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Periodical: The Whisper

Summary:   From Pat Deveney's database:

Whisper, The.
Voice of Tomorrow / Vancourier to the Voice / A Journalette of Prevenient Thought.
Independent, International / Give Tomorrow a Voice Today
Other titles: Voice of Tomorrow
1932–1936? Monthly through June 1933, then bimonthly, and then monthly
Valley of the Pines, Montague, MI. Editor: Joseph Alexander Sadony, founder and editor, and William Alvis Guthrie, M.D.. Succeeded by: Voice of Tomorrow
Corporate author: Official Organ for The International Board of Prevenient Education
1/1, March 1932. 8-16 pp., $1.00 a year, later available in exchange for free-will offerings to cover printing and postage.

The journal was intended as the "midget forerunner" designed to test the waters for a proposed Magazine of Prevenient Thought, Voice of Tomorrow, which never materialized. It announced itself in the first issue as "an international, independent Journal of practical, forward-looking synthetic Philosophy and Literature, advocating the non-sectarian union of Science and Religion, assisting in the promotion of universal understanding, and recognizing and investigating the little known possibilities and susceptibilities of the Human Mind. It seeks to capture fragments of Tomorrow's thought, philosophy and literature in all forms, as well as various phases of 'prevenient life'; presenting an 'official' Preview of the Human Scene." The forthcoming journal was to be "issued only to our staff — associate editor — contributors and a limited number of students, 'registered readers' and original subscribers, who are active in 'Giving Tomorrow a Voice Today.'" In line with this, the journal's masthead listed a large number of people on various Advisory Boards and as Associate Editors, Contributing Editors, Special Correspondents and representatives—the forerunners of the "Prevenient Net-work" that never came. The goal of the grandiose scheme was the "survival of the intuitively fit," and its secret was "to live in Tomorrow, in thought, just enough to be able to conduct Today in answer to the prayers you then might utter."

What this meant, apparently, was the exaltation of hunches received by "mental radio" and visualization of ideals in pursuit of the "unpremeditated life," the unselfconscious, natural, unsophisticated, intuitive achievement of man's inherent desires. (The picture on the masthead, appropriately, showed a bearded, long-haired man with an angel whispering in each ear.)

The unpremeditated life included sex:

"Excessive sex seeks a sexless cloak; and because the spontaneous charm of well-balanced virginity has been lost, the first losers sought to put that charming cloak out of fashion, causing those who still possessed it to hide it in shame, don ning the appearance of a sophistication that was not natal and not quickly nor easily acquired. Neither the beauty nor sacredness of love finds their feminine expression in girls of experienced modesty, but rather in the unpremeditated, unselfconscious actions of unsophisticated, pure-minded 'children,'no matter what their age, for such will never 'grow up.'"

"But virtue is not virgin when a woman's purity is pride and show; when her fear of shame preserves her from vice to which her heart is attached; and when the refutation of chastity causes her to violate it. Nor should we condemn the question of sex, when it should be a pure interesting study; realizing it to be life itself, awakening life within life, and not merely animal propensities which are but its shadow."

Sadony (1877-1960), was German-born but grew up in Michigan and then Chicago. He worked as a photographer, movie maker, inventor, and author (Gates of the Mind, 1948), but is perhaps best known as the head of a "Society of Psychology" and its "free-love" House of Mystery colony in Michigan and Chicago, where he gathered around him (as his wife revealed in her 1908 divorce) a bevy of young girls (no more than 13 allowed) whom he trained to give him their earnings and submit to his trance commands—including divorcing their spouses (if any) and discarding their clothes in the colony.

Sadony helped edit John E. Richardson's Great Work in America after its revival in California in the 1920s, and contributed to To You, its successor. Simultaneously with this journal Sadony also published The Bulletin/Caravel Bulletin in 4-page letter format. The journal was largely written by Sadony, with occasional articles by various disciples, and each issue carried a fetching photograph of Sadony. Guthrie, who at times helped edit the journal, was the founder of "You College," the American College of Natural Philosophy in Franklyn, Kentucky, whose lessons were advertised in the journal. NYPL; LOC; Villanova University.

Issues:Whisper V1 N1 Mar 1932
Whisper V1 N2 Apr 1932
Whisper V1 N3 May 1932
Whisper V1 N3 May 1932 Partial
Whisper V1 N4 Jun 1932
Whisper V1 N5 Oct 1932
Whisper V1 N6 Nov 1932
Whisper V1 N7 Dec 1932
Whisper V2 N1 Jan 1933
Whisper V2 N2 Feb 1933
Whisper V2 N3 Apr 1933
Whisper V2 N4 May 1933
Whisper V2 N5 Jun 1933
Whisper V2 N6 Jul-aug 1933
Whisper V2 N7 Sep-oct 1933
Whisper V2 N8 Nov-dec 1933
Whisper V3 N1 Jan 1934
Whisper V3 N2 Feb 1934
Whisper V3 N3 Mar 1934
Whisper V3 N4 Apr 1934
Whisper V3 N5 May 1934
Whisper V3 N6 Jun 1934
Whisper V3 N7 Jul 1934
Whisper V3 N8 Aug 1934
Whisper V3 N9 Sep-oct 1934
Whisper V3 N10 Nov-dec 1934
Whisper V3 N11 Jan-feb 1935
Whisper V3 N12 Mar-apr 1935
Whisper V4 N1 May-jun 1935
Whisper V4 N1a Dec 1935
Whisper V4 N2 Dec 1936

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