Law of attraction
The law of attraction is the New Age principle which postulates that thoughts, beliefs and emotions of a person vibrate at certain frequencies and attract experiences of the same frequency: positive thoughts attract positive experiences, negative thoughts attract negative ones. Made widely popular since 2006 with the book The Secret.
Origin and history
The basic idea ("we attract what we project") has antecedents in Hermetic principle of correspondence ("as above, so below"), in the positive thinking American end of 19th century (William W. Atkinson, Wallace Wattles' The Science of Getting Rich 1910, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich 1937), and in the New Thought movement (Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science). It is not a new idea — but its modern formulation crystallised in the late 20th century.
The current explosion of popularity comes from the book and documentary The Secret (Rhonda Byrne, 2006) which sold 30+ million copies and was translated into 50 languages. Then came Esther Hicks and Jerry Hicks with their channelings of "Abraham" — corpus that systematises the law of attraction with concepts such as "vibrational alignment", "vortex", "scale of emotions". Today the law of attraction is one of the most widespread popular spiritual concepts in the world — though also one of the most criticised.
How it is supposed to work
According to its proponents: 1) The universe is essentially vibrational: everything is energy at different frequencies. 2) Thoughts and emotions are also vibration. 3) "Like attracts like" (vibrational resonance). 4) Therefore, focusing your thinking and emotion on what you wish (with clarity, with positive emotion, with sustained faith) attracts experiences of that resonance. 5) Conversely, focusing on fears, lacks or complaints attracts more of the same.
Practical recommendations: visualisations (mentally imagine you already have the desired result), positive affirmations (repeat verbal phrases of desired state in present tense), gratitude (raises basal vibration), focus on what you have AND what you want, release attachment to the "how" (you do not need to know how it will arrive — only know that you wish it and trust). The "vortex" of Hicks is metaphor of the optimal vibrational state.
Critical considerations
The law of attraction has valuable elements: focusing on solutions instead of problems works psychologically; sustained positive vision improves vital outlook; gratitude has measurable beneficial effects on mental health. Visualisation is real psychological technique used in sports and therapy.
But it also has important problems: 1) blames the victim ("if you are sick / poor / abused, it is because you have attracted it" — irresponsibly ignores systemic and traumatic factors). 2) Naive denial of objective reality ("if I do not think about Covid, it does not affect me"). 3) Magical materialism (focused obsessively on attracting cars and money rather than inner growth). 4) No solid scientific evidence beyond the placebo and motivational effect — universal claims are not testable. Conclusion: extract value useful (focus, gratitude, visualisation) without falling into magical reductionism.
Also known as
- Power of attraction
- Manifestation law
- Law of vibration