beliefs". Similarly, Hammer thought that "source amnesia" was a "building block of a New Age worldview", with New Agers typically adopting ideas with no awareness of where those ideas originated.

As a form of Western esotericism, the New Age has antecedents that stretch back to southern Europe in Late Antiquity. Following the Age of Enlightenment in 18th-century Europe, new esoteric ideas developed in response to the development of scientific rationality.