Historical Foundations in New Thought Ideas
The authors of The Secret cite the New Thought movement which began in the late 18th century as the historical basis for their ideas.
- Essentially, The Secret is ... touting the principles of New Thought and Unity Christianity. The teachers of The Secret have been regulars on New Thought/Unity circuit for years — now more "prosperous" than ever.
The New Thought book The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles, the source Rhonda Byrne cites as inspiration for the film, was preceded by numerous other New Thought books, including the 1906 book Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World by William Walker Atkinson, editor of New Thought magazine. Other New Thought books Byrne is purported to have read include self-help authors like Prentice Mulford's 19th-century Thoughts Are Things; and Robert Collier's Secret of the Ages from 1926.
The opening sequences of the film portray the alleged history of The Secret — showing:
- In a sequence titled, "The Secret was Buried:"
- The text of the Emerald Tablet being copied on to a scroll and given to a priest.
- The Emerald Tablet being buried near the Pyramids of Giza.
- Followed by a sequence titled, "The Secret was Coveted:"
- The ornate title page of the 1906 book The Life Power and How To Use It by Elizabeth Towne
- A Knight Templar giving the scroll to a Catholic priest.
- Scroll with text of the Emerald Tablet being analyzed by alchemist St. Germain.
- A drawing of the Azoth of the Philosophers in the alchemist' shop.
- Followed by a sequence titled, "The Secret was Suppressed:"
- A series of brief scenes of the business elite meeting in a contemporary board room.
Read more about this topic: The Secret (2006 Film)
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“What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a Man ... by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts?”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.... It is all the more serious since, with the loss of my rule V, not only the foundations of my arithmetic, but also the sole possible foundations of arithmetic seem to vanish.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
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“What I call middle-class society is any society that becomes rigidified in predetermined forms, forbidding all evolution, all gains, all progress, all discovery. I call middle-class a closed society in which life has no taste, in which the air is tainted, in which ideas and men are corrupt. And I think that a man who takes a stand against this death is in a sense a revolutionary.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)