It sounds like a concept from a physics textbook — or from a self-help book on dating. The term itself is attractive, and makes one wonder, What compelling idea does this stand for?

It develops that "The Law of Attraction" actually says that when you activate within you a vibration for something, that thing will be drawn to you, whether it is good or bad.

Yeah.

The Law of Attraction was revealed by a group of spirit entities collectively known as Abraham, speaking through the medium of one Esther Hicks. She and her husband Jerry have attracted to themselves beaucoup bucks through the vibration of canny marketing.

Though Abraham is a personal being (or, rather, collection of beings), the Law of Attraction is apparently an impersonal supernatural force. In Catholic belief, there is no such thing as an impersonal supernatural force; thus the "Law" that is "attracting" things to the Hicks and their followers must be coming from some supernatural person — and it clearly isn't God.

Under Abraham's teachings, there is no charity. The Hicks give, but only to people who seem to want it, never to those who need it. Speaking of a waitress who "attracted" an envelope full of cash from him, Jerry Hicks explains: "She yelled: 'Oh my God, you can't believe what you have done for me. I was going to lose my apartment.' We said: 'If you'd told us that, we wouldn't have given you the money....'"

This quotation is from an interview in the U.K. publication The Independent. It's a story that shows a bewildering degree of shallowness on the part of Hicks couple. For instance, under the Law of Attraction, one brings all bad things upon oneself through bad vibes. When the interviewer inquires whether this applies to the millions of lives taken in the Holocaust, Esther Hicks responds with a banal story about a chicken named Renegade.

The point of the chicken story seems to be that like Renegade, victims of murder and other tragedies bring their fate upon themselves. They only get what they ask for — or, in the words of Esther, "the person receiving prejudice is the one who has the vibration that is attracting it." For his part, Jerry wonders aloud, "So what did they [the Jews] do to bring that on themselves, do you suppose?"