New Age communities
New Age communities are places where, intentionally or accidentally, communities have grown up to include significant numbers of people with New Age beliefs. An intentional community may have specific aims but are varied and have a variety of structures, purposes and means of subsistence. These include authoritarian, democratic and consensual systems of internal government.[1] New Age communities also exist on the Internet.[2]
Notable communities
Australia
- Byron Bay
- Nimbin – a small town in north-east New South Wales that since the 1973 Aquarius Festival has been a center of hippie and alternative lifestyle.
Europe
- Ceredigion, Wales
- Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Damanhur – a commune, ecovillage, and spiritual community situated in the Piedmont region of northern Italy about 50 kilometres (30 mi) north of the city of Turin. The group holds a mix of New Age and neopagan beliefs.
- Dornach, Switzerland
- Findhorn – a community founded in 1962 to act as a focal point for the work of Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy Maclean near Findhorn, in Moray, Scotland
- Glastonbury – 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.
- Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland.
- Stroud – a market town in the centre of Gloucestershire, England ''A small Cotswold market town which has become known as 'Hippy Central.' '' [3]
- Totnes – known as "Britain's alternative capital. A New Age nirvana of Sufis, surfers and Buddhist builders ..."[4]
United States
- Arcosanti, 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 Earth.
- Asheville, North Carolina
- Avalon Organic Gardens & EcoVillage, Arizona
- Bisbee, Arizona
- Bloomington, Indiana
- Boulder, Colorado – home of Chögyam Trungpa's Shambhala Center, Naropa University, and center of the Ken Wilber-based integral movement
- Breitenbush Hot Springs, Oregon
- Burlington, Vermont
- Cassadaga, Florida
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Crestone, Colorado
- 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.
- Eugene, Oregon
- Eureka, California
- Eureka Springs, Arkansas
- Fairfield, Iowa – home of Maharishi University of Management (formerly Maharishi International University) since 1974 and has been referred to as "the world's largest training center" for practitioners of the Transcendental Meditation technique.
- Harbin Hot Springs, California
- Hot Springs, Arkansas – an ancient Native American gathering place featuring over 47 natural hot springs. Now houses a large community of Native American and New Age healing art practitioners.
- Idyllwild, California
- Ithaca, New York
- Joshua Tree, California
- Lily Dale, New York
- Marfa, Texas
- Missoula, Montana
- Moab, Utah
- Mount Shasta, California
- Ojai, California
- Paia, Hawaii
- Portland, Oregon
- Roseburg, Oregon
- Santa Fe, New Mexico
- Salem, Massachusetts
- Sedona, Arizona – is where the "Harmonic Convergence" was organized by Jose Arguelles in 1987. Purported "spiritual vortices" are said to be concentrated in the region.
- Summertown, Tennessee
- Taos, New Mexico
- Topanga, California
- Venice, California
- Yellow Springs, Ohio
Central America
- San Marcos La Laguna, Guatemala – A very small town on Lake Atitlan. There is an assortment of schools, teachers, and healers. Las Piramides del Ka was the first school to bring yoga and meditation to San Marcos La Laguna. Now there are a variety of different schools teaching yoga, Tai Chi, Massage, Reiki, breathwork, etc.
Charismatic leadership
Such communities may be founded by charismatic leaders who may be credited with quasi-religious status, being considered gurus or messiahs. Such leaders inhibit the survival of these communities.[5]
See also
References
- Oliver Popenoe, Cris Popenoe (1984). Seeds of Tomorrow: New Age Communities that Work. Harper&Row. ISBN 0-06-250680-3.
- Kemp, Daren and James R. Lewis, ed. (2007). "The Diffuse Communities of the New Age". Handbook of New Age. Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 175–79. ISBN 978-90-04-15355-4. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
- "Stroud, the gentle Cotswold town that spawned a radical protest". The Guardian. 2019-04-20. Retrieved 2020-12-04.
- Lucy Siegle (2005-05-08). Shiny hippy people. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Brumann, Christoph (2000). "The Dominance of One and Its Perils: Charismatic Leadership and Branch Structures in Utopian Communes". Journal of Anthropological Research. 56 (4): 425–451. doi:10.1086/jar.56.4.3630926. JSTOR 3630926. S2CID 142032962.
External links
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.