New Thought, The.
Monthly Journal for the Psychic Club.
1901--1910 Monthly
Chicago, IL and then, in 1904, New York, NY. Publisher: Psychic Research Company; New Thought Publishing Co.. Editor: Sydney Blanshard Flower, William Walker Atkinson; 1903, Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Atkinson; 1905, Atkinson and then Atkinson assisted by Franklin L. Berry and Louise Radfordd Wells; 1906-1910, Berry and Wells; April 1910, Atkinson.
Succeeds: Hypnotic Magazine (August 1896-December 1897)-->Journal of Medical Hypnotism (January to May 1898)-->Suggestive Therapeutics (June 1898-January 1901)-->Journal of Magnetism (January-November 1901) Succeeded by: Neue Gedanken (1904-1907)-->Goldfield Gossip (1906-1908)-->Popular Therapeutics (New Thought merged into in 1910)-->The Yogi (1910-1911?)-->New Thought (1920-1922?)-->Rejuvenation (1921?-1922?)-->Will-Power (1922?)-->The Thinker (1924?-1925?)
10/12, December 1901-October 1910. 20-42 pp., 6 x 9. 50 cents-$1.00.

This was the most important of the transformations of Sydney Blanchard Flower's Hypnotic Magazine (which was begun in 1896 and whose volume numbering it continued). In 1910, the journal was merged in part into Popular Therapeutics which later became New Thought Companion. Flower revived the journal under the name New Thought in 1920 to tout John R. Brinkley's goat-gland transplantation techniques, but this seems to have expired by 1922. Atkinson, who was a New Thought industry in himself, was the first editor of the journal and (with Flower) largely wrote the journal in the early years and saw its circulation rise from 4,500 to more than 100,000.

Flower began the journal in December 1901 as a continuation of the series of journal he had begun with Hypnotic Magazine in 1896. In the spring of 1900 the then incarnation of the journal--Suggestive Therapeutics--was denied bulk-mailing privileges and ceased publication. The next year its remnant was taken over by Lloyd Jones's Journal of Magnetism for 9 issues and then Flower started this journal, reassuming the volume numbering of the series of journals. The new journal was intended as the organ of Flower's Psychic Club (later "Success Club," professedly for distribution to members only. It was launched by giving it free to purchasers of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's The Heart of New Thought, which caused the journal in 1903 to lose its second-class postage privilege. In December 1904, the Post Office issued a fraud order against Flower and the journal for, among other things, the outrageous claims regularly made in the journal to solicit financing for Flower's North Shore Reduction Company, a venture that combined holdings of magnetite with a device to separate the ore: he promised returns of 1% a week, then 2% a month, with guaranteed return of principal. Those with the temerity to demand their interest or principal found Flower unavailable, as did the postal inspector who had been promised access to the journal's books, and the Post Office banned him and the journal from further access to the mail. This effectively terminated the journal, but it was subsequently revived by other investors, without Flower, and continued to publish until 1910, including in the early years contributions by Atkinson, although the revived journal was closer to the standard, affective New Thought norm. Contributions by Flower, Atkinson, Nancy McKay [Gordon], Uriel Buchanan, Elizabeth Towne, and W.T. Cheney. Both Atkinson and Flower were convinced of the importance of "sex energy" in psychical and spiritual development, and they and the other authors wrote extensively on the subject and on a practical application of that energy to achieve New Thought goals. In the first issue, for example, Flower wrote: "There is no energy, to my thinking, which is not in its essence, literally sex-energy. There is no vitality, which is another name for energy, which is not sex-vitality." Preservation of this energy by Zoism ("the method of repressing desire") and proper breathing joined the individual with the Divine Spark and generated "spiritualized plasma for the building of the new physical body." The "sex-energy is more valuable to you when conserved than when allowed physical expression." In 1901, apparently in imitation of the Mystic Success Club started by the competing Magazine of Mysteries, the journal started a Success Circle to supplement its already existing Psychic Club and the Atkinson School of Mental Science and his American Society of Clairvoyants. A German-language version of the journal, with translations of articles that had originally appeared here, was begun by Flower in Berlin in 1904 as Neue Gedanken and articles from the journal were published there by Jay Van Tuyl Daniels, Flower's former partner, as Flowers Kollektion. On Atkinson, see the note under Advanced Thought Journal. NYPL; NYS Library; Brown University; University of North Carolina; University of Michigan; Cincinnati Christian University; Wisconsin Historical Society; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Oxford; United Library (Evanson, IL); Skidmore, Lily Dale (4 issues).

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