Dawning Light, The.
Spiritualism and Liberal Thought / Devoted to the Occult and Liberal Thought.
A Weekly Newspaper Devoted to Occult Science, Spiritualism and Religion; Organ of the Association of Ideas, Setting Forth Plainly the Philosophy of Remembrance, a Revelation Which Heals / Devoted to the occult and liberal thought
Other titles: The Dawning Light of the New Era
1895--1902? Weekly
San Antonio, TX.
Editor: Edward Newnam; Charles W. Newnam and Robert Albert ("Pat") Newnam.
Publisher: Charles W. Newnam.
Succeeds: The Texas Spiritualist
1/1, July 1895. (5/2 was August 6, 1899). The journal was still being advertised (in the Nautilus) in 1902.
20 pp., 6 x 8, $1.00 a year.

Charles W. Newnam (1837- ) was a printer and had earlier published, with C.T. Booth, the Texas Spiritualist in Hempstead, Texas, which contained contributions by Freeman B. Dowd. He was a convinced spiritualist (his wife was said to have been a medium), but in publishing this local spiritualist journal in the last few years of the nineteenth century he seems to have been faced with the dearth of anything new or notable to write about. The majority of the surviving issue was devoted to a long, breathless novelette set in romantic ancient Egypt: "'Oh, Sovereign, ruler of all Egypt and of the land thereof, hail! I present to thee in the person of this maid Yosephine, daughter of the valley of Camman, who hath been brought to thee by the gods, guided by thy servant whom thou seest before thee.' At these words Marcus aroused from his trance and starting forward he seized the now trembling maiden in his arms and cried, ‘It is she, it is she! the maiden whom I beheld last night beneath the tree of love and life in the garden of the gods. Already hath the vision been fulfilled. Yosephine, thou art my chosen bride, sent to be queen of my throne and ruler of my heart,'" etc. (It has a happy ending when Marcus and Yosephine wed, he becomes king, and Egypt prospers when "rollicking and revelry were banished from the court and only innocent amusements indulged in such as would be very pleasing to the dwellers in the gardens of the gods when they gazed upon them from far away"). The journal also carried prominent advertisements for Texas mediums and psychics, who were members or missionaries of the Texas State National Association of Spiritualists, like R.H. Kneeshaw ("The Well Known Medium and Magnetic Healer") for diagnosis of disease, John L. Manley, "Magnetic-Specialist" ("Magnetic and Vapor Baths"), and John W. Ring of Galveston ("Texas Psychic Class" and "World's Psychic Class"), et al. The journal also covered the controversies between spiritualists and the local Christian churches, and carried a curious note on a meeting of the Hermetic Brotherhood: "The Hermetic Brotherhood had another interesting and instructive meeting last Sunday This society is increasing in numbers and use fulness all over the United States, and especially in the North and East Its particular aim is to give instruction in Occult matters," although, given the date, it is impossible to determine which Hermetic Brotherhood may have been intended. Pat Newman, Charles's son and assistant editor of the journal, was a baseball player and manager for the Texas and South Texas League baseball teams. Noted in the Banner of Light in 1897 and 1899 as a spiritualist journal published in southwest Texas, and in "List of Advance Thought Publications," The New Cycle, March 1900, 159-60, and Now, 1902. This journal may be the same as the Dawning Light that absorbed the Spiritual Advocate (Cincinnati) in 1897, although there was another and probably earlier journal of the same name published in Iowa. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (v. 5, 1899).

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