Meaning and Magic: How to Live with Power, Purpose and Success

One of today’s most acclaimed voices of esoterica, mysticism, and the occult, Mitch Horowitz is a PEN Award-winning historian whose books include Occult America, The Miracle Club, Daydream Believer, Modern Occultism, Happy Warriors, and Practical Magick. A former vice president at Penguin Random House, Mitch has written on alternative spirituality for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Time, and The Wall Street Journal. A frequent presence in national media, Mitch hosts Discovery/HBO Max’s Alien Encounters; plays himself in Shudder’s V/H/S/Beyond, a 2025 Critics Choice Award nominee for Best Movie Made for Television; and hosts SpectreVision’s podcast Extraordinary Evidence: ESP Is Real. His work is censored in China.

Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer who lived during the Eastern Zhou period. He is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, an influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thought.

Henry David Thoreau was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience", an argument in favor of citizen disobedience against an unjust state.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a prolific 19th century American writer, poet, lecturer, and philosopher who led the Transcendentalist movement. His original essays changed how America viewed its artistic and cultural potential, helping it break away from European literary traditions.

Niccolò Machiavelli (3 May 1469 - 21 June 1527) was an Italian diplomat, politician, historian, philosopher, humanist, writer, playwright and poet of the Renaissance period. He has often been called the father of modern¬political science. For many years he was a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote his best-known work The Prince in 1513, having been exiled from city affairs.

Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American visual artist, poet and writer of the New York Pen League. He is regarded as a literary and political rebel. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero.

James Allen was a British philosophical writer and poet and a pioneer of the self-help movement. At the turn of the 20th century, he was one of the most popular writers on spirituality, his many books comforting millions of readers with their simple, unpretentious wisdom about living a joyful life.

Norman Vincent Peale was an American minister and author known for his work in popularizing the concept of positive thinking, especially through his best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking.

During his eighty two years Clason was a soldier, businessman and writer. His Clason Map Company was the first to publish a road atlas of the US and Canada. He’s best known for writing informational pamphlets on how to achieve financial success.

Ralph Waldo Trine was an American philosopher, author, and teacher who wrote many books on the New Thought movement. A close friend of Henry Ford, he spoke with him about success in life. Trine worked as a journalist and eventually became an author of many books on philosophy

Frederick Van Rensselaer Day was an American dime novelist and pulp fiction writer. After graduating from Columbia University Law School he became a junior partner of William J. Gaynor, who became the mayor of New York. Dey’s writings “The Magic Word” and “The Magic Story” were extremely popular through twenty editions.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. He led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. He was a leading philanthropist in the United States and in the British Empire.

Charles Filmore was an American religious leader who founded Unity, a church within the New Thought movement, with his wife, Myrtle Page Fillmore, in 1889. He became known as an American mystic for his contributions to spiritual interpretations of Biblical Scripture

Theron Q. Dumont, whose real name was William Walker Atkinson, was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, having written nearly a hundred books with many other pseudonyms. He was a very important and influential figure in the early days of the New Thought movement.

Joseph Murphy has been acclaimed as a major figure in the human potential movement. A bestselling author in the mid-twentieth century, his most notable, The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind, has sold millions of copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. Dr. Murphy wrote, taught, counseled, and lectured to thousands all over the world as Minister-Director of the Church of Divine Science in Los Angeles and through his daily radio program.

Anthony Norvell was a popular writer and lecturer on occult and esoteric topics, particularly the uses of visualization to bend reality to the individual’s personal will. He had a gift for making arcane ideas into workable, practical, and accessible methods.

Neville Goddard was a Barbadian writer, speaker and mystic. He grew up in Barbados and moved to the United States as a young adult. He taught various self-help methods for testing his own claim that the human imagination is omnificent, therefore God.