New Age Time Line

Johnno

The Living Force
This is far from complete and was done a couple of years ago when I was looking into to the New Age movement. What I found that the New Age movement had its roots in Theosophy and Alice Bailey's Lucis Trust organization. The Lucis Trust formed new groups by promoting "self propogating triangles", where one group would form two new groups....which would then form FOUR more new groups and so on.....and so on.

This sort of explains a very loose similarity although some of the New age groups are a far cry from the original Lucis Trust manifesto . Chinese whispers have ruled the day.

The "love and light" phrase flung around the NA environment is lifted directly from the last line of the LT invocation for some reason they've in the main dropped the "power" bit....... perhaps its not touchy/feely enough.Anyway, the last line of the LT invocation goes.....

"Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth."

Times have changed IMHO with the co-operation between the Straussian Neocons and the fundamentalist churches in the USA. Morality has become a big selling point whereas once it was avoided. Church and state seem to no longer have the divide they once had. So the New age movement whilst it is a force to deflect and distract is nowhere as dangerous as the fundy right IMHO.

Perhaps an evangelical timeline would be in order.

Johnno

1840s
The New Thought movement (which includes CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS SCIENCE, and UNITY) was initiated by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a student of hypnotist Anton Mesmer. Quimby theorized, influenced by Mesmer's electro-magnetic theory of "animal magnetism" and the Hindu and Buddhist belief that matter is an illusion, that physical maladies are simply the result of translating into the flesh the incorrect idea of "illness," and therefore developing the power of the mind will cure people of illnesses. Quimby even established a short-lived medical clinic based on this theory.
1851
Helena Blavatsky meets her "Master." In London. this Master introduced her to Eastern Spiritualism. During the next twenty-three years she allegedly traveled around the world to study with gurus and shamans in Mexico, Egypt, Canada, and Asia.
1860s
One of Quimby's patients during this period was Mary Patterson, later to become Mary Baker Eddy.
The central concepts of all New Thought religious groups are the belief that humanity is divine (which naturally involves a pantheistic view of God), the understanding that the Mind is all that exists, the practice of metaphysical healing, and the separation of the historical Jesus from the divine Christ. Mary Patterson begins New Thought studies.

1864

Beginning in 1864, Blavatsky spent three years studying esotericism in Tibet.

1870s
In 1874 Blavatsky came to the United States to defend Spiritualism, and in 1875 she founded the Theosophical Society with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and William Q. Judge. The Society was formed to expound Blavatsky's teachings that within each person is the divine spark of the Universal Mind, and this spark can be expanded through the study of diverse spiritual traditions. Her first book, Isis Unveiled (published in 1877), moved the theosophical tradition to a greater emphasis on Indian mysticism.
1876

Mary Baker Patterson — who became Mary Baker Eddy — was young woman who, plagued with emotional and physical illnesses, underwent treatment with mesmerism from Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (see 1840s). Patterson believed herself to be healed by Quimby's treatment (although, after his death, she disavowed Quimby). Eddy founded the Christian Scientists Association (later the Church of Christ, Scientist) in 1876, shortly after publishing Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
Eddy's religion, rooted in New Thought, claims to be a reestablishment of early Christianity. Eddy claimed that the early Church taught mind is the only reality, and that matter is an illusion. She further taught that Christ healed through the same spiritual influence with which she wrote Science and Health.

1883
Alfred Percy Sinnet of the Theosophical society releases details of the “Eighth Sphere” (4d STS?) in his book “Esoteric Buddhism”. Unfortunately Sinnett gets his metaphors and explanations confused resulting in the Esoteric streams of the Christian Church getting involved. See 1893. Sinnett essentially states that the present Moon is the 8th Sphere, when in fact the physical aspect of the Moon was created by Jahve to prevent a certain amount of matter from being seized by Lucifer and Ahriman. (ref Zelator)

1887
William Wynn Westcott a Rosicrucian, comes across a part manuscript in brown ink cypher from a freemason Rev A.F.A. Woodford. From his hermetic knowledge, Westcott was able to decipher the text which pertained to hitherto unknown rituals of “The Golden Dawn”. Westcott asked Samuel Mathers to add to the fragemts into full scale rituals

1888
Westcott, Mathers and Dr WR Woodman (Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of Anglia) establish “The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn”.
1889
Charles Fillmore and his wife Myrtle started the Unity School of Christianity after Myrtle was introduced to CHRISTIAN SCIENCE after reading Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The prayer used by Myrtle in her healing, "I am a child of God, therefore, I do not inherit sickness," alludes to Unity's adherence to the NEW THOUGHT belief that sickness is an illusion. A key addition made by the Fillmore's to basic New Thought teachings is the belief in reincarnationCharles and Myrtle Fillmore start Unity.
1893.
CG Harrison a leanrned esoteric Christian of a “High Church” attempts to put Sinnett’s disclosure of the eighth sphere in some sort of order.Harrison acknowledged that “many occultists who say the subject ought not to be brought before the public at all” and gave a much more esoteric account of the Eighth Sphere. He recognised that Sinnet had been the fist to profane the mystery, but that in doing so he had been working unconsciously, and in any case had succeeded in getting many of his facts wrong. (Hedsel, Ovason : Zelator p 432)

1895
On June 30, 1895 at the age of fifteen, Alice Bateman (Bailey) had a memorable experience. "I was sitting in the drawing room reading. The door opened and in walked a tall man dressed in European clothes...but with a tall turban on his head.... He told me there was some work that it was planned that I could do in the world but that it would entail my changing my disposition very considerably;" ( Alice A. Bailey, The Unfinished Autobiography, (New York: Lucis Trust Publishing Co., 1951), p. 36. )
1895
Aleister Crowley joins the London chapter Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

1904
Crowley is told by his wife he is receive important message. It comes from Aiwass (JH: hawa-as Coincedence?)
In April 1904 Crowley is dictated “The Book of the Law”. Crowley identified Aiwass as a magical current or solar phallic energy worshipped by the Sumerians as Shaitan, a “devil god”, and by the Egyptians as Set.
1906
The most significant development in the history of Alice Bailey was her proclamation in 1906 that a young Indian boy named Krishnamurti was the Messiah.

1909
Crowley publishes the Secret Rituals of the Golden Dawn

1912
Crowley involves himself in the Ordo Templi Orientalis.. Crowley explores the astral plane using Enochian magic.

1915

In 1915, Alice Bailey met two English women living in Pacific Grove, California, who introduced her to Theosophy and Helena Blavatsky. Through her studies of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrines, she realized the man she met at age 15 was Master KH (Koot Hoomi). "I discovered that he was not the Master Jesus, as I had naturally suspected....I have worked for Him, ever since I was fifteen years old and I am now one of the superior disciples of his group¾or as it is called esoterically¾in his ashram." ( Alice A. Bailey, The Unfinished Autobiography, (New York: Lucis Trust Publishing Co., 1951), p. 37-38)



1917
Ernest and Fenwicke Holmes start Religious Science. Founded in 1917 by Ernest and Fenwicke Holmes as the Metaphysical Institute of Los Angeles, the United Church of Religious Science teaches the Science of Mind, which in essence is NEW THOUGHT. Ernest's 1928 book Science of Mind, and the continuing journal of the same name, teach that freedom is attained through the "scientific" study of God and His law through meditation and affirmations
Watchman

In 1917, Alice moved to Hollywood to be near the headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Krotona. Her first job at the center was as a vegetarian cook, scrubbing the bottom of garbage pails. A divorce from Walter Evans was soon followed by marriage to Foster Bailey, a lawyer who devoted his life to ancient wisdom. (Harold Balyoz, Three Remarkable Women, (Flagstaff: Altai Publishing, 1986), p. 210)

1919
In the fall of 1919 Alice Bailey had an encounter with still another Master, who guided her for thirty years. ( Alice A. Bailey, The Unfinished Autobiography, (New York: Lucis Trust Publishing Co., 1951), p. 164)

1922

By 1922, Bailey started the Lucis Trust Publishing Company

Aleister Crowley is asked to head the Ordo Templi Orientalis

1923
Alice Bailey starts the Arcane School. The Arcane School (which is part of the Lucis Trust) was founded in 1923 by Alice Bailey, who was a student of H. P. Blavatsky (see THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY).
The Arcane School Headquartered in New York, with centers also in Europe, the school's graduates have frequently become leaders in the New Age Movement. They form a part of what they call The New Group of World Servers, men and women working in all walks of life, preparing the world for the New Age. Bailey described the Arcane School as "non-sectarian, non-political, but deeply international in its thinking. Service is its keynote. Its members can work in any sect and any political party provided that they remember that all paths lead to God and that the welfare of the one humanity governs all their thinking. Above everything else, ...a student is taught that the souls of men are one....It is a school wherein true occult obedience is developed....They are taught... prompt obedience to the dictates of their own soul. As the voice of that soul gets increasingly familiar it will eventually make them members of the Kingdom of God and bring them face to face with Christ."6
http://www.watchman.org/profile/bailypro.htm


1929

Krishnamurti formerly declared as the Messiah by Alice Bailey, renounced his role as the Messiah in 1929 and founded the Order of the Star (related to the current Krishnamurti Foundation of America), which focuses on Hinduism and mystical experiences.


.
1932
Alice Bailey commences in 1932, the World Goodwill
World Goodwill is an organization that claims to be preparing the way for a one-world religion and a one-world government. World Goodwill works closely with the United Nations. It maintains headquarters in the cities of New York, London and Geneva. The group publishes literature as well as conducts symposiums related to its goals, which are consistent with those of Lucis Trust. Much of its public literature shows no signs of its occultic background nature, making it the perfect vehicle for attracting into its New Age influence people who would reject overtly religious or occult philosophy
http://www.watchman.org/profile/bailypro.htm
(Gap …..Thule Society…….. ? I AM movement?)
1941

I've got some stuff on Jack Parsons and Crowley here

1950s
Founded in 1959 by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is the Spiritual Regeneration Movement Foundation,

1966
Church Universal and Triumphant founded.

Swami Prabhupada founds ISKCON in America. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), more commonly known as the Hare Krishnas, can be traced back to 16th century India. It was brought to America in 1965 by Abhay Charan De Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who in 1966 opened a storefront center and began publishing Back to Godhead magazine. The movement grew in popularity following the release of the song My Sweet Lord by George Harrison (a former member of the Beatles); the song included the famous "Hare Krishna" mantra.

The Beatles visit the Maharishi in India. Transcendental Meditation (also known as TM) exploded in popularity in 1967 after the Beatles traveled to India to study under the Maharishi


1972

In 1972 the Maharishi initiated a "World Plan" to introduce TM to the entire world.

Jane Roberts publishes the first volume of her channeled Seth Material.
1974
Part of the Maharishi’s TM plan included the 1974 purchase of Parsons College, a Presbyterian school in Iowa, and renaming it Maharishi International University. TM is also behind the Natural Law Party, a political organization that is most active in western Europe.
The essential practice of TM revolves around the repetition of, and meditation upon, a mantra. Mantras, which are central to Hindu spirituality, are sounds or words that enable practitioners to enter states of higher consciousness.
1983
In 1983 MacLaine, an actress, published her autobiography, Out on a Limb. The book, which described her experiences with astral projection, UFO encounters, and other New Age events, established MacLaine as the preeminent New Age celebrity in the 1980s.

Randall Baer produces a book on crystals and the healing propeties of these. Baer later renounces his involvement in the New Age Movement becoming a born again christian. He writes a book called “The New Age Nightmare” after turning to Christianity (Fundamentalist???) but is killed in an unusual car accident days before its release.
 
Just curious...what is your take on "A Course in Miracles". Is it more New Age stuff or do you think it has merit?
 
janorama2001 said:
Just curious...what is your take on "A Course in Miracles". Is it more New Age stuff or do you think it has merit?
I went to one of Maryanne Williamson's talks. I was never able to put it into words, but I felt a bit unerved by the experience. My partner said that she seemed very cavaleer with other peoples concerns.

My $.02
 
Missed this question, apologies.

I'll look into this. However looking at their introduction page, one gets the impression of a YCYOR(You create your own reality) type group. Peace and happiness seem to be high ideals. This would be great in a perfect world but going by the way things actually are...... peace and happiness are a form of self calming and denial of how things really are. A form of "waking sleep" so to speak.

Call me cynical but these days, society seems to regard "happiness" as the bigness of your big screen TV.

Their Lesson for he day (day 63)

The light of the world brings peace to every mind through my forgiveness.

In a simplistic form, if I forgive say..... George Bush and his plundering neo-con buddies, then all will be OK!
 
Johnno said:
1906
The most significant development in the history of Alice Bailey was her proclamation in 1906 that a young Indian boy named Krishnamurti was the Messiah.

1929
Krishnamurti formerly declared as the Messiah by Alice Bailey, renounced his role as the Messiah in 1929 and founded the Order of the Star (related to the current Krishnamurti Foundation of America), which focuses on Hinduism and mystical experiences.

Hello Johnno
I think that Annie Besant and Leadbeater proclaimed and d袬ared Krishnamurti as the Messiah, not A. Bailey.
 
Back
Top Bottom