Magnesia

“ In this same question of animal magnetism we may discover the spring of all your mysteries. The close analogies between the natural and imparted phenomena of trance and magnetic sleep and somnambulism, and somnambulic blindness, and magnetic ecstacy; even the frauds of lucid vision and clairvoyance, and the vaunted gift of prophetic divination, with the explanation of some, and the refutation of others, will dispel the most subtle arguments in proof of divine influence; seeing that the process is conducted by men of mortal mould, who claim no merit even for the possession of occult learning. ”

“ There is magnetism, and I have magnetism. There is a life-principle expanding all over the world, and I am in communication with that vital medium, and through it exert a vital influence upon others, and they upon me. This process of healing by mesmerizing is only coming into rapport, so that the vital forces of the healthy person enter in and strengthen the vital forces of the weak. Then there is a nerve-media existing around and in the individual, through which the pains of others are communicated to him. Pain in another causes an action in this nerve-medium which communicates the pain to me ”

“ From the brain of every spirit medium ascends a blazing sun, which burns the brighter when the magnetic relations between it and the spirit world are most perfect. This blazing light, this radiant effulgence, is perceived instinctively, though not knowingly, by every individual who listens to a discourse from a “trance medium.” So from the brain of the actor this glorious light throws out its rays into the assembly, and when he becomes fully inspired, its magnetic influence is felt with overpowering vividness ”

“ Well, if so much unholy force can arise from below, may not an equal efflux of sacred essence descend one day from above? The strong magnetism of genius drew my heart out of its wonted orbit; the sunflower turned from the south to a fierce light, not solar—a rushing, red, cometary light, hot on vision and to sensation. ”

“ But this profession of magician, which sprang from priesthood, has largely promoted superstition in medicine, and was particularly instrumental in bringing it into extraordinary repute. It is our intention to concern ourselves a little more minutely with magicians and magic.
§2. The Spread of the Word “Magic.”—How and when magic was transplanted from its Oriental home to the Occident can not be determined with certainty; for the Greeks, as well as all antique peoples, probably all nations, had a belief in ghosts and demons, in fortune-telling, and in sorcery. ”

“ As the winged hours pass, and our glances, our words, our intuitions, and the subtle laws of magnetism that are so powerful, and yet so utterly beyond the ken of reason, reveal us to each other, I detect in the depths of her blue eyes a light which vanishes when I seek it, but returns again—a principle which she does not even recognize, much less understand, and yet which she already unconsciously obeys. ”

“ But while there seems no good reason for doubting the genuineness of some of these cures, the power of mind over mind, and the influence of personal magnetism in certain kinds of nervous disorders, are so well known that they can be easily explained without any reference to the supernatural. ”

“ It is just as evident that those of stronger minds and healthier bodies should be sent to sleep by the process. That these effects have been produced by these means, there are thousands of instances to shew. But are they testimony in favour of animal magnetism?--do they prove the existence of the magnetic fluid? It needs neither magnetism, nor ghost from the grave, to tell us that silence, monotony, and long recumbency in one position, must produce sleep; or that excitement, imitation, and a strong imagination acting upon a weak body, will bring on convulsions. ”

“ People, too, make great mistakes about this self-same mystic magnetism. They imagine it to be either all physical, or all mental, when, in fact, it is both; and this subtle fluid, or emanation, is the absolute connecting link between soul and body, matter and mind, and, ultimately, between man and the Deity. ”

“ If there is any thing more than trick in these spiritual manifestations,—and I am inclined to think that, in some instances, there may be,—I should refer it, as in case of the ancient wizards, to the influence of occult natural causes—perhaps electricity, or animal magnetism, or something else, operating upon a nervous system of peculiar sensibility. I incline to this opinion for several reasons.
"In the first place, if the noises and other manifestations were really the work of spirits, why should they not be made through one person, as well as another? Why should not all mediums be alike? ”

“ I need but say that all matter this side the Divine is [Pg 138] of itself dead—that all life and consciousness flows directly and indirectly from the Divine Being, and that there can be no manifestation except as connected with the Divine Being. The idea that magnetism, electricity, or nerve-force has power of itself, is altogether false. They are only connecting parts in the universe, uniting the Divine on one hand with matter on the other. They are mere media of communication between the Fountain of all power on the one hand, and the recipient of power on the other. ”

“ The most plausible explanation yet offered by men of science is, that by the will of the magnetizer his own nervous and mental system assumes a certain condition which changes that of the subject into one of opposite polarity, paralyzes some of his cerebral functions and causes him to fall into a state resembling sleep. The stronger and healthier man affects the nervous system of a feeble and less healthy man according to his own more or less strongly marked individuality, and the spiritual influence naturally develops itself in the same proportions as the material influence. ”

“ But to my mind personal magnetism in its true sense, and as distinguished from what may be termed a purely animal magnetism, is nothing more nor less than the thought forces sent out by a great-hearted, tender-hearted, magnanimous, loving, sympathetic man or woman; for, let me ask, have you ever known of any great personal magnetism in the case of the little, the mean, the vindictive, the self-centred? ”

“ Already deeply immersed in the study of the marvelous, his mind absorbed in the weird phenomena of the recently discovered science of animal magnetism, she came to him both as a patient and as a living embodiment of the mysteries that held for him a boundless fascination, and once he found reason to believe in her alleged supernormal powers, there was nothing too fantastic or extravagant to which he would not give ready credence and assent. ”

“ As these are cognizable by inspection by our senses, we may partially know them by that alone: but the Soul, either of ourself or of another, being beyond that cognizance, can only be known by the acts and words which are its effects. Magnetism and electricity, when at rest, are equally beyond the jurisdiction of the senses; and when they are in action, we see, feel, hear, taste, and smell only their effects. We do not know what they are, but only what they do. We can know the attributes of Deity only through His manifestations. ”

“ XXXV. There is another sort of magnetism, rich, full, voluptuous, Websterian, which originates in body, not in soul; and it flows in copious streams from the persons of such as have it, suffusing everything and everybody with its warm and vivifying power. It is charged with passion, enthusiasm, volcanic fire; and while it warms others is very apt to burn. It comes of full veins, large lungs, livers, good digestion, steady nerves, fulness of habit, appetite and spirit, and always more or less wins influence and marked distinction for its possessor. ”

“ She passed with extraordinary ease into the condition of lucidity, when she was conscious only of basking in light, anxious to be magnetized more deeply so as to get more thoroughly into the light, and, moreover, aware only of the existence of those who had passed away from earth. ”

“ You remember the effects of intense impression on the mind in the excitement of catalepsy, and indeed in causing instantaneous death: this is intense influence on the sensibility. The effects of deep impression on the sight or touch, by the passes of magnetism, are magnetic ecstacies: this is intense influence on the senses. So that all your mysteries are the result of this influence passing through the brain to the body; and the vaunted miracles of Mesmer, and Bertrand, and Dupotet, are, as I have said, impositions, chiefly as regards the nature of their influence. ”

“ The demonic ecstasy, full of invincible magnetism, which looks forth from the countenance of a soul obsessed with, evil, has much more in common with the magnetic exultation of a soul possessed with love than has that ghastly inertness, with its insane malignant attraction to death. ”

“ I found every intense imagination, every new adventure of the intellect endowed with magnetic power to attract to it its own kin. Will and desire were as the enchanter's wand of fable, and they drew to themselves their own affinities. Around a pure atom of crystal all the atoms of the element in solution gather, and in like manner one person after another emerged out of the mass, betraying their close affinity to my moods as they were engendered. ”

“ I at first planned to aim at my heart but have decided that the brain would be more reliable. I have planned all this long ago, at the very beginning...of my appearance before you, and was it not in this readiness of mine to depart that you have detected ‘inhuman’ indifference? Isn’t it true that when one eye is directed upon the other world, it is hardly possible to maintain any particularly bright flame in the eye directed upon this world?... I refer to the kind of flame I see in your eyes. O! you have wonderful eyes, Signor Magnus. ”

“ What you call nervous fluid or magnetism, the men of old called occult power, or the potency of the soul, subjection, MAGIC!”
“Magic is based on the existence of a mixed world placed without, not within us; and with which we can enter in communication by the use of certain arts and practices.... An element existing in nature, unknown to most men, gets hold of a person and withers and breaks him down, as the fearful hurricane does a bulrush ”

“ Sleep and mesmerism explain the mythical nature of material sense. Sleep shows material sense as either Sleep and oblivion. oblivion or nothingness, as illusion or dream. Under the mesmeric illusion of belief, a man will think that he is freezing when he is warm, and swimming, when he is on dry land. Needle-thrusts will not hurt him. A delicious perfume will seem intolerable. Animal magnetism thus uncovers material sense, and shows it to be a belief without actual foundation. Change the belief, and the sensation changes. Destroy a belief, and the sensation disappears. ”

“ The singular phenomena which results from extreme sensibility of the nerves in some individuals have given birth to divers opinions about the existence of a new agent which has been named animal magnetism, about the action on ordinary magnetism, and about the influence of the sun and moon in some nervous affections, and finally, about the impressions which the proximity of metals or of running water makes felt. ”

“ If the object be a representation of some sacred Person—a Crucifix, a Madonna and Child, an Angel, a Saint—there is a yet further gain. The Being represented, if his magnetism has been thrown into the image by the appropriate Word and Sign of Power, can re-inforce that magnetism with a very slight expenditure of spiritual energy, and may thus influence the devotee, or even show himself through the image, when otherwise he would not have done so. ”

“ The aura of the medium and sitter blending with my spirit magnetism, your continued thinking and also the medium, thereby disturbing the equability of the magnetic and electric emanations, and to a corresponding degree affecting the psychic forces of the communicating spirit, and other things you would not understand if told you, all conspire to enfeeble the spirit intellectually, and, to a certain extent, limit it to the mental sphere of those present, especially the medium, upon whom we are so largely dependent. ”

“ Body is the seat of the senses; soul is the seat of the deeper faculties; for Emotion, Love, Sympathy, Memory, Fancy, Judgment, and a hundred other human attributes belong to the region and domain of soul, spirit, mind,—the invisible man within,—and the vehicle of their display and action upon, and in the outer world, is magnetism. Proof: When we are in perfect magnetic rapport with an individual, that person can be made to imitate our action, think our thoughts, do as we do, and be for the time our exact counterparts ”

“ Till of late years, when some of the arcana of animal or vital magnetism have been disclosed to us, it was impossible for us to conceive by what means such strange conceptions could prevail; but since we now know, and many of us have witnessed, that all the senses of a patient are frequently in such subjection to his magnetiser, that they may be made to convey any impressions to the brain that magnetiser wills, we can without much difficulty conceive how this belief in the power of transformation took its rise ”

“ You're trying to reconcile me with the girl you met under the magnolia that day, aren't you? A very silly, frightened girl who hung onto your hand like grim death and tried so very, very hard to believe the nice lie you told her about magnolias never being struck by lightning. You are, aren't you? ”