Steven J. Sutcliffe

Introduction: Making it (all?) up – ‘invented religions’ and the study of ‘religion’

The editors of the special issue ‘Invented Religions: Creating New Religions through Fiction, Parody and Play’ outline the aims of the collection and place it in the context of debates on ‘invented religions’ and the ‘invention of tradition’. We introduce key concepts employed by contributors, place the category of ‘invented religion’ in a wider constructionist context, contrast it with the seminal notion of ‘invention of tradition’ and note some of its specific features which reward analysis as a separate category. We argue that the category of ‘invented religions’ is descriptively interesting and theoretically useful, and we suggest that developing the latter aspect in particular can encourage this new area of enquiry away from an exotic niche and into the mainstream of explanatory theorising in the academic study of religion/s.

On the metaphysics of ‘life’ and the production of ‘religion’ in Spiritualities of life: New age romanticism and consumptive capitalism

‘I would hate to think that I’ve been spending much of my life studying the airy-fairy’ (p. 150) worries Paul Heelas halfway through this intriguing new discussion of ‘new age’ religiosity – here re-named ‘spiritualities of life’. Implicitly viewed by many as somehow not constituting ‘proper religion’ – perhaps because it seems too amorphous and diffuse to have lasting historical impact, or perhaps precisely because of its apparent merging without remainder into late modern practices of consumption (hence the subtitle of the present book) – ‘new age’ and related forms of self-styled ‘spirituality’ have proved slippery fish. Studying them properly is conceptually challenging and resource intensive. The primary sources are prolific but dispersed, institutions tend to be small scale and local, and it can be difficult to trace lines of authority and tradition. In any case the impression remains that the ‘low’ cultural affiliations of ‘new age’ or ‘mind body spirit’ phenomena – as with perceptions of related formations such as ‘occult’ and ‘paranormal’ – somehow do not merit the attention of serious theorists of religion. This situation is compounded by the relative lack of development of a sophisticated set of research questions within the field of new age studies. At a basic historiographical level, for example, it remains a moot point whether ‘new age’ represents a secularised expression of a culturally elite formation called ‘esotericism’ (e.g. Hanegraaff 1996) or a more demotic and populist strain of post-Christian religiosity (e.g. Possamaı̈ 2005). Reconstructing a repertoire of distinctive beliefs and practices has not been helped by the fact that the data scarcely register under the terms of the dominant ‘world religions’ paradigm. Despite exposure of the latter as an essentially normative category, it continues to shape the practical organisation of the study of religion/s, obstructing the task of recovering a more nuanced and differentiated taxonomy of components and representations of ‘religious’ data from out of the reified agglomerates that it promotes. That the array of new age data so squarely butts up against the traditional tidy taxonomy of ‘religion entities’ promulgated by the world religions programme should give all theorists in the study of ‘religion’ pause for thought and not just students of the so-called ‘New Age Movement’, or of ‘New Religious Movements’ generically, into which taxonomic cul-de-sacs (so far as satisfactory explanation of ‘new age’ phenomena is concerned, that is) it is all too convenient to shunt the data. In other words, serious analysis of what Heelas here

Issues in Accessing a Gurdjieffian Tradition: Lessons from a Study of Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953)

The first named author has experienced ambiguous responses when he has approached persons associated with groups taught by, or in the lineage of Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953). As is well-known, Nicoll participated in Gurdjieffs Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man near Paris in 1922-3, thereafter studied with P. D. Ouspensky in London and Surrey, and subsequently taught his own groups from around 1931, producing at least two publicly known successors in Beryl Pogson and Ronald Oldham. In this article we discuss a series of personal enquiries, some of which involve named public figures previously associated with the ‘Work’, and others who are not publicly identified. Responses (where received) have typically been noncommittal. We reflect on problems in attempting to research, as academics, participants in a tradition which fights shy of academic enquiry despite its creative influence in fields such as psychology, literature and new forms of ‘spirituality’. By locating our case within the discussion on problems in studying ‘secret’ or ‘hidden’ traditions, we explore possible reasons for this ambivalent reception, ranging from principled rebuff to the provision of a ‘test’ of the motives of the enquirer. At the same time, other scholar-practitioners have recently put unpublished Gurdjieffian texts into the public realm: for example, Maurice Nicoll’s writings have been brought back into print and his archive at Yale University has been publically available for some time. In light of these conflicting data between guarding access on the one hand and freely disseminating information on the other, we reflect on issues in accessing Nicollian and Gurdjieffian traditions and address the tension we detect between a movement preserving its integrity, assimilating to the post-1960s ‘new spirituality’ culture, or simply dying out.

G.I.Gurdjieff and the Study of Religion/s

This is an introduction by the guest editors to a special issue on the study of Gurdjieff approached within the comparative study of religion/s. We position this special issue within a new wave in the study of Gurdjieff that aims to eschew emic biases as well as a narrow ‘new religion’ typology in order better to engage the social, cultural and textual histories common to the general study of religion/s. We briefly indicate the existing scholarship on Gurdjieff in this light before introducing the contents of the five original articles in this special issue, with particular reference to the pioneering work of Andrew Rawlinson on Gurdjieff as a ‘western guru’.

Gurdjieff as a Bricoleur: Understanding the “Work” as a Bricolage’

Several descriptions have been given to the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff (1866?-1949), including ‘esoteric Christianity’, a herald of the ‘New Age Movement’ and a standalone system called ‘The Work’ or the ‘Fourth Way’. Scholars qualify their assessments by noting Gurdjieff’s exposure to Theosophy, Spiritualism and Hypnotism, or his background in indigenous oral culture. Nevertheless, a complex unity of ideas, constituting a whole, is usually taken to underpin Gurdjieff’s instructions, with the allure and mystique of this ‘System’ lying in the quest to uncover its source(s). As a result, the Gurdjieff movement is typically presented as sui generis, issuing from a self-contained dynamic. In contrast, taking my lead from the model of the bricoleur in Levi-Strauss, and drawing on an illustrative range of primary sources and secondary literature, I argue that Gurdjieff is better understood not as launching a new ‘system’ – complete, integrated and self-sufficient - but as drawing together a heterogenous repertoire of sources and resources through which to make a bricolage. As a result, the ‘fourth way’ has always been a ‘work in progress’.

‘Rosicrucians at large’: Radical versus qualified invention in the cultic milieu

This paper explores the differential legitimating strategies pursued by three ‘invented religions’ with roots in the 1930s ‘cultic milieu’. Each of these new formations sought to legitimate itself to contemporary ‘seekers’ through appeals to the authority of a ‘hidden transmission’. The formative appeal was made by the Rosicrucian Order, Crotona Fellowship (ROCF) and was in turn adapted in the historiography of two of the most influential new religious formations of the second half of the twentieth century, Wicca and Findhorn, which shaped the later Pagan and New Age movements. However, while Wicca and Findhorn duly flourished, the ROCF disappeared. Based on primary source analysis of ROCF documents, and analysis of emic historiographies of Wicca and Findhorn, this paper argues that these differential outcomes amongst ‘Rosicrucians at large’ reflect the adaptive fitness of qualified over radical ‘invention of tradition’ in the cultic milieu.

Seekership as Social Institution in Alternative Religion

This article approaches a new biography of Frederick Bligh Bond by placing the subject’s life and career in the wider context of the formation of modern alternative religion. While acknowledging the rich particularities of Bond’s interests, attention is paid to the broader cultural context in which Bond lived and worked. This includes the modern cult and mythos of Glastonbury in both elite and popular cultural aspects as well as a wider social institution of seekership which shapes individual biographies. The article argues that through his seekership Bond was paradoxically more of a ‘type’ than his biographer allows and that his contributions to Glastonbury and to the New Age milieu should be interpreted in this light. The Rediscovery of Glastonbury: Frederick Bligh Bond Architect of the New Age, by Tim Hopkinson-Ball. The History Press (Sutton Publishing), 2007. 236pp., £20.00. ISBN-13: 9780750945646.

The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader.

Russell T. McCutcheon (ed.), The Insider/ Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader. London and New York, Cassell, 1999, viii+405 pp.,

Introduction: Opportunities and constraints in transnational disciplinary formation

85, £65 ISBN 0 304 701777,

The Problem of Invented Religions

35, £19.99 (paperback) ISBN 0 304 701785. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000, 331 pp.,