New Age in the context of "Human Potential Movement"

Religion in Hungary is varied, with Christianity being the largest religion. In the national census of 2022, 42.5% of the population identified themselves as Christians, of whom 29.2% were adherents of Catholicism (27.5% following the Roman Rite, and 1.7% the Greek Rite), 9.8% of Calvinism, 1.8% of Lutheranism, 0.2% of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and 1.5% of other Christian denominations. 1.3% of the population identified themselves as adherents of other religions; minorities practising Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, the Baháʼí Faith, Taoism, Hungarian Neopaganism and other Neopaganisms, and New Age, are present in the country. At the same time, 40.1% of the population did not answer, not identifying their beliefs or non-beliefs, while 16.1% identified themselves as not religious.

Higher consciousness (also called expanded consciousness) is a term that has been used in various ways to label particular states of consciousness or personal development. It may be used to describe a state of liberation from the limitations of self-concept or ego, as well as a state of mystical experience in which the perceived separation between the isolated self and the world or God is transcended. It may also refer to a state of increased alertness or awakening to a new perspective. While the concept has ancient roots, practices, and techniques, it has been significantly developed as a central notion in contemporary popular spirituality, including the New Age movement.

Modern paganism, also known as "contemporary" or "neopagan", encompasses a wide range of religious groups and individuals. These may include old occult groups, those that follow a New Age approach, those that try to reconstruct old ethnic religions, and followers of the pagan religion or Wicca.

Cattle are prominent in some religions and mythologies. As such, numerous peoples throughout the world have at one point in time honored bulls as sacred. In the Sumerian religion, Marduk is the "bull of Utu". In Hinduism, Shiva's steed is Nandi, the Bull. The sacred bull survives in the constellation Taurus. The bull, whether lunar as in Mesopotamia or solar as in India, is the subject of various other cultural and religious incarnations as well as modern mentions in New Age cultures.

Levitation or transvection, in the paranormal or religious context, is the claimed ability to raise a human body or other object into the air by mystical means.

While believed in some religious and New Age communities to occur due to supernatural, miraculous, psychic, or "energetic" phenomena, there is no scientific evidence of levitation occurring. Alleged cases of levitation can usually be explained by deception and fraud, such as trickery, illusion, and hallucination.

In alchemy, the Magnum Opus or Great Work is a term for the process of working with the prima materia to create the philosopher's stone. It has been used to describe personal and spiritual transmutation in the Hermetic tradition, attached to laboratory processes and chemical color changes, used as a model for the individuation process, and as a device in art and literature. The magnum opus has been carried forward in New Age and neo-Hermetic movements which sometimes attached new symbolism and significance to the processes. The original process philosophy has four stages:

• nigredo, the blackening or melanosis
• albedo, the whitening or leucosis
• citrinitas, the yellowing or xanthosis
• rubedo, the reddening, purpling, or iosis

The origin of these four phases can be traced at least as far back as the first century. Zosimus of Panopolis wrote that it was known to Mary the Jewess. The development of black, white, yellow, and red can also be found in the Physika kai Mystika of Pseudo-Democritus, which is often considered to be one of the oldest books on alchemy. After the 15th century, many writers tended to compress citrinitas into rubedo and consider only three stages. Other color stages are sometimes mentioned, most notably the cauda pavonis (peacock's tail) in which an array of colors appear.

Alternative medicine refers to practices that aim to achieve the healing effects of conventional medicine, but that typically lack biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or supporting evidence of effectiveness. Such practices are generally not part of evidence-based medicine. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.

Some alternative practices are based on theories that contradict the established science of how the human body works; others appeal to the supernatural or superstitions to explain their effect or lack thereof. In others, the practice has plausibility but lacks a positive risk–benefit outcome probability. Research into alternative therapies often fails to follow proper research protocols (such as placebo-controlled trials, blind experiments and calculation of prior probability), providing invalid results. History has shown that if a method is proven to work, it eventually ceases to be alternative and becomes mainstream medicine.

Mediumship is the practice of purportedly mediating communication between familiar spirits or spirits of the dead and living human beings. Practitioners are known as "mediums" or "spirit mediums". There are different types of mediumship or spirit channelling, including séance tables, trance, and ouija. The practice is associated with spiritualism and spiritism. A similar New Age practice is known as channeling.

Belief in psychic ability is widespread despite the absence of empirical evidence for its existence. Scientific researchers have attempted to ascertain the validity of claims of mediumship for more than one hundred years and have consistently failed to confirm them. As late as 2005, an experiment undertaken by the British Psychological Society reaffirmed that test subjects who self-identified as mediums demonstrated no mediumistic ability.