New Thought and mental science

Charles F. Haanel

1866 – 1949

Charles Francis Haanel was an American businessman and New Thought author best known for The Master Key System (1912), a correspondence course teaching that mind is the master power underlying all achievement and material reality. His work systematized the metaphysical principles of concentration, visualization, and alignment with universal law that formed the core of the New Thought and mental science movements, influencing generations of self-improvement literature. He represents the strand of practical occultism that merged esoteric philosophy with business success culture in early twentieth-century America.