In 1972 Jane Roberts of Elmira, New York, publishes Seth Speaks, the first of the books she dictates in trance from the entity Seth: you create your own reality. The Seth material becomes channeling's classic and gives the movement its most quoted doctrine, that belief manufactures experience.
Tagged: New Age
The Event
- Date
- 1972 (exact)
- Era
- The Countercultural Bloom; Standard periodization of New Age history
- Location
- Elmira; today Elmira, New York
- Traditions
- New Age Spirituality
- Streams
- New Age
- Key figures
- Jane Roberts
- Key texts
- Seth Speaks
Primary Sources
- Roberts, Jane. Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Secondary Sources
- Hanegraaff, Wouter J. New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: Brill, 1996.
- Heelas, Paul. The New Age Movement. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
- York, Michael. The Emerging Network: A Sociology of the New Age and Neo-Pagan Movements. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.
Provenance: HIST-1476; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
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World View
New Age Spirituality
New Age spirituality is an eclectic search for the divine within: through healing, meditation, and ancient wisdom, each person awakens to their own sacred power.