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Periodical: | It |
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Summary: |
From Pat Deveney's database:
It. The advertisement for the journal in Talisman, November 1904, painted the journal as something of a live wire:
"IT," is devoted to the evolution of the individual. George Ralph Weston (Madison, Wisconsin, 1854-San Antonio, Texas, 1906), the editor and publisher of the journal and author of much of its content, was supposedly an allopathic physician, but the advertisements for his practice show him offering free consultations for his "osteopathic and metaphysical" treatments and morphine and opium cures. His Solar-Ray Company also manufactured a device that revolutionized "the method of treating all chronic, nervous and female diseases by the powerful Solar-Rays. Bacili, Bacteria and all disease germs are destroyed by the Solar-Ray." This apparently used "Chemicalized Rays of Light" in conjunction with Weston's Solar Bath. He was the author of The Key to Happiness, 1903 ("superior to many Five-Dollar correspondence courses, and probably is the clearest, shortest and best explanation of Hypnotism extant. Anybody who can read can understand it, and become a PRACTICAL HYPNOTIST. It is writ- ten for PRACTICE, not for theorizing") and The Secret of Power, 1903 ("gives a Practical Working Knowledge of HOW to CURE disease, HOW to BETTER your condition in life, and HOW to COMMAND SUCCESS. It is a plain, practical statement of HOW to do, that you may HAVE and DO whatever you desire. 50 cents"). The journal, despite its claim to be "Hot Stuff" and Weston's reputation as a man who "says what he thinks, and says it so hard you are silenced even when you are not convinced," was filled with Weston's rather awful verse and his exhortations to overcome death and realize that "You, Nature, God, all there is, are One. . . . Are not the Spirits messengers invested with superhuman Power by God? No. Not any more than You, for You are as much Spirit now as you ever will be. As much as those who have had the misfortune to leave the Body. Spirit and Body Joined, as in Man, constitutes the most potent, the most perfect, the highest possible aggregation of ‘Godstuff' that Intelligent Mind has yet evolved." Nautilus noted that Weston was a "follower and champion of Helen Wilmans," who contributed to the journal, and Weston obviously belonged to that fringe of New Thought exemplified by Wilmans, Thomas J. Shelton and Harry Gaze that held out the solipsistic view of unlimited freedom of the self, together with its corollaries physical immortality and the denial of death, as the goal. The journal was largely written by Weston but contained contributions by Wilmans and the mysterious Dr. Paul Edwards and advertisements for Edwards' journal, The Mental Advocate, and also contained an article by Miss Grace Adeliade Kiersted (with photo), Edwards' secretary and successor as editor of Mental Advocate, and verse by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. H.H. Brown, New Thought Primer (1903), 54, said that this journal claimed "quite a circulation," an unlikely claim. Weston terminated the journal, probably after the third issue, when his eyesight failed. University of Texas, Austin. |
Issues: | It V1 N1 Feb 1903 |
It V1 N3 Apr 1903 |
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