>>14094416I doubt very much that the people such as Joe Vitale behind The Secret even believe in the law of attraction. They're direct marketers from the tradition of fancy long sales letters. It ultimately goes back to the New Thought movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which Rhonda Byrne herself credits. Many of the New Thought dudes (including Atkinson with his 10,000 credibility-building pseudonyms) were correspondence-course salesmen first and occultists/mystics tenth.
That doesn't mean the law of attraction is fake, but keep a lookout for the following:
-- confirmation biases (ignoring failures completely)
-- usual occult rationalizations of failure (it's not that it doesn't work -- it's that one didn't try hard enough, one tried TOO hard and was lusting for results, one's inner self had other ideas, etc.)
-- attributing success to the law of attraction when it can easily be attributed to the practical actions one took
-- attributing success to the law of attraction when it can be attributed to the ways the subconscious mind can find solutions, hone perceptions, and be alert to opportunities in a completely non-mystical manner
