The History of the Law of Attraction, Part One

"The Secret " burst into the media a while back and created a groundswell of "Law of Attraction" experts.

The funny thing is that this Law of Attraction (LOA) isn't anything new; it's been around for centuries.

Yes centuries.

Gautama Buddha, said,"What you have become is the result of what you have thought".

The Bible says, "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." Matthew 21:22 (King James Version)

Some people think that the LOA's roots go all the way back to the Hindu concept of karma and dharma.

I think what was once considered " law" back then was gradually replaced by science telling us what would and would not work. Everything had to be concrete and proven, and there was little room left for faith.

But nothing that affects people in a positive way can stay buried long. In 1906, William Walker Atkinson wrote a book called "Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World." Following that, books began to appear on the topics of "positive thinking" and the "Law of Attraction."

Atkinson's book really wasn't the first rumbling though. Phineas Quimby had laid the groundwork earlier with his "The Quimby System". This system held that disease is not the cause of illness, but the effect of a conflict existing within the mind; he claimed that all mental and most physical diseases were the result of faulty reasoning. Thusly, what you thought made you ill.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science movement was also a student and patient of "Park" as his friends called him. In 1862, Eddy received treatment from Quimby and was cured quickly. Although I have to point out that the exact nature of her illness was never determined to be psychosomatic or hysterical, so "thinking" you actually were better would work here as opposed to a purely physical aliment.

By 1890s, many organizations were calling themselves "New Thought". New Thought became a catch all phrase, combining various occult and orientalist traditions, as well as a strong Christian influence.

In the early 1900s, New Thought had become popular in the United States. New Thought churches and centers had sprung up. The scope of thought had widened now, and encompassed not only physical healing, but the financial success books of Wallace Wattles, Frank Channing Haddock, and Thomas Troward.

In 1906, Atkinson's book came out and then in 1910 Wallace Wattles published a book called "The Science of Getting Rich"
Charles F. Haanel wrote "The Master Key System" in 1912, then later in 1937, Napoleon Hill published "Think and Grow Rich".

New Thought had built up quite a head of steam.