I took a 2 semester course in New Religious Movements (at UBC here in Vancouver) about 20 years ago. Our instructor (a newly minted PhD from the U of Calgary) proposed that the New Age, as we now know it, had its roots in the works of Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910), originally in his 1st book “Revelation of Nature” (1847). Along with Davis’ writing, the Fox Sisters, Mesmerism, and Swedenborg’s followers kind of jelled into what soon developed as Spiritualism. Apparently 'Johnny Appleseed’ (John Chapman) figured in all this somehow.
I remember ploughing through assigned readings in “Revelation of Nature”, and thinking at the time that Davis’ main points regarding astral bodies, disease as ‘misalignment’, prescriptions for the creation of a utopian ‘New Age’ (he uses the term), etc, etc, could have been lifted verbatim from many of the Human Potential writings of the 1980s.
Comments?
Fritz
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