In 1983 Shirley MacLaine, an Academy Award winning actress at the height of her fame, publishes Out on a Limb, her memoir of past lives, channelers, and a spirit guide named Ramtha. The book and its 1987 television adaptation carry the New Age's core claims into the American mainstream on a celebrity's name, to the movement's delight and its critics' despair.
Tagged: New Age
The Event
- Date
- 1983 (exact)
- Era
- The Mainstream Moment; Standard periodization of New Age history
- Location
- New York; today New York, New York
- Traditions
- New Age Spirituality
- Streams
- New Age
- Key figures
- Shirley MacLaine
- Key texts
- Out on a Limb
Connections
Primary Sources
- MacLaine, Shirley. Out on a Limb. New York: Bantam, 1983.
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-1478; 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.