Elaine Woo - November 2, 2008

Marilyn Ferguson, the author of the 1980 bestseller “The Aquarian Conspiracy” and a galvanizing influence on participants in scores of alternative groups that coalesced as the New Age movement, died Oct. 19 at her home in Banning. She was 70.

The cause was believed to be a heart attack, said her son, Eric, of the adjacent Riverside County city of Beaumont.

In 1975, Ferguson turned an interest in human potential into an influential monthly newsletter, Brain/Mind Bulletin, which reported on new discoveries in neuroscience and psychology. That work led her to discern that a massive “cultural realignment” was occurring, a conspiracy in the root sense of disparate forces all breathing together to produce personal and social change.

“The Aquarian Conspiracy” was the era’s first comprehensive analysis of seemingly unconnected efforts — scientists investigating biofeedback, midwives running alternative birthing centers, politicians encouraging creative government, a Christian evangelist promoting meditation, an astronaut exploring altered states of consciousness — that were “breathing together” in their break from mainstream Western practices and beliefs in medicine, psychology, spirituality, politics and other fields.

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