CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2Religious Studies and Spiritual PracticesStudy and Philosophy of ReligionHistorical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies

Theosophical Elements in New Age Religion

Hammer, Olav·2013·Handbook of the Theosophical Current
DOI 10.1163/9789004235977_014
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Writing a chapter on the Theosophical elements of the is a task that comes with a particular set of problems.The vagueness of the epithet New Age is connected with the history of the term. It was popularized in the 1970s as a phrase designating a very loosely organized and highly eclectic set of practices and doctrines. Theological and philosophical issues are also treated in the literature, and are discussed by interested individuals, but they play a more subdued role. The brief overview of religiosity has stressed the multiplicity of ideas and approaches involved. The belief in reincarnation was boosted by the Oriental Renaissance that in the 19th century generated a lively interest in the religions and philosophical systems of India. This chapter begins by noting the difficulties involved in pinning down the exact nature of the influence of Theosophical materials on practices and texts. Keywords:New religiosity; reincarnation; theosophical elements

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1163/9789004235977_014

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Theosophy, emerging from Hindu and esoteric Buddhist sources, and New Thought, with precursors including Mesmerism, were among the 19th-Century religious movements influencing the New Age concept; New Thought focused on healing from early on.

    “These include Theosophy (Hammer 2013), itself emerging from Hindu and esoteric Buddhist sources, and New Thought, its own precursors including Mesmerism (Albanese 1992), which from early on focused on healing (Hickey 2019).”

    From New Age Healing: Origins, Definitions, and Implications for Religion and Medicine (2022) · cites this paper as Hammer 2013

  • With its theology of the impersonal Divine, Theosophy was particularly influential on the New Age, which inherited a propensity to see the divine in impersonal terms.

    “With its theology of the impersonal Divine, Theosophy was particularly influential on the New Age, which inherited a propensity to see the divine in impersonal terms.”

    From Nothing Personal: Blavatsky and Her Indian Interlocutors (2021) · cites this paper as Hammer 2013

Authors
Hammer, O.
Corresponding author
Hammer, Olav
ORCID
Hammer, Olav
Venue
Handbook of the Theosophical Current
Publisher
BRILL
Published
2013-01-01
Pages
237-258
DOI
10.1163/9789004235977_014
OpenAlex
W2476515733
Cited by
1
References
0
Citations by year
2024: 1
FWCI
0.00
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • BRILL eBooks (publishedVersion)
  • University of Southern Denmark Research Portal (University of Southern Denmark) (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Study and Philosophy of Religion
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
Keywords
New Age, Theosophy, new religiosity, reincarnation, Oriental Renaissance, esotericism

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review