1780 colored engraving describing a gathering of the ‘Society of Harmony’ founded by Anton Mesmer, consisting of patients and assistants to Mesmer’s animal magnetism therapy, showing use of the special tub at his clinic. From the French Library.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA, is a lengthy note written by François-Jean Daillant de La Touche (1744- 1827) in the biographical introduction of his book, ‘Abrégé des ouvrages d’Emanuel Swedenborg‘ published in 1788, composed of abstracts taken from his many writings with numerous explanatory notes from the compiler, here describing ‘animal magnetism’ and the cultural and spiritual context it is connected with the scientific and spiritual investigations of the great Swedish luminary. ‘The ‘Abstract’ made him one of the first who, in France, were interested in him. It attracted the interest of numerous readers between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, fascinated by mystical thought in general and by Swedenborg in particular, being among the readings which inspired the work of the first Balzac, ‘Séraphîta’, written between 1834 and 1835)’. (In Cristina Trinchero, ‘Histoire et mémoires d’un poète oublié, François-Jean Daillant de La Touche‘- Università degli Studi di Torino-Trauben, 2010). We can announce that a cycle of posts devoted to Swedenborg, is coming soon. Below excerpt is from page LXIII to LXVII of the ‘preliminary speech’.

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The mean that produces these marvelous effects, this truly humane medicine practiced by the benevolent disciples of Swedenborg, requires the full length of our attention. Animal magnetism is the search, the restoration of harmony; it exists therefore, because this harmony undeniably exists; but, we believe that it can only be useful as long it is religious; in its essence, it is religious, and the soul of the person who dispenses it does more than just giving his fluid. We must, as the magnetizers say, be ‘bound’, and in a benevolent bonding (in French: ‘Il faut être en rapport, et en rapport de bien‘). Two persons whose thoughts and lifestyles are balanced, can help each other in dealing with corporeal ailments. Our Lord said of the true believers: ‘…they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.‘ (Mark, 16:18.). Our Lord clearly teaches, in this sentence, that it is faith that does the healing. It was Elisha’s, and not his incubation, that resurrected the Sunamite’s child, as it was Elijah’s faith that resurrected the child of Serapta’s widow, also with the same ceremonies; because these touches, these incubations, these laying of the hands, are the forms, the correspondances, and the vehicles of the good. These precious knowledge were a common thing during the Antiquity; the Chaldean priests were healing in their temples by the laying of the hands. We can see Egyptian figures in clear magnetic or magnetizing attitudes, such as with one where a hand is placed on the stomach, and another hand is placed on the back of a sitting person.

Magnetism is not of a miraculous nature; it is nothing else but an effect of the human intelligence, detached from the senses, exalted, and that can, in this state, shed great natural lights upon us. We have learned from enlightened and accountable somniloquy-that gave us numerous testimony to help us fathom the relationship of the other somniloquists that receive revelations, speaking about heaven and the angels-that magnetism is the natural state, as it was in its original purity; but this state cannot manifest to us in its full strength and usefulness, because existing in an imperfect order of things, which our contemporary world undeniably is, it can only be imperfect itself. What is happening nowadays in this field is only an attempt, a weak image of what men could do, if  they would be restored in their primeval state of innocence, because they were created to have influence and might upon each other; but, then they would not need anymore this curative might, because there would be no vices nor errors anymore on earth. Whereas our ailments (minus our hereditary and accidental  ailments) come from our errors and vices. Depraved morality corrupts the physical level, and makes us vulnerable to hellish influences from which all of our suffering come from. They are not without remedies; the soul being shrouded by the body, the spiritual man being shrouded with the corporeal, this one can heal that one; the soul can heal the body, because it moves it and sets it into action. ‘Health of the heart is life of the flesh‘, says the wise man in Proverb, 14:30 & ‘Peace of the soul is health of the bones‘ in Proverb, 16:24.

But there is no healing for the body worn by the years, that bends and falls like flowers, plants and trees; there is no healing for the body poisoned deep into its core, or hit by a serious accident; there is no healing for the body-young or old-of a vicious soul, which has subverted everything upside down, and destroyed in itself the general laws of mater, which are gravitation and attraction of similar parts; stale humor (because there is only one disease: obstruction), this thick liquid, acquires when it loses its fluidity, a gravity that it should not have in the just proportions of the machinery; it disrupts its normal course; it falls and attracts, alike all that is subject to the law of gravity in nature. Man suffers, or die. His wise ancestors, safe-keeping in all of its purity the image of the Creator, were living without illnesses, or if there were some, were only mild ones; they were healthy in body by the steering of the thought; they would heal by the thought; we can believe this, because we have witnessed in our present corrupted times, that one can still be healing by the might of the thought, healing by a balanced life, by joy or inner peace, as we can hurt ourselves by the opposites, such as allowing an hypochondriac obsession afflict our good nature, or let a paralysis spread by overthinking or by the agression of acute grief. The body in all of this has nothing to do with it, but the soul everything. These considerations may sound singular in a century where it is said and believed that the body is everything, and that one must be blind to not agree with this.

The man of good, that reflects, senses and know that there is only might and action but in the soul, that the thought only is real and alive. This field that we call body, is a reporting platform for the senses (‘…est un rapport de nos sens‘ in French); the material organs of our senses are only the echo chambers of what is affecting them, and our soul has nothing in common with the external organs. Sensation, excited in our soul by light and sound, does not look alike this tenuous aerial matter that produces sound and light; the soul sees and hears through the eyes and ears, that have a connection with matter, because these organs are also material. The qualities that we deem essential to matter, extent and impenetrability, may very well not exist, and matter can very well be something else than what we believe it is, because what our inner sensation is representing by extent and impenetrability is neither extended nor impenetrable; during sleep and in the absence of the external objects, our soul is affected by sensations, often very different than with those it is affected during wake time in the presence of the external objects and in using our senses; this presence of objects is not necessary for the sensations of the soul to operate; our souls and ourselves can therefore exist alone. In sleep, and after death, our body exists, but is not perceived anymore by the soul. Is the body something real enough to constitute our essence, as it can be perceived and also not be perceived, affecting us in a manner different than what it is, or what it was? No, matter is only true to matter; the pure spirit has no use of it, it does not seek it, it does not know it; it’s the corrupted spiritual level that seeks and corrupts the material level. ‘For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground…’ Job, 5:6.

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Original French

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Source

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