Birth.

The New Age movement was not a religion as much as it was an amalgamation of several Eastern philosophies blended with postmodernism. Initially somewhat of a fringe movement, New Age broke into the mainstream in the mid 1980s and soon found its way into contemporary society in several ways. New Age music, speakers, and books became readily available across the United States as stores selling New Age materials proliferated, unashamed to mix consumerism with religious tenets. American Bookseller in 1988 lists more than twenty-five hundred New Age bookstores, twenty-five thousand titles in print, and $1 billion in sales in 1987 alone. New Age became an immensely profitable endeavor, as well as a somewhat contradictory one. The contradictions arose because the movement's teachings of individuality, counterculture sensibility, oneness with nature, and simple lifestyles clashed with its commercial obsession and use of the media and celebrities...