Can any oldfags tell us about the "new age" movement that gained a lot of popularity in the early/mid-90's...

Don't worry user; they say that 80 is the new 40.

That's my suspicion, but some of it looks sincere. Low-circulation "zines" that can't possibly have made any money. Local "macrobiotic food" producers who never distributed outside of their town, etc.

It was a time of optimism , fall of communism, a new decade.
Probably the last time we/I felt optimistic about anything.
>I feel so old.

Same here, 28 years ago today I was in paris with a gf on her 19th birthday, now just another lonely old bloke.

This is a shitty era.

What was the mood like in the UK around the end of the 80's/early 90's? Was it actually all a big Madchester party scene, or was that mostly just a small subculture?

I was into biker culture then, so the manchester scene wasn't my thing.
People drank,people smoked would go for a lunchtime pint ,we could smoke on the factory floor, put up titty pics on the wall at work.
There wasnt such a healthy culture then.

David Icke appeared on tv and the crowd laughed at him, I actually listened to what he said and bought his first book.

interesting how much of that album is indebted to David Byrne and Brian Eno's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" project
also, the follow-up "The Cross of Changes" blows that album out of the water
born in the late-80s, so I have fuckall first-hand interaction with it, but there was a heightened interest in the supernatural, alien, paranormal activity. it's as though once the world went unequivocally unipolar, and threat of nuclear annihilation receded to the background for the first time in decades, we started focusing at the fringes of consciousness, exploring inner space, and looking for life beyond our own planet.
Sven gets it right - after 9/11 everything fucked up. had there been no invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, there wouldn't have been this "clash of civilizations" bullshit going on right now.
Islam didn't exist for me before 2001. I thought as much about it as Hinduism - nay, Jainism. it was irrelevant.
after Bush provoked multiple foreign wars in the Muslim world, all of a sudden we have people blowing themselves up and going on killing rampages in the Western world up to the present day.
if our governments were the least bit smart they would freeze Muslim immigration until the frequency of spontaneous incidents of violence had dropped below a certain threshold - but apparently it would be racist to single out a group like that. it would be "Islamophobic." (normally, phobias have to do with unjustified fears...)

That's not a 90's thing m8, that shit has been around since the 1960s. If you want to get really technical, cults have been common in the US since Mormonism. All that 90's shit was just the same subculture, 30 years later. Notice how many 60s things were revived: Marilyn MANSON, etc. Suddenly it was like everyone wanted to relive the 1960s. They even tried to have a second woodstock.

youtu.be/EeeYkuvPm9s

Attached: file.png (960x768, 543K)

Probably all cause the millennium was approaching and it seemed so futuristic and spiritual/evolution. I think it was hopeful people driving the markets. But then 9/11 happened and ruined the buzz.

The increase in anti-mainstream religion sentiment created the predictable hole in the spiritual needs of the masses and so lots of people turned to various kinds of hand wavy pagan mysticism. The big money/corporation stuff was capitalizing on the demand for this sort of thing. I remember the mid-late 90s internet full of stuff about witchcraft and magic. People took it seriously. I even tried to cast some spells :^)

Hedge fund managers are singing the praises of transcendental meditation. what are you on about?

>when you realize 9/11 was an inside job to keep humanity from ascending

This is whats wrong with millenials by the way. Millenials were supposed to be the first humans to start spiritually awakening but then the entire mood and psyche of the world was hijacked and plunged into perpetual war. So now millenials just kind of sit around, existing in stasis.

>discovering enigma on cassette pre-internet

DAMMMN i can only imagine

I still have that on original cassette tape, another good album from those days was sacred spirit.

Cassette is so old tech i have nothing to play them on.

I fucking hate Enigma, they ruined this beautiful piece.
youtu.be/gKL-Cv2wdBk

The "Harmonic Convergence" in 1987 probably added to the momentum

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_Convergence

Attached: harmonic-convergence-promo-ap8708161248.jpg (1200x630, 227K)

>Was it actually all a big Madchester party scene
It was pretty big for a while before grunge & before the whole brit pop thing, and techno / rave culture was big also at the time & almost completely an underground scene, as in, nobody outside of it knew anything about it, all these scenes were drug fuelled really, it couldn't last.

You know what perfect encapsulates late 80's early 90's? The movie The World's End with Simon Pegg.. ( well at least until the ending). the tunes and the attitudes. Fuck me I miss those days.

The new age thing came around kind of organically. we were on the cusp of a millennium. people were becoming more connected. SO people were receptive to new / alternative ideas and thoughts. Eras also loop around in terms of fashion and thoughts. It felt like a second 60's wave.. especially with all the warehouse raves and E's

Oddly enough, my portable black-and-white TV has a built in tape player and radio. It looks like this. I bought it a couple years ago for $20; I think it was made in the late-80's.

Attached: f5cf548e53160653f4f220c9e5416225-cassette-recorder-tv-radio-jpg[1].jpg (640x480, 40K)

we had a good decade mostly free of war or posturing as though the bombs might fly any moment - 1991-2001 - but the vibe was ruined by 9/11 and Dubya's warmongering, and even though that period was 15-17 years ago the taint still hasn't dissipated.

it's just more marketing bullshit to gullible people and "skeptics" (unlock your inner chi, this music will help you reach inner peace etc). It's like that Dr Oz fad diet shit that sells to 40 year old moms wanting to lose weight, just a predecessor of that whole thing.

Those things were cool, I had a tape to tape version.

I don't think with the way things are now that kind of new age ideals could ever return? At least not in mainstream culture as much of it is co opted mainstream now.
Look at the vegetarian section in the supermarket now vs what it was in 1990, you had nut loaf then and that was about it.

I have no idea for sure, but I'd venture to say 40/60 ratio.

these things never start in the mainstream anyway; but good ideas always spread back into the mainstream, and the turnaround of these cycles are basically instantaneous these days. that's one of the reasons why people have been casting about for a new music underground: everything that gets the least bit popular gets overexposed before it has the chance to really develop, and so success comes instantaneously, and then flares out just as quickly.
it'd have to start somewhere truly underground, and have time to develop away from the prying eyes and critical comments of any random person with internet access.

check out those concepts on the poster:
>shelter
>spirit
>wellness
>learning
all sorts of sigils, symbols, interesting fonts, stylized characters were in vogue in the '90s

Attached: 89037135e5aa6177a45ca304eb57c8d8.jpg (308x480, 46K)

there are signs of a renewed intellectual awakening, though. Jordan Peterson has sent people looking not just through Jung's concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes, but all the books published by Bollingen press.
I see people exploring deep concepts in philosophy & theology - discussions that would have been considered positively esoteric 5 years ago are now being discussed openly.
it's as though all of us can be thought of as manifesting a certain amount of processing power, and our culture is using us to run through all the different possibilities and past solutions our and other cultures have created to try to find an answer for the problems of our current age.
one of the best recent discoveries I've found that manifests a new age vibe is this particular twitter account:
twitter.com/westernidentity
if a new age reawakening happens, the sorts of people that fit in with the lefty twitterverse will have no part of it (locked into secular matters and politics so completely that their eyes can never look up at the stars).

Attached: 89037135e5aa6177a45ca304eb57c8d8.jpg (968x768, 202K)

There’s a DVD copy of Yanni Live at the Acropolis in every Greek household in existence. It’s actually a really good concert.

hippies ascending to management positions figure out they can sell an image of that lifestyle to eager rich yuppies and make a fortune

It was just everyone calming the fuck down after the 80s.

>How much of this was an "organic" movement, and how much of it was a commercial ploy by big corporations to replace traditional religion with a new set of products?
the two concerns dovetailed:
>natural health food and supplements sure cost a lot
this is just the case of many seeds planted in the '60s exploding into the mainstream during the '90s - and large coporations capitalizing on new or renewed interest in these ecological concerns, health concerns, and interests in exotic cultural and religious forms by commodifying them.
it's not so bad if people actually are connected with what they're looking for, but most people got pale imitations very far from the real thing. oodles of "world music" fusion with dated '90s beats flooded the market, while hardcore Ocora and UNESCO discs barely saw an uptick in interest. like most things, everything worthwhile goes to the self-selected few that give a shit and work hard to separate the wheat from the chaff themselves.

>it's not so bad if people actually are connected with what they're looking for, but most people got pale imitations very far from the real thing.
it's important to note: most people don't want the real thing, and wouldn't be prepared to understand, enjoy, or make use of it even if they had it right in front of them.
most were (I hate this term, but) normies who wanted a little taste of something different, and were only willing to go the small distance that opening their wallets and selecting something on the shelf that was only slightly different from what most people were experiencing anyway.
that's where the commodification comes in: most people only came into contact with the popularized - often simplified and compromised - version of the real thing, whatever it was.
to use an analogy: plenty of yoga mats get sold, but hardly anyone who thinks they're "doing yoga" these days achieves any of the aims that traditional practitioners of that discipline set out to attain.
which isn't to say that nobody is searching for the real deal, or that the real thing isn't out there - just that the commodified version of something authentic and powerful has been swallowed entirely in the public consciousness by a ersatz popularization of it. almost everything good suffers from this to some degree.

Attached: Yoga_Design_Lab_Ball_Night_Lifestyle.jpg (1264x843, 262K)

I heard Sadeness on the radio in the late 90s and it took me damn near a dozen years to find out the name of the song.
I kind of grew to like Enigma after that

It is the most popular religion in Estonia. Most people here declare proudly that they are atheists but at the same time believe in Tarot cards, healing crystals, clairvoyants, reincarnation and so on.

would you say that this stems from pre-Christian practices and attitudes that never were truly stamped out by your nation's comparatively recent conversion to Christianity, or this more of a recent phenomenon?

Phrases that make you rage:
>Love and light
>we are all one
>we are all god

>stalin was god
>the crackpot who stole your tv was god
>you're one with and aids infested gipsy prostitute

Really? You have pics of that? Seems kind of odd.

It's definitely recent. The ancient paganism has been eradicated long time ago. We were all pious Lutherans before Communism. But Commusists told us that there is no God and punished people who went to Church. After the collapse of the USSR came the New Age and to a lesser extent Neo-Paganism, but the latter has no connection to the Pre-Christian paganism, it's been re-imagined from zero.
This sort of stuff is common:
www.kristallikeskus.ee
Also pic related.

Attached: nõid_anete.jpg (740x410, 57K)

Imagine my surprise. Germans can indeed be funny.

Attached: šamaan_anu.jpg (1171x633, 382K)

Pretty simple. Christianity and its moral teachings were under attack during the sexual revolution of the late 60's and early 70's. After abandoning their religion many people, especially women longed for a spiritual outlet. They blended hippy culture with a watered down version of Christianity/Buddhism/Hinduism/ and came up with a solipsistic religion that was malleable to at once satiate their spiritual cravings and give license to their degeneracy.

it started with them banning tom and jerry cartoons saying it promoted violence,then it started with removing the gollywog from the jam jars for racism

i didnt even know what racism was lol?

Attached: 1504557941520.jpg (168x301, 8K)

youtu.be/I_iyHnGHQaI

Attached: tähetark_igor.jpg (1200x800, 173K)

>Starts checking your chakras

Thanks. Do you think a chinky looking manlet has a shot with chicks over there? Also into new age stuff

Just so i dont derail the thread,this stuff has been around a long time. In the US esp, in the early 1900s. A popular business book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon hill has obvious New Age ideas. The self-help genre also in books are sometimes mixed with New Age books. Its pretty mainstream now

as inhumane and brutal as the Soviets were when it came to suppressing religion, I have a hard time believing that this was necessarily the primary cause of Estonia's loss of faith.
Sweden was also mostly-Lutheran, and was never under the USSR's control, yet they also transitioned from a Christian nation to a mostly-atheistic one in a few generations without any active state suppression of religion; whereas Poland, which suffered the same persecution of the religious as Estonia did, is still among the most Christian nations of Europe despite all that.
that's why I think it gives more credit to the damned Bolsheviks than they deserve to claim they're the reason Estonia isn't so religious anymore.

Attached: 800px-Europe_belief_in_god.svg.png (800x732, 147K)

This. Sadeness II is a sublime tune.

concerning the music the new-age trance stuff was part of the lsd/extacy culture back then, hence groups like The Beloved and Orbital etc using Von Bingen samples etc, it was something new/different in a new-age of drug culture, the lsd cuture was pretty good back then, Paisley clothing/hoodies were in as were tops adorned with the Hindu Om symbol, it was all part of a new summer of love, it was a good time to bee a teen

t.42yo.

Attached: 2000px-Om_symbol.svg.png (2000x2062, 114K)

Women are women no matter the place.

Yes, I think you are correct. It's just the fact that people before Communism were all members of the Church and every home had a Bible. And the dechristianization started with generations under Communism. Now it has gone so far that our president (female) Kersti Kaljulaid denied the church service on her inauguration. She was the first president of Estonia to do so.
>Do you think a chinky looking manlet has a shot with chicks over there?
No.

Ah, yes. The age of informercials selling CDs.

It was a cash grab latching on to nu hippy culture. Mainstream America didn't take it seriously and the music itself was made fun of by almost everyone I knew.

I liked it, personally. Suited my personality and interests really well, and plus it was just a soothing, introspective turn after the tumult and extroversion of the 1980s. I'm not sure what kicked it off, but it was /comfy/.

One thing you didn't mention that I saw a lot of where I was living out west was a huge upsurge of interest in (and respect for) Indian religions and beliefs, native Americans I mean. People really took a sincere interest in Indians for maybe the first time ever. Shamanism became a very big thing. And you saw a lot of native actors like Graham Greene having great careers pretty much for the first time outside of John Ford movies. TV series like Northern Exposure and movies like Thunderheart reflected that trend, and desu I think they still hold up really well today.

I am generally pretty racist but I've always been cool with American natives. (I know booze is an issue with them and many are criminals/assholes/depressing. But I have also met a lot of cool ones. And they are more akin to Asians/Japanese than anything, which probably influenced my opinions. I grew up around a lot of niggers and illegal Mexican swill, and let me tell you, if you had my childhood you'd prefer Indians too. Anyway.)

The X-Files was another huge 1990s thing which ties right in with what we're talking about here. I genuinely miss the 90s. Though if I could go back in time I'd probably kill Bill Clinton and his foul wife.

I've always wished Art Bell had guest starred on an episode of X-Files.

>Same here, 28 years ago today I was in paris with a gf on her 19th birthday, now just another lonely old bloke.
29 years ago next month I was in Edinburgh with the love of my life that wasn't destined to work out, having an absolutely wonderful time. Ah well.

And yeah, it was probably the last time we felt optimistic about anything. For more than five ill-advised minutes anyway. My condolences.

Excellent summary.

Love Enigma. Maybe I should dig out my old tapes and CDs. That was good stuff.

Listen to Bill Cooper's "Mystery Babylon" series. Download from HOTT website, torrent, or find them on youtube. There is nothing "new" about the "New Age" religion apart from the name.

Attached: 322.jpg (580x580, 56K)

It's not boring and there are lively moments, but it's a rough time for sure. Roughest I've known really, though the crime-ridden 70s were no picnic. Starting with the recession things got pretty dark, or really, with 9/11 but that's hindsight. Things didn't get extremely bad until well into Obama.

Born 81 so I'm a true 90s kid. Good Times. I'd give anything to go back. Back around 91 I thought the future would resemble something like back to the future 2. I genuinely thought that feasable but instead of getting hover boards and self drying clothing we got radical feminism, tranny madness, sjws and a horde of third world savages literally threatening Europe's existence. Back then I had no clue as to how shit the future would actually be.
Anons had it right when they say it all went to shit after 9/11. There's truth to that but I think the cancer really ramped up around 2007/08 with the advent of social media and "nerd culture" being co-opted by the mainstream.
God, I'd give anything to go back to 1991.

Great post, for someone born in the late 80s you've got a sharp grasp of things.

I was really woke to Islam's unpleasant nature early on, because I'd studied all the big Abrahamic religions and realized I didn't like them and that Islam was the most brutal. And also, I had high school friends whose parents had worked for the Shah of Iran. Their stories, and how they'd barely gotten out with their lives when the Shah's regime fell, gave me cold chills. Plus coming of age in the 70s generally had taught me about terrorism. I knew worse would come but didn't foresee the nightmare we're living now entirely. Just a lot of foreboding.

I do know that the first wisps of PC culture I perceived in the late 90s filled me with instant rage and dread. Sometimes it sucks to be right.

check out 'dead can dance' or early brian eno, jon hassel, harold budd, daniel lanois, cluster, holger czukay for more inspriration...

>I remember the mid-late 90s internet full of stuff about witchcraft and magic. People took it seriously. I even tried to cast some spells :^)
Ha, me too. Some of them worked, actually. Hmmm.

I've heard boomboxes and tapes are making a comeback, rather like how vinyl and Polaroids have done.

That's awesome, have never seen one quite like that.

idk but Yanni is pretty good. Too bad the Acropolis version of "The Rain Must Fall" has been scrubbed from YouTube. Some really good musicianship on display in that.

True, everything looked kind of witchy and medieval. Not a bad thing.

also in the realy 80s yiu had that futuristic Detroit and Space Elektro that is really music out of time.

It was a dream of something that was squandered away for fast and easy entertainment and also the Yuppie's gaining influence with their shallow worldview and hedonistic pleasures

>which isn't to say that nobody is searching for the real deal, or that the real thing isn't out there - just that the commodified version of something authentic and powerful has been swallowed entirely in the public consciousness by a ersatz popularization of it. almost everything good suffers from this to some degree
Love this sentence, yes, exactly! and mega-points for using "ersatz."

My mother, single mother, got into this shit big time. I was 5-15 in the 90’s. She met this guru and I swear he was banging every single mom in the city because they would all go to his zen dojo. She made me go once, they were doing yoga in leotards and spent most of an hour in downward dog. He was savoring the asses of 20 moms.

the one worry I have is that the lack of religion as a stabilizing social force could mean your country might drift into unexpected and undesirable directions. tarot cards and crystal-gazing is a benign distraction, but here in Canada he loss of religion has quickly been taken-over by a sharp swing to the political left.
I might not know what I'm talking about, since I know very little of the political situation in your country, or the attitudes of your fellow citizens, but the only danger I can foresee threatening your nation's stability is either the EU forcing Estonia to take in 3rd world migrants to "share the burden" with Germany, Sweden, etc., or else your political left wing clamouring to take them in despite the negative consequences that everyone knows about by now.
that said, from previous conversations I've had with Estonians, you seem to have a good handle on things in your country. here's hoping things stay that way.

archive.org/details/HiddenDangersOfTheRainbow

Here is an entire book on the New Age movement. Go wild OP

In the UK in 2001 we already had politicians warning about grooming gangs. Wed had Lockerbie and various towns filling with Muslims. This has been going on a long time in Europe
In France in the 90s the suburban council estates were infested and they'd do things like gang rape girls lock them in utility cupboards and burn them alive inside
I've always known islam was incompatible. Everyone else low key seemed to too until the mass media shilling in their favour. They were such an ill fit for the 90s new age candle shop vibe they stood out like utter savages

thanks.
from personal experience, all the Persians I've met have been some of the nicest, most polite, and intelligent people I've ever met. uniformly so.
whatever threats of Islamic radicalism other Muslim-majority populations might pose to the West, these are people I'm happy we've welcomed into our country.
I wonder if the social dynamic is similar to the one where all the Cubans who fled to Florida were political conservatives and business-owners, while all those on the far left stayed on the island? in that sense, it would be only religious moderates who would have left after the Islamic revolution...

(((active state suppression of religion)))
Theyre just much more subtle about it.
I've seen how they've taken even the most basic elements out of school over a 20 year teaching career. They dilute it because it unites us as a cultural bloc. Without it it the next strongest cultural unifying force in Europe now is islam

saw this symbol while experiencing DiPt/DPt

thanks. while what I meant came through just fine, I kind of messed up the sentence structure. it should read:
>which isn't to say that nobody is searching for the real deal, or that the real thing isn't out there - just that most authentic and powerful versions of basically everything has been swallowed entirely in the public consciousness by an ersatz popularization of it.
I picked up "ersatz" from Robert Christgau, when he was reviewing "In the Court of the Crimson King"

What a Chad.

>savoring the asses of 20 moms.

now we don't need that - at the local park or shopping center we can see the asses of moms and their daughters, both in skin-tight clothing(leotards, "leggings" or whatever you prefer)

Attached: 1518912212458.jpg (780x1040, 131K)

Yanni! The Olympic ring fountains in centennial park used to do a show to one of his songs right after the ‘96 olympics

I used to listen to Enigma and Enya when playing Civilization 2

It is meant to distract you. Welcome to the Brave New World. Churches exist to obscure the teachings of Christ and the new age exists to obscure the teachings of the Buddha. Idiots will eat up the materialistic social aspects and never focus on core teachings , while more intelligent people are repulsed by the insanity of it all and hence rarely read about authentic Buddhism

Tldr it was da demon joo

I was one of the first generations that wasn't taught to recite the Lord's Prayer in school during morning ceremonies.
now we accommodate Muslim students praying in school gymnasium.
it's really not hard for people who are paying attention to connect the dots.
my brain isn't allowing me to believe that this picture is of a real, injured woman. it's interpreting it as some sort of weird performance art.

New Age began with the Hippies dude, and their fascination with Eastern mysticism which was badly misunderstood to promote hedonism.

It's not a 90s development.

What he said. Though it kind of started with Satan.

Fuck man, I love this album. I remember constanly hearing this on the radio when I was a little kid. I know it's degenerate trash, but the aesthetic in and of itself is incredibly alluring and distinctive, unlike quite anything else.

Attached: 1535021166371.jpg (564x564, 70K)

>HURR DURR IM FUCKEN RETARDED

What do you all recommend for a 22 year old like myself living in this era? Things are so confusing, so polarized. It is not a comfy time to be a young adult.

>fascination with Eastern mysticism which was badly misunderstood to promote hedonism.
this is seriously fucked. Listening to stuff like Mahavishnu Orchestra and other John McLaughlin projects I wonder where it all went wrong. It was supposed to be a time of making peace with God and/or the universe.

Live fast. Die young. Leave a good looking corpse.

It was less popular than it is now but the people into it were less of posers about it
Mostly it was the younger version of the liberal boomers you see today
I lived in Nashville and we had a vampiric/Satan church and the neighbors had built a large wooden cross in their yard facing it, teens would meet up behind the bowling ally and kill cats, it was less mainstream but also less fake, still LARPish but they actually left the house and did things

That movie “The Craft” had all hoe bag teens calling themselves witches and they tried to legit summon demons, probably why 28-35 yr old women are such trash now

you're mistaking a bunch of disparate shit for a cohesive movement

What a weird story that was, it was one guy and his goth stripper gf in a Bond villian missile silo lair
That guy was amazing