The Siberian Village of Okunevo as a Place of Power and its Sacred Landscape

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Julia Senina
Keyword(s):  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Sacred Landscape ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
Sacred Landscapes ◽  
Specific Interpretation ◽  
The Village

Abstract The paper deals with contemporary places of power and New Age sacred landscapes in Russia.* It focuses on the Siberian village of Okunevo, its sacred sites, and their worshippers. Formation of this place of power was a result of the activity of individuals (both academics and adherents of new religious movements), combined with the specific interpretation of archaeological sites and the natural landscape of the area. The landscape around the village of Okunevo affects the interaction of people with the sacred loci and the ways the signs, symbols and narratives about them are created.

scholarly journals The articulation between evolutionism and creationism in New Religious Movements: Two South American case studies

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Vitor Campanha
Keyword(s):  
Biological Evolution ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
The Internet ◽  
South American ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
American Case

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how certain religious perspectives present nuances between the concepts of creation and evolution. Although public debate characterizes them as polarized concepts, it is important to understand how contemporary religious expressions resignify them and create arrangements in which biological evolution and creation by the intervention of higher beings are presented in a continuum. It begins with a brief introduction on the relations and reframing of Science concepts in the New Religious Movements along with New Age thinking. Then we have two examples which allows us to analyze this evolution-creation synthesis. First, I will present a South American New Religious Movement that promotes bricolage between the New Age, Roman Catholicism and contacts with extraterrestrials. Then, I will analyze the thoughts of a Brazilian medium who disseminates lectures along with the channeling of ETs in videos on the internet, mixing the elements of ufology with cosmologies of Brazilian religions such as Kardecist spiritism and Umbanda. These two examples share the idea of ​​the intervention of extraterrestrial or superior beings in human evolution, thus, articulating the concepts of evolution and creation. Therefore, in these arrangements it is possible to observe an inseparability between spiritual and material, evolution and creation or biological and spiritual evolution.

Secular Beats Spiritual

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Meditation ◽  
New Age ◽  
Exercise Programme ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
The West

The decline of Christianity in the West is undeniable but commentators differ in their understanding of what this represents. For some, it shows a decline in interest in religion; for others, religion has not declined, only changed shape. Possible candidates for Christianity’s replacement are the new religious movements of the late 1960s and what is variously called New Age, alternative, or contemporary spirituality. This detailed study of the religious and spiritual innovations since the 1970s assesses their popularity in Britain and concludes that the ‘not-decline-just-change’ view is unsustainable. Serious interest in spirituality has grown far less quickly than has the number of people with no religious or spiritual interest. The most popular and enduring movements have been the least religious ones; those that have survived have done so by becoming more ‘this-worldly’ and less patently religious or spiritual. Yoga is popular but as a secular exercise programme; Transcendental Meditation now markets its technique as a purely secular therapy; British Buddhists now offer the secular Mindfulness; the Findhorn Foundation (Europe’s oldest New Age centre) no longer promotes counter-cultural communalism but sells its expertise to major corporations. The book also demonstrates that, although eastern religious themes such as reincarnation and karma have gained popularity as the power of Christianity to stigmatize them as dangerous has declined, such themes have also been significantly altered so that what superficially looks like the easternization of the West might better be described as the westernization of the easternization of the West.

Alternative Archaeology and New Age Traditionalism in Contemporary Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-73
Author(s):  
Andrei Tiukhtiaev
Keyword(s):  
New Age ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Southern Russia ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Krasnodar Region ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
New Age Spirituality

Abstract This article examines how esoteric traditionalism in contemporary Russia searches for legitimisation using alternative archaeology. Although New Age spirituality is often considered a private religion, some of its manifestations have a significant impact on the public sphere. The author demonstrates that the New Age in Russia contributes to redefining of categories of religion, science, and cultural heritage through the construction of sacred sites and discursive opposition to academic knowledge. The research is based on analysis of media products that present esoteric interpretations of archaeological sites in southern Russia and ethnographic data collected in a pilgrimage to the dolmens of the Krasnodar region.

New Spiritualities in Western Society

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Possamai
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
New Age ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Western Society ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Western World ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Late Modern

Various social and cultural changes from modernity to late modernity have been key to the appearance and development of new spiritualities in Western society. The often-contested term of “new spiritualities” is often liked with other no less contested ones such as “mysticism,” “popular religion,” “the New Age,” and “new religious” movements. Further, if the expression new spiritualities or alternative spiritualities took off outside of institutionalized religions in the Western world, this term is now re-used by these institutions within their specific theology. As new spiritualities are becoming mainstream in the first quarter of the 21st century, they are having a low-key impact on post-secularism (i.e., a specific type of secularism characteristic of late modern societies).

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