Miracles by Mail
The Rise and Fall of America’s First Mail-Order Religion
In 1929, Frank Robinson invented America’s first mail-order religion. He called it “Psychiana,” a name that came to him in a dream, and hyped his creation in eyeball-grabbing magazine advertisements. “I TALKED WITH GOD,” one read. “Yes, I did, Actually & Literally.”
Robinson promised, by subscribing to his 20-lesson mail-order course in Psychiana, a “psychological religion” that not only revealed how to converse with God but also how to acquire godlike powers.
The course cost $20—a buck a lesson—and during the Great Depression and World War II Americans by the thousands ante’d up, hoping for illumination.
Son of a Baptist minister, Frank Bruce Robinson was born in England in 1886. Rejected by his father and step-mother, in 1903, his father dispatched him to Canada as part of a shipload of orphans and paupers. For three years, he lived in an Ontario orphanage that rented its residents to farmers as cheap labor.
Fleeing the institution, Robinson began a period of drink-sodden folly. In Toronto in 1910, he joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which soon expelled him for drunkenness. In Portland, Oregon in 1912, feigning American citizenship, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, which quickly ejected him as a “chronic alcoholic.”
But in 1917 he quit drinking. He worked in pharmacies, peddled stocks, and sold self-help books door-to-door. He married a judge’s daughter, and in 1928 they settled in Moscow, Idaho, where Robinson, 42, worked in a drugstore while he concocted his new religion.
Fueled by coffee and cigarettes, he spent nights pounding a borrowed typewriter, banging out those mail-order Psychiana lessons—more than 200,000 words, many of them typed in capital letters.
Calling himself “Dr. Robinson,” he promised his “REVOLUTIONARY TEACHING” would reveal how to use “DYNAMIC UNSEEN POWER” to perform miracles, including healing the sick.
Robinson warned students to “obey my instructions TO THE LETTER” or else “get nowhere, and only be a loser.”
He advertised Psychiana in pulp sci-fi and detective magazines. The hype worked: Thousands bought into his mail-order theology. For patients unable to make it to Idaho, mail-order medical diagnoses at $5 a pop.
Robinson soon became the town’s largest private employer and a wealthy man.
He launched a radio show and a lecture tour, appearing on stage flanked by two stenographers who transcribed his every word, lest any godlike wisdom be lost. “The showman in him hungered for the energy of a live audience,” his biographer writes, “and the stage is where he felt at his best.”
In May 1940, as German armies were blitzing through France, Robinson instructed his followers to pause four times every day, close their eyes, visualize Adolf Hitler, and repeat “The spirit which is God will bring your downfall.”
After atomic blasts ended World War II, Robinson circulated a two-sided leaflet touting “The New Psychiana.” One side blared, “THIS CIVILIZATION IS DOOMED,” predicting that atomic war would soon kill most humans.
The other side proclaimed, “THIS IS GOOD NEWS,” detailing a post-apocalyptic utopia in which “all shall live FOREVER WITH THE GREAT SPIRIT WHICH IS GOD.”
In October 1948, Frank Robinson’s “DYNAMIC UNSEEN POWER” expired; the mail-order mystic died at 62. He was not “BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE,” but his widow and son managed to keep Psychiana alive for four years, repackaging and reselling Robinson’s writings.
In 1952, they closed down the operation, blaming postal costs. Newsweek discerned a different cause: “Without the dynamic personality of the founder,” the magazine reported, “Psychiana seemed to be doomed.” ~ Peter Carlson ~ Psyched Out: America’s First Mail-Order Religion. HistoryNet Retrieved
Looking for more salvation?
The God-fearing Map to Hell
With Christian Nationalism in the news - here’s an artifact from America’s Puritan strand: “The Way of Good and Evil”, drawn and published by John Hailer in 1862, is a circular allegorical image depicting the divergent paths of good and evil while on life’s journey.
Theme Park of Temptations (1932)
Behold this fascinating pictorial map created by W. J. Dittmar, an illustrator of ragtime music sheets in the early 20th century. The map, titled The Road from Earth to Heaven, was first published in 1932 for the Union Gospel Press, a Christian publishing company. It depicts the road through life as a theme park, with various attr…
A strange and invisible power is here. I know because I talked with ChatGPT. Yes, I did, Actually & Literally. And inside of five years, 95% of American copywriting jobs will be destroyed. Read all about it in The Laughable Feast...which coincidentally is $1 a post.
Seems like L. Ron Hubbard might have taken notes on this "religious" scam.