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Etheric Technology 6: Ruth Drown and The Evolution of Radionics

Despite the usual pushback from the medical profession, the work of Dr. Albert Abrams -- which was discussed in an earlier post in this sequence -- attracted a great deal of attention from medical practitioners who were willing to push the envelope. That allowed Abrams' work to come to the attention of the next pioneer of radionics, Dr. Ruth Drown. (That's her on the left.) Drown entered the medical profession the hard way. Born in rural Colorado in 1891, she married a local farmer, but caught a train to Los Angeles in 1918 with her children to escape domestic abuse. She landed on her feet, worked in a variety of jobs, and in 1923 became a nurse working for Dr. Frederick Strong, one of a number of physicians who used Abrams' equipment to diagnose and treat patients. She turned out to have a remarkable talent for healing with the Abrams method. Her experiences and succesful cures convinced her to study for a chiropractic degree, which she earned in 1927.

As soon as she hung out her shingle and began practice, she began experimenting with modifications on Abrams machines. She was apparently the first person to guess that the effects Abrams and his peers were getting had nothing to do with radio waves or electricity, and began to devise machines of her own that had electrical wiring but used no electrical current. Her talent for naming devices, alas, was not on a par with her talent for healing; she called her most successful device the Homo-Vibra Ray. (In her defense, "homo" as slang for homosexual wasn't yet in common use. George Winslow Plummer's once-famous volume Rosicrucian Fundamentals, published in 1920, began with the ringing sentence: "The subject of Rosicrucianism is Man, the Homo.")

Ruth Drown at work

Some of her innovations turned out to be crucial for the evolution of radionics -- a term which she invented, by the way. Along with the recognition that some force distinct from radio waves and electricity was responsible for radionics cures, she pioneered the "stick pad," a plate of glass or plexiglass used by radionics machine operators to gauge the flow of the unknown force through the machine, and she began the systematic collection of "rates" -- settings on radionics machines -- which are specific to illnesses, organs, and other factors. These became standard elements of radionics during her lifetime and remain common today.

Some of her other claims pushed the boundaries of radionics further than many subsequent practitioners have been willing to go, and helped fuel the debunking crusade against her. She found, according to her writings, that she could get accurate readings using a drop of blood from the patient, and that she could treat patients at a distance using the same medium. (Paracelsus, the great Renaissance alchemist and physician, made the same claim; both were able to produce evidence for it.) The spookiest of her achievements, and the one that came in for the most criticism, was the apparent ability of her Radio-Vision machine to take photographs of organs at a distance -- photographs that apparently showed lesions where medical diagnosis by other means found them to be. The judge, predictably, refused to let these be introduced as evidence in her trial.

Yes, there was a trial. In the wake of the Second World War, as the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry tightened their grip on health and healing in the United States, alternative medical practitioners of all kinds came in for increasing persecution under laws designed to defend the medical monopoly. In 1950, at the behest of the AMA, federal authorities brought charges against Drown. Most of the evidence she offered in her own defense -- evidence that her methods worked, and that she had successfully diagnosed and treated thousands of patients -- was excluded from her trial. She was accordingly convicted of interstate fraud for shipping one of her machines across a state line and served a brief prison sentence. Still more legal charges were pending against her when she died in 1965.

Some of her equipment survived, and inspired other students of radionics -- the device above is one example. After her time, however, while radionics flourished elsewhere, it was forced underground by legal proscription in the United States. The fate of the next pioneer of etheric healing we'll be discussing put the seal on that process. The golden summer of etheric medicine was ending, and a bitter winter followed.

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Ahem.

As someone who used to be a new writer -- though it's been a few years now! -- I think it falls to me to pass on the really unwelcome news that new writers have to deal with at some point early in their careers; I certainly did.

It's quite simply this: there are tens of thousands of really bad writers out there busy pushing their own work on all and sundry, and by and large, the more loudly they demand that someone, anyone, read their fiction, the worse said fiction turns out to be. You may be the exception to that rule, but the more you sound like a bad writer trying to badger people into reading your novel, the more certain it is that nobody is going to invest the hours necessary to read your work.

I know, it's unfair. Life is that way.

If you want to find an audience as a writer, you're facing a steep uphill climb. It's not insuperable, but if this comment of yours is an example of how you're going about it, you've embraced a strategy that almost always fails. I encourage you to rethink your approach.

Specifically, I encourage you to:

- Get some short pieces published in genre magazines;
- Start a blog, and post regularly;
- Consider doing some genre pieces as 99-cent e-books;
- Consider trying some field of nonfiction, where the competition is much less fierce and it's easier to build an audience.

You need to get some name recognition for your writing, and posts like this one -- where you come across as demanding that people read your novel whether they feel like it or not -- will not help. I know how frustrating it is to write and be unable to find a market; I finished my first novel in 1978 and finally got published for the first time in 1996. This is something that most writers have to go through, however. If you want a writing career, it's one of the burdens you have to face.

That’s good advice, JMG, thanks! Now if I can stay awake long enough to implement it. I am chronically sleepy lately—12-14 hrs a day—and dr hasn’t yet figured out why. I gather he’s ruled out scary stuff like brain tumor. I go back for testing Thursday. Prayers from all appreciated! 💤

—Lady Cutekitten. 😴

Positive energy en route. I know a lot of people who are needing extra sleep just now -- it's a common response to serious stress.

Really? Well, at least I’m not suffering alone. My prayers go out to all my fellow snoozers!

—Lady Cutekitten

Er, I meant to type FOR all my fellow snoozers, sorry.

Lady Cutekitten

Thank you for the advice. I'm open to hear it.

I meant an invitation, rather than a demand or badgering. I'm sorry that it came across in that negative way.

I guess a point about newbie mistakes is that they're new and exciting mistakes to each generation making them, but old and tiresome to those who've seen them before. I've seen that in the things other than fiction writing, where I have had some successes. Thanks for your patient tone, assuming goodwill and naivety - which is indeed accurate about me.

I have had some nonfiction work published. The fiction is an entirely different thing. I don't see any likely carry-over from the business and technical nonfiction audience to the magic/fantasy fiction audience. The fiction is so different and "out there," relative to "day job land," that I've assumed a need to build the fiction audience from scratch. I'm using a unique pen name for the fiction.

You suggest three specific ways to let people discover my fictional work in shorter form. That's very helpful!

I can see how all three could work to build an audience over time.

Now, I need to look at the strategic choices that come to mind: whether to break up the existing novel; or write short pieces in the same universe, but save the novel's story for book length once I'm known and so is the setting; or write something completely different, self-contained, to introduce myself as a writer first, then later offer the novel as a whole new world to people aware of my writing.

I appreciate your advice. I'm taking it to heart.

I'll continue to participate in your comment section, and refrain from further pitches. Thanks for your patient and kind way you shared your advice.

I'd encourage you to try something different, and stretch your fictional wings a bit. Two markets you might consider are MYTHIC Magazine (www.mythicmag.com), which will have its next open submissions period in June and July and is open to all kinds of fantasy and science fiction, and New Maps (www.new-maps.com), which is more specialized -- they want specifically stories set in the deindustrial future, i.e., a future where industrial progress has given way to regress and decline rather than apocalypse -- but is open to new stories all the time.

Also, consider popular nonfiction as a bridge between technical writing and fiction. That was how I managed to get into print, after trying to sell a series of (actually rather bad) fantasy novels -- I found a solid niche writing occult nonfiction, built a readership, expanded on it with a blog and this journal, and then could publish my novels and get steady sales because I had readers who knew they would enjoy my writing and my quirky outlook on things.

One useful statistic: of the books that are published every year, 80% are nonfiction and 20% are fiction. Of novice writers who are trying to get published for the first time, 80% write fiction and 20% write nonfiction. So you can be one of the 80% of writers trying to get into the 20% of markets, or you can be one of the 20% of writers trying to get into the 80% of markets...

Deindustrial fiction: I remember seeing your call for it in the past, and didn't realize that was still an open possibility.

"popular nonfiction as a bridge between technical writing and fiction."

It didn't occur to me that this was possible. I thought that if I tried, I'd be like the restaurant/store that sells chocolate-dipped tempura and pantyhose... no particular reason for buyers on either side to cross the line to the other part of the business!

Hmm, come to think of it, that is exactly how I discovered Retrotopia - from your nonfiction blogs first, and then your dramatized version of a possible future. Is this the novel that you mentioned having written in '78 and published in '96?

The last year flattened me, with both health and finances smashed way down. I'm starting a rebound. I have a good plan in the works for the new freelance nonfiction based day job. As hinted at, this relates to what I've done before in previous day-job land. Fortunately, I don't need to find a way to pay the bills right away, or likely ever, with the fiction. This lets me figure out how to help it find its audience over time.

Deindustrial fiction is a niche market these days, but it seems to be growing steadily. As for nonfiction as a bridge to fiction, well, let me tamper with your metaphor. While tempura and pantyhose may not have anything to do with one another, imagine a shop selling chocolates and lingerie; they may not have much in common, but plenty of women like both, so someone who comes in to buy chocolates for herself or for a lady friend might glance at the lingerie and say, "You know, I could get that too..."

In much the same way, when I couldn't get into print writing fantasy fiction, I turned to occult nonfiction, because a lot of people who read one of these also read the other. (Of course I also read both, and the advice to write what you love to read is always good.)

As for the novel -- no, Retrotopia was a much later work. My first novel, the one I tried to publish in 1978, was titled Seven Stars Rising and it was a ninth-rate piece of generic fantasy schlock, hopelessly unpublishable. The book of ine that saw print in 1996 was an occult nonfiction work titled Paths of Wisdom. The first novel I published was The Fires of Shalsha, which I originally wrote in the mid-1980s, revised massively in the early 1990s, and then completely rewrote in 2004 and again in 2008; it finally saw print in 2009.

"let me tamper with your metaphor"

I'm glad you did. Your version of the combo shop is much more enticing.

Thanks for sharing your own history. I've often seen descriptions of the years of "development hell" that sometimes leads to movies being made and marketed, and sometimes to nothing to show for all the work. Good to know that such a long term process can happen with books, as well... and that they do sometimes eventually get to see the light of day.

Thanks, JMG! I had not heard of Mythic Magazine.

Can you recommend a good writer’s-market list for non-fiction? I can’t go to the library yet or I’d just ask them. [UnDruidly word] this Covid panic!

—Lady Cutekitten

There isn't one. Nonfiction is very genre-specific -- the small to midsized publishers that are your best bet as a beginning writer specialize in one kind of nonfiction or another. For example, most presses that do occult nonfiction don't do anything else, or do at most some closely related field such as alternative health. Your best bet is to look on your bookshelves and online, see what publishers issue books in the fields you want to write in, and go to their websites to see what their submission requirements are.

Hi, Mr. New Writer:

1) Nonfiction-to-fiction-- I was reminded of Jonathan Maberry (http://www.jonathanmaberry.com/aboutjonathan.cfm), whose writers' workshop I attended for a year. He is a now-successful horror author who got his start writing nonfiction books about martial arts. As JMG says, the first big step is getting published-- anything published. Agents and publishers see that and figure you are a better risk.

2) I vote for short pieces in the same universe. You could try submitting them to New Maps (http://www.new-maps.com/). And/or, sign up for a Dreamwidth account, and start posting them as blog entries here. When you post a comment, do so after logging in and post it as you. Your name becomes a link to your blog, and people can go find your "free samples". I've browsed the comment-names of a number of the other posters here and they have some neat stuff up.

3) Your earlier comment was a little long. I tend to go long-winded if I don't watch myself. So I will write something, then go back over it a couple times and condense it down to the essentials as much as possible before hitting "post". Not just here on the blog; I do this all the time at work with emails too.

- Cicada Grove

Thanks, Cicadia Grove.

Is it possible to edit my post here? I'd like to replace the outburst with an apology. I meant it to be whimsical and inviting, but I see that it's hard to find a way to take it as anything but haughty, arrogant, rude, condescending, intrusive, demanding, and entitled. That's not at all what I meant. I want to apologize and take that back.

I do like getting to discuss entry points to fiction writing with a successful writer I respect tremendously, and with commenters I respect tremendously, who are also avid readers with adventurous mindsets. I hope that with a more respectfully participatory attitude shown on my part, and without any links or specifics, that my journey of self-publishing might be an interesting and relevant little theme to include here.

Nope. There's no way to edit a post once somebody has responded to it. Sorry!

In that case, I'll just hope that my subsequent apology and more useful contributions serve as appropriate amends over time.

- MNW

As long as we’ve drifted into discussing fiction—fiction writers know that mental shift that takes place to wherever-you’re-writing-about, and also takes place when drawing, at least if you are using the Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain method. I was charmed to learn that the kids these days have (re)discovered the shift and are using it to visit places like Hogwarts or their favorite anime.

https://huntnewsnu.com/64152/lifestyle/reality-shifting-phenomenon-takes-over-tiktok/

The techniques look unnecessarily complicated to me, but then, like every other artist or writer born before the publication of Drawing...Brain, I was born with that gearshift in my head. Betty Edwards seems to have been the first person to be able to teach how to shift, or at least the first person to write it down.

If anyone wants to try reality shifting, you might first wish to work through Drawing...Brain, as her technique is much simpler than the ones the kids are using. The first version of Drawing..., with the brown-on-white cover, is by far the best and I still see lots of copies at yard sales and used book stores.

Lady Cutekitten of Lolcat

I never understood the appeal of TikTok, and have ignored as much as I can about it.
The article doesn't make clear how these kids' experiences fit into the 60 second video format. Are they just talking about these anecdotes?

The descriptions of their "scripting" experiences sound to me very much like "guided meditations" I've heard for decades. The only differences being that they are their own "guides" to their "scripts," and that they claim a Narnia-like long time in the other realm.

My own fictional characters' scenes most vividly come to my mind while I take a long walk, but can come to mind other times I want to work on the story line. More and more, it seems that I'm simply an observer to an ongoing story that I'm not scripting or directing. I've seen that described as a common experience for many authors, and many musicians as well.

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Etheric Technology 6: Ruth Drown and The Evolution of Radionics

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: A follow up to last week's magic/fantasy books discussion.

Re: "reality shifting"