History
Antecedents
Popularisation behind these ideas has roots in the work of early 20th century writers such as D. H. Lawrence and William Butler Yeats. In the early- to mid-1900s, American mystic, theologian, and founder of the Association for Research and Enlightenment Edgar Cayce was a seminal influence on what later would be termed the New Age movement; he was known in particular for the practice some refer to as channeling. Another prominent influence was the psychologist Carl Jung, who was a proponent of the concept of the Age of Aquarius.
Hanegraaff believed that the New Age movement’s direct antecedents could be found in the UFO religions of the 1950s, which he termed a “proto-New Age movement”. Many of these new religious movements had strong apocalyptic beliefs regarding a coming new age, which they typically asserted would be brought about by contact with extraterrestrials. Examples of such groups included the Aetherius Society, founded in the UK in 1955, and the Heralds of the New Age, established in New Zealand in 1956.
Luc Paquin
On-line – Self-Directed Learning
Helpful Materials
When communicating with a person with aphasia, keep some of the following materials on hand to help enable conversation and comprehension:
- Blank paper to present one or two pictured items or words at a time.
- Markers or pencils – the bolder or larger the writing, the better to see so use a thick black marker. For those with aphasia, writing with a pencil is easier. Make sure to place the pencil and paper right in front of him/her.
- Cut out window, created from construction paper – use this to frame one picture at a time.
Paper and flashcards – whether letter-sized or small sheets, flashcard can be used to write keywords (e.g., TOOTHBRUSH) or to introduce or change a topic.
Norma
History
Antecedents
According to scholar Nevill Drury, the New Age has a “tangible history”, although Hanegraaff expressed the view that most New Agers were “surprisingly ignorant about the actual historical roots of their beliefs”. As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age has antecedents that stretch back to southern Europe in Late Antiquity. Following the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century Europe, new esoteric ideas developed in response to the development of scientific rationality. This new esoteric trend is termed occultism by scholars, and it was this occultism which would be a key factor in the development of the worldview from which the New Age emerged.
One of the earliest influences on the New Age was the Swedish 18th century Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, who professed the ability to communicate with angels, demons, and spirits. Swedenborg’s attempt to unite science and religion and his prediction of a coming era in particular have been cited as ways in which he prefigured the New Age movement. Another early influence was the late 17th and early 18th century German physician and hypnotist Franz Mesmer, who claimed the existence of a force known as “animal magnetism” running through the human body. The establishment of Spiritualism, an occult religion influenced by both Swedenborgianism and Mesmerism, in the U.S. during the 1840s has also been identified as a precursor to the New Age movement, in particular through its rejection of established Christianity, its claims to representing a scientific approach to religion, and its emphasis on channeling spirit entities.
A further major influence on the New Age was the Theosophical Society, an occult group co-founded by the Russian Helena Blavatsky in the late 19th century. In her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), Blavatsky claimed that her Society was conveying the essence of all world religions, and it thus emphasized a focus on comparative religion. Another was New Thought, which developed in late nineteenth century New England as a Christian-oriented healing movement before spreading throughout the United States.[34] Drury also identified as an important influence upon the New Age movement the Indian Swami Vivekananda, an adherent of the philosophy of Vedanta who first brought Hinduism to the West in the late 19th century.
Luc Paquin
Europe
In Early Modern European tradition, witches were stereotypically, though not exclusively, women. European pagan belief in witchcraft was associated with the goddess Diana and dismissed as “diabolical fantasies” by medieval Christian authors. Witch-hunts first appeared in large numbers in southern France and Switzerland during the 14th and 15th centuries. The peak years of witch-hunts in southwest Germany were from 1561 to 1670.
The familiar witch of folklore and popular superstition is a combination of numerous influences. The characterization of the witch as an evil magic user developed over time.
Early converts to Christianity looked to Christian clergy to work magic more effectively than the old methods under Roman paganism, and Christianity provided a methodology involving saints and relics, similar to the gods and amulets of the Pagan world. As Christianity became the dominant religion in Europe, its concern with magic lessened.
The Protestant Christian explanation for witchcraft, such as those typified in the confessions of the Pendle witches, commonly involves a diabolical pact or at least an appeal to the intervention of the spirits of evil. The witches or wizards engaged in such practices were alleged to reject Jesus and the sacraments; observe “the witches’ sabbath” (performing infernal rites that often parodied the Mass or other sacraments of the Church); pay Divine honour to the Prince of Darkness; and, in return, receive from him preternatural powers. It was a folkloric belief that a Devil’s Mark, like the brand on cattle, was placed upon a witch’s skin by the devil to signify that this pact had been made. Witches were most often characterized as women. Witches disrupted the societal institutions, and more specifically, marriage. It was believed that a witch often joined a pact with the devil to gain powers to deal with infertility, immense fear for her children’s well-being, or revenge against a lover. They were also depicted as lustful and perverted, and it was thought that they copulated with the devil at the Sabbath.
The Lost Bearded White Brother
Terminology of the “New Age”
The term “new age”, along with related terms like “new era” and “new world”, long predate the emergence of the New Age movement, and have widely been used to assert that a better way of life for humanity is dawning. It has, for instance, widely been used in political contexts; the Great Seal of the United States, designed in 1782, proclaims a “new order of ages”, while in the 1980s the Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed that “all mankind is entering a new age”. The term has also appeared within Western esoteric schools of thought, having a scattered use from the mid-nineteenth century onward. In 1864 the American Swedenborgian Warren Felt Evans published The New Age and its Message, while in 1907 Alfred Orage and Holbrook Jackson began editing a weekly journal of Christian liberalism and socialism titled The New Age. The concept of a coming “new age” that would be inaugurated by the return to Earth of Jesus Christ was a theme in the poetry of Wellesley Tudor Pole and Johanna Brandt, and then also appeared in the work of the American Theosophist Alice Bailey, who used the term prominently in such titles as Disciplineship in the New Age (1944) and Education in the New Age (1954).
Between the 1930s and 1960s a small number of groups and individuals became preoccupied with the concept of a coming “New Age” and prominently used the term accordingly. The term had thus become a recurring motif in the esoteric spirituality milieu. Sutcliffe therefore expressed the view that while the term “New Age” had originally been an “apocalyptic emblem”, it would only be later that it became “a tag or codeword for a ‘spiritual’ idiom”.
Luc Paquin
On-line – Self-Directed Learning
How to Use Communication Techniques
The fundamental thing to remember when working with someone with aphasia is to be natural. Use communication techniques when breakdowns occur, gradually layering when needed. Overusing communication techniques can also cause incomprehension if the person with aphasia feels you’re being patronizing. Watch the cues from the person with aphasia closely and follow the path that seems to be getting the most response. And remember – everyone experiences communication challenges from time to time, even the most skilled communication partners.
Those with severe aphasia will likely need more extensive support to absorb messages both in and out so use as many communication techniques that appear to be helping.
Norma
Definition
The New Age phenomenon has proved difficult to define, with much scholarly disagreement as to how this can be done. Religious studies scholar Paul Heelas characterised the New Age movement as “an eclectic hotch-potch of beliefs, practices, and ways of life” which can be identified as a singular phenomenon through their use of “the same (or very similar) lingua franca to do with the human (and planetary) condition and how it can be transformed”. Similarly, historian of religion Olav Hammer termed it “a common denominator for a variety of quite divergent contemporary popular practices and beliefs” which have emerged since the late 1970s and which are “largely united by historical links, a shared discourse and an air de famille”. Sociologist of religion Michael York described the New Age movement as “an umbrella term that includes a great variety of groups and identities” but which are united by their “expectation of a major and universal change being primarily founded on the individual and collective development of human potential”.
Describing the New Age as a “religious movement”, the religious studies scholar Wouter Hanegraaff adopted a different approach by asserting that “New Age” was “a label attached indiscriminately to whatever seems to fit it” and that as a result it “means very different things to different people”. He thus argued against the idea that the New Age movement could be considered “a unified ideology or Weltanschaaung”. Echoing the view that the phenomenon labeled “New Age” was not “even a homogenous entity at all”, the religious studies scholar Steven J. Sutcliffe nevertheless rejected the idea of a “New Age movement”, deeming it to be “a false etic category”. Many of those groups and individuals who could analytically be categorised as part of the New Age movement reject the term “New Age” when in reference to themselves. Thus, religious studies scholar James R. Lewis identified “New Age” as a problematic term, but asserted that “there exists no comparable term which covers all aspects of the movement” and that thus it remained a useful etic category for scholars to use.
The New Age movement is a form of Western esotericism. Hanegraaff considered the New Age to be a form of “popular culture criticism”, in that it represented a reaction against the dominant Western values of Judeo-Christian religion and rationalism, adding that “New Age religion formulates such criticism not at random, but falls back on” the ideas of earlier Western esoteric groups.
York described the New Age movement as a new religious movement (NRM). Conversely, Heelas rejected this categorisation; he believed that while elements of the New Age movement represented NRMs, this was not applicable to every New Age group. Hammer identified much of the New Age movement as corresponding to the concept of “folk religions” in that it seeks to deal with existential questions regarding subjects like death and disease in “an unsystematic fashion, often through a process of bricolage from already available narratives and rituals”. York also heuristically divides the New Age movement into three broad trends. The first, the “social camp”, represents groups which primarily seek to bring about social change, while the second, “occult camp”, instead focus on contact with spirit entities and channeling. York’s third group, the “spiritual camp”, represents a middle ground between these two camps, and which focuses largely on individual development.
Luc Paquin
Asia
Kuwait
MPs in Kuwait have proposed to use death penalty for sorcery. Ethiopians have been deported for practising sorcery.
Pakistan
In Pakistani mythology, a common perception of a witch is a being with her feet pointed backwards.
Philippines
Witchcraft in the Philippines is often classified as malevolent, with practitioners of black magic called Mangkukulam in Tagalog and Mambabarang in Cebuano; there are also practitioners of benevolent, white magic, with some practising both. Mambabarang in particular are noted for their ability to command insects and other invertebrates to accomplish a task, such as delivering a curse to a target.
Magic and witchcraft in the Philippines varies considerably across the different ethnic groups, and is commonly a modern manifestation of pre-Colonial spirituality interwoven with Catholic religious elements such as the invocation of saints and the use of pseudo-Latin prayers (oración) in spells, and anting-anting (amulets).
Practitioners of traditional herbal-based medicine and divination called albularyo are not considered witches. They are perceived to be either quack doctors or a quasi-magical option when western medicine fails to identify or cure an ailment that is thus suspected to be of malevolent, supernatural origin (often the work of black magic). Feng shui, an influence from Filipino Chinese culture, is also not classified as witchcraft, and it is seen as a separate realm of belief altogether.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia continues to use the death penalty for sorcery and witchcraft. In 2006 Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali was condemned to death for practicing witchcraft. There is no legal definition of sorcery in Saudi, but in 2007 an Egyptian pharmacist working there was accused, convicted, and executed. Saudi authorities also pronounced the death penalty on a Lebanese television presenter, Ali Hussain Sibat, while he was performing the hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) in the country.
In 2009 the Saudi authorities set up the Anti-Witchcraft Unit of their Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice police.
In April 2009, a Saudi woman Amina Bint Abdulhalim Nassar was arrested and later sentenced to death for practicing witchcraft and sorcery. In December 2011, she was beheaded. A Saudi man has been beheaded on charges of sorcery and witchcraft in June 2012. A beheading for sorcery occurred in 2014.
Tocharians
An expedition sent to what is now the Xinjiang region of western China by the PBS documentary series Nova found a fully clothed female Tocharian mummy wearing a black conical hat of the type now associated with witches in Europe in the storage area of a small local museum, indicative of an Indo-European priestess.
The Lost Bearded White Brother
The New Age is a term applied to a range of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices that developed in Western nations during the 1970s. Precise scholarly definitions of the movement differ in their emphasis, largely as a result of its highly eclectic structure. Many scholars of the subject refer to it as the New Age movement, although others contest this term, believing that it gives a false sense of homogeneity to the phenomenon.
As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age movement drew heavily upon a number of older esoteric traditions, in particular those that emerged from the occultist current that developed in the eighteenth century. Such prominent occult influences include the work of Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, as well as the ideas of Spiritualism, New Thought, and the Theosophical Society. A number of mid-twentieth century influences, such as the UFO cults of the 1950s, the Counterculture of the 1960s, and the Human Potential Movement, also exerted a strong influence on the early development of the New Age movement. Although the exact origins of the movement remain contested, it is agreed that it developed in the 1970s, at which time it was centred largely in the United Kingdom. It expanded and grew largely in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular within the United States.
Despite its highly eclectic nature, a number of beliefs commonly found within the New Age movement have been identified. Theologically, the movement typically adopts a belief in a holistic form of divinity which imbues all of the universe, including human beings themselves. There is thus a strong emphasis on the spiritual authority of the self. This is accompanied by a common belief in a wide variety of semi-divine non-human entities, such as angels and masters, with whom humans can communicate, particularly through the form of channeling. Typically viewing human history as being divided into a series of distinct ages, a common New Age belief is that whereas once humanity lived in an age of great technological advancement and spiritual wisdom, it has entered a period of spiritual degeneracy, which will be remedied through the establishment of a coming Age of Aquarius, from which the movement gets its name. There is also a strong focus on healing, particularly using forms of alternative medicine, and an emphasis on a “New Age science” which seeks to unite science and spirituality.
Those involved in the New Age movement have been primarily from middle and upper-middle-class backgrounds. The degree to which New Agers are involved in the movement varied considerably, from those who adopted a number of New Age ideas and practices to those who fully embraced and dedicated their lives to it. The movement has generated criticism from established Christian organisations as well as contemporary Pagan and indigenous communities. From the 1990s onward, the movement became the subject of research by academic scholars of religious studies.
Luc Paquin
On-line – Self-Directed Learning
Revealing Competence
There are communication techniques that can help ease the exchange of information and feelings between the conversation partner and the person with aphasia. The key is ensuring messages are taken IN, OUT and VERIFIED by the person with aphasia.
Getting the message IN is a matter of modifying the way you converse to ensure you are being understood by the person with aphasia. Some methods to try include:
- Using short, simple sentences and an expressive voice.
- Using gestures when conversing.
- Writing keywords or main ideas down – e.g., PAIN in large or bold print.
- Using pictures and focusing on one at a time.
- Eliminating distraction – noises, other people, or multiple visual materials.
- Observing the person’s facial expression, eye gaze, body posture or gestures to determine level of comprehension.
Getting the message OUT might be a bigger challenge for someone with aphasia. To help them express their thoughts to you, try:
- Asking yes or no questions.
- Asking one question at a time.
- Asking him/her to gesture, point to objects or pictures, or write key words, such as “Can you show me…”
- Giving him/her sufficient time to respond.
- Asking fixed choice questions such as, “Do you want water or coffee?”
- Phrasing yes or no questions from general to specific.
Verifying the message is important to making the person with aphasia feel understood and valued. Summarize slowly and clearly by saying, “So let me make sure I understand” and using the following methods:
- Adding gestures or written key words.
- Repeating the person’s message.
- Expanding on what you think the person might be trying to say.
- Recapping the conversation if it was a long one.
Norma