Meditation may be for a religious purpose, but even before being brought to the West it was used in secular contexts.[citation needed] Beginning with the Theosophists meditation has been employed in the West by a number of religious and spiritual movements, such as Yoga, New Age and the New Thought movement.
Various forms of meditation have been described in popular culture sources. In particular, science fiction stories such as Frank Herbert's Dune, Star Trek, Artemis Fowl, Star Wars, Maskman, Lost Horizon by James Hilton, and Stargate SG-1 have featured characters who practice one form of meditation or another. Meditation also appears as overt themes in novels such as Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums and Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.
