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The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of New Age Religions. Ed. by James R. Lewis. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2004. 682p. acid-free $99 (ISBN 1-59102040-9).
Historical Dictionary of New Age Movements. By Michael York. Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements Series no. 49. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2004. 231p. acid-free $60 (ISBN 0-8108-4873-2).
New Age thought is in a state of constant flux and evolution, and tracking and explaining its particular manifestations can be compared to aiming at a moving target at best. This may have contributed to a lack of definitive resources covering the field. Since the appearance of Gale Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (Gale, 1984) and the New Age Encyclopedia by J. Gordon Melton (Gale, 1990), little has been done to study New Age thought in a comprehensive manner. The publication of the works by Lewis and York is a welcome development.
Lewis has edited a wide-ranging and detailed compilation that examines New Age thought both from the outside in and inside out. Part I contains articles by various scholars centered around four themes: historical influences...