HEATHER FREEMAN: Have either of you ever heard of the law of attraction? 

CHRIS: Yes. 

HEATHER: Yeah, tell me about that. 

CHRIS: I guess you – naturally you attract what you put out into the world. And so if you want to attract positivity, you also have to output positivity. You can't output negativity and then expect the opposite to come to you. 

ANDREW: Actually my grandpa sends me a lot of videos about it. I think it's 100% true. I think when you think about something, you start to see signs in real life that translate to your mind, and then you can kind of know that you're heading on the right path. 

KAY: If you tell yourself affirmations and, you know, just positively think that a certain thing will happen or come to you, then it will. 

HEATHER: It's a beautiful sunny day at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. So the students are out. I wanted to ask them about the law of attraction and manifestation. Everyone I talked to had heard of those ideas before. (It's having a moment on social media.) While some students believed in them, others weren't so sure. 

JOURNEI: Um, yeah, I don't 100%, like, believe that it's 100% true, but I think it's more so speaking things into existence.  

EVE: Yeah, I've heard of manifesting. Just, like, kind of thinking what you want the outcome to be. And I don't really know if I believe in manifestation, but if you think about it and you, like, wish for it to happen and you’re like constantly have it in mind, then it would happen. I don't know if I necessarily believe that that's how it works, but…. 

AMANI: I've heard of it through, like, social media sites and things like that. For me, I'm Muslim, so I believe like obviously like praying to God about it. But you have to like be positive about it. 

SAM: I don't know too much about it. But, like, even if manifestation as it might not be entirely true, you're still working towards it. So I think, you can make it true if you really try and believe.

HEATHER: I'm not sure where I land either. I try to be open-minded about the metaphysical beliefs and practices of others. And it made me a little uncomfortable to realize just how much manifesting I practice myself – without giving it a second thought. 

Part of that – is that these ideas seem so ubiquitous and are all over social media right now. 

TIKTOK CREATOR - MINDSETVIBRATIONS: When you figure out who you are and what you want to do and you devote your life to it like a maniac. 

TIKTOK CREATOR - HOTHIGHPRIESTESS: You start to believe and walk around like you are the hottest person alive, people will start treating you like the identity that you believe you are. 

TIKTOK CREATOR - VIBRATEANDCREATE: The law of attraction says this: whatever you think about, focus on, fantasize about, you're going to create more of in your life.

TIKTOK CREATOR - BECOMINGWITHLEX: What you speak of your life actually comes into existence. Why do you think when you ask, ‘How can this day get any worse?’ something happens that is worse? 

TIKTOK CREATOR - MINDVALLEY: You're shifting your identity at a fundamental level, almost like self hypnosis and the universe will start to reflect that.  

HEATHER: But it’s also because these ideas have been with us for a long time. And they impact the way we think about our personal agency in profound ways. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: If you go on a place like TikTok today or on Instagram, #manifesting and law of attraction are bigger than ever. I'm a college professor. If you ask my 18 to 22 year olds, if they've heard of this, I would say 90% of them raise their hands. 

HEATHER: Dr. Sean McCloud is a professor of Religious Studies at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

SEAN MCCLOUD: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok – they have these stories about how if you do and think these things, it works. And throughout American religious history, people have been interested in doing things that work, not so much concerned what the history of those practices are, not concerned with whether there's a – quote – “science” behind the practices. They're looking for things that help them in some way. Testing something out and seeing if it works. 

HEATHER: This is Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman. 

From positive self-talk and affirmations to vision boards, Americans engage in practices that are, at their heart, part of this country's rich magical, spiritual, and religious history. And we don't even know it. 

In today's episode #GoodVibesOnly, we'll finally connect that history to the practices of so many Americans, and we'll uncover the movements and ideas that led to this latest surge in popularity.

We'll be right back. 

 (BREAK) 

HEATHER: Welcome back to Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman. 

Manifesting, positive thinking, and the law of attraction are all part of a constellation of related ideas and practices. And  for the sake of convenience in this episode, we'll just use the term 'new thought'.

The basic idea, though, is this:

Your thoughts and feelings impact the physical world around you, and you can use your thoughts to steer what you want from the world. So good thoughts bring you good things, and negative thoughts bring negative.

Regardless of how individuals think this works, the techniques employed are largely the same. Practitioners will verbalize, write down, or meditate intensely on what they want to have happen – and then they wait for it to manifest. 

For a Christian who practices prosperity theology, their prayers are mediated by God. 

For someone who describes themselves as ‘spiritual, but not religious’, their vibrations, energy, or capital-W "Will" interacts with the capital-U “Universe.” 

And for a secular materialist, this is simply a psychological phenomenon. It's proven by science, right? 

Even though a lot of people believe or practice some form of this, most don't know where it comes from. 

Here's one of the Charlotte students again— she said a version of something I’ve heard a lot of people say.

HEATHER: And where have you heard about this before?

EVE: Um, I don't really know. I guess just kind of around from friends and stuff like that. But I don't know, like, an origin of where I heard ‘manifestation’ from. 

HEATHER: To be fair, the origins are murky. And they draw from a lot of different religious practices and philosophies from around the world. 

So to find a good starting point, we'll jump over to Vienna, in the 1770s.

For a long time, astrology was considered a natural science in Europe. 

And physician Franz Anton Mesmer was interested in how the planets affected the human body, particularly the sun and the moon. He also hypothesized that a sort of celestial ‘fluid’ traveled through the human body. With this idea in mind, he treated his patients by placing magnets on their bodies to control the flow of this force. 

This ‘magnetic star fluid’ was one of the first Western conceptions of what later became supernatural energy. 

Susannah Crockford is an anthropologist and lecturer at the University of Exeter.

SUSANNAH: They didn't use the word ‘energy’ back then. But it was seen as analogous to electricity and magnetism, these unseen forces and they thought that there was some sort of unseen force that operated between human and animal, kind of organic bodies. And that's why he called it ‘animal magnetism’, that's where that term comes from.

HEATHER: Shortly after, Mesmer stopped using magnets and began moving this starry magnetic fluid with his bare hands. He believed his own animal magnetism could be used to move this fluid in the bodies of others. 

To promote his idea of animal magnetism to other physicians and to the public, Mesmer did stage demonstrations of his hand-waving techniques. 

Now, Mesmer's patients were generally women and his treatments often sent them into fits or hysterics. And so these demonstrations were— well, a little sensational for that time.

SUSANNAH: He talked about using his ‘subtle fluid’ to influence women and that, you know, that aspect was there. It was sort of scandalous. He would kind of do these passes with his hands around their bodies and they would like be sent into these fits, these sort of like ecstatic states and some of them would be like totally zonked out and some of them would do exactly what he said and some of them would literally become hysterical, and it was like a real scene at the time, sort of scandalous.

HEATHER: Other scientists were skeptical. So they performed one of the earliest, double-blind experiments to test Mesmer's techniques. The study disproved Mesmer's theories of animal magnetism. Today, his techniques are considered more social influence than subtle fluids. 

Although Mesmer fell to the sidelines for the rest of his career, others continued using those techniques which evolved into early forms of hypnosis. 

SUSANNAH: Others who came after Mesmer discovered that you could just kind of fix your gaze and attention, and you could induce what were starting to be called ‘altered states’, although there wasn't such an idea of consciousness. But this idea of the way humans can sway each other and whether this is some type of occult or psychic force, became very influential later on. 

HEATHER: This idea of the way humans can sway each other and whether this is some type of occult or psychic force became very influential later on. In our episode The Heartbreak of Harry Houdini from Season 1, we learned about Spiritualism and the Second Great Awakening, a period in American history when new religious movements were springing up, particularly in the Northeast.

During this time in the early 19th century, lecture circuits were spreading new concepts. Mesmerism, hypnotism, new religious movements like spiritualism, scientific talks and social advocacy were spreading new ideas across the United States. These lectures were educational, but in a time before radio or television, they were also entertainment.

This spread of new ideas also inspired new religions, and some were inspired by Mesmerism. These religions picked up the connection between science and the invisible world. So our next stop is  Christian Science.

Sean McCloud again. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: Christian Science, is founded by Mary Baker Eddy in the Boston area.

The idea behind Christian science is the world that we see is the material world, right, the physical world around us, our bodies. This is really in many ways false. God wants everybody to be healthy. And it's the power of our minds, if we tap into God's power, that will actually heal us in particular ways. It's a new religious movement that adds to Christianity. And the brand new text was “Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures.” If you follow the path through reading Mary Baker Eddy's book, you can learn how to remain healthy. The key was to read it as a manual that would help you live longer, more positive life. 

Christian Science uses ideas of science and the claims that they are scientific to make themselves more authentic to Americans who are starting to experience new forms of science and technology, such as the telegraph, the railroad, and later, various forms of electricity. 

HEATHER: In this merging of science and Christian faith, a unique view of medical care emerged.

SEAN MCCLOUD: For example, if you're a Christian Scientist, you do not believe in consulting medical doctors. So it would – I won't say sinful because that's not the terminology Christian Science would use – but they think it would be going against God's will if you were very sick to go to a medical doctor because it's showing a lack of faith. Instead you would both pray yourself, but also have some Christian Science healers pray with you to, tap into God's power to make your physical body feel good again because it's really controlled by the spirit world.

HEATHER: Christian Science grew rapidly under Mary Baker Eddy’s leadership despite this unconventional view towards medical care. 

Today, Christian Science churches affirm that medical care is a personal decision, not something dictated by the church. But this rapid growth of Christian Science spurred other related movements, including New Thought.

SEAN MCCLOUD: Making a claim that your religion is scientific in this time period is something that a number of groups did. With New Thought, there was the idea that if you think positively, positive things will come to your life. If you think negatively, negative things will come into your life.

HEATHER: While Christian Science focused on health, New Thought addressed every aspect of your life from your income to your attractiveness. 

New Thought also left behind some of the religious ideas in favor of more esoteric or metaphysical language. Phrases like ‘manifestation’ and ‘the law of attraction’ began appearing in books.

From Napoleon Hill's 1937 book Think and Grow Rich, to The Power of Positive Thinking in 1952 by Norman Vincent Peale, every decade or so, a new book seemed to bring these ideas back to popular attention, as if it were – well, new thought.

By the 1950s and 60s, the academic disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis were gaining traction. Although they were still fairly young fields in the U.S., scientific ideas from these disciplines were merging with popular ideas about the mind. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: Especially after World War II, it's not just about treating people who cannot succeed in society, but rather making a person who is already okay, even better: better in their love life, better in their work life, better in their family life – optimizing, right? We start getting that sort of conception of what the therapeutic is for and all these self-help books are about those very things. 

SUSANNAH: The emergence of things like psychoanalysis, it starts to become this way of understanding and then influencing and empowering yourself. When we get to the 20th century, the most important relationship is with ourselves and kind of creating our success, which can then have all these other consequences, right? You know, if you believe in yourself, you can go out and earn more money. You can do better things in your career and your love life and that can actually have tangible benefits. 

So it's not a trivial thing, actually, to think that you can influence your own life in this way. That's what New Thought is saying, right? That you can basically self hypnotize by just reciting these, affirmations and convince yourself that you're capable of amazing things. 

HEATHER: New scientific discoveries were merging with popular ideas about psychology and being spread through books as New Thought. 

But now let's leave the 1950s for the counterculture movements of the 1960s and seventies. Let's enter – the New Age. 

We'll be right back.

 (BREAK) 

HEATHER: This is Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman. 

By the 1960s, the idea that the human mind could control invisible forces and affect the material world was well over a hundred years old. 

Whether encountered through Mesmerism, hypnotism, Christian Science, or New Thought, ‘mind over matter’ was such a familiar concept for most Americans, it wasn't really a ‘new thought’ at all. 

New Age was the next wave of these ideas in American society. But just like New Thought, New Age is such a familiar and common expression in the United States, it's actually really hard to pin down and define.

Sean McCloud again. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: New Age is this huge umbrella term for all sorts of individual traditions. If I were to ask 10 people in front of me to define New Age, we might have 10 very different definitions, but we might have a few shared things, things that are stereotypical, right? Like crystals, Reiki healing, for example. People who get stereotyped today as New Age might be as interested in Hindu yogic methods as they are in Buddhist visionary meditation, Tibetan visionary meditation, as they are to particular Christian Science influenced healing. So it's that sort of remixed religion, remixed spirituality that picks and mixes different things together to find something new. 

HEATHER: Although the phrase 'New Age' is often associated with Eastern religions, these two words come to us from Western occultism. 

First and foremost, the Theosophical Society. It was founded in 1875 by  Helena Blavatsky, a Russian mystic who took Spiritualism to a whole new level. 

The Theosophical Society introduced ideas from Hinduism and Buddhism to Christian audiences in the U.S. It also declared that a ‘new age’ was dawning and that it represented the next stage in human evolution, which would include spiritual enlightenment. So, very loosely speaking, we have New Age to thank for Yoga studios, but we have Theosophy to thank for New Age.

Susannah Crockford.

SUSANNAH: That got really popular in the 1960s when all these social and political movements are happening, where it really does feel like there's this big change happening. And there was a religious side to that, that it wasn't just political change that they were trying to bring about with the counterculture, but there was also a religious and spiritual change.

You get people doing new practices, often that were Eastern influenced, things like yoga, things like meditation. And this then became very popular in the 1970s and 80s and that's when you really get the sense that there is such a thing called the New Age Movement.

HEATHER: I want to pause for a second and talk about the why the phrase  “New Age” has negative connotations for some people. 

The phrase is often used as a pejorative, and there's overlapping reasons why. This conflation of science and spirituality certainly makes many secular materialists uncomfortable, and that's one reason. But depending on who you ask, there's a lot of reasons why other Americans look down on New Age. 

One has to do with the harmful cultural appropriation of indigenous practices and materials, such as burning white sage, which is sacred to several tribes.

Another is the misappropriation of ideas from Buddhism and Hinduism. For example, many Americans talk about karma in a puritanical way: it's the bad stuff that happens to people who cross you. But that's not what karma means in Buddhism. Rather karma is the choices you make, the turns you take on the road of your life.

And another big criticism is the portrayal of these concepts as scientific fact, which harms understandings of both science and religion.

SEAN MCCLOUD: People who were not scientists were making claims that it's a scientific fact that the Law of Attraction works. The difference between just thinking positively about things and the movement that we're talking about in the historical trajectory of this movement from Christian Science and New Thought to the Law of Attraction is that this not just a psychological benefit, but it's seen as a supernatural fact. A reality of the universe that this thing kind of works automatically and mathematically. 

So it's not just thinking positively is a good thing psychologically, but thinking positively taps into a literal law of the universe that is supernaturally guided. 

SUSANNAH: They're using the language of science and they're using the language of science for a reason, because it has authority, because it's persuasive, it legitimates what they're doing, but also because the whole way that they understand spirituality is deeply infused with scientific principles, such as that everything is energy and that energy vibrates at certain frequencies, right? 

HEATHER: These criticisms point to a conflict that's several centuries old: the tension between science and religion. 

SUSANNAH: What is real? What is true? Science can provide some of those answers, but it can't then provide the other answers that religion used to answer. There isn't actually a hard line either around science or around religion, right? 

These are all domains with very fuzzy boundaries. Science is very good at telling us, like, how things work, but it does not tell us things about what is good, what is right, what is wrong, what should we do, what are our values.

HEATHER: Science and religion have always coexisted. These are different spheres of human innovation. Sometimes they overlap, but they don't have to destroy or absorb one another.

When the counterculture movements of the 1960s and 70s came to an end,  neoliberalism emerged.

SUSANNAH: You're the one that matters, you're the one that makes the difference. It's actually not about your social relationships within a class structure anymore, it's just about you, the individual. 

HEATHER: Everything from the war on drugs to the Cold War seem to center around ideas of the individual being in complete control of their fate. And this individualism seemed especially pronounced when it came to money.

SEAN MCCLOUD: This is the beginning of the dominance of neoliberal capitalism, which is also a form of economy that really focuses on individuals with complete free will. I think Margaret Thatcher – United Kingdom, late 1980s, and I'm only going to be able to paraphrase it – she says, there's no such thing as a society: there are individuals and there are families.

You know, some of us are born poor, some of us are born more wealthy. If we're born a particular race, we automatically have advantages or disadvantages in a place like the United States. But neoliberalism denies all of that, right? 

HEATHER: But New Age ideas didn't disappear with neoliberalism. 

First Lady Nancy Reagan famously sought advice from an astrologer, advice that may have impacted White House policies. And in the 1990s pay-per-call advice from the Psychic Readers Network was entertainment for some and serious guidance for others. 

And in neoliberalism we also see New Thought. Positive brings positive and negative brings negative? Well for the neoliberal, if you are poor or sick or ugly, it was invariably your own fault. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: Our supernatural, spiritual practices and lives mirror these kind of economic realities that we live in, that have these conceptions of the self. And New Thought does this interesting thing in that it's individualizing, and puts the onus on the individual for their own healing, for their own spiritual progress.

HEATHER: These ideas continue to live on in books on self-help and New Age spirituality for the next couple of decades. And then in 2006, New Thought, the law of attraction, and manifestation came back to the front and center of public consciousness.

Rhonda Byrne was an Australian television producer. After reading a book on New Thought from 1910, she decided to spread the message to the rest of the world. She created a documentary movie, as well as a book about the ideas behind the law of attraction. This documentary and book are called The Secret. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: What is The Secret? The ‘secret’ is the law of attraction. So it's nothing new. It's what we see in Christian Science. It's what we see in New Thought, the notion that if you think positively, then positive things are going to come to you. If you think negatively, negative things are going to come to you. And this is a supernatural fact, not a psychological, feel-better thing. 

HEATHER: Sounds familiar, right? 

But The Secret got a national television bump from another new thought advocate….

OPRAH WINFREY: Basically the message of The Secret is the message that I've been trying to share with the world on my show for the past twenty-one years: it is very true that the way you think creates reality for yourself. 

SEAN MCCLOUD: Oprah Winfrey, being a law of attraction, New Thought proponent, featured Rhonda Byrne on her daily talk show and then followed up with a series of episodes on the law of attraction featuring some of the most famous, New Age writers of the time, people like Deepak Chopra, for example.

HEATHER: The Secret was wildly successful. The book was translated into 50 languages and has sold over 30 million copies. But it also had its critics. 

For some who believed in the law of attraction, a failure to manifest was a failure of the self. So, if you were trying to manifest wealth and you were still poor, it was your fault.

SEAN MCCLOUD: So if we live in a sort of a neoliberal capitalist gig economy, where you are on your own, right, you might have a bunch of side hustles trying to make ends meet, then certain supernatural ideas, like the law of attraction, like manifesting – that may be a comfort that you go to.

What can you control? Perhaps yourself. Perhaps if you think positively versus negatively, right? Even if it doesn't give you real control over your lives, it gives you a symbolic control. 

HEATHER: If you don't have a lot of political, economic, or personal power in your life, the law of attraction can give you a sense of agency. But critics point out this can also lead to victim blaming. 

SUSANNAH: We're not in control of everything that happens to us, right? You can get yourself into some very problematic positions if you tell people that they are suffering some great trauma, that actually what they need to do is think their way out of this with kind of affirmations and positive vibes and visualization.

And The Secret, that is saying the opposite. It’s saying if something bad happened, well, you created that in your life because you wanted to learn that lesson, right? And so therefore you need to change yourself. So it leads to this intensely victim-blaming way of thinking, where people are responsible for the misfortune that has happened to them.

HEATHER: Good vibes only. The law of attraction. Manifestation. 

Many Americans fold these ideas into their daily lives. Whether you're a basketball player, visualizing a difficult shot before you take it; or you notice a new wrinkle and remind yourself that, ‘Yes, I am beautiful’, many of us employ positive thinking in our daily lives. 

SUSANNAH: If something is useful, then people will start doing it and using it. And I think a lot of people do find affirmations very useful. Like, they can make you feel better, and that's not to be sniffed at. I think that, you know, if people can help themselves feel better, and it'll help them get through the day, then why not do affirmations? For many people, it is just a very helpful tool that makes them feel better and helps them focus. And there's actually nothing wrong with that. 

HEATHER: Do you ever practice positive thinking? 

KAY: Yes, I do practice positive thinking. I think it's very important and just having a positive mindset, not talking negative to yourself, just being very positive about life and what happens. 

JOURNEI: I do as well, going off what she said. I feel like having a positive mindset – it just brings positivity into your world. It's better than negativity. 

HEATHER: Cool, yeah. How about you? 

TAYLOR: You know, I believe that there is a Higher Power. But again, there's also so much to learn and I'm still learning and figuring out what exactly I believe in. So I'm just kind of running with whatever I resonate with and going from there.  

HEATHER: Next week on Magic in the United States, we'll travel to the ancient mountains of Appalachia; we'll discover the remixed folk practices of these diverse mountain communities; and learn about the magical long con of Montague and Duck Moore. 

Would you like to leave us a comment or a thought on one of our episodes? Give us a ring. 980 - 277 - 4402. Or leave a message or voicemail at magicintheunitedstates@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Magic in the United States is written and hosted by me, Heather Freeman. The show is produced by Amber Walker and edited by Lucy Perkins. Our associate producer is Noor Gill and the show is mixed by Jennie Cataldo. Fact-checking by Dania Suleman. The executive producer for PRX productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. The show's music is from APM music and Epidemic Sound. And our project managers are Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church. Thanks to advisors Yvonne Chireau, Chaz Clifton, Sean McCloud, and Thorn Mooney. Thanks to guests Susannah Crockford, Sean McCloud, and Charlotte students Andrew, Amani, Chris, Eva, Journei, Sam and Taylor.  This production was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. 

Wherever you are in the United States, the east, the west, the north or the south… Remember that magic is everywhere. I'm Heather Freeman.

And I'll see you at the crossroads.