The Secret Source. Maja D'Aoust

to Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. Aside from Mrs. Eddy, Mr. Evans was the only person who actually made a cohesive philosophical system of mental healing immediately after Quimby’s passing. One of the most interesting aspects of Evans’ written works is that he integrated the work of Phineas Quimby and the spiritualist inspiration of Emanuel Swedenborg.

Emanuel Swedenborg

      Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist, and was another in the line of Hermetic prophets who claimed to receive information from angels. According to Swedenborg, he had developed a technique which allowed him to converse with angles clairvoyantly, whenever he wished. This method, which he called “Testicular Breathing”²⁸ was performed during intercourse.

      According to Swedenborg, after a theophanous vision (during sex), he was allowed to enter freely into Heaven and Hell, and communicate with angels, demons, or any other spirit he should happen across. The narratives in Conversations With Angels have been ably translated by Swedenborg scholars David Gladish and Jonathan Rose, and have been selected from three of Swedenborg’s works, Conjugal Love, Apocalypse Revealed, and True Christian Religion. The Hermetic inspirations and nature of Swedenborg’s writings have been examined by many scholars, but are best made plain in Ethan Allen Hitchcock’s Swedenborg, a Hermetic Philosopher: Being a Sequel to Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists. This work shows that Swedenborg writings may be interpreted from the point of view of Hermetic philosophy.

      Along with the New Thought movement, the works of Swedenborg inspired a church of worshippers (The New Jerusalem Church), the Spiritualist movement in America, and such literary figures as William Blake, August Strindberg, Charles Baudelaire, Balzac, Waldo Ralph Emerson (and the Transcendentalist movement), William Butler Yeats and Carl Jung.

Emma Curtis Hopkins

      Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849–1925) was a student of Mary Baker Eddy’s, and some credit her with founding the New Thought movement. She worked closely with Mrs. Eddy for several years, but eventually had a falling out with the Church of Christian Science and began teaching and lecturing on her own.

      Following Eddy, Hopkins conceptualized the Trinity as three aspects of divinity, each playing a role in different historical epochs: God the Father, God the Son and God the Mother-Spirit. Hopkins believed that the changing roles of women indicated the re-emergence of the Mother aspect of God.

      Hopkins went on to inspire a good number of New Thought writers and founders of their churches. Two of her better-known students were Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who founded Unity School of Christianity, the largest denomination with members in the New Thought movement.

Charles and Myrtle Fillmore

      The difference between Jesus and us is not one of inherent spiritual capacity, but in difference of demonstration of it. Jesus was potentially perfect, and He expressed that perfection; we are potentially perfect, [but] we have not yet expressed it.

      —Charles Fillmore

      Charles Fillmore was born to a Chippewa trader on an Indian reservation near St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1854. His wife, Myrtle, was born in Pagetown, Ohio, in 1845. Like Quimby, Charles suffered from tuberculosis, and as a result of his disease, set out on a quest for healing. Together the Fillmores roamed the West seeking a cure for Charles’ illness, until they came across Christian Scientists and Emma Curtis Hopkins. Charles started a prayer group called “Silent Unity.” (He had originally wanted to call it Christian Science, after Quimby, but was forced to change the name due to a legal conflict with Mary Baker Eddy.) Around 1891, the prayer group grew into what is known today as the Unity School of Christianity. Christianity here was used in a loose sense of Christ-consciousness; the teachings of the Fillmores were mostly metaphysical and even included reincarnation. In the Unity Church, salvation is attained by “atonement with God,” a reuniting of human consciousness with God-consciousness. They taught that if Jesus had attained this, all men could.

Prentice Mulford

      Prentice Mulford (1834–1891) wrote humorous pieces for various journals in California before he helped found the New Thought movement. Mulford was also an avid prospector for many years, jumping claims all over California in his search for gold. Much of his writing career focused on the unimportance of money and material things. He often wrote that those who suffered from lack of money were forced to become more intelligent that those that had it: “Poverty argued for us [in] possession of more brains”²⁹ Mulford played a fairly large role at the beginning of the New Thought Movement with the publication of his popular book, Thoughts Are Things. The writing in this book offers New Thought ideals combined with humor.

      The surest way for a young woman to become ugly is to be discontented, peevish, cross, complaining and envious of others. Because in these states of mind she is drawing to her the invisible substance of thought, which acts on and injures her body. It ruins the complexion, makes lines and creases in the face, sharpens the nose and transforms the face of youth into that of the shrew in very quick time.

      The more you get into the thought current coming from the Infinite Mind, making yourself more and more a part of that mind (exactly as you may become a part of any vein of low, morbid, unhealthy mind in opening yourself to that current), the quicker are you freshened, and renewed physically and mentally. You become continually a newer being. Changes for the better come quicker and quicker. Your power increases to bring results. You lose gradually all fear as it is proven more and more to you that when you are in the thought current of Infinite Good there is nothing to fear. You realize more and more clearly that there is a great power and force which cares for you. You are wonderstruck at the fact that when your mind is set in the right direction all material things come to you with very little physical or external effort. You wonder then at man’s toiling and striving, fagging himself literally to death, when through such excess of effort he actually drives from him the rounded-out good of health, happiness and material prosperity all combined.³⁰

Thomas Troward

      Though the laws of the universe can never be broken, they can be made to work under special conditions which will produce results that could not be produced under the conditions spontaneously provided by nature.

      —Thomas Troward

      Thomas Troward (1847–1916) is said to be the second father of the New Thought movement, after Quimby. He served as a Divisional Judge in Punjab for twenty-five years. A devout churchman and a student of all religions, he formulated a philosophy that explained a creative mental process. Troward, like most New Thought adherents, believed that all people mentally create the world in which they live. He called his philosophy “Mental Science,” and lectured on it all over the world. Troward spoke several languages, studied biblical scripture written in Hebrew, read the Koran, and researched the writings of Raja Yoga.

      Troward was the author of many highly influential books in the New Thought world, including The Edinburgh Lectures (1904) and The Dore Lectures (1909). Troward’s writings influenced many later New Thought authors, such as Emmet Fox, Ernest Holmes, Paul Foster Case, Joseph Murphy and Bob Proctor (who is prominently featured in Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret).

      Troward considered himself a Rosicrucian, and focused much of his teachings and inspiration on this source. He ends his final published writing with the following quote: