New religious movements — a term covering an enormous range, from the nineteenth-century origins of Mormonism and Spiritualism to the twentieth-century emergence of Wicca, New Age spirituality, Cao Dai, and Rastafari — arise at cultural crossroads where old certainties have dissolved and new forms of meaning are being forged. They are often dismissed as aberrations, but the same suspicion was directed at Christianity in its first century, at Islam in its early decades, at Buddhism as it spread beyond India. Every tradition that now commands universal respect was once a new religious movement — and the question of how we distinguish genuine awakening from manipulation deserves careful, honest examination.
Rumi