New Age communities
Encyclopedia
New Age communities are places where, intentionally or accidentally, communities have grown up to include significant numbers of people with New Age
beliefs. The intentional communities have specific aims but have a variety of structures, purposes and means of subsistence. These include authoritarian, democratic and consensual systems of internal government. New Age communities also exist on the Internet
.
s or messiah
s. Such leaders inhibit the survival of these communities.
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
beliefs. The intentional communities have specific aims but have a variety of structures, purposes and means of subsistence. These include authoritarian, democratic and consensual systems of internal government. New Age communities also exist on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Australia
- NimbinNimbin, New South WalesNimbin is a village in the Northern Rivers area of the Australian state of New South Wales, approximately 30 km north of Lismore, 33 km southeast of Kyogle, and 70 km west of Byron Bay....
– a small town in north-east New South Wales that since the 1973 Aquarius FestivalAquarius FestivalThe Aquarius Festival was a counter-cultural arts and music festival organised by the Australian Union of Students and sponsored by Peter Stuyvesant and held at Nimbin...
has been a center of hippy and alternative lifestyle.
Europe
- DamanhurFederation of DamanhurThe Federation Of Damanhur, often called simply Damanhur, is a commune, ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 30 miles north of the city of Turin. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the Valchiusella valley, bordering on the Gran...
– a commune, ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 30 miles (50 km) north of the city of Turin. The group holds a mix of New Age and neopagan beliefs.
- FindhornFindhorn FoundationThe Findhorn Foundation is a Scottish charitable trust registered in 1972, formed by the spiritual community at the Findhorn Ecovillage, one of the largest intentional communities in Britain....
– a community founded in 1972 to act as a focal point for the work of Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean near Findhorn, in Moray, Scotland
- GlastonburyGlastonburyGlastonbury is a small town in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,784 in the 2001 census...
– is particularly notable for the myths and legends surrounding a nearby hill, Glastonbury Tor, which rises up from the otherwise flat landscape of the Somerset Levels. These myths concern Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Grail, and also King Arthur. Glastonbury is also said to be the centre of several ley lines.
- TotnesTotnesTotnes is a market town and civil parish at the head of the estuary of the River Dart in Devon, England within the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty...
– known as "Britain's alternative capital. A New Age nirvana of Sufis, surfers and Buddhist builders ..."
United States
- ArcosantiArcosantiArcosanti is an experimental town that began construction in 1970 in central Arizona, north of Phoenix, at an elevation of 3,732 feet...
, Arizona – a self-contained experimental town that began construction in 1970. Its architect, Paolo Soleri, designed the town to demonstrate ways urban conditions could be improved while minimizing the destructive impact on the EarthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
.
- AshevilleAsheville, North CarolinaAsheville is a city in and the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. It is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the 11th largest city in North Carolina. The City is home to the United States National Climatic Data Center , which is the world's largest active...
, North Carolina
- BoulderBoulder, ColoradoBoulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, Colorado – home of Chögyam TrungpaChögyam TrungpaChögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.Recognized...
's Shambhala Center, Naropa UniversityNaropa UniversityNaropa University is a private American liberal arts university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.Naropa describes itself as...
, and center of the Ken WilberKen WilberKenneth Earl Wilber II is an American author who has written about mysticism, philosophy, ecology, and developmental psychology. His work formulates what he calls Integral Theory. In 1998, he founded the Integral Institute, for teaching and applications of Integral theory.-Biography:Ken Wilber was...
-based integral movement
- Breitenbush Hot Springs, Oregon
- Esalen, California – a center in Big Sur for humanistic alternative education and a nonprofit organization devoted to multidisciplinary studies ordinarily neglected or unfavoured by traditional academia.
- Harbin Hot SpringsHarbin Hot SpringsHarbin Hot Springs is a non-profit hot spring retreat and workshop center in Harbin Springs, Lake County, in Northern California, about two hours northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area.-History:...
, California
- Sedona, Arizona – is where the "Harmonic ConvergenceHarmonic ConvergenceThe Harmonic Convergence is the name given to the world's first globally synchronized meditation, announced by José Argüelles, and which occurred on August 16–17, 1987, which also closely correlated to an exceptional alignment of planets in our solar system, see below .The timing of the Harmonic...
" was organized by Jose Arguelles in 1987. Purported "spiritual vortices" are said to be concentrated in the region.
Charismatic leadership
Such communities may be founded by charismatic leaders who may be credited with quasi-religious status, being considered guruGuru
A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...
s or messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
s. Such leaders inhibit the survival of these communities.
See also
- EnvironmentalismEnvironmentalismEnvironmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
- Global Ecovillage NetworkGlobal Ecovillage NetworkThe Global Ecovillage Network is a global association of people and communities dedicated to living "sustainable plus" lives by restoring the land and adding more to the environment than is taken...
- List of intentional communities