Personal magnetism was one of the central subjects in the mental science, suggestion, New Thought, occult, and self-development literature that surrounded the Yogi Publication Society. It described the power by which one person could attract attention, inspire confidence, impress ideas upon others, command a room, influence social and business relationships, and project a strong personality. Yet the literature published within and around the YPS did not treat personal magnetism as a single mysterious faculty. It was explained through will, concentration, thought, suggestion, nervous energy, self-control, personality, mental atmosphere, and the conscious direction of forces already present in the individual. In some works the language was psychological. In others it was magnetic, energetic, Yogic, or occult. Across these different presentations stood a common teaching that personal influence could be understood, developed, strengthened, and consciously directed.
The history of personal magnetism within the YPS is closely connected with the earlier work of Herbert A. Parkyn and the Chicago School of Psychology. Years before the YPS appeared, Parkyn was teaching suggestion, concentration, will training, personal influence, nervous force, habit formation, self-control, and the means by which thought produces outward action. His Special Mail Course in Hypnotism and Suggestive Therapeutics carried these teachings to students by correspondence and joined the development of personal power to a systematic study of mind. The later YPS literature expanded many of these subjects through New Thought, Yogi philosophy, personal magnetism, mental science, occultism, and systems of psychic and spiritual development.
What is personal magnetism?
Personal magnetism is the name given to the power of personality by which an individual attracts, impresses, persuades, or influences other people. The term became popular because ordinary social influence often seemed to contain something that could not be explained by words alone. Two people might deliver the same message, yet one immediately commanded attention while the other produced little effect. One person could enter a room and become noticeable without speaking. Another could inspire confidence through voice, bearing, expression, and manner. Writers on personal magnetism attempted to identify the mental and physical conditions behind these differences and teach students how to cultivate them deliberately.
This made personal magnetism much more than charm. It included control of attention, emotional steadiness, confidence, concentration, expectation, speech, posture, gaze, self-possession, and the ability to communicate a definite mental attitude. The magnetic person was presented as someone whose thought and action were coordinated. Indecision, uncontrolled emotion, scattered attention, nervous mannerisms, and lack of purpose weakened the impression made upon others, while concentrated thought and controlled expression strengthened it.
Was personal magnetism supposed to be a literal magnetic force?
The word magnetism was used in several ways. Earlier traditions of animal magnetism had described an actual invisible influence or fluid capable of passing between people. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers increasingly combined this older language with psychology, suggestion, nervous energy, telepathy, and theories concerning thought vibrations. Personal magnetism could accordingly refer to a subtle force, the outward expression of mental power, the psychological effects of a commanding personality, or some combination of these ideas.
The YPS literature inherited this mixed vocabulary. A writer could speak of magnetic force in one passage and then explain influence through attention, expectation, suggestion, concentration, or mental attitude in another. The important point was not always whether magnetism constituted a measurable physical substance. The teaching centered on the claim that mental states express themselves outwardly and affect other people, and that this process can be trained.
How is personal magnetism created?
Personal magnetism was usually presented as the result of several powers working together. A strong will without self-control could become aggression. Concentration without confidence might remain inward and produce little influence. Physical vitality without mental direction could become restless energy. The magnetic personality was created by organizing these powers around a definite purpose.
Concentration gave thought direction. Will sustained it. Self-confidence removed hesitation. Emotional control prevented the individual from surrendering composure to surrounding circumstances. Voice and bodily expression carried the internal state outward. Suggestion gave ideas psychological force. Repetition converted desired qualities into habits. In teachings that employed a more energetic vocabulary, nervous or vital force supplied the power that was conserved, accumulated, and directed through personality.
What role does thought play in personal magnetism?
Thought stood near the center of the personal magnetism systems associated with the YPS. A person continually expresses mental states through facial expression, tone, movement, expectation, confidence, hesitation, and behavior. The inner condition does not remain entirely hidden. Repeated thought also changes the person who thinks it by creating habits of attention, feeling, and action. The cultivation of personal magnetism began, for this reason, with the cultivation of the individual’s own mental life.
This idea closely connects personal magnetism with Parkyn’s earlier teaching that thought takes form in action. A thought repeatedly entertained does not remain an isolated mental event. It tends toward expression, affects conduct, and can become incorporated into habit and character. Training thought was accordingly a means of training the outward personality. The student did not simply pretend to possess confidence, determination, or self-control. Repeated mental training was intended to establish those qualities until they appeared naturally in conduct.
How is personal magnetism connected with suggestion?
Suggestion supplied one of the clearest psychological explanations for personal influence. People constantly affect one another through words, expectations, gestures, emotional states, reputation, confidence, and authority. A forceful statement delivered with conviction may carry greater suggestive power than the same words spoken hesitantly. A person who expects to be heard often creates a different response from someone who approaches an interaction expecting rejection.
This relationship was central to Herbert A. Parkyn and the Chicago School of Psychology. Parkyn’s work examined the laws governing suggestion and showed that suggestion did not depend upon hypnotic sleep. Suggestive influence was active in ordinary waking life. His teaching also placed great importance on auto-suggestion, through which the individual could direct suggestion toward his or her own involuntary mental processes. This gave personal magnetism both an inward and outward dimension. Before attempting to influence others, the student learned to influence the habits, expectations, emotional reactions, and conduct of the self.
Is personal magnetism the same as hypnotism?
Personal magnetism and hypnotism overlap historically, yet they are not identical. Nineteenth-century discussions of animal magnetism and mesmerism helped establish the vocabulary from which later ideas of personal magnetism developed. Hypnotism then shifted attention toward suggestion, attention, expectation, and altered states. Personal magnetism carried the investigation into ordinary social life and asked how similar principles might operate without a formal hypnotic procedure.
Parkyn’s work is important here because his investigations led him away from the belief that hypnotic sleep itself produced therapeutic results. He identified suggestion as the operative principle and developed methods that could function in the waking state. Once suggestion was separated from hypnosis, the study of influence could extend naturally into education, habit formation, self-development, business, personality, persuasion, and personal magnetism.
What is the difference between personal magnetism and personal influence?
Personal influence is the wider category. Every person influences others to some degree through appearance, speech, behavior, reputation, emotion, and ideas. Personal magnetism describes a concentrated or unusually effective form of that influence, especially when it seems to arise from the force of personality itself.
The personal magnetism literature sought to make this influence conscious. Instead of leaving personality to temperament or accident, students were taught to observe how attention, voice, confidence, mental attitude, restraint, and expectation changed their effect upon other people. The goal was to transform influence from an unconscious social process into a faculty that could be cultivated.
Why was concentration so important to personal magnetism?
Concentration prevents mental energy from being scattered among competing thoughts and impulses. A person whose attention continually shifts may have difficulty conveying certainty or purpose because the internal state itself lacks direction. Concentration was taught as a way of holding the mind steadily upon an idea, object, action, or desired result until thought acquired continuity.
This explains why concentration became such an important subject in the later works issued under the name Theron Q. Dumont. The Dumont system connected concentration with will, personality, memory, mental control, suggestion, personal magnetism, and achievement. Personal magnetism was not isolated from these other faculties. Concentration provided the organizing power through which the individual could bring thought, will, expression, and action under deliberate control.
What is the relationship between willpower and personal magnetism?
Willpower gave direction and persistence to the magnetic personality. Writers on the subject repeatedly contrasted the person who knew what he wanted with the person who vacillated between possibilities. The first projected purpose and certainty. The second communicated uncertainty. Will training was meant to strengthen the ability to choose a course and continue it despite distraction, discomfort, or opposition.
Yet the strongest systems did not reduce personal magnetism to domination. The will first had to govern the individual who possessed it. Control of temper, fear, nervousness, impulsive speech, distraction, and discouragement formed part of the same training. Self-mastery was presented as the foundation for influence because a person who could not direct his own attention and reactions was poorly equipped to direct a sustained influence outward.
What was meant by nerve force and vital force?
Nerve force and vital force belonged to the energetic vocabulary frequently used in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century systems of personal development. Writers treated the human organism as possessing a limited supply of energy that could be wasted through excessive nervous activity, uncontrolled emotion, needless muscular tension, worry, fear, restless movement, or other forms of dissipation. Conservation of this force was said to increase personal power.
The language could be physiological in one source and occult in another. In either case, the behavioral teaching was similar. Calmness was stronger than agitation. Controlled movement was stronger than nervous movement. Deliberate speech was stronger than uncontrolled speech. Rest, breathing, bodily health, emotional regulation, and economy of effort were all used to build the physical foundation upon which mental power and personal presence could operate.
How does the body contribute to personal magnetism?
Personal magnetism was never entirely a mental exercise. Posture, breathing, physical vitality, eye contact, facial expression, voice, movement, grooming, and bodily control all affected the impression made upon other people. The body was treated as the instrument through which the internal state became visible.
This physical dimension also connected the subject with Yogi philosophy and the teachings published under Yogi Ramacharaka. Breath, vitality, prana, nervous energy, concentration, and mental control could be brought together in a system where physical and mental development supported one another. The body was not separate from personal influence. Breathing, vitality, and bodily control helped create the steadiness through which mental force could be expressed.
What role does breathing play in personal magnetism?
Breathing exercises were often presented as a means of improving vitality, calming the nervous system, increasing control, and regulating the energies of the body. Within Hindu philosophy and the Ramacharaka books, breath was also connected with prana, the vital principle believed to animate living beings. This gave breath training a significance beyond ordinary respiration.
When applied to personal magnetism, controlled breathing helped support composure and concentration. A person who could regulate breathing during stress was less likely to display nervous agitation. Within the more occult interpretation, breathing could also assist in accumulating and directing vital force. The psychological and energetic explanations often appeared side by side.
What is the magnetic gaze?
The magnetic gaze was a recurring exercise in personal magnetism literature. It referred to the deliberate use of the eyes to hold attention and communicate confidence, concentration, or command. Exercises sometimes instructed students to develop steadiness of gaze by focusing upon a fixed point or practicing sustained eye contact.
The deeper purpose was control. An uncontrolled stare could appear awkward or aggressive, while a steady and natural gaze communicated attention and self-possession. The exercise trained the student to resist distraction and nervous avoidance. As with many personal magnetism exercises, an outward technique doubled as an inward exercise in concentration.
Why was the voice considered magnetic?
Voice communicates far more than the literal meaning of words. Pace, volume, rhythm, hesitation, emphasis, emotional tone, and certainty can alter the effect of a statement. Personal magnetism systems accordingly devoted attention to controlled speech and the development of a voice that conveyed confidence without unnecessary force.
This again connects magnetism with suggestion. The suggestive effect of an idea can depend upon how it is presented. A calm statement from a person who appears completely convinced may influence an audience differently from the same sentence delivered nervously. Voice became one of the principal channels through which thought, emotion, intention, and suggestion passed from one person to another.
What is a magnetic personality?
A magnetic personality is a person whose mental and physical expression creates sustained attention, attraction, confidence, or influence. The quality does not require physical beauty or constant sociability. Many writers described magnetic individuals as controlled, observant, calm, deliberate, and capable of directing attention without appearing to seek it.
Restraint could be as important as expression. The person who reacted to every stimulus, disclosed every thought, or constantly sought approval was said to lose force. The magnetic personality maintained an inner center of control. This teaching linked magnetism with poise, reserve, confidence, and emotional independence.
Is personal magnetism something a person is born with?
The literature generally rejected the idea that personal magnetism belonged only to naturally charismatic people. Natural temperament could give someone an advantage, yet the major systems treated magnetism as a combination of qualities capable of development. Concentration could be exercised. Speech could be improved. Nervous habits could be corrected. Confidence could be strengthened. Attention could be trained. Suggestion and auto-suggestion could reshape habitual reactions.
This teachability was one reason personal magnetism became such a successful correspondence-course and self-development subject. It promised that qualities associated with leadership, persuasion, confidence, and social power were not fixed gifts. They could be studied as laws and cultivated through repeated exercises.
Can personal magnetism be developed through auto-suggestion?
Auto-suggestion provided a direct method for changing the qualities that contribute to personal magnetism. A person who repeatedly anticipated failure, embarrassment, or rejection was continually reinforcing the very mental conditions that weakened confident action. Auto-suggestion attempted to replace these habitual expectations with ideas of control, confidence, persistence, calmness, and ability.
Parkyn’s earlier system gave auto-suggestion a systematic place within mental training. His Special Mail Course in Hypnotism and Suggestive Therapeutics taught students how repeated suggestion could affect involuntary processes and habitual action. When applied to personal magnetism, the principle meant that personality itself could be trained from within. The outward influence upon others began with the suggestions repeatedly accepted by the individual’s own mind.
What is the relationship between personal magnetism and habit?
Habit turns repeated actions and mental responses into increasingly automatic patterns. Personal magnetism training made extensive use of this principle because confidence, posture, controlled speech, concentration, and emotional steadiness cannot be sustained effectively if each must be consciously manufactured at every moment.
Repeated exercise was intended to make desired qualities habitual. A student practiced concentration until sustained attention became easier, controlled nervous movements until physical composure became natural, and used auto-suggestion until a new response began to replace an older one. Personal magnetism was built through the gradual organization of behavior around new habits.
Is personal magnetism the same as charisma?
The modern word charisma overlaps with personal magnetism, but the historical concept carried a more elaborate theory. Charisma usually describes an observable quality of attraction or leadership. Personal magnetism literature attempted to explain how such a quality was produced and how it could be cultivated.
It also included subjects not normally included under charisma, such as suggestion, thought projection, nervous force, vital energy, concentration exercises, magnetic gaze, breath control, telepathy, and theories of mental vibration. Personal magnetism belonged to an intellectual world in which psychology, physiology, mental science, and occultism frequently met.
Is personal magnetism connected with telepathy?
Some writers believed that personal magnetism included a direct mental influence operating beyond ordinary speech and body language. This brought the subject into contact with telepathy, thought transference, mental currents, and thought vibrations. A strongly concentrated thought was sometimes described as radiating outward and affecting receptive minds.
Other explanations remained closer to suggestion and ordinary psychological influence. These different interpretations often existed within the same literature. Personal magnetism could involve obvious channels such as voice and expression while also allowing for subtler forms of mental communication. The boundary between personal magnetism, suggestion, and telepathy was not always sharply drawn.
How is personal magnetism related to clairvoyance and psychometry?
Personal magnetism, clairvoyance, and psychometry belonged to the same large field of psychic and occult investigation, yet they described different abilities. Personal magnetism concerned influence moving outward from the individual, while clairvoyance and psychometry were usually presented as receptive faculties through which information was perceived.
The distinction between projection and reception became important in systems of psychic training. A student might learn to concentrate and project thought in one exercise, then become quiet and receptive in another. The literature associated with Swami Panchadasi and Swami Bhakta Vishita explored these relationships through mental influence, psychic perception, thought transference, and the development of occult faculties.
How does personal magnetism relate to New Thought?
New Thought supplied a natural environment for personal magnetism because both emphasized the formative power of thought and the possibility of deliberate self-development. New Thought writers taught that habitual mental states influence health, conduct, confidence, relationships, and achievement. Personal magnetism applied similar principles directly to personality and interpersonal influence.
William Walker Atkinson became an important writer within this field, addressing personal magnetism, thought force, suggestion, mental influence, concentration, and related subjects. The overlap between these themes and the later YPS catalog helped make personal magnetism part of a much larger program of mental development.
How did Yogi philosophy explain personal magnetism?
Within Yogi philosophy, personal magnetism could be interpreted through prana, thought force, concentration, will, breath, and control of the mind. The works of Yogi Ramacharaka presented the human being as possessing physical, mental, and spiritual powers capable of systematic development. Control of breath and attention became methods for gaining greater command over the self.
This supplied a different vocabulary for subjects already familiar within Western mental science. Nervous force could be discussed as pranic energy. Mental influence could be treated through thought waves or thought vibrations. Concentration and will could be placed within a Yogic discipline of mental control. The YPS could move between these vocabularies while maintaining the recurring idea that personal power depended upon disciplined thought and self-mastery.
What did Swami Vivekananda teach about mental power and concentration?
Swami Vivekananda helped introduce American audiences to Indian teachings concerning Raja Yoga, concentration, prana, control of the mind, and the disciplined development of human powers. His work provided an important background for the American interest in Yogic psychology that preceded the YPS.
The YPS later presented its own extensive literature on Yoga, concentration, breathing, psychic powers, thought force, and mental mastery. Personal magnetism could fit easily into this environment because it treated concentration and self-control as sources of outward power. The difference was often one of purpose. Yogic concentration could be directed toward spiritual realization, while personal magnetism literature frequently directed the same faculty toward personality, influence, achievement, and control.
How did Theron Q. Dumont teach personal magnetism?
Theron Q. Dumont gave personal magnetism one of its most systematic presentations within the YPS publishing world. The Dumont books joined personal magnetism with concentration, willpower, personality, memory, suggestion, mental therapeutics, thought culture, and mastery of the mind. The subject was treated as a trainable science of personal power.
The Dumont system also preserved themes already found in Parkyn’s earlier teaching. Thought was expected to express itself in action. Mental states could become habitual. Suggestion could alter conduct. Concentration strengthened the direction of thought. Nervous energy had to be controlled and conserved. Personality could be deliberately cultivated. The close grouping of these subjects makes personal magnetism one of the clearest points of continuity between the earlier Chicago School curriculum and the later literature published under the Dumont name.
How is personal magnetism connected with Western esotericism?
Within Western esotericism, human beings were often understood as possessing invisible dimensions extending beyond the physical body. Thoughts, desires, emotions, and will could be described as forces capable of affecting subtle planes or other minds. Personal magnetism could then be interpreted as one expression of the interaction between mind, vitality, and invisible force.
This framework connected the subject with mesmerism, occultism, psychic development, Theosophy, Hermeticism, Rosicrucian teachings, and Qabalism. Each tradition supplied its own explanation of mind and force, but personal magnetism provided an accessible subject through which invisible principles could be applied to everyday human relationships.
How is personal magnetism connected with Hermeticism?
Hermeticism provided a philosophical language in which mind, correspondence, vibration, polarity, and cause and effect could be related to personal power. The writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus had long supplied Western occultism with teachings concerning the relationship between the human mind, nature, and the larger order of the cosmos.
Within the YPS world, this connection became especially visible through the Three Initiates and The Kybalion. Its principles of Mentalism, Vibration, Polarity, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, Correspondence, and Gender supplied a Hermetic framework for mental mastery. The individual who learned to change mental states, control reactions, and consciously use mental laws occupied much the same territory as the student of personal magnetism who sought control over thought, emotion, will, and expression.
What does vibration mean in personal magnetism?
Vibration became one of the most common explanations for how thought and emotion might pass beyond the individual. Thoughts were described as producing vibrations or waves that could affect surrounding minds, while emotional states created an atmosphere that others could sense. A confident person was said to radiate confidence, while fear, anger, enthusiasm, or determination could also spread through a group.
The language provided a bridge between everyday observation and occult theory. People plainly do respond to the emotional states of others, even when little is said. The vibration theory extended this observation by proposing that thought itself had an active radiating quality. This made personal magnetism compatible with teachings on telepathy, mental influence, thought forms, and Hermetic vibration.
Does personal magnetism involve an aura?
Some occult systems explained personal magnetism through the aura, an invisible field or atmosphere believed to surround the individual. Thoughts, emotions, health, vitality, and character were said to affect this field. A strong and controlled individual would accordingly possess a different magnetic atmosphere from someone weakened by fear, uncontrolled emotion, or nervous exhaustion.
The aura also connected personal magnetism with Theosophical and psychic teachings concerning subtle bodies and planes. In these systems, influence did not begin and end with visible physical behavior. The person continually expressed mental and emotional conditions into a surrounding field, creating another possible explanation for the immediate impression one individual could make upon another.
How does personal magnetism relate to Qabalah, Rosicrucianism, and alchemy?
Qabalah, Rosicrucian teachings, and alchemy approached human development through symbolic and esoteric systems that went far beyond social influence. Yet each could be connected with the idea that the individual is capable of transformation through knowledge, discipline, and control of internal forces.
Alchemy supplied an especially useful metaphor for this process. Transformation of the self could be represented as the refinement of something crude into something more ordered and powerful. Personal magnetism applied a comparable process to personality. Scattered attention became concentration, nervousness became composure, hesitation became decision, uncontrolled emotion became self-command, and unused ability became directed action. The language differed, while the theme of disciplined transformation remained important throughout the occult literature surrounding the YPS.
Was personal magnetism considered a spiritual power?
Not necessarily. A person might possess considerable personal magnetism without possessing spiritual wisdom or moral development. The ability to influence others could be used for selfish, commercial, social, benevolent, or spiritual purposes. This distinction mattered because occult and Yogic writers frequently warned that the development of unusual powers did not by itself demonstrate higher consciousness.
Within a spiritual system, personal magnetism could become one result of self-mastery. Control of thought, desire, emotion, speech, and action might naturally increase a person’s presence and influence. Yet the spiritual objective extended beyond influence over other people. Karma placed responsibility upon the use of power, while Yogic and esoteric teachings directed attention toward character, consciousness, and liberation.
Does Karma affect the use of personal magnetism?
Karma gave personal influence an ethical dimension. If thoughts, motives, and actions produce effects, then the deliberate use of mental or personal power creates responsibility. Influence used to deceive, manipulate, or injure another person would create different consequences from influence used to teach, encourage, heal, or assist.
This prevented personal magnetism from being merely a technique for getting what one wanted. Within the spiritual side of the YPS literature, power and responsibility belonged together. The development of will increased the importance of directing the will wisely. Greater ability to influence others increased responsibility for the purposes toward which that influence was used.
Is personal magnetism connected with reincarnation?
Reincarnation placed personal development within a much longer history of character. Abilities, tendencies, desires, strengths, and weaknesses could be understood as results of development extending beyond a single physical lifetime. From that perspective, an unusually powerful personality might represent qualities cultivated through previous experience.
Personal magnetism training still emphasized present effort. Whatever the origin of a person’s tendencies, concentration, will, self-control, and character could be developed now. The doctrines of reincarnation and Karma expanded the timescale of personal development without removing individual responsibility for current thought and action.
How did Theosophy interpret personal magnetism?
Theosophy offered a complex model of the human being composed of physical and subtle principles. Thoughts and emotions could affect astral and mental conditions, while the aura expressed aspects of the individual beyond the visible body. This gave personal magnetism a possible occult mechanism through which one person’s inner state could affect another.
Theosophical literature also stressed the dangers of developing psychic powers without corresponding ethical and spiritual discipline. This warning paralleled the distinction found elsewhere between personal power and spiritual advancement. Magnetism could be developed, but the possession of influence did not establish wisdom.
How is personal magnetism connected with Christian mysticism?
Christian mysticism did not ordinarily use the language of personal magnetism in the same technical sense, yet the YPS publishing environment often compared systems of spiritual and mental development across religious traditions. Faith, inward transformation, disciplined thought, spiritual authority, healing, prayer, and the power of the spoken word could all be brought into conversation with contemporary theories of mental influence.
The distinction remained important. Christian mystical authority was grounded in spiritual relationship and transformation, while personal magnetism literature often analyzed influence as a trainable human faculty. The YPS catalog allowed these different approaches to appear beside one another as part of its continuing investigation of mind, consciousness, spiritual power, and human development.
What role did psychical research play in the study of personal magnetism?
Psychical research investigated claims that ordinary psychological and physical explanations could not easily account for, including telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, hypnotic phenomena, thought transference, and unusual forms of perception. Personal magnetism occupied the edge of this field because ordinary social influence could be observed directly while claims of silent mental influence raised questions about telepathy and psychic force.
Figures such as J. C. F. Grumbine explored clairvoyance, psychometry, telepathy, mediumship, and psychic development within the same American environment in which suggestion and personal magnetism were being studied. These overlapping investigations made the boundary between psychology and occultism unusually fluid. The same question could be approached as suggestion, thought transference, magnetic influence, psychic sensitivity, or mental vibration depending upon the writer and the phenomenon under examination.
How was personal magnetism presented across the Yogi Publication Society catalog?
The Yogi Publication Society did not confine personal magnetism to a single author or book. Its catalog approached the underlying subject through multiple identities and systems. Yogi Ramacharaka connected mental power with Yoga, prana, breath, concentration, and control of thought. Theron Q. Dumont developed an extensive system centered on personal magnetism, concentration, personality, will, memory, and mental mastery. Swami Panchadasi and Swami Bhakta Vishita carried related ideas into psychic influence, thought transference, and occult development.
The Hermetic side of the catalog presented mental mastery through the Three Initiates and The Kybalion, while William Walker Atkinson wrote extensively on thought force, mental influence, suggestion, personal power, and New Thought. These different author identities allowed closely related questions about mind and influence to be presented through psychological, Yogic, occult, Hermetic, and self-development frameworks.
Why is Herbert A. Parkyn important to the history of personal magnetism at the YPS?
Herbert A. Parkyn is important because the system developed through his Chicago School of Psychology preceded the YPS and already contained many of the subjects that later became central to its personal magnetism literature. Parkyn taught suggestion, auto-suggestion, concentration, personal influence, will training, habit, mental control, nervous force, and the conversion of thought into action. These were not isolated observations. They formed an organized teaching program distributed through lectures, clinics, publications, and correspondence instruction.
His Special Mail Course in Hypnotism and Suggestive Therapeutics is especially important because it shows these teachings assembled before the appearance of the YPS. The later personal magnetism systems did not suddenly introduce concentration, suggestion, will, nerve force, habit, and directed thought into this publishing circle. Those subjects were already being taught together in Parkyn’s program. The founding of the YPS at Parkyn’s Chicago offices in 1903 makes this earlier curriculum a major part of the history behind the Society’s later treatment of personal magnetism.
Why did personal magnetism become such an important YPS subject?
Personal magnetism brought together many of the subjects that defined the Yogi Publication Society. It could be approached through psychology as suggestion and habit, through New Thought as the formative power of thought, through Yoga as concentration and prana, through occultism as mental influence and subtle force, through Hermeticism as mental mastery and vibration, and through self-development as confidence, personality, will, and achievement.
Few subjects crossed so easily between the different systems represented in the YPS catalog. Personal magnetism could begin with the simple question of why one person exerts more influence than another and lead directly into the Society’s larger investigation of thought, will, vitality, suggestion, concentration, telepathy, psychic force, character, and consciousness. It became one of the clearest meeting points between the psychological teachings that preceded the YPS and the Yogic, New Thought, Hermetic, and occult systems through which the Society later developed those teachings.
