Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [131]
Chapter Five: The Mail-Order Prophet
The preeminent works on Frank B. Robinson are These Also Believe by Charles S. Braden (Macmillan, 1949), They Have Found a Faith by Marcus Bach (Bobbs–Merrill, 1946), and the pamphlet “Psychiana: The Psychological Religion” by Keith P. Petersen (Latah County Historical Society, 1991). Also helpful is Bach’s Strange Sects and Curious Cults (Dodd, Mead, 1961). For Robinson’s conversion experience, I have relied chiefly on the works of Bach and The Strange Autobiography of Frank B. Robinson (Psychiana, 1941). I have benefited from a wide range of Psychiana papers, correspondence, and meeting transcripts, including those of the Holmes–Robinson speaking appearances, archived at the University of Idaho Library Special Collections. Key news articles include: “ ‘Money-Back’ Religion,” UPI, 3/30/36; “Moscow, Idaho, Once Home to a Booming Religion Known as Psychiana” by Rich Roesler, [Spokane] Spokesman-Review, 9/3/96; “Money-Back Religion,” Time magazine, 1/17/38; “Death of Psychiana,” Newsweek, 3/24/52; “Mail-Order Messiah” by Fred Colvig, Sunday Oregonian, 12/26/37; “A Visit to the Man Who Talked with God” by Herman Edwards, Sunday Oregonian, 12/24/39; and “Idaho Publisher Offers Finns Plan to Beat Reds,” UPI, 12/5/39. On the career of Arthur Bell, see California Cult by H. T. Dohrman (Beacon Press, 1958) and “Mankind United,” 9/20/37, and “Profit’s Prophet,” 5/21/45, both from Time magazine. The recollections of Alfred Robinson are from Bach’s Report to Protestants (The Parthenon Press, 1948). The columnist who attended the Holmes–Robinson talks was Sidney P. Dones writing in the 9/25/41 Neighborhood News. The closing quote is from Braden (1963, 1987). Thanks to John Black (www.johnblack.com/psychiana) and to the Northwoods Spiritual Resource Center (www.angelfire.com/wi2/ULCds/) for compiling a wide range of Psychiana resources online.
Chapter Six: Go Tell Pharaoh
Quotations of Frederick Douglass are from Autobiographies (Library of America, 1994), which encompasses Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1893).
The invaluable historical resource on hoodoo is a five-volume oral history, Hoodoo-Conjuration-Witchcraft-Rootwork, by Episcopal priest and folklorist Harry Middleton Hyatt, who began assembling his material in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He privately published his volumes, based on interviews with more than 1,600 devotees of hoodoo, between 1970 and 1978, and he died before a projected sixth volume, an index, was completed. Where Hyatt’s volumes can be found (there exist fewer than 600 complete sets), they are the most remarkable records of African-influenced magic in America. Hyatt’s finest written interpreter and a hoodoo master scholar in her own right is Catherine Yronwode, whose resources include an extensive Web site (www.luckymojo.com), her online and print books (Hoodoo in Theory and Practice and Hoodoo Herb and Root Magic), and her indispensable Hoodoo Rootwork Correspondence Course. Carolyn Morrow Long’s Spiritual Merchants (The University of Tennessee Press, 2001) is a masterly record of the hoodoo supply dealers of the twentieth century, as well as a history of African-influenced magic. Important texts on religious and folk beliefs among African slaves and their descendants are Slave Religion by Albert J. Raboteau (Oxford University Press, 1978, 2004)—from which I drew the Georgia Writers’ Project quote—and Black Magic by Yvonne P. Chireau (University of California Press, 2003). Also helpful are: Voodoo & Hoodoo by Jim Haskins (Scarborough House, 1978, 1990) and Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro by Newbell