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God and the New Age
First published in ESP Magazine
by Christine Hall Several months ago, a friend of mine was at a gathering of Ceremonial Magicians in the mountains of Tennessee. The group was an oddball assortment of old hippies and younger New Agers who studied the practices of a turn of the century occult group, the Golden Dawn, that had revived the religion of the ancient Egyptians. During the course of the discussion, they began trying to name exactly what they were attempting to accomplish with the work they were doing.
“Well, we’re trying to achieve conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel,” said one, echoing the rhetoric of the Golden Dawn.
“But what is the Holy Guardian Angel?” my friend asked.
Some suggestions came from the group. Somebody thought it must be the Egyptian deity Re, since he was the God of light. Another person thought “our individual higher selves.” Still another said “the white light,” since everyone from the Jewish mystics to the Buddhists see spirit as emanating from a source of light.
“How about God?” asked my friend, innocently enough.
A momentary hush fell over the group. Then someone broke the silence, saying “Absolutely not. God is too Christian, too patriarchal, and we’ve gone way beyond that.” There seemed to be a consensus. No matter what they were looking for, it definitely wasn’t God.
You see, the word “God” is a big stumbling block in the New Age, which is composed primarily of baby boomers who abandoned the Christian church in great numbers back in the 1960s. Now that they’re aging, and finding a new connection with spirit, many take great pains to distance themselves from the spirituality of their childhood and the new spirituality that they’re discovering here on the cusp of the new millennium.
To these folks, the Christian God is frequently seen as sexist, racist and filled with negativity. The “eye for an eye” vengeance and the “thou shall not” admonishments do not fit well into New Age philosophies, that mainly see spirit as all-loving, all-compassionate, all-healing and all life-affirming. So, the word “God” has become something to be avoided at all costs. This can even be seen at 12 Step groups, where participants are often reluctant to turn their problems over to “God,” but instead evoke the generic “higher power,” “the light of reason” or “good orderly direction.”
As my friend tried to point-out to the magical group in Tennessee, this is a most unfortunate turn of events, for it only serves to separate and alienate the various factions of the spiritual community from each other. It supports the erroneous belief of many Christians that the New Agers are worshiping the devil. At the same time, it reinforces the feelings among those who practice alternative forms of spirituality that the Christians are somehow the enemy. Neither belief is true, of course. The Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu and New Ager have nearly everything in common. All believe that spirit should be the guiding force in people’s lives.
Thankfully, not all New Agers are afraid to invoke God by name. When Wayne Dyer, author of “Your Erroneous Zones,” spoke in Greensboro, North Carolina recently, most of the several hundred people who turned-out to see him were not old hippies or your usual garden variety New Age types. Instead, most were God fearing Christians and members of local churches. Although Dyer spoke to them about the spiritual wisdom to be found in the words of the Buddha, Meher Baba, Lao Tzu and many other non-Christian sages, they were able to accept and understand what he said because he kept returning to Jesus and God, the frame of spiritual reference they could understand.
A similar approach was taken back in the 1950s, when followers of the Hindu mystic Paramahansa Yogananda first brought Eastern meditation practices to the United States. They did not speak of “Krishna consciousness” or try to convince people to throw away their Bibles for the Bhagavad-Gita. Instead, they presented their practices as ways for Westerners to develop “Christ consciousness,” as a way for Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Catholics and the like to become better Christians. They weren’t here to convert us to Hinduism, because they recognized that we already had a perfectly good religion. They only wanted to help us to excel within the religion we already had.
The Wiccan priestess stands in the sacred grove and evokes a Goddess of the ancient Celts or Greeks. The Ceremonial Magician creates sacred space and calls upon one of the Neters from the Egyptian pantheon. The Buddhist takes refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The yogi quiets the mind to listen for a divine voice. The Christian offers prayers to be answered.
Each of these people is seeking a connection with the divine. In this sense, the divine has many names, such as Demeter, Horus, Buddha, Krishna, Jehovah, Allah and many more. The name they all have in common is God.
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