Marilyn Ferguson - Death and Reaction

Death and Reaction

Ferguson died unexpectedly of an apparent heart attack on October 19, 2008. Her death was widely noted in the national and international media. The Los Angeles Times described her as a "galvanizing influence," and quoted her U.S. publisher, Jeremy Tarcher, who described his own personal epiphany when he first met with Ferguson and recognized the potential of the information she had collected. The New York Times called The Aquarian Conspiracy "the Bible of the New Age," and mused that the once-radical ideas of her "benign conspiracy" may now seem commonplace.

Offering a tribute on the website beliefnet.com (also on the Huffington Post's website), best-selling physician-author Deepak Chopra described Ferguson as "a one-woman movement for hope." He recalled being a young doctor who was studying meditation when he came across The Aquarian Conspiracy in the early 1980s, and realized the book had instantly unified a movement that otherwise seemed to be resigned to the fringes. At her death, Chopra wrote, Ferguson could rest in the knowledge that "a watershed had been crossed," and that her "leaderless revolution" had steadily gained force around the world in the generation since the book was written.

The Aquarian Conspiracy was re-issued in a "Tarcher Cornerstone" edition in August 2009, featuring a new introduction by Jeremy Tarcher. In October 2009, Ferguson received a posthumous Distinguished Alumna award from Mesa State College.

Divorced in 1978, Ferguson was subsequently married to Ray Gottlieb from 1983 to 1991. She retained the last name of her second husband, with whom she had three children: Eric Ferguson (born 1964), Kristin Ferguson Smith (born 1967) and Lynn Ferguson Lewis (born 1969).