copyrighted 2009.
Many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians see the New Age movement as another attempt by Satan to dominate the world. According to these Christians, the New Age movement is a front of seemingly innocuous people who are really being used by Satan. “The rise of the New Age movement,” Neil Anderson and Steve Russo say, “is just another facet of his [Satan's] effort to seduce and control an entire generation.”[i] Constance Cumbey goes even further, saying the New Age is the vehicle for the Antichrist. “It is the contention of this writer,” Cumbey says, “that for the first time in history there is a viable movement – the New Age Movement – that truly meets all the scriptural requirements for the antichrist and the political movement that will bring him on the world scene.”[ii]
The Christian evidence that the New Age movement is a Satanic front can be divided into three general categories. First, that New Agers say they are God. Second, that New Agers have many similarities to the Nazis. Third, that New Agers engage in human sacrifice and other nefarious activities.
The first charge against the New Agers is that they teach that the individual is God, and this teaching is the same as Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. “The New Age teaching,” Constance Cumbey says, “are the same old lies that have been about since the snake beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden: ‘Thou shalt not surely die . . . and thou shalt be as gods.’”[iii]
The second charge against the New Age movement is that it is similar to the Nazis because both groups are concerned with occultism such as crystals, channeling and meditation, and both groups embrace pantheistic paganism. Constance Cumbey first made this attack in The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow. In this book, Cumbey claimed that the New Age movement is exactly like Nazism, and Satan is using it as a front to take over the world. Cumbey says that the New Age is “a movement that parallels Nazism in every grotesque detail.”[iv] According to Cumbey, outsiders get fooled because “they fail to see that point-for-point the program of the New Age Movement has complete identity with the programs of Hitler.”[v] Some Christians go even further and say the New Age movement will be even worse than Nazism. Referring to the New Age movement, William Garrison says that “we must not be ignorant of a modern-day plan for a purge that will make even those shady events of World War II seem like a Sunday School picnic.”[vi]
The third set of Christian charges against the New Age movement are even more farfetched than the first two. Garrison says that prominent symbols or facets of New Age include the swastika, unicorn, pyramid, yin and yang, and “the number 666, sacred to the movement.”[vii] Neil Anderson maintains that movies like the Field of Dreams are promoting evil because through these movies “Satan [is] subtly promoting in our culture nice little spirit guides that will resolve all our problems.”[viii] Randall Baer says that many children’s toys and cartoons actually lead children into Satan’s realm. “Children’s cartoons,” Baer says, “toys, and games increasingly are infested with subtle-to-overt darkness . . . A child’s mind is corrupted in a subtle manner . . . Occult symbols and violence guide a child’s imagination into the world of Satan.”[ix] According to some Christians, even cuddly, purple dinosaurs with their own TV show are part of Satan’s plan. The Christians have been claiming that Barney is “a herald of the New Age movement and a potential hazard to the spiritual health of children.”[x] Barney is Satanic because Barney asks kids to imagine themselves in certain situations, and this kind of visualization supposedly exposes kids to evil, occult influences. Vegetarianism also, according to Tal Brooke, is demonic. Brooke maintains that the Bible teaches that vegetarianism is promoted by the demons and so vegetarianism will emerge in the end times.[xi] Pat Robertson, the popular televangelist, claims that “the New Age religions, the beliefs of the Illuminati, and Illuminated Freemasonry all seem to move along parallel tracks with world communism and world finance. Their appeals vary somewhat, but essentially they are striving for the same very frightening vision.”[xii] The scariest charge against the New Agers is offered by Paul de Parrie and Mary Pride. They charge that real New Agers consider violence and human sacrifice necessary for the next step in human evolution.[xiii] Parrie and Pride assert that since the New Age movement has appeared our society no longer has an ethic of compassion for the old, sick and handicapped. Instead, it now has an ethic of cutting costs and neglecting the medically dependent. Parrie and Pride think the New Age movement is the cause of this neglect because New Agers encourage human sacrifice, just as the pagans did.[xiv] Parrie and Pride claim the New Agers hate the sick because they believe they are gods, and thus have a “gut-level hatred of anything that reminds them of mortality.”[xv]
The general claim that the New Age movement is a front for evil will be analyzed first. A major problem with this claim is that the Christians continually see any one who differs from their beliefs, even other Christians, as a pawn of evil. For example, Calvin saw those who attacked child baptism as evil, and the fundamentalists at the turn of the century were sure the Pentecostalists were evil. Nowadays, Pat Robertson believes the Masons are a major source of evil. This continual drumbeat from the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians that their ideological opponents are evil loses its force over time and causes their charges to lose some credibility. The trouble is not that the Christians believe in evil forces, but that they have a simplistic vision of how these evil forces work. Everyone who does not agree with their beliefs ends up being called a pawn of evil, while those who agree with their beliefs are said to be good. Unfortunately, being safe from evil is not as simple as agreeing with some religious or political line. These Christians miss the psychologically subtle way that evil can work through people no matter what kind of religious beliefs they have. Furthermore, the Christians also ignore the evil that can result when one group demonizes its opponents, and thus imagines itself as pure and free of faults.
Even on the Christians’ own terms of worrying about evil fronts, New Agers could make the case that the Christians themselves are better pawns of evil than the New Agers. For by persecuting and killing those who disagree with them through the Crusades, the Inquisition and the witch hunts rather than loving their enemies, most New Agers would agree with the Enlightenment Deists’ critique of orthodox Christianity and say that the Christians have perverted Jesus’ message. In this way, the Christians have spread much more evil than the New Agers.
Another problem with the credibility of these Christian critics of the New Age is their shoddy scholarship. Even their own colleagues are critical of them on this point. Irving Hexham, an evangelical Christian, castigates his fellow Christians for their poor scholarship.[xvi] Hexham says that evangelical Christian works on the New Age are simplistic, reductionist and have limited range.[xvii] Ted Peters, a Christian professor of systematic theology at Pacific Lutheran Seminary, says that Christian writers are “embarrassing the Christian tradition”[xviii] by not understanding properly the statements the New Agers make. An example of shoddy scholarship is the way some Christians see everything in the New Age as paganism, pantheism or Hinduism. In this vein Norman Geisler is horrified by the Star Wars movies because “Once again, the cosmic sponge of Hinduism makes its presence known on American’s screens.”[xix] Unfortunately for Geisler, Star Wars is based on Chinese Taoism and not on Hinduism. Unfortunately Geisler is not an isolated case but just one example of a widespread Christian tendency to not be careful in understanding the New Age movement. The third group of ridiculous charges that New Agers encourage human sacrifice and revere the number 666 are examples of this shoddy scholarship.
The first Christian charge is true; some New Agers do maintain that they are God. Nevertheless, this claim is not as widespread in the New Age as the Christians maintain; this claim certainly is not the foundation of the movement as some Christians charge. Only some New Agers (whom the media focuses on because of Shirley MacLaine’s influence) make this claim. A much more common conception of God among New Agers is panentheism: God is in everything, but God is not identified with the world. Furthermore, the claim “I am God” is an integral part of the long religious tradition of India. This claim should not be understood as someone claiming their ego is God; it is claiming that one’s inner soul or Atman is the same as God or Brahman. One can only maintain that this claim is the result of evil forces if one also asserts that the foundation of much of Indian religion is the work of evil forces.
The second Christian charge concerns the New Agers’ similarities to Nazism. This claim is much more serious because the New Agers do share the Nazis’ interest in occultism, and even some New Agers worry about the similarity.
First, scholars agree that many Nazis were involved with crystals, meditation and power objects. Because they were involved with occultism, James Webb, a historian of the occult, says that “in pre-Nazi Germany the Age of Aquarius was sometimes timed to coincide with the arrival of the Thousand Year Reich.”[xx] Hitler also had qualities admired by people in the New Age movement. After suffering a mustard gas attack in 1918, Hitler had a bout of blindness, and during this time he had a supernatural vision in which he heard a voice summoning him to save Germany.[xxi] One New Age scholar says that Hitler “was a trance medium.”[xxii] The influential historian of Fascism, Ernst Nolte, maintains that “there should be no doubt as to the mediumistic trait in Hitler. He was the medium who communicated to the masses their own, deeply buried spirit.”[xxiii] Hitler also said that “man is becoming God . . . Man is God in the making . . . Those who see in National Socialism nothing more than a political movement know scarcely anything of it. It is more even than a religion: it is the will to create mankind anew.”[xxiv] Nolte says that Hitler even intended to make the world vegetarian.[xxv]
Second, many Germans are themselves worried about the similarities between the New Age movement and Nazism. In the seventies and eighties, there was widespread concern in Germany over the many Germans who surrendered their will to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and accepted him as their Fuhrer. From a wider perspective, the scholar Peter Kratz in his book Die Gotter der New Age, maintains that the New Age movement in Germany serves as a front for the return of the neo-Nazis. Kratz claims the New Agers and the neo-Nazis both share many characteristics, and they are united in a campaign against the German left.[xxvi] Furthermore, Kratz cites many prominent German New Agers making Nazi-sounding statements. Rudolph Bahro, a prominent Marxist philosopher who became a disciple of Rajneesh, says that “in reality there is a call in the folk soul [Volkseele] for a Green Adolph [Hitler] . . . This is the German Moment in the green movement.”[xxvii] Another prominent German New Ager, Rainer Langhans, says that “spirituality in Germany means Hitler . . . We must take up the inheritance of our elders . . . in the sense of a rediscovery of what Hitler tried.”[xxviii]
Third, some statements coming from some New Agers or their leaders do sound very similar to statements of the Nazis. Satya Bharti Franklin, the ghostwriter and editor of many of Rajneesh’s books, asserts that Rajneesh was profoundly anti-Semitic, and he said that “Jews are so ugly … His adulation of Hitler was disgusting. He used to boast . . . that he’d succeed where Hitler failed.”[xxix] Franklin said he would praise Hitler in his talks but she would edit these statements out of his books.[xxx] According to these followers of Rajneesh, Rajneesh even wanted to take over the world.[xxxi] Nor is Rajneesh the only prominent New Age guru who admired Hitler. Believing destruction and killing were part of God’s lila or sport, Swami Muktananda considered Hitler a divine instrument. For this reason, Muktananda said that “Bangla Desh and Hitler are only instruments for killing a certain number of people whose time has come.”[xxxii] In America, J. Randolph Price, a New Ager who helped to popularize the power of visualization to promote world peace, says people with “lower vibratory rates” will be removed from the planet in the New Age.[xxxiii] The people with “lower vibratory rates” are presumably those with lesser consciousness who are not attuned to higher spiritual energies; the Christians interpreted this phrase as meaning them.
Despite the fact these quotes come mostly from Indians and Germans – citizens of countries which are not noted for their racial tolerance – New Agers themselves worry about the movement’s similarities to Nazism. Morris Berman says that New Age gurus and movements like “est” are akin to Nazism because they both involve blind devotion to gurus or leaders. Furthermore, according to Berman, in both the Nazi era and our time, myths, symbols, occultism, the “natural,” and the nonrational are all deliberately cultivated as antidotes to our artificial, over-intellectualized, bureaucratized way of life.[xxxiv] Berman maintains that the Nazis co-opted this type of energy and channeled it into a destructive form and that we should be concerned about the possibility of the New Age also being co-opted. Another prominent New Ager, David Spangler, also worries about the similarities between the Nazis and the New Age movement. Spangler, like Berman, thinks that our times are similar to the period in Europe between the World Wars when the ecological spirit and the desire for transcendence was channeled into Nazism. For this reason, Spangler thinks that we need to understand the similarities between the two times because an understanding of these similarities can prevent the tragedy from reoccurring.[xxxv] Spangler even maintains that using the term “New Age” can promote evil: “I don’t use it much anymore in lecturing. The danger is the tendency to create an attitude of division, ‘old age’ versus ‘new age.’ Worse, there can be an unwillingness to deal with history at all.”[xxxvi] In the seventies, Co-Evolution Quarterly which was read by very many people involved with or very sympathetic to New Age ideas, had an article which worried about the similarities between the New Agers and Germany’s wandervogel or pre-Hitlerite youth groups and how these groups welcomed a leader when Hitler arrived. FN There was even speculation in the New Age circles of the seventies of who would play the part of Hitler – with Werner Erhard of est usually considered the most likely candidate.
The New Age movement and the Nazis have some similarities, not because they are both a front for evil, but because both synthesize Enlightenment values and Romantic values. The Nazis took Romanticism’s concern for the volk, intuition, nature, feelings and the occult and combined it with the Enlightenment’s love of business and technology. Nevertheless when we look at the two movements, there are at least two major differences that made the Nazis such a virulent source of evil: the cult of violence and racism. The New Age eschews both of these things very strongly. So while the New Age may share an interest in the occult, nature and paganism with the Nazis, there is no reason to think that it would make a good front for Satan the same way the Nazis did. For the New Agers do not privilege their race above any other and do not advocate violence.
For all these reasons, it is not an adequate explanation of the New Age movement to claim that it is a front for Satan.
Copyrighted 2009
This essay was written by Joseph Waligore. He dedicated his life to following the will of the Universe when he was 20. Seven months later he received a message from his Higher Self or inner connection to the divine to quit Dartmouth College. Through following a deep intuition in a dream and after many synchronistic experiences, he met his soulmate and married her. He and his wife followed their spiritual intuitions in their daily lives, including receiving messages to have children. For twelve years he stayed at home and raised his three children while his wife worked. Then, his wife told him he needed to make some money, so he got a Ph. D. in philosophy from Syracuse University. He currently has a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about him can be found at his MySpace profile. He also has a website with information about his own spiritual journey and his spiritual philosophy.
There is a Facebook group called Flowing. People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.
Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.
[i]Neil T. Anderson and Steve Russo, The Seduction of Our Children (Eugene: Harvest House, 1991), p. 58.
[ii] Constance Cumbey, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow: The New Age Movement and Our Coming Age of Barbarism (Shreveport, Louisiana: Huntington House, 1983), p. 7. The page is unnumbered.
[vi]William Garrison, Holocaust II: The Truth About the New Age Plan (Tulsa, Oklahoma: End Time Ministries, 1985), p. 3.
[vii]Garrison, Holocaust II, p. 30.
[viii]Neil T. Anderson and Steve Russo, The Seduction of Our Children (Eugene: Harvest House, 1991), p. 25.
[ix]Randall N. Baer, Inside the New Age Nightmare (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House, 1989), p. 155.
[x]“Barney Labeled ‘New Age’,” Christianity Today, May 16, 1994, p. 47
[xi]Tal Brooke, Sai Baba: Lord of the Air (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1979), p. 379.
[xii]Pat Robertson, The New World Order (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1991), p. 185.
[xiii]Paul de Parrie & Mary Pride Unholy Sacrifices of the New Age (Westchester, Ill.: Crossways Books, 1988), p. 26.
[xiv]Parrie and Pride, pp. 54-6.
[xvi]Irving Hexham, “The Evangelical Response to the New Age,” in James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, ed., Perspectives on the New Age (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), p. 161 & p. 324, n. 45.
[xviii]Ted Peters, The Cosmic Self: A Penetrating Look at Today’s New Age Movement (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), pp. ix-x.
[xix] Norman L. Geisler and J. Yutaka Amano, The Infiltration of the New Age (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndall House, 1989), p. 7-8.
[xx]James Webb, The Occult Establishment (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Pub. Co., 1976), p. 454.
[xxi]Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), pp. 280-1.
[xxiii]Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian Fascism, National Socialism, trans. Leila Vennewitz (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960), p. 292.
[xxiv]Adolf Hitler, as cited in Berman, p. 253.
[xxv]Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, p. 291.
[xxvi]Peter Kratz, Die Gotter des New Age (Berlin: Elefantin Press, 1994), pp. 9, 31, and passim.
[xxvii]Rudolf Bahro, as cited in Peter Kratz, Die Gotter des New Age (Berlin: Elefantin Press, 1994), p. 107. My translation.
[xxviii]Rainer Langhans, interview in “taz” 12 April 1989 as cited in Kratz, p. 123.
[xxix]Satya Bharti Franklin, The Promise of Paradise: A Woman’s Intimate Story of the Perils of Life with Rajneesh (Barrytown, NY: Station Hall Press, 1992), p. 324.
[xxx] Franklin, p. 107.
[xxxii]Swami Muktananda, Satsang with Baba, vol. 1 (Ganeshpuri, India: Shree Gurudev Ashram, 1974), pp. 24-6.
[xxxiii]J. Randolph Price, as cited in Randall N. Baer, Inside the New Age Nightmare (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House, 1989), p. 169.
[xxxiv]Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), pp. 287-92.
[xxxv] David Spangler, Emergence: The Rebirth of the Sacred (New York: Delta, 1984), p. 159.
[xxxvi]Spangler, Emergence, pp. 158-9.
Copyrighted 2009
My name is Joseph Waligore. I currently have a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about me can be found at my MySpace profile or my Facebook profile.
This website is one of four websites I have. At makingyourconnections.com I have a posted a significant portion of a self-help book I am currently writing. This book helps people succeed in the world by making their connections, the special people in their lives. Another website, www.followingtheflow.com is for spiritually oriented people and discusses very similar ideas from a more spiritually oriented perspective. Another one, www.josephwaligore.com is for academically or intellectually oriented people. It has my writings about spiritual philosophies such as Stoicism, Socrates, the Deists, the Enlightenment period, and the rise of modern science.
There is a Facebook group called Flowing. People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.
Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.
I am looking for an original copy of “Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow” by Constance Cumbey. I had an original at one time but had loaned to who I thought was a friend, needless to say I never got my book back. I purchased a new copy but there are is a lot of documentation that has been removed from this copy. The one that I have is copyrighted 1983. I need a copy dated from the 1970′s any one that has a copy and wishes to sell please contact me via email with subject: Hidden Dangers at [email protected].
Thank you,
Peggy Lucha
You know you guys really gotta stop pushing this unjust and insane propaganda onto everyone. This has gone too far. I know you mean well but your wrong and this isn’t fair or what Jesus I’m sure would condone if he was here. First of all, what this article says is that God doesn’t want us to love ourselves? God himself said we are created in his image so what’s the big deal? Also, the Bible itself was created by the gov’t since the church owned the gov’t, slaves, and people during those days. Some of the books that weren’t included in the final copy of the Bible were the infamous lost teachings of Jesus Christ where he discussed holistic practices such as ‘Reiki’ and self-healing. The whole concept of being ‘born again’ which he preached was in direct relation to reincarnation if you could only stop thinking they were writing so literally. This was a period in time where people conversed in metaphorical stories-usually embellished. What makes you think any religious person was any different especially when speaking of something as dramatic as the almighty or God? As for pinning all new age gurus in a box together is also absurd. Not all believe in the same thing. Of course humans must undergo temptation because yes the flesh is against spirit and yes there are opposing forces but a candle can light a whole room vs a black dot cannot do anything to a room in light so this isn’t really 50/50 here. We are here to learn lessons and to overcome the desire to be selfish and fearful. And what kind of God would allow an evil-opposing force to tempt, haunt, and mislead his children astray when he’s hello-God! Why would he need to? Seems pretty useless to me if he’s God why is he trying to prove himself to himself. If God created Satan then Satan is God too and this is all pointless also. If God loves his children more than we love ours then what kind of father is he really? It would seem the modern Human would have more compassion than that? And what about the child who grows up in a decent middle-class neighborhood in comparison to the child who grows up in a dirt-poor country where Christianity doesn’t even exist and is left for dead starving? Or the child who gets raped daily by her parents or whatever other sick stuff that goes on in comparison to the Christian, middle-class child with no real issues in their life? This is fair? Do you mean to tell me you would throw out basic logic and sense of justice in the name of fear because your just scared of going to hell? I’m sorry but it sounds to me that you are simply selfish because the common welfare of your fellow man comes last obviously. What about where the bible speaks of slaves as ok? And where it instructs all citizens to not protest your gov’t and to obey all its rules and not to question it? This is all there I am not making any of this up or embellishing it. And what about where it specifically instructs in the Old Testament to a man who rapes a daughter to pay the father 50 rupees? And how are gays born straight but then led gay? How many straight men do you find just flip their switch like that and why would they? The reason you are viewed as fundamentalists is because you look at life through a small, narrow-tube. Inconsiderate of anyone else around you because anything that takes your eye off of your beliefs is considered harmful or evil. I grew up Christian when I was in my teens and had these same questions and no pastor ever gave me anything more than the usual basic rhetoric you hear everyday from Literalists. It’s sad to see how young your soul really is. To have no intuitive understanding of what the mechanism is that’s running here is such a chagrin that it almost brings me to tears.
Interesting! I would to ask if it is okay with you to share this to my fellow church mate. I know they will love this topic and also they will share this to others. I am very much interested to your topic.
I agree with Mike. There are too many people wanting to get into spiritual discussions and being misinformed or making assumptions…I’ve pretty much stopped participating in these conversations all together. Thanks for being something to replace the chatter!
Interesting. It’s very refreshing to read authentic spiritual exploration rather than denominational drivel and evangelical silliness. I was particularly struck by the mention of “shoddy scholarship.” I am a Christan seminary student who is appalled at some of the willfully misinformed prattle that passes for theological dialogue. I often feel as though I’m having discussions with Oprah’s audience.
Anyway, keep it up. Good stuff.
Mike
J Lee, thank you for pointing out my misstatement. I meant to say “Calvin saw those who attacked child baptism as evil.” (Calvin makes this statement in the Institutes, Book IV, Chapter XVI, section 32.)
“Calvin saw those who advocated child baptism as evil”
On the contrary, Calvin was in favour of infant baptism; it was he who launched a program of extermination of the Anabaptists who believed that one should be baptised upon making an informed decision in regard to following Christ. As a matter of fact, many of Calvin’s opponents were executed by drowning which was deemed a fitting death given their views on beleivers’ baptism by immersion.
I enjoyed this thank you for going on a limb to touch a controversial topic. A tool is a tool. Nazis used hammers therefore all people who use use hammers are nazis? this is how i correlate the logic that is presented by the right wing christians. Some of these christian groups (and other sects of abrahamic religion)are verging on Hitler like activities in that they are influencing and calling on the masses to oppress and im sure for a lot of them if they had it their way start new witch trials. When “The Conspiracy” started to become big they jumped on the opportunity to make claim that anyone that wasn’t one of them was evil and under the influence of satan. Well i will say i am speaking as a canadian so most of the influence i witness is coming out of america. Freemasonry is a neutral organization, that people who do bad things meet their and possibly conspire against others is an issue regarding the morality of the individual. This is the double edged sword so called freedom, which is spouted misleadingly consistently by the media and groups of people who just dont get it.
Your comments about Est, werner erhard and therefore indirectly landmark education are humorous. Erhard would think himself the messiah.
The irony of the nazi issue is that a lot of indias spirituality that is not buddhist derives from the sanskrit era of inda. Sanskrit and the people who spoke it as some legends would have it was a blend of the aryan people and the people who lived in india. So when people lump theosophy, occultism, spirituality, human potential movement and so on with nazi-ism what they are really doing is re-affirming what hitler wanted, the world to believe that his group was the aryan people. As for why that is important to hitler and the magical order he joined is a long conversation, as for the validity, i dont know enough to get into and make it clear and precise.