Voices of the Angels: The New Thought Movement Was a Women's Movement

Descriere: Voices of the Angels: The New Thought Movement Was a Women's Movement: This book is in a Reader style format that includes short biographies of nine early New Thought women writers, and excerpts from their body of work. These Early New Thought women include Elizabeth Towne, Fannie Brooks James, Nona Brooks, Malinda Cramer, Annie Rix Militz, Dr. Emilie Cady, Florence Scovel Shinn, Ursula Gestefeld, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. These women were some of the first students of the well known Emma Curtis Hopkins, believed to be the initial founder of the New Thought Movement. They and several others, including Hopkins, were the Voices of the Angels heralding a new women's era. They were instrumental in expanding and creating the New Thought Movement at its beginnings, being the founders of several branches of New Thought. These branches included Society of Pragmatic Mysticism, Church of Christ Scientist, United Divine Science Ministries, Home of Truth, and the lesser known "Science of Being" club called the Exodus Club. The author, in her introduction, proposes that this New Thought Movement was a cornerstone of the Suffragette movement, as well as an indirect influence on social changes taking place at this time in America's history at the turn of the 20th century. The author preserves the language of the times imparting the flavor of the Victorian culture that was prevalent in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Dr. Emilie Cady was a successful physician during the turn of the century which was very unusual for a woman, and the exception. Her contemporaries were Emmet Fox and Ernest Holmes, founder of Religious Science. She wrote the Unity text book Lessons In Truth . Elizabeth Towne uses some delightful domestic metaphors to describe the human condition, like the yeast rising in a loaf of bread, or the story of the Jellyfish. Her femininity enriches her teachings and welcomes the female reader right into the arena of New Thought with very accessible examples of the uses of the principles in the philosophy. She wrote directly to the women of the times. Annie Rix Militz was involved with the Unity branch of New Thought, was a popular teacher, and writes about the power of Concentration and how best to be in control of self. Florence Scovel Shinn in Your Word Is Your Wand offers us a plethora of affirmations to use in a wide variety of circumstances. These served as valuable spiritual tools in the New Thought teachings. The author's intention in compiling this reader is to provide a literary home for these early women writers and lecturers of New Thought so that the their teachings, and the flavor of this cultural era undergoing tremendous change can be experienced and revealed, linking all of us in companionship with our women ancestors whose shoulders we stand upon. We owe a great debt to these forebears, who committed themselves to the social and political changes that we enjoy living in today. We are their vision of the future; we are their intention made manifest, and we are the fruit born from the seed they planted. They forged the stream carrying the ideal of what could, and in some instances, would be a higher ground for us all to stand upon. Reading these women is a spiritual practice in and of itself.