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__NOINDEX__ The metaphysical movement in the United States is a set of idealist religious groups that emerged in the 19th century, several of them in New England. The movement encompasses Christian Science and several groups belonging to the New Thought family, such as the Unity Church, Church of Divine Science and Religious Science. It may also be defined to include other movements such as Theosophy. The term metaphysical in this context has little or nothing to do with the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics.

The groups have in common that physical and mental health, and prosperity in general, are attainable by forming the right relationship with, or understanding of, the underlying principle of the universe, referred to variously as Mind, Divine Mind, Truth, Principle, God, the Absolute, Life, Love, Spirit, Soul. Humankind was seen as a perfect reflection of Divine Mind, and primarily (or, for Christian Scientists, entirely) spiritual in nature, rather than material.

The father of the movement is generally identified as "mental healer" Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), a clockmaker in Portland, Maine, who began practicing mesmerism/hynosis in the late 1830s. By the 1850s he had 500 patients a year, and come to realize that the cures he appeared able to effect were caused by suggestion, rather than mesmerism.

Note
The word metaphysical in metaphysical family or metaphysical movement has little or nothing to do with the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. (Philosophers studying metaphysics examine issues such as existence, freewill and determinism, causation, space and time.) Here the term refers to a set of idealist belief systems – encompassing Christian Science and various New Thought groups – that emerged in the United States in the 19th century. Charles S. Braden wrote (Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought, Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 4–5):

"Mesmerism had developed as a therapeutic method; but it was in America that it was invested with religious significance and gave rise to a complex of religious faiths varying from one another in significant ways, but all agreeing upon the central fact that healing and for that matter every good thing is possible through a right relationship with the ultimate power in the Universe, Creative Mind – called God, Principle, Life, Wisdom, and a dozen other names by one group or another – since man in his real nature is essentially divine. This broad complex of religions is sometimes described by the rather general term 'metaphysical,' because its major reliance is not on the physical, but on that which is beyond the physical. It was the Portland healer, P. P. Quimby, who seems to have started it all, around the middle of the nineteenth century. It was a woman, Mary Baker Eddy, who, healed of a serious ailment by Quimby, first made a religion of it, produced a scripture, Science and Health, and is regarded by her followers as the final revelator of Truth. Where but in America could such a movement have arisen? The general movement has proliferated in many directions. Two main streams seem most vigorous: one is called Christian Science; the other, which no single name adequately describes, has come rather generally to be known as New Thought."