Suggestion (1898-1906) was an American magazine of suggestive therapeutics and applied psychology published in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. It emerged from The Hypnotic Magazine and served as the principal publication associated with Herbert A. Parkyn and his Chicago School of Psychology.
It became a major influence on the New Thought movement by articulating a systematic, non-mystical framework for mind cure grounded in psychology, physiology, and clinical practice rather than religious doctrine. Through its consistent promotion of the "Law of Suggestion" as the governing principle behind mental influence, health, habit formation, and character development, Suggestion functioned as the primary source through which a medicalized understanding of mind cure circulated within New Thought. Its articles, terminology, and methods were widely echoed and reproduced in later journals, books, correspondence courses, and instructional systems created by graduates and affiliates of the Chicago School, extending the magazine’s influence well beyond its own publication run.
Beginnings and development
Suggestion emerged from a coordinated publishing system developed by Herbert A. Parkyn to support the instructional and clinical work of his Chicago School of Psychology.
Parkyn was a physician and lecturer who specialized in suggestive therapeutics, a system that emphasized the therapeutic power of verbal and waking suggestion rather than reliance on drugs or deep hypnotic trance. In 1896 he founded the Chicago School as the first instructional institution in America dedicated to the systematic teaching of suggestion as a lawful psychological process. The school became the central hub of a growing network of affiliated Schools of Suggestive Therapeutics established by Parkyn and his graduates across the United States.
Rather than relying on popular "magazine medicine" or mass-market health periodicals, Parkyn deliberately created and controlled a sequence of professionally edited journals to document clinical results, present theoretical arguments, and standardize terminology. These publications were intended to distinguish his system from both theatrical hypnotism and sectarian healing movements, and to define suggestive therapeutics as a disciplined field grounded in psychology and medical practice.
The Hypnotic Magazine
The first of these publications was The Hypnotic Magazine (August 1896 to December 1897), founded by Parkyn and Sydney B. Flower and published through their Psychic Publishing Company. Flower served as editor and Parkyn directed the philosophical and scientific content. The magazine functioned as the unofficial organ of the Chicago School and presented hypnotic suggestion as a clinical subject for serious medical and psychological investigation.The Chicago School of Psychology and Hypnotic magazine 1895-1910
The Journal of Medical Hypnotism In January 1898 the publication was renamed The Journal of Medical Hypnotism (January to May 1898). Parkyn and Flower made the change to distinguish their work from the growing number of untrained practitioners and stage performers who portrayed hypnotism as a mysterious, dangerous, or theatrical power. The new title was intended to identify the journal as a medical periodical devoted to legitimate therapeutic practice rather than entertainment or occult speculation.
Suggestive Therapeutics In June 1898 the journal was renamed again as Suggestive Therapeutics (June 1898 to December 1900). This rebranding reflected Parkyn’s instructional emphasis on waking, verbal suggestion and aligned the publication with the expanding system of branded Schools of Suggestive Therapeutics opened by Parkyn and his graduates. Under this title, the magazine functioned as the unofficial organ of the affiliated schools and served as the central publication reporting on their activities and presenting the standardized method taught across the network.
Suggestion magazine
While Suggestive Therapeutics served the affiliated schools, Parkyn launched a parallel Chicago-based journal in August 1898 titled Suggestions, later shortened to Suggestion, as the new organ of his Chicago School of Psychology. It was presented as the official continuation of The Hypnotic Magazine and featured what it termed "choice literary gems by the world's best known Mystics." Its stated purpose was to disseminate the most advanced ideas and experimental findings in the fields of "Suggestive Therapeutics, Hypnotism, Telepathy, Suggestive Education of Children, Dreams, Visions, and all Psychical Phenomena."
While acknowledging the crowded field of similar publications, Parkyn argued that most failed to grasp a true understanding of mental phenomena, stating that the boundary between natural and supernatural forces affecting the mind and body had yet to be clearly defined. Although many events commonly attributed to the supernatural could, in Parkyn's view, be explained by natural laws, he did not rule out the possibility that some phenomena were genuinely supernatural. He acknowledged the widespread interest in subjects such as telepathy, clairvoyance, mind reading, and crystal gazing as sufficient justification for a serious investigation, but pledged to exclude spiritism and spirit phenomena from its content.
From its inception, the magazine quickly established itself as the foremost journal for serious, scientifically grounded exploration of the mental sciences. It featured contributions from many of the leading thinkers in mental science and related fields of esoteric research including, Thomson Jay Hudson, William Walker Atkinson, George W. Carey, William James, Stanley LeFevre Krebs, Henry Harrison Brown, Edwin Hartley Pratt, Elmer R. Gates, William Xavier Sudduth, Frank Channing Haddock, Isaac Newton Vail, Edgar L. Larkin, A. Victor Segno, and many more.
Mission and the New Psychology
Suggestion defined its mission as the promotion of a "New Psychology" grounded in natural law and rational inquiry. The magazine asserted that life was governed by fixed laws of mind and body and that health, happiness, and success depended on understanding and obeying those laws. It identified right living as the combined practice of right thinking, right breathing, and right eating, with mental causation presented as the primary force shaping both physical conditions and personal experience.
The magazine explicitly denied that spiritism, mediumship, or supernormal agencies influenced earthly events, insisting instead on the sovereignty of human intellect and will. It argued that facts were the result of unyielding law, that thought was the most powerful force in existence, and that creation itself was the outward expression of thought. Disease, failure, and distress were described as results of violated law rather than mystery or fate, and drug-based medicine was portrayed as mostly interfering with nature rather than producing cures.
At the core of the New Psychology was the belief that every individual possessed inherent powers of development. Humanity was described as the highest expression of creative energy acting through mentality, endowed with the capacity to cultivate health, character, and achievement through conscious control of thought. The magazine taught that worry, fear, doubt, sickness, and failure could be banished by understanding mental law, and that optimism, personal magnetism, self-control, and will power could be deliberately developed.Suggestion V14 N3 Mar 1905
Suggestion also extended its psychological doctrine into ethical, social, and economic domains. It advocated changes to economic systems that it argued restricted natural happiness through artificial legislation and predatory monopolies. The magazine asserted that nature designed every sentient being for a happy existence and that, if mental and natural laws were allowed to operate freely, peace, good will, prosperity, and health would follow on both personal and collective levels.Suggestion magazine May 1905
The "Occult World" column and the "Astra" pseudonym
A special section of Suggestions magazine titled "Occult World" was introduced by Parkyn to serve as an anonymous outlet for exploring subjects that traditional medical circles considered controversial or unscientific. Articles in this section were attributed to the anonymous pseudonym "Astra," a Sanskrit term used in Hindu and Hermetic traditions. This anonymous section allowed Dr. Parkyn to write and publish material on the occult, supernatural phenomena, or experimental mind research without risking professional backlash. In the first five issues of the magazine, the Astra articles formed a five part serialized investigation into the ancient Hindu history of Yogis having the power of telepathy and the possibilities that it is a law of nature. This demonstrated Parkyn’s clear intention for the magazine to act as a platform for a serious inquiry into this area.Suggestion Magazine issues 1-5
Parkyn was deeply influenced in his study of yogic and Eastern mental traditions by M. H. Lackersteen, who had grown up in Calcutta and served for fifteen years as Surgeon-Major in the British Army in India during the Sepoy mutiny. Lackersteen moved to Chicago in the 1880s and was a key figure, along with his close friend, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, in organizing the Parliament of World's Religions at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Lackersteen was one of the most prominent physicians in Chicago and had a lifelong interest in hypnotism and became an early and influential supporter of Parkyn, acting as one of his strongest advocates in the city.He helped secure the location for the Chicago School and lived next door. After Lackersteen’s death in 1897, Parkyn’s adoption of the Astra pseudonym in 1898 served as a means of publishing Lackersteen’s ideas on Eastern mental philosophy
Astra and the principle of psychic projection or telepathy
Parkyn's choice of using the name Astra as the pseudonym for the author of the "Occult World" department in Suggestion magazine was selected with intention. The term carries a long history of meaning in Sanskrit and in esoteric tradition. Formed from the Sanskrit root "As", meaning "to throw" or "to project," and the suffix "-tra," meaning "instrument," the word translates to a "projection instrument." Just as mantra is the "thought instrument" and yantra the "control instrument", in Hindu epics astra is the instrument of projection.
In the Hindu epic traditions the astra is not simply a physical weapon but is empowered by the will, activated by mantra, and directed by intention. To release an astra is to harness word and thought and project it outward as energy. Its esoteric meaning is the principle that mind and will can extend beyond the body. Thought, word, and intention become forces that move outward like rays. In this sense an astra is a psychic or telepathic projection, a current of subtle energy launched from within the practitioner out into the world.
In Western esoteric traditions astra, came to be understood as the projection of thought and was seen as a force that could be directed outward from the mind. The medium of this projection was called the astral plane, the subtle realm that lies between spirit and matter. In this framework the astra is the ray of mental intention sent forth, and the astral plane is the field through which it travels, carrying the influence of mind beyond the limits of the body.Suggestion Magazine issues 1-5