There is now a renewed interest in the sacred. Most western societies are characterised by a shift away from traditional religion. Following the rise of science, or enlightenment, the belief systems of traditional religion have been questioned and dismissed. Galileo turned his telescope to the skies and spied not heaven. With his theory of evolution, Darwin explained that our human species was born, not of some creator God, but from a heritage that may be traced back to the lower mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, primitive organisms and the earliest protoplasm. For Freud, religion was the result of an infantile wish for an all-powerful father, a wish that we may now set aside in favour of science and reason.

This we have done. The rise of science robbed the heavens of its deity. Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is Dead” (1870) articulated a growing sentiment amongst the European intelligentsia. As the old God was dethroned, the human intellect was established as the new authority.

A period of secularism has since witnessed the waning power of the traditional faiths. For many, the Christian stories are no more relevant that the old Greek myths. Indeed, in this modern age, the term myth is commonly understood to mean untrue, rather than poetic exposition of realms that reach beyond our understanding.

Yet, despite our increasingly secular stance, a new movement has begun. Although our schools and universities continue to press the superiority of rationalism over superstition, there has now emerged renewed interest in the sacred, its gods, spirits and powers. This interest stems not from the uniformed, but from an educated tier that has come to recognise the limits of a reductionist worldview, and which reaches forward with both an open mind and a rationality that remains intact. This tier is no longer prepared to simply believe in science. Scientism is now challenged by the new mysticism.

From the perspective of an entrenched atheist, this movement may appear to be a regression. Yet there is no blind belief or fundamentalism in play here. Rather, this movement is spear-headed by some of our greatest minds in the fields of physics, philosophy, sociology and depth-psychology. The new mysticism does not negate, but builds upon our hard-won rationalism.

The Swiss Psychologist, Carl Jung, long banished from academia, was amongst the pioneers in this field. Jung explains the way forward as follows:

I am not, however, addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead. For most of them there is no going back, and one does not know either whether going back is always the better way. To gain an understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach.
That is why I take these thought-forms that have become historically fixed, try to melt them down again and pour them into moulds of immediate experience. It is certainly a difficult undertaking to discover connecting links between dogma and immediate experience of psychological archetypes, but a study of the natural symbols of the unconscious gives us the necessary raw material. ~ Carl Jung; CW 11:par 148

As Jung states, there is no going back. This new movement has since gained momentum. Instead of a hard stop, for many atheism will prove to be a stepping stone between an old and new worldview. Future, and even more recent generations, will not recognise this passage. Instead, they will find themselves born into this new consciousness.

In this session, we will look at the rise of a New Mysticsm, and the manner in which it gains expression.