Weltmer's Magazine.
A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Christian Philosophy, Psychic Healing and Whatever is New and Current in Science and Literature / A Monthly Periodical Devoted to Spiritual Philosophy, Psychic Healing and the New Thought of the Present Day / A Suggestive Therapeutic Health Journal, also Concerned with Teaching the Gospel of Present Happiness and Stimulating an Interest in the Lost World of Thinking / A Magazine-Catalogue of Practical Psychology and Healing/ Devoted to the teaching of p0ractical methods of demonstrating, in everyday life, the Kingdom of God within.
Forgiveness and Agreement / An Investigator is One who Wants to Know, is Willing to Work, can Ask a Question and Answer it /Forgiveness, Intention, Agreement, Suggestion, Prayer, Concentration / You Can Have Health; You Can Have Wealth. Man Can Achieve What Man Can Conceive -- S.A. Weltmer
Other titles: Weltmer's Journal / Weltmer's Magazine of Suggestive Therapeutics
1901--1930? Monthly, bimonthly
Nevada, MO. Publisher: Weltmer Publishing Co.; Ernest Weltmer, owner and publisher; Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics. Editor: Sidney Abram Weltmer, with Angie F. Newman as associate editor; then with Ernest Weltmer, James Edmonson, and Grace M. Brown as associate editors.
Succeeds: Magnetic Journal (1898-1903?); Weltmerism (April 1901); Fulfillment (absorbed August 1906); New Thought (Chicago, combined with, March 1909) Succeeded by: Journal of the A.S.T.A.
1/1, January 1901-1930(?). $1.00 a year. 32-64 pp. (varies). Illustrated.

The journal ceased publication for a time with the issue of July 1904 and when it was revived it was under the name Weltmer's Journal, which, from the numbering of the surviving issue, vol. 10, no. 4, may have been published in parallel to Weltmer's Magazine as the free advertising vehicle, replete with extravagant claims and fulsome testimonials, for the Weltmers' work, as were Weltmerism and the Magnetic Journal. In August 1906 Weltmer's Journal absorbed Grace M. Brown's Fulfillment and began to appear under the original name, Weltmer's Magazine, with Brown as associate editor. A new series was begun August 1907, primarily under the control of Ernest Weltmer (1880-1963), one of Sidney's sons. In March 1909 the journal bought New Thought (Chicago) and combined the two (said to have a circulation of 60,000 at the time) under the name New Thought, with production and editorial work split between Chicago and Nevada, Missouri. This was done because Weltmer's Magazine had never managed to convince the Post Office to allow it access to second-class (bulk) mailing privileges, which New Thought enjoyed. The merger apparently did not work out, and in 1916 Weltmer's Magazine reappeared with new volume numbering under the direction of Ernest Weltmer and with occasional articles by Sidney, lasting until at least 1930. There is a reference in 1915 to an article Sidney Weltmer wrote in the "Journal of the A.S.T.A.," which may be the otherwise unknown Journal of the American Society of Suggestive Therapeutics and may be an interim continuation of Weltmer's Magazine. The Association of Suggestive Therapeutics was an attempt by the Weltmers beginning in about 1907 to organize their students in Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and Arkansas. Sidney Abram Weltmer (July 7, 1858-December 6, 1930) was an Ohio farmboy turned Baptist minister who in 1897 founded what was at first called the American School of Magnetic Healing in Nevada, Missouri, offering classes in the Weltmer Method of Healing. This became the Weltmer School of Magnetic Healing and the Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics ("Where every known disease is cured without medicine or surgery"), which taught mental healing and also telepathy, self-hypnosis, magnetism and thought transference -- "Weltmerism," as Sidney called it in The Mystery Revealed, or the Hand-Book of Weltmerism (1901), or "Suggestotherapy." Although Weltmer considered himself a "rational" mental healer with what became over time a four-year course on mental and absent treatment ("Many of his students are making $10.00 to $50.00 per day. Taught by mail or personal instructions"), the journal initially attracted advertisements from all of the flamboyant confidence men who sprang up in the early years of the century to tout the wonders of suggestion, psychic healing and personal magnetism as the means of attracting wealth, health and success. This is scarcely surprising since, as Marc Demarest has discovered, Weltmer had been the "representative" of the Central Business College in Sedalia, Missouri, in the mid-1890s, at the same time that C.S. Clark and E.V. Neal ("X. Lamotte Sage"), two of the best known hucksters of success, had taught there, and Thomas F. Adkin, who worked with both of them and also advertised in the journal, had been present in the same city. Others, of the likes of T.J. Betiero and R.E. Dutton also regularly advertised in the journal. When Weltmer was attacked by local physicians and clergy, the Post Office issued a stop order against delivery of mail to his enterprises--a significant loss since the Post Office at the same time was having to upgrade the local office to first-class status because of the volume of mail Weltmer was receiving--and the federal government had him indicted for fraud. Weltmer took them to court, finally prevailing in the United States Supreme Court in November 1902. See American School of Magnetic Healing [i.e., Weltmer's school] v. J.M. McAnnulty, 187 U.S. 94 (1902): "[T]hese statutes were not intended to cover any case of what the Postmaster General might think to be false opinions, but only cases of actual fraud in fact, in regard to which opinion formed no basis. . . . Surely, it cannot be said that it is a fraud for one person to contend that the mind has an effect upon the body and its physical condition." Although Weltmer prevailed against the government, the experience seems to have taught him caution, and after 1902 the journal's advertising content was severely restricted and the more outrageous claims ceased to appear. Weltmer bragged of having more than 50,000 (sometimes 100,000, or 1,000,000) students and patients, and hoped for an equivalent subscription base for the journal, but claimed to have reached only 10,000 subscribers -- which was probably an exaggeration since the journal admittedly only had a "few thousand" subscribers when it merged with New Thought. The journal, although prominently featuring advertisements for Weltmer's books and courses, tried hard, probably because of Post Office regulations, to avoid becoming a mere promotional vehicle for Weltmer -- a function reserved for the Magnetic Journal, Weltmerism, and the Weltmer Journal, and was one of the most substantial New Thought magazines of the period, with contributions by (and occasionally photographs of) the Weltmers, Helen Wilmans, Alexander Wilder, C.H.A. Bjerregaard (a librarian at the NYPL who is probably the one who copyedited his contributions in the printed copies of the journal in the library), Paul Avenel, George A. Fuller, Paul F. de Gournay, Frederic W. Bury, Eugene Del Mar, Paul Tyner, Helen Wilmans, Nona L. Brooks, et al. The journal had a regular telepathy section written by Ernest, and in 1907-1909 organized the great "Weltmer Experiment" in which readers registered and received a serial number and then wrote in using that number to reveal their perceptions of sentences or symbols telepathically broadcast by the institute. This undoubtedly had the underlying purpose of demonstrating the validity of action at a distance to buttress the reality of absent healing. The results were later summarized and written up by William Walker Atkinson. The institute also hosted the fifth New Thought convention in 1905. Like many (or perhaps most) New Thought practitioners, Weltmer taught "regeneration" through the "sex force."

"The creative force in the human mind and body is the sex force.

The law of attraction is an expression of this energy in man, in plant or in animal.

The force which generates a substance in the human body, which, if used according to the laws of nature, will reproduce mankind and perpetuate the race, is the same force which, when recognized, understood, and properly regarded, regenerates the body, strengthens the mind, builds up the character and develops perfect self-hood." (Regeneration, 1898-1909)

Whether this belief had any practical application, however, is unknown. It is curious that such a small town as Nevada, Missouri, would have supported not only Weltmer and this journal but at the same time been home to Edouard Blitz, the representative in America of Papus's Ordre Martiniste and Union Idéaliste Universelle, but there is no known connection between the two. Weltmer's occult connections seem to have been limited to Freemasonry and to the unknown "Atlantian Mystics," in which he was said to have been an "unoath-bound initiate in the fourth degree." In 1916, The Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics is listed by H.P. Holler as an "affiliated institution" of his Oriental University, a diploma mill in Washington, D.C., but the basis of the claim is unknown and it would be hard to say who was the deceiver and who the deceived in the relationship. University of North Carolina; NYPL; College of Physicians of Philadelphia; Weltmer papers, University of Missouri, Columbia.

For closely related Weltmer materials, see Magnetic Journal, Weltmer Journal and Weltmerism.

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