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.

Asia

• Ubud - south East Asia's centre for yoga and alternative lifestyle
• Pai Northern Thailand

Europe

• Ceredigion, Wales
• Christiania, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Damanhur – 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.
• 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.
• Totnes – known as "Britain's alternative capital. A New Age nirvana of Sufis, surfers and Buddhist builders ..."^[3]

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
• Boulder, Colorado – home of Chögyam Trungpa's Shambhala Center, Naropa University, and center of the Ken Wilber-based integral movement
• Breitenbush Hot Springs, Oregon
• Cassadaga, Florida
• 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.
• 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 - Spa City, also known as "Valley of the Vapors", an ancient gathering place of North, Central and South American tribes. Home of over 47 natural hot springs, and located on the largest vein of crystal quartz in North America, spanning 30–40 miles wide extending a distance of about 170 miles southwest from Little Rock, Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma. Metaphysical epicenter with multiple vortices throughout the region, with large community of alternative healers, massage therapists, vibrational medicine, energy and light workers practicing both Native American and new age healing arts.
• Lily Dale, New York
• Mount Shasta, California
• 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.
• Angels Camp, California - Love and Light Religion

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.

India

• Auroville, Tamil Nadu
• Goa

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.^[4]

See also

• Environmentalism
• Global Ecovillage Network
• List of intentional communities
• Omega Institute for Holistic Studies

References

1. Oliver Popenoe, Cris Popenoe (1984). Seeds of Tomorrow: New Age Communities that Work. Harper&Row. ISBN 0-06-250680-3.
2. 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 90-04-15355-1. Retrieved 2010-08-28.
3. Lucy Siegle (2005-05-08). Shiny hippy people. London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
4. Christoph Brumann (2000). "The Dominance of One and Its Perils: Charismatic Leadership and Branch Structures in Utopian Communes". Journal of Anthropological Research. 56, No. 4 (4): 425–451. JSTOR 3630926.

External links

• Intentional Communities website