New Dawn Magazine: There are numerous difficulties in trying to discern what among the proliferation of new or revived faiths might be regarded as working to usher forth a New Age based on eternal values, and those that work to establish the rule of malignant, matter-bound forces. The problem is that there are often superficial resemblances that occur between them. Even within the same occult orders, such as Freemasonry, there are a range of views that might be in opposition but are mistaken as being part of a single, all-embracing conspiracy. There is a tangle of terminology, groups, personalities, ‘Hidden Masters’, accusations and counter-accusations of black magic, and so forth. This article considers ways in which the positive and negative currents within the ‘New Age’ might be identified. The school of Perennial Tradition regards traditional cultures, religions and spiritualities as sharing core beliefs, values of an eternal nature, on which are founded Civilisations and societies in their cycles of health. Hence, in the analogous cycles of cultures as far removed geographically and ethnically as the Japanese, Hindu, Norse, and Arabian, all will possess analogous beliefs in regard to social hierarchy, chivalric ethos, and a nexus that exists between the Divine and the temporal. In such a society one’s highest calling, whether as peasant or prince, is to work in accord with one’s cosmic duty, or what the Hindus call dharma. In such a society castes reflect the Divine order on earth: ‘as above, so below’, and degenerate into contending economic classes in the cycle of decline
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