The Philosopher’s Stone: Spiritual Alchemy, Psychology, and Ritual Magic - Israel Regardie 2013
The Magnetic Theory
Book Two Magnetism and Magic
There is but little question that the application of the psychological method, though it does explain much, does not fully cover the ground in alchemy in a way that is particularly satisfying to the critical sense. Possibly, we should be content in that it affords us some degree of empirical understanding and insight into obscure modes of thought. We are given a certain degree of perception into what are otherwise objectionable forms of obscurantism and secrecy. It seems offensive to our particular modern type of consciousness that men, otherwise of good character, sound intellectual judgment and capacity, should in the past have expressed no small degree of sympathy with this subject. Their sympathy and enthusiasm receives therefore some approbation and justification when interpreting their mystifications in this particular light.
Analytical psychology and its fellow, psychoanalysis, are quite recent appearances on the threshold of intellectual accomplishment. In mediaeval times we find but little evidence of the psychological method. Of philosophies there have been dozens. Former epochs abounded with mystical systems of interior prayer and meditation, and Magic too was well represented. It is in the past, in my estimation, and in ancient systems, that we must look for another and possibly more enlightening clue to the hermetic mystery. In fact, one author, Mrs. M. Atwood, who has given us what indubitably must be admitted to be the best volume on alchemical hermeneutics, does posit the theory that Mesmerism or Magnetism gives the key—though no more—to this mystery. In view of this hypothesis, therefore, it may be wise if I summarily consider the historical ground and antecedents of vital Magnetism in order that the reader may be acquainted with the outlines of what later will be elaborated.
From a study of Greek and Latin literature it is almost certain that a species of healing by a laying on of hands was so commonly practised in ancient days as not to demand a detailed or particularized description. Underlying such a method was the belief that the human organism generates or is permeated by an electric or creative power or fluid, animal magnetism, or vital emanation. Not only does it circulate in its own arterial system but, aided by a laying on of hands and directed by a keen imagination and strong will, it can be communicated to another person for therapeutic purposes. It need hardly be laboured that the Bible contains many references to cures of an apparently magnetic nature. And such magnetic methods continued from the earliest times through to the Middle Ages. They were commonplace in Europe for centuries.
Avicenna, a physician of the ninth or tenth century, said: “The imagination of man can act not only on his own body, but even on others and very distant bodies. It can fascinate and modify them; make them ill, or restore them to health.”117 Marcus Fienus, a physician of Florence, said in the same century: “A vapour, or a certain spirit, emitted by the rays of the eyes, or in any other manner, can take effect on a person near you. It is not to be wondered at that diseases of the mind and of the body should be communicated or cured in that manner.”118
Petrus Pomponatius of Mantua believed that: “Some men are specially endowed with eminently curative faculties; the effects produced by their touch are wonderful; but even touch is not always necessary; their glances, their mere intention of doing good, are efficient to the restoration of health.”119 Here we have an adumbration, at least, of hypnotic practise and the suggestion theory.
Van Helmont, the sixteenth-century discoverer of laudanum, ammonia, volatile salts, etc., also held opinions similar to Mesmer. He held that: “Magnetism is a universal agent; there is nothing new in it but the name. Magnetism is that occult influence which bodies exert over each other at a distance by means of attraction and repulsion.”120 He named this influence the “Magnale Magnum,” as Eliphas Levi much later on, in the nineteenth century, spoke of it as the Astral Light.121 Helmont conceived of it, not as a corporeal thing, but as an ethereal, pure, vital spirit or essence. It penetrates all bodies, and in man has its seat in the blood, where it exists as a peculiar energy, enabling him by the force of will and imagination to act at a distance. He also asserted the idea of polarity or the duality of magnetism, which he claims is composed of a vital principle and a “will principle.” The former exists “in the flesh and blood of man,” the latter belongs to the soul, or consciousness. But since soul and body are not separate discrete entities but together comprise a whole, so magnetism is one, manifesting in different principles on different planes. It seems to accord fairly well with the psychological definitions of libido.
Sendivogius, the great alchemist, wrote: “Let therefore the searcher of this sacred science know that the soul in man, the lesser world or microcosm, substituting the place of its centre, is the king, and is placed in the vital spirit in the purest blood. That governs the mind, and the mind the body.”122 It is upon this statement, and the philosophy underlying such a postulate, that is built up the hypothesis of vital magnetism as the key opening to the threshold of the alchemical mystery.
William Maxwell, a contemporary of Van Helmont, held similar views, some of which are curiously like those of emanations or radiations from the body, countenanced openly in several modern scientific quarters. He remarks: “All bodies emit corporeal rays serving as vehicles through which the soul transmits her influence, by communicating to them her energy and power of acting; and these rays are not only corporeal, but they are even composed of various kinds of matter. The universal remedy is no other than the vital spirit strengthened in a suitable subject.”123
Sebastian Wirdig, a learned philosopher-physician of the same generation, averred: “The whole world exists through magnetism; all sublunary vicissitudes occur through magnetism; life is preserved by magnetism; everything functions by magnetism.”124
Similar passages are to be found in the works of Paracelsus and a host of leading authors of these and later centuries. All more or less affirm the existence of a universal ether, the medium both of light and thought activity.
That ether they represented interiorly in man by a vital spirit or magnetism which radiated and emanated a vital influence from him, subtly and invisibly. This spiritual force, so the theory went, could be controlled and manipulated for purposes of healing by a willed transmission through the hands, or by direct glance of the eye, to another ailing individual. But it is only when we come to Mesmer and his disciples and colleagues that we realize the superiority of his theoretical formulation of the concept of magnetism and the advantages of his particular approach.
Franz Anton Mesmer was born in Austria in 1734, and in 1766 in Vienna he became an M.D. His inaugural address maintained that the sun, moon, and stars affect each other and cause tides, not only in the ocean and sea, but in the atmosphere too. It was his theory that they affect in a similar way all organized bodies, through the medium of a subtle and mobile fluid which he conceived to pervade and permeate the universe, and to associate all things together in material intercourse and harmony. His theory further included the idea that all things soever in Nature possess a peculiar power which manifests itself by special action upon other bodies. That is to say, it is a physical and dynamic power acting exteriorly, without any chemical union, or without being introduced physically into the interior of the organization. Mesmer also contemplated the idea that all organic bodies, animals, plants, trees, waters, metals, might be magnetized. By this he meant that they could be charged or impregnated with a flow or current of vital energy. This cosmic vitality or animal magnetism could be transmitted, he claimed, by direct contact with a body already magnetized, or by means of the hand, the look, or even the will. Like light and electricity it could penetrate solid and fluid bodies, and, so he thought, could be reflected by mirrors, or polished surfaces, especially in the direction of its poles.
So far as the practical application of general theory is concerned, Mesmer, like modern psychological exponents, believed that moral causes and erroneous attitudes towards life may constitute the underlying factors in disease. That is to say an attitude towards life which was in conflict or at variance with reality could interfere with the psychic distribution of vitality throughout the bodily system. Such a general equilibrium could produce vastly improved health in functional and organic disease. His theory held that the magnetism is continually circulating in the bodily system. Not only so but that it emanates to an appreciable distance about the body. When the rapport is made between patient and healer, that is when contact is established either by glance or mesmeric passes or physical touch, it circulates through the systems of the two people, just as blood would if their arteries and veins were interconnected—assuming that such a condition were possible.
Mesmer Projecting Magnetism
The reception of his theories and then startling cures was not particularly happy. Commissions were authorized to examine the cures announced by Mesmer and his patients, and following unfavourable reports and much antagonism he fell afoul of public opinion almost everywhere. In passing, it may be well to mention that somehow or other in the early part of his career he had received some suggestive ideas from two Jesuits named Gassner and Hehl. The former used exorcism as a means of curing certain types of disease. He held a theory, modified from the straightforward Roman Catholic view, that there are two kinds of disease. The one is curable by the ordinary means employed by doctors, whilst the other can only be cured by priestly means, by exorcism. To these he added a third category which he called “mixed,” requiring the services of both priest and doctor. Gassner also imparted the secret of strengthening the curative effect by moving one’s hands over the diseased parts of the body. Later such movements became known as “passes.” From Hehi, Mesmer had obtained at the outset of his public career a set of magnetized steel plates which, when laid upon different parts of the body, were claimed to have a curative effect. Mesmer did not long persist in the use of these plates, passing on to the use of his baquet, and much later on discarding all these accessories, coming to rely exclusively on the magnetism generated by or emanating from his own personality. He pictured man as a closed circuit of the magnetic fluid; also as taking part in a larger cosmic circuit, or in many larger circuits of magnetism or energy which flowed through him from the universe about him, thus renewing the vitality of his personality.
We find Mesmer constantly speaking both of increasing the rapidity of the flow of magnetism through the body and of equilibriating that vital flow. He does not care to speak of “charging” the patient with magnetism or of “saturating” him with the fluid. His theory consisted solely in the idea of equilibriating the disturbed vitality in the body of his patient.
Following Mesmer, we come to the Abbé Faria, a French priest who, after experimenting some time with mesmerism, announced in 1814 a view of the subject comparable to that held at this day. That is to say, he did not stress any actual communication or even equilibriation of magnetism from healer to patient as being the primary factor in therapy. He held the view that the effects were mainly subjective. The mesmeric state was possibly due to changes in the mind and body of the subject produced by faith and expectancy. In other words it was an anticipation on general lines of the later theory that the hypnotic or mesmeric state was induced solely by expectancy and by suggestion. At the time, however, this view was glossed over and forgotten.
Although at the date of Mesmer’s death in 1815 his system of procedure of inducing a violent crisis in the patient was followed in its integrity by a considerable number of practitioners almost everywhere, more especially in Germany, there were already two other more or less important schools of Animal Magnetism in existence. One of these was the school of de Barbarin, who taught that the cures were effected directly through the providence of God, being in reality the result of faith alone. The processes of Mesmer, he held, served but to disguise that fact, and in no way to assist the cure which was in every instance produced by an “act of the soul.” Having no new processes to describe, and no new worthwhile theory to enunciate, this school has left very little record of its existence.
The development of magnetism in the so-called “Experimental” school of the operators who were undoubtedly the legitimate heirs and successors of Mesmer, caused the disappearance of the schools both of Mesmer proper and of de Barbarin. But who were the “great magnetizers” of this experimental school? These included a great many operators in almost every country in Europe. Many were physicians who, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first quarter of the nineteenth, devoted themselves to magnetic therapy. Some established private institutions, where patients were received, while others operated in various hospitals. The best known of that generation of magnetizers are the Marquis de Puységur, Baron du Potet, Deleuze, and Lafontaine, all of whom have left treatises on the subject. Very soon, de Puységur, as a pioneer, began to move away from his master both in the theory and practise of magnetism. Indeed we may safely say that the later magnetizers followed the pupil rather than the master. Were we to call the processes of Mesmer and the violent effects in the artificial crisis which he encouraged as “Mesmerism,” then the real discoverer of Animal Magnetism, as it has been known for the last hundred years, as a phenomenon rather than as a theory, is the Marquis de Puységur, the acknowledged founder of the experimental school. It is to him that are due the processes now generally known as mesmeric—processes which are productive of results differing considerably from those produced by Mesmer himself. De Puységur’s early instructions for magnetizing are as follows: “You are to consider yourself as a magnet; your arms and particularly your hands being its poles; and when you touch a patient by laying one of your hands on his back, and the other in direct opposition upon his stomach, you are to imagine that the magnetic fluid has a tendency to circulate from one hand to the other through the body of the patient. You may vary this position by placing one hand on the head and the other on the stomach, still with the same intention, the same desire of doing good. The circulation from one hand to the other will continue, the head and stomach being the parts of the body where the greatest number of nerves converge; these are, therefore, the two centres to which your action ought to be mostly directed. Friction is quite unnecessary; it is sufficient to touch with great intention.”125
There was a fundamental difference between the theories of Mesmer and de Puységur. The former emphatically asserted that magnetism was an ocean of life and vitality permeating all things, and pervading the earth and the air as well as the human system. His conception of his cure by the magnetic technique was simply the adjustment of the disturbed flow of magnetic or etheric currents within the system of his patients. De Puységur, on the other hand, held the idea that the operator definitely imparts magnetism or vitality to the patient, and that such an imparting of power is responsible for the restoration of health. It is significant that neither Mesmer nor the adherents of his school ever complained of fatigue or exhaustion after treatments, while, on the other hand, it was no common thing for the practitioners of the experimental school to experience exhaustion after a certain number of treatments. The modern magical conception really combines both theories. Not only does it postulate as a categorical fact the existence of cosmic ethers or flows of vitality and spiritual power, but it carries the postulate a step further. These cosmic streams of force, pervading and permeating all space and all things therein, must of necessity permeate the physical and astral form of man. Thus within him are mirrored the forces of the cosmos; he is a miniature epitome of the macrocosm. By the employment of his volitional and imaginative faculties, the intelligent man is able to direct these currents through his own physique, willing their entrance into the system of another for therapeutic or other purposes. It is only man’s egotism and self-willed complacency that shuts off the free flow of the spirit. The libido flows up freely from the Unconscious when there are no resistances, the individual Unconscious receiving its power and its very existence from the Collective Unconscious—that which is common to all men and the whole of life.
De Puységur’s first discovery of any importance was that in the drowsy or somnambulistic state which quite early is produced by the application of magnetism, it was possible to address the patient and obtain evidence of a very high order of intelligence. Mesmer was previously aware of the induction of somnambulism but rarely interfered with it, considering it as a natural state by means of which the system adjusted its inequilibrium. Dr. William Gregory, many years later, in describing the somnambulistic patient declares that his whole manner seems to undergo an improvement and refinement. “It would seem as if the brute or animal propensities were laid to rest, while the intellect and higher sentiments shone forth.”126 What interested de Puységur most about this new discovery was that not only did the replies he received from sleeping patients show the most marvellous insight into their own symptoms and the means of treating them, but they gave evidence of the extraordinary phenomenon of telepathy. Here was the beginning of what came to be known as the “higher phenomena.”
His second discovery was made in 1811. It consisted in finding out how to produce the somnambulistic state more quickly and more efficiently than before, namely by the use of passes. Several years later, du Potet laid more stress on the effect of the will and less on benevolent intentions, relying far more even than did de Puységur on the fixation of the eye and the passes. Lafontaine, who has been called the last of the great magnetizers, relied almost exclusively on the passes, except that sometimes he established contact with the hands while looking into the eyes of his subjects. Of course, his will was exerted powerfully all the time.
Chiefly responsible for introducing Mesmerism into England was Dr. John Elliotson, who employed it surgically at University College Hospital, London. No sooner had Elliotson demonstrated its efficiency—and he did that in a most remarkable way—than his medical colleagues commenced to deride and ridicule both him and his practice. The term hypnotism as a less objectionable and more scientific term for certain aspects of the mesmeric state was first coined in 1843 by a Manchester physician, Dr. James Braid. It was in 1842 that he first began experimental work with mesmerism, and seems to have been the first modern practitioner deliberately to use the technique of fixation of sight and suggestion instead of passes and the laying on of hands. Even the bright object was after a while eliminated, since in some patients it aggravated conjunctivitis, the entire stress being now laid upon verbal suggestion.
Another eminent pioneer was James Esdaile, a Scottish medico stationed in India. He appears to have been the first British mesmerist to receive some measure of official support. From 1845 onward he employed mesmeric states for painless surgery with great success at various Indian hospitals, and the record of his operations by these means make thrilling reading. Many of his operations were for the removal of monstrous scrotal tumours weighing nearly a hundredweight, horrible but deadly convincing evidence of the effectiveness of his technique. The discovery and wide application of ether and chloroform for painless surgery put an end to the interest in hypnotic experimental work. From 1842 to more or less the end of the century there is a break in the history of hypnotism in England. On the Continent, however, we come across famous names like Liébault, Bern-heim, Moll, Charcot, Janet, and the beginning of different groups of hypnotic operators coming to hold vastly different theories—the Nancy School, the Salpétrière School, etc. Doctors Lloyd Tuckey, Morton Prince, Vincent Wingfield, Milne Bramwell, and Bernard Hollander, are other names of English experimentalists who have done much to restore public confidence and scientific respectability to the subject more recently.
Manifestly, this is no more than a superficial glance at the subject. It is only in an indirect way that we are here concerned with animal magnetism as a therapeutic agent. My reasons for this outline are that Mrs. Atwood, whose theory I am to delineate and expand, held that the practice of Mesmerism might be considered as the first step to the solution of the alchemic mystery. That she had vast insight and understanding is a statement which cannot be doubted. Before she was yet thirty this astonishing young woman wrote, at her father’s instance, a small work entitled Early Magnetism, in its higher relations to Humanity as veiled in the Poets and the Prophets. Written in 1846 when most other mesmerists and hypnotists were engaged solely in therapeutic work or in the application of the trance state to the production of psychic phenomena such as clairvoyance and telepathy, etc., this woman and her father, Mr. South, were displaying an acumen and insight which are literally amazing. They realized other and more spiritual possibilities concealed within the practice of animal magnetism. In this work she expressed the view that in its application to higher ideals, one object of the magnetic trance might be to conjoin the mind to its lost spiritual universality. She believed it might be possible to pass the consciousness regressively through its many phases of historical evolutionary development back to the long-forgotten life in Reality, “passing behind the murky media of sense and fantasy to behold reflected in the brightened mirror of our own intelligence the pure Truth; not as it may appear individually or arbitrarily but in its characteristic necessity and universality.”127
Furthermore, in describing the technique to be pursued, she adds:
The trance state when justly and perseveringly ordered for that end, affords the metaphysical condition pre-eminently perfect; for it removes the sensible obstruction and presents a clearer glass before the mind than it can ever regard in the natural state. The patient is no sooner lightly entranced than he begins to feel an internality never before known to him and which may be intensified as the intention is fixed and the calibre of the mind and circumstantial conditions are favourable; the passive personality collapses from its circumferential and phenomenal life into that central Omnipresence whose circumference is not; whilst the mind, rightly disciplined and related to the Universal becomes universalized and one with the great magnetic Will of Nature, revolving with the Infinite Medium (the pure ether) through all its spheres, perceiving all things in all and in itself, until at length becoming perfectly converted to its principle, the divinized microcosmic epitome moves with demiurgic power and grace.128
Here we have a mystical and religious conception which so far transcends the previous practice of magnetism as, for example, the Jungian concept of psychotherapy transcends the cruder and pioneer theories of the Freudian school. For whatever may or may not have been the underlying ground of belief and procedure in the alchemical writings, at any rate Mrs. Atwood’s hypothesis is so suggestive and far-reaching in its practical implications that one hesitates considerably to discard it without having subjected it thoroughly to a critical test.
Although the alchemists were firm and adamant in their instruction that nothing could be accomplished without the preliminary dissolution, they have left but little clues as to the significance of this operation. It is true that they have spoken of manual operations, but it seems that this could lend countenance not only to the mesmeric passes but also to the physical and metallurgical theory where transmutation was accomplished or attempted by hard labour and by sweat of the brow. The first way of approach and the closed entrance to these manual operations remained a mystery, and its secret if we except this thesis had not yet been unfolded. Nor, if we may accept the admonition contained in their own writings, would it be possible to discover the method from a cursory examination of their books alone. Yet the process itself, as a technical method always must be, is said to have been in itself a very simple one. For it is called by some of them a play of children and is represented as very trivial, slight, almost a ridiculous thing.
Recent observation, or rather experience, during the last one hundred years or so, has elicited various means of discovering this secret. The enormous progress which has been made in the translation of obscure Eastern texts dealing with the art of meditation, concentration, and religious exaltation, give us several clues. In fact, one modern alchemical apologist claims that the secret lies in a species of meditation and introversion leading to a self-induced trance state in which consciousness as such is not obscured, as for example it is in certain spiritualistic trance states. On the contrary, it is claimed that consciousness becomes heightened and exalted by these methods, and all the faculties of mind are sharpened and left in a much stronger condition than before. Not only so, but that the ego is much more able to deal with life and living than ever it was prior to having undertaken this particular type of psychic training.
The psychological method, which previously we examined, is also another and very effective method. Its popularity and the increasing interest in its technique is proof of the hold which it has taken in the popular mind, not only as a means of therapy but as a philosophical mode of self-discovery and knowledge.
But the trance state as induced by magnetism and the reactions induced in the subject are so suggestive over and above these other symptoms that we are tempted to wonder whether there is not some technical method which answers to the enigmatic descriptions left to us by the ancients. We know full well that some magnetic method of entrancement was widely practised in Greece. Thousands of years ago the Phrygian Dactyli, the initiated priests, spoken of as the magicians and exorcists of sickness, healed disease by these processes. These methods were the principal agents in theurgic mysteries as also in the Aesculapiea—the healing Temples of Aesculapius, where the patients were treated during the process of “incubation,” as it was termed, magnetically in sleep.
Certain of Mr. Arthur Edward Waite’s criticisms to the Atwood theory in his work The Secret Tradition in Alchemy demand some attention here. It would be difficult to find anywhere such unnecessary controversial criticism as is found in Mr. Waite’s book. For one thing he accuses her of employing a turgid, difficult style. This is certainly true. But the psychological mechanism of projection must operate here, for Mr. Waite’s style is hardly beyond criticism in these very respects. However, it is not to the literary aspect of his criticisms that attention need be called at length. He remarks towards the end of his book that:
it is of common knowledge that the psychic state of many entranced subjects conveyed an impression of purity, refinement, beauty, as if the actual or comparative grosser part has been put to sleep for the time being. But this state is as far removed from the spiritual attainment envisaged by Platonic successors as are the records of trance mediumship from the realizations of Eckhart and Ruysbroeck, speaking in the light of the union.129
Why Mr. Waite should utter this criticism against the Atwood hypothesis, it is hard to realize. It is particularly out of place, for the point he raises is precisely the argument of Mrs. Atwood. She argues that if we compare the first effects of mesmerism, that is the somnambulistic state in which the so-called higher phenomena of community of sense and feeling manifest, with the sacred art of the ancients, the former appears but trivial. The supreme spiritual wisdom attained in divine union, the self-knowledge the ancients desired and the perfection of life and immortality their system promised and said to have been bestowed on those initiated into the higher mysteries, these are objects quite outside of the vision of the mesmerists. What has Mesmerism to do with spiritual ends such as these? What is its philosophy, she asked? Has it yet attempted to investigate consciousness and its depths and origins? Naturally, the ordinary mesmeric state bore no resemblance to the sublime mystic state of the great saints and philosophers. And it is her hypothesis that this was realized by and known to the alchemists who employed magnetism only as the first step towards the consummation of the divine mystery. It was by this means that the hermetic solution was accomplished. From this the other steps could be perceived and climbed. To effect this solution was only the beginning of the Hermetic art.
The medium (that is the astro-mental sheath) in its natural state is volatile, immanifest, fantastic, irrational and impotent, compared with what it subsequently is able and by artificial conception suffers itself to become. The Alchemists, we repeat therefore, did not remain satisfied with a few passes of the hand or any first phenomena whatever, but they proceeded at once scientifically to purify, depriving the ether of its wild affections and impressures by a dissolution of the circulating body in its own blood. For this is the brazen Wall celebrated by Antiquity. Take the occult Nature, which is our Brass, says Albertus, and wash it that it may be pure and clean.130
Thus it is seen that the strictures of Mr. Waite are wholly without foundation. And I confess to a sense of sad disappointment in him. The Atwood theory of mesmerism as applied to the Hermetic mystery is, in my opinion, so important and so suggestive that it may be well to quote from her work at greater length in order to clarify exactly what it is that she proposes. When commenting upon The Six Keys of Eudoxus I shall attempt to dilate upon this theory, simplifying her terminology and employing the comparative method.
First of all it was her belief that there was a secret connected with the Mystery celebrations of the ancients which no modern so-called intellectual criticism has explained away or divulged.
A few writers on Animal Magnetism (notes), having within these few years become enlightened by that singular discovery, suggest their Trance and its phenomena as a revelation of the Temple Mysteries and various religious rites. But no one, that we are aware, has developed this suggestion or carried the idea sufficiently above the therapeutic sphere; they appear to have taken a broad view, without particular inquiry into the nature of the rites from the ancients themselves. Had they done this (we speak of the more advanced minds) we are persuaded that with that key in hand, their attention would have been drawn in new directions and their satisfaction about the modern use of it become much modified by observing the far superior results which through their Theurgic disciplines, the ancients aspired after, different too, as they were superior to any that we are accustomed to imagine even at the present day.
The ordinary effects of Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism, or vital Magnetism, or by whatever other term the unknown agency is better expressed, are now so familiarly known in practice that it will be unnecessary to describe them; they have attracted the attention of the best and leading minds of the present age, who have hailed with admiration a discovery which enables man to alleviate pain and maladies insurmountable by other means …
But years have passed and the science has not grown, but retrograded rather in interest and power, since de Mainaduc, Puysegur, Coiquhoun, Elliotson, Townsend, Dupotet, and the rest, faithful spirits, first set their fellow men on the road of inquiry.131
Her position and her attitude to the history and theory of Magnetism is thus made crystal clear; no possibility exists for misunderstanding. The hypothesis which she came to adopt did not stop with the acceptance of the psychical phenomena produced by the practice of the mesmeric art.
A pioneer in an intellectual world, and a woman with a clearer spiritual vision and foresight than most of her day, she realized the intrinsically invaluable nature of the technique. She perceived that the experimental work of therapy and investigation of the higher phenomena was interesting and intriguing no doubt, but clearly it was not the sort of investigation that the ancients followed in their mysteries. It is true that they worked on the same kind of material, with similar instruments, and with a similar technical method. Yet their practice was different, because it was conducted upon established philosophical principles and with a truly enlightened as well as benevolent aim. That Mesmerism affords entrance together with the imagination into another kind of consciousness was the contention she could not doubt.
And more than this, in well-conditioned cases, we have proof of the intrinsical intelligence and power of the Free Spirit which can expatiate into the whole circumference of its sphere and reveal hidden things, exhibiting a variety of gifts … This Mesmerism, in respect of our Mystery then, may be regarded as a first key which, opening into the vestibule, affords a view within the sense’s prison, but of the labyrinth of life only.132
These protracted quotations will provide some preliminary notion as to what manner this practice of magnetism is conceived of in this hypothesis. It is obvious that Mrs. Atwood regards it solely as an elementary view of a diviner state of consciousness, as the entrance into the hermetic mystery, solely as a means of entry and nothing more. Beyond this first stage, other means are to be employed, other techniques—a utilization of the magnetic art to transcend itself into perfection. This idea will expand itself as we read and examine the text following, and I shall attempt to dilate upon the simpler aspects of the technique in a brief commentary.
117. Avicenna in his treatise “de Naturâ” from the “Book of Healing” (Kitab Al-Shifa). Avicenna’s ideas on psychology and imagination are found in the al-nafs (“soul, self or psyche” ) sections of his Kitab al-shifa’ (The Book of Healing) and Kitab al-najat (The Book of Deliverance).
118. Regardie may be referring to Thomas Fienus (1567—1631), a Renaissance medical theorist and physician. Born in Antwerp, Fienus studied in Italy. He published a number of medical books on such topics as the formation of the fetus, a handbook of surgery and a treatise on imagination, De Viribus Imaginationis (1608).
119. Pompon, “de Incantat,” p. 51, et seq.
120. Van Helmont. De Magnetica vulnerum curatione (Paris, 1621).
121. Levi, Transcendental Magic (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1972), 66.
122. Quoted in Atwood, Part II, Chapter 1: “Of the True Subject of the Hermetic Art, and its concealed Root,” 150.
123. Maxwell, de re Magnetica, 1679.
124. Wirdig, The New Medicine of the Spirits, printed in 1673.
125. De Puységur, quoted in Walsh’s Psychotherapy (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1913), 154. Can be found online at: http://www.archive.org/stream/psychotherapyinc00walsuoft/psychotherapyinc00walsuoft_djvu.txt and at Google Books.
126. Gregory, Dr. William, Animal Magnetism, or Mesmerism and its Phenomena (London: The Psychological Press, 1909), 215. Can be read at Google Books.
127. South, Thomas, Early Magnetism, in its higher relations to Humanity as veiled in the Poets and the Prophets (London: H. Bailliere, 1846), 10.
128. Ibid., pages 42 and 16.
129. Waite, Secret Tradition in Alchemy, 375—76.
130. Albertus, quoted in Atwood, Part IV, Chapter 1: “Of the Vital Purification, commonly called The Gross Work,” 455.
131. Atwood, Part II, Chapter 3: “The Mysteries continued,” 186.
132. Ibid., 202, and Part III, Chapter 1, “Of the Experimental Method and Fermentation of the Philosophic Subject, According to the Paracelsian Alchemists and Some Others,” 273.