New Age / neopagan gatherings take place on a regular basis throughout the world. In America the most prominent of these are the Rainbow Gatherings held in various parts of the country, and the Burning Man Festivals held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Drawing New Agers, Wiccans, goddess-worshippers, earth-worshippers, and outright Satanists together with curiosity-seekers and party-goers, the Burning Man Festivals increase in size every year: in 2004 there were 35,000 participants. The Festivals conclude each year with the torching of a forty-foot-high sacrificial wooden man, reminiscent of the ancient “wicker man” sacrifice practiced by the Druids on the feast of Samhain (now known as Halloween).

While such gatherings are a significant indicator of the growing normalization of paganism in our society, more significant is the fact that New Age ideas and practices are entering more and more into all spheres of human thought and activity, shaping the lives of millions who may not consciously identify themselves as neopagans or New Agers.

Thus, the “New Age” has become less a movement than a cultural trend, a leaven insinuating itself everywhere: into psychology, sociology, history, the arts, religion, health care, education, and government. Mental hospitals throughout the country have instituted New Age programs: Eastern meditation, transpersonal psychology, biofeedback, and music mediation. Many senior citizen centers have adopted Yoga as a way to promote “mind-body” health. A large number of major corporations have sponsored New Age seminars for their employees, where visualization, hypnosis, “psychic healing,” “dream work,” contacting spirit guides, and other “consciousness-raising” practices have been taught. Even in public, government-funded schools, mediumism under the name of “channeling” has been taught as a means of “inner healing.” A consortium of concerned parents in Connecticut has described what has been happening in the classroom: “In the name of discovering their ‘life purpose,’ children are encouraged into trance-like states of mind where they communicate with ‘guardian spirits.’ The use of Yoga exercises and mind control techniques are other example of the format of this program.”

Christian churches, sadly, follow the same dangerous trends, trailing in the dust of the world’s march of apostasy. In the mid-1970s Father Seraphim had written: “The profound ignorance of true Christian spiritual experience in our times is producing a false Christian ‘spirituality’ whose nature is closely kin to the ‘new religious consciousness’.” Years before “channeling” of disembodied entities had become a New Age fad, Father Seraphim had quoted charismatics speaking about how they “channeled” the “Holy Spirit.” But even if we omit the issue of the charismatic revival, the prognosis he made has been borne out in other areas. As New Ager Marilyn Ferguson writes in her book The Aquarian Conspiracy: “An increasing number of churches and synagogues have begun to enlarge their context to include support committees for personal growth, holistic health centers, healing services, meditation workshops, consciousness-altering through music, even bio-feedback training.”

In the city of Detroit, for example, mind control courses have been taught by a Roman Catholic priest and nun. In New York, the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine has features sermons by David Spangler – a leading member of the Findhorn Foundation who has said that a “Luciferian initiation” would be required to enter the New Age. In Oakland, California, the “University of Creation Spirituality,” under the leadership of Episcopal priest Matthew Fox, advocated a “redefined” Christianity that rejects the traditional Christian theology and the ascetical Christian worldview while embracing Wiccan spirituality. Here, “rave masses” (also known as “techno-cosmic masses”) are held every month, having been originally launched at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in California. Described by one observer as “a syncretistic brew of paganism, witchcraft, nature-worship, drama, art, and dance, these multi-media “masses” are attended by well over a thousand people.

Concurrently, there is now a movement in contemporary Roman Catholicism to assimilate the teachings of Carl Jung, one of the founding fathers of the New Age movement. Jung, who participated in s?ances and admitted to having “spirit guides,” taught that the exclusion of the “dark side” is a fatal flaw in Christianity, and that therefore there needs to be a fourth hypostasis added to the Holy Trinity – Lucifer! His theories are being extolled in Roman Catholic seminars and workshops, and his psychotherapy is being practiced in some Roman Catholic churches, and by monks and nuns in some monasteries. Episcopal and Protestant (especially Methodist) churches have also entered this movement; a number of Protestant ministers also work as Jungian analysts.

Within many mainline Christian churches there is a strong and determined movement to “re-imagine” the Christian faith along the lines of radical feminist theology, neopagan goddess worship, and a New Age worldview. In 1993 the first “Re-imagining” conference was held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in conjunction with the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Decade of Churches in Solidarity with Women. The conference was attended by over two thousand participants from twenty-seven countries and fifteen mainline denominations, most prominently the Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ, and American Baptist. One third of the participants were clergy. Speaking of the need to “destroy the patriarchal idolatry of Christianity,” the conference speakers rejected and at times ridiculed the Christian dogmas of the Holy Trinity, the Fall of man, the unique incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and the redemption of man by Christ’s death on the Cross. In place of these articles of faith, the conference promoted pantheism, shamanism, and homosexual rights. The participants took part in a “liturgy” wherein milk and honey were used rather than bread and wine, and the goddess “Sophia” was worshipped rather than Jesus Christ. The chant was repeated: “Our Maker Sophia, we are women in your image… with our warm body fluids we remind the world of its pleasure and sensations.” At a later Re-imagining conference held in 1998, Sophia-worshipping participants also shared biting into large red apples to express their solidarity with Eve, whom they regard as a heroine for having partaken of the forbidden fruit.

Although conservative Christians have spoken out against the conferences, the Re-imagining community remains influential within mainline churches, holding inter-denominational caucuses to discuss strategies for expansion. Worship of the goddess Sophia continues within these churches. As recently as June 2004, during the Presbyterian General Assembly in Richmond, Virginia, a “Voices of Sophia” meeting was held in which Sophia was invoked as a goddess.

More significantly, feminist theology has become the most prominent trend on mainline seminary campuses today, and is a driving force within the ecumenical movement. The main coordinator of the 1993 Re-imagining conference, Mary Ann Lundy, is now the Deputy Director of the World Council of Churches. At the 1998 Re-imagining conference, she made clear the agenda of both feminist theology and modern-day ecumenism: “We are learning that to be ecumenical is to move beyond the boundaries of Christianity. You see, yesterday’s heresies are becoming tomorrow’s Book of Order.” As we have seen, this is also the agenda of the New Age movement.

Since Fr. Seraphim first wrote about the “charismatic movement” that was sweeping Christian churches, the movement has grown at a phenomenal rate. Worldwide, Pentecostalism is the fastest growing segment of Christianity: it is increasing at a rate of thirteen million people per year – primarily in Asia, Africa, and South America – and now claims nearly half-a-billion adherents.

Fr. Seraphim’s observations about charismatic experiences have been borne out most strikingly in the “holy laughter movement” that mushroomed in the 1990s. About “laughter in the Holy Spirit” Fr. Seraphim had written: “Here perhaps more clearly that anywhere else the charismatic revival reveals itself as not at all Christian in religious orientation.” This is precisely the charismatic phenomenon that has seen the greatest increase in the last decade.

The rise of the current laughter movement can be traced to another movement that arose within Pentecostalism: the so-called Faith Movement in the 1980s. Also known as the “health, wealth, and prosperity gospel” because of its teaching that Christ has delivered believers from the curse of poverty and sickness, the Faith Movement contains strange tenets which resemble those of the New Age movement, such as belief in the power of creative visualization (visualizing what you want, and then “claiming” it), the belief that a person can become as much an incarnation of God as Jesus Christ was, and the denial that Christ redeemed man through His death on the Cross.

Through the ministries of leaders such as Kenneth Copeland, Rodney Howard-Browne, and Marilyn Hickey, the Faith Movement has spread its heresies and attendant charismatic phenomena throughout the world. Since the spring of 1993, the movement has had a profound impact, not only on Pentecostal churches, but on mainline Christian churches as well. It was then that Faith Movement leader Rodney Howard-Browne drew widespread attention to his televised “laughing revival” at an Assemblies of God church in Lakeland, Florida. Thousands came from around the world to take part. Howard-Browne would walk through the crowds, placing his hands on people, and saying such things as “Fill! Fill! Fill!”, whereupon many would collapse on the floor, laughing uncontrollably, cackling and hooting. Others would writhe on the floor screaming hysterically, act as if drunk, be stuck to the floor with what Howard-Browne called “Holy Ghost glue,” or be “slain in the Spirit,” that is, fall to the ground on their backs, often into unconsciousness. Each of these manifestations would often last for up to several hours, and sometimes (as in the case of uncontrollable laughter) for several days.

Calling himself a “Holy Ghost bartender” who is “drunk all the time,” Howard-Browne showed disdain for any attempts to test the spirits to see whether they are of God (1 John 4:1). “I’d rather be in a church where the devil and the flesh are manifesting, – he stated, – than in a church where nothing is happening because people are too afraid to manifest anything… And if a devil manifests, don’t worry about that, either. Rejoice, because at least something is happening!”

In August 1993, Randy Clarke, pastor of a charismatic church in St. Louis, Missouri, attended a Faith Movement meeting led by Howard-Browne in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Four months later, Clarke brought the “laughing revival” to the Airport Vineyard Church of Toronto, Ontario. What began as a four-day series of meetings expanded into months of nightly services that sometimes lasted until 3:00 A.M. At this point the laughter movement skyrocketed, eliciting massive coverage by the worldwide media. Dubbed the “Toronto Blessing,” the “holy laughter” meetings were billed as the top tourist attraction of 1994. Hundreds of thousands of Christians came to the Toronto church from all over the world – not only Pentecostals, but also Mennonites, Nazarenes, Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, Roman Catholics, etc.

In Toronto, the manifestations of the Faith Movement-inspired “laughing revival” grew even more bizarre than those reported earlier. In addition to the phenomena already described, people were seen to crawl on the ground and roar like lions, bark like dogs, paw the ground and snort like bulls, oink, howl, moo, crow, growl, and emit other animal noises. Other manifestations of the “revival” included jerking and shaking of the head and body, karate chopping motions, imitating warriors, dancing uncontrollably, abdominal spasms, intense chest pain, “vomiting in the spirit,” and “birthing” (going through a mock labor and delivery).

Of the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken part in the “Toronto Blessing,” 15,000 have been Christian ministers and pastors. They have subsequently brought the movement to their congregations throughout the world, causing such phenomena as “holy laughter” and being “slain in the spirit” to multiply at a rapid rate on five continents. In England alone, 7,000 churches, including those of the Church of England, have embraced the Toronto Blessing. The manifestations of the laughter movement have now swept what has long been regarded as mainstream Christianity. In July of 1995, a Pentecostal and several Protestant and Roman Catholic charismatic scholars defended the animal noises as either manifestations of the Holy Spirit or human responses to the Holy Spirit’s working.

The widespread acceptance of these manifestations reveals an utter ignorance of the traditional Christian standards of spiritual life. In the Orthodox Church, most of these manifestations have been historically regarded as clear signs of demonic possession. In Orthodox Christian countries even today, such behaviors are exhibited by possessed individuals during services of exorcism performed by Orthodox priests. An American Orthodox nun, who attended such exorcisms in Russia in 1995, records that “once the services are underway, the demons begin to show themselves. One woman rages in a male voice, another person shakes violently, another shrieks, another is thrown to the floor, losing consciousness… yet another looks as though he is in distress and pain, just before vomiting on the floor…They scream their hatred for the priest, vowing to have their revenge, as he douses them with holy water. Some demons make jokes, others are just raw anger and hatred. But the loudest noise always seems to be that of animals: mooing, crowing, and especially barking and growling.”

Although, as Fr. Seraphim has noted, charismatics would disclaim any association with occultism and paganism, it is noteworthy that the same manifestations of the “holy laughter” movement are found in the New Age movement. The Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, called by his disciples the “divine drunkard,” encouraged his devotees to come and “drink” from him. His spiritual “wine” was often passed on with a single touch to the head (known as the shakti-pat), at which his followers would collapse in ecstatic laughter. Another famous guru, Swami Muktananda, would hold meetings at which thousands of his followers from around the world came to receive his touch. They experienced uncontrollable laughing, roaring, barking, hissing, crying, shaking, as well as falling unconscious. Muktananda was only imparting to his disciples experiences that he himself had undergone: roaring like a lion and other involuntary animal behaviors, which he attributed to spirit-possession by the goddess Chiti.

It is also noteworthy that prominent New Agers have spoken out in favor of the “holy laughter” movement that has entered Christian churches. One such spokesman, Benjamin Cr?me, well known for his predictions of the imminent coming of a New Age Messiah, has said the following about the “Toronto Blessing”: “People are reacting to new energies invading our planet. Energies emanating from the ‘christ’ give them a sense of peace.”

Popular evangelist Oral Roberts, who hosted a revival led by Rodney Howard-Browne, has called the “holy laughter” movement the beginning of “another level of the Holy Spirit.” Howard-Browne himself has said the movement marks a “powerful new wind of the Spirit,” bringing with it “the exciting sound of joy, joy, joy, joy!” that is “energetically stirring us to higher levels with God.” This is remarkably similar to claims made by today’s New Age “prophets.” At the same time “holy laughter” began to ripple through the churches, New Age leader Barbara Marx Hubbard wrote that the human race was soon to experience a leap in evolution which she called “The Planetary Pentecost” or “The Planetary Smile.” “From within, – she wrote, – all sensitive persons will feel the joy of the force flooding their systems with love and attraction. As this joy floods through the nervous systems of the most sensitive persons on earth, it will create a psycho-magnetic field of empathy… This massive sudden emphatic alignment will cause a shift of consciousness of Earth.” As a result of this, she says, “the ‘christ’ will appear to you all at once.”

With mainline Christians having the same experiences and harboring the same expectations as neopagans, we see the fulfillment of Fr. Seraphim’s words about how many Christians will be deceived into accepting a pagan initiation experience.

It should be pointed out that many New Agers today would not be aware of, much less subscribe to, all the points of “The Plan.” As we have seen, the movement incorporates a diverse array of groups, ideas, and practices. If it can be called a “conspiracy,” this is certainly not because all New Agers are working together secretly, on an organizational level, toward fulfillment of “The Plan.” Ultimately, “The Plan” is being orchestrated not on a human but on a demonic level, and the architects of the New Age movement are, to a large degree, only mouthpieces of ideas that are not their own.

The New Age movement is only the “spiritual” side of a much broader movement which has mushroomed in the decades since Father Seraphim Rose’s death. This is the multi-faceted movement towards “globalism,” which is very much in the interest of those whose goals may not be religious at all.

In recent years international investment bankers and corporations have made enormous strides toward their goal of a hegemony of world finance and a global economic system. In 1980 the following warning was issued by Admiral Charles Ward, a former member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, which includes major government figures, heads of multinational corporations, and representatives of the largest banking firms in the world: “The most powerful cliques in these elitist groups have an objective in common – they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the United States. A second clique of international members in the CFR… comprises the Wall Street international bankers and their key agents. Primarily, they want the world banking monopoly from whatever power ends up in the control of global government.” More recently, in 1993, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, announced on television: “You had me on before to talk about the New World Order… I talk about it all the time… It’s one world now… Willing or not, ready or not, we are all involved… The competition is about who will establish the first one-world system of government that has ever existed in the society of nations. It is control over each of us as individuals and over all of us together as a community.”

This vision of the future has been shaping the foreign policy of many governments, not least that of the United States. A clear declaration of the globalist agenda was made in 1992 by Strobe Talbott, long-time personal friend of President Bill Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State during the Clinton administration, and one of the chief architects of the U.S.-led military intervention in the Balkans: “Nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority.” In Talbott’s view, nations are nothing more than social arrangements: “No matter how permanent and sacred they may seen at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary… It has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible 20th century to clinch the case for world government.”

With the establishment and expansion of the European Union, the creation of the Euro currency, the advances toward a cashless society, the control of former Eastern-bloc countries by Western financial interests, the formation of an international criminal tribunal by the United Nations, and the consolidation of state armies as “peacekeeping” forces under the United Nations and NATO, we see what appear to be the forerunners of such a one-world system. Some of these developments are not necessarily evil in themselves. Taken together, however, they help to set up a global apparatus which can make way for the rising “religion of the future.” Such was the expectation of Alice Bailey, who in the 1940s wrote: “The expressed aims and efforts of the United Nations will be eventually brought to fruition, and a new church of God, gathered out of all religions and spiritual groups, will unitedly bring to an end the great heresy of separateness.” Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, expressed the same belief on the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995: “At the beginning the United Nations was only a hope. Today it is a political reality. Tomorrow it will be the world’s religion.” A proponent of the teaching of both Alice Bailey and Teilhard de Chardin, Muller says that mankind’s goal should be “to see the religions globalize themselves urgently in order to give us a universal, cosmic meaning of life on Earth and give birth to the first global, cosmic, universal civilization.”

Today, those with a globalist agenda in the political and financial sectors work alongside globalists in the religious sector, particularly with “interfaith” organizations such as the United Religions Initiative (founded as a religious counterpart to the United Nations), the Temple of Understanding (an official consultant of the United Nations Economic and Social Council), and the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions (a revival of the World’s Parliament of Religions, which first convened in Chicago in 1893). It is interesting to note that in the last decade, witchcraft has played a prominent role in the interfaith movement. At the centennial conference of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held in Chicago in 1993, Wicca took center stage. As “Covenant of the Goddess” officer Don Frew notes, “We witches found ourselves the media darlings of the conference!… By the end of the nine days, the academics attending the Parliament were saying, ‘In 1893, America was introduced to the Buddhists and Hindus; in 1993, we met the Neopagans.’… From that point on Neopagans would be included in almost every national or global interfaith event.”

Although interfaith organizations usually affirm that their only aim is to promote “understanding” and “dialogue” among religions, it is apparent that in some cases this aim is only a first step in a larger program: the “convergence of religions” in the New Age. As William Swing, Episcopal Bishop of California and founder/director of the United Religions Initiative, expressed it in his book The Coming United Religions: “The time comes… when common language and a common purpose for all religions and spiritual movements must be discerned and agreed upon. Merely respecting and understanding other religions is not enough.” Bishop Swing imagines all the world’s religions as paths up a mountain, converging from below on a single point, a “unity that transcends the world.” At the top of the mountain, the esoteric believers from each faith would “intuit that they were ultimately in unity with people from other religions because all come together at the apex, in the Divine. Everyone below the line would be identified as exoteric.” Like Blavatsky, Bailey, and Teilhard before him, Bishop Swing looks to this convergence of religions with messianic expectancy. In his opening address to the 1997 summit conference of the United Religions Initiative, he proclaimed: “If you have come here because a spirit of colossal energy is being born in the loins of the earth, then come here and be a midwife. Assist, in awe, at the birth of new hope.”

If, as we have said, the worldview of the “new religious consciousness” is entering into all aspects of human thought, what are some of the signs by which one can identify it? It can be seen, first of all, in the common sentiment that all religions are one, all are equal, all are saying the same thing, only in different ways. On the surface this idea appears attractive because it seems to give everyone a fair shake. On a deeper level, however, it can be seen how this concept, under the pretense of fostering “unity in diversity,” actually destroys diversity. If an adherent to a religion believes that all other religions are equal to his own, he can no longer truly hold to that religion; he can no longer be who he is. Instead, while perhaps holding to some outward cultural artifacts, he becomes essentially a blank – a blank waiting to be filled by some new revelation. He has become as blank as everyone else who has been infected with the same modern mentality. Thus there is no true unity or diversity, only sameness based on blankness. This false “unity in blankness” is precisely what Satan will use in order to hypnotize the mass mind in the last days. As Father Seraphim once pointed out in a lecture: “Such a vague thing is exactly what the devil likes to grab hold of. In any particular religious belief you may be mistaken, but at least you put your heart into it, and God can forgive all kinds of mistakes. But if you do not have any particular religious belief and you give yourself over to some kind of vague idea, then the demons come in and begin to act.”

The religious mentality of modern man is becoming more amorphous and hazy all the time. A poll taken in 2002 indicates that 33% of Americans consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” which is to say that they do not identify with an organized religion but are creating their own personal spirituality. According to the same poll, the number of such people is increasing by over two million each year, even as the number of those who consider themselves religious is declining at the same rate.

The new, “spiritual” man of today can browse through bookstores or surf the internet to find any religious idea or practice that strikes his fancy, from Western to Eastern, from Sufism to Satanism. The more data he stores in his head, however, the more vague his worldview becomes. He has religious interests in several areas, but he basically believes that all is relative: i.e. “My ideas work for me, your ideas work for you.” He believes in everything at once, but in nothing very deeply, and in nothing that will demand a sacrifice from him. He has nothing worth dying for. But his antennae are out, feeling for something else that will strike his fancy, that will satisfy his vague unrest without asking that he honestly look at himself and change, without disturbing his constant endeavor to satisfy his ego. His spiritual interest is intimately connected to his quest for ego gratification, and thus he stands poised to receive anything from anywhere that will provide this gratification. He is clay in the hands of the spirit of Antichrist, which, as the Apostle teaches, is already in the world (1 John 4:3). He is a candidate – or rather a target – for the “religion of the future” about which Fr. Seraphim wrote.

A sad indicator of the spiritual condition of contemporary man is seen in the enormous popularity of the Conversations with God books by Neale Donald Walsh, which have sold over seven million copies since the first book appeared in 1995. At the 1997 summit conference of the United Religions Initiative, Walsch said of himself: “I represent the new paradigm of a religionless religion – a religion without structure – a spirituality that transcends all boundaries.” Walsch claims to channel a being whom he calls “God.” Flattering readers with the idea that they too are God, Walsch’s “God” tells them there is no such thing as sin and no need for repentance, for the “Original Sin” was really the “Original Blessing” – an ascent to knowledge. Walsch’s “God” speaks to the blank mind of the new, “spiritual” man: “You may want to consider the possibility that what would work for the world right now – given what the world says it wants to experience, which is peace and harmony – is a New Spirituality based on New Revelations… A spirituality that enlarges upon organized religion in its present form. For it is many of your old religions, with their inherent limitations, that stop you from experiencing God as God really is. They also stop you from experiencing peace, joy, and freedom – which are other words for God as God really is… The world is hungry, the world is starving, for a new spiritual truth.”

In these revelations from Walsch’s “God,” one can recognize the same basic message that was channeled by earlier occultists such as Alice Bailey. But while this message resonated with a relatively small number of occultists during Bailey’s time, today it resonates with mainstream society, with the emerging “global consciousness.”

If one perceives a common thread among occult and New Age teachings spanning generations, this is because there is a single mind directing the formation of the new religious consciousness. It is the mind of the same fallen angel who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden with the words: Ye shall be as Gods (Genesis 3:5). But while the evil one’s servant, the Antichrist, will appear to triumph for a time, in the end it is he whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming (2 Thess. 2:8).

From all that has been said above, it can be seen how, in the years following the publication of Father Seraphim’s book, the formation of an actual “religion of the future” has become increasingly real and believable. Now we can see even more clearly how humanity is being made open to the “demonic Pentecost” that Father Seraphim predicted, in which the multitudes of the world – including those who call themselves Christians – can actually be initiated into the realm of demons.

Only Orthodox Christianity – with its Patristic standard of spiritual life and its thoroughly refined teachings on spiritual discernment – can cut through all the deceptions of our times at once. For this reason, Satan sees it as his greatest enemy, and is doing all in his power to undermine it. But for the same reason we must do all that we can to cling to it, as Father Seraphim exhorts us.

“He who does not experience the Kingdom of God within him,” writes St. Ignaty Bryanchaninov, “will not be able to recognize the Antichrist when he comes.” In Orthodoxy we behold Christ undistorted. We can know who He is, and we can know His Kingdom within us, without fantasies, hysteria, heated emotional states, and without any mental images. Knowing this, we will not be starving for a new spiritual truth, for we have found the Truth, not as an idea but as a Person – and we partake of Him in Holy Communion. We will not be a blank waiting to be filled, for we will already be filled with Christ, Who is all, and in all (Col. 3:11). Having Christ’s Kingdom within us, we will inherit it for eternity.