The New Age: The History of a Movement

This is exactly the sort of new age 101 book that I was looking for, and even better than I expected! (And here I was told there wasn't any such thing as a new age 101 book.) This is a neatly organized book (sorted by chronology and by subject) with lots of full color photographs and illustrations contemporary to the subjects discussed. Its tone is astonishingly, delightfully neutral, describing both the positive, successful, genius aspects of each movement within the movement, while also telling about the debunkings, hoaxes, disasters, and dissolutions. It provides enough background information about each subject for you to understand it a bit better than if you'd directly approached another book on that subject alone. It covers not only the sub-movements that I'd come to think of as being New Age, but also related movements, such as the Victorian precursors to the New Age, modern shamanism, developments in psychology, and hippie psychadelica. While it does cover the Goddess-based spirituality, it does not include any other things about Paganism, Wicca, etc. (Odd, since I'd expect the neo-Pagan movement to be included in here, if they included those other things.) It is not strictly American (or Californian, which tends to be thought of as the center of the New Age movement) and includes movements which happened primarily in England or in India. The book does not present new ideas of its own, it just describes what the ideas were of these other people, and how it worked out for them. If you're interested in anything occult (or psychadelic, psychological, or social) then read it, it's excellent in every way! Doesn't matter if you're new to the occult, or if you consider yourself to be fairly experienced; you will learn something from this. It's more than just a New Age 101. Pagans may be disappointed by being left out, but there's still plenty of connections that they'll like. I'm not sure how much reread value this book has, although it's ideal as a reference.