International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

   

Periodical: It

Summary:  From Pat Deveney's database:

It.
A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Evolution of the Individual / A New Thoughter by an M.D.
1903 Monthly
San Antonio, TX.
Language: English.
Editor: G. Ralph Weston, M.D.
Publisher: G.R. Weston.
1/1, 1903.
$1.00-$1.25 a year, 24 pp.

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.
" IT " is ‘Hot Stuff,'' and will set everything afire, so be careful.
" IT" is a Cyclone of Truth, not vibrating, but Revolving into Immortal Life; Revealing "IT."
"IT" Dare.

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.

Other Sources:University of Texas, Austin.
Issues:It V1 N1 Feb 1903
It V1 N3 Apr 1903
Claude-Generated Themes:   'It' is an American New Thought magazine whose pages preach the familiar mind-cure gospel: right thinking builds a heaven in the present, wrong thinking a hell, and the awakened self claims its divine heritage as Spirit, Law and Intelligence. Its practical face is prosperity and success literature — success, opulence and abundance as the fruits of affirmation and the law of attraction — shading into the drugless, breath-and-diet health register the movement favored. Occasional occult borrowings (it lifts a passage 'From Magazine of Mysteries') and talk of hypnotism and mental faculties are the ordinary metaphysical furniture of the genre rather than separate programs. It belongs with the New Thought and mental-science press, cross-listing with success literature and mind-cure.

Generated by Claude from the periodical's digitized text; a thematic reading, not a bibliographic description.
Topics:Health Reform and Alternative Medicine | Hypnotism and Suggestion | New Thought