Recently, I wrote about the occult principles and practices that underpin the famous self-help book “Think and Grow Rich” (1937), by Napoleon Hill. Today, I want to examine another, much more recent book containing the same troubling ideas and background.
When Rhonda Byrne’s book-and-movie combo “The Secret” burst onto the scene in 2006, it caused a sensation. The book sold more than 34 million copies in 50 languages, lodged a spot at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for more than 200 weeks, and secured Byrnes an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. In 2007, TIME magazine listed Byrnes among the world’s most influential people.
Much like Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” Byrnes’ “The Secret” promises a pathway to success and happiness through harnessing hidden or secret knowledge known to history’s rich and powerful. According to Byrne, all the great figures of history – such as Abraham Lincoln, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Winston Churchill – knew “The Secret.”
What is this “secret”? Essentially, it’s the “Law of Attraction” and the art of “manifesting” – basically the same thing Hill peddled in his book almost 70 years prior. The Law of Attraction asserts that “like attracts like,” meaning positive or negative thoughts and feelings will draw those types of experiences into your life. Manifesting, based on the Law of Attraction, is the practice of visualizing what you desire in order to make it real.
The central error of the Law of Attraction is the Hermetic idea that the world is a mental projection that we can manipulate through our minds. This type of thinking (and practice) puts man in the place of God, as the creator and ruler of the universe, and it lies at the root of all occult and magical practices.
The concepts related to manifesting and “positive thinking” have permeated the pop psychology and self-help spaces. Less well known, however, is the fact that these ideas are rooted in occult and magical beliefs and practices. They were transmitted to today’s mainstream culture via the New Thought movement of the 19th century. New Thought took concepts embedded in occult Hermeticism and Kabbalism and “dressed them up” to be more palatable to modern people.
New Thought originated in New Hampshire from the clockmaker Phineas Quimby, who lived from 1802 to 1866. After witnessing the lectures and healing demonstration by mesmerist Charles Poyen in the 1830s, Quimby began to experiment with the tantalizing notion that the mind can control matter. He spread his ideas, including the notion that disease results from “incorrect thoughts” (specifically Christian doctrines), and that by changing thought patterns one could remove disease. According to Quimby, humanity needed to purify its thoughts in order to achieve union with the “Divine Mind” – not the Christian God, but a vaguer, pantheistic world-divinity. Such ideas are, of course, profoundly anti-Christian and spiritually dangerous.
Diagram of various false religious movements including New Thought. (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Quimby’s followers developed the movement that would become New Thought. The New Thinkers were also heavily influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who argued for the existence of a pantheistic “universal mind” to which all human minds are connected. The adherents of New Thought believed the blasphemous idea that the individual person’s creative mind was really the same thing as God – hence the alleged power of thoughts to shape reality.
One of the pioneers of New Thought, William Walker Atkinson, has been credited with the anonymous 1908 book “The Kybalion: A Study of Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece.” This text, which has been called “the most popular occult work of the past century,” is essentially a book on magic that claims to draw on ancient wisdom, laying out metaphysical principles behind reality. If you’ve ever heard someone talk about “bad vibes,” then you’ve encountered one of the principles of the Kybalion.
This work asserts that every thought or emotion has a vibration associated with it, and by a conscious effort of the will these mental states can be recreated through the correct vibrations. Similarly, visualizing an ideal future in order to realize it is an esoteric practice we’ve inherited via New Thought and the Kybalion.
To return to the subject at hand, the witch Thorn Mooney specifically cites “The Secret” as one of the books bequeathed to us by New Thought:
Both the Law of Attraction – the principle that ‘like attracts like’ – and the popular practice of manifestation find their roots in New Thought, making their way into many forms of contemporary witchcraft via the New Age, popular culture, or directly though texts like ‘The Kybalion’.
Byrnes also acknowledged that “The Secret” was inspired by New Thought. She explains that her “awakening” to “the secret” occurred when she read a 1910 book, “The Science of Getting Rich,” by Wallace Wattles, which was a foremost text of the New Thought movement.
So the problematic genealogy of Byrnes’ book is clear: occultism ->New Thought ->”The Secret.” As Peter Jones says in “The Christian Science Monitor”:
‘The Secret’ is the power of positive thinking on spiritual steroids. It is a new hybrid religion that joins the self-indulgent materialism of the West with the [occult] Hindu/Buddhist spirituality of the East. It takes principles and quotations from all religions and claims that guilt is passé, that the ‘law of attraction’ is neither good nor evil, and that you deserve whatever you desire and attract to yourself.
Jones explains that “The Secret” proves that pantheistic, esoteric, and occult beliefs have infiltrated the mainstream culture in the West. He quotes from the film adaptation of the book and “The Secret”’s X account: “[W]e are the creators of the Universe;” “You are God in a physical body.” This is overt pantheism with a Freemasonic and Luciferian undertone. “Note what is happening,” Jones warns. “Such teachings arrogantly conflate human potential and divine potential, granting to creatures the powers unique only to God.”
And therein lies the key problem. The greatest danger with this kind of thinking is that it allies one with the original occultist, the one who first tried to put himself, a mere creature, in the place of God with his resounding, “I will not serve.”
Before becoming a writer, Walker Larson taught literature and history at a private academy. His writing has appeared in over a dozen outlets, including The Hemingway Review, The Epoch Times, and his Substack, The Hazelnut. He is also the author of two novels, Hologram and Song of Spheres.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
