Mystic World, The.
First with Advanced Thinkers!
1931 Monthly, irregular (March, April and May combined)
Chicago, IL. Publisher: Mystic World. Editor: Ross K. New (or Neu).
1/1, January 1931. 66 pp., $2.00 a year.

This short-lived journal, valuable more for its advertisements than for its content, is a revealing reflection of the period between the Wars when many of the prominent figures of an earlier era were still active but popular occultism in general was in steep decline. It straddles the period between the heyday of magazines like Nautilus and the coming of down-market pulp magazines like Fate after World War II. It was the product of Ross Kinsey New (or Neu) (1891-1965), of Elkhart, Indiana, who under the name "New Publishing Company" on South Clark Street in Chicago published a jumbled list of "occult, mystical and psychical" books by mainly minor authors, supplemented with instructions on "Speed Typewriting Self-Taught in 60 Hours" and "Rail Rambles" ("The railroader's life told in rhyme") and the like. New's own interests in occult matters are impossible to discern at this distance, but, as Marc Demarest has discovered, he appears in the newspapers in the years before the entry of America into World War I in the company of Dr. Guy Ballard and also at times with Maud Lord Drake and her famously lovely granddaughter Valdeo de Comiche Parker. In the late 1920s he was managing editor and then co-publisher of Effa Danielson's Occult Digest. New Publishing had published Julia Seton's works in the 1920s and noted in its advertisements that it was "affiliated" with the Occult Publishing Company (with offices in the same building) that published William Walker Atkinson, "Frater Achad," A.S. Raleigh, the Chicago "sex physiologists," and others. Ross seems to have started the journal on a shoestring, with most of its authors almost certainly rewarded with advertising space for their books, lessons and organizations rather than with cash, and tried hard to attract interest with full-page photographs like those in the contemporary movie magazines.

The journal described itself in its internal advertisements as "The Fighting Mystic Monthly of the United States for Peace, power and understanding amongst all who seek the Great Goal," and held itself out as the defender of "mysticdom" against the prevailing charlatanism:

"MYSTIC WORLD goes on record as the first spokesman of exploited mysticdom -- to sound a prophetic warning to those who fondly imagine that humanity remains conveniently blind to the fakers! We want the whole world to know that ours is the creed of the superman -- and ours the courage to sound the first tocsin to the mystics of our great country! We are on the side of common decency and justice-against all comers, be they placed high, or low! The Free-Masonic code of human liberty inspires us to state in unmistakable terms that MYSTIC WORLD is a clearing- house for all those leaders, teachers and students who honor Truth as highest virtue, and who will not prostitute their ideals for slinking gain solicited under false pretences. . . . America's mysticdom must cleanse its house, so that the world at large may look Up, not Down to us! Superstitions must not be tolerated in this enlightened age . . . ." Etc. The sincerity of this crusading posture, however, is revealed by the quality of the advertisement printed in the journal.

The journal carried articles by:

"Adiramled" (D.D. Bryant) ("The Practical Art of Alchemy," and advertisements for his "Hidden Science of Life or the Last Word in Regeneration," available from Sand Springs, Oklahoma, and marked down from $100 to $25)

Julia Seton, M.D. (("Japan through the Eyes of a Mystic," with a fetching sketch of the author)

Elvhia Park Boyle ("Chinese Pulse Diagnosis" – "almost a lost art")

Victor G. Rocine ("Eat your Way to Beauty"— with a photograph of Sally Rand looking healthy), and corresponding advertisement for the Rocine School of Human Nature ("founded 1893") and his lessons.

C.F. Russell ("Silence -- the Lightning Path": "You can arouse the state of mind proper to an act of silence by concentrating on an image of yourself equal to the actual fact. Thus, if you are typewriting, imagine yourself as just where you are -- typewriting. Transfer your consciousness completely to your imagined figure, which coincides in time and space with the actuality. Forget the actuality and identify yourself in consciousness with the image. If you do this correctly you will be insensible to any pain or other sensation which accompanies the actuality and you will be astonished with the result." Russell (1897-1987) was an early Erisian and disciple of Aleister Crowley, and advertisements for his Choronzon Club – "Short Cut to Initiation" -- also ran in the journal.)

Dr. M.N. Bunker ("Women are no longer a Mystery") a graphologist and proponent of curative gymnastics, with a letter endorsement from "Cheiro"

Charles J. Clarke, the proponent of "Genuine Molecular Socio-Analysis" and "Molecular Sociology"

The journal also carried extensive filler from unknown authors and from a variety of pulp fiction and adventure writers, like Violet de Besa, Harrie Vernette Rhodes (poetry), Chester G. Wood (of Oak Park, Illinois, "Awaken the Mystic Powers within You!"), Maris Warrington (or Maris Warrington Billings, a pseudonym of Edith S. Howard), A. Nourredin-Addis ("Atlantis"), H.F. Jamison (weird tales)

The advertisements provide the meat of the journal, ranging through known and unknown occult groups through a host of minor mages and healers: AMORC (back cover advertisement and congratulatory letter to the journal from H.S. Lewis); the School of Life Foundation in New York and its journal Illumination; The Order of Krishna of the Latent Light Culture in Tinnevelly, India, which published the Kalpaka; the Brotherhood, in Tampa, Florida ("You can have happiness"); the College of Divine Metaphysics, Indianapolis, Indiana ( which offered for a free degrees of Doctor of Psychology, or Metaphysics, or Divinity "by correspondence in the quiet of your own home"); the Brosseau System, Berkeley, California ("Success – Health – Happiness" through Radio-Therapy); the Brotherhood of Light in Los Angeles; and the Esoteric Publishing Company of Applegate, California – the last remnant of Hiram E. Butler's colony – which offered his Solar Biology "for Progressive People;" etc. Most notable is The Mystery Teachers, P.O. Box 850, Chicago ("Awaken with the Logos Dawn of Living Truth and ‘Come-Forth-by-Day," which taught the Memphite "Atlantaean Doctrine" Central, the "ever-living secrets of Intra-Cosmic Life" and solicited enrollment for the "personal, private home-study course of the ‘Atlantaean Doctrine'": "Become a self-illuminated Initiate — one of the Pioneering Vanguard of the Coming Race!" This seems to have been the work of the pseudonymous "Aegyptus" who wrote for this journal and published (through New Publishing Company) his The Macro-Cosmic Mystery.

In addition to these, the journal touted the likes of Mary L. Allen ("Get What You Want!"); Charles W. Denicke, astrologer; Ernistine de Roo ("Lessons in Living" to develop a "Radiant, Magnetic Personality"); Norman Arens, Student and Teacher of the Divine Art (of astrology), Chicago; Dan C. Hinds, Mentalist (Vandalia, Illinois); J. Carleton of Chicago ("Get What is Yours"); William Jennings Gassiere, Astrologian, et al.

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