One especially dangerous aspect of the New Age movement is the way it lends new meanings to traditional Christian terminology. Just as Hinduism has been able to assimilate all of the religious traditions in India, the pantheistic New Age movement is capable of deceiving many unwary Westerners.

New Age religion often utilizes altered states of consciousness to provide the existential basis for a satanic new faith. The widespread “recreational” use of psychoactive drugs has undoubtedly done much to stimulate interest in New Age mysticism during recent decades. For people who have been living as nominal Christians in a wasteland of materialism and scientific rationalism, the obviously spiritual, experiential side of New Age theology is powerfully seductive.

Two of the best books on the topic are A Crash Course On The New Age by Elliot Miller and The New Age Cult by Walter Martin.

The problem with this point of view is that it confuses respect for life with a belief that all life forms should be ranked equally in value. After all, all life forms are conscious, and everything edible is made from something alive. There even seems to be a primitive consciousness in plants. Some people claim, for example, that plants grow more rapidly in an environment where classical music is played than when they are forced to listen to rock and roll or rap! Are we cannibalizing our fellow sentient creatures when we put beans, carrots, potatoes, and turnips in a vegetable soup?

Few people feel much kinship with snakes. Even fewer feel kinship with such primitive creatures as centipedes, cockroaches, and spiders. There is a reason for this. Fortunately, the simpler the life form, the less consciousness, self-awareness, and “personality” it has. If we deny the existence of the food chain and the natural hierarchy of more conscious, self-aware creatures over less conscious ones, we end up valuing simpler, vastly less self-aware creatures as much as human life.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the Bible tells us God said:

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground” (1:26 NIV).

There is a consciousness in animals that we share—to a degree. Higher animals aren’t just machines. They have a degree of consciousness with which we should identify and empathize. Many of us are uncomfortable with the killing of animals for food. We have a strong sense of ambivalence because we admire and empathize with our fellow creatures but recognize that the cycle of predation is part of the created order and our bodies need the nourishment that their flesh provides (Genesis 9:1-4). This ambivalence about killing animals is good. One of the early indications of a serial killer is that the person enjoys being cruel to animals or kills them for pleasure. Wanton torture or killing of animals is an indicator of something seriously wrong with a person’s soul. However, because higher animals are conscious doesn’t mean we should treat them as our equals or view them as aspects of the divine. The created world is marvelous beyond imagination, but we must resist the strong pantheistic tendency to worship the creature and forget the Creator.

The dignified and humane slaughter and eating of animals is an important aspect of biblical tradition. (See the ATQ article  What Was the Purpose of Animal Sacrifices?) This tradition was affirmed by our Lord in His last supper with the disciples (Luke 22:7-8).

Killer whales, brown bears, wolves, and wild stallions can be tamed by people. This is because people are created in the image of God. If we really value natural order, we’ll see that living creatures are in a hierarchy with humans at the top. When people exaggerate the worth of insects, rodents, snakes, or cows, they proportionately degrade the value of human life.

Fertility religions were based on the passing of the seasons— alternating times of harvest and plenty, scarcity and hardship. Fertility was personified by a goddess, and her consort—often a young god—went through an annual cycle of death and rebirth. Worshipers of the goddess practiced a kind of “magic” that usually relied on sexual ritual and human sacrifice to ensure the continuing favor and fertility of the goddess and her consort. ( Leviticus 20:2 ; Deuteronomy 18:10 ; 2 Kings 21:6 ; Psalms 106:38 ; Jeremiah 7:31 ; Ezekiel 23:37 , etc.) The Old Testament and a broad range of other sources make it clear that such worship involved the use of both male and female “sacred prostitutes” (Deuteronomy 23:18 ) and involved ecstatic frenzy, sometimes including self-laceration and self-emasculation (1 Kings 18:28 ). (See the Questions, Why Did Ancient Pagans Practice Blood Sacrifices?;  How Can the Christian Tradition Be Defended?)

Margot Adler, an author known for her sympathy with Neopaganism and highly regarded in Neopagan circles, has written one of the most comprehensive histories of modern Neopaganism. In her book Drawing Down the Moon, she tells how during the first decades of the modern “witchcraft” movement (1950s-1970s) a “myth of Wicca” took form. This myth was sparked by the 1921 thesis of Egyptologist Margaret Murray, who maintained that the Pagans of pre-Christian Europe survived into the Middle Ages in great numbers. According to her, the Catholic Church in collaboration with secular authority intentionally and systematically sought out and slaughtered millions of those still holding to the “old religion.” In her view, only a few survived the witch-hunts to provide an unbroken link from the founders of modern Neopaganism-Witchcraft to their earliest Stone Age predecessors. Ms. Adler admits that most leaders of the modern Neopagan movement acknowledge there is no historical basis for this myth. (See Drawing Down the Moon, pages 86-87.)

Jeffrey B. Russell offers this observation regarding the Murray thesis:

This scenario . . . is not permitted by the evidence, which Murray misused in violation of the simplest rules of criticism. All historians are agreed on this (see pp. 41-42).

Historian Joseph Klaits also leaves no doubt regarding the lack of an historical basis for the Murray thesis:

Murray’s bold theses have been effectively criticized many times over the years, most recently by Norman Cohn, who shows with great thoroughness that her opinions rest on a tangled tissue of highly selective quotations, mistranslated passages, and out-and-out fabrications. Although the popular reputation of Murray’s works remains remarkably strong, no serious student of the subject accepts her evidence.(Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts, pp. 10-11)