New Age in Denmark New Age in Denmark

292 Rothstein Chapter 36 New Age in Denmark New Age in Denmark Mikael Rothstein Denmark is probably one of the most secular countries in the world, despite of the fact that 77,8% of the population remain members of the protestant Danish National Church (Folkekirken; literally The People’s Church). To a very large extent, membership of the Church is a national, rather than a religious, marker, and any assessment of the Danes’ religious lives needs to consider people’s private spheres, and not rely on their formal religious affiliations. In fact, New Age perspectives (however defined, e.g., in accordance with Hanegraaff’s semi- nal 1996 monograph New Age Religion and Western Culture) are very often part and parcel of the average Dane’s religiosity. Hence, being a member of the Church by no means excludes interest in New Age activities, and certainly does not prevent people from entertaining beliefs quite alien to Protestant doc- trines. Most significant in this respect is perhaps the presence of belief in reincarnation among 16% of the population (2009 census by the newspaper Politiken), in a version of reincarnation that does not conform with any tradi- tional Hindu or Buddhist conceptions, but is conceived of as a progression on a kind of “spiritual path”. Only a fraction of what is produced and consumed in terms of New Age religion in Denmark is specific to this particular country. Most elements, whether mythological, ritual, aesthetic or otherwise, could just as well be found in other parts or Europe, the United States or the rest of the world. Danish spokespersons for New Age are thus co-producers of a global, religious phenomenon (Rothstein 2001). Nevertheless, the intention in this chapter is to consider a few examples of how such a global New Age is expressed in a Danish context. In order to gain a foothold in Denmark, a global New Age has obviously needed local modes of production and delivery. The large-scale dissemination of the many New Age-related concepts, practices, products, and services in Denmark is in particular due to four channels of distribution: New Age bookshops; Body, Mind, Spirit fairs; individual high-profile New Age teachers with the capacity to reach out to large audiences and the centres from which they operate; and the widely available magazine Nyt Aspekt. This chapter will be organised to reflect this four-fold localisation. Other themes closely related to New Age as found in Denmark are dealt with elsewhere in this volume, and © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004325968_038 New Age in Denmark 293 the reader is therefore also referred to chapters on contemporary astrology in Denmark, Martinus cosmology, Theosophy and Theosophically-inspired move ments in Denmark, and Danish UFO movements. For more general infor- mation on the history of research into new religions and New Religious Movements in Denmark, much of which is relevant also to the New Age scene, see Rothstein 2015. Bookstores and the Dissemination of the New Age It is impossible to determine with any precision when New Age beliefs entered Danish society, and when they started to make an impact. The only feasible way of addressing this question may be to consider the bookshops in Copenhagen where literature related to esoteric, occult or otherwise “alternative” topics was sold in the decades leading up to the 1970s. Strubes Boghandel (Strube’s Bookstore) was established in 1951 by Poul Strube (1907–1991) in order to serve an audience interested in all things “mystical”, from Swedenborgian philosophy and animal magnetism, to early twentieth-century spiritualism, chiromancy, ley lines, dowsing, parapsychology, telepathy, telekinesis, secret societies, UFO s, and various versions of early neo-Hindu thought. Later, subjects such as astro-archaeology, crypto-zoology, the Bermuda Triangle, the enigmas of the pyramids, and Stonehenge mythology, among many other things, entered the bookshelves. As new book shops emerged that specialised in New Age themes, Strube’s bookstore entered the same market. The bookstore never expanded significantly, but Poul Strube and his wife Jonna Strube (1939–2002) also ran a small publishing house specialising in occult and esoteric literature in line with their previous work. Poul Strube was, for instance, during the period 1954–1982 the publisher of Psykisk Forum (Psychic Forum), a forerun- ner of later New Age magazines. Strube’s books, characteristically simple and old-school in design, were available primarily from their own shop, but sec- ond-hand copies were always to be found elsewhere. Some were translations of internationally acclaimed authors (Gurdjieff, Schuré, Brunton, Blavatsky, Leadbeater, Paramahansa Yogananda, Vivekananda, von Däniken, etc.), others were written by Danish authors, who usually never made it beyond a small Copen hagen-based readership. Strube’s also offered books and other materi- als from the neighbouring Unitarian Church which, in its own way, served as a common ground for people with religious interests that could not be accom- modated in the National Church, or in the host of so-called free churches, i.e., formally established Christian congregations outside the Protestant main- stream. Indeed, the Unitarian Church (in Denmark the least ecclesiastical, and .

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