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hypnotism01 Material nature,” he writes, “draws her forms through constant magnetism from above, and implores for then the favor of heaven; and as heaven, in like manner, draws something invisible from below, there is established a free and mutual intercourse, and the whole is contained in an individual.” Van Helmont believed also in the power of the will to direct the subtle fluid. There was, he held, in all created things. a magic or celestial power through which they were allied to heaven. This power or strength is greatest in the soul of man, resides in a less degree in his body, and to some extent is present in the lower animals, plants, and inorganic matter. It is by reason of his superior endowment in this respect that man is enabled to rule the other creatures, and to make use of inanimate objects for his own purposes. The power is strongest when one is asleep, for then the body is quiescent, and the soul most active and dominant; and for this reason dreams and prophetic visions are more common in sleep. “The spirit,” he says, “is everywhere diffused, and the spirit is the medium of magnetism; not the spirits of heaven and of hell, but the spirit of man, which is concealed in him as the fire is concealed in the flint. The human will makes itself master of a portion of its spirit of life, which becomes a connecting property between the corporeal and the incorporeal, and diffuses itself like the light.” To this ethereal spirit he ascribes the visions seen by “the inner man” in ecstasy, and also those of the “outer man” and the lower animals. In proof of the mutual influence of living creatures he asserts that men may kill animals merely by staring hard at them for a quarter of an hour. That Van Helmont was not ignorant of the power of imagination is evident from many of his writings. A common needle, he declares, may by means of certain manipulations, and the will power and imaginations of the operator, be made to possess magnetic properties. Herbs may become very powerful through the imagination of him who gathers them. And again “I have hitherto avoided revealing the great secret, that the strength lies concealed in man, merely through the suggestion and power of the imagination to work outwardly, and to impress this strength on others, which then continues of itself, and operates on the remotest objects. Through this secret alone will all receive its true illumination all that has hitherto been brought together laboriously of the ideal being out of the spirit—all that has been said of the magnetism of all things—of the strength of the human soul—of the magic of man, and of his dominion over the physical world.” Van Helmont also gave special importance to the stomach as the chief seat of the soul, and recounts an experience of his own in which, on touching some aconite with his tongue, he finds all his senses transferred to his stomach. In after years this was to be a favorite accomplishment of somnambulists and cataleptic subjects. A distinguished English magnetist was Robert Fludd, who wrote in the first part of the ‘7th century. Fludd was an exponent of the microcosmic theory, and a believer in the magnetic effluence from man. Not only were these emanations able to cure bodily diseases, but they also affected the moral sentiments; for if radiations from two individuals were, on meeting, flung back or distorted, negative magnetism, or antipathy resulted, whereas if the radiations from each person passed freely into those from the other, the result was positive magnetism, or sympathy. Examples of positive and negative magnetism were also to be found among the lower animals and among plants. Another magnetist of distinction was the Scottish physician, Maxwell, who is said to have anticipated much of Mesmer’s doctrine. He declares that those who are familiar with the operation of the universal spirit can, through its agency cure all diseases, at no matter what distance. He also suggests that the practice of magnetism, though very valuable in the hand of a well-disposed physician, is not without its dangers, and is liable to many abuses. While the theoretical branch of magnetism was thus receiving attention at the hands of the alchemical philosophers, the practical side was by no means neglected. There were in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a number of” divine healers,” whose magic cures were without doubt the result of hypnotic suggestion. Of these perhaps the best known and most successful were Valentine Greatraikes, an Irishman, and a Swabian priest named Gassner. Great-rakes was born in 1628, and on reaching manhood served for some time in the Irish army, thereafter settling down on his estate in Waterford. In 1662 he had a dream in which it was revealed to him that he possessed the gift of curing king’s evil. The dream was repeated several times ere he paid heed to it, but at length he made the experiment, his own wife being the first to be healed by him. Many who came to him from the surrounding country were cured when he laid his hands upon them. |
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