History of the Law of Attraction
Written by Positive Affirmations Hub editorial team · Editorial team — no clinical credentials claimed · Last updated
The Law of Attraction feels like a modern phenomenon, but its roots go back over 150 years. Tracing that history helps explain why the idea mixes spiritual language, self-help pragmatism and commercial packaging — and why treating it as either ancient wisdom or settled science both miss the more interesting, tangled actual story.
New Thought and the mind-cure movement (1800s)
The Law of Attraction's ancestor is New Thought, a loosely organised American religious and philosophical movement that emerged in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. It combined elements of Christian Science, Transcendentalism, and popular 'mind-cure' practices, which held that mental and spiritual states could influence physical health and life circumstances.
Phineas Quimby, often cited as an early influence, worked as a mental healer in the mid-1800s and argued that illness had mental origins that could be addressed through belief and suggestion. His ideas fed into a broader current of American thought that treated the mind as a powerful, semi-spiritual force — a precursor to later 'thoughts become things' language.
Ralph Waldo Trine and popularisation
Ralph Waldo Trine's 1897 book 'In Tune with the Infinite' became a bestseller and helped bring New Thought ideas — that aligning oneself with a benevolent universal spirit brings health, wealth and happiness — to a much wider readership. This period established the template that later manifestation writing would repeat: an accessible, optimistic message that inner alignment shapes outer life.
Napoleon Hill and prosperity writing (early-to-mid 1900s)
Napoleon Hill's 'Think and Grow Rich' (1937) is frequently cited as a bridge between New Thought and modern manifestation culture, though Hill's actual emphasis was closer to definite purpose, persistence and organised planning than to metaphysical attraction. His framing of 'burning desire' and vivid imagination as drivers of achievement nonetheless supplied language that later Law of Attraction writers borrowed heavily.
Through the mid-twentieth century, a wider genre of prosperity and motivational writing kept variations on this theme alive, usually blending practical business advice with more spiritual claims about belief shaping reality.
The modern mass-market era
The phrase 'Law of Attraction' as commonly used today was popularised in the 2000s through bestselling books, seminars and a widely watched film, which simplified the older New Thought and prosperity ideas into a compact formula and introduced misleading references to quantum physics to lend it an air of scientific authority.
This era also coincided with the rise of blogging, then social media, which made manifestation content extremely shareable — short, emotionally compelling claims travel further than nuanced explanations. That commercial and social-media incentive helps explain why so much current content overstates certainty rather than presenting the idea as one strand of a much longer, more complicated history.
Common questions
Who coined the term 'Law of Attraction'?
The concept predates any single coiner, but the phrase circulated within New Thought and Theosophical writing in the late nineteenth century before being popularised in its modern form by twentieth and twenty-first century self-help authors.
Is New Thought a religion?
New Thought is generally described as a metaphysical or spiritual movement, and it influenced several religious denominations (such as Christian Science and Unity), but it isn't a single organised religion.
Sources & further reading
- Trine, R. W. (1897), In Tune with the Infinite — Primary historical text illustrating early New Thought ideas about mind and circumstance.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — 'New Thought movement' — Overview of New Thought's origins and influences.
