The saga of Franz Anton Mesmer was exceedingly dramatic and extended far beyond his death. It resulted in a veritable Age of Mesmerism, the vitality of which took on international interest and fascination that endured for about 140 years.
Indeed, such was the strength of Mesmerism that it came to constitute one of the first international movements of any kind. And its international vivacity was such that the anti-energetic sentiments in the mainstream modern sciences did not succeed in deconstructing it until about 1920.
Even then, Mesmerism left three long shadows of itself: the first in the guise of hypnotism; the second in the guise of psychical research; the third in the guise of the energetic mysteries of sexual energies.
FRANZ ANTON MESMER
France Anton Mesmer (1733-1815) was born in Switzerland at Weil, near the city and lake of Constance. By all accounts, he was of copious intelligence and a somewhat high-minded individual, whose thinking was completely in keeping with his times.
Modern historians seldom consider him as a person within his times, but assess him according to modern standards as they later developed. And by those later standards, Mesmer’s activities consisted of one strange folly after another.
He was educated in Vienna where he took a degree in medicine. As his doctoral thesis he produced a study entitled DE PLANETARUM INFLUXU (the influence of the planets on the human body).
In modern contexts, this document is mistakenly condemned as Mesmer’s “astrological thesis.” But in his times, and as we have already seen, the thesis examined magnetic energetic influences that were thought to be universal in nature.
Mesmer observed that the action of the magnetic influences “consists of alternating effects which may be considered as fluxes and re-fluxes” of sympathetic systems.
The effects manifest “in the human body with properties analogous to the magnet; there are poles, diverse and opposed, which can be communicated, changed, destroyed and reinforced; the phenomenon of inclination is also observable.”
In later summarizing his thesis, he indicated that “the property of the animal [read ANIMATE] body which renders it susceptible to the [magnetic] influence of the celestial bodies, and to the reciprocal action of the environing [local environmental] ones, I felt prompted to name, from analogy to the magnet, animal magnetism.”
As discussed in chapter 4, please bear in mind that the contexts Mesmer was using referred not to “animal” magnetism, but to ANIMATING magnetism—and that, during his times, this usage was understood and accepted.
MEDICAL USES OF MAGNETIC "PLATES”
Mesmer was one of the many physicians who were exploring cures and healings via magnets. Mesmer apparently innovated, designed and constructed his own version of such plates. By applying his magnetized plates to a patient’s limbs, he affected his first cures in about 1773. Unfortunately, what these plates consisted of has been lost.
But probably analogous to them are various magnetic plates designed in Japan during the 1980s, which also produced cures.
Further, the application of weak electromagnetic currents to bone fractures and ulcerous infections has been confirmed as speeding up healings and cures. [See, for example, THE BODY ELECTRIC by Robert O. Becker, M.D., and Gary Selden, 1985.]
Mesmer came to special public attention because of a bitter, and quite public, controversy involving the invention of his plates.
The priority of this invention was claimed by a Jesuit priest having the curious name of Maximillian Hell, a professor of astronomy/astrology at the University of Vienna. Mesmer won this claim, but was quickly involved in another controversy involving his cure of a blind girl.
At some point between 1770 and 1775, Mesmer was among the many physicians and intellectuals who witnessed a number of cures effected by the strokings of J. J. Gassner without the use of magnets.
Because of this, Mesmer correctly conceptualized that the human body possessed a magnetic “field,” and that such fields could affect each other. Mesmer thereafter disposed of the magnets.
For a fresh start he abandoned Vienna as well and traveled to the Paris, the City of Lights.
MAGNETIC “VATS”
Installed in Paris, he quickly developed novel techniques and equipment to effect cures. The exact nature and materials of the new equipment have again been lost to posterity. But not their impact, resulting scandals, and the extraordinary controversies that came to surround the very name of Mesmer.
The equipment Mesmer designed consisted of several versions of a large circular vat (in French, BAQUET), filled with “certain substances” that apparently consisted of mixtures of various metals and shards of glass. Whatever the substances consisted of, they served to “collect animating magnetism” and transfer it and its sympathetic qualities to the sympathetic systems of the patients.
The theory was that the “certain substances” collected and amplified the magnetic forces, and then, via hand-held connectors, the forces were transferred to and resaturated the sympathetic systems inherent in the bodies of the patients.
The methods utilized to effect the transfer tend to boggle the imagination.
The patients sat around the baquets in communal groups, each holding a metal or glass rod, or a mere copper wire or string of thread, the other end of which was pushed into the substances in the vats. Mesmer erected several circular vats, each about a foot high, and experimented with a number of hand-held “connectors” that served as conduits for the animating (or re-animating) magnetisms.
There is no doubt that some cures were attained for ailments strictly physical in their cause, but even more cures were obtained regarding illness mental (psychosomatic) in origin. Even Mesmer himself indicated that his “techniques” better dealt with what we today would refer to as conditions psychosomatic in origin.
Indeed, as a physician, Mesmer usually, and correctly, first sent physically ill patients to other doctors, and otherwise accepted them only if physical remedies were of no effect.
THE ENERGETIC PHENOMENA OF THE VATS
Although the exact material constituents of the circular, communal vats have been lost, the nature of the energetic phenomena experienced by the “patients” has not.
As described (usually too briefly) in most sources, these phenomena consisted of “violent convulsions, cries, uncontrollable laughter, and various physical symptoms”—followed by “lethargy” after which the “cures” became apparent.
WHAT was cured, and WHY it was, has always remained an historical mystery, confounded by expressions of awe, shock, and professional hysteria. On the face of the brief descriptions of the phenomena, it is difficult to know what was actually meant by “violent convulsion.” Later scientific criteria established “convulsions” as consisting of quite serious and very painful involuntary contractions of the muscles during which the nervous system goes haywire, sometimes resulting in coma.
It is also difficult to understand what was meant by “various physical symptoms,” or even what was meant by “cries” and “laughter.” However, the sum of all of these phenomena quite clearly falls into the category of catharsis of the ecstatic, or ecstasy, type. And obvious clues regarding this can be comprehended not by studying the phenomena, but by examining WHO attended upon the vats. Many had no visible ills to cure. If this particular issue is examined, it will be seen that they came just for the thrill of experiencing the animating, magnetic energies.
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND REGARDING THE VATS
Mesmer’s reputation preceded him to Paris, and once installed there he acquired numerous supports. Principle among these at first was Charles d’Eslon, medical adviser to the Count d’Artois, brother to King Louis XVI. This was high patronage, indeed.
In September of 1780, d’Eslon asked the Faculty of Medicine to confirm Mesmer’s ideas and techniques, a request that was rejected.
None the less, public enthusiasm and high patronage support had grown to impressive heights.
In March 1781, on behalf of the King, no less a personage than the powerful Minister de Maurepas offered Mesmer 20,000 livres (a significant amount)—and a further annuity of 10,000 if he establish a school and agreed to divulge the “secret” of his “treatments.” Mesmer at first refused, but later accepted a subscription of 340,000 livres for lectures to pupils.
With this financial arrangement, Mesmer increased his vat facilities, and surrounded them with rather impressive environments. These consisted of large rooms noted for the opulence of their furnishings, with enormous reflecting mirrors everywhere, the whole being dimly lit.
Mesmer and his vat-facilities were mobbed with applicants, among them vast numbers of the aristocracy and royalty. Many memoirs of various members of the aristocracy establish that the mob included even Queen Marie Antoinette and the whole of her court.
SPONTANEOUS SEXUAL ORGASM AT THE VATS
It is from some of these memoirs, not consulted by biographers of Mesmer, that a complete picture of the “convulsive” catharsis is revealed. There is no doubt at all that those holding the connectors often experienced an aspect of ecstatic catharsis known from ancient times—some kind of involuntary auto-orgasm in females and auto-ejaculatory release in males.
Hence, the connection among the “convulsions,” “cries,” “laughter” and the subsequent “lethargy” tend to fall into place since these taken altogether are recognizable and familiar constituents of sexual orgasm.
And, indeed, if the “convulsions” had been painful, it is quite unlikely that applications to sit at the vats would have been any more numerous than the cases of those willing to try anything and everything to ameliorate their ills.
MESMERIC TRANCES
Also known from ancient times, ecstatic catharsis engendered dramatic and empowering shifts in “levels” of consciousness of the kind we today would refer to as heightened “altered states”—and during which many kinds of so-called “paranormal” trance phenomena were experienced.
Such phenomena also came to light within many of Mesmer’s vat participants. But a perpetual confusion has settled in regarding this matter, in that Mesmeric trance phenomena have been historically confused with hypnosis. Hypnotism can easily be confused as an extension of Mesmeric trance, since it, too, is a type of altered state.
But in actual historical fact, hypnotism as such was not identified until about 1842 by the English surgeon, James Braid (1795-1860). Braid first termed the phenomenon as “neuro-hypnotism,” a phenomenon that also sometimes aroused involuntary sexualizing activity.
Types of hypnotism, however, had earlier been identified in ancient Persia and India, with probably even more ancient antecedents in Egypt.
In any event, Mesmer’s stay in Paris was cut short, leaving Mesmeric trance phenomena to be investigated by later of his followers.
MESMER’S EXPULSION FROM FRANCE
Although a great deal has been written about Mesmer’s expulsion from France, it remains unclear as to why and how the expulsion was instigated.
The official story holds that in 1784, the “French government” charged the Faculty of Medicine, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the Academy of Sciences, to examine “animal magnetism.”
Considering the high patronage of Mesmer, which included the King, many of his ministers, and significant personages of the Court, it is difficult to determine exactly what happened.
In any event, and whatever the real reasons, nine Commissioners were convened under the presidency of no less than Benjamin Franklin, then in Paris, and included the astronomer, Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the chemist, J. K. Lavater, both esteemed scientists of the time.
The Commissioners were restricted to the activity of attempting to establish evidence of a new physical force that was claimed as the agent of the cures. But it is clear that the actual target was Mesmer himself, and the actual purpose was to get rid of him.
The Commission produced two known reports, but between them the consensus among the Commissioners is quite garbled.
Franklin, for example, recommended further examination of the issue. But King Louis XVI, not known for much in the way of certitude, was somehow stampeded to order Mesmer’s expulsion from France, and which was quickly effected.
Mesmer removed himself to Meersburg, Switzerland, were he lived a quiet, unobtrusive life until he died in March 1815. How it was that Mesmer, a veritable supernova, thereafter consented to obscurity remains something of a mystery.
THE CONTINUING SAGA OF MESMERIC PHENOMENA
Even so, and even if he “retired,” the continuing impact of Mesmerism was itself phenomenal. It is fair enough to say that any written account which might do justice to him, and to the remarkable phenomena of Mesmerism, must necessarily fill a number of volumes.
In the twentieth century, something along these lines was attempted by the redoubtable Eric John Dingwall, Ph.D., a Director of the Department of Psychical Phenomena at the American Society for Psychical Research (1921-1922), and Research Officer at the Society for Psychical Research (1922-1927).
For many years, Dingwall collected papers published between 1800 and 1900 recording Mesmeric research and phenomena in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Latin America, the United States, and Great Britain. He ultimately edited these papers into four volumes which he published in 1967-68.
As he described via a masterful understatement: “Accounts of alleged paranormal phenomena occurring in the mesmeric and hypnotic states have been omitted by most writers on hypnotism and details, generally speaking, of this aspect have not so far been published. The aim [of the four volumes], therefore, is to raise the curtain on the almost unknown and forgotten activities of the mesmerists of the nineteenth century, while concentrating on the paranormal aspects of their work.”
Dingwall gave the four volumes the general, and quite misleading, title of ABNORMAL HYPNOTIC PHENOMENA: A SURVEY OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY CASES.
Dingwall appears to have been either somewhat ironic, or politically cagey, since, as he well understood, mesmeric and hypnotic phenomena were never quite synonymous. As it was, hypnotic phenomena were scientifically acceptable, but just so.
In any event, Dingwall’s four volumes give some idea of the enormous extent of the saga of Anton Mesmer and of the GLOBAL scope of mesmeric phenomena encountered and documented by his successors—ALL of which, by 1920, had outrageously been caused to vanish into the modernist landfill of the unscientific.
The Mesmeric phenomena, as so called, were not really to reemerge until the Soviet bio-energetic research referred to earlier, and the Chinese CH’I energetic research of the 1980s-1990s still to be referred to later on.