THANK GOD FOR THE ATOMIC BOMB!

I was caught between being stunned and laughing out loud when I first came across this bizarre ad. Published in a magazine in 1946, it was just a year after the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the copy was not related to "The Bomb" winning the war. Instead, it proselytized the god-like function of nuclear power and its benefits to mankind.

The publisher of this ad was by a religious organization that went by the name of "Psychiana" based ironically in a town called Moscow, Idaho. Like so many others, the head of the group was Frank Bruce Robinson, one of the self-styled prophets of the "New Thought" movement that was an outcropping of Madame Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy. Robinson built a mail order empire selling pamphlets containing his spiritual philosophies, and business was so good that he had to buy his own printing press to keep up with the orders. He made millions, but most of it went back into the business. Despite his ad hype, Robinson was actually an early proponent of affirmations and other forms of self-help way before these concepts caught on in the 1980's during the New Age Movement.

If you're interested in learning more about Psychiana, Mitch Horowitz devotes an entire chapter to it in his book, "Occult America", published in 2009.