attention. These beliefs are as relevant and valid as any other religious or spiritual beliefs. If you think the subject is not worth your valuable time and attention, then just ignore it. "If you don't like it, you can't have any."

Septegram 02:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

A few comments

I'm the "anonymous user" who did that forked version. Yeah, feel free to delete it.

I cleaned up some stuff today, mainly by moving things around. The biggest problem with the way it was before was, it wasn't clear. (Who what when where why?) And then there was a lot of overlap / duplication. Still is, actually--maybe somebody else wants to have a go.

On the lifestyle stuff (books, crystals, fairs, etc.) I think this is very important. What do New Agers do? How do we know that they exist? Even if other people do many of the same things, it's still good to let people know that we're not (necessarily) talking about, for instance, a bunch of people who go to church on Sunday, or bite the heads off of chickens under the full moon, etc..

"Movement" needn't imply that they all agree with each other or anything. For instance, we habitually speak of the "anti-war movement" or the "civil rights movement". The fact that outsiders see them as part of one broad group is enough to qualify, no?

Deleted the fork

I've deleted the fork under New age/revised. If anybody has any objections, drop in at my talk page. -- Sundar (talk · contributions) 09:48, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

New Age/Nazi Links

Sorry - I'm very new to the whole (wonderful) Wikipedia phenomenon, so i don't know if this is the appropriate place to ask this, but would it be possible for anyone with the relevant expertise to add information about the links between early New Ageism and Nazism to the New Age pages? Thanks.

• If you have information that can be referenced then just add it to the article , the Wikipedia maxim is " Be bold". If you are still unsure , add it to the discussion page first and a debate can take place there. Lumos3 08:28, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

There's a site for Nazi mysticism. I would be very wary of calling it "New Agism", though I did link to it from the esotericism entry. One problem is that the New Age as we know it came from English-speakers during the 1970's, and then spread to other countries (where it synergized with remnants of earlier esoteric movements). Another is that if you hang around New Agers, Nazis are the last thing they will remind you of (I think). Of course there are some common themes (such as exaltation of nature and pre-Christian mythology).

By all means, add a link if you feel strongly about the issue. Be aware however that a Christian anti-New Age polemic called "Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow" made much of the Nazi connection. It speculated that New Agers were all in a conspiracy (a real one, not just "breathing together" as Marilyn Ferguson pointed out its etymology was) to bring about a worldwide dictatorship headed, if memory serves, by the Beast of Revelation.

Thanks for your help - I'll check out the mysticism and esotericism links.

Re: adding anything myself, I only have 'net access at work, so unfortunately this is not possible time-wise at the moment. But thanks again for helping me in my research.

PS - why does my text flow on from the previous entry, and give no reference to my name/time/date (like this: Lumos3 08:28, 22 July 2005), please?

Just add four tilds thus ~ after an entry and the Wiki will convert this into a signature and timestamp. Only do this on a discussion page. Articles are not owned by any individual are only tracked by their history. Lumos3 12:30, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks.Easy Peez 13:46, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

New Age Wikipedians

I have started a User category for users of Wikipedia who are interested in or practise New Age concepts. If you want to be included add the following to your User page, where xxxx is your user name.

[[Category:New Age Wikipedians|xxxx]] 

Lumos3 18:03, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Earth Changes delete

Hey, would you people care to give your opinion about Earth changes? The article is about to be deleted: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Earth_changes Subramanian ^talk

Anon 24.108.231.21 comment

Anon 24.108.231.21 added this to the article , moved here. This article speaks to the term "New Age" as a phenomena of the 20th century. The term is actually derived from awareness of the ages as measured by the precession of the Equinox. It is an astrological term and was popularized by the awareness of the coming age of Aquarius as spoken of in the popular song New Age of Aquarius which begins "It's the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.." We are currently in the age of Pisces, so when we speak of the age of Aquarius, we say "new" and "age". What is in this article is the popular conception of what the term means, without understanding of its astrological roots. New Age of Aquarius Lumos3 17:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Title of Article

It should be called "New Age Movement" not "New Age". "New Age" is an astrological reference referring to the coming age as measured by the precession of the Vernal Equinox(es). anon

I would oppose any change. The term New Age is in common use for the movement as a whole. The Age of Aquarius already has an article and this article can easily reference that one. Lumos3 11:24, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

External links section

This article has a categorised set of external links supporting the diverse points of view. Whilst I don’t claim this list is perfect the deletion to a bare uncategorised dozen links by user User:Aaron Brenneman does not conform to the guidelines set out in Wikipedia:External links and takes away much that is useful to the reader. Lumos3 23:52, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

This is the edit in question. It maintains a selection of the major views, pro and con, and avoids linkkfarming per WP:NOT. Only links that were clearly inappropiate were removed. - brenneman^(t)(c) 00:29, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

That is your view, as I said I think you have been over enthusiastic here. Lumos3 09:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I endorse Aaron's action, and have reverted the restoration of the links. Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. And blatantly calling Scientology a cult is not NPOV. User:Zoe|^(talk) 00:26, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

You missed the word "mere" from the above quotation. Wikipedia is not a mere mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. This is crucial . A page which is only links or to which the Links section is over large for its size is not acceptable. The New Age article is extensive and needs to be held in a context so that users can verify what it says. I am not claiming that every link is necessary, only that we need a well developed External links section to allow the reader to explore what is a current phenomenon. I shall be restoring it in some form. Lumos3 09:29, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

And you missed the part that says, There is nothing wrong with adding a list of content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. User:Zoe|^(talk) 19:48, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I have reformatted the External links section in the manner used in the Astrology article. I feel this is a good compromise as it reduces the amount of space taken up by the section and so achieves a better balance but still allows plenty of structure to be included. Some featured articles have had extensive External links sections , see Dinosaur and Java programming language so the Wikipedia policy is not so clear cut as you say. This section still needs a lot of weeding and more explanations to be added. Lumos3 00:02, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Deletion of External links - Personal websites by individuals

User:DreamGuy has deleted this section saying its only spam. In fact the contribution of individuals to New Age thought is significant and is the reason it is different to other forms of spirituality. Individuals form their own mix of belief, theology , spirituality within the overall umbrella name of New Age. A limited section showing a few examples (say 10) of the best of these is necessary in an encyclopaedia to illustrate this phenomenon. I will be restoring the section with an explanation of why its there. Comments please. Lumos3 13:04, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Conforming to the guideline

I've again trimmed this section to conform to the guideline. Some highlight: Links to notable figures in the movement are not appropiate. Their articles can be linked from the text or via a category, and there can be an external link in the parent article. Not here. Sections on criticism should have only the most well-known examples. There should be no links to "providers" of any sort. If there are links that someone beleives should be included, please bring the here first. - brenneman ^{L} 03:35, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I have restored the external links section to the version 55360269. The deletion of them by User:Aaron Brenneman interprets the Wikipedia:External links policy too harshly. Many links here will form the basis for the citations in this article. Lumos3 19:07, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Sweet mother of Abraham Lincon that's a lot of links ;) Links should be used to support content in the article, and provide further reading of content which cannot be integrated into Wikipedia.

This means the number of links should be fairly few in number.

Sfacets 12:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Defence of extended External links section

An article like this which is about a Movement and not a single well defined subject will have a larger number of links than most. There is no single entitity called the New Age and the links reflect and illustrate the range of diversity in the Movement. There is precedent for this in other articles of a similar nature which have reached Featured status. Lumos3 07:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Three users have trimmed this section. That should give some indication that perhaps it doesn't belong. - brenneman ^{L} 12:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Nandesuka 15:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

No one has expained why this article should have few links but some featured articles have many, see Bahá'í Faith , Black hole, Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, J. R. R. Tolkien, Plate tectonics etc etc. Is there a POV hidden agenda at work here? Will the trimmer be at work on these as well? Lumos3 18:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

NPOV

There is not nearly enough criticism in this article of what is ultimately a very silly thing, if we're rational adults about it. 83.146.55.85 01:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I made comments above in Comments - snake bites its tail —with apparently invisible fonts and unreceived telepathic replies. You have done an excellent rewrite Lumos. BF 07:58, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not clear what the objection is here. It seems that 83.146.55.85 thinks that "New Age" is a silly thing. Fair enough, but what has that got to do with the neutrality of the article? Are you denying that there is such a thing as New Age or are you stating that the article is not written with a NPOV? Please clarify. Sunray 02:19, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the individual is disputing NPOV, fueled by his soap box mini-rant. FistOfFury 01:36, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi all. I made a slight change to the wording in the medicine section. I'm mainly a contributer to the acupuncture page, but popped over here for a look. It seems you guys here have a little problem with NPOV - that's ok, we do too (although we are now making significant headway). I altered the statement-

"When tested using the same types of regimens as those applied to pharmaceutical drugs and surgical techniques (for example, double blind clinical studies), these systems rarely if ever yield demonstrable improvements over standard techniques."

If you're going to be quoting "scientific superiority" you need to back it up with facts, and at the very least not use speculative language. So I removed the "if ever" part because there are some aspects of alternative medicine that actually have demonstrated effectiveness. I also fleshed out the "direct and indirect harm" part to be less mysterious sounding and more informative. Piekarnia 03:10, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed "currently a few loose screws short of a set," which is clearly NPOV, replacing it with something that I think carries the same general information without the disparaging tone. Septegram 19:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Citation

Ok, this artilce is massive and has effectivly no citations. The reference section at the bottom is long and unstructured, and give no indication as to what points to what. Have a look at the verification policy and please note that uncited material may be removed.
brenneman ^{L} 03:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a hostile threat to vandalise the article. The verification policy refers to the removal of uncited new material, not the destruction of an existing article. A constructive approach would be to go through the article and add {{fact}} which displays as (‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.› ) in places where a citation is needed. Lumos3 08:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm noticing that this article appears to resist co-operative editing. In cases where people aren't willing to edit harmoniously, they can be forced to do so. That's not a "hostile threat" just a statement of fact. - brenneman ^{L} 12:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

That is a hostile threat even as in the same breath you say its not. Your deletion of 2 sections without so much as a justification here also says something publicly about your own approach to co-oporative editing. Lumos3 09:01, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps a better approach than "forcing" anyone to do anything would be to mark up the sections that you find inadequate or, better yet, fix them yourself, as opposed to simply deleting sections wholesale. Septegram 13:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that is another option. But the burden is on the editor adding material to put sources in. It says so in big, bold letters here. - brenneman ^{L} 11:28, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

You do not deal with past lack of citations by blanking large areas of an article as Aaron Brenneman does. Mark up old material and by all means demand citation from new material. Mass blanking of existing articles is just vandalism. Lumos3 14:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

• I'd suggest that you take that up on the talk page of the policy I've now linked twice and that was linked in the edit box where you typed the above response in the words "...must be based on verifiable sources."
  brenneman ^{L} 08:24, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Change of list to prose

• Edit by brenneman

Aaron Brenneman has again removed a large piece of material, much of it cited without comment here or apparent reason. I will hold this as evidence of bad faith editing. I have restored it as prose rather than a list. Lumos3 16:36, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

No sourced material was removed in this edit, only summarised. I even gave the benefit of the doubt to some unsourced material:

Certain geographic locations are believed to eminate special energy, which may be male or female in character. Such a place is called a vortex and many such places may have been considered sacred or healing places by indiginous native populations prior to colonization.

I simply summarised this (complete with misspelling) to:

... certain geographic locations eminate energy...

I also note that there in now a large amount of uncited material in this section alone.

brenneman ^{L} 03:38, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

New Age & Orientalism

Somewhere in the New Age article needs to include the idea that particular ideologies in certain New Age movements is a form of orientalism that results in mystifying eastern religions and eastern practices.

Criticism

The change to the text of this section from "These often highlight the discrepancies between New Age's seemingly irreconcilable mix of occultism and acceptance of the laws of physics" to "New Age's irreconcilable mix of occultism and acceptance of the laws of physics" seemed unnecessarily POV to me, so I inserted "apparent" back where "seemingly" had been. I think that gives a more NPOV flavor to the section, since it acknowledges that the mix seems irreconcilable while not saying that it either is or isn't. I welcome discussion on this, but feel my change makes it a more NPOV statement than simply calling the mix "irreconcilable." Septegram 21:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I added a cleanup marker to the Beliefs section. As this article has been upgraded, that section has fallen into dissaray. I will be going throught it in order to organize, re-word, and re-link. Anyone interested in helping please join me.

Cleanup

I added a cleanup marker to the Beliefs section. As this article has been upgraded, that section has fallen into dissaray. I will be going throught it in order to organize, re-word, and re-link. Anyone interested in helping please join me.

Basejumper123 19:40, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

-That section does indeed require massive cleanup.

All humanity—indeed all life, everything in the universe—is spiritually interconnected, participating in the same energy. “God” is one name for this energy [10]. Spiritual beings (e.g. angels, ascended masters, elementals, ghosts, and/or space aliens) exist, and will guide us, if we open ourselves to their guidance. [11]

The human mind has deep levels and vast powers, which are capable even of overriding physical reality. “You create your own reality.” [12]

This is completely inappropriate language for an encyclopedia, not to mention heavily POV, stating New Age beliefs as reality. Compare to the articles for other religions.

FieryPhoenix 23:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I reverted the "massive cleanup, part 1" by FieryPhoenix. Please take it one or two points at a time per edit, and allow other interested editors a chance to respond. I agree this article's a mess right now (heck, probably will be forever); but please give the other editors a chance to respond to more specific points than a mass edit of an article that has many editors' participation to date. (For whatever it's worth, one thing that caught my attention was the change to "new age practitioners" in introducing a paragraph that purported to describe new age beliefs, practices, orientations, influences, etc.) ... Kenosis 04:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Link issues in "Language" section

I've noticed some problems with the following links:

In the section "Power," the links to "mystical power" and "psi energy" both link to "Odic Force," as does the link to "energy" in the section "Spirit." I question the appropriateness of this, and think perhaps "mystical power" and "energy" should not have links at all. To link them specifically to "Odic Force" implies that this is the full and only sense in which these terms are used.

I looked into changing the "psi energy" link so that it linked directly to "psi energy," but that redirects to Cinergy, a power company in Chicago, Illinois. My inclination is to change the link to point to Psionics and delete the redirect page. Unfortunately, I don't know how to delete a redirect page, and I'd like some feedback before I went doing so anyway.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Septegram 13:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Mama Loves her Baby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Revision as of 04:11, 25 November 2001 by BF
Please Read: Talk:New Age (archive)
Much of this current discussion reminds me of what had been happening since I began this article. Larry Sanger guided me and others back before you could use tildes to display your username in articles.

From the first Talk:

"We need people to write, not remove, to help not detract. If you don't like the article find another one and ruin theirs ! ~BF"

Actually, we need people to render this article the most accurate, unbiased account of the New Age movement as possible. The purpose of this article is to give as fair an accounting of the movement, the people associated with it, its sub-movements, and above all the recent history of it, as possible. It isn't the purpose of this article to state any one individual's take on the movement. The subject ' is ' one that we ought to be able to collaborate about. -- User:LMS (Larry Sanger)

Many of you have adhered to this advice. I am calling your attention to the past and reminding you that the snake will bite its own tail eventually— due to the cyclical nature of history and pompous amateur writers. Lumos saw my vision for New Age and it became his vision too. New Age is inherently POV because the subject is experiential in nature. "Describe the taste of an orange." Thank you to all who helped the baby grown up. Now it is out on the street looking at the world pulled over its eyes, like some "Matrix-style" illusion. Living in denial that the New Age has become the mainstream portends of sleepwalking through life, apparently awake. Conflict makes for a nice novel, not an excellent article. ~ BF 05:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Beliefs section

I support Septegram's move to a bulleted list. Originally this was a numbered list , but that seemed like a hierarchy, A paragraph made it look like a monolithic creed. A bulleted list allows the concept of "pick and mix" present in the New Age movement to come through . I have added a sentence to emphasis this.

We need to add citations to external sites or studies as evidence of each belief in practise. Lumos3 17:33, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Lumos3. The paragraph also sometimes made it hard to tell if a sentence was a "stand-alone" belief or related to the previous sentence. I broke it out as best I could, but anyone who thinks it needs rearranging is invited to do so.

Which is kind of a given, I suppose, since this is "the encyclopedia anyone can edit..."

Septegram 14:55, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

"See Also" Section Removed

User:Kingboyk removed this entire section with the comment "rm Section. Work the relevant links into the text. If that can't be done, create a List article or use a category":

- *Philosophical   
- ** Syncretism, Postmodernism, Karma, Vedas, Spirituality, Synchronicity, Mythology, Mysteries, Aquarian Age, Transcendence, Multi-dimensionality, Odic force, Fanaa, Baqaa, Esoteric cosmology, Integral thought, Integral theory   
   
- *Meditative   
- ** Qi, Qigong, Prayer, Bhakti, Tantra, Meditation, Kundalini, Mandala, Trance, Muraqaba, Dhikr   
-    
- *Music   
- ** New Age music, Circle dance, Grammy Award for Best New Age Album, Qawwali, Sufi whirling, Hare Krishna, Nambassa    
-    
- *Spiritual/Religious   
- ** A Course In Miracles, Angels, Anthroposophy, Christian anarchism, Cosmic Ordering, Dances of Universal Peace, Eckankar, Goddess Worship, Hinduism, Jesus, Kabbalah, Spiritism, New religious movements, New Thought Movement, Rosicrucian, Scientology, Shamanism, Spirit guides, Sufism, Theosophy, Zen,    
-    
- *Contemporary new age teachers   
- ** Andrew Cohen, Michael Sharp, David Spangler, Benjamin Creme, Barry Long, Da Free John, Ram Dass, Louise L. Hay, Caroline Myss, Marianne Williamson, Leonard Orr, Carlos Castaneda, Rajneesh, Khwaja Shamsuddin Azeemi, Wayne Dyer, Mary Manin Morrissey, Tiziano Terzani, Tony Samara, Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Carlos Seeker, Hisham Kabbani, Kabir Helminski, Linda Goodman, Ken Wilber,Abraham-Hicks   
-    
- *Health   
- ** Alternative medicine, Acupuncture, Aromatherapy, Ayurveda, Biorhythms, Brainwaves, Breatharians, Crystals, Chakras, Color Therapy, Fruitarianism, IRECA method, Iridology, Kirlian photography, Lotus Birth, Menstrual cup, Reiki, Pyramid power, Self-help, Veganism, Vegetarianism, Visualization    
-    
- *Native Religions   
- ** Shamanism,    
-    
- *Social Movements   
- ** Encounter group movement, Large Group Awareness Trainings (LGATs), MLMs, Rebirthing, Hundredth Monkey,    
- **New age travellers   
-    
- *New Age communities    
- **Significant New Age communities exist in the following places: See New Age communities.    
-    
- *Consciousness   
- ** Astral projection, Angels, Auras, Consciousness, Elementals, Near-death experience, Out-of-body experience, Reincarnation, Soul travel, Past life regression, Double bodies, anomalous phenomena   
-    
- *Special Abilities   
- ** Automatic writing, Charismatics, Clairvoyance, Dreaming, ESP, Levitation, oracles, Psychic phenomenon, Psychokinesis, Remote viewing, Palmistry, Sorcery, Telepathy, Channeling, Longevity   
-    
- *Geographic Energy Centers   
- ** Avalon, Sacred sites, Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, Lemuria, Ley lines, Machu Picchu, Mount Kailash, Stonehenge, Portals, Power spots   
-    
- *Systems involved in control, prediction, or description of the physical world   
- ** Alchemy, Astrology, Chaos magic , Magick, Numerology, Odic force, Tarot, Feng Shui, Vastu   
-    
- *Aliens   
- ** Alien abduction, Alien implants, Crop circles, Cattle mutilation, Area 51, UFOs   
-    
- *Miscellaneous   
- ** Ancient civilizations, Underground civilizations, Time travel, Forteana, Living Enrichment Center   
-    
- *Marketing   
- ** LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability - a $227 billion p.a. market segment in the U.S) 

My inclination is to revert this change; I think it's too big for a wholesale delete, especially without discussion. If User:Kingboyk wants to make the changes he recommends, that's fine, but until he or someone else wants to undertake the task I think the references are sufficiently relevant to be kept. Be Bold notwithstanding]], I'd like some discussion on this before I charge ahead.

Septegram 13:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

It's a sign of very bad writing. If a link is relevant, it should be in the text. If it isn't directly relevant, it doesn't belong in the page. That's what the category system is for.

Also, large See Also lists like this attract dubious entries - check that list and you'll find at least a handful of entries that shouldn't be there. --kingboyk 13:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

No disrespect intended to your experience, expertise, and history, which are impressive, but I think it was a bit excessive to simply delete the section wholesale. Yes, it needs reworking, but let's use it as a starting point rather than make it go *poof.*

I should point out that some of us (i.e. me) are sufficiently inexperienced as to not know how to use the "category" system, and are reluctant to go mucking around and possibly bending things. The honkin' great list is a compromise between not having the material on the page and either (a)using categories or (b)rewriting the article. I'm sure you'll agree that rewriting the article to include even half of these items would be a monumental task.

Septegram 14:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. You might want to consider making a list article of alternative-culture topics, with some notes so that it's not superflouos (how is that word spelt?!) to the category, and then the massive see also sections in this and similar articles can be zapped. They don't give a professional appearance to the article imho, and they do tend to attract low quality entries. In the meantime, I've been bold, you feel like reverting me, I don't much mind, so let's move on :) Thanks for the dialogue and if you want any help or guidance give me a shout on my talk page. --kingboyk 15:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment by 207.155.27.16 posted 06:49, 15 December 2006

The following comment was placed with the article and moved here by me. Lumos3 09:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Note: the New Age described in this article entry is the one that is based upon synchronized religious life, or rather, the emulation of advanced spiriutal life, as compared to the Bible, which in turn is also a classic book of basic spirituality. The New Age movmement is said to be a threat to society because the spiritual teachings lack solid foundation and are based upon psycological discoveries.</ref>

Deleting Stuff

I deleted a couple of paragraphs that I thought were too vague or needed sources, but the change was reverted with a request to provide sources instead of deleting. That's a good New Age attitude, which I recently forsook myself. Someone came and deleted almost the whole Parapsychology article I'd been working on, due to having few sources, and I said basically the same thing. But in fact, anyone has the right to delete anything that isn't sourced. See WP:CITE. This article needs a lot more sources, so hereby my suggestion that the authors find some. As far as I can tell, the paragraphs were original research, not to mention POV Martinphi 03:02, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually this only says material should be deleted if it is actually harmful. In other cases it should either have citations added or the fact tag thus ‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.›  should be used. I am restoring along these lines. Deleting of established material is not colaborative working unless it is accomapied by a full rationale and justification here. I am sorry you have encountered aggressive deltionists I think they do a lot of harm to Wikipedia. Lumos3 11:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but "harmful" is a matter of opinion. To me, these unsourced slams against the intellectual cohesiveness of New Age belief (however silly many of the beliefs actually are), is harmful. I see someone alerady tagged them, and I'm putting them here to ask for a source. But I feel it is appropriate to delete them if they aren't sourced soon.Martinphi 20:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Please Source

Please can someone source the following POV paragraphs?Martinphi 20:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The New Age worldview typically involves a mysticism-based (rather than experiment-and-theory-based) view of describing and controlling the external world; for example, one might believe that tarot card reading works because of the "interconnectedness principle", rather than regarding the success (or failure) of tarot card reading as evidence of the interconnectedness principle. The various New Age vitalist theories of health and disease provide further examples. ‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.› 

In contrast to the scientific method, the failure of some practice to achieve expected results is not considered as a failure of the underlying theory, but as a lack of knowledge about (hidden) extenuating circumstances. This stance has led some skeptics to pronounce the New Age movement to be primarily anti-intellectual in nature. ‹The template Talkfact is being considered for merging.› 

Was Jesus a later avatar of the Buddha?

I can't agree with this "Jesus was a later avatar of the Buddha" behalf of all the Theravada Buddhists. According to our belief The Lord Buddha has completed the journey of Samsara with no more Klesha or Karma left behind. Therefor there is no way for a reincarnation for a Buddha or a Paccheka-Buddha or an Maha-Rahath.

Fairies

What defines "new age" movements is that they don't understand Occam's razor - basically the principle that just because I can't prove there aren't fairies at the bottom of the garden it doesn't mean that there are. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.7.20.133 (talk) 00:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC).

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