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Periodical: Thought (Alameda)

Summary: Thought.
Devoted to the Scientific Demonstration of the Power of Thought.
Thoughts are Things
1899--1902? Monthly
Alameda, CA. Publisher: Thought Publishing Company. Editor: Marion Eddy.
1/1, January 1899. 16-20 pp., 50 cents a year.

This was, as were many other journals of the period, primarily a vehicle to carry advertising and to promote the the work of Dr./Prof./Count J.A. (John August) Eichwaldt and his then wife "Marion Eddy." Eichwaldt was a minor New Thought purveyor of lessons. He appeared first in 1898 with advertisements in national magazines for his "Practical Occultism" ("A new book, giving specific directions and practical rules for the use of occult forces in all business, art, and social affairs. Not written to advertise expensive lessons, but teaches methods which are easily understood, and if applied will awaken most wonderful forces which will lift you above the limitations of disease and non-success"), and the next year was business manager of Occult Science Library Magazine -- the organ of Ernest Yates Loomis's Home Silent Thought Brotherhood in Chicago, from which Eichwaldt undoubtedly learned the tricks of the lesson trade. The next year he started this journal. It was advertised as containing every month "an original treatise on Thought Force and its practical and scientific use" ("Thought as a Power," "Power of Positiveness," "Personal Magnetism"), but in actuality consisted primarily of Eichwaldt's platitudes ("Remarks on Happiness") and lengthy excerpts from his wife's novelettes, supplemented occasionally with articles like J.F. Morgan's "How to Obtain Long Life, the 'Key' Given in Eight Lessons on Exercises," which were taken from the teachings of "Rev. Dr. Hanish (Otomar Zar Adusht Hanish), "a Persian who is at present instructing classes in Chicago." (The editor was careful not to "vouch for their effectiveness or value" and thought some seemed useless, but offered them for what they might be worth.) Eichwaldt's wife, "Marion Eddy," who edited the journal, was Mary Frances Hanford (M. Frances Hanford-Delanoy), a prolific writer of plays, poems, articles and stories, movie scripts, and novels like Afterclaps of Fortune, "Serious Complications," "The Outcast's Daughter," etc., and graced the pages of the journal with her "El Molino, or the Crimson Light." The couple was divorced in 1907 and Eddy had to sue Eichwaldt for alimony, revealing in the process that "Count Eichwaldt" had apparently returned to Russia. He hadn't, and for the next 20 years he continued to publish lessons on diet, exercise, success, personal magnetism, long life, and the other commonplaces of New Thought. In 1927 he published Systematic re-education of the subconscious mind; a practical course of study in mental dynamics, from his own press in Fruitvale, Oakland, California. The journal carried extensive and prominent advertisements for Eichwaldt's "Hypnotism and Suggestive Therapeutics" (worth $100.00 but available for $1.00) and lessons and books by the likes of Hiram Butler, Ernest Loomis, Eleanor Kirk, Horace Fletcher, T.J. Shelton, Albert Chavannes, and others, as well as its own "Atlas Compound or Cordial" ("Cell Culture. The Secret of Health"). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of California, Berkeley.

Issues:Thought V3 N6 Jun 1901
Thought V3 N10 Oct 1901


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