No post since the beginning of the week. I know. Here's what happened. Last Friday night, Robin and I watched that movie I was talking about, What the !@DANG@! Do We Know. It was even worse than I'd feared. Much worse. To keep it brief, my head exploded. And not in the good way. More like that final scene in Scanners. It turns out that, aside from making no sense whatsoever, this is one giant cult movie. I don't mean like Repo Man or something culturally worthwhile like that. I mean a cult movie. Why do I always find these things out a year late? Anyway, I've had to be heavily sedated all week and I couldn't type, so no posts. Do you see what I put myself though for You People? Let's face it, I'm just more comfortable in the past. Well, ever since the present -- contra Eckhart Tolle -- turned out to be a total washout.

So, let us return to yesteryear, shall we? The fellow you see here -- not just once, but twice (so enamored have I become with his stern visage) -- is none other than Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. And yes, I answer to your inevitable question, the very same Phineas Parkhurst Quimby who wrote Mingling Minds: Phineas Parkhurst Quimby's Science of Health & Happiness. Can't you just see yourself mingling minds with Phineas P? I can. It'd be like that final scene in Scanners where somebody's (I don't want to spoil it for you) head explodes. Nice S/FX, too. That David Cronenberg, what a card! But back to Phineas P. He was the founder, along with Emma Curtis Hopkins, of the New Thought movement, believe it or not. Also, even stranger, P.P. and Spaulding Gray were separated at birth -- even though they were born 140 years apart!

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby	Spaulding Gray [rip]

from: Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875-1920, review by Shelly McKenzie
source: American Studies International, 1 February 2001
via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright © 2001 George Washington University

As Satter explains [in Each Mind a Kingdom; see previous post], white masculinity was retooled into a unique combination of primitive drive contained by morality, rationality and intellectualism when ideals of manhood were re-examined in the wake of economic changes and developments in evolutionary theory, and anthropology. Middle-class urban white men took to demonstrating their physical virility through body-building, shooting and camping. This ideology with its "low impulses," was distinct from previous norms of white manhood based on rationality and intellect alone. Not everyone was prepared to embrace these new standards however; instead some women and men "argued that pure, selfless women rather than aggressive, desirous men were the best hope for civilization, the republic, and the (Anglo-Saxon) 'race'." With her link between mind and heart, free of primitive drives, white womanhood was believed by some to be the highest expression of race perfection. This group, known as social purists or reform Darwinists, asserted that motherhood was "the soul-energizing of the race" and that white men's lustful nature was leading to devolution of the race because the sexual activity they often forced on women produced deficient children.

CBO readers asking to "be excused"

It was in the midst of this cultural debate that the New Thought movement grew. Influenced by mesmerism, hypnotism and the writings of Phineas Quimby, early New Thought advocates such as Mary Baker Eddy, Warren Felt Evans and Emma Curtis Hopkins posited a religious healing system that would allow the mind to control the body. New Thought tenets held that human minds, being the creation of God and therefore divine, had the power to similarly create... Adepts also fervently believed that hunches, intuition and "gut feelings" were in fact a form of communication from God, who was also known as the All-Supply, the All Mind, the Divine Spirit, or "the Christ."

...At various times New Thought teachings were known as Mental Science, Science of Being, Religious Science, Divine Science or Christian Science (not in affiliation with Mary Baker Eddy).

[links and emphasis of funny parts mine]

from: Emma Curtis Hopkins: Forgotten Founder of New Thought book review by Nancy A. Hardesty
source: Church History, 1 June 2003
via: HighBeam™ Research

Emma Curtis Hopkins... was a central figure in the development of New Thought and mind cure healing. A native of Killingly, Connecticut, Hopkins met Mary Baker Eddy in 1883... Soon she was editor of the fledgling Journal of Christian Science. However, in October 1885 Hopkins was summarily dismissed from her post, one of many Eddy alienated.

Still a believer in Christian Science principles, Hopkins moved to Chicago where she became a "teacher of teachers. She founded the College of Christian Science and the Hopkins Metaphysical Association as a way of uniting its graduates. In 1888 the school became a theological seminary, and Hopkins began to ordain graduates of its advanced course -- 111 by 1893, including Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, founders of Unity School of Christianity; Malinda Cramer and Kate Bingham, founders of Divine Science; and Annie Rix Militz and Paul Militz, founders of Homes of Truth. In 1895 Hopkins closed the seminary and moved to New York City. There she maintained a healing and counseling practice among the glittering circle around Mabel Dodge Luhan. She continued to teach individuals, including Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science. In 1920 she published High Mysticism.

[links and emphasis of funny parts mine]

C. Fillmore	D. Lama