Claude M. Bristol and the Metaphysics of Success

BY MITCH HOROWITZ

The American metaphysical scene has produced no other figure quite like Claude M. Bristol. Born in 1891, in Portland, Oregon, Bristol had a background as varied as the nation itself: a veteran, a spiritual seeker, a sometime journalist, a sometime businessman, and an enthusiast of the possibilities and powers of the mind.

In 1948, Bristol’s personal interests in metaphysics led him, at age 57, just three years before his death, to write his enduring New Thought classic The Magic of Believing.

The impetus for the book began earlier in Bristol’s life. As a World War I veteran, he came home to a nation in transition. The American economy was growing and the mass of young men returning from the war, many of whom came from agrarian roots and had never worked in manufacturing or in large offices, were unsure how to enter the new economy. Bristol believed that the threshold of prosperity began in the mind. He spread his theories and wrote his two and only books—the first TNT: It Rocks the Earth in 1932— to expose veterans and others to his ideas about the causative properties of thought.

In The Magic of Believing, Bristol’s more developed book, self-help readers encountered topics that are rarely held in high repute today: ESP, telepathy, and telekinesis, among them. When I recently abridged and narrated The Magic of Believing,  I made the decision to retain this material—and I did not do so lightly. As I’ve written in One Simple Idea, my own analysis of the positive-thinking movement, I believe that many journalists and academics today have failed to understand, or even attain basic familiarity with, the experiments to which Bristol refers, particularly those conducted by ESP researcher J.B. Rhine at Duke University beginning in the early 1930s.

I take seriously Bristol’s contention that legitimate parapsychology has something to offer the motivational reader. Speaking as a personal seeker and historian who has considered this field, I can vouch for the general validity of Bristol’s popularizations and suggested applications of some of Rhine’s parapsychological experiments. Indeed, Bristol was one of the few positive-mind theorists of his day who rightly highlighted the work of Rhine and his contemporaries.

Bristol, in his way, made large questions about the mind seem simple—because he believed that meaningful personal experiments were possible, and could demonstrate, or at least suggest, the efficacy of positive-mind mechanics in daily life, including in matters of career, creativity, and relationships.

Many readers swore by The Magic of Believing, including entertainers Liberace and Phyllis Diller. Liberace wrote a foreword to one of Bristol’s editions, published in 1955 as a “Special Liberace Edition.” In 1956 the piano maestro released a tributary song, “The Magic of Believing,” to which you can listen here:

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The famously brash Diller said that Bristol’s book helped her overcome crippling shyness (a claim I have no immediate problem believing). The comedienne spoke ingenuously about her experience in interviews, as you can see here:

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Scientific authorities might be unimpressed with such testimony, but it does give a sense of the depth of dedication that Bristol’s work inspired. The Magic of Believing was such a post-war favorite that it was even adapted into a young readers’ version in 1957, pictured here.

The young readers’ adaption failed to catch on, however. At more than 200 pages, it was almost the length of the original, and no simpler. But it is the kind of publishing endeavor that I would like to see more of today. Despite the enduring popularity of New Thought books, few editions are available for children and teens.

Although Bristol sometimes uses dated language and a credulous tone, The Magic of Believing remains a surprising and radical journey into the possibilities of the mind. We are still at the early stages of grappling with some of his topics, gaining a glimpse of anomalous mental capacities in a new wave of experiments in placebo studies, neuroplasticity, precognition, and quantum theorizing.

I suggest approaching The Magic of Believing in a spirit of enthusiasm and personal adventure. It’s an old favorite that may reignite the sense excitement you felt when first discovering New Thought.

MITCH HOROWITZ was raised in a world of Bigfoot stories, UFO sightings, and Carlos Castaneda books. He grew determined to find the truth behind it all—and today Mitch is a PEN Award-winning historian and the author of Occult America and One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life. Mitch has written on everything from the war on witches to the secret life of Ronald Reagan for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, and Time.com. The Washington Post says Mitch “treats esoteric ideas and movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness that is too often lost in today’s raised-voice discussions.” Mitch is a vice president and executive editor at Penguin Random House, where he publishes authors, living and dead, including David Lynch and Manly P. Hall. Visit him at www.MitchHorowitz.com and @MitchHorowitz.