Superstitions and new age movement in modern society

From the past to the present, the human desire to know and learn the future, the search for solutions to the fear and helplessness, the effort to attain happiness has always existed. In addition, the search for meaning in individuals and modern socio-economic factors, anxiety and risk, and some psycho-social factors that have been the consequences of the development of the capitalist system seems to provide the continuity of superstitious beliefs in contemporary life. Moreover, these beliefs are today reproduced in modern forms. In traditional times, there are miracle-working holy men with their fairy tales, magical amulets, today belief forms of the New Age serve as a spiritual purification and discharge mechanisms for the modern individuals. Psychics who claim to communicate with spirits, practices with the horoscopes and spiritual energy displays a development in Turkey under the name of "life coaching" and "personal development" and seems increasingly to widespread these New Age activities locally. In this sense, these superstitious beliefs, which are prevalent even in cities within the multi-faceted variety of religious experience in our society, have an important place in the general population by intertwining them with the other elements from oral culture and Islamic religion while the more secular groups of society partakes in these superstitions witihn the forms of these New Age beliefs. Hence it is important to examine the social factors underlying the adventure of the concept of belief on both individual and social level towards religious superstition and New Age beliefs. In spite of the modernization and development of modern science, it is worth to make researches in the field of sociology concerning how these superstitions in the field of religion and New Age beliefs are reproduced in the contemporary locations with different social reasons as well as the similarities of these beliefs in terms of social functionality to their more traditional forms. The findings have been obtained through literature survey, observation and interview form. In line with the flexible and holistic nature of the study, interviews have been conducted between 15.01.2019-18.02.2019 with 20 participants selected from the Anatolian and European regions of Istanbul with in-depth interviewing technique in accordance with the qualitative research method. In this study, it has been concluded that new age and superstition concepts are similar in terms of social functionality and superstition is reproducing itself in modern societies. Keywords: Religion, religiosity, superstition, New Age, modernization.