New Thought Magazines: How Periodicals Spread the Movement’s Ideas

From the 1890s through the mid-twentieth century, New Thought periodicals served as the circulatory system of a diffuse but powerful spiritual movement. Magazines such as Mind, The Nautilus, Unity, and New Thought carried the movement’s core ideas—mental healing, the power of positive thinking, and the divinity of the human soul—to hundreds of thousands of readers across the United States and beyond. These periodicals were not merely passive recorders of a movement; they actively shaped its boundaries, connected distant practitioners, and transformed a loose collection of healers and metaphysicians into a recognizable national phenomenon. This article traces the rise of New Thought magazines, profiles their key editors and publications, and assesses their enduring legacy in American religious and self-help history.

Historical Context

The New Thought movement emerged in the late nineteenth century from a fertile intellectual soil that included Transcendentalism, mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, and the metaphysical healing systems of Phineas Quimby and Christian Science. The Transcendentalists, especially Ralph Waldo Emerson, emphasized the immanence of the divine and the power of the individual mind—ideas that would become central to New Thought. Mesmerism and the mind-cure movement of the 1840s and 1850s introduced the concept that mental states directly affect physical health, a principle Quimby systematized in his practice of spiritual healing. Mary Baker Eddy, Quimby’s most famous student, founded Christian Science in 1875, but many of her students and others who rejected her authoritarianism went on to develop a more liberal and pluralistic approach that became known as New Thought. By the 1890s, this diffuse movement lacked a central institution or creed; it was instead a network of healers, lecturers, and writers who communicated primarily through periodicals. The explosion of cheap printing and the expansion of postal services in the late nineteenth century made magazines the ideal medium for spreading these ideas. The first New Thought journals—such as The Christian Science Journal (founded 1883) and Modern Thought (1889)—were soon joined by a host of independent publications, each with its own editorial voice and regional base.

Main Narrative

Origins of New Thought Periodicals

The earliest New Thought periodicals grew out of the mind-cure and Christian Science movements. Modern Thought, launched in 1889 by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, was one of the first to promote a non-sectarian metaphysical Christianity. In 1891, the Fillmores began Unity as a cheaper companion to Modern Thought, devoted to the practice of silent prayer and healing (IAPSOP, Unity). This dual publication strategy—a flagship magazine and a more accessible devotional companion—proved highly influential. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Sydney Blanchard Flower transformed his Hypnotic Magazine (1896) through a series of reincarnations—Journal of Medical Hypnotism, Suggestive Therapeutics, Journal of Magnetism—until it emerged as New Thought in December 1901 (IAPSOP, New Thought). These early magazines were often small, inexpensive, and intensely personal, reflecting the entrepreneurial spirit of the movement.

Founders and Editors

The editors of New Thought magazines were often the movement’s most dynamic figures. John Emery McLean and Charles Brodie Patterson co-edited Mind, a New York–based monthly that from 1897 to 1906 claimed to feature contributions from “the Best Known Writers” on science, philosophy, religion, psychology, metaphysics, and occultism (IAPSOP, Mind). Patterson, a prolific author and lecturer, used Mind to promote a cosmopolitan, intellectual New Thought. Elizabeth Towne, editor of The Nautilus from 1898 to 1951, was arguably the movement’s most influential popularizer. She and her husband William E. Towne published the magazine first in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, then Holyoke, Massachusetts, and finally Portland, Oregon, reaching a broad middle-class audience with practical lessons in “self-help through self-knowledge” (IAPSOP, Nautilus). Charles and Myrtle Fillmore edited Unity from its founding in 1891 until their deaths (Charles in 1948, Myrtle in 1931), building the Unity School of Christianity around the magazine’s network of silent prayer groups. William Walker Atkinson, a lawyer turned New Thought writer, edited New Thought (Chicago) from 1903 onward, later sharing the role with Ella Wheeler Wilcox and others. Atkinson’s prolific output—under his own name and pseudonyms—helped systematize New Thought teachings.

Key Publications

Mind (1897–1906) was a large-format monthly (64–96 pages) that aimed to be the movement’s intellectual flagship. By 1904, its advertisements proclaimed it “the world’s largest and most important periodical dealing with contemporary research and progress in Philosophy, Religion, Psychology and Metaphysics” (IAPSOP, Mind). It attracted contributions from leading New Thought and occultist writers, and its editorial evolution—from McLean to Patterson to J.M. Scott—reflected the movement’s shifting alliances.

The Nautilus (1898–1951) was the longest-lived New Thought journal. It began as a small magazine in Sioux Falls and grew into a national publication under Elizabeth Towne’s energetic editorship. Towne’s practical, optimistic tone and her willingness to include a wide range of metaphysical topics made The Nautilus a bridge between the intellectual New Thought of the East Coast and the more pragmatic, self-help oriented Western movement. The magazine’s motto, “Self-Help through Self-Knowledge,” captured its mission (IAPSOP, Nautilus).

Unity (1891–present) is the longest-lived New Thought periodical of all. Originally published from June to December 1891 as a companion to Modern Thought, it was discontinued and then restarted in 1895 to absorb Modern Thought and its successors, assuming the latter’s volume numbering (IAPSOP, Unity). The Fillmores used the magazine to promote silent Unity prayer groups, and by 1928 it had reached a circulation of 148,000, making it the movement’s most widely read publication. Unity remains in publication today, a testament to the enduring appeal of its message.

New Thought (Chicago, 1901–1910) was the most important of the transformations of Sydney Blanchard Flower’s hypnotic magazine series. Under the editorship of William Walker Atkinson and later Ella Wheeler Wilcox, it became a vehicle for Atkinson’s synthesis of New Thought, yoga, and mental science. The magazine merged into Popular Therapeutics in 1910, but its influence continued through Atkinson’s many books and through the careers of its contributors (IAPSOP, New Thought).

Changes Over Time

As the New Thought movement grew and diversified, its periodicals evolved in response. Some, like Mind, folded after a decade; others, like The Nautilus and Unity, adapted to changing audiences. The 1900s and 1910s saw the rise of the International New Thought Alliance (INTA), which attempted to unify the movement; its journals, such as New Thought (Chicago), often served as unofficial organs for this effort. The 1920s brought a wave of mergers and name changes, as seen in the succession from New Thought to Popular Therapeutics to The Yogi and beyond (IAPSOP, New Thought). By mid-century, the movement’s center of gravity had shifted from periodicals to books and radio, but magazines like Unity and Science of Mind (founded by Ernest Holmes in 1927) continued to thrive, carrying New Thought ideas into the human potential movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Why It Matters in New Thought History

New Thought magazines were not just vehicles for ideas; they were the movement’s primary institutions. In the absence of a centralized church or creed, periodicals provided a sense of community and continuity. They allowed readers to feel part of a larger movement, even if they never met another New Thought practitioner. Magazines also served as a training ground for writers and leaders: figures like William Walker Atkinson, Elizabeth Towne, and Charles Fillmore honed their teachings in the pages of their journals before expanding into books and lecture circuits. The success of these publications demonstrated the marketability of metaphysical self-help ideas, paving the way for later bestsellers like Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and the entire modern self-help genre. For historians, New Thought magazines are invaluable primary sources, documenting the movement’s evolution, its internal debates, and its connections to broader cultural currents such as occultism, feminism, and the New Age. They remain essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how a diffuse spiritual movement became a lasting force in American religious life.

Primary Sources

• Mind (1897–1906) – Edited by John Emery McLean, Charles Brodie Patterson, and others. A major New Thought monthly published in New York; available in archives and microfilm collections.
• The Nautilus (1898–1951) – Edited by Elizabeth Towne and William E. Towne. The longest-lived New Thought journal, published in Sioux Falls, Holyoke, and Portland. Full runs exist in several research libraries.
• Unity (1891–present) – Edited by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. The most enduring New Thought magazine, still published by Unity School of Christianity. Historical issues are digitized by the Unity Archives.
• New Thought (Chicago, 1901–1910) – Edited by Sydney Blanshard Flower, William Walker Atkinson, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and others. A key journal in the movement’s middle period.
• IAPSOP (International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals) – An online archive providing detailed bibliographic records and links to digitized issues of many New Thought magazines, including those cited here.