And if you still think New Age isn't over-commercialized, consider case of trance channeler who trademarked her spirit guide!

Native American ***************

What New Age movement has managed to do is turn Tarot cards (which have a history going back hundreds of years) into a divinatory version of Happy Families. Feng Shui has been turned into a fashionably expensive way of choosing wallpaper. And highly respected Jewish Kabala has become latest trendy esoteric religion. All difficult bits have of course been neatly stripped away in order to make it more easily digestible by New Age fraternity. Meanwhile, generations of Native American wisdom has been repackaged and is now sold as "The Inspirational Thought for Day". Many Native American tribes are of course no longer to be found.

The dream has gone. All that is left is dreamcatcher.

There is nothing particularly wrong with getting in touch with your own spiritual roots. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with having a symbiotic connection with spiritual roots of other people and cultures.

As far as I am aware, there is no artificial New Age movement in poor villages of Africa. But maybe there is no readily available market for it. Maybe there is no money waiting to welcome it in. Doubtless there is lots of money to be made (probably already being made) not from selling to less affluent countries, but rather in buying artefacts from them (at an advantageous rate of course) and reselling them at a good profit to New Age adherents in West, thereby perpetuating myth of relevance of New Age movement today.

Mythology *********

It's time to take a bold step. Leave behind artificial trappings of New Age Movement. Find out about mythology of your own part of world. Construct your own beliefs or belief system that is relevant to here and now. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you have a valid belief system, when all you have is either a credo that cost you $5.95 or a Feng Shui bill that will turn neighbours green with envy and make your accountant go white with fear.

If that is all you have, admit it. If it's badges you want why not say so? If it's beliefs you seek, then look elsewhere.

What we really need to do is to stop worshipping at shop windows and to get away from notion that ring of a cash register equals divine revelation. And above all we need to learn to trust ourselves again rather than always feeling a need to follow other people's paths. Our belief systems ought to evolve organically and naturally rather than having to be constructed, like Frankenstein's monster, from leftover bits and pieces of everybody else's.

“Is that opinion of Derek and others at Damanhur?”

“I think so.”

“There are many ‘experts’ who say that light speed is still not transcendable or that time is linear and it is not possible to do many things that I posit in these pages, I know. I offer up this site to these people and say that whole truth of what Black Ops and other agents of real knowledge pursue is not under control of NASA or The Smithsonian and other public or relatively transparent structure of academia and government. Here is a site worth looking into that discusses some of things that many have known for a long time. It does not include Catholic scholar/physicist who reportedly has developed a chronovisor in conjunction with Werner von Braun and Fermi’s inputs that would be similar to one thing Philosopher’s Stone could achieve (http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/bpp/TM-107289.htm).

‘Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti (1925-1994) was a Benedictine priest, scientist, and world-class authority on "archaic" music (pre-Christian to 10th century A.D.). He claimed to have yoked quantum physics to occult arts to construct a time-machine-- chronovisor. Father Ernetti said he had traveled to Rome in 169 B.C. to witness a performance of now-lost tragedy, Thyestes, by father of Latin poetry, Quintus Ennius. He claimed to have used chronovisor to watch Christ dying on cross. Why would so distinguished a churchman have felt need to confabulate such a story? Is Vatican suppressing full truth of Father Ernetti’s life and achievements?’ (5)”

It was clear to Sean that he would have to take a taxi home as wine flowed and his body began to succumb to its cumulative effect.

“Pessimism has depths of feeling and this ideology as prophetic or simply reported as it may be - is worse than any mere pessimism. I prefer to think there are at least some members of our race who have a part to play in all of this. I prefer a 'conspiracy' to a technological determinism. But Martin Heidegger does identify an argument for acting before it is too late. Are there any moral players left in philosophy? Certainly there are, but it is entirely possible they won't be found teaching philosophy in schools. Why assume any Platonic or reversal of same, attitudes with games to control others? Why engage energy in destructive morality? The essence he should have studied is in beauty of each child and on ripples of waves that signal passing of what carries us towards our potential. Let all people know truth which he defines as 'disclosure and unconcealment'. We are of opinion this kind of truth is a necessity for change and creativity. It is often bandied about as 'transparency' in financial circles. If all mankind were able to know these truths then there might be a revival of humanity and an end to cybernetics!” Sean almost croaked as his wits crescendoed into blather and they parted company.