Why Do We Hate New Age?

This is part one of two (well, actually three) videos on New Age religion and why we love to hate it. This video will focus on the roots New Age has in western esotericism.
Click the bell icon so you'll know when we add a new video!
Join the Nordic Animism patreon: / nordicanimism
Shop Nordic Animism at our webshop: shop.nordicani...
Subscribe to the Nordic Animism Newsletter: eepurl.com/iiN29X
Want more Nordic Animism? Check out these playlists:
• RAGNAROK
• THE RAVEN
• MYTHOLOGY
• ACADEMIC
• SACRED FIRE
• POLITICAL
• ANCESTORS
• THE WORLD TREE
• CALENDAR
• BEER - ᚨᛚᚢ
The Nordic Animism platform is developed by Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen:
Instagram: / nordic.animism
Facebook: / nordicanimism
Tiktok: / nordic_animism
Website: nordicanimism....
linktr.ee: linktr.ee/nord...
Editing: Mattie David
Music: "Odrerir" Troels Liebgott. See: / @troelsliebgott792
Outro Music: "Raven Brings Runes" by
/ @jotunger and / @kjellbraaten

[@oldakela6834]

This is a good video. I was raised by new agers but naturally gravitated towards animism and paganism on my own. On one hand I can critique new age beliefs in a way only people raised in a certain belief system themselves can, but on the other hand I am glad to have been raised by them rather than people holding more dominant viewpoints. I’m in the U.S. but here at least “most” new agers just kind of hold a wishy washy, internally inconsistent set of beliefs that usually involve misunderstood eastern religious concepts coupled with modern western notions of a monotheistic God who has a plan for everything and everyone, sometimes with the trappings (but usually not beliefs) of indigenous practices thrown in. But the number one thing I associate with new age thinking is a total rejection/avoidance of any kind of darker or negative aspects of reality. Those don’t fit in if all that really exists is a singular god and that god is all love, so they take a “head in the sand” approach to those things. I think that’s what turns a lot of people off; new agers may have legitimate roots in western esoterica, but that few of them understand anything but a surface level of the concepts they invoke, and are too imbalanced in their focus to understand them better. But that said, a lot of the people who complain about new agers may also lack in understanding in different ways, or be imbalanced (like the reconstructionists who can’t consider anything if it’s not fully supported by incontrovertible historical evidence, for example).

[@robgau2501]

I couldn't have said it better.

[@cedaremberr]

I'd be interested in one of the esoteric philosophy/history channels doing a breakdown on the toxic positivity of some modern western esoteric traditions. I'm pretty sure there's a line from the "law of attraction," through the conversations between protestantism and esoteric thought during the 2nd Great Awakening, and likely roots further back, but the details seem fuzzy to me

[@user-sr1kc6jj2b-p1q]

Nicely said! I would also add that if one were to travel to the areas where the misunderstood “eastern” religions originated from and are dominant, one might also find that most ordinary people would have the same _level_ of understanding and belief. The difference being that they respect what they are taught by higher ranking devotees and what the devotees or clerics tell their “parishioners” is likely to be more consistent than the post-modern consumerist patchwork of the New Age.

[@celestialtreetarot4260]

This is so cool. I’m a New Age flake so I appreciate hearing about this history. I remember my anthropology teachers being really annoyed when traditional knowledge got “contaminated” by New Age ideas in a culture they admired or studied. That idea may have changed by now though

[@inlesinlet]

Phenomenal! I've had animist leanings my entire life, but I didn't know that animism was "a thing" and that other people throughout history, and even today, experience the world like I do. It made philosophy undergrad in Norway *very frustrating* indeed. I got so upset by all of these Western philosophers, but I had no idea why I got so upset. Descartes in particular infuriated me, and it was only made worse by none of my peers being infuriated with me. Now I understand it a lot more. Anyways, I propose "Descartes-dunking" as a term mirroring "Viking-washing", as in dunking something into a bucket of Descartes-water in order to "cleanse" it.

[@sarenthodinsson]

My issue with the New Age as it is commonly understood today is that it often does what happens in academia: a flattening of differences into stereotypes that are then regurgitated for their particular audience without nuance as though they are factual. Who they sell this particular view to is different, but the effect is a flattening of intellectual, philosophical, religious, and in many cases esoteric ideas, expressions, practices, and experiences. While New Age thought may have an old pedigree, insofar as the history of the philosophical and religious ideas underpinning them, the New Age is not only inconsistent with its own histories, it is often inconsistent in thought and expression day-to-day, opening itself up to poor mythmaking, the taking of others' ideas and cultural praxis and claiming them as their own, and being hijacked for far-right, racist, and/or fascist means.

[@singam7436]

Interesting videos, allow me if you will to try to clarify my own mixed feelings on the New Age phenomenon When it comes to my own religion, there is a real sense in which New Age ad its predecessors in Theosophy and Thelema have basically shaped how the west sees Dharmic religious concepts and took active part in the Orientalist project, as seen in things such as how the New Age notions of Chakras and Tantra in general are far removed from the original Hindu and Buddhist ideas due to a lack of real attempt at understanding (unlike their fellow Esotericist John Woodroffe/Arthur Avalon) among other things. On the other hand, several prominent Theosophists such as Annie Bessant were quite active in my country's freedom struggle, and thewestern interest in Hindu ideas that was generated by Western Esotericists played an important role in the Hindu Rennaissance Apologies for the rambles, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say in the next video

[@AbbieOates]

I like when Viking Prof rants. Thanks for the video and sharing your knowledge. ❤️

[@markusnicklas4627]

Oh my! Thanks for correcting yourself, Rune. Thanks for opening up the fields for further insight. May people find inspiration here to deal with themselves and others kindly, careful and with harm to none. Probably this one hurts me so much, because such a lot of self-delusion is connected with it for me. My father was a miner and thats why f.i. I have connections to gemstones, but this is also associated with going "underground," its risks and immense dangers

[@geoffreymassey4865]

Honestly the best thing I can about Crowley is that W.B. Yeats kicked him down a flight of stairs. He still had very much a colonialist approach to magic and esotericism. Otherwise I can agree with the basic point of this though.

[@ssanhayeob]

i really appreciate how you can bring nuance into these kinds of topics that are too often treated as binary matters. i'm looking forward to the future videos on this theme.

[@mattjustice830]

Thank you so much rune you really have helped me with understanding more of my inner spiritual understanding and the importance of animism in our practices

[@Bjorn_Algiz]

Very interesting and informative 😊 love your work and analysis on beliefs and culture.

[@natuvampire]

Really appreciate the author's references and your animistic perspective on stuff!

[@Iyana]

Looking forward to watching your new video when it premiers! 🤍

[@bwhitedpencilbox889]

This puts into words something I’ve been noticing for a while now. It’s a pretty messy project, retrieving the threads of old animisms from the wreckage of colonial western culture.

[@mattias5157]

This is brilliant and very profound.

[@kayebohemier]

Having been raised pagan, here's what I usually think about when I think about New Age: 1) All of the pagan books I wanted to read as a kid, typically about Goddesses and moon rituals and similar, were on the same shelves as those awful books by the people who think all politicians are Reptilians and that every ancient monument was built by extraterrestrials. It made me feel really ashamed that the books I actually wanted to read were not shelved in religion. I don't want to share shelf space with conspiracy theorists. 2) When I was in my teens, I heard about a plastic shaman who had caused multiple hospitalizations and at least one fatality at a fake sweat lodge thing in the USA that he had charged participants huge amounts of money for. He had zero training from any group of people on how to safely do them. I wish I could say that's the only news story I've heard like that. 3) I've met a lot of people over the years who have messiah complexes, typically thinking that they're chosen for saving humanity or something, and as part of that, they engage in the weirdest incoherent things. I also recall meeting a few people who were sold on the idea of an apocalypse in 2012 and sometimes wonder what happened to them when 2013 came around and they realized they were still here. 4) Ethically-sourced crystals cost between $15-40 each usually. That's the price of not having child and/or slave labor. Many people in New Age I meet think that they can cleanse cheaper crystals' bloody history away with lunar charging or a symbol-table, and even after that, they don't treat the crystals as if they are precious. When I think about New Age disparagingly, I'm not thinking about people who are ethical and earnest. I'm thinking about people greedy for money or hyperconsuming for a certain "look" or who don't care about the ethical consequences of their practices, who are not aiming for some form of balanced ethical living, or people who are deeply wounded and who haven't found an environment that will help them dig themselves out of their mental coping mechanisms. So a spiritual materialism. I think Davi Kopenawa's assessment of the power of merchandise in settler cultures, the devastation that infatuation causes, and the way it drives away the numinous beings around us is fairly spot-on, even while accounting for the cultural differences we have regarding burial practices and similar. Your video, however, did get me thinking about how the broader culture lumps everything all together under that category and doesn't distinguish. Maybe we need a new umbrella term for spiritual materialism and unethical behavior.

[@Aphidman1]

I am happy to have found your channel! Thanks for the historical perspective.

[@ernamoller175]

Thank you Rune!

[@mattias5157]

Last year or in 2022 I fell in love with your fellow dane Anders Puck Nielsen and his clear, reasoning videos on the war in Ukraine. Today I´ve found a new favourite. Very nice, polite, profound and still christal clear, en svensk nyårshälsning från Chiapas i Mexico!

[@nikoguarro]

I just watched Contrapoints tangent on Granola Fascism. And a lot of ge things she describes there where things that I intuitively had picked up during my childhood when my mom opened the doors of our house to almos all New Age cults. The problem with new age is that it serves itself from the sort of rethorics that spouse conspiranoic theories, and spiritual hygienism that also permiates fascist rethoric. I personally can stand new age becuase I have a lot of trauma sorrounding that subject.

[@bht96]

Even though I am Norse Pagan, I cannot totally give up the Thoth Tarot and some Thelemic concepts. Crowley was a bona fide genius and I will always hold his philosophy and teachings in high regard.

[@porlagente]

I think Dr. Jacques Vallee explains the problem well in Passport to Magonia. New Age is essentially a contactee religious complex-a worldview founded upon the perceived assertions of Trickster entities. But rather than reject such assertions when they come into conflict with objective reality, the New Age believer instead rejects objective reality itself. This is why New Age is not just annoying, but pernicious-anti-reason, anti-fact and perhaps ultimately anti-human.

[@96lucasb]

Crowleys Tarot is cooler tho

[@atlanticdragon4773]

I think vikings hate new age because they jealous of how much success they have in running their business

[@NordicAnimism]

Totally! they are better at conquering the world!

[@rosemarymcbride3419]

I think that the cosmology of distinction ultimately sits within the comparably more wholistic relational one. It is relational but only from a very narrow locus, namely whatever position(s) provide dominance to an individual or identity group. In this way it can both establish the social/political/intellectual distinctions it claims exists while also enabling it to use esoteric ideas to enforce them.

[@rhiannonfugatt3269]

Dowsing and pendulum swinging is definitely not "new age" but ancient practice. One of the only divining practices allowed to continue to exist after Christianity came because people had to find water.

[@elmarm.5224]

Do you have a source for that it works and that pendulum swinging is a divination as "ancient practice"?

[@rhiannonfugatt3269]

There are many reputable sources out there, just google ancient pendulums in archaeology or worlds oldest pendulum @@elmarm.5224

[@zoozooe]

What is platonic thought?

[@dylanmagoiofthethalasso4032]

Over the past year and a half to 2 years I have held the thought in my mind that the term "New Age" is an offencive(?) term, because over that time period I have found information on practices that are considered "New Age" by happenstance but do to the transfer of the true original practices from there native land and westernizing it has watered down the spiritual meaning of those said practices, "dumbing it down for us Westerners". Some of the practices/beliefs I have taken a peak at from there original meaning are: yoga, karma and chakras. So what I'm picking up is that, some guy started the Christian belief of separating the togetherness of human, animals and earth in general and kind inadvertently created the belief of "Man having dominion over everything non-human"? Oh jeez I do not like black and white, no nuance thinking.

[@edj8008]

To late to make a comment but I think what I don't like new age is the grifting and lack of chill.

[@MaudMargretheRex]

Thanks : counter-Education - sounds as a good Way to stray. And perhaps the new thinker; Iian McGilchrist whos knowlegde makes new Great discoveries: straight from the build of our brains..

[@SofiaFreja]

Darwin did not create or support Social Darwinism. The science behind Natural selection didn't support those racist mutations of his evolutionary theory. And it's absurd to blame him for racist pseudo science.

[@NordicAnimism]

The fact that retrograde evangelist psychopaths have made a pariah out of evolutionary theory shouldn't make us close our eyes to how this theory was abused. What is pseudo-science and what is norm approved knowledge change over time. Assuming the opposite means understating the modern euro-centric idea of steady progression towards and absolute truth. In the early 20th century Race evolutionism was not pseudo-science. It was as standard accepted knowledge as the fact of human created climate change is today. Once you accept the tension in that, you enable yourself question euro-centric modernity. Also note that the point is not to devaluate evolutionary theory, but to say that Power uses normative thinking to produce cruelty more than it uses subaltern thinking

[@Cynthia.B]

I think the quote by Darwin at 20:34 pretty much sums up the fact that he did have a racist mindset.

[@SofiaFreja]

@@Cynthia.B I didn't say he wasn't a privileged white man raised in a racist culture. Or that he didn't have racist thoughts. He did not create Social Darwinism. Eugenics and other bastardizations of evolutionary theory were created by others after Darwin. And he would never have supported that nonsense, because it's pseudoscience. And the point of Darwin's life's work is that our understanding of the natural world ought to be based on scientific principles. What is amazing about Darwin's work, is that it holds up, virtually intact today, despite all the attempts of racists and other such horrible people to denigrate and co-opt it.

[@seanwagner7426]

the more i study i see new age was taken from Christianity just leave out jesus and insert self. its still putting your power outside of yourself. for example you need a stone to awaken the chakras or engaging w other entities outside of self. literally everything they teach xan be found in the bible once you innerstand symbolism. feel free to believe whatever but those stones wont save you lol.

[@miguelatkinson]

How exactly how where talking about people who believe in reincarnation, charkas,karma, and channeling and all the things that would either run contrary to the bibles teaching or aren't even practiced or believed in Christianity

[@flemmingrosenvold5417]

A lot of woke and leftish nonsense.

[@NordicAnimism]

Totally! - you should check out my "Political" playllist btw. Here: kzbin.info/aero/PLpgfnnXC81dUnVSuQrkrOZs3ggaV90qsb&si=NHuM7tlALTkde3vh

[@AEGIPAN101]

Are you going to provide examples of how this video constitutes "woke and leftish nonsense" or are you just going to use the buzzwords of the day to make a baseless accusation because YOU had a reaction to the information in the video? Or, even worse, are you one of those people who can't accept that pre-Christian Nordic culture and history doesn't match with the image of muscular white men doing strong manly man things? Because if you are one of those people then I am delighted to inform you that pre-Christian Nordic mythology is spectacularly queer and based

[@HYPMAN100]

@@AEGIPAN101 I think he means new age itself not the video