1.5. A New Age Begins
Last modified 07/01/2008
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With the onset, duration, and passing of the Axial Age a great new era in
world history comes into existence, and it seems as if a new age of religion,
and culture, begins. We mention this because our study of the eonic effect
points to the 'new age' of modernity, but the overall pattern shows a
pattern of 'new ages' as it were. The once mighty Egypt seems to fall away,
while an evanescent Canaanite kingdom survives to generate an enduring legacy in
its place. We should note one factor: the motion toward a trans-cultural matrix
of universal culture latent in the material of the Old Testament, which
nonetheless will preserve its closed framework of the politics of Israel. By a
series of later transformations, which are distinct from the action of the Axial
Age, a sequence of monotheistic religions come into existence, and just as
importantly a set of experiments in trans-cultural oikoumene creation produce
the world religions that history records. Almost the same effect is visible in
India where the phenomenon of Buddhism emerges in the Axial interval as a
crystallization of a 'Hindu' background, and proceeds toward the transcultural
status of a world religion.
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