New Age spirituality did not suddenly appear in American life in the 1970s and 1980s. This study shows that it first flourished more than a century ago during the Gilded Age, under the mantle of "New Thought". The promotion of metaphysical healing, psychic sense, and various forms of mysticism that characterized "New Thought" as well as its critique of the Christian churches, had as much appeal for middle-class feminists as it does today. Catherine Tumber shows how both popular spirituality movements shared a marked resemblance to that of the spiritually alienated gnostics of antiquity, who turned radically inward in response to the decline of Roman civic life. Likewise, modern "gnostic feminism", as Tumber calls it, has surfaced during periods of triumphant corporate consolidation, which has historically disrupted the delicate spiritual, social and political relationships between public and private in which middle-class women have been particularly enveloped.