Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/body Connection : The Roots of Complementary Medicine 9780877856085, 9780877853305

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Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection Swedenborg Studies No. 19

Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection The Roots of Complementary Medicine By John S. Haller Jr.

Swedenborg Foundation Press West Chester, Pennsylvania

© 2010 by the Swedenborg Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publisher. Swedenborg Studies is a scholarly series published by the Swedenborg Foundation. The primary purpose of the series is to make materials available for understanding the life and thought of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and the impact his thought has had on others. The Foundation undertakes to publish original studies, English translations of such studies, and primary sources that are otherwise difficult to access. Proposals should be sent to: Editor, Swedenborg Foundation, 320 North Church Street, West Chester, PA 19380. ISBN (hardcover): 978-0-87785-331-2 ISBN (paperback): 978-0-87785-330-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haller, John S.   Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the mind/body connection : the roots of complementary medicine / by John S. Haller.    p. ; cm. — (Swedenborg studies)   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-0-87785-331-2 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-87785-330-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Alternative medicine—History.  2. Mind and body.  I. Swedenborg Foundation. II. Title.  III. Series: Swedenborg studies.   [DNLM: 1. Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688–1772.  2. Mesmer, Franz Anton, 1734–1815. 3. Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688–1772.  4. Mesmer, Franz Anton, 1734–1815. 5. Mind-Body Relations (Metaphysics) 6. Complementary Therapies—history. WB 900 H185s 2010]   R733.H355 2010   615.5—dc22 2009041891 Edited by Morgan Beard Index by Robin Haller Design and typesetting by Kachergis Book Design Printed in the United States of America Swedenborg Foundation 320 North Church Street West Chester, PA 19380 www.swedenborg.com

The old world made spirit parent of matter. The new makes matter parent of spirit.    — Ludwig Feurbach (1804–1872)



Contents



List of Illustrations   ix



Acknowledgments   xi



Introduction   xiii



1 A Life of the Mind   1



2 Theological Excursions   31



3 In the Mind’s Eye   68



4 Perfectionism in Our Time   92



5 Competing Mediums   126



6 From Mental Science to New Thought   158



7 Biomedicine’s Kindred Spirits   188



8 New Age Healing   225



Endnotes   239



Bibliography   275



Index   303

vii

Illustrations Emanuel Swedenborg   3 René Descartes   4 Franz Anton Mesmer   69 Mesmer’s Baquet   73 Franz Joseph Gall   79 “Calves’ Heads and Brains; or, a Phrenological Lecture”   81 Joseph Rodes Buchanan   84 John Humphrey Noyes   94 Charles Fourier   103 Charles Julius Hempel   111 The Fox Sisters   129 Andrew Jackson Davis   132 “Clairvoyance”   139 Phineas Parkhurst Quimby   161 Mary Baker Eddy   168 The homeopathic principle of similia similibus curantur   189 Samuel Hahnemann   194 Andrew Taylor Still   221

ix

Acknowledgments Those to whom I am indebted include Director Maggie Heran and staff members Betsy Kruthoffer, Heather Snyder, Alex Herrlein, and Anna Heran of The Lloyd Library and Museum; librarians Mary K. Taylor, Barbara Preece, Kimbra Stout, David Koch, and David Carlson of Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Connie Poole from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois; and the librarians and support staff of the Boston Medical Library; the Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois; Harvard College Library; Illinois Wesleyan University; the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University; the John Crerar Library of Chicago; Johns Hopkins University; Kent State University Library; Louisiana State Library, Baton Rouge; New York Public Library; Northwestern University; Radcliffe College, Hilles Library; Stanford University Library; Swedenborg Library, Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn; Tappan Presbyterian Association Library; University of Illinois, Urbana and Springfield; University of Kansas Library; University of Miami Library; University of Michigan Library; University of Oregon; University of Texas at Austin; University of Washington Libraries; Yale University Cushing/Whitney Medical Library; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Meadville Theological Library; and the Theodore Lownik Library of Illinois Benedictine College. My thanks also to Morgan Beard and her staff at the Swedenborg Foundation, whose insightful comments added measurably to the final

xi

product. Her perceptive reading and valuable suggestions saved me from numerous errors. Those that remain are my own responsibility. As always, I am grateful to my wife, Robin, who offered inspiration, encouragement, criticism, and substantial assistance, including the reading of numerous drafts and indexing the finished manuscript.

xii  Acknowledgments

Introduction A short step in any direction from Western science’s reductionist approach to knowledge is a meditative world that includes ghosts, demons, angels, saints, divinely inspired dreams, remote viewing, electromagnetic fields, distant healing, and a host of psychic phenomena and occult activities that defy the epistemological tools of “normal” science. Starting with the Kabbalah in Jewish mysticism and continuing through the apocalyptic literature of the pre-Christian era, Gnostic cosmology, and German pietism, to name but a few, there have been centuries of challenges to conventional thinking regarding mindmatter interaction that operates beyond the ordinary senses. As a generally accepted theory of knowing, this meditative world first fell in arrears as Baconian empiricism cast a long shadow over the acceptance of paranormal events. Hastened along by Descartes’s view of life as automata, the emergence of the empirical sciences during the Enlightenment, the mechanical triumphs of the Industrial Revolution, and later by Darwin’s dysteleology, this rationalist worldview found itself challenged by a universe whose existence and complexity demanded neither a designer nor a purpose. The product of chance, Earth plied the ether with blind indifference to the thoughts, hopes, and feelings of its myriad of creatures. Yet “God,” “immortality,” “duty,” and “judgment” were earnestly sought by those who objected to the cold indifference of the night sky. From Emanuel Swedenborg’s visions and Franz Anton Mesmer’s magnetic fluid to Walter J. Kilner’s human auras, Ralph Waldo Trine’s thought forms, Charles W. Leadbeater’s chakras,

  xiii

and Barbara Brennan’s High Sense Perception, a more mystical worldview remains an integral part of mankind’s perceptual set. While Newtonian physics continues to be the principal means by which the observable world is known and explained, the possibility that objects are connected through time and space has suggested an interaction of mind and matter that challenges the classical assumptions of how we understand the world. The advancement of quantum theory proposes a new, emergent reality beyond the boundaries of the observed, where subject and object are inextricably entangled at a level deeper than our ordinary senses can comprehend. This shift in the way we understand the workings of the universe has also affected the way we view and treat health and disease. Specifically, it introduces a novel method of bringing the mind into the healing process. This metaphysical paradigm is not particularly new, as aspects of it have been around since ancient times. This alternative view of body and spirit took a decided turn during the Enlightenment, remaining in the backwaters of Western thought, where it continued to uphold nonmaterial modalities and view death as a transition into something other than organic life. Nevertheless, as deftly explained by historian Clarke Garrett, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment has been overly defined as “a coherent body of secular ideas and attitudes, shared by the intellectual vanguard of Europe.”1 This emphasis on the secular and the rational obscures much of the spiritual thought that dominated the period, including prophecy and millenarianism. Clearly the idea of a meditative world of consciousness that transcends matter has drawn its support not only from the world of the spirit but from science and rational thinking as well. Its recent resurgence within Western society has come at a time when the world, as a whole, has become much more interdependent. Despite the epistemological claims, if not supremacy, of reductionist science, various elements in America and Europe have forced science into service in support of Kirlian auras, trance mediums, biorhythms, psychic surgery, psychokinesis, and parapsychology. Thus, the West’s renewed interest in the cosmic dimension has meant the infusion of a broad range of noetic experiences that now include Eastern religions and mysticism, spirit and occult worship, and a myriad of counterculture movements.

xiv  Introduction

Today, we often refer to this meditative worldview as psi. First coined in 1942 by Robert Thouless, the term refers to a paranormal experience that is unexplainable in the context of existing science.2 The meditative worldview that today challenges the prevailing dominance of Western reductionist thinking took wing with two earlier movements—mesmerism and Swedenborgianism—that coursed through the nineteenth century as host companions to eclecticism, phrenology, Spiritualism, mind cure, Christian Science, homeopathy, transcendentalism, New Thought, and Theosophy, and then into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries under the name of osteopathy, chiropractic, anthroposophy, holistic health, positive thinking, and New Age healing. They even helped formulate the spiritualist backbone of America’s perfectionist and communitarian traditions. In both these host movements, objective truth was replaced by a subjectivity or experiential knowledge that included altered states of consciousness. From Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Anton Mesmer to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Rudolf Steiner, and many of today’s popular lay healers, humankind has been perceived as evolving mentally and spiritually in many multifaceted ways, some of which are overtly religious in nature, and others that are more openly Gnostic and occult. When it comes to Emanuel Swedenborg, it is hard to comprehend the sheer magnitude of his writings. His genius, as explained by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), was in his ability “to penetrate the science of the age” by learning through books and by experience what lessons could be taught in quarries, forges, shipyards, and dissecting rooms. His grasp was such that he anticipated many of the scientific breakthroughs of the nineteenth century in the fields of astronomy, metallurgy, magnetism, chemistry, atomic theory, and anatomy. Born into a world of great ideas and trained on the books of extraordinary scholars, he not only mastered their worlds but introduced a number of new theological concepts. In the world of ideas in which he lived and sparred, he found grandeur in the human body, including the ethereal elements of the brain. While Descartes boasted of having separated the body from the mind, Swedenborg made them whole once again, but in a very distinctive manner.3

Introduction  xv

It is doubtful that any religious or philosophical thinker has left as voluminous a body of work for posterity. Between 1718 and 1745, Swedenborg produced nineteen volumes of work focusing on civic, scientific, and philosophic topics. Between 1749 and 1772, an additional thirty volumes delved into his theological and religious thinking. Known and referenced by European and American intellectuals such as Immanuel Kant, Samuel Coleridge, Herman Boerhaave, Johann Goethe, Thomas Carlyle, William Blake, John Greenleaf Whittier, Honoré de Balzac, Robert Browning, William Dean Howells, Henri Bergson, JeanJacques Rousseau, Helen Keller, and François Voltaire, to mention just a few, and having been distinguished by Emerson as one of the “representative men” of history, he has been viewed as a genius whose vision and visions were marks of seminal importance.4 Along with Leonardo da Vinci, he is one of the great geniuses known to the Western world, a man whose abilities crossed a multitude of disciplines—from science and mechanics to religion and philosophy. On the spiritual side, Swedenborg had no equal. Although many scientists have shown themselves to be deeply religious, none—with the possible exception of the mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)—has been cited as a renowned mystic. Like Swedenborg, Pascal was drawn away from his scientific investigations because of a deep and life-changing religious encounter. While Pascal revealed these experiences in his Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets (Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on other subjects), published in 1670, Swedenborg wrote volumes concerning his communications with spirits of the afterlife, treating them as if they were inhabitants of a foreign land and he was but a traveler in their midst. Swedenborg was a man of faith from a young age, but once he entered his visionary period, he approached his theological writings with a new sense of certainty about the nature of the afterlife. By means of a special, self-announced illumination, he became the exponent of a sect as well as a philosophy that was more angelic than human. It was this side of Swedenborg that turned him into the progenitor of a host of movements—from telepathy and Spiritualism to mind cure and New Thought. As a metaphysical system, Swedenborgianism had a

xvi  Introduction

triple focus: the cosmology of earth and heaven, the connection between mind and body, and the psychology behind the intellect and will. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectuals called frequent attention to the insight and mental power of Swedenborg. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries, however, have proven more of a challenge to his reputation, as his science and theology have appeared less relevant in addressing the problems of the modern age. Nevertheless, his ideas continue to draw interest (albeit subdued), and elements of his genius have morphed into the thoughts and writings of numerous thinkers whose works have appealed to wide audiences. The general course of Swedenborg’s early studies began with the theological, then moved to the classical, and by the time he left the University of Uppsala in 1709 he had shown a strong predilection for the physical sciences. From here he moved to physical philosophy, general cosmology, and then into studies of the body and soul, joining the ranks of the theologians as he sought to reduce the world to its basic elements. Anticipating Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) in chemistry, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749– 1827) in cosmology, John Dalton (1766–1844) in matter, Thomas Young (1773–1829) and Michael Faraday (1791–1867) in the vibratory nature of light, and numerous modern researchers on the functions of the brain, he was a scientist directed by religious enthusiasm and bent on discovering the soul.5 Swedenborg’s scientific writings form the principal part of his early years. Acquainted not only with the most contemporary scientific knowledge but having conversed with so many of the scientific leaders of his day, he was eminently qualified to undertake studies in mechanics, mathematics, anatomy, and physiology, bringing to the subjects not only the best thinking of other savants but that of his own genius. Skilled in experimental techniques, he avoided the biases of prior system-builders as he moved inductively through his own observations and experiments. For him, the true route to philosophical knowledge was through experience, geometry, and reasoning. Ultimately, however, he chose not to liberate himself entirely from the medieval mindset as he looked at the planets and stars; it was the quality of the causes, not

Introduction  xvii

the quantity of the effects, that captured his interest.6 Swedenborg and his intellectual progeny were critics of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and its Baconian method, not because of its accomplishments, but because it ushered in a strictly materialistic view of the universe and a set of research standards that excluded many of the essential topics that humanists had been debating for centuries: wisdom, love, the soul, death, spiritual existence, morality, truth, and aesthetics. What makes Swedenborg so fascinating is his attempt to retain a theistic science in an age that was beginning to discount the role of God, revelation, and the scriptures in the day-to-day explanation of human behavior. Invigorated by the rationalist-empirical heritage of his day, Swedenborg lived with senses that were awake to both the world of science and to direct communications from the heavens. He lived in two systems of thought, two modes of inquiry, and two modes of viewing humanity and the universe. Swedenborg’s vision was of a world where the forces of the seen and unseen joined in the unfolding of God’s plan. Like his American contemporary, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), his study of physiology, psychiatry, physics, chemistry, and anatomy were intended to display God’s sovereignty. Like Edwards, too, he was an artist with words, taking each verse in Scripture and making new sense of the most mundane passages. Swedenborg discovered, as had Edwards, that God need not rend the laws of the universe to fulfill his contract with man; rather, he had only to work through them to make clear his intent. What makes Swedenborg remarkable is not his science or his religion specifically, but his ability to transform the greatest scientific gains of the Enlightenment into an illumination and vindication of God’s plan. One cannot, however, view Swedenborg in an intellectual vacuum. Many of his cosmic ideas ran parallel with the more secular thinking of the Swabian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815) whose embryonic idea of magnétisme animal (animal magnetism) encouraged experimentation and communication with the “other” world. To be sure, Mesmer’s ideas fell short among those who hungered for holiness; nonetheless, those ideas encouraged an optimism that commended them to numerous social revisionists, fawning proselytes, ardent reformers, and those disposed to a more secular explanation of life’s secrets. Taken in

xviii  Introduction

aggregate, both mesmerism and Swedenborgianism were attuned to a higher reality, to the inner recesses of the mind, and the subordination of the material to the spiritual. Both sought to restore harmony to the body’s system using unseen forces as the causal agency. Unlike Swedenborgians, the supporters of mesmerism were not as dependent on the thought and imagination of its originator. Instead, mesmerists were grounded in the ideas of multiple individuals who showed no regrets or misgivings for having moved beyond Mesmer’s initial musings. Over time, mesmerism witnessed a myriad of innovators, some who were dismissed as shallow and others who brought remarkable insight to the operations of the mind. More secular in tone, mesmerism articulated a healing system that, while in harmony with nature and reliant upon unseen forces, avoided an explicitly religious explanation for its workings. Its references to these unseen forces of matter and spirit avoided the siren calls of organized religion. By contrast, Swedenborgians were unapologetic in their reliance upon the rapturous writings of their founder. For them, his inspired, mystical worldview required no further explanation or direction. Swedenborg remained at the center of their metaphysical view of the cosmos and the source for their religious revisionism. Numerous questions assembled in my mind as I began thinking about these two men and their metaphysical systems. Who were they, and what were the experiences that helped shape their respective life and mind? What was the nature of the intellectual milieu in which they operated, and who were their peers? How innovative were their ideas, and to what extent were those ideas adopted by others? When and how did their ideas assemble in America? Who were their American advocates, and in what disciplines or areas of thought did they find the greatest resonance? How and to what extent were their writings or beliefs distorted? To what extent did their scientific reputation lend plausibility to their beliefs about healing? To what spheres of religious or metaphysical thinking did they best appeal? How is it that they influenced so many different areas of thought and culture—from communitarianism to faith-healing, Spiritualism, New Thought, New Age, telepathy, clairvoyance, and so on? Is there a direct correlation between Swedenborg and Mesmer and these movements, or is it one of percep-

Introduction  xix

tion? What is their relevance to the myriad of healing modalities that emerged in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries? What theological or cosmological innovations are attributed to their appeal? To what extent were the ideas of Mesmer and Swedenborg complementary and competitive? These questions were but the first of many that whetted my appetite and carried me into this intellectual journey. The role of the paranormal in society is something that deserves more than an occasional footnote. Considered marginal to many who examine American thought and culture, it is much more central than generally understood. Particularly when studying the country’s alternative healing systems, of which there were—and are—many, it is impossible to ignore the paranormal and its connections to both mesmerism and Swedenborgianism. When referring to the influence of Swedenborgianism, it is also necessary to understand the relationship these healing systems have had with this reformed theology, which is in sharp contrast to more conservative or mainstream Protestantism. This book traces the interconnection between the physical and cosmic realms as expressed by the advocates of mesmerism and Swedenborgianism—those who aligned healing (which I define in the broadest sense of the term) with the currents of providential laws and purposes, and those who envisioned a less spiritual but nonetheless subtle form of interaction between the cosmos and the individual’s own mental powers. Both demonstrated a distrust of and self-conscious opposition to authority; both appealed to the benevolence and progressive tendencies in nature; and both articulated a philosophy that reinforced the soul’s capacity for inner harmony. Notwithstanding the mutual and supporting nature of these two movements, emphasis will be given to the wider and deeper relationship between mind and body advocated in the mystical worldview inspired by Swedenborg and his followers.

xx  Introduction

Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

chapter 1

A Life of the Mind First and foremost, we need to know who the God of heaven is, since everything else depends on this. —Emanuel Swedenborg

Few individuals can converse intelligently with engineers, geologists, physicists, metallurgists, philosophers, physiologists, and statesmen, as well as elaborate on erudite subjects like bookbinding, watchmaking, cabinetmaking, optics, astronomy, hydraulics, and angels. Except for the topic of angels, Thomas Jefferson may have done so. But the Swedish scientist, philosopher, and religious writer Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) did just that. As a mystic, scientist, philosopher, and traveler between worlds, he was at home in virtually every field of knowledge. Descended from families who had drawn their livelihood from the mining industry of Fahlum in Kopparberg Province in Sweden, the son of a highly respected poet, philologist, and minister of the state church, Swedenborg had a thirst for knowledge that seemed unquenchable. As a member of the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala, Sweden; the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia; and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, he enjoyed personal contacts with an international cadre of royalty, statesmen, scientists, philosophers, and literati.

1

The Cartesian Challenge Jesper Svedberg (1653–1735), the father of Emanuel, wrote a biography that he bequeathed to his children and their descendants. Documenting a life that was rich in the ecclesiastical and political events of the day, it gave witness to a critical time in Swedish history, when German pietism was making its mark within Swedish Lutheranism and when Charles XI (1655–1697) was setting out to break the power of the clergy while, at the same time, establishing the principle of royal absolutism. It was also a time when the reigning orthodoxy of scholastic Aristotelianism was under siege by Cartesians, noticeably evident in the struggles among the faculties of theology, medicine, philosophy, and law at Uppsala.1 Until French scientist and philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) claimed that living organisms were no more than “machines,” explainable by strictly chemical and physical principles and properties, it was commonly held that the processes within the living organism were unique and could not be duplicated in the laboratory. Essentially, the living organism contained a “vital force” that came from without the organism. This force was greater than the sum of the physical properties alone; it was that extra something that gave the organism its life. In the absence of this vital force, one could only talk of an inanimate object. The Cartesian world of matter was permanently separated from the spiritual world of vital force owing to a mechanistic physics and the fact that biological organisms were viewed as natural phenomena which did not differ in principle from inanimate objects. This mechanistic biology became the dominant theory of French scholars in the late seventeenth century. However, given the authority that the Christian church claimed over the intellectual life of western Europe, it was by no means certain how it would be received in a world in which the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian theology represented by scholasticism still held forth. The challenge of Cartesian dualism to the AristotelianAquinasian model created a rent in the fabric connecting the scientific world with that of theologians. By the eighteenth century, however, the purely mechanistic explanation proved difficult to maintain, as anatomists were diverted to more comfortable teleological theories. Against

2  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)

the spirit of rising skepticism, if not disbelief, a number of individuals from both the natural sciences and philosophy sought to find evidence of the Infinite in their encounter with the world. These included the microscopic observations of Italian physiologist Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694), the preformation theory of French philosopher and theologian Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), and the animalcule theory of Dutch naturalist Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723).2 With the rising influence of rational religion and science at the expense of revealed religion, the Cartesian deity was portrayed as some-

A Life of the Mind  3

René Descartes (1596–1650). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

one who, like a great and wise watchmaker, had set the world in motion through carefully crafted mathematical and mechanical rules of physics. Descartes’s assurance of a coherent universe rested on the assumption that the Creator had correlated the mental constructs of the brain with external reality, i.e., that nothing existed that could not be confirmed by the senses. The Cartesians did not see the universe as the result of indwelling spiritual forces but rather as a vast mechanism ruled by the laws of physics where God, being outside space and time, did not interfere with the physical laws. But the God of rational religion and the God of the Bible were not as compatible as their respective philosophers had hoped. Depending upon where they stood, people grew

4  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

weary of reassurances that the gulf between science and revelation could be bridged without any unintended consequences.3 Uppsala, a town of cobbled streets and gabled houses, was home to a university by the same name (Academia Regia Upsaliensis) whose buildings and Gothic cathedral stood as stately reminders of the aspirations—both educational and religious—that drew Sweden’s educated classes to this temple of learning on the western side of the Fyris River. Chartered in 1477 with a papal bull from Pope Sixtus IV, its four faculties of law, medicine, theology, and philosophy struggled through the Reformation and the turbulence of Swedish nationalism to become a Lutheran center of science and learning under the guidance of King Gustavus II Adolphus (1594–1632). The archbishop of Uppsala was also the university’s chancellor, and the university stood front and center in the crosscurrents of ecclesiastical and secular learning. The teachings of Aristotle, having long been brokered through Thomas Aquinas and similar ecclesiastical minds, dominated the train of educated thinking until the mathematical mind of Descartes, famed for his Discours de la Méthode (1637), opened scholars to a competing worldview. Before long, demonstrations of Descartes’s methodical science were sweeping through the classrooms, clubs, and library at Uppsala, capturing the conversations and imaginations of the university’s community of students and scholars. Outside of the faculties of law and theology, Uppsala had become a center of Cartesian thinking, including the anatomist and botanist Olof Rudbeck (1630–1702), who introduced dissection of the human body at the university and made important contributions to knowledge of the lymphatic system.4 When, in 1686, the faculty of theology demanded from Charles XI control over disputations and all scientific research, the university became embroiled and torn by the ensuing factionalism. Orthodox and conservative in his ways, the king did not yield to the theologians, but allowed the discussion to continue. Eventually, a royal commission was appointed to decide the dispute, ruling that the faculty of philosophy should have freedom of open discussion provided they did not question the authority of the Scriptures.5 The victory of the Cartesians made possible the study of nature unhindered by the limits set by medieval religion.6

A Life of the Mind  5

This was an age when the church, and Lutheran orthodoxy in particular, began a long and contentious dialog with Cartesian science. Churchmen thought the sciences had undermined their authority by challenging the supernatural route to knowledge. On the other hand, scientists believed the church and its clerics had become obstacles to true unfettered inquiry. Theology, which had once been the meat and drink of public and private discourse, supported by both evangelical and pietistic elements in the church and society, was now forced to share the stage with science for mastery of the century’s impassioned minds. Despite the efforts of Charles XI to keep the two competitors on speaking terms, theirs was an uneasy truce that often erupted into spectacles of open distrust, public satire, and ecclesiastical censorship. Within this warring landscape, Jesper Svedberg pursued a career, aided by royal intervention, that advanced him to positions of court chaplain, professor of theology, rector magnificus, and dean of the cathedral. An earnest reformer of the educational system, the Swedish language, the Swedish Bible, and the Swedish Hymnbook, he found it impossible to remain aloof from the discussions. A staunch supporter of foreign missions, an opponent of the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and sympathetic to the principles of pietism, he stood with stout heart in opposition to the Cartesians.7

Young Emanuel Emanuel, the third of Jesper’s eight children, was born in 1688 in Stockholm. His mother, Sarah Behm, was from a family prominent in the copper industry. As a child, Emanuel experienced a strong religious environment enriched by almost daily exchanges of ideas on the subjects of faith, duty, salvation, and God. The home was also one of enlightened conversations on politics, science, philosophy, and technology. This was a family whose attitude toward science and faith was supportive rather than dismissive, reflecting the Swedish king’s desire to keep peace between the two forms of knowledge. Discussion, questioning, and debate were a large part of Emanuel’s upbringing and weighed heavily in the development of his critical thinking skills, his fluency with languages, and the intensity of his inquiring mind. The particular uniqueness of his upbringing allowed him to move from practical and

6  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

scientific endeavors to faith in God, in the power of mind, the wisdom of creation, and the importance of revelation. At the time of Emanuel’s birth, Jesper was chaplain to a cavalry regiment. Four years later, in 1692, he became a professor of theology at the University of Uppsala, three years after the Royal Commission had recommended that the study of Cartesianism should be freely discussed. Jesper, a deeply religious man, had authored numerous works on both theological and secular subjects. Vigorous in his patriotism and in his religion, he provided his family with a strong appreciation for the life of the mind. In this nurturing environment, young Emanuel found understanding, charitable love, spiritual and mental conditioning, and a faith in both science and religion. Being especially receptive to the leanings of German pietism, Jesper protected his family from Lutheran dogma, a characteristic that reflected his own temperament of openness, if not outright disbelief in the doctrinal formulations of his religion.8 Following the death of his wife and oldest son from an epidemic in 1696, Jesper invited Johan Moraeus, a nephew and medical student, into his household as a tutor for Emanuel. Moraeus’s influence proved rich for the young boy and brought out his curiosity as well as his awareness of the deep fissures within the intellectual community between Aristotelianism and Cartesian dualism. In 1699, at the age of eleven, Emanuel enrolled at Uppsala, where he majored in philosophy, a subject that included a preponderance of science and math. In addition to writing and conversing with professors and fellow students in Latin, he took instruction in Greek and Hebrew, acquired a working knowledge of English, Dutch, French, and Italian and, for enjoyment, dabbled in poetry, music, and law.9 In 1703, when Jesper was appointed Bishop of Skara in central Sweden, he took his second wife (Sara Bergia, a wealthy mining widow he married in 1697) and his two youngest girls with him, leaving fifteenyear-old Emanuel, Emanuel’s sister Hedwig, and two brothers to live with Jesper’s oldest daughter Anna and her husband Dr. Erik Benzelius the Younger (1675–1743), the university’s librarian. Young Emanuel had always been close to Anna, who, at the age of seventeen, married Benzelius, a professor of theology who later became a priest. For six years, Emanuel lived under their roof. Anna became a second mother to him

A Life of the Mind  7

while her husband, some thirteen years older than Emanuel, mentored him in his studies. Benzelius was an avid proponent of Cartesianism and known to have organized informal faculty gatherings to discuss the latest literary and scientific topics. Emanuel acquired many of the librarian’s biases, including his reverence for the sciences, and shared in his correspondence with some of the great minds of the day—all attributes of a scholarly mind that Benzelius willingly passed to his young protégé. Although Benzelius aroused in Emanuel a love for the life of the mind and helped to shape the attention Emanuel paid to the physical sciences and general cosmology, he caused little change in his young charge’s religious feelings.10 Like his father, Emanuel was free of the doctrinal feuds that consumed so many of his generation. “I was prohibited reading dogmatic and systematic theology before heaven was opened to me by reason that unfounded opinions and inventions might thereby easily have insinuated themselves, which, with difficulty could afterwards have been extirpated,” he wrote in a letter to his friend Dr. Gabriel A. Beyer in 1767.11 He also admitted to having rejected as early as the age of twelve the idea “that God the Father imputes the righteousness of His Son to whomsoever and whenever He pleases, even to the impenitent.”12 He rejected as well the Trinity for a more Unitarian view of the Divine. Nevertheless, while delving deep into Cartesian thought, he never strayed far from the faith of his parents, taking delight in conversations with clergy and claiming at a young age to have conversed with angels and to have accustomed himself to “internal respiration,” by which he meant the physical and mental state experienced at the time of his spiritual communications.13 Trained in both the sciences and humanities, he epitomized both the empirical side of the Enlightenment and its mystical side, bearing the lasting imprint of a Lutheran bishop’s son whose synoptic view of the universe contained both a scientist’s precision and a mystic’s illumination.14 As a university student, Swedenborg became a lover of Greek and Latin and found himself opposed to religious formalism, focusing instead on the writings of Seneca, Publilius Syrus Minus, and the Greek thinker Plutarch; the visions and spiritual world of the Hebrew prophets; and the Hellenistic influence on the use of the term “word,” or logos.

8  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

In 1709, Swedenborg defended his thesis in the presence of his father and several judges. Written in Latin and titled “Select Sentences from L. Annaeus Seneca and Publilius Syrus the Mime with Notes,” it consisted of a selection of citations from Latin and Greek authors, principally Seneca and the Bible, which were used as the basis for his own commentary on the virtue of religion.15 Following a successful defense, he published several poems in both Swedish and Latin. With degree in hand, he had achieved a thoroughness in his education that made him an ideal candidate for a strong academic career. This was a particularly low point in Swedish history, with Charles XII (1682–1718) having driven the economy into a shambles as a result of failed expansion efforts, including being humiliated by the Russians in the Battle of Poltava (1709). Despite this nation-building disappointment, the Swedes remained loyal to their king, and, following the victory of Steinbock against the Danes, Swedenborg published a series of poems that addressed such subjects as patriotism, love, and friendship.16 In 1710, at the age of twenty-two, Swedenborg traveled to London and Oxford during the heyday of the scientific revolution. Having grown up in an intensely religious and intellectual atmosphere, he turned quite naturally to the currents of thinking that heated the debates and scholarship of his day. He visited museums; met with the astronomer John Flamsteed at Greenwich Observatory; conversed with Edmond Halley on subjects ranging from mathematics and physics to astronomy and philosophy; and attended the lectures of Sir Isaac Newton on vacuums and gravitational force. Not content to live in the shadows of these savants, he read extensively and spent untold sums on machinery, books, and instruments, and even wrote a volume of fables. His educational tour also included Holland, France, Hanover, and Pomerania, where he designed plans for constructing a submarine, an air gun, a drawbridge, canal locks, a water clock, a conveyor for minerals, a flying machine, ear trumpets, and even a musical instrument.17 His appetite for knowledge and practical mechanics was unquenchable as he explored lens grinding, mineralogy, metallurgy, geology, chemistry, and a half-dozen other fields. Much of what he learned during his trips abroad was acquired by lodging with different artisans and mechanics and learning their trade.

A Life of the Mind  9

By 1714, he had mastered several trades and claimed fourteen inventions. During the same period he took time to cultivate the English poets William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson, Sir John Beaumont, John Milton, John Dryden, and Abraham Cowley.18 Upon his return home, Swedenborg immersed himself in mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics and became acquainted with many of the more renowned scientists of his day. One such was Christopher Polhem (1661–1751), the so-called Swedish Archimedes, for whom Swedenborg had immense respect. With Benzelius’s financial backing, Swedenborg launched the scientific periodical Daedalus Hyperboreus primarily as a vehicle for Polhem’s materials and works, although Swedenborg himself contributed a number of articles. Issued in six numbers over the course of two years, the journal represented an effort to communicate the practical aspects of the Enlightenment. The publication served as precursor to Acta Literaria Sueciae, an organ of the Royal Society of Sciences of Uppsala.19 Despite his scientific accomplishments, Swedenborg at the age of twenty-eight had yet to find either a position or an income. He had hoped for a chair of mechanics at Uppsala, but the appointment failed to materialize. Instead, he received the king’s royal patronage in 1716 as assessor extraordinary to the Board of Mines, a department of the government which inspected mines and the metallurgical industry.20 This non-salaried and honorific appointment gradually grew in responsibility and involved extensive inspection tours, the preparation of detailed reports, administrative problem solving, and even tax collecting. Thus began Swedenborg’s thirty-one-year career in public service, a post that was made permanent in 1724 and continued until 1747. The combination of his formal and self-directed education, which consumed much of the first thirty-five years of his life, brought him in contact with many of the world’s leading scholars.21 Swedenborg’s personal life was not so successful. Polhem’s daughter had been promised to Swedenborg, but, at only fourteen years of age and not disposed to being betrothed, the young girl anguished that her father had signed a written agreement on her behalf. Upon learning that his affections were not reciprocated, Swedenborg relinquished any claims he once hoped of her hand. Her rejection became a rationaliza-

10  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

tion for Swedenborg’s rededication to a life of the mind, a pursuit that he embarked on with remarkable energy.22 In his capacity as assessor extraordinary, he set out through Holland and Germany, visiting the workings of mines in Saxony and the Hartz Mountains, blast furnaces, arsenic and sulfur works, and copper and tin manufacturers. These visits, upon his return, resulted in numerous reforms in the Swedish mining industry as well as a myriad of recommendations on such topics as navigation, metallurgy, currency reform, the decimal system, rolling mills, and other interests, which he reported to the Swedish parliament. He also proceeded to pen his way through the intellectual world, writing and publishing books in a variety of fields. These included works on Algebra (1718), Attempt to Find the East and West Longitude by the Moon (1718), On the Motion and Rest of the Earth and the Planets (1719), Proposed Change in Money and Measures (1719), and On the Height of Water (1719). In 1721, he wrote Chemistry and Physics, an essay using geometry and chemistry to explain experimental philosophy. That same year he published New Observations and Discoveries Regarding Iron and Fire and Finding Longitudes. This was followed in 1722 with a work titled Miscellaneous Observations of Phenomena in Nature, in which Swedenborg gave a geometrical explanation of the laws of nature and argued that the same forces were at work in the making of a particle and in the creation of the universe.23 For an age that was emerging from alchemy, Swedenborg’s interest in chemistry was remarkable. In his Chemistry and Physics, for example, he postulated that everything could be explained mathematically and that all matter was simply motion arranged in geometric forms. His theory, an early version of crystallography, described a world of mathematically arranged forms that were in constant motion, in sharp contrast to the Newtonian view of a world formed from permanent and irreducible particles of matter. It was an exercise in the problems of molecular physics and of determining the properties of natural substances.24 Swedenborg explained creation as resulting from a first natural point of matter caused by the Divine’s impulse to action. From this initial point of pure motion, the natural kingdoms—animal, vegetable, mineral—emerged. Here was an early deterministic and probabilistic model used to describe the cosmographic history of the universe—the

A Life of the Mind  11

drama of nature played out in the time and space of theoretical physical science—involving the world of molecular particles. These ideas became the foundation for Swedenborg’s later writings on physiology, physics, and the nature of the universe.25

Philosophy of Organism As early as 1717 in a paper published in Daedalus and titled “A Proof That Our Vital Essence Consists for the Most Part of Small Vibrations, That Is, of Tremulations,” Swedenborg made his earliest foray into the philosophy of organism, describing the general grounds on which nature is perceived, i.e., either the product of purely physical or purely vitalistic forces, or some combination therein. He postulated that the vital force of a living organism, or what he called the “intercourse between the soul and body,” consisted of tremulations, or small vibrations.26 Two years later, in a draft treatise titled “Motive and Vital Essence,” he described how the vital forces worked in harmony with the nerves and membranes. In a letter to Eric Benzelius, he noted that his ideas were in agreement with those of Italian anatomist and pathologist Giorgio Baglivi (1668–1707), a student of Malpighi. Swedenborg also noted that Descartes had addressed the subject, followed by Alphonsus Borellus (1608–1679), professor of mathematics at Pisa. Predicting that his ideas would no doubt create a “squabble” within the halls of Uppsala, he nonetheless hoped that the professoriate would be open-minded to the prospect that life consisted of small vibrations, including not only the most minute body parts but the senses as well. All parts of the body were connected by “threads and sinews” so that when one part was affected, the sensation was transmitted to another part “and especially in the membrane of the brain, for all the threads and nerves terminate there, and into it is collected whatever belongs to the whole body.” From these observations, he concluded that the living force consisted of little motions. “Whatever lives in us,” he wrote, are the “most subtle motions . . . a tremulation in our finest nerves, in the most delicate membranes, in the very bones and in the entire systems of nerves and bones.”27 Swedenborg went on to point out that the lungs, not the heart, were the “fountain” of the body’s motions. Here external air was received and communicated its motions to every other part. These motions were

12  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

but “a grosser degree of tremulation” that propelled the fluids into the nerves and to the extremities and brain, communicating life by means of circulating undulations or motions of tremulation. He postulated that differences in the expansion of the membranes affected the temperament of the individual, causing some to have a sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic, or nervous temperament.28 Unlike his contemporaries, who were swayed by the dominant philosophy of Hippocratic and Galenic medicine to view the brain as a gland that secreted an animal spirit, he argued that the neural process was really the result of an oscillation of particles which moved back and forth within a fluid traveling from the brain to the peripheral nerves. The force which Swedenborg identified as supplying these tremulations, explained neuroscientists Konrad Akert and Michael P. Hammond in an article in the journal Medical History, came from “stimuli to the sense organs and by the undulatory motion of the brain.”29 In his work On Tremulation, the Swede also gave the first intimation that human beings might have the capacity to create an action that effected change at a distance. It was possible, he postulated, for an individual to fall into the thought pattern of another, perceiving what the other was doing or thinking. For this to occur, the individual’s “membrane trembles from the tremulation of the other person’s cerebral membranes, just as one string is affected by another, if they are tuned to the same key.”30 In this manner, the thoughts of one individual could be communicated to another—a hypothesis that became an important component of Spiritualism, mind cure, Christian Science, and the movement known as New Thought. On Tremulation served as an important connection between Swedenborg’s anatomical investigations and the development of his later philosophical and religious ideas. Beginning as an annotator of the classics before immersing himself in mineralogy, geology, astronomy, mathematics, physiology, and physics, it is clear that his voluminous writings were intended to display the greater glory of his God. However, the transition from a predominantly mechanistic and impersonal cosmology to one that was spiritual and vitalistic would emerge slowly and with the aid of analogy, what his followers would come to call the doctrine of correspondences. In time, Swedenborg would move away

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from a mechanistic model of the universe to view the physical world as the fabric on which God unfolded his design. The world would become the body or corporeal realization of God, the outward imagery and expression of his mystical presence.

Ennoblement In 1719, Emanuel’s family was ennobled and named Swedenborg by Queen Ulrika Eleanora (1688–1741), the successor to Charles XII. The title allowed Swedenborg to take his seat with the Nobles of the Equestrian Order in the Triennial Assemblies of the States of the Realm. A year later, his stepmother died, leaving him a modest fortune that helped to support the continuation of his life as an independent scholar and to underwrite the publication costs of his numerous writings. In 1724, in recognition of a growing appreciation for his writings and speculations, the Consistory of the University of Uppsala and the Royal Society of Sciences offered him a professorship of pure mathematics, which he declined. He did, however, accept membership into the Royal Society in 1729 and lived on terms of friendship and collegiality with many of the leading minds of the Western world. Using his seat in the House of Nobles, Swedenborg remained an active participant in the ongoing debates related to Sweden’s natural resources, its tax structure, economy, and foreign policy. In addition, he was appointed as an engineering advisor for several public works projects, relying on his engineering and mechanical acumen to assist in supervising and providing oversight for the initiatives. Throughout this period, he was an imaginative and creative thinker whose broad intellectual attainment made him conversant in a variety of disciplines.31 As Swedenborg’s interest in minerals intensified during the 1730s, the focus of his energies turned more and more toward theoretical problems as he speculated on their chemical structures, the mathematical foundations of matter and motion, the origin of the planets, and ultimately on the underlying principles of anatomy and the soul. Step by cautious step, moving from observation to induction, he formulated the building blocks for a unified accounting of the universe that he hoped would satisfy both the Christian and agnostic philosophers of the Enlightenment.

14  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

In 1733, Swedenborg went abroad, spending most of his time in Leipzig, where his three-volume Opera Philosophica et Mineralia (Philosophical and Mineralogical Works) was published in 1734. The second and third volumes were the result of extensive travels across the mining areas of Europe to observe methods of assaying, chemical processes, and the types of furnaces and machinery needed to produce iron, steel, copper, brass, and various alloys. These works became standard references for the time and did much to promote and improve the mining industry in Sweden. It was the first volume, however, that represented a groundbreaking development in Swedenborg’s thought. The first volume was titled Principia; Or the First Principles of Natural Things; Being New Attempts Toward a Philosophical Explanation of the Elementary World, and it threw light on Swedenborg’s emerging philosophical views by grappling with the making of the universe and uniting the organic and inorganic worlds in an eternal bond. He postulated that the membranes and fluids constituting the human organism resonated with the auras in the universe. As Swedenborg’s biographer James John Garth Wilkinson explained, each individual body was one with the world, “a machine whose utter wisdom harmonizes with God alone, and leads right minds to God.”32 The volume was sweeping in its breadth, addressing a cosmology that pointed to the creation of a universe that derived from centers or points of energy.33 Beginning with a mathematical or natural point that Swedenborg considered to be one of pure motion, he proceeded to postulate primordial particles of matter he called “finites” and “elementaries” and create a universe of suns and planets. “How many myriads of heavens may there not be!” he exclaimed, “How many myriads of mundane systems! . . . In a word, we might say, that infant heavens and earths were successively coming into existence as the others declined in age, grew hoary with years, and fell into decay.”34 In his imagination, he saw worlds in the making that predated Thomas Wright’s An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (1750), Immanuel Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), and Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Exposition du Système du Monde (1796) by several decades.35 Swedenborg followed in the footsteps of the earliest Ionian philosophers when he sought to examine and discuss the reasoning behind

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the phenomena of the world. Drawing from Descartes, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716), he agreed on the fundamental importance of motion in explaining the variations of matter. However, as a cosmological philosopher, he went beyond their thinking, which began with the fundamental principle of an eternal, preexistent matter. Swedenborg’s concept of the “finite” started from a nonspatial geometrical point, or ens, consisting of pure motion and produced by the energy of the Infinite, the underlying source of creation. From this single point all other forms arose. Rather than conceiving of matter as something hard, indivisible, and impenetrable, he held it to be motion. “Nature,” he wrote, “is only a word which expresses all the motive forces proceeding from the first motion of the Infinite till the world is completed.”36 Energy was not something added to matter but was intrinsic in matter; energy actually was matter. With this concept, Swedenborg presaged the thinking on atomic particles and atomic energy by two hundred years. For modern people, explained the Reverend Reuben P. Bell, Swedenborg’s theory has the look and feel of quantum physics, with “subatomic particles blinking in and out of reality, compounded into little reciprocating pluses and minuses, built up into shells and orbitals of multiples of the same simple particles.”37 The concept of a “first natural point” represented the original moment of creation by the Divine. This point had both a natural and a spiritual existence that, in an Aristotlean sense, was waiting on some particular form or essence in order to be put in motion. From this first natural point, multiple finite points manifested and were compounded until they formed the elementary particles of matter that became the basic “stuff” of the universe from which all things emerged.38 Moving outward in a spiral motion, these particles eventually built what amounted to animal, vegetable, and mineral spheres within an active universe, all under the guidance of a divine force.39 Along with Descartes, Swedenborg viewed the world as spatial, temporal, corporeal, and having vortical motions. Both conceived the living body to be a mechanical construction animated by a noncorporeal soul. However, the two thinkers differed in their ideas about the shapes of these particles of matter and their motion. Neither the “human soul”

16  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

of Swedenborg nor the “thinking substance” of Descartes was subject to space or time. For Swedenborg, the soul was geometrical, mechanical, and finite, formed on the plane of the highest substances of nature, whose vital essence consisted of vibrations or tremulations. The soul, being the chief component of the body, was diffused throughout, but especially in the brain—both in the cortical and in the medullary parts. With the death of the body, it separated itself from the grosser parts and was carried by angels to the heavens, where it underwent purification.40 Swedenborg thus posited the existence of an infinite something beyond space and time that manifested itself as a mathematical point and became the seed containing the latent energy of the universe. This point was a particle consisting of pure motion that emanated finite points in a circular or spiral motion. The movements of these points of force eventually produced the four constituents of the cosmos: gravitation, magnetism, ether, and air. Swedenborg hypothesized that the human soul was of the same substance as the magnetic element of the universe, and ideas were but vibrations in the soul. When the vibrations were strong enough, they reached the senses.41 In Swedenborg’s cosmology, everything in the material world depended on a corresponding cause in the spiritual world, a concept also prominent in Neoplatonic and Kabbalist thought. Thus the spiritual and natural worlds were linked together. Nothing occurred in the natural world that did not serve the final purpose of things. The whole of nature with its ascending degrees was the theater for God’s purpose. The whole of creation was but a “chain of uses and forms” emitted from the Divine. The original substance emitted from the Divine was spiritual and unlike the “monads” of Leibniz or the “atoms” of Epicurus. Instead, the original substance consisted of “primitives” (“first natural points”) beyond the scope of geometry and simple mechanics. It was the first “finition” of the divine infinity. The Divine did not create this substance out of nothing, but from its own infinity.42

Physiology and Psychology Swedenborg’s view of the world, which began as that of an Enlightenment-era scientist formed by the philosophy of Descartes and the mathematical theories of Isaac Newton, became more and more

A Life of the Mind  17

spiritual as he grew older. It is wrong, however, to believe that Swedenborg turned abruptly from scientist to mystic. Having come from a deeply religious family, he had always held religion close to his heart and to the purposes of his scientific endeavors. Much like the Massachusetts Puritan Jonathan Edwards, he was a mystic in his youth, and his scientific endeavors were simply stepping stones from the visible into the invisible. Inspired by the mathematical world that Newton had bequeathed to eighteenth-century science, he set out to better understand the mechanical, physical, and biological aspects of the universe while never forgetting the nature of the soul and its relationship to the body.43 From 1734 onward, Swedenborg drew away from his strictly scientific endeavors into a more nuanced relationship with nature as he sought to grasp the essence of the human soul. In 1734, he published The Infinite and Final Cause of Creation, which served as a supplement to the Principia inasmuch as it built a set of relationships between the finite and infinite and between the body and soul. Swedenborg reasoned that while finite humanity could not know or plumb the mind of the Infinite, one could nevertheless conclude that the soul—the link between man and God—was what made humans thinking beings.44 Concerned with the Infinite’s connection with the finite world, Swedenborg sought out the masters of anatomy to assist him in finding physical traces of the soul.45 His journeys took him to Copenhagen, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Italy, where he initiated an extensive discourse on “the essence and nature of the soul, its influx into the body, and the reciprocal action of the body.” He strove to identify the spirit of life that was produced in the brain cells and that flowed through the nerve fibers. The brain cells were the exchange center between the infinite and the finite, between the soul and the body, and presupposed a more universal circulation of the divine influx of which it was a part.46 In 1738, Swedenborg wrote a draft of Three Transactions of the Cerebrum, which remained unpublished for two hundred years before being translated by the Swedenborg Scientific Association of Philadelphia in 1938. The book, which provided the first translation of Swedenborg’s anatomical and physiological writings in English, demonstrated the as-

18  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

tonishing range of Swedenborg’s neuro-physiological knowledge and the thoroughness with which he approached the subject matter. It was also an early indication of Swedenborg’s identification of the seat of the soul in the cortex.47 Swedenborg continued his research into the brain and the nervous system, culminating in 1740 with a 627-page draft manuscript on the brain, which would be translated into English and published in the 1880s by Dr. Rudolf Leonard Tafel. The manuscript anticipated many nineteenth-century discoveries related to the functions of the brain.48 This, in turn, led in 1740–41 to Swedenborg’s Oeconomia Regni Animalis, which, despite the traditional translation Economy of the Animal Kingdom, focused on the human body and not the lower animals. Published in two volumes, the first part addressed the blood, arteries, veins, and heart, with an introduction to Swedenborg’s reason-based method of studying the mind and soul. The second part addressed the nature of the brain, the cortical substance, and the human soul. Given Swedenborg’s extraordinary insights, it was commonly assumed that, besides attending lectures and relying on the research and observations of others, he had participated in the experiments of French surgeon François Pourfour du Petit (1664–1741) at the Royal School for Dissection in Paris in 1736. There he supposedly carried out postmortem examinations and worked under the close eye of Jacques-Bénigne Winsløv (1669–1770) for eighteen months, during which time he examined the effects of lesions in the cortices of dogs. However, the evidence for this is not convincing, and, as one skeptic explained, Petit had no notion of the conclusions drawn by Swedenborg. Besides, there was no reference in Swedenborg’s diaries that he had ever visited Petit’s laboratory. Instead, argued neuroscientist Charles G. Gross, Swedenborg’s ideas came “from a careful reading and integration of the anatomical, physiological, and clinico-pathological literature that was available to him and that was so copiously quoted in his works.”49 Even Swedenborg’s first biographer questioned whether he had made use of the dissecting room. It was suspected, wrote J. J. Garth Wilkinson, that Swedenborg attended the instructions of Herman Boerhaave at the same time as the elder Alexander Monro (1697–1767). However, Boerhaave died at Leiden in 1738, forcing Wilkinson to conclude that Swedenborg

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obtained his knowledge principally from plates and books. Uninhibited by prior beliefs and theories, he had delved into the literature with a new set of eyes and ideas.50 Regardless, Swedenborg’s neurological notions represented a significant advancement in the understanding of both involuntary and willful motor activities, views that were remarkably modern in their grasp.51 It is clear, too, that he was well read on the subject of the brain before he put pen to paper. He had access to Johann Jakob Wepfer’s Observationes anatomicae ex cadaveribus eorum, quos sustulit Apoplexia (1675); Théophile Bonet’s Sepulchretum (1679); and Jean Jacques Manget’s Bibliotheca anatomica (1685) and Theatrum anatomicum (1717).52 Some of his concepts can also be traced to Thomas Willis, whose Cerebi anatome (1664) suggested the function of the corpora striata (pineal gland) as the true seat of the soul and the agency that governed the activities of the body; to Marcello Malpighi on the small spheres of the cortex; and to Raymond de Vieussens, who described the organization of the brain in his Neurographia universalis (1684), where he wrote about the medullary portion of the brain, regio superna, which formed the upper part of the corpora striata and capsula interna, the regio media of the middle part, and the regio infirma of the lower part. When Anton van Leeuwenhoek’s work with the microscope enabled him to describe the cortex as containing small spheres, Swedenborg chose to call them “spherulae” or “cortical glands.” These, the Swede considered the most important part of the cortex. Here was the site of human mental activities.53 The prematurity of Swedenborg’s ideas is remarkable. He was, according to Swedish anatomist Gustav Retzius, “a learned anatomist and a sharp-sighted observer, but also in many respects, an unprejudiced, acute, and deep anatomical thinker.”54 Although Swedenborg actually anticipated many later discoveries, as Charles G. Gross explained in an article in The Neuroscientist, his writings “had no impact on the development of neuroscience.” His ideas remained unknown to William Carpenter, David Ferrier, Michael Foster, Edward Schafer, Henry F. Campbell, Edward Foster, and other researchers whose work on the brain had opened new lines of research and understanding. It really was not until Max Neuburger, professor of the history of medi-

20  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

cine in Vienna, introduced Swedenborg’s ideas in 1901 that the Swede’s writings became the subject of curiosity and analysis.55 According to Neuburger, Swedenborg’s work on the brain and nervous system had been groundbreaking. Not only had he shown the function of the cortex in governing muscular actions, but he pointed to the gray substance of the medulla oblongata and the spinal cord as regulating involuntary movements.56 Drawing upon the works of many early and contemporary anatomists and physiologists, Swedenborg had been able to observe, examine, reason, and induce the connection between the various regions of the cortex, the sense impressions, and the voluntary motions—conclusions regarding brain localization that were not verified until the nineteenth century.57 A partial reason for the lack of recognition is that Swedenborg never held a chair in medicine; nor were many of his manuscripts circulated beyond a small circle of friends and supporters. Indeed, many were written anonymously. Lacking a professional society to publish and advocate for his ideas, most of his writings laid unread in the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences library until the 1880s, when R. L. Tafel published them. Swedenborg’s Oeconomia Regni Animalis could probably have been better titled “Economy of the Soul’s Kingdom,” as F. H. Pratt once suggested, or “The Organization of the Soul’s Kingdom” since the term animal really implied anima, or soul.58 In some ways, the book served as a bridge between Swedenborg’s science and his philosophy, acting as a link between his presentation on the grandeur of the human body and his religious beliefs. No armchair philosopher, he drew from the best medical knowledge of his day, and his conclusions were far-reaching as he pursued the functions of consciousness, perception, sensations, and thought. He showed how specific parts of the brain controlled the muscles in various parts of the body; that the gray matter in the center of the brain controlled many of the involuntary acts of the body; and that the function of nervous control was given to oval particles (later called cells or neurons). He also examined the blood, which he considered to be the vehicle of the soul; suggested the role of the lungs in purifying the blood at a time when oxygen had yet to be discovered; and proposed the idea of a spirituous fluid which originated in the brain.59

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Swedenborg wrote: The blood is as it were the complex of all things that exist in the world and the storehouse and seminary of all that exists in the body. It contains salts of every kind, both fixed and volatile, and oils, spirits, and aqueous elements; in short, whatever is created and produced by the three kingdoms of the world, the animal, the vegetable and the mineral. Moreover, it imbibes the treasures that the atmosphere carries in its bosom, and to this end exposes itself to the air through the medium of the lungs.60

Swedenborg thought nothing was as noble in the animal kingdom as the circulation of the spirituous fluid—the substance of the soul— inasmuch as “through every point [it] continues, irrigates, nourishes, renovates, forms, actuates and vivifies everything whatever in its limited universe.” Such was the “circle of life.” The marvel of circulation was synchronous with that of the body’s respiration. The actions of the lungs “wonderfully concur in promoting and transfusing this truly animal juice through the nerves.” The cortical substance held the middle ground between the last of the arteries of the brain and the first of the nerve fibers of the brain. It attracted the purest animal spirits from the arterial blood and then transmitted them into the fibers. He perceived the cortex as the “two-headed Janus,” looking both forward and backward, but which united in a manner that closed the loop between cause and effect.61 According to Wilkinson, Swedenborg challenged the traditional view of the heart as the seat of human intelligence that ruled over the soul. In particular, Swedenborg found that the heart was little more than a distributive organ that pumped blood to all parts of the body. Its purposive role was obverse to that of the lungs, which Swedenborg credited with the ability to make the whole organic body respire. The lungs represented the very spirit of the individual.62 The heart pulsed to each organ an amount of blood, and the organ received the blood of its own free will, and used the blood for its purposes. In the lungs, there was an “intrinsic commerce” between breathing and thinking. “It is through your nose that you draw in the lung-breath and brain-breath which cohere with thought,” Wilkinson wrote. The animations of the brain corresponded to the lung’s respirations. The heart stood for love,

22  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

which could also be called the will. In other words, what people love, they then will. The lungs, on the other hand, stood for intellect. In this sense, an individual with a specific bent or affection “breathes the figure of his intended aim or object.”63 Antecedents and contemporaries of Swedenborg displayed little interest in the convolutions of the brain’s cortex, often giving torturous explanations for their purpose: a cooling organ (Aristotle); a source of phlegm (Hippocratic doctors); protection from rupture during vigorous movements (Andreas Vesalius); enhancing the taking of nourishment (Thomas Bartholm); and a mass of glands or globules that resembled tiny intestines (Marcello Malpighi). Only Thomas Willis, a professor of natural philosophy at Oxford, was willing to attribute such functions as imagination and memory to the cortex. As Charles Gross explained, even the later work of Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777)­­­, professor at Tübingen and later Bern, and J. G. Zinn, professor of medicine at Göttingen, found the cerebral cortex to be little more than an “insensitive rind with no sensory, motor, or higher functions.”64 Swedenborg correctly located the motor areas of the brain; he also located the intellectual faculties in the frontal region of the brain. He discounted Descartes’s theory that the soul resided in the pineal gland. While he ascribed significant functions to the pituitary gland, calling it the “arch gland” of the body, he nonetheless ascribed the soul to the cortex.65 Although the cortical substance was the principal agent in bodily functions, Swedenborg noted that it was not the “prime determinant,” since it was itself determined by the spirituous fluid or soul which was the “universal force and substance” that flowed through the body. It was the spirituous fluid that reigned in the body and from which flowed all things. The spirituous fluid was the “most universal and most perfect substance in the animal kingdom.”66 In order to understand Swedenborg’s image of the soul, one must imagine a pulsating fluid in the organism. This spiritual fluid, or anima, represented the highest form of thought and a medium for the life and wisdom flowing from the Infinite. It also constituted the determining force for the organism. Using such works as Christian Wolff’s Ontologia (1730), Scipion Dupleix’s Corps de Philosophie (1626), and Robert Baronius’s Metaphysica generalis (1583), Swedenborg plumbed the clas-

A Life of the Mind  23

sical writers in his efforts to understand the soul without crossing into pure theology. At best, he skirted the boundaries of matter and spirit by identifying the soul with organic spiritual fluid, thereby suggesting that the soul itself was material.67 The soul, according to Western scientists, philosophers, and Christian theologians well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the immortal entity that directed the body for its own purposes. For Swedenborg, this meant that the cerebral cortex was the soul’s residence in the body as well as part of the universal aura or divine spirit. At issue was whether the soul was material or simply waves of air or ether. In either case, there remained a problem in conceiving the mechanism that served as the communication between the organic and the inorganic. What made dead matter become living? What was the chain of causation between the material atom and an immaterial force? To answer this, Swedenborg introduced the concept of series and degrees, by which he meant that the soul flowed into the body by “intermediates,” a progression divided by degrees. The material world had developed from immaterial forces, and life had also risen from immaterial force, plus a life source, which came from the Infinite. These changes came by steps or degrees in a manner which Swedenborg called influx. Thus, we see the opinions of the mystical and philosophical Swedenborg emerging in the spaces left by Swedenborg the anatomist.68 Despite the fact that the human soul was far removed from the senses and eluded firm grasp, Swedenborg considered it a proper subject for human inquiry. He marveled at the ambitions of humankind to “touch the heavens” and thereby attain some degree of knowledge of the attributes and essentials of the Infinite. He accepted the idea that there were degrees of order in the universe—the “great chain of being” of the ancients—and believed that by these alone an individual could ascend from strictly external phenomena and gain understanding of the higher spheres. In essence, it was the science of following the steps of nature and learning the relation between things superior and inferior.69 Working with the idea that divine influence moves through the body in series and degrees, Swedenborg viewed the spirituous fluid or soul as the third degree above the blood, the “most perfect substance and force” of the body and the “determining principle of all things.” Ac-

24  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

cording to the doctrine of series and degrees, each fluid, according to its essence and form, produced the forces of nature. There were fluids of the earth (i.e., water, oil), fluids of the world (air, ether, auras), and animal fluids (different types of blood). The purest of these fluids in each of their separate orders owed their existence to the Deity that was essential life and wisdom. All things existed in their own distinctive manner and followed each other by a wonderful subordination to the prime form and substance upon which all things depended.70 For Swedenborg, nature in and of itself was dead. Matter could neither feel, hear, see, taste, nor smell, much less perceive or understand. It served life only as an instrument subject to the will of the Deity. Thus, life and nature were two different things: life represented ends; nature represented effects. Life and intelligence flowed only into substances that accommodated the reception of life, i.e., the simplest, universal, and most perfect substances of the animal body—the spirituous fluid or soul of the body—and from there into other substances and parts according to their degree of composition and form.71 Thus, the spirituous fluid, like nature itself, was dead and only served as an instrument for life. Formed from the purest substances of the natural world, the power or principle of the spirituous fluid or life depended upon the intelligent being who controlled the universe. Called the soul, this pure fluid was the vice-regent of the body and was to be found in the recesses of the cortical glands.72 For Swedenborg, understanding the manner in which life and wisdom flowed was far above the capacity of the human mind. No analysis or abstraction could fully grasp the how and why of the Deity. Humans could not ascend in their analysis and abstraction beyond the nature of their beings. Bound by the natural world, the human mind derived its ideas from the world. The human mind could not enter into the mind of God. The soul, circumscribed by the body, was limited in its intuitions by the created universe. Nevertheless, the soul or spirituous fluid had both a natural and a spiritual nature. The former enabled it to exist in the world and the latter enabled it to live and be wise. Since the spirituous fluid was the supereminent organ, its role was to “represent the universe,” “to have intuition of ends,” “to be conscious of all things,” and “to determine.” Seated above the other faculties of the body, it became

A Life of the Mind  25

their order, truth, rule, law, science, and art. It was this force that was directive and formative of the actions taken by the body.73 As a physiological thinker, Swedenborg always intended for his intellectual labors to serve the greater glory of God. To that end, his method of study was not to improve upon the canon of medical knowledge so much as it was to better understand the mystery of the soul. In this regard, his influence was to be found less among members of the medical profession than among nonmedical and nonscientific thinkers such as Comte Destutt de Tracy, Baron d’Holbach, and Charles Bonnet, who, like Swedenborg, were interested in unlocking the mysteries of the soul.74 The schism between mind and matter that Descartes had exaggerated and widened, Swedenborg sought to minimize through his doctrine of series and degrees. Four years after publishing his Oeconomia Regni Animalis, Swedenborg produced the two-volume Regnum Animale (commonly known by its misleading translation Animal Kingdom) which treated of the viscera, or the organs of the abdomen; the viscera of the thorax; and the skin, touch, taste, and forms of organs in general. Comprised of eighteen parts, it began with the spermatic arteries of the male reproductive organs, provided a thorough review of the female organs, and ended with the formation of the fetus in the womb. The sweep of his anatomical and physiological writings is breathtaking in detail and in his mastery of the subject. Beginning in each case with the facts and eliciting the descriptions of the best anatomists of the day, he proceeded by induction to first principles, thus amplifying his discussions into a more philosophical statement of universal truths. Although he began his thinking within a Christian atmosphere of belief in a personal God and providence, he chose to approach his writing in a manner that would lead a skeptic to acknowledge God. To do this, he chose to arrive at this acknowledgment through the order and design implicit in nature— its arrangement, distribution, hierarchy, likeness, fitness, etc.—or, as Wilkinson described it, “from the principle of forms, whereby nature descends down the stairs of excellence and universality, from vortex to spire, from spire to circle, and from circle to angle, and reascends by supersinuations from the earth to the sun, and from the mineral to man.”75

26  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

The object of Swedenborg’s Oeconomia Regni Animalis and Regnum Animale was an investigation into the structure of the human organism to attain knowledge of the nature, form, and constitution of the human mind. Represented in their publication was a clear transition from a more mechanistic worldview to one that was preeminently organic and vitalistic. In both works, he was obsessed with establishing an overall synthesis of the material and spirit worlds by finding the anatomical and physiological connection between the body and psyche. In many ways, Regnum Animale was simply a continuation of the Oeconomia along the same general lines, gathering together and analyzing the various parts of the body and their connection to the brain. The latter was more of a supplement and a restatement than it was a new direction.76 In the few short years that it took Swedenborg to produce his Oeconomia Regni Animalis and Regnum Animale, he wrote a closely related work titled Introduction to Rational Psychology in 1741, followed by a draft of another manuscript on the brain, the English translation of which was not made until R. L. Tafel published The Brain in 1882–1887. As with his earlier works, Swedenborg pursued this line of investigation believing that he could demonstrate the organic nature of the soul. In carrying out his effort to discover the soul of humanity, he plumbed the wisdom of Aristotle and Plato on such matters as memory and rationality, tried to penetrate the operations of the psyche, recorded and interpreted his dreams, traveled extensively, met Europe’s most renowned scientists and philosophers, and claimed to have experienced psychic visions.

Synthesizing Science and the Spirit Swedenborg’s organic philosophy of nature was especially evident in his human physiological experimentation and observation. Over and over again, he introduced teleological conceptions in place of purely mechanical explanations. Again and again, biological facts and observations were infused with the idea of a nonmaterial “something” that was used to explain an organism’s development. It is probable that Swedenborg’s ecstatic experiences following a period of intense spiritual crisis in the years after 1734 helped to explain and confirm this transformation in his thinking. These experiences gave him assurance that

A Life of the Mind  27

the soul was capable of a more intimate communion with God. Not only was Swedenborg convinced that he had found the solution to Cartesian dualism, but the ecstatic nature of his experiences also gave him a profound appreciation for mystical insight.77 In many ways, Swedenborg harmonized his scientific and religious interests through Neoplatonism. The lower mind (animus) was the operation of the soul in the cortical substance. It was at once a part of the soul and also of the body. It had no innate ideas but acquired everything from the material world. The higher mind (mens) was able to judge things correctly because of its connection with universal wisdom and with innate ideas. In his Spiritual Experiences, Swedenborg made reference to certain occult experiences or hallucinations that gave validity to his ideas and explained that he had arrived at these experiences through control of his breathing. He interpreted his visions as signs of confirmation that he had been correct in his thinking.78 Swedenborg viewed the body as an aggregate of atomic particles working in harmony with the pulse of the universe. Respiration drew into the blood vessels and nerves of the body the spirit that gave rise to the state of the brain or mind. There was a correspondence between the state of the brain and the lungs that had yet to be understood by science. For Swedenborg, there was a direct correlation between respiration and the thoughts and emotions of the individual, between the soul and the body. Led by his own personal muse, Swedenborg did not always work sequentially in either his scientific or his theological pursuits. Nevertheless, what he did was analytical and based on a progression of facts— from the search for the operation of the soul within the body to a greater understanding of the Creator and his creation. Starting with scientific writings and then shifting to theological writings that were both personal and anecdotal, Swedenborg stressed both experience and authority in constructing a cosmology that built on ideas of previous philosophers, ideas that were original to himself, and ideas that came through his communication with the spiritual world. What emerged was a view of divine providence that few could have imagined. Voracious in his assimilation of ideas and anxious to forge a synoptic worldview, he for-

28  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

mulated the concept of a body/soul nexus that involved both the natural and spiritual worlds. In an age when philosophers and scientists were heatedly debating the nature of the connection between the body and the soul, and materialists and vitalists spoke and wrote extensively on these subjects, Swedenborg argued that there was but one power, the Infinite, and that it could not be in any relationship with the finite, which operated under the laws of time and space. For the spirit to be finite there must be two kinds of spirit, the higher and lower, and while the lower ceased to exist when a person died, the higher remained. But how could such a spirit approach the Deity if bound by the laws of space and time? Here Swedenborg introduced the medium of spirits or angels as the intermediaries between the finite and the Infinite.79 The soul was something whose existence was beyond and above its mechanics and geometry; the soul was “in” the substance rather than being the substance itself. In his search for the soul, Swedenborg’s spiritual perspective acquired an ever-larger view. Although governed by mechanical laws and capable of being examined experimentally by mechanics and geometry, and while it was finite and not infinite, nevertheless the soul consisted of the purest elements of nature and could not perish upon death. Instead, it separated itself from the grosser parts of the body and, by the medium of angels, was carried into heaven.80 For Swedenborg, science had both natural and spiritual qualities. God was always to be viewed as the causative factor who, while impossible to measure or calculate, remained imminent in the material universe. In essence, the universe was dualistic, consisting of both interior and exterior components. That which was mental, intuitive, and spiritual was as “real” as that whose physical properties could be measured. Every external event had an interior component that could be reached by Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences, which held that everything in the physical universe represented some aspect of the spiritual. Thus, for Swedenborg, God was a principle in every event and not just in creation; all natural phenomena had causes that were spiritual. Like Jonathan Edwards, who used Newtonian physics to explain how the Creator worked through nature to human beings, Swedenborg

A Life of the Mind  29

looked as well for a natural mechanism to explain how the God of the universe governed nature, including how his spirit and wisdom flowed into the body of a human being, giving it life. This spiritual influx from God enabled the spirituous fluid in a person to live and to follow God’s commands. Rather than rend the fabric of the universe to accomplish his purposes, God worked through the recesses of the cortical glands, making the cortex the instrument of life and vice-regent of the soul. The genius of Swedenborg was in his ability to veil the omniscient wisdom and power of God within the known fabric or material substance of humanity. For both Edwards and Swedenborg, the mystery of the Godhead was suppressed in order to give humanity a firmer understanding of God’s purposes. For both men, God had foresworn his unfathomable mystery by working through the sciences, including medicine, to explain his purpose. Those willing to investigate nature would be able to know the truth.81

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chapter 2

Theological Excursions The Lord created us to be capable of communicating with spirits and angels while still living in our bodies, as people actually did in the earliest times. After all, we are one with spirits and angels. In fact we ourselves are spirits clothed in flesh. —Emanuel Swedenborg

Bridging the natural and spiritual worlds created an elusive challenge for Swedenborg, who sought in various ways to discover the soul in the brain of human beings, thus linking the two worlds. Ultimately, his doctrine of correspondences, evident in rudimentary form in his work On Tremulation and later explained in his Oeconomia Regni Animalis, postulated an analogous relationship between the spiritual and the natural.1 The nexus between the two worlds was by no means easy to comprehend, as Swedenborg once admitted: “Of the transcendent nature of this conjunction there is no analysis and no abstraction that can reach so high . . .”2 Humanity could not reach above its own limits or above the sphere of the human soul without the assistance of more spiritual beings. For a fuller understanding of these hidden truths, Swedenborg had to await his spiritual crisis in 1743–45 and the revelations that supplied

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a unifying vision of the connection between the two worlds. The answers he so long awaited, however, came not in a single insight but over years of cumulative experiences with angels and hosts in the spirit world. Here, Swedenborg saw and learned what he had struggled in vain to understand. He now found humans of the natural world transformed into the Universal Human of heaven, whose organs were composed of communities of countless angels. What were previously the membranes and fibers of the cortical substance now corresponded to the spiritual human being whose soul after death consisted of will and understanding, of love and wisdom. These correspondences, explained Reuben P. Bell in The New Philosophy, will “not be found with the microscope, or teased out of the dissection needle. They are beyond the senses, but may be observed in operation in all things of the universe.”3 Thus, what had once been an obscure and difficult puzzle now became a philosophical truth for those who accepted Swedenborg’s spiritual visions and revelations. Scientific analysis and philosophical reasoning had brought natural human beings only so far in understanding the Divine. The fullness of knowledge could only come through revelation— the spiritual extension of humanity’s telescope into the heavens. Revealed truth formed the final capstone to humanity’s understanding of the Divine. In 1745, the same year the third and final part of his Regnum Animale was printed, Swedenborg also published Worship and Love of God, which explained his vision of the way everything began and ended with God. Beginning with a description of creation, Swedenborg proceeded to describe the origination of earth, the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the creation of the first man; Adam’s marriage to Eve; and then to the soul, the mind, and the image of God. Swedenborg posited a theory of spontaneous generation that extended to the universe and its contents, along with the constant or ontological presence of the Creator.4 In all of Swedenborg’s writings one sees a steady climb from the mundane to the spiritual, from the sciences to natural theology, and through it all, an acceptance of biblical revelation. Until 1745, at the age of fifty-seven, almost all of his writings were a representation of this slow but steady ascension. Knowledge rested on a combination of sci-

32  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

ence, nature, and revelation. After 1745, Swedenborg emancipated himself to the otherworldly and, aided by memory, continued his pursuit of knowledge by conversing with spirits, experiencing visions and dreams, and breathing inward to live and communicate among the angels. From then until his death in 1772, he wrote more than forty volumes on theology, some of which were published and many left in manuscript form.5 Swedenborg’s crisis years became the foundation for his later works. What he strove to prove through scientific observation, experimentation, and induction would now be confirmed through a more personal, internal communication with angels. He did not reject his earlier opinions or view them as antithetical; rather, they were validated using an enhanced, if not an inspired, approach to knowledge—angelic communication. Much of what he wrote in this theological phase of his life was done anonymously and in Latin, with many of his closest friends unaware of his secret life and otherworldly experiences. During this time, he worked alone in a secluded summer cottage on his property. As his works circulated among learned society and news of his authorship was revealed, Swedenborg found himself challenged to maintain a balance between the spiritual world that he intensely savored and a more public existence. With his reputation as a thoughtful scientist preceding him, and with a growing number of sympathizers, he continued with his mission to unfold the mysteries of the Bible beyond the conventional beliefs of the time. Eventually, these mystical revelations became the cornerstone of the New Jerusalem Church.6

Dark Night of the Soul The completion of Swedenborg’s transition from philosopher to theologian came during a dramatic spiritual crisis in the spring of 1745 when traveling in London. Described in his Spiritual Experiences (published posthumously), he heard a male voice telling him not to eat too much, followed by a vision in which a vapor was expelled from his body and turned to tiny worms, which then burned before his eyes.7 Following this event, he professed to have had his senses opened directly into the spirit world, allowing him to converse with angels and devils, from whom he came to have a new understanding of Scripture. This privilege,

Theological Excursions  33

which began in his fifty-seventh year and which differed from the rapturous experiences of earlier mystics, lasted more than twenty-seven years. During this period of his life he addressed the nature of heaven and hell, regeneration, correspondences, faith, charity, marriage, the nature of God, the nature of evil, divine providence, and free will. He likewise claimed to pass along messages from the dead received during visits to heaven and, also while traveling in the spiritual realms, to have conversed with the inhabitants of Mercury and Jupiter (who were supposedly disposed to the doctrines of New Church); Mars and Saturn (heretics and apostates); Venus (giants in stature); and the Moon (people small in stature with no written language). Finally, he claimed to have traveled beyond the solar system via the spiritual realms and conversed with the spirits residing on planets of distant suns.8 In these experiences, Swedenborg concluded that the inclinations that had been in him since early youth were now visible. He accepted the responsibility thrust upon him “for opening those things which are hidden interiorly in the Word of God-Messiah.”9 His method of reaching understanding began with closing his eyes and relaxing; slowing his breathing; diminishing his awareness of the world about him, including his bodily sensations; and concentrating his entire being on the problem at hand. His first experiences with this intensified inner experience began as a child during his morning and evening prayers. During his early fifties, as he studied the anatomy of the brain in an effort to find the locus of the soul, he found himself once again meditating and in deep thought as he looked inward to better understand the operations of the mind. In this manner of meditation, he found it possible to deal best with the spheres of thought that held his attention. Intent on describing what he saw and experienced, he acted in the role of a phenomenological psychologist. In the process of meditation, he recounted having experienced photism, or mental flashes of light consisting of different colors and strengths, which he concluded were there to confirm what he was thinking as true. He attributed these flashes of light to having attained special insight beyond the strict empiricism he knew and practiced as an engineer and scientist.10 Eventually, Swedenborg’s meditations morphed into a hypnagogic state of dreams and waking visions where he found himself poised in

34  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

a delicate balance between self-awareness and inner processes. In this state, he was able to talk, remember, and even record his actions. In time, he went beyond this state and into trances which were even more intense, where the body’s awareness was much less apparent. Swedenborg himself interpreted his dreams and waking visions as truths received from God; later commentators drew a variety of conclusions about their significance and their role in his spiritual development.11 Swedenborg used the terms correspondences and representations to describe the symbolic relationship between the natural and the divine. Every natural thing had a spiritual counterpart, and this, in turn, became a representation of the Divine. He had originally insisted that one arrived at correspondences through reason and logic,12 but increasingly he relied on his waking visions, dreams, and auditions involving angels and evil spirits. He saw the spirit and natural worlds as commingled rather than separate and distinct. Most humans were unaware of this commingling, living as they did immersed in physical sensations; nevertheless some, like Christian Scriver (1629–1693), leader of the German pietists; the Shakers; the mid-nineteenth century communitarian group in Brockton, New York; and the Ebenezer Society of Iowa and West Seneca had learned to communicate with the spirit world just as he had, using “internal breathing.” Swedenborg explained in his Journal of Dreams (1743–1744) that he was able to take notice of and communicate with spirits in the form of dreams which he could recount in great detail. These dreams were both erotic and fearful, a combination of temptation, sexual passion, anxiety, and despair, after which he found himself in God’s grace and serving as his instrument. The contents of these diaries are reminiscent of those written by contemporary Puritans and other devoutly religious of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who used the pages to mark the contours of their beliefs, the despair of being out of touch with God, and the bliss that came (if it came) from saving grace. Swedenborg’s diary was filled with dreams that captured the impurities of his thoughts, the deepness of his sense of unworthiness, and the alternating feelings of despair and ecstasy. Like a good diarist, he followed the record of these events and the intensity of his feelings, hoping to discover a trend or direction in his soul’s odyssey. “I do not will to be my

Theological Excursions  35

own,” he confessed, “I am certain of it, and believe that Thou, O God, lettest me be Thine, all my life long, and that Thou dost not take away Thy Holy Spirit from me, which Strengthens and upholds me.”13 When his dream diary was first published in English in 1860, many fixated on the sexual nature of the dreams as a pretext to critiquing the man and his historical significance. Left missing by Swedenborg’s detractors was the fact that his generation was much less drawn into the drama of sexual repression as the later Victorians who attacked him. Indeed, the passions were to be enjoyed, if not celebrated, rather than be denied, as any reading of the eighteenth-century love manuals and advice books suggested. His passions for women were of no great significance to those of his own generation who saw venery as a natural outlet, if not a welcome enjoyment. As Swedenborg proceeded to write about the spirits who communicated with him, critics viewed this behavior as the sign of a sick mind. That someone could play such an important role in the fields of algebra, astronomy, physiology, physics, crystallography, and mineralogy and then switch to communications with a world of spirits seemed only possible if some physical condition were affecting his mind. On the other hand, supporters saw Swedenborg’s new focus as a prophetic calling, believing that his lifetime of intellectual and spiritual development had prepared the way for this new vocation. Among contemporaries and later commentators alike, Swedenborg’s writings and revelations have been interpreted as the product of epileptic seizures, a psychosis, or worse. The issue was raised as early as 1744 when John Paul Brockmer, a Londoner in whose house Swedenborg lodged, claimed that he had seen the Swede foam at the mouth, run naked into the street, and call himself the Messiah.14 Later, English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley (1835–1918) diagnosed Swedenborg as having developed a messianic psychosis in middle life; he considered Swedenborg to be suffering from monomania, possibly due to epilepsy.15 Other researchers explained Swedenborg’s dramatic switch from a life of science to one of mysticism as the result of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), a condition in which the afflicted person experiences symptoms such as sensations of déjà vu or jamais vu (feelings of familiarity or un-

36  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

familiarity), visual or auditory hallucinations, intense feelings of fear or euphoria, uncontrollable movements, and inability to respond to others during seizures. Temporal lobe epilepsy has also been attributed to visionaries like St. Paul, Muhammad, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This diagnosis was made on the basis of Swedenborg’s own description of the sensations he experienced when purportedly in contact with the spiritual realms.16 There came over me a shuddering, so strong from the head downwards and over the whole body with a noise of thunder, and this happened several times. . . . I then fell into a sleep and at about 12:00, 1:00 or 2:00 . . . there came over me a strong shuddering from head to foot, with a thundering noise as if many winds beat together: which shook me; it was indescribable and prostrated me on my face . . . at the very moment I was wide awake and saw that I was cast down . . . and I spoke as if I were awake: but found nonetheless that the words were put into my mouth. “And oh! Almighty Jesus Christ, that thou . . . deigned to come to so great a sinner. Make me worthy of thy grace.” I held together my hands, and prayed, and then came forth a hand, which squeezed my hands hard. Straightaway . . . I continued my prayer and said, “Thou hast promised to take to grace all sinners; thou canst nothing else but keep thy word.” At that moment, I sat in his bosom, and saw him face to face . . . 17

However, Swedenborg’s descriptions of his experiences also differed from typical TLE sufferers in several significant ways. A TLE seizure generally lasts anywhere from several seconds to several minutes, whereas Swedenborg’s visions persisted for hours. TLE is often associated with memory problems, especially when the victim suffers from seizures for more than five years, and in a majority of cases it is also the prelude to a convulsive (grand mal) seizure—neither of which Swedenborg reported. In general, TLEs rarely coincide with decades of useful productivity. Although there was a history of claims that nonhuman spirits had intervened in human affairs, the idea of deceased human spirits communicating with living human beings formed a vital part of Swedenborg’s spiritual journey. In this sense, he ranked as the first seer for whom communication with the spirits of those who formerly lived on

Theological Excursions  37

earth was a natural phenomenon. Swedenborg also believed in multiple heavens and hells—or, more precisely, that heaven and hell were each made up of many levels and realms—and considered his communication with those worlds a special gift to him alone; it was not something that other human beings could evoke on whim. Understandably, then, the followers of Swedenborg distrusted the claims of later Spiritualists and refused to recognize any additional revelations or prophecies beyond those made by their seer.18 Having been “intromitted” into heaven by Jesus himself, a miracle that no other human had ever experienced, Swedenborg found himself with the opportunity to converse with his own relations and friends, kings and dukes, and learned men, as well as with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Rebecca, Moses, Aaron, and the Apostles.19 The early fathers of the church claimed to have had similar communications, but this practice evidently died out by the middle of the third century. According to the Reverend Thomas Hartley, a contemporary of Swedenborg’s and an early convert to his teachings, the loss of this gift occurred when “Christianity suffered her faith to be corrupted by the impure mixtures of heathenish philosophy.” This, along with growing disbelief in the spiritual side of the natural world, spread among all classes and was made worse by the pleasures which chained the mind to the senses. Outward pleasures trumped consideration of inward spiritual things. Thus the wisdom once available from God had been replaced by the “willful blindness” of those who purposively chose darkness. What hindered conversation with angels was humankind’s own unbelief and unfitness for such company. As a result, explained Hartley, the Lord became “more sparing of his benefits and gifts to his church than in former times.”20 The dreams and visions that led Swedenborg to renewed biblical study resulted in a feeling that he had been chosen not to reveal a new Word but to make the existing Word better understood by subsequent generations. In this manner he was “the herald of a new dispensation of Christianity.”21 These visionary experiences became an integral part of his theology and the vehicle in which he was able to address biblical exegesis and revelation. Convinced that the Bible was too difficult for ordinary mortals to comprehend, he sought to uncover its wisdom through his personal communication with the angelic world.22

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Around the time that Swedenborg started to become known for his spiritual writings, he also received considerable notoriety for his clairvoyant knowledge. The first instance occurred in 1759 when he reported on a fire in Stockholm, some 250 miles from Gothenburg, where he was dining with some friends. Swedenborg was able to give his companions details on the progress of the fire—which was endangering Swedenborg’s own home—and when and where it was extinguished, as well as specific details as to its damage. The next day those details were confirmed by couriers from Stockholm. The second event took place in 1761 and involved Madame de Marteville, widow to Louis de Marteville (1701–1760), the Dutch ambassador to Sweden. She had been served with a bill which her husband had allegedly failed to pay before his death. Swedenborg reportedly contacted the spirit of the dead husband, who conveyed that the receipt on the bill could be found behind a particular drawer in the ambassador’s cabinet. (In an alternative version of the story, the ambassador appeared to his wife in a dream and gave her the information directly. The following day, Swedenborg visited Madame de Marteville and told her that he had tried to contact her husband in the spirit world but that the ambassador refused, simply saying that he had to go and tell his wife something.) The third event also occurred in 1761 and involved Queen Louisa Ulrika (1720–1782) of Sweden, who requested that Swedenborg contact the spirit of her deceased younger brother, Augustus Wilhelm, crown prince of Prussia (1722–1758). In a private audience, Swedenborg relayed a message from her brother that the queen claimed was a secret only known by her and her brother.23 All of these occurrences were investigated by many at the time, including Immanuel Kant, who had a genuine interest in Spiritualism but attributed Swedenborg’s claims to a combination of vanity, fabrications, and self-delusion. Nevertheless, Swedenborg found himself in the uncomfortable position of being asked to act on behalf of certain individuals as a communicator between the spiritual and natural worlds.24

Secrets of Heaven In 1747, at the age of fifty-nine, Swedenborg resigned from the Board of Mines and returned to London, where he began writing and publishing

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his theological magnum opus, Secrets of Heaven (also known as Arcana Coelestia). From 1749 to 1756, eight volumes were eventually published, amounting to more than 4,500 pages. Thus began the author’s theological phase, in which he wrote commentary upon the books of the Old and New Testaments and carried on a dual existence in both the natural world and his new spiritual world of communing spirits. Secrets of Heaven constituted a spiritual exposition of Genesis and Exodus, plus descriptions of his visionary experiences of heaven and hell. In it, he addressed such subjects as Christian religion, conjugal love, divine love, divine providence, angelic wisdom, the Apocalypse, human regeneration, the glorification of Jesus Christ, and heaven and hell. The Word (i.e., the speech of God) and the works of God (objects of nature) were brought together, showing the relationships between the natural and spiritual spheres and illustrating the full wisdom behind creation. Each sphere was intended for a specific use, yet all were one in soul and therefore part of the divine equation. The Word—which in Swedenborg’s writings referred not only to the Bible but to spiritual teachings within the Bible that predated and transcended the book itself—taught truths to the natural world as well as to all other spiritual spheres through a combination of history and symbolic correspondences.25 One of the key aspects of Secrets of Heaven—one that would eventually draw the greatest attention from both critics and admirers—was Swedenborg’s description of heaven and hell. Since biblical references to heaven and hell were cryptic at best, Christians indulged in a great deal of speculation about these other worlds. Two of the most popular and influential depictions of the afterlife were written by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), who provided vivid, detailed descriptions of both heaven and hell, and English poet John Milton (1608– 1674), who took his seventeenth-century readers on a similar tour of the spheres above the earth. Both poets described the resurrection of the body and either eternal damnation or an eternal life with Christ, who had likewise ascended into heaven following his crucifixion. For most Christians, heaven was the dwelling place of God and his chosen people.26 Swedenborg believed these spiritual worlds differed for every individual. Each person realized in these worlds the essential nature of his

40  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

or her particular psychological and spiritual existence. This gave these worlds a quality very different from that described in Scripture or by Dante and Milton. Having failed to discover the soul in his anatomical experiments, Swedenborg discovered it in the continuation of life in another state within the ether. In their transformed state, individuals discovered who they really were and drifted towards the spiritual world that best matched their inner character. Stripped of their bodies, each followed that which reflected his or her basic disposition or tendency.27 It was common among Christian believers to accept the existence of angels and demons (fallen angels), but those beings were perceived as having been created separately from humans. By contrast, Swedenborg conceived of a spiritual universe which surrounded the physical universe, and that within and around each planet, as explained by Swedenborgian William H. Holcombe in Our Children in Heaven (1868), there was “a spiritual orb composed of spiritual substance and full of spiritual inhabitants.”28 Angels and devils had not been separately created by God as more developed forms of spiritual beings but were human beings who, after death, had passed from the natural world into the spiritual world. Although the living had no conscious dealings with these spiritual communities, angels continued to be near the living, who were helped and strengthened by their presence. They were “our constant, though unseen companions,” wrote James Reed, author of Swedenborg and the New Church (1880). There was no reason to believe they were a superior race of beings, since they all belonged to the family of humanity. The spiritual world was always near, with its inhabitants in regular attendance upon humankind. In later decades, positing this close connection made it easy for mediums to proclaim their ability to contact the spiritual world.29 Following death, the soul did not pass directly to heaven or hell; there was an intermediate stage which Swedenborg called the world of spirits. After death, the soul was awakened by angels into a new, spiritual body that, at least at first, appeared exactly identical to the person’s earthly body. In the world of spirits, good was separated from evil, and the departed soul took on its true essence. “When we first enter the world of spirits,” Swedenborg wrote in his treatise on Heaven and Hell (1758), “our spirit has a similar face and tone of voice as it did in the

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world. . . . Later, though, our face changes and becomes quite different. It comes to look like the ruling affection in which the deeper reaches of our minds were engaged in the world . . . because the face of our spirit is very different from the face of our body.”30 Heaven consisted of all who had once lived in the universe and its plurality of worlds. This diversity was part of heaven’s beauty, giving these spiritual worlds a sense of a graduated series of perfections.31 That which was seen or experienced in these spiritual worlds was but a representation of one’s inner experiences. If one had lived in a spiritually rich inner state, then the spiritual world became a reflection of that state, with the quality of each and every angel being determined by his or her own good. “Every angel accepts the heaven that is outside in keeping with the heaven that is within,” wrote Swedenborg.32 Furthermore, when angels were with those like themselves, they were in their utmost freedom and in full delight of their heavenly life. The people of heaven wore garments, lived in houses surrounded by gardens and fields, and worshipped in temples. Viewed collectively, the entire angelic society appeared as one in a human form. Swedenborg referred to this human form as the Universal Human, sometimes translated “Grand Man.” Swedenborg conversed with numerous angels, sometimes singly and at times in company with many others. He noted that they could not be seen with earthly eyes but only with the eyes of the spirit that were within. Only through a knowledge of correspondences was a person’s spiritual world visible in his or her natural world. The Word of God was written by pure correspondences. In this manner the natural world was conjoined with the spiritual world. In Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg described hell as a place where discord reigned. Upon death, the soul that was consumed with selflove gravitated downward, dragged down by the impure thoughts, hatred, pride, egotism, and lust that the living being had loved while in the world. Thus bound, it haunted its old and remembered places. In hell there was no sun, and, except for the type of illumination that came from coal fires, the inhabitants roamed in darkness. It was a land of bogs, fens, and tangled forests, where spirits lusted after the delights of evil. While the spiritual levels of heaven tended toward gradual perfection, hell was quite the opposite, where the evil individual received

42  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

good but converted it into more evil. Where good souls eventually became the angels in heaven, the evil became the devils who tormented others in hell.33 Despite Kant’s description of Secrets of Heaven as “sheer nonsense,”34 the eight quarto volumes, along with Heaven and Hell, influenced such thinkers as Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Coleridge, William Blake, Carl Gustav Jung, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Henry James Sr., Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Helen Keller, among others. Together with Swedenborg’s other theological works, they provided readers with an eyewitness account of the spirit world that encompassed both the internal spiritual world and the external world of nature. The sense that, through his many theological works, Swedenborg had brought closure to so many unanswered questions from Scripture gave him an extraordinary influence over the literary elite as well as over the personal lives of many troubled Christians.35

Universal Human The picture that Swedenborg painted of the spiritual world was that of many realms which “are not beyond the borders of what is generally called the visible world” and which stand to each other in “a relationship of correspondence,” wrote German theologian and historian Ernst Benz. Each soul “released from this lower earth immediately after death” reached this realm through “a process of stage-by-stage spiritualization.” The heavenly kingdom consisted of numerous communities working in harmony and grouped on the principle of association, i.e., each group attracting those who were most alike. “So a man becomes after death what he inmostly is,” explained Benz, “his inner form develops more fully and accurately, and his inner being moulds his spiritual body in this new form of existence ever more completely, so that the external and internal are in perfect correspondence.” Each of these individual communities of redeemed spirits then joined together in harmony as a community of love which, in the human form, represented the “Universal Human” which was heaven itself.36 In Swedenborg’s vision of the Universal Human, the various angelic societies were arranged to correspond to the anatomy of a human being. Some were in the head, while others were in the arms, chest, and vital

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systems of the body. “The communities which are in a particular member, then,” Swedenborg explained, “correspond to the like member in a human being.” Those in the Universal Human who corresponded to the head were “supremely involved in everything good . . . in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, intelligence, and therefore in delight and happiness.” Those who were in the breast were in “the qualities of thoughtfulness and faith.” Those in the loins and generative organs were “in marriage love.” Those in the mouth and tongue corresponded to understanding and perception, while those in the kidneys corresponded with the searching and separating of truth.37 People with genuine faith in the Lord formed the centerpiece of the human race—both on earth and in heaven—and represented the breast of the Universal Human and the focus of vision.38 The role of the historical churches (including pre-Christian faiths) was to contain within their bounds those who believed in the Word. While it was not essential for all to be Christian, it was necessary for the individual to “turn away from self-love and open up to the influx of selfless love and wisdom.” That act of selfless love had been the manifestation of the historical Christ.39

Correspondences One of Swedenborg’s contributions to Christian thinking—building on the foundation laid by Hermetic and Kabbalist thinkers such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535), Paracelsus (1493–1541), Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522), Jakob Boehme, and others—was the doctrine of correspondences. “The whole natural world is responsive to the spiritual world—the natural world not just in general, but in detail,” wrote Swedenborg in Heaven and Hell. “So whatever arises in the natural world out of the spiritual one is called ‘something that corresponds.’ It needs to be realized that the natural world arises from and is sustained in being by the spiritual world, exactly the way an effect relates to its efficient cause.”40 The use of correspondences had originated in ancient Egypt and Asia and migrated into early Christianity from a variety of mythologies that imprinted themselves on the Mediterranean world and allowed individuals to attain an end that

44  Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind/Body Connection

corresponded to the manner in which they conducted their earthly affairs.41 It was a concept that included both analogy and differences, existing as a timeless theme in the face of an ever-changing world.42 Starting in Oeconomia Regni Animalis, Swedenborg adopted the concept of correspondences as a means of introducing the relationship of the natural world to the spiritual world and showing how the spiritual intent of the Scripture became revealed to humanity. Over time, it became one of the more important components of Swedenborg’s approach to knowledge. Although he insisted that correspondences were to be understood through rational methods and not through any form of occultism, it was apparent to many of his followers that this knowledge had come to Swedenborg during moments of inner respiration.43 Any of us who are unaware that the Word has a spiritual meaning, like a soul within its body, have nothing else to judge the Word by except its literal meaning. Yet the literal meaning is like a case that contains the precious objects of the spiritual meaning. When we are unaware of the spiritual meaning, we cannot judge the divine holiness of the Word any more than we could judge a precious stone on the basis of the ore that envelops it, which sometimes looks very ordinary. . . . Therefore to prevent people from doubting that the Word is divine and most holy, the Lord has revealed to me its inner meaning, a meaning that is essentially spiritual and exists within its outer, earthly meaning like a soul in a body. The inner meaning is the spirit that brings the letter to life. The inner meaning has the power to prove even to our earthly self that the Word is divine and holy—provided we are willing to be convinced.44

The universal principle inherent in the term correspondence meant that the natural world was obedient to the spiritual world and that the actions of worldly bodies, when properly understood, became omens, instructions, or warnings of the otherworldly. All events had a natural as well as a spiritual significance.45 Knowledge of the doctrine of correspondences explained the relation between the natural world and the spiritual world, and of the laws that governed them. Based not upon poetic fancy but upon reality, it was one of the more beautiful truths in Swedenborg’s theology, as it enabled people to find the spiritual sense of the world for themselves. It was how revelation of the Word was re-

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ceived and taught. It existed to enable individuals to see with their own eyes that which God had revealed and on which they could rely. It was the relation that existed from creation between the effects in the natural world and their efficient causes in the spiritual world. Further, it was a strictly natural order, having been imprinted by the Creator. This meant that every voluntary action of the body was the effect of some spiritual cause. In addition, Swedenborg taught that in the universe at large, there was a relationship between everything natural and spiritual. The spiritual universe dominated and animated the natural universe in the same manner that the human spirit animated the human body.46 Through the doctrine of correspondences, Swedenborg provided a system for interpreting the Scriptures that enabled readers to understand the Bible’s hidden meanings. Now, through illumination, one could see the proper relationship between spiritual causes and the material forms in which they were embodied. There were no meaningless words, accounts, or contradictions in Scripture. The obscure was made plain and what before was invisible was now revealed in its essential relationship with the Divine. Swedenborg, with divine assistance, had enabled humankind to understand the Word of the Lord. The Bible was a pastoral story or literal parable within which existed a spiritual revelation. Swedenborg’s theory posited the idea of macrocosm as visible in microcosm, i.e., all natural things were thought to be representative of eternal reality and therefore have a mystical or spiritual meaning—all parts of a greater, all-embracing Divine. Swedenborg viewed the spiritual and material worlds as places of universal progressions and developments. This notion implied a harmony between the immortal soul and human consciousness. One need only imagine Jacob’s ladder consisting of all manner of forms with a hierarchical scale emanating from the Divine and descending through various levels of consciousness to the petrified life of a stone.

Other Writings Swedenborg’s Secrets of Heaven and Heaven and Hell were followed by nearly twenty other publications, including Divine Love and Wisdom (1763), Divine Providence (1764), Apocalypse Revealed (1766), Marriage Love (1768), and True Christianity (1771). Each of these latter works

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represented developments of theological interpretations and revealed correspondences that Swedenborg had discovered in the previous decades. In them he sketched out the clarified doctrines and ideas that explained the Lord’s purpose. Using Greek and Hebrew texts, he made his own translations of Scripture to explain the theology of true Christianity—what he called the Church of the New Jerusalem, or simply New Church. Although he did not discount any literal interpretation of Scripture, it was clear to him that the foundations of what he determined to be the new theology were based upon an influx of the “inner sense” of the Word which had been specially revealed to him by the Lord and by heavenly spirits.47 In Apocalypse Revealed, which Swedenborg wrote in 1766 and distributed to clergy and university libraries throughout Europe, he provided an interpretation of the book of Revelation, recorded the transformation of the Christian Church in the spiritual world, and narrated the divine judgment on the various churches, including that of the papacy.48 Swedenborg saw the Last Judgment not as an earthly event which was to occur in the future, but as a metaphysical event which happened in the spiritual realms in 1757. It was the beginning of the fifth of the spiritual ages of humanity, or “churches,” which Swedenborg had described in his commentary on the Bible. The “Most Ancient Church” was Swedenborg’s term for the first of these spiritual ages, and it began with the God’s creation of Adam—who, in Swedenborg’s correspondential view of the Bible, stood for humanity in general. The Most Ancient Church represented a time when people communicated with the Lord by way of influx, or direct internal reception of divine love and truth. The first church ended with the Flood, a symbol of the evil that resulted when humanity allowed its connection to God to decay from lack of use. The second church, called the “Ancient Church” or “Noachian Church,” began in the aftermath of the Flood, but having also become consumed in evil, was replaced at the promulgation of the Ten Commandments with the “Israelite” or “Jewish” Church, which, in turn, was replaced by the Christian Church at the time of the Apostles.49 It was the Christian Church that continued until the overcrowding of spirits in hell led to the Last Judgment, which took place in 1757. Swe-

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denborg claimed that the purging of evil from the Christian Church, to which he alone had been witness, occurred in the spiritual world.50 The Last Judgment of 1757 marked the beginning of a “New Church,” first established in the spiritual world and succeeding the Christian Church in much the same fashion that the latter did the Jewish Church.51 In order to assist in the Second Coming of the Lord, a more spiritual New Church organized to interpret Scripture and to correct the dogmatic errors of the older Christian Church.52 Founded upon new revelations, the New Church expressed an exaggerated sense of its own importance. In addition, it existed within a perceptual set of affirmations that included opposition to ruthless competition and a belief in the truths found in both science and the Bible. Other differences also existed, including an ethical injunction that involved not only individual ethics but collective ethics as well, resulting in an “altruistic unity” that covered all of human relations. A human being in the afterlife stood out as “a perfect, complete, conscious, rational being.” Humans were not simply an accident of evolution, but the “ultimate factor of creation.” As a result of the Last Judgment, fresh powers had been passed on to humanity along with a widened intelligence. A new age was upon the world, made known by the works of Swedenborg.

Challenges During the latter decades of Swedenborg’s life, his theological publications were distributed to libraries and universities in England, Holland, France, Germany, and Sweden, where they were read with much interest. Although they contained views regarded as divergent from Catholicism and Protestant orthodoxy, few protested. No doubt the lack of opposition stemmed in part from the author’s use of Latin, which meant that Swedenborg’s ideas were unlikely to reach the general church-going population. Gradually, however, Swedenborg’s writings gained attention in his native country, and Swedish translations of Swedenborg’s ideas filtered among groups of readers who discussed and debated his heterodoxy. Among the Swedish clergy who read his works, many challenged them as inconsistent with the teachings of the Lutheran church.53 Two cases in particular finally sparked legal action on the part of the Lutheran orthodoxy: a Swedish translation of a German review of

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Apocalypse Revealed published by poet, editor, and secondary-school teacher Johan Rosén, and a book based on Swedenborg’s teachings written by a professor of Greek and theology at Gothenburg, Dr. Gabriel A. Beyer. In 1768, the Consistory of Gothenburg—a group of senior Lutheran clergy operating under the authority of the bishop—met to compare Swedenborg’s doctrines with those of Luther to determine whether his writings were unbiblical, heterodox, and inconsistent with binding doctrines. One major detractor was the dean of the consistory, Olaf A. Ekebom, who viewed the writings as “corrupting, heretical, injurious, and in the highest degree objectionable.” Ekebom attacked Swedenborg for “badly and perversely” explaining Scripture; for claiming that the Scriptures could not be understood except by correspondences; abusing “with gross contempt” the idea of justification by faith alone; and undermining the very foundations of the Christian religion.54 The chief attorney in the legal prosecution of Beyer and Rosén, Assessor Andrew John Aurell of Gothenburg, entreated the Consistory to “eradicate the Swedenborgian innovation.”55 Responding in his own defense, Beyer called his accusers “zealous dogmatists” who cleaved to the letter and who were “timid and afraid of finding a ghost in every line.” Ungrounded in philology, they had not the patience to read and study Scripture with any real depth. Beyer insisted that there was “an undeniable conformity between [Swedenborg’s] doctrines and the real meaning of God’s word” and found nothing in his writings that conflicted with the Scripture.56 In 1770, the Royal Council rendered a verdict against Beyer and Rosén and directed Swedenborg’s many clerical supporters to cease using his teachings. The dispute, however, did not end with the Council’s verdict. Swedenborg appealed to King Adolf Frederick, and the matter was sent to the Götha Court of Appeals, which ordered several universities to undertake a study of Swedenborg’s ideas. However, the universities were reluctant to participate in the study due in part to their sympathy with Swedenborg’s writings and their desire not to embarrass the Consistory. The result was a stalemate that continued to drag on for years after Swedenborg’s death in 1772.57 It can be argued that Swedenborg’s problems with the Lutheran Church were not so much that he had wandered into the heterodox-

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ies of rationalism, agnosticism, secularism, positivism, or Unitarianism, but that he was seen as giving dubious credence and social status to religious enthusiasm. The rationalistic overtones and materialistic underpinnings of Cartesianism gave little tolerance to views that incorporated unorthodox religious zeal and the hubris of special insight, a situation that helps to explain the early tensions between Methodism and the Anglican Church. Swedenborg’s theology, viewed as an antidote to the skepticism of the age, seemed threatening to the more conventional Protestant polity. Both Leibniz and Newton had gone through similar transitions from the science of nature to that of the spiritual world and revelation. All three devoted their later years to theology and Scriptural prophecies. What makes Swedenborg’s quest distinctive is his claim that he “was not permitted to be taught even by any angel, but by the Lord alone while reading the Word.”58 Not surprisingly, Swedenborg’s writings became a hotbed of religious discourse, taking hold among members of the university intelligentsia, scientists, scholars, aristocracy, and clergy in Protestant circles in England and on the Continent. Notwithstanding this lively discourse, his writings were ridiculed in those countries where Lutheranism or Catholicism were the state religions. Those who objected to Swedenborg’ writings noted that he had rejected nearly half of Scripture (Ruth, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ester, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. The New Testament was rejected in its entirety with the exception of the four Gospels and the book of Revelation). Critics also accused him of using the doctrine of correspondences to present his own mystical interpretations, many of which they claimed lacked consistency or certainty. Others objected to his teachings because he denied the Christian doctrine of the Trinity; denied that angels were an order of beings distinct from human beings; denied the doctrine of predestination or election; denied the atonement and intercession of Christ; and denied justification by faith. He also supported the idea that the soul’s judgment came not from God but from the self. Despite the criticism, the appeal of Swedenborg’s thought was as broad as it was deep. For one thing, Swedenborg’s writings soothed a raw nerve in orthodox Christianity by offering more understandable explanations for doctrines that had outlived their time, including that

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of the Triune God. Swedenborg was more of a Unitarian than a Trinitarian. Yet, for those to whom the age of the Enlightenment had left a feeling of coldness and sterile objectivity, he brought a warmth and a passion to the discussion of God and the soul. His communications with the heavens gave substance to the location and dimension of the spiritual world and the nature of its angelic beings; contributed new life and insight into the hidden meanings behind certain verses in Scripture; enlarged the capacity of humanity to achieve an inward illumination and an inner harmony with God; imparted confidence that the soul had the capacity for improvement even after death; consoled parents whose children had died at birth or at a young age that all children had a special place in the invisible world; and offered an appealing explanation of marriage that was both physical and celestial in nature. In essence, the New Church represented a modification and enlargement of the Christian faith by building a connection between science and revealed religion.

The Diaspora Just as the state church of Sweden blocked the organization of New Church in the land of its originator, so did the Lutheran Church in Germany. There, Immanuel Kant’s Träume eines Geistersehers (Dreams of a Spirit-Seer), published in 1766, leveled contempt and ridicule against Swedenborg’s Secrets of Heaven, contending that it was “utterly empty of the last drop of reason.”59 The vehemence of this attack may have been due in part to Kant’s abandoning the tenets of his early education. Proud of “shedding the old skin of Scholastic Supernaturalism,” explained Ernst Benz, Kant expressed the “general mood and attitude of the rationalist generation of German philosophers” who viewed Swedenborg as “an arch fanatic and a fool.”60 What was omitted from Kant’s caricature was the scientific Swedenborg, the man who had pioneered in mathematics, physics, astronomy, metallurgy, and so many other disciplines. Kant’s interpretation painted Swedenborg as a fanatic and thus an unwelcome inspirer of German thought. Gregory R. Johnson, editor and co-translator of Kant on Swedenborg (2002), argued that Swedenborg influenced Kant in several ways. First, Swedenborg offered a dualistic interpretation of the cosmos, di-

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viding it into spiritual and material worlds, claiming that human life existed in both worlds. This was foreshadowed in Kant’s explanation of the phenomenal (material) and noumenal (spiritual) worlds in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Second, Swedenborg’s clairvoyant visions of events distant in space and time conformed with Kant’s later argument in Critique of Pure Reason that space and time were transcendental “forms” that made intuition (i.e., paranormal phenomena) a possibility. Third, Swedenborg saw people as living in both the spiritual and material worlds, finding themselves in a conflict between the passions that governed their material bodies and the moral law. This, according to Johnson, anticipated Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and his Critique of Practical Reason (1758), which voiced concerns for humanity’s divided nature, i.e., “the moral law’s status as an influx from the noumenal to the phenomenal self, and the requirement of acting upon ‘duty for duty’s sake’ if one’s actions are to be truly moral.” Fourth, Swedenborg’s depiction of the spirit world became a model for Kant’s “kingdom of ends” in his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and of the afterlife in his Critique of Practical Reason. Fifth, Swedenborg’s use of correspondences and symbolic interpretations (called “signatures” by Kant and his contemporaries) of Scriptural passages motivated the hermeneutics used by Kant to explain the intelligible world. And sixth, in response to a desire to separate Swedenborg’s true visions from those that were more fanciful, Kant’s anthropological writings of the 1760s represented an effort to distinguish cosmological and metaphysical issues from the more corrupting aspects of human reason, such as the errors of the extreme rationalist-empiricist dichotomy.61 Although Swedenborg was neither quoted nor referenced by the disciples of the new rationalism, he was nonetheless eagerly read by many German idealists, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854), who sought to continue the tradition of Jakob Boehme, Franz von Baader (1765– 1841), Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling (1740–1817), and Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801). “Having been condemned by German Scholastic philosophy,” wrote Benz, “Swedenborg became the teacher of the ‘Outsiders,’ who became the creators of the philosophy, poetry, and religion of the next one hundred years.”62

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Benz further explained that the fate of Swedenborg’s reception in Germany was a mixed bag of contentiousness and respect. The initial dissemination of his ideas occurred in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, during a period when English and French philosophy had become dominant in Western thinking. His influence, however, failed to affect professional philosophers in the German universities, who had drunk deep of rationalism. Instead, Swedenborg’s breakthrough in Germany came by way of pietism, the new Theosophy movement, and the leaders of Revivalism. Among this group of sympathetic adherents was Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782) of Tübingen, a pietist and founder of Swabian Theosophy.63 Author of Swedenborg’s Earthly and Heavenly Philosophy, and Those of Other Authors, Exposed to the Light of Truth, in Order to Find the Best (1765), Oetinger was from the apocalyptic school of thought, viewing the world as following a precise plan of divine redemption and salvation, with the Holy Spirit an active and consequential principle intervening in space and time. For Oetinger, revelation was not just a onetime event, nor had it ended with the Old and New Testaments. Each period of history had its own forms of revelation. Thus, Swedenborg carried a special significance, joining a long list of prophets that began in the pre-Christian era and continued with later figures such as Martin Luther and Jakob Boehme. According to Oetinger, “the unbelief of the world” moved God to appoint Swedenborg as a “herald of heavenly communications.” Swedenborg’s experiences were intended to give the unbelievers a better understanding of the spiritual life of human beings by using the best scientific knowledge known to humanity. For the age of rationalism, Swedenborg became an instrument of divine revelation, a “spirit seer” who enjoyed communicating with the spiritual world and who formulated a cosmology that brought unity to the material and spiritual universe. The Swede was able to demonstrate in multiple ways how natural science and the processes of nature turned ultimately to faith, a unity of earthly science and heavenly philosophy.64 A number of Swedenborg’s ideas also found a home among those Lutherans who secretly admired his genius. One such admirer was Johann Friedrich Immanuel Tafel (1796–1863), who received permission from the King of Württemberg to publish translations of Sweden-

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borg’s works. Due in large measure to Tafel’s work, from the 1830s until the March Revolution of 1848 the doctrines of Swedenborg found favor among German scholars. Swedenborg also was popular among German mediums, a connection that did much damage to his reputation, since many of these early Spiritualists claimed communications with demons and other nonhuman spirits.65 In Catholic France, Swedenborgianism made a slow start, with a few early converts from among members of the Masonic lodges at Avignon and Paris. They combined the teachings of Swedenborg with Spiritualism, Jesuitism, Masonry, animal magnetism, and the mystical ideas of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803)—ideas that later crossed into England and London’s New Church Society. By 1848, however, the number of practicing Swedenborgians had dwindled to only a handful, facing the powerful opposition of both Catholicism and positivism.66

The New Church As a revolutionary in theology and a traveler through heaven and hell and among the planets, Swedenborg blazed his own path of originality and, in doing so, attracted the attention of inquiring minds. The movement known as Swedenborgianism began with the formation of societies whose object was to mark a boundary between orthodox Christianity and the principles enunciated in Swedenborg’s theological works. His was not just a philosophy but a distinctive theology that gained supporters both on the Continent and in America.67 Like John Wesley (1703–1791) and George Whitefield (1714–1770), two of the early leaders of the Methodist movement, Swedenborg intended to found no church but only to “inculcate a practical, vital piety that would be reflected in morality and service to mankind,” explained historian Clarke Garrett. However, many of his followers were unwilling to stay with their traditional churches and chose instead to throw their lot with an organization that would more strictly adhere to Swedenborg’s views on the Trinity, piety, spiritual regeneration, millennialism, and his emphasis on human potential. It was in the notion of the millenarian New Jerusalem that Swedenborg had so significant an influence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.68

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The devotees of Swedenborg felt the Christian church was in great peril, with its members sensual, selfish, worldly, and lacking in brotherly love. Divided among numerous denominations and sects, the Christian church seemed bent on losing its hold upon good people everywhere, as a deep-rooted skepticism appeared to replace their faith in spiritual things. In the midst of this gloom, the Swedenborgians viewed their age as the dawning of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven and revealing to humanity a new view of the spiritual world and the laws of spiritual life. Believing that the human mind unaided by revelation could never understand the true meaning of the prophets, the Swedenborgians relied upon their revelator to explain the spiritual sense of the Word and the deeper treasures in Scripture. These new revelations came without miracles; Swedenborg’s followers believed humans capable of judging between truth and falsehood without requiring the constant reassurances that came with raising the dead or healing the sick. By the end of the eighteenth century it was clear to the proponents of Swedenborg’s mysticism and spiritual revelations that the established churches were doing little to realize his pietistic aims. As a result, circles of Dissenters, Methodists, mystically oriented Anglicans, and even occultist lodges of Freemasonry coalesced around his beliefs. First in London, and later in Manchester, Philadelphia, and other major cities, circles of readers began forming societies dedicated to the regeneration of humanity, to the restoration of early Christianity’s acts of healing, and to a millenarian view of history.69 In time, a diverse group of artists, philosophers, novelists, poets, and social reformers found Swedenborg’s claims to conversations with angels sufficient justification to seek spiritual illumination from his ideas and visions. A host of admirers organized congregations and reading circles across England, Sweden, France, Germany, and the United States dedicated to Swedenborg’s vision of God, heaven, and the potential for humanity’s spiritual and secular improvement. Collectively, these organizations became known as the Church of the New Jerusalem or simply New Church, a term intended to designate a “new order of things.” It was not simply the substitution of one church for another “but a radical change in their habits of thought and modes of life, a renewal of the mental and spiritual air which they breathe, a fresh

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impulse and direction given to all their efforts and activities.” It constituted an entire new system of theology.70 Historically, Christian orthodoxies showed little patience for new sects, especially when they were tied to reformers whose behaviors were deemed to be bizarre or potentially disruptive of society’s prevailing norms. This had certainly been the case with early Methodism in England, whose clergy were considered heretical and forced to either recant or, in some cases, were driven into asylums for their deviancy.71 Despite this common ground, Wesley rejected the writings of Swedenborg as the product of “a distempered imagination.”72 Still, many Methodists were drawn to Swedenborg’s pronouncements and to the establishment of the Church of the New Jerusalem. Along with English Dissenters, many well-positioned and wellfinanced supporters of Swedenborg in his home country, including members of the Lutheran Church and of the nobility, openly avowed his doctrines and saw to it that his writings were published in various languages. This included a short-lived paper, the Aftonbladet (1784), which advocated on Swedenborg’s behalf, and Sämlingar för Philantroper, the first journal dedicated to New Church thinking, which was initially published in 1787.73 Following Swedenborg’s death, an early British convert to Swedenborg’s teachings named Robert Hindmarsh pulled together a group of followers who met regularly in London to discuss and expound on the concepts of Swedenborgian theology. James Glen, who was connected with the Hindmarsh group in London, established a reading circle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1784.74 While Swedenborgian ideas had filtered through numerous countries, it was in England, the country that historian Marguerite Block identified as “the home of religious toleration,” that the New Church blossomed and became “the mother of practically all the branches of the New Church now existing in the world.”75 The transition to New Church did not come easily. In the late 1780s, a schism arose among the disciples of Swedenborg, with some choosing to separate from the existing churches and establish the New Church and others seeking the rebirth of Christianity from within the existing denominations. Among the non-separatists was the Rev. John Clowes, rector of St. John’s Church in Manchester, who succeeded in teaching

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New Church doctrines from his pulpit and establishing reading circles to study Swedenborg’s writings. He advocated a more Fabian approach—operating with patience and allowing the doctrines of New Church to gain recognition from within rather than outside the existing churches. Among the separatists was Robert Hindmarsh, one of the organizers of the original group in London, and his son, James, who obtained a Dissenter’s license and officiated at the first baptism of members into New Church. Before long, James Hindmarsh had developed a liturgy adapted from the Church of England.76 In 1810, a Swedenborg Society formed among members of the Church of England. Its intention was to be a non-sectarian organization dedicated to publishing the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and educate non-Swedenborgians about his teachings. The society met on the site of the Freemasons’ Tavern on Great Queen Street in central London and later at the Connaught Lecture Room in Covent Garden. Those who supported the views of Swedenborg took pains to disabuse critics that genuine Swedenborgianism thought any less of the efficacy of prayer, of worship, of faith, of Christ’s divinity, immortality, heaven, hell, baptism, Holy Supper, or atonement. But for hard-core Swedenborgians, socalled orthodox Protestant theology had been perverted over the centuries and complicated by the fact that many of the doctrinal concepts were poorly understood and in need of a more rational explanation.77 The charter for the Swedenborg Society came from a passage in Swedenborg’s True Christianity (1771) which said: “Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in person . . . and nevertheless has foretold that he was to come and establish a new church, which is the new Jerusalem, it follows that he will do this by means of a man, who is not only to receive these doctrines in his understanding, but also to publish them by the press. That the Lord has manifested himself before me, his servant, and sent me to this office . . . I affirm in truth.”78 Once Swedenborg received his mission, it became the duty of the Swedenborg Society to publish the doctrines and make them known to the world. The Society consisted of three classes of members: those who were willing to lend money, interest free; donors or benefactors; and annual subscribers. The Society contained a full library of Swedenborg’s works, in Latin, English, and other languages.79

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One early American representative of Swedenborgianism was Jacob Duché (1738–1798), rector of Philadelphia’s Anglican congregation and an uneasy Christian, especially about the Trinity. His pietism and support of George Whitefield was at odds with the city’s social elite, particularly after he joined a group of men and women who advocated a form of mystical Christianity and who met privately for prayer and discussion. After fleeing to England during the American Revolution, he served as chaplain of the Asylum for Female Orphans in Lambeth, outside of London, where his sermons garnered a strong following and where he and his wife became acquainted with a local Swedenborgian society. He remained an Anglican until his death but considered himself a dedicated Swedenborgian who longed for discourse with angels. Attendees at Duché’s London meetings included those who were engrossed in occultism, Freemasonry, mesmerism, Spiritualism, and millennialism, along with members of various Christian denominations who hoped to regenerate their churches through pietism and revelation. All found Swedenborg’s writings to be a conduit to humanity’s moral and social improvement.80 The earliest record of New Church activity in the colonies was carried out by James Glen, who toured Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Kentucky in 1784, and who, through advertised lectures on the writings of Swedenborg, sought converts among the educated class. Soon afterward, a reading circle was established in Philadelphia that met at the home of publisher Francis Bailey (1744–1817) and the schoolroom of Johnston Taylor. Bailey’s Freeman’s Journal or the North American Intelligencer (1781–92) captured both the social and economic ideas of Swedenborg as well as the imagination of pioneers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and beyond the Alleghenies into the Ohio Valley. In 1801, Bailey published an American edition of Swedenborg’s True Christianity that, over time, found its way into Indiana and Illinois.81 Bailey’s influence stretched into Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and the Midwest. Among those attending Bailey’s reading circle was John Young, an attorney who moved to Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 1790; Daniel Lammot, founder of the New Church in Wilmington, Delaware; Jonathan Condy, who served as clerk of the House of Representatives;

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William Schlatter, whose bookstore distributed free copies of New Church literature; and John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, who traveled through the Midwest distributing apple seeds and spreading Swedenborgian ideas. The implicit faith that Americans held in the special destiny of their nation, a faith inscribed in their political speeches and pulpit sermons, facilitated the ease with which Swedenborgian ideas infiltrated into the collective psyche. As will be evident in later chapters, America’s confidence in its destiny fed (and was fed by) the wellsprings of revivalism, millenarianism, and sanctification, intersecting society through a myriad of reformers and prophets, each claiming special access to God or some indeterminate force in the universe.82 In New York, signs of Swedenborgian activity included Dr. Joseph Russell, who brought together the first meeting of New Church families in 1793. This was followed two years later by the work of the Rev. William Hill, a non-separatist and member of the Church of England, who provided initial translations of Swedenborg’s writings. There was also Samuel Woodworth, who published a monthly New Church magazine, the Halcyon Luminary (1812–13), and the poet Philip Freneau (1752–1832), editor of the National Gazette, who found Swedenborg’s doctrine of primitivism compatible to his own special liking and honored him with the poem “On the Honourable Emanuel Swedenborg’s Universal Theology.”83 The translated writings of Swedenborg were often found among Episcopalians in the American South and in the private libraries of the plantation class. Many of these works came from William Schlatter’s publishing house. Among Southern advocates was Robert Carter III (1727–1804), a Deist who converted to the Baptist Church before finding comfort in the theological writings of Swedenborg. In 1791, as a result of these readings, Carter emancipated his slaves and moved to Baltimore, where a New Church Society had been formed by a group of Germans who were at the time also debating the issue of animal magnetism as taught by Franz Anton Mesmer.84 Followers of Swedenborg were among the earliest opponents of the international slave trade, due in no small measure to the Swede’s admiration of the African race. Although he had not spoken specifically against slavery, his comments on African spirituality had been suffi-

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cient to inspire his disciples to emphasize freedom as a prerequisite for a person’s regeneration.85 While it is true that some Swedenborgians were either pro-slavery or neutral on its existence, many joined with the leaders in the anti-slavery movement in Europe and America.86 In 1817, a schism group from the English New Church settled in Philadelphia. These so-called Bible Christians mixed their belief in vegetarianism and opposition to alcohol, slavery, and capital punishment with elements of Swedenborgianism—enough to make them appear as heretics to more conservative New Church believers. By the 1830s, however, these new arrivals found common ground with the temperance lecturer, Presbyterian minister, and advocate of vegetarianism Dr. Sylvester Graham (1794–1851) and homeopath Dr. William A. Alcott (1798–1859), editor of Moral Reformer.87 Another early American adherent of Swedenborgianism was Margaret Hiller Prescott (1775–1841) of Salem, Massachusetts, daughter of Major Joseph Hiller, who, after the War for Independence, had been appointed by President George Washington to the office of customs collector for the port of Salem. Major Hiller, who had never been satisfied with the doctrine of the Trinity nor with the Episcopal Church’s explanation of heaven and hell, read Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell. His doubts satisfied, he ordered numerous other works of Swedenborg and became a strong believer in New Church doctrines. His daughter Margaret immersed herself in these writings at a young age and, after her marriage to Samuel Jackson Prescott, sustained her spiritual needs through deeper study of Swedenborg. In 1817, Margaret Prescott published a treatise titled Religion and Philosophy: An Attempt to Show that Philosophical Principles Lie at the Foundation of the New Jerusalem Church. At the time, only two New Church societies existed in America, one in Baltimore and the other in Cincinnati. With the book’s publication, however, the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem formed in 1818 with an initial membership of twelve. The society published New Jerusalem Magazine (1827–72 and 1887–93) and the first American edition of Secrets of Heaven.88 A disproportionate number of the converts to New Church came from the Quakers and the Anglican Church. They also came from among the followers of English socialist Robert Owen (1771–1858)

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and from the disciples of the French utopian socialist and philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837), whose influence will be examined in chapter four. In the deep South, Swedenborg was introduced to interested readers by the French priest Guillaume Oegger (1790–1853), who had studied the social theories of both Claude-Henri de Saint Simon (1760– 1825) and Swedenborg. Oegger’s Le Vrai Messie ou l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament Examinés Conformément aux principles du langage de la Nature (1829) was eventually read and translated by the New England transcendentalists. Later, Lutheran Germans migrating into New Orleans and Galveston, Texas, brought with them Tafel’s translations of Swedenborg, as did those who migrated up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to St. Louis and Pittsburgh in the 1840s. Some of these migrants moved to Iowa, where they founded the Jasper colony in Lenox township.89 Cincinnati became the hub of Swedenborgianism in the Midwest. The first New Church society, organized in 1811, grew rapidly and adapted easily to Owenism, Fourierism, and other reform initiatives that circulated among the liberal and educated classes of the city. A number of the city’s New Church members joined the utopian community at New Harmony, Indiana; supported the publication of six New Church periodicals published between 1825 and 1860; and opened the first New Church Sunday school in the United States in 1832, followed by a New Church day school in 1840.90 New Church advocates formed another center of activity in Chicago thanks to the work of lawyer Jonathan Young Scammon (1812– 1890). In addition to founding the city’s first New Church society, he was a strong supporter of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, the University of Chicago, and Hahnemann Hospital.91 The doctrines of Swedenborg spread to other parts of the state as well, including the capital, Springfield, where Isaac S. Britton, state superintendent of schools, was a member of New Church and a friend of Abraham Lincoln, with whom he conversed on the topic.92 The Swedenborgians viewed the Christian world as fraught with doctrinal chaos, negativism, and destructive heterodoxies. “If orthodox Christianity had been able to answer man’s questions relating to the Bible, God, and the future life, Swedenborg would never have been heard from,” commented the Reverend R. R. Rodgers, minister of the

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New Church in Birmingham, England, in 1910. “His theology came because old creeds and old ideas in theology failed to satisfy the critical intellect; it came as an antidote to infidelity and skepticism, and it came to help forward reverent and rational Christian thought in all departments of religion.”93 Taking no credit for himself, Swedenborg had claimed to supply Christianity with a true doctrine of life, a clear understanding of the Bible, and an elevation of religion above the chaos of Christian heterodoxies. As he commented in Apocalypse Revealed, “Every church at its beginning regards the good of life in the first place, and the truths of doctrine in the second, but as the church declines, it begins to regard the truths of doctrine in the first place, and the goods of life in the second; and at length in the end it regards faith alone.”94 What set the Swedenborgians apart from other Christian sects was their belief in Swedenborg’s power to reveal the true meaning of Scripture, a meaning that transcended its spiritual sense to reveal a celestial interpretation that previously had only been understood by angels. The Swedenborgians also differed in their conception of the nature of the Deity, which was based on what Frank Sewall, pastor of the Church of the New Jerusalem in Washington, D.C. at the turn of the twentieth century, called “unity of function,” meaning that Swedenborg denied the “distribution of Divine functions over the mysterious tripersonality of Being characteristic of orthodoxy.” For Swedenborg, the Deity was a single unity of being and function in Jesus Christ who was “God manifest.”95 New Church ideas reached a new height of influence in 1850 with Emerson’s interpretative essay of Swedenborg in Representative Men. By then, numerous Swedenborgian journals had been established, reading circles formed, editions of Swedenborg’s works translated, and the ideas of Swedenborg circulated by many eminent Americans.96 During the second half of the nineteenth century, however, Swedenborgianism struggled with internal divisions and external enemies. From within was the strife between those who were strongly antiecclesiastical, anti-clerical, and suspect of authority on one side, and on the other side those who viewed the New Church as a single ecclesiastical and hierarchical organization demanding strict accountability from its member churches and clerics. Outside the New Church were indi-

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viduals who claimed to be Swedenborgian but refrained from membership. Like Henry James Sr., these supporters, steeped in the writings of Swedenborg and sharing his metaphysical temperament, shied away from the New Church’s more ecclesiastical claims. James found Swedenborg’s ideas an antidote to many of the pernicious aspects of his age; nevertheless, he distinguished between the embodiment of Swedenborg’s spirituality and the ecclesiastical authority that filtered Swedenborg’s spirituality through the organizational structure of the New Church. He preferred to believe that Swedenborg’s philosophical message could be found in many religious societies and not simply in a single, exclusive organization called the New Church. For James, the Church of the New Jerusalem was more an idea than a physical enterprise.97 While Christian dogma suffered from the sentiments of the time —particularly from the discoveries made in the life sciences and the doubts raised by critical investigations into the origins of the Bible— the torrent of theories that came in the wake of evolutionary theory failed to undermine American faith in the design and purposefulness behind creation. To be sure, Christian cosmology failed to prevail against the newer pronouncements of science, but few Christians were drawn to a view of the world as a product of random accidents and an image of humanity as having emerged from primal sludge. While adherence to the story of humanity’s fall and redemption languished stillborn from the pulpits, Swedenborgianism offered a tantalizing opportunity to reestablish a connection with death and some assurance of survival beyond the grave. Over time, the members of New Church began to lose their vitality, transforming themselves from a hotbed of millennialism and occultism to that of a well educated but conservative group of middle-class believers existing on the edge of denominationalism. By the twentieth century, its vision of the future had become secularized into a myriad of more earthly concerns centered around social and moral improvement, benevolence, communitarianism, and service to humankind. Having to compete with other aspiring religions and “isms” in the marketplace of ideas, Swedenborgians struggled unsuccessfully to retain their vitality, and, like the once-emotional adherents of Methodism, they settled into

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a more routinized religiosity.98 Today, there are approximately five thousand Swedenborgians organized in seventy-five different societies in Great Britain; in the United States, approximately 13,500 are organized around three different associations. The remainder of Swedenborg’s followers are spread across organizations in thirty different countries.99

Lasting Influence Swedenborg has been described as handsome, meticulous in dress, slender in build, gracious among other people, unpretentious, and gentle. He had an appreciation for music and theater, and was attentive to everything dealing with religion and the soul. Critical of dogma, he dedicated himself to a life of purposeful simplicity and respect for the influx of God’s grace. That he chose to combat the materialism of his day with an armamentarium of science and rational methods is reminiscent of the American Puritan and philosopher Jonathan Edwards, whose genius was dedicated to furthering the sovereignty of God. For both men, their faith was never in doubt. As Marguerite Block explained of Swedenborg, “he had felt no conflict between faith and reason, and therefore it seemed to him a simple, albeit tremendous, task to reunite science and religion in an indissoluble bond for all of the world.”100 Swedenborg’s contributions to philosophy, including his theories of influx, of discrete degrees, and of correspondences, tended to be elaborations of Platonism and its theory of eternal, unchangeable forms. Notwithstanding these historical sources, the concepts took on new luster as Swedenborg reintroduced them to generations of men and women anxious to find a spiritual pathway within the visible, tangible world. Most of those who drew from Swedenborg’s ideas, explained Herbert W. Schneider in his History of American Philosophy (1946), did so in order “to clothe natural history in the garments of spirituality.”101 For Henry James Sr., for example, the patterns of natural science were shadows of God’s communion with nature and mind. In his Substance and Shadow (1863) and Society the Redeemed Form of Man (1879), James reunited God with a redeemed form of spiritual humanity, removing him from the realm of mere cause and effect.102 There is a cadence and repetitiveness in the argumentative style of Swedenborg’s writings—both scientific and theological—that evokes

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Aristotle, Augustine, and even Aquinas. The subtleties in his works are to be found in the particular form and substance that distinguishes each concept from the other as well as each sentence and paragraph. Precision in his writings makes them both clear and amorphous at the same time. Like Emerson, he was able to fashion words in a manner that, when read or heard, resonated marvelously with the senses but which, on reflection, left the mind puzzled and often unfulfilled. Swedenborg claimed to live in a constant state of communication with multiple worlds and hosts, each providing him with the contextual basis for what he identified as divine revelation, new philosophical principles, and other spiritual truths. After reading his innermost thoughts and revelations and reconciling them with experience, faith, and conscience, it was difficult for many of his disciples to agree on what exactly they had understood. He reveled in the divine currents that flowed unobstructed through his meditations. Being a man of insight, of eloquence, and of genius, he was open to a wide variety of influences that pushed him toward (but never to) a formal ministry. Having read widely and deeply from many of the disciplines, he found himself using language and ideas that, for many of his admirers, were little more than vague expressions, albeit original, brilliant, and ever thoughtful. He inspired others because of the force of his own convictions. For the unsophisticated, his writings provided an emancipating moment, although his philosophy did not necessarily form a coherent whole. His thoughts were exhilarating and even enlightening; but few of his admirers had the ability to absorb the fullness of his words, much less comprehend a mind that stretched in all directions. Viewed by many as a latter-day prophet whose interpretations of Christian scripture had given added insight into the spiritual essence of Christian doctrine, Swedenborg was accorded a level of respect by his contemporaries that gave him a unique poignancy for the age. As explained by historian Robert C. Fuller, Swedenborg’s writings “carried with them a Gnostic intrigue that appealed to those wishing to find a spirituality that went beyond routine church affairs. . . . Swedenborg was himself living proof that the truths of religion could be known directly through inward illumination.”103 Like his contemporary Jonathan Edwards, Swedenborg found God

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in the universe but knew that one did not meet God face to face there. God may be found in nature, but he was also something other than the world itself.104 Nevertheless, both Edwards and Swedenborg sought that inward communication with the Divine in and through nature. Both felt an “ardency of soul” that they willingly allowed to transform and take precedence over their lives.105 While both found intellectual sustenance in the Newtonian worldview, they were equally willing to surrender to the currents that filled them with the presence of God and with the joy and ecstasy that turned their insight against the rational world. Both strained against the codes of Lutheran and Congregational sobriety that sought to hold down the wellsprings of the regenerate spirit. For Swedenborg, the Newtonian mechanical worldview would be replaced with a fully articulated, organic, and vitalistic conception of nature. Reading Swedenborg and then perusing Edwards’s “The Flying Spider,” “Notes on the Mind,” “Of the Prejudices of the Imagination,” or his “Diary” reveals a striking similarity in thinking, especially in the technical and utilitarian nature of their words, their remarkable powers of observation, the manner of their dialog, and their confidence in reason. The resemblance between these two minds and the range of their curiosity is remarkable. Both departed from their early common ground by going the way of theology, giving up not only natural science but secular philosophy. Both had early religious experiences, cut their teeth on the disputations of theologians, lived through their early years with torments of self-scrutiny, were passionately introspective, and sensed the immanent God constantly pressing close upon his creatures. With the certainty and earnestness of prophets who had met God face to face, they taught the reality of direct revelation and contributed to a mystic vision of the world. In reading their books, one cannot escape the power behind their words and the ringing echoes of some deep religious experience. As the great defender of New England Calvinism, Edwards was precocious in his early insights into the physical sciences. In physics, meteorology, and astronomy, his knowledge led him to conclusions that were sometimes far in advance of the conventional wisdom in his day. That the modern scientific world would be captured within the worldview

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of this young man in so remote a colonial town speaks to the breadth of his reading, the soundness of his scientific instincts, and the surprising realization that his scientific acumen, if not genius, was consciously and deliberately sacrificed on the altar of Puritan faith even as that faith was dying in the Congregational churches of his day. Edwards’s contributions to philosophy and the sciences were noteworthy but failed to otherwise change his mystical and otherworldly view of life.106 A century later, those who feasted on the raptures of transcendentalism looked back with attentiveness to the color and imagery of these two very original thinkers. Gone was Edwards, the high priest of chiliastic Calvinism, his wringing condemnation of Arminianism, and his proud submission to the God of the Old Testament. There remained only the mystical and rapturous Edwards, the Edwards who justified the work of the spirit and the necessity of inwardness, the Edwards whose passions and affections of the soul were broken loose from scholastic distinctions. Rather than being relegated to the rear guard of America’s intellectuals, he remains among the nation’s high priests of Christian insight. There is ample evidence to suggest that what Swedenborg sought to achieve with his inner spirituality was no different from what Edwards sought to capture through grace, and to achieve through immanence. For each, the marrow of their Christianity was confidence that God had covenanted with humanity in order that he might experience a new birth and share in his essence.

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chapter 3

In the Mind’s Eye It is not the curse or the blessing that works, but the idea. The imagination produces the effect. —Paracelsus

Although the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was an age of growing secularism among Europe’s intellectual leadership, many seekers of the age, as historian Clarke Garrett explained, “incorporated the traditions of prophecy and biblical millenarianism” into their earthly endeavors.1 Indeed, the five senses of the Lockean empiricist tradition were often trumped by a combination of millenarian myth, religious “enthusiasm,” Freemasonry, and utopianism. Within this context, Franz Anton Mesmer’s trance-inducing treatments and his theory of animal magnetism found as many devotees as Swedenborg’s theological and mystical writings.2 Both Mesmer and Swedenborg affirmed the existence of an unseen dimension to the universe and of certain subtle energies that moved through and about both living and nonliving things. Swedenborg explained this energy as a form of “divine influx” which flowed from God and pervaded all of creation. For Mesmer, these energies were “invisible tides” whose free flow or blockage made the difference between health and illness. Although Mesmer’s proponents employed a naturalistic in-

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Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

terpretation to explain the phenomenon known as animal magnetism, there was sufficient ambiguity in the theory to pique the curiosity of the most mystical of thinkers. Given the acceptance by both Mesmer and Swedenborg of the existence of a spirit world, it was a small jump in sophistry for their followers to conclude that special communication with spirits was something possible for all.

Mesmer’s Early Years Born the third of nine children in the Swabian town of Iznang in the region dividing Switzerland from Germany, Franz Anton Mesmer passed his childhood years under the close watch of Catholic monks

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and Jesuit educators before enrolling at the University of Vienna, where he first studied law and then medicine, receiving his medical degree in 1766. His thesis topic, Dissertatio Physico-medica de Planetarum Influxu (A Physico-Medical Inquiry Concerning the Influence of the Planets on the Human Body), was by no means new, as it represented an ongoing debate between religion and science over the natural and spiritual agencies present in the cure of human afflictions. Richard Mead (1673– 1754) earlier had written on the influence of the stars on humankind, and the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), a professor of mathematics at the University of Würzburg, had authored Ars Magnesia (1631) which reflected on the unseen forces of nature and speculated on the uses of magnetism in both mechanics and healing. His later Magnes sive de arte magnetica opus tripartitum (1641) proposed an explanation for how magnetism affected the earth and planets, the tides, animals, and plants, as well as medicine.3 He saw magnetism as the central force in the universe and the key to discovering nature’s secrets. Further elaborations on the subject came from Father Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779) of Klösterle, Switzerland, who practiced church-approved exorcism but whose healing techniques combined both religious symbols such as the crucifix and a recognition that magnetic forces filled the universe. Gassner’s methods were investigated by a commission established by Maximilian Joseph III (1727–1777), elector of Bavaria, and found to be consistent with church doctrine.4 Besides the above-mentioned sources, Mesmer also drew his ideas from the healing techniques of Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell (1720–1792) at the University of Vienna, who practiced healing through the application of steel plates to the naked body. Mesmer, who had once been a student of Father Hell, claimed to have discovered an invisible universal fluid, or ether, which permeated the natural world and constituted the medium through which light, heat, and electricity traveled from one object to another. This fluid, which Mesmer labeled magnétisme animal (animal magnetism), required an even distribution throughout the body in order for health to be maintained. When this energy was disrupted in any way, the resulting disequilibrium caused one or more of the body’s organs to become dysfunctional, and illness ensued. Thus, disease owed its origination to the disruption in the flow

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of animal magnetism as it coursed through and around the body. Mesmer claimed the ability to restore the equilibrium essential to health by passing magnets over and around the patient’s body. He also claimed that he could extend the force of magnetization beyond metal to include paper, water, glass, wood, and other objects, and that these objects could then be used to assist in the healing process.5 Mesmer’s system of animal magnetism represented a materialistic counterpart to Kircher’s “theology” of magnetism and Gassner’s religious exorcism, opening a new line of thinking that developed over time into a number of different healing modalities. In the postCartesian world, it was no longer necessary to regard every healing technique as somehow dependent on a religious explanation. Mesmer himself believed that his power to cure patients stemmed from his ability to influence the subtle dynamic fluid which served as an aura around each individual. In building this theory, he borrowed from a number of early sources, including the mystical doctrines of alchemist and physician Paracelsus, considered by many the founder of magnetic philosophy inasmuch as he used magnets to treat fluxes, hysteria, epilepsy, and inflammatory diseases. For Paracelsus and other mystics, the magnet served as a metaphor to be used in understanding the forces that governed the universe. As explained by Frank Podmore, English author and writer on psychic matters, The action of the magnet at a distance was ascribed to a force or fluid— for its exact nature is usually left undefined—radiating from its substance; and a like force is inferred to radiate from the stars, from the human body, and from all substances in the universe: each body thus reciprocally affecting and being affected by all the rest. Moreover, these rays were not lifeless or fortuitous, but were guided in their incidence and their operations by the indwelling spirit of the body from which they proceeded—a spirit of which the stream of light or other palpable rays formed merely the gross vehicle.6

Rebelling against the rational synthesis so eagerly sought by the eighteenth-century philosophers, Mesmer looked not to John Locke or Isaac Newton for his cue but to a more romanticized notion of nature, where all bodies—from people to planets—were under the influence of

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the universal fluid, and where empathy existed between all things material and spiritual. When properly employed, animal magnetism provided an alternative to conventional medicine, utilizing invisible and omnipresent forces to reconcile imbalances between the mind and body, thereby better adapting the individual to the universe as a whole.7 In this metaphysical paradigm, a human being was a microcosm of the universe, containing within his or her self the different elements or virtues of the universe, including the virtues of a magnet. Thus the human body, like the planets and stars, was home to a force that could act on other bodies. Such was this power, explained Paracelsus, that “the will of a person on this side of the ocean may make a person on the other side hear what is said on this side.”8 Given what Paracelsus, Belgian chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont (1577–1644), French chemist Pierre Borel (1620–1689), and others had already concluded, the ideas put forward by Mesmer were more a reformulation of earlier theories than the introduction of a wholly new philosophy. What Mesmer accomplished was to resurrect this old tradition at a point in time when it resonated with contemporary thinking.9 Following an acrimonious feud with Father Hell over ownership of the concept of animal magnetism, Mesmer left Vienna—where he had been harshly criticized by members of the medical faculty—and settled in Paris. There, he became an instant success among the courtly classes (including Queen Marie Antoinette), who were enamored with his combination of science and sentimentality. The core of Mesmer’s philosophy was his twenty-seven propositions concerning the ebb and flow of bodies in the universe and the distribution of a fluid that influenced the relationship between all things. In essence, his propositions explained how animal magnetism existed in every living being, and, while varying in scope and intensity from one to another, it nonetheless connected each living being to every other living being and to the fluid force that enveloped the universe. Mesmer’s medical training permitted him to view this fluid force as not only the ultimate power or reality behind the universe but as a potential source for healing illnesses of various sorts, including mental ones.10 Among Mesmer’s disciples was Dr. Charles D’Eslon (1739–1786), physician to the king’s brother, who was highly regarded within the

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Mesmer’s Baquet (178?). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

French medical profession and who sought to have Mesmer’s doctrines tested against more orthodox therapeutics. D’Eslon invited members of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris to Mesmer’s fashionable clinique at the Hôtel de Bullion on the Rue Coq-Héron. There, amid private living quarters, plush offices, and the relaxing atmosphere of woods and lakes, Mesmer had constructed an oaken tub or baquet that stored “magnetic fluid” (ground glass and iron filings covered in water). During the course of treatment, the tub was connected to iron rods and cords held in patients’ hands or placed on their bodies. Treating the body as a battery, Mesmer sought to restore proper flow by directing the electrical fluid contained in the baquet into the patient using a combination of touch, laying on of hands, and the passing of a wand above the individual or diseased part. Although the effort to present his ideas before the Faculty of Medicine failed because of his novel depar-

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ture from accepted practices, Mesmer did succeed in raising the attention of the general public and the more fashionable among the nobility. So successful was his triumph that in 1781 he was offered a sizable pension from the government provided he reveal the secrets of his treatment. Mesmer chose instead to use his popularity to promote a secret organization known as the Société de l’Harmonie Universelle (Society for Universal Harmony), which spread from Paris to the provinces of Lyon, Strasbourg, Bayonne, Montpellier, Dijon, Nantes, Marseille, Bordeaux, and Lausanne in a series of Mason-like lodges. Members of the society took an oath to promote the doctrine of animal magnetism while protecting its secrets. For his part, Mesmer sold subscriptions to courses of lectures on his unorthodox system while continuing to utilize the fashionable techniques he made famous at the Hôtel de Bullion.11 Mesmer’s unorthodoxy caused Louis XVI (1754–1793) to establish a Royal Commission in 1789 consisting of four members of the Faculty of Medicine and five from the Royal Academy of Sciences to examine his claims. Included among the nine commissioners were astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, physician and politician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, and printer, scientist and politician Benjamin Franklin. A second commission was also formed consisting of members from the Royal Society of Medicine. Both commission reports described the effect of the fluid force on patients—cries, convulsions, and bizarre behavior—and warned of the potential for serious mischief from the spread of the practice, recommending its suppression. Both also rejected Mesmer’s theory, ascribing the cases of successful treatment he cited to imagination or suggestibility.12 A minority opinion submitted by botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu of the Royal Commission judged that his colleagues had taken too narrow a view of Mesmer’s claims. De Jussieu countered by postulating a force he called “animal heat” that radiated from the fingers (or a baquet of magnetized water) and was intensified by the will of both the giver and recipient. Rather than the planets playing a pivotal role in the healing process as Mesmer believed, he theorized that the will of the operator and the imagination of the patient had brought about the effects.13 Following the two critical reports, Mesmer retired from the scene, leaving others to defend his system. By the time of his death in 1815,

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Mesmer had fallen into obscurity, but not before disciples such as the Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825) and physicist Alexandre Bertrand (1795–1831) had transformed his animal magnetism into a type of “artificial somnambulism,” or what Scottish physician James Braid (1795– 1860) called “hypnotism.”14 These admirers replaced the mystical concept of animal magnetism with the Enlightenment’s more secular bias for matter and force. Mesmer’s reliance on invisible forces was played down as more freethinking scientists made a case for greater empiricism and utilitarianism. Drawing from the natural sciences and from freedom grounded in the combination of reason and skepticism, they cut a sharp distinction between the supernatural and the more objective, scientific, and mechanistic aspects of nature. Their opinions, however nuanced, remained subordinate to rational methodology and verifiability. Thus, in looking for more rational explanations, they tended to explain the effects of mesmerism as psychological rather than the result of any kind of unseen universal force.15 An alternative point of view was introduced by Geoffrey Sutton, whose 1981 article titled “Electric Medicine and Mesmerism” proposed an interesting similarity in the eighteenth century between the newly established field of electric therapy—as introduced by Nicolas-Philippe Ledru (1731–1807) and tested by P. J. C. Mauduyt de la Verenne (1732– 1792)—and the magnetic cures brought to Paris by Mesmer under the aegis of animal magnetism. Both systems shared a common view of the universe and of the relationships between electricity and weather, between weather and health, and between electricity and health. In addition, they came into the public eye at approximately the same time. And yet, while these two practices were based on surprisingly similar theories and therapeutic techniques, electric therapy achieved the support of the French Royal Society of Medicine while animal magnetism faced harsh criticism from both the medical and scientific world. On balance, explained Sutton, the judgment that rendered Mesmer “incorrect” and Ledru and Mauduyt “correct” was “not on the basis of clear scientific evidence—for this could be adduced in one form or another for either side of any of the issues—but rather on the basis of who belonged to their world.”16

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Mesmer’s Filters As Mesmer’s theories filtered through Europe’s nobility, his disciples found themselves benefiting from a popularity that placed them in great demand and offered unexpected remuneration for their services. Although many continued to espouse some form of the etheric or fluid explanation, they found themselves increasingly in the minority as time went on and eventually adopted a more rationalistic psychological explanation of the phenomena to accommodate critics. Much to their surprise, they found that the healer-patient relationship produced many unexpected effects depending upon the patient’s mental condition and the ingenuity of the healer—for example, instances of clairvoyance and telepathy—that presaged a whole new approach to consciousness.17 The Marquis de Puységur, an early disciple of Mesmer, carried the science of animal magnetism to a new level when he reported having placed his patients into a sleep- or trancelike state of magnetization, whereupon they were capable of various forms of clairvoyance. This required a special rapport between himself and the patient, a relationship that opened up a whole new understanding of the healing process. Puységur concluded from his experimentation that the causative factor was not the physical presence of animal magnetism or its fluid effect on the subject, but rather his own power of thought or suggestion over the patient. This implied a psychological influence or causality rather than a simple physical one.18 When mesmerism arrived in England following the Napoleonic Wars, it came tainted as an unwelcome, if not seditious, import. Nevertheless, there was a brief period at the end of the eighteenth century when several “professors” using magnetic treatment opened offices in London and in the provinces. This included a brief craze when Elisha Perkins’s (1741–1799) “metallic tractors” (two three-inch steel and brass rods, each with a point at one end) aroused interest among healers in the cure of inflammations; but it, too, disappeared without much fanfare. England’s mesmeric movement paled next to the mania that consumed France, where salons and societies prospered and where the public was inundated with tantalizing pamphlets on the subject. Over time, however, supporters such as Nicolas Bergasse, Joseph François

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Deleuze, Abbé de Faria, and Puységur succeeded in assuaging skeptics and persuading English scientists, physicians, and clergymen to test the theory of animal magnetism and its power to cure a broad range of diseases and illnesses.19 Unlike the British, American converts lined up to accept mesmerism, regardless of whether the underlying theory was religious or empirical in focus. The youthful nation was overrun by a host of entrepreneurs who traveled from town to town delighting crowds with their showy tricks and elaborate claims. The first notice of this European fad came in 1836 when Charles Poyen, a young French expatriate and self-professed expert on animal magnetism, filled his public lectures in the Northeast with demonstrations of somnambulism that included suspension (i.e., complete severance from external stimuli), intimate connection with the magnetizer and no other, influence on the subject’s will, thought transference, clairvoyance (i.e., seeing through various parts of the body with the eyes closed), and unusual expressions of memory and imagination. In his Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England (1837), Poyen recounted numerous experiments before audiences that included ministers, college professors, businessmen, and laborers.20 Word of Poyen’s successes passed from city to city and generated huge audiences. The audience response seemed to be split between curiosity and openness to belief, especially when there was the promise of a medical cure for the diseases that ailed anxious patients. With an enthusiasm fed by newspapers and magazine articles, animal magnetism entered the American lexicon, becoming an important part of the nation’s belief in self-improvement, personal healing, and special destiny. Despite his renown, Poyen added little to what was already known about mesmerism except to reaffirm that the phenomena associated with animal magnetism were natural rather than supernatural in nature.21

Phrenology In 1807, a generation after the initial splash of mesmeric mania in Europe, Viennese physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) arrived in Paris where, like Mesmer, he set out to establish a fashionable practice. A keen observer of anatomy and facial expression, he drew upon the

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writings of prior anatomists to popularize the theory of brain localization, concluding that the behavior of an individual was determined by the size and proportionality of controlling organs in the brain, and that these measurements could be discerned by the shape of the cranium. Thus, by an examination of an individual’s head, one could determine the person’s character, intellectual capabilities, and psychological tendencies.22 Among Gall’s many disciples was Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776– 1832), whose further elaboration of brain localization attracted numerous reform-minded individuals to phrenology and its behaviorist possibilities. Together, the two men built their science on three principles: that the brain was the physical location of the mind; that it consisted of separate organs, each related to distinct mental faculties; and that the size and shape of each organ was a reflection of its respective power. While Gall recognized twenty-seven distinct divisions in the brain, Spurzheim suggested thirty-seven.23 Spurzheim laid the groundwork in the British Isles with his lecture tours in 1814 and 1815. Unlike mesmerism, which had been tainted by its association with the dethroned French monarchy, phrenology received broad support from the educated classes as well as from clerks, shopkeepers, merchants, military officers, engineers, and artisans. Phrenology’s more utilitarian purposes clearly overshadowed the dilettantish specter of French nobility sitting around Mesmer’s baquet. In keeping with phrenology’s growing popularity, supporters founded a number of phrenological societies and journals and sponsored any number of public lectures on the subject. In 1832, Spurzheim initiated a lecture tour through the United States, where he found himself lionized by the press and intellectuals, including significant members of the scientific and medical communities. His visit, brought short by his untimely death that same year, laid a firm grounding for the visit of George Combe (1788–1858) six years later. Combe was among the founders of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society and first editor of the Phrenological Journal (1823–47). He was a prolific writer and competent and popular speaker who attracted large audiences as he lectured in cities on the East Coast and communities along the Erie Canal. Using these skills, he transformed the theories

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Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

of Gall and Spurzheim into an attractive new science of the mind that was understandable across a broad spectrum of society. Unlike the natural and biological sciences, phrenology required little or no mastery of mathematical theorems and formulas. Phrenology was viewed as a predictive form of acquired knowledge with direct application to human needs. It was a science whose focus had shifted from understanding nature to understanding individuals and society. Combe and his brother Andrew won many converts, including Orson and Lorenzo Fowler, who

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brought the practical side of phrenology to the broad masses through the Fowler and Wells publishing house in New York.24 While continental Europeans viewed phrenology as a largely hereditarian science, Americans and their English cousins preferred a more environmental approach, interpreting phrenology as a jumpingoff point for personal, social, and political change. The ability to “read” the mental character of an individual offered the opportunity to build a bridge from the body to the individual’s physical environment, suggesting the possibility of personal improvement through a change of surroundings. This set the stage for the later utopian theories postulated by thinkers like Charles Fourier, who advocated the creation of communities designed to maximize human potential. It was Combe who developed the social philosophy of phrenology that appealed so much to the educated classes of England and America. In his Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (1828), his Essays on Phrenology (1819), and Moral Philosophy; Or the Duties of Man Considered in His Individual, Social and Domestic Capacities (1840), Combe introduced a view of humanity that veered sharply away from Christian theology by proposing the steady growth of people’s intellectual capacities over their animal propensities.25 Here was a secular view that fit comfortably into the reform-minded social philosophy of the period in that it provided a scientific justification for personal improvement. Due to certain tendencies and capacities determined at birth, however, it denied any radical change in the individual’s constitution. Phrenology was a scientific guide to character, an outgrowth of the earlier theory of humoral pathology. “This was a social philosophy that was made-toorder for those who were, or who felt that they were, upwardly mobile in early Victorian society,” explained T. M. Parssinen in an article in the Journal of Social History. “It reinforced their demand for admission to the ruling class and still resisted the extremists who would abolish all ranks in society.”26 Proponents of phrenology viewed the brain as an organ of the mind, and therefore saw phrenology as an empirically based science. This meant that it was understandable apart from the long-held view that the mind had an immateriality which could only be understood by philosophers. As explained by Parssinen, “phrenology juxtaposed a

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“Calves’ Heads and Brains; or, a Phrenological Lecture” (1826). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

theory which claimed that the mind and its functions could be investigated like any other object of scientific study.” As a result, Gall’s theories made the mind the subject of anatomists, physiologists, and the infant science of neuroanatomy.27 Phrenology appealed to both the secular and the religious minded, in part because of its perceived utility. The size and shape of the skull became a “window” into the soul, a predictor of personal behavior, and an opportunity for secular and religious reformers to find common cause.28 As physiomedical physician William H. Cook remarked in 1851, phrenology was a science “in all the majesty of unerring Truth” whose practical advantages “could be worked out in law, government, religion, education, and even in physic.”29 Phrenology’s importance came not only from its assertion that the brain was the sole organ of thought, but that it was divided into differ-

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ent regions, each in control of certain capacities (i.e., cerebral localization) that could be studied empirically as a physical organ. Phrenology made the specific contours of the cranium a visible road map connecting individual conduct or behavior with the brain’s interior structure. The materialist implications of this road map were there to be seen; however, they were by no means assumed to be true. Most adherents to phrenology remained steadfast in believing that the whole of an individual’s personality was more than the sum of its localized functions. Its appeal to both the heart and mind of the nation’s democratic culture was almost instantaneous and, not surprisingly, merged quickly with mesmerism to a form the basis of a people’s system of applied psychology.30

Phreno-Mesmerism Beginning in the late 1840s, phrenology faced withering criticism from physiologists who questioned the connection made between the protuberances of the skull and the character of the brain. Criticism also came from the general public—which was increasingly troubled by the myriad of claims made by quacks who had transformed phrenology into a circus-like phenomenon—and from clergymen who challenged the materialistic tendencies of this new science.31 Standing by themselves, mesmerism and phrenology were positioned halfway between the siren calls of both religion and science. Phrenology, based on the proposition that the distinctive regions of the skull correlated with specific character traits, reflected a set of materialistic and nonspiritual assumptions. Mesmerism, on the other hand, appeared to leave the door open for a religious interpretation, even though it lacked denominational authenticity. Their merger as phrenomesmerism, phreno-magnetism, or phrenopathy proved more accommodating to the cultural assumptions and expectations of society. Within a single conceptual framework, phreno-mesmerism revealed a mental life that was dynamic and responsive to both physical and spiritual stimulation. Phreno-mesmerism introduced itself to the medical community and to the public at large as a new branch of science which recognized a higher nature attuned to both spiritual and material laws. The marriage, even if one of convenience, served as proof of an invis-

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ible energy or fluid force at work in the universe and, under certain conditions, how it could be controlled by gifted individuals who acted as agents in its transmission. One such advocate was Dr. John Elliotson (1791–1868), an English doctor educated at Edinburgh who took up the phreno-mesmerism hoping to learn how the practice could be brought into regular medicine. One of the founders of the Phrenological Society of London in 1824 and publisher of the magazine The Zoist: A Journal of Cerebral Physiology and Mesmerism (1845–56), he thought it natural to connect mesmerism with phrenology. He discovered that when a patient’s head was touched by the mesmerist, the organ associated with that particular part of the skull produced a reaction characteristic of its function. By varying his touch, for example, he was able to induce patients into moving their hands or limbs in sympathy with his own, demonstrate foreknowledge of impending events, or send them into states of sleep or catalepsy. Using touch or dispersive passes over a specific location of the cranium, he claimed the ability to combat the specific disorder, disability, or disease in its corresponding organ.32 Influenced by Irish chemist Richard Chenevix (1774–1830), a fellow of the Royal Society, Elliotson sought to apply mesmerism to the patients at the University College Hospital in London to alleviate pain. Although he demonstrated that magnetism could be used to dull the pain of surgical operations and cure many diseases that had stymied doctors, he faced the opprobrium of his colleagues and lost his right to practice at the college hospital.33 As the science of phreno-mesmerism became the rage, in 1843 alone more than three hundred persons were giving public lectures on the subject in Great Britain and the United States. Besides Elliotson, the honor for establishing the legitimacy of phreno-magnetism should be divided among the Reverend La Roy Sunderland, Dr. Robert H. Collyer (a former pupil of Elliotson), and Dr. Joseph Rodes Buchanan.34 Methodist minister, abolitionist, and mental philosopher La Roy Sunderland (1804–1885) spread his message through the newspaper Zion’s Watchman (1836–41) and the Magnet (1842–44), a periodical that touched on a host of topics including phrenology, abolitionism, and the use of mesmeric trance as an anesthetic in surgery. Sunderland for-

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Joseph Rodes Buchanan (1814–1899). Image courtesy of the Lloyd Library and Museum.

mulated the principle of pathetism, by which he meant the ability of an agent or operator to induce a change in the nervous system of a patient by means of suggestion. Anticipating the work of the next generation of mesmerists, he rejected the analogies of magnetism and electricity common among his contemporaries in explaining the relationship between agent and patient and replaced those explanations with the power of suggestion.35 English physician Robert H. Collyer (1814–1891), a student of both Spurzheim and Elliotson and editor of The Mesmeric Magazine (1842), found a way to combine phrenology with magnetism in a manner that appealed to both religious-minded people and those looking for a nonmaterial explanation of disease causation. He believed that when used in combination, phrenology and magnetism became a portal into human nature, exposing defects in the animal, moral, and intellectual

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faculties, thus enabling the healer and the patient to better understand what anomalies might exist and how to correct them. In anticipation of the séance common among later Spiritualists, Collyer separated the veil that divided the natural and spiritual worlds by encouraging a dialog between persons of intense religious faith and those experiencing clairvoyant visions.36 Others followed in the 1830s and ’40s, including Dr. James Stanley Grimes (1807–1903), author of A New System of Phrenology (1839), and Universalist pastor John Bovee Dods (1795–1872) whose lectures and books were heard and read by all levels of society. Each had his own name for the phenomenon. Grimes called it etherology, while Dods preferred the name electrical psychology. Before long, phreno-mesmerism had anchored itself in the American psyche, becoming the touchstone for Phineas P. Quimby, Andrew Jackson Davis, Mary Baker Eddy, and others, who transformed its early theatric and exhibitionist character into a more value-laden healing and spiritual exercise.37 A particularly outspoken disciple of Mesmer who took animal magnetism into the world of medical theory was Joseph Rodes Buchanan (1814–1899). A pugnacious believer in Spiritualism, he began experimenting with mesmerism while living at the Owenite socialist community in New Harmony, Indiana, in 1842.38 A persuasive speaker, Buchanan took his sparse knowledge of medicine and transformed it into a zealous defense of reform practice. To accomplish this task, he announced the discovery of two new sciences, one which he labeled psychometry, or the influence of clairvoyance on the cerebral tissues; and the other sarcognomy, the study of the true relationship between the body and mind. Both represented an attempt to combine mesmerism and phrenology into a new synthesis.39 Psychometry, or “soul-measuring” (from the Greek terms psyche, soul; and metron, measure) was a form of measurement that served as a diagnostic tool to assess the heretofore hidden world of an individual’s psychic or soul capacity. By placing their hands upon the different regions of the head, psychometrists claimed they could detect the full character of the patient.40 Buchanan said he had perfected Gall’s system by providing a more coherent explanation for the sympathy between mind and body. Besides Gall’s twenty-seven distinct brain functions, he added what he

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believed were the newly discovered faculties of organology, modality, antagonism, cooperation, unity, and duality. Buchanan’s neurological system consisted of a psychological map of the body showing the connection between the brain and every region of the body. Just as physiognomy explained the character of the face, sarcognomy (from sarx, flesh; and gnoma, opinion) enabled the physician to know the full character of the body. Buchanan used the term to express knowledge of both the physiological and psychological roles of the body in maintaining health and treating disease. As a vitalist, he rejected the proposition that life was merely a condition of matter. Instead, he viewed life as entirely distinct from physical forces. The soul worked through the brain and expressed itself in the various organs. No physiological or psychological process occurred in the body without the guidance from a specific locality in the brain. “The entire brain,” wrote Buchanan, “corresponds with the entire body, and whatever occurs in one has its echo in the other . . . with the soul occupying the brain as the master occupies the mansion.”41 As dean of the Eclectic Medical Institute (EMI) in Cincinnati from 1850 to 1856, Buchanan embraced phreno-mesmerism as the underlying basis for his reform school of healing. His lectures followed a logical pattern that viewed reform medicine, along with the new science, as the forefront of scientific discovery. Phreno-mesmerism, he argued, was “more pregnant with the germs of great thought, and great reforms, than any other form of human knowledge.” It stood to change the existing knowledge of the brain and its functions, becoming an engine of major reform.42 In 1854, Buchanan published Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology in which he introduced his theory of “nervaura,” a fluid force or emanation of the nervous system that varied with every individual and that could be transmitted from one individual to another. Nervaura explained the contagious effects of smallpox and other fevers that spread among individuals who met in public assemblies. But nervaura also had a positive element, as in the case of a physician who was able to cure without medicine merely by placing his hand on a patient. Thus, by touch, or by simply using “dispersive passes” over the body, a healer could treat disease.43

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Buchanan was fond of experimenting with his students at EMI, having them hold in their hands medicines wrapped in paper and receive their medicinal benefits through thought transference. He came to believe that all substances, including the human body, threw off some form of emanation and that certain individuals with particular sensitivity or “nerve aura” were able to experience the emanation. For Buchanan, the ability to feel such emanations was a psychic faculty of the mind and not the work of a medium and the intervention of spirits. Buchanan’s Journal of Man, a bimonthly and then monthly magazine published from 1849 to 1890, treated of such subjects as phrenology, physiognomy, psychometry, self-culture, health science, general education, and human improvement. As editor and proprietor, he used the journal to advertise his Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology as well as his popular lectures on assorted topics. In the early years of the journal, he pontificated on the importance of clairvoyance, mesmerism, Spiritualism, nervauric treatment, and other mind-cure sciences. The journal also reinforced ideas put forward by Swedenborg and some of his nineteenth-century followers. An enthusiastic believer in the “rappings” of the Fox sisters, Buchanan advocated both clairvoyance and spiritual communications and reaffirmed the veracity of Swedenborg’s “heavenly talks” with those who had passed.44 Among the articles in Buchanan’s Journal of Man were ones by J. J. G. Wilkinson, the author of Swedenborg: A Biography (1849), along with a Swedenborgian description of the spirit world by Professor Robert Hare, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, author of Experimental Investigation of the Spirit-Manifestations (1855). In his article, Hare wrote: The Spirit-world lies between sixty and one hundred and twenty miles from the terrestrial surface; the whole intermediate space, including that immediately over the earth, the habitation of mortals, is divided into seven concentric regions called spheres. The region next [to] the earth [and] the primary scene of man’s existence, is known as the first or redumental sphere. The remaining six may be distinguished as the spiritual spheres. The six spiritual spheres are concentric zones, or circles, of exceedingly refined matter, encompassing the earth like belts or girdles. The distance of each from the other is regulated by fixed laws. . . . They have latitudes,

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longitudes, and atmospheres of peculiar air, whose soft and balmy undulating currents produce a most pleasurable and invigorating effect. Their surfaces are diversified with an immense variety of the most picturesque landscapes; with lofty mountain ranges, valleys, rivers, lakes, forests, and the internal correspondence of all the higher phenomena of earth. The trees and shrubbery, crowned with exquisitely beautiful foliage and flowers of every color and variety, send forth their emanations. . . . Although the spheres revolve with the earth on a common axis, forming the same angle with the plane of the ecliptic and move with it about the ponderable sun, they are not dependent on that body for either light or heat, receiving not a perceptible ray from that ponderable source, but receive those dispensations from his internal or spiritual correspondence, (a spiritual sun concentric with the sun of your world,) from that great central luminary whose native brightness and uninterrupted splendor baffle description.45

As did other vitalists in his day, Buchanan allied himself with the ideas of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644), Georg Ernst Stahl (1660–1734), and Marie-François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802). He often times spoke of the “over-soul” that sustained the universe and of the “divine nature” which consisted of will, wisdom, and love. With these terms, he linked the individual to the universe, to nature, and to the allencompassing spirit. Interestingly, Buchanan made frequent reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “The Over-Soul” and described Emerson as “the most remarkable specimen, now living, of highly cultivated and intense Ideality.”46 Later in his career, Buchanan became a staunch Spiritualist and, in his Primitive Christianity (1897), claimed to have received direct communications from St. John, Confucius, and other historical figures.47 By the end of the 1840s, phreno-mesmerism had been eclipsed by other fads and fashions. As explained by Peter McCandless, the combined movements had alarmed America’s intellectuals “because both sciences promoted unorthodox or radical views on religious, scientific, medical, and social issues.” Both phrenology and mesmerism, having appealed to the broader population for support, had threatened the leadership of mainstream religion, science, and medicine. Giving credence to these two movements—either separately or combined—was thought to open the door to criticism of formalized education, includ-

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ing scientific positivism. There was also a fear that egalitarianism and unbridled democracy would lead to attacks on medicine’s professional standards, and that supporting them would elicit anti-intellectual challenges from the occult and encourage a resurgence of social and cultural radicalism.48 When phreno-mesmerism came under attack in mid-century, mesmerism broke away to reestablish itself as a legitimate discipline in its own right. In doing so, mesmerism relinquished its occult and metaphysical foundations for a more secular and positivistic explanation. Books such as James Braid’s Neurypnology or, The Rationale of Nervous Sleep, Considered in Relation with Animal Magnetism (1843), and James Esdaile’s Natural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance, with the Practical Application of Mesmerism in Surgery and Medicine (1852) were examples of this more serious scientific approach. For them, the powers of “suggestion” and “imagination” established between the mesmeric operator and the patient substituted for the “invisible energy” and “universal fluid” of prior days. As historian Fred Kaplan explained, “All of the performances of subjects under the influence of mesmerism were the result of powerful imaginations working in congruence, not of an all pervasive fluid or force that had a separate and permanent existence of its own.”49 British surgeon James Braid (1795–1860) of Edinburgh was convinced of the veracity of the phenomena produced by mesmerism but not as sure of the modality of magnetic fluid. He discovered that he could induce in patients a mesmeric state which he called “neurypnotism” or “hypnotism.”50 His ideas were reinforced several decades later by Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault (1823–1904), one of the founders of the so-called Nancy School, whose Du sommeil et des etats analogues (1866) argued that hypnotism was nothing more than suggestion and could be used as a curative force.51 Braid encouraged further study into the potential medical use of hypnotism but without the accompanying theory of the universal fluid postulated by Mesmer.52 At the University of Nancy, Hippolyte Bernheim’s (1840–1919) Hypnotisme, suggestion et psychotherapie (1890) built on the work of Liébeault. Daniel Hack Tuke’s Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind Upon the Body (1872) provided a thorough scientific treatment of the topic. William Benjamin Carpenter’s Principles of Mental Physiology (1874)

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proved to be a landmark study of psychological medicine, influencing a generation of students on the subject of mental diseases.53 Decades later, the phenomenon known as hypnosis would nourish the broader field of psychiatry developed by French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), French psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947), and Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).54 In Germany, as in France, the application of animal magnetism and its various offshoots of clairvoyance and thought-transference were used primarily for healing. Nevertheless, alongside those who explained the phenomena in physical or natural terms were those who drew from the writings of the early mystics and from Swedenborg to explain their trance conversations with the spirit world.55 Envisioning the universe as a living organism, magnetists Carl Kluge (1782– 1844), Arnold Wienholt (1749–1804), and J. H. Jung-Stilling (1740– 1847), thought it perfectly reasonable for there to be communication between the natural and spiritual worlds.56 Jung-Stilling, for example, propounded a spiritual cosmology that argued for the existence of an ether that connected body and soul as well as the spiritual and material worlds. “The boundless ether that fills the space of our solar system is the element of spirits in which they live and move,” he wrote. “The atmosphere that surrounds our earth, down to its centre, and particularly the night, is the abode of fallen angels, and of such human souls as die in an unconverted state.”57 The mind-body question continued to underscore the challenges facing nineteenth century scientists and philosophers as they carved out the newer fields of neurology, psychology, and psychiatry. Did the mind, however defined, have an independent existence distinct from the body’s tissues and their physical and chemical properties? Could one separate the mind and body and treat them as separate entities? What was the impact of each on the other? From whence came the animating principle? Was there an inseparable connection between mind and matter? Was it necessary to treat them always as a unified whole?

Mesmer’s Legacy As explained by historian Robert Fuller, American mesmerism demonstrated a “structural affinity” with religious symbolism in that a

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patient became “become silent, self-effacing, and submissive before a healer who was understood to be in special rapport with higher cosmic powers.” And, when it came to the outcome of the mesmeric passes, the patient’s state of consciousness represented a holistic, if not an “almost sacramental encounter with a . . . spiritual agent.” For those non-mainstream American Protestants of Calvinist heritage for whom the notions of faith and grace were preeminent symbols on the road to salvation, the application of mesmeric energy served as a satisfying alternative to traditional medicine. When seen in the context of contemporary sectarian and unchurched movements such as Mormonism, Adventism, communitarianism, and millenarianism, mesmerism was in step with the idea of the soul’s journey to regeneration, or spiritual rebirth.58 Upon learning how mesmerism had extended its concept of physical force to connect with the human soul and with the Infinite, some Swedenborgians felt reassured in the direction their movement was taking. They saw, for example, how subjects who were mesmerized entered a level of mental impressibility or “spiritual influx” that permitted religious believers to have a glimpse of God’s existence and sovereignty. Numerous individuals who had been placed in a trance-like state of semiconsciousness gave affirmation of the afterlife that Swedenborg had described in great detail. According to Fuller, so-called mesmeric science lent “plausibility to the religious visions of the movement’s founder” and provided a touchstone for the nation’s journey toward a new form of spirituality. By the 1840s and ’50s, many of the supporters of Spiritualism, universalism, and Swedenborgianism—all beneficiaries of Mesmer’s legacy—found it easy to move from evangelical Protestantism to various new modalities operating on the boundaries of science.59

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chapter 4

Perfectionism in Our Time I believe man can be elevated; man can become more and more endowed with divinity; and as he does he becomes more God-like in his character and capable of governing himself. Let us go on elevating our people, perfecting our institutions, until democracy shall reach such a point of perfection that we can acclaim with truth that the voice of the people is the voice of God. —President-Elect Andrew Jackson, 1828

The idea of spiritual perfectionism met American society in the 1820s and ’30s through the Second Great Awakening, a period of religious revival marked by widespread Protestant evangelism and mass conversions. The sermons and writings of revivalists such as Asahel Nettleton, Timothy Merritt, Phoebe Palmer, and Charles G. Finney built upon the theological concept of justification by faith to arrive at the practices of purification and ultimately sanctification, emphasizing the spiritual renewal of a person through faith and devotional service. First evident among the followers of Methodism and Presbyterianism—and later among less-known evangelical groups—revivalism, perfectionism, and Spiritualism became defining features of the nation’s religious enthusiasms that burned across the American landscape.1 Moving west from

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Vermont across New York to the Great Lakes and into the Midwest, these movements spread across what historians would later identify as the “burnt” district. The region became home to a myriad of selfproclaimed prophets, communists, millenarians, and vegetarians; devoted followers of Joseph Smith Jr. (1805–1844), founder of the Latter-day Saints movement, and William Miller (1782–1849), founder of the Adventist movement; and followers of a hodgepodge of magnetizers, mediums, and clairvoyants. Building on a connection between Spiritualism and social reform, between the physical manifestations of conversion and the American belief in optimism and faith in the individual, the leaders of these new sects, phalanxes, and cooperatives moved quickly to create communities that would replace existing social structures with ones that supported their own peculiar principles. Given an atmosphere of tolerance for experimentation, these native adventurists and transplanted European cults jostled one another as they sought a new and better social order. As explained by Ralph Waldo Emerson to his Scottish friend and essayist Thomas Carlyle: “We are all a little wild here, with numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has a draft of a new community in his waistcoat pocket.”2

American Socialism Social reformer John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886), the founder of the perfectionist community of Oneida in western New York, was a witness to and unofficial historian of the communitarian movement in America. Noyes had been a theology student at Yale who, during the course of his studies, converted to perfectionism (the practice of personal sanctification). Declaring that he was free from sin, he set out to gain converts in New England and New York and, with a few stalwarts, established a communal society first at Putney, Vermont, and later at Oneida in western New York. His system, which he called Bible Communism, included the sharing of possessions, the practice of mutual criticism, and eventually the endorsement of “complex marriage,” a form of free love where each member was encouraged to have frequent partners and to practice a strict form of birth control. Oneida emerged at a time when communitarianism had been focused almost exclusively around the beliefs of Albert Brisbane (1809–

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John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886)

1890) and Charles Fourier (1772–1837). Their concept of “phalanxes” or “Associations” consisted of a series of harmonious rural communities utilizing a blueprint that combined democracy and millennial Protestantism. Between 1843 and 1845, waves of these communities were established, with Oneida coming almost at the end of the experiments.3 Noyes and his community believed that a revolution was fast approaching, a term he often used in place of the millennium. He divided human nature into four categories—physical, moral, intellectual, and spiritual—and held that people could be “regenerated” only through the

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development of their spiritual natures. This change, according to Noyes, would be accompanied by an “outburst of spiritual knowledge and power—a conversion of the world from sensuality, from carnal morality, and from brain-philosophy, to spiritual wisdom and life.”4 The signs of the time indicated that God was making ready for the revolution. Examples of this had been evident in the visions of Swedenborg and Anne Lee (1736–1784), founder of the Shakers; in the rise of mysticism and mesmerism; and in the discordant speculations of materialistic skepticism.5 In his The History of American Socialisms (1870), Noyes gave full support to the perfectionist movement, believing it would serve as a beacon to America’s great socialist experiment to reconstruct the “inner” and “outer” experiences of its people. His study drew extensively from the research of A. J. Macdonald, an itinerant Scottish printer, who had taken up the task of chronicling sixty-nine perfectionist communities that had formed in the United States around the ideas of Robert Owen (1771–1858) and Fourier. Macdonald excluded from his study the religious associations of Dunkers, Moravians, and Zoarites, as well as the Brazilian, Venezuelan, and Icarian experiments, as they were colonies of foreigners. In a letter sent in 1851 to the existing cooperative experiments, Macdonald informed them of his intent to write a book titled “The Communities of the United States” to be used as a guide for future experiments by pointing out the errors and accomplishments of what had gone before. In the letter, he included a set of twenty-one questions and asked for a response. Before he was able to publish his findings, Macdonald died of cholera in New York City in 1854. Learning of Macdonald’s death, Noyes recovered the notes from Macdonald’s relatives and used them as the basis of his own history.6 Starting with the Macdonald collection, Noyes pointed out two principal communitarian groups: those who followed the ideas of Robert Owen, who had come to the United States and commenced experiments in communism in 1824, and those who followed the ideas of Charles Fourier as explained by his American disciple Albert Brisbane and journalist Horace Greeley (1811–1872). Owenism had preceded and prepared the way for Fourierism, but both had sought “the possibility of a scientific and heavenly reconstruction of society.” In all, eleven experiments formed around the Owenite community design and thirty-

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four around the Fourier design. The Owenite communities were spread across Indiana (4); New York (3); Ohio (2); Pennsylvania (1); and Tennessee (1). The Fourier communities were located in Ohio (8); New York (6); Pennsylvania (6); Massachusetts (3); Illinois (3); New Jersey (2); Michigan (2); Wisconsin (2); Indiana (1); and Iowa (1). While the numbers of participants varied from a low of fifteen to a high of nine hundred in the Owenite experiment at New Harmony, Indiana, most consisted of between one and two hundred members, many of whom passed from one group to another as their communities failed. With the exception of the Rappite, Zoar, Ebenezer, Janson, and Oneida communities, for whom religion was the central focus, all of the experiments died young, with most lasting only a year or two.7 In viewing the two movements, Noyes concluded that they were similar in kind to the religious revivals that had occurred earlier. What Nettleton and Finney had been to the Second Great Awakening, Owen and Fourier had become for perfectionism. “There was a time between 1831 and 1834,” Noyes wrote, “when the American people came as near to a surrender of all to the Kingdom of Heaven as they came in 1843 to a socialist revolution. The Millennium seemed as near in 1831, as Fourier’s Age of Harmony seemed in 1843.” Revivalism and perfectionism represented the “inner” and “outer” aspects of regeneration: the former affecting the soul and the latter affecting the body. The revivalists ultimately failed “for want of regeneration of society,” while the perfectionists failed “for want of regeneration of the heart.”8 Noyes identified Swedenborgianism as the unofficial religion of the two socialist movements. While Associations sprang up and then disappeared one by one, the surge of Swedenborgianism which accompanied the Fourierist movement “swept on among their constituents . . . under the form of Spiritualism.”9 Swedenborgians not only believed in the possibility of a perfectionist world, but they expected that it would ultimately be governed by the spiritual world. When imbued with social justice, Christian love became the social gospel of the future. According to Noyes, many of these believers, including Owen’s son Robert Dale Owen, “began by believing in the marvels of animal magnetism, which led him to believe in the spiritual world, and . . . in the miracles of Christ.”10 Noyes observed that while the term Spiritualism substituted

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for Swedenborgianism in the lexicon of American usage after 1847, nonetheless “the history of their relations to each other, proves them to be identical in essence.” In other words, Spiritualism was nothing more than “Swedenborgianism Americanized.”11 Enthusiastic converts to Spiritualism saw no difference between Swedenborg’s claims to have conversed with spirits in heaven and hell and mediums’ claims to be receiving messages during a séance. If the spirit world was real, and apparently demonstrable, they reasoned, then surely the next step was to use Swedenborg’s descriptions of harmonious communities of angels as a template for creating heaven on earth. Between the fading of the Second Great Awakening in the 1840s and the onslaught of the Civil War trooped a succession of secular and religious “isms” that absorbed the energies of Americans. Within this mix of movements, both mesmerism and Swedenborgianism offered a synthesis open to those seeking to bring together the natural and the supernatural. As explained by Whitney R. Cross in The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (1965), mesmerism had led to Swedenborgianism, and Swedenborgianism to Spiritualism, “not because of the degree of intrinsic relationship between the three propositions but because of the assumptions according to which American adherents understood them.” Cross continued: The religious liberals of the forties had grown beyond dependence on the letter of Scripture. After their fashion, they had espoused science as the grand highway to knowledge and happiness. But they lived in an era of romantic idealism. Before they ever heard of Mesmer or Swedenborg, they expected new scientific discoveries to confirm the broad patterns of revelation as they understood them: to give mankind ever-more-revealing glimpses of the pre-ordained divine plan for humanity and the universe. They expected that all such new knowledge would demonstrate the superiority of ideal over physical or material force, and that it would prove the relationship of man’s soul to the infinite spiritual power.12

Mesmerism had tested the credulity of America’s wonder-loving public and prepared the way for the acceptance of Owenism as an answer to the nation’s yearning to include social reconstruction as part of

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its collective experience. As Owenism prepared the way for Fourierism, it opened the possibility for both scientific and heavenly reconstruction—a regeneration of the soul and the soul’s physical environment on earth. Owen’s unquestioning interest in and acceptance of Spiritualism was based on his belief that it produced information that would hasten the millennium.

Owenism In his New View of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character (1813) and Book of the New Moral World (1836), Welsh socialist Robert Owen laid the foundation for reconstructing society and creating a new character or face for the human race. Owen believed that no one was bad or evil by nature; gross errors in education, religion, and society made humanity what it was. Reacting in large part to the social ills created by the Industrial Revolution, he advocated the creation of small, managed communities of no more than three thousand persons, where children were educated and cared for by the community—doing away with the practice of child labor—and government gave workers the best possible conditions under which to work. By ensuring that every person in the community had some form of employment and was properly compensated for his or her labor, Owen believed he could eliminate poverty, thus removing the root causes of crime and immoral behavior. He claimed that he was offering to the family of humanity “the means of endless progressive improvement, physical, intellectual, and moral, and of happiness, without the possibility of retrogression or of assignable limit.” The revolution he advanced was applicable to all nations and peoples, creating a new moral order that did away with standing armies and eliminated the prejudices of class, sect, party, country, sex, and color. He predicted that the new direction given to thoughts, feelings, and actions would create a person in whom evil would vanish, to be replaced by wisdom and benevolence. Since the goal of human existence was to be happy, the object of human wisdom was “to know how to obtain and to secure that degree of happiness which can be most permanently enjoyed.”13 Owen captured the imagination of both Europe and America as he engaged society in the prospect of a social revolution. He appealed to

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kings and congresses to think about the family of humanity and how to reconstruct society in ways that would resolve the issues affecting both the inner and outer spirit. Arriving in Washington, D.C., on November 25, 1824, he shared his ideas with President-elect John Quincy Adams; later, on February 25 and again on March 7, 1825, he explained his plans and vision before the members of the House of Representatives and government functionaries, including President James Monroe, whose term ended on March 4 of that year. While America addressed its inner life through a home-grown revivalism, Owen sought to resolve its outer life through the importation of a nonreligious socialism from England.14 It is doubtful whether Owenism would ever have moved from theory to practice had it not been for the work of a Christian communist sect known as the Rappites, six hundred of whom came from Württemburg, Germany, settling on five thousand acres in Butler County, Pennsylvania, in 1804. Ten years later, they moved to the banks of the Wabash in Indiana, where they purchased thirty thousand acres of land, of which three thousand were under cultivation. There they built the town of Harmony, which included churches, schools, mills, factories, and other buildings. Under the patriarchal and undisputed leadership of George Rapp, they thrived until 1824, when they sold the land and buildings to Owen and returned with his flock to Pennsylvania, taking up residence in a village in Beaver County that they called Economy.15 Notwithstanding Owen’s vision for “New Harmony,” neither his enthusiasm nor his money was a match for the divisiveness rampant among community members. After seven different constitutions, complete with endless bickering, the community collapsed in 1829.16 Communities based on the perfectionist ideas of Owen included Nashoba in Shelby County, Tennessee; the Cooperative Society near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the Blue Springs and Forestville communities in Indiana; the Franklin and Coxsackie communities in New York; and the Kendal community near Canton, Ohio. The latter two groups were created by veterans of the Franklin community—men and women who moved from one to the other as their communities failed.17 Owen’s ideas were also the impetus behind the Yellow Springs community outside Cincinnati. Even though Owen expressed skepticism con-

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cerning the Bible and was more or less a pantheist in theology, he found Daniel Roe, minister of the New Jerusalem Church in Cincinnati, to be a strong supporter of his movement. Together with others in the city, Roe organized a community of approximately one hundred families at Yellow Springs (now the site of Antioch College) as the location for their replication of New Harmony.18 Owen’s blueprints consisted of model farms, gardens, orchards, schools, and playgrounds arranged so as to align the laws, institutions, and customs with the best attributes of human nature. Nevertheless, the succession of communitarian colonies—both secular and religious—that organized around his vision throughout England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the United States seldom had much affinity with each other. Individuals can be traced across several of the communities, but the colonies themselves were very idiosyncratic in their leadership, their identity, and in their methods of social reform. Being ambitious in their aspirations as well as strong and outspoken individualists, the Owenites tended to exaggerate their interpretation of society’s problems along with their own solutions to those problems. As vegetarians, prohibitionists, cold-water faddists, and a flotsam of other incidental “isms,” they stood in sharp contrast to the staid mainstream towns and cities of the East Coast and Midwest.19 In his eighty-third year, Robert Owen converted to Spiritualism. He had several sittings with private mediums and claimed to have received communications from the Duke of Kent, who had been an early supporter of his socialist schemes, along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Percy Shelley, John Milton, John Wesley, William Shakespeare, and William E. Channing. As a result of these otherworldly communications, he published a profession of faith in the Rational Quarterly Review, and, in 1854, renewed his commitment to perfectionism with this remark: “God now commands all nations, through the new manifestations of Spirits from superior Spheres, to prepare for universal peace, that man may commence on earth a new existence. . . .”20 Swedenborg could not have said it any better. Having started as a believer in mesmerism, Owen showed how easy the transition could be from Mesmer to Swedenborg, and then to Spiritualism. The promise of Owen’s new utopian world order made him so pop-

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ular among the working classes that they found it easy to embrace his Spiritualism as well. His visionary scheme for New Harmony, along with his belief in spirit communication, drew countless hearts into the Spiritualist movement that might otherwise have stayed away. A vigorous crusader, Owen did much to lend respectability to Spiritualist activities and their affiliate causes of temperance, vegetarianism, abolitionism, phrenology, and assorted types of socialism. Robert Dale Owen (1801–1877), the son of the English reformer, had come to the United States as a young man to assist his father in the founding of New Harmony. He was similarly smitten by Spiritualist visions, as evidenced by his collection of medium phenomena in Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, published in 1860; his 1871 publication of The Debatable Land Between This World and the Next; and his article three years later in the Atlantic Monthly wherein he explained that his acceptance of Christ had been due to having “seen and touched and conversed with a materialized spirit.”21 Owen had been a true believer in the Fox sisters (see chapter five) and trumpeted their mediumship abilities to all who would listen. Only later did he learn of their fraudulent activities and retract his endorsements.

Fourierism The French social scientist and reformer Charles Fourier was born a year after Robert Owen in the city of Besançon, in the Franche-Comté region near the Swiss border, and at eighteen traveled as a commercial house agent through most of Europe. Having lived through the horrors of the 1789 French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, during which he nearly lost his life, he directed his attention to the social evils of society. In 1808, he published Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générales (Theory of the Four Movements), which became the basis for his theory of phalanxes and Associations. In 1816, Just Muiron of Besançon became deeply interested in Fourier’s ideas and assisted him in publishing a two-volume work titled Traité de l’association domestiqueagricole (A Treatise on Domestic and Agricultural Association) in 1821. The title was subsequently changed to Théorie de l’unité universelle (Theory of Universal Unity); this publication eventually drew the attention of the public to Fourier’s ideas.22

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A child of the Enlightenment, Fourier sought to identify the laws needed for the proper management of God’s creation, especially control of the passions and instincts to ensure harmony. Any event, however trivial, had repercussions through the body politic. Understanding and managing the well-being of humankind required careful and detailed calculation, including the development of “Associations” or “phalanxes” where adults and children could be formed into harmonious groups and series according to their “attractions and repulsions” as well as their respective functions and final destinies. Using “universal analogies” or “correspondences” to explain his societal framework, Fourier took liberties with contemporary physics and astronomy (including Swedenborg’s cosmology) to explain his psychological and social theories and to develop his harmonious communities, thirty-four of which were founded in the United States between 1841 and 1858.23 Fourier sought to correct society’s problems through a more creative division of labor, through his own interpretation of the principle of laissez faire, and through a restructuring of the individual household. Believing that everyone needed a broad, diversified work environment, he encouraged individuals to break up the monotony of labor by moving from one type of work to another. Doing so, he believed, was good for both mind and body and helped form a more complete and responsible individual. As for the principle of laissez faire, he demurred at the idea that trade and industry should be left to self-regulation. If people were without passions and blind in their judgment, self-regulated competition might work; however, it was impossible to separate people from their passions. Besides, the total lack of regulation had led to a myriad of unnecessary and costly duplications of effort. In place of unfettered competition, Fourier substituted associationism. Through the creative use of labor, capital, and talent to obtain cooperation, social harmony, and nonviolent evolution, he theorized it would be possible to produce handsome profits and use harmony to control people’s passions. To facilitate associationism, Fourier wanted to bring families together into a single household for the purpose of greater efficiency. He believed that the root of society’s incoherence was its system of separate households, which aggravated waste. Clearly, one kitchen was better than three hundred.24

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Charles Fourier (1772–1837)

Fourier viewed the ideal community as one that ranged from four hundred to eighteen hundred persons cultivating about 5,700 acres. In such a community, or Association, every individual had an account that posted the credit they earned during the course of the year. These accounts were part of a collective account belonging to that person’s harmonial group, and individuals were paid interest from that account as a stockholder. Fourier believed that such a community could not only create order and unity, but extend life.25 He predicted benefits that included riches; practical truth; effective liberty; peace; a system of preventive medicine and extirpation of artificial diseases such as plague, yellow fever, cholera, and smallpox; collective and individual philanthropy; and unity of social action.26

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Fourier’s most noted disciple was Albert Brisbane, a native of Batavia, New York, who had gone to France at the age of eighteen to study under Victor Cousin, François Guizot, and Abel-François Villemain at the Sorbonne and then to Berlin to learn from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Brisbane fell in easily with Cousin’s eclecticism but eventually tired of its chameleon-like character. From Guizot, he acquired an appreciation of German philosophy and of the significance of Hegel, a factor that caused him to travel to Berlin in 1829 where Hegel stood as “the culmination of all philosophy.”27 On his return to Paris, Brisbane fell in with the Saint-Simonians, whose socialist reform movement he considered one of the more important events in history. Simonianism “was a new idea thrown into the world,” he wrote, “the idea that a new order of society, changing fundamentally all its institutions, would create for humanity a new social life. . . . It was a fundamental, radical reform of the whole social organization.”28 This brought him in contact with various groups of energetic young men and women anxious to reorganize society in the direction of an industrial government, a concept that led him to Charles Fourier and his Theory of Universal Unity. Like Robert Owen, both Fourier and Brisbane dealt with the “exterior” of the human condition, convinced that if the social and economic influences were properly managed, the “interior” of the individual would change accordingly. Having dedicated himself to solving the social problems of humankind and to the conception of a new social order in which the interests and relations of individuals were organized around the principles of justice and equity, Brisbane returned to the United States in 1834 as Fourier’s staunch disciple. By 1839, Brisbane had begun lecturing on Fourieristic ideas in Utica, Syracuse, Seneca Falls, and Rochester, publishing Social Destiny of Man in 1840 and Association in 1843. Along the way, he gained an influential convert by acquainting Horace Greeley with Fourier’s theories.29 In 1842, Fourier’s theories became public when the so-called Advocates of Association purchased space in Horace Greeley’s New York Weekly Tribune to publish articles written by Brisbane. The articles appealed to all classes of readers, including skeptics, by laying out practical plans for starting a joint-stock Association or phalanx that would

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return as much as $80 annually on a $1,000 investment. As explained by Brisbane, a person who invested $1,000 “would be certain of a comfortable room and board for his interest, if he lived economically, and would have whatever he might produce by his labor in addition. Besides, he would live in an elegant edifice surrounded by beautiful fields and gardens.”30 While Owen’s plan involved the transformation of society into a communist-based community built around individual homes and a family structure, Fourier’s plan was based on a joint-stock form of business arrangement that likewise reinforced the home and family structure. The former had the “unity of life” (i.e., transformation of human nature) as its communistic basis, while the latter insisted upon the “distinction of person” and “separate properties” as the foundation for its concept of joint-stockism.31 According to Brisbane, the Association was “a means of uniting all individual forces and intelligences, now so miserably wasted and misapplied, and of directing them to great and important undertakings.” These were societies different from those attempted by Owen, the Rappites, Shakers, and others who were intent on eliminating individual property. By contrast, the Association was designed to improve the present system of “incoherent, isolated, piece-meal cultivation” by creating collectives where people shared in the labor of a particular task while still benefiting individually through paid dividends. The economy of scale promised “colossal profits.”32 With Brisbane’s assistance, the social theories of Fourier swept across the American landscape in the 1840s, capturing the imagination of countless reformers, many of whom had been attracted by the possibility of establishing experimental communities to serve as models for the greater society. Brisbane viewed Fourier as an original genius, much like Copernicus or Newton, who had labored to understand the laws of society in order to put an end to humankind’s miseries.33 Given that the whole of the agricultural industry of the South was dependent upon slavery, Brisbane thought it important to replace the plantation system with an agricultural Association. Abolishing slavery suddenly would infringe upon the American social contract, but replacing it with an Association would result in a unity of labor, capital, and talent. It offered a level of reform that attacked the evil of slavery,

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not by a conflict of principles but by a judicious combination of scientific cultivation; the right of person and of property; and recognition of the capacity, talent, and labor of the different sexes and ages. The property right in slavery could not be revoked, Brisbane reasoned, without jeopardizing the future of the union. “If the Abolitionists can spread their views and strengthen their party, so as to give it a preponderance over the opposing fractions of other parties, and if, when they have obtained this power, they proceed to carry out practically their principles,” he warned in 1840, “the South may deem it expedient to secede from the North—and the Union ceases!” This situation would “sooner or later result in misunderstandings, quarrels and perhaps even war.” Only the intervention of associationism and a coherent choice of industries could solve the foreboding issue of abolitionism.34 The publication of The Phalanx, Or Journal of Social Science (1843–45), a New York newspaper owned by Brisbane and devoted to the advancement of Fourierism, sparked a rush of social experiments designed to achieve the “new world of wealth and harmony.”35 Organized first in Roxbury, Hopedale, and Northampton, Massachusetts, associationism spread to New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa. Supported by success of his books, Brisbane served as midwife to a host of phalanxes, including the conversion of the Brook Farm community outside of Boston from transcendentalism to a combination of Fourierism and Swedenborgianism.36 The associationist movement had its roots in the Arminian or free will base of Protestant sectarianism as well as the radical communitarianism of Charles Fourier. Just as a sinner found grace only after willingly making the free act of faith, so associationism demanded an intelligent and self-motivated free act of choice as a prerequisite to socialist perfectionism. The movement had even deeper roots in the writings of Swedenborg and the perfectionist spirit evident in the Church of the New Jerusalem. However, Brisbane posed an obstacle to the Swedenborgian connection, as he seemed more secular than religious in his public statements and writings. Indeed, as Nicholas V. Riasanovsky explained in The Teaching of Charles Fourier (1969), Brisbane chose to ignore Fourier’s Biblical references along with proofs of how Fourier’s

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ideas complemented Christian doctrine. Not until Brisbane returned to Europe in 1844 did the associationist movement in the United States turn more deliberately toward Spiritualism and Christian socialist ideas.37 With the phalanxes organized into series and groups, the connection to Swedenborg’s revelations of the heavenly order became all the more apparent. Fourier’s concept of series and groups entailed the methodological arrangement of members drawn together by their mutual attractions; nevertheless, these same groups were in direct rivalry with those immediately contiguous to it. By contrast, Swedenborg’s concept of series and degrees, when applied to the political sphere, stressed a harmonious order where all the parts worked together for the common good. Notwithstanding this difference, Swedenborgianism filled the gaps in Fourierism, leaving few doubts as to their complementarity.38 The associationist movement was part of the early nineteenthcentury rebellion against Christian orthodoxy, and Calvinism in particular. Having found encouragement from the Arminian and Antinomian advocates within the liberal wing of Protestantism, the associationists proceeded to align themselves with reformers who saw the unlimited possibilities of human endeavor, including the realization of the kingdom of God on earth. In some ways, the movement served as a testing ground for both secular and religious reformers—an opportunity to determine if there was a likelihood of common ground among religious mystics, communitarians, socialists, millennialists, Unitarians, Universalists, agnostics, and militant freethinkers. The associationists found this common ground by referring to Swedenborg’s Platonic scale of degrees rising through the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, with each traced to its source in God and bridging the natural and spiritual worlds. For better or worse, Swedenborg’s law of correspondence became the most often-used term or metaphor to depict the consanguinity between the two worlds. In introducing elements of socialist perfectionism and millennialism as a means of counteracting the destructive elements of growing materialism in American society, the associationists transformed the ethic of Christian love into a thinking, working, living ideal that extended beyond the individual to the greater community. Only by sharing, cooperating, and working in communal solidar-

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ity to realize that ethic could the individual rise above self-centeredness and build the society worthy of Christ’s Second Coming.39 Swedenborg’s ideas echoed through the publications of the associationists. Fourier’s law of “universal analogy” and his identification of levels of created matter drew heavily from Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences and his depiction of divine order. Notwithstanding Swedenborg’s retention of hell and remnants of Calvinistic theology, Fourier’s vision of the harmonious society was strikingly similar to the otherworldly kingdoms described by Swedenborg. To be sure, they differed in their view of sin, divine intervention, and the meaning of the Second Coming. As historian Carl Guarneri explained, Swedenborg saw the Second Coming as “the inward revelation of biblical truths to the devout,” and not as a “transformed social order” that Fourier had envisioned. Hence, when the associationists adopted the ideas of Swedenborg, they not only selectively chose among his ideas but sometimes interpreted them “in a radically new context.”40 Excited by the socialist ideas of Fourier, American utopians found themselves in the forefront of reform circles as they sought to build their model communities. While most of these endeavors were shortlived, they represented an important component of religious and secular reform in the first half of the nineteenth century. Equally important is the fact that these communities were a blending of the rationalism of the Enlightenment with the ideas and symbols long held in Christianity. “Inspired by their commitment to Christian love and convinced of the essential unity of reason and revelation,” observed Guarneri, “they believed that Christianity and socialism were not inevitable antagonists, as critics claimed, but indispensable allies.” Fourier’s social ideas may have drawn heavily from the secular side of the Enlightenment, but the American approach to Fourierism reflected a more Christian heritage. Indeed, it represented “the first extensive attempt to harness the powerful ideas and symbols of Christianity, including Swedenborgianism, to the emerging worldview of secular socialism.”41

Henry James Sr . American theologian and Swedenborgian Henry James Sr. (1811–1882)— friend of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Carlyle and father of two

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famous sons, William and Henry—was a man of wealth, a staunch believer in the importance of both democracy and individualism, and at home with the religious and philosophical currents of his day. He sensed the freshness of the romanticism that was sweeping across the nation and, at the same time, felt the plaintive strain of the Enlightenment as its advocates drifted into obsolescence. As a witness to this changing of the guard, James struggled to find meaning in the “enthusiasms” that seemed to bounce from vegetarianism and Graham flour to parlor socialism, abolition, hydropathy, table rappings, transcendentalism, phrenology, and phrenopathy. James’s own mental and religious development helped him to navigate these elements of change. Openly hostile to the Calvinism of his ancestors, he moved intellectually and with determination to affirm the views of Emerson and Swedenborg. James seized upon Swedenborg’s social philosophy and, combining it with the ideas of Fourier, sought to find a solution to the evils of the Industrial Revolution. Here was the nexus of morality and democracy in action. Buoyed by an ebullient optimism, James joined with George Ripley, Albert Brisbane, Horace Greeley, and others to construct a kingdom of heaven on earth, a combination of Swedenborgianism and Fourierism. Swedenborg’s idea of the Universal Human, or God as divine humanity, easily translated into the idea that each individual became a Christ of the new order. These were not the dreams of a lunatic but the aspirations of a man and a generation caught up in the need to restructure society. James viewed associationism as a social experiment intended to express the fullness of divinely inspired human potential. For him, as for Swedenborg, the emphasis was on group rather than individual improvement, giving added measure of meaning to the concept of the Universal Human. Among the Swedenborgians, James was perhaps the most celebrated Fourierist. It was James who sought to transform Swedenborg’s religious ideas into some form of social restructuring. For him, the New Church was best represented not as a group of like-minded worshipers, but of believers dedicated to the ethic of Christian love and set on applying Christian morality and the creative energy of divinely inspired souls to form a new society. The Fourier phalanx represented the material outer shell or architecture of this Christian communal society

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whose inner or spiritual undercarriage followed Swedenborg’s design for the way people should live on earth. For James, the “natural order . . . was never intended for a finality to the mind, but at most as a spur or discipline to its advanced spiritual growth.”42 An extraordinary man of letters, James followed his own muse into the metaphysical abstruseness of Swedenborg. “As one who was better at living the truth he wanted to express than at expressing the truth he lived,” observed Giles Gunn, “James did not quite seem to fit anywhere and so was dismissed by some and neglected by the rest.”43 Nevertheless, James’s vision of a reformed society and of Christ as humanity raised to the highest level of perfection revealed his metaphysical rejection of traditional Christian theology and the verve with which he relied upon Swedenborg to represent his convictions. Drawing from both Swedenborg and Fourier, he sought to throw over the odiousness of the Calvinistic-Puritan legacy for one that pulsated with God’s immanence, humanity’s social solidarity, and society’s ultimate perfectibility. In an early publication titled What Constitutes the State? which was an expansion of a lecture given before the Young Men’s Association in Albany in 1845, he explained that the so-called “social contract” was a fiction that denied the spiritual origin of the state and the moral distinctions among individuals. The state, he wrote, “means simply the social condition peculiar to man: a condition which makes his highest life to depend upon his relations to his fellows, or which limits his enjoyment of life within the limits of his love to his brother.”44 Although James did much to popularize Swedenborg, he was a selfproclaimed Swedenborgian, and most other Swedenborgians repudiated all connection to him. As explained by his good friend Edwin Godkin, “the [Swedenborgian] sect to which he belonged, and of which he was the head, may be said to have consisted to himself alone.”45 According to Charles Eliot Norton, the American realist author William Dean Howells was known to have quipped that James not only wrote The Secret of Swedenborg, but “kept it.”46

Charles Julius Hempel At the same time that James was explaining Swedenborgianism to his contemporaries and linking it to Fourierism, a similar effort was

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Charles Julius Hempel (1811–1879). Image courtesy of the Lloyd Library and Museum.

undertaken by homeopath Charles J. Hempel (1811–1879) in his The True Organization of the New Church (1848). For Hempel, there was an obvious connection between Fourierism and Swedenborgianism and a natural union of science and religion in the conception of the Universal Human. Notwithstanding Fourier’s emphasis on altering the individual’s external environment to bring about change in character, and Swedenborg’s belief in individual depravity and regeneration, in both the phalanxes of Fourier and in the spiritual heavens of Swedenborg the inhabitants were organized according to their affections, resulting in an orderly arrangement that, when combined, realized the natural or Universal Human. Both concepts helped define humanity’s freedom and happiness.47 Hempel dedicated his work to both Fourier and Swedenborg, believing that the doctrines of these two men could no longer remain sep-

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arated. Their union, he argued, constituted “the union of Science and Religion.” For Hempel, the realization of the plan put forth by Fourier was the application to life of the theories of Swedenborg. The Association was a theorem to be demonstrated, and the members of New Church needed to delve less in their “man-worship of Swedenborg” and heed the more sublime truths revealed in the Swedenborg’s writings to realize “the grand social transformation which awaits the world.” Rather than simply contenting themselves with purifying the “interiors of their minds,” he urged the members of the New Church to reconstruct the “external man” for a life of love by means of a collective effort laid out by Fourier.48 Hempel intended to introduce the doctrines of Fourier to the followers of Swedenborg and thereby kindle in them a desire for organizing a “New Jerusalem” that would “command the attention and ultimately secure the conquest of the World.” Hempel noted that Swedenborg had used the term “Grand Man” or “Universal Human” to designate the spiritual heavens. It was an organization of heaven’s inhabitants into a “series of groups” or “consociations” based upon the particular level of their spiritual lives. These consociations allowed the “internal man” to exist in fullness and in peace. Hempel believed that Fourier had discovered a “serial arrangement” which served both social and individual regeneration and urged the followers of Swedenborg to come together to live in harmony rather than remain isolated and apart. “It is in the organization of your church,” reasoned Hempel, “that the doctrine of Fourier will furnish the practical science which is needed; unless the writings of Swedenborg are illustrated by the sublime teachings of Fourier, the Heavenly Arcana will remain a mystical doctrine, and . . . will never have any important bearing upon the social progress of Humanity.”49 By recounting the benefits of Fourier’s Associations, Hempel hoped to show New Church followers that it furnished a “clear and positive method of realizing the kingdom of God upon earth.” What Fourier discovered and constituted under the name “Association” or “phalanx” became the science of converting the spiritual, intellectual, and physical faculties of human beings into the highest possible use to themselves and to society. The association of interests and passions deduced

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from the laws of nature constituted a “living harmony” or true church, where every individual lived for the good of the whole. The passions of all were directed to love of God and charity toward other people. The Association was an entity respective of each individual’s interests, and insofar as it achieved that purpose it fortified the union of all. In the Association, “every man is his own good and his own truth, where everybody is determined to the choice of a certain branch of Industry by the attractive force which that particular branch exercises over his mind.” Every fiber was placed in the service of truth and useful action—where all the interests of humanity were united.50 The Association’s mix of capital, talent, and labor was the genius of Fourier and represented Swedenborg’s ideal of Christ and his divine kingdom. It was in the fulfillment of the Christian concept of sacrifice, reasoned Hempel, that the Association became a force for social harmony, humanity, and order. Thus, the truths announced by Swedenborg and scientifically expressed by Fourier made each Association a “tabernacle in which all souls shall find room for a holy and useful life.” Each became a living reality of Christian love, laying the foundation of that “heavenly Jerusalem, where our bodies shall find health, our minds truth, our souls infinite life.”51 Hempel’s book represented the culmination of efforts to bring together the ideas of Fourier and Swedenborg. Quoted generously by the Fourierist organ The Harbinger, the book became a commentary on the principles of Fourier and Swedenborg and their application to the American scene.

Swedenborgian Associations Swedenborg’s vision of the spirit world as well as his law of correspondences formed a natural fit with Fourierism for many people. The connections between the material and spiritual worlds gave context to the different levels of creation, illuminated the harmony between reason and revelation, and denied the dualism of matter and spirit.52 For that reason, a number of the Fourierist communities that formed in the mid1800s were predominantly Swedenborgian, including Mountain Cove, Virginia; Brocton, New York; Yellow Springs, Ohio; Le Raysville, Pennsylvania; and Lenox, Iowa.

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The Mountain Cove community in western Virginia was under the leadership of the Reverend James L. Scott and the Reverend Thomas Lake Harris (1823–1906)—a Swedenborgian considered by William James to be “America’s best-known mystic”—who believed in direct communication with God without intermediaries.53 Born into Calvinism, Harris became pastor of the Universalist Church in New York City and, in 1848, formed an independent Christian congregation. He then led his parishioners on a spiritual quest, first to Spiritualism, then to Swedenborgianism, and lastly to the economic teachings of both Owen and Fourier. After helping to found the Spiritualistic community at Mountain Cove, Harris left to become pastor of the Church of the Good Shepherd in New York. Although he and his congregation held much in common with the theology of Swedenborg, they were no slavish imitators. Instead, they veered right and left, borrowing from the Swede when it served their purposes and ignoring him at other times.54 Harris traveled to England in 1859, where he continued to preach on Swedenborg. When he returned, he became involved in two communities, one at Brocton in Salem-onErie, New York, and the other the Christian Church of the New Jerusalem in New Orleans, where he again took up his peculiar brand of Swedenborgianism.55 The Brocton community of New York advanced the ideas of Swedenborgianism with the same zeal that it supported Fourierism. Established on the southern shore of Lake Erie, it consisted of 1,600 acres that included vineyards, orchards, and residences for about sixty adults, among them several English aristocrats. As a religious community, the members followed the tenets of Christianity and Swedenborg’s particular interpretation of Scripture. This included his theory of love and spiritual marriage; opposition to all aspects of spirit-rappings; and an emphasis on science, art, literature, language, and philosophy. In 1875, Harris moved the community to Fountaingrove in Santa Rosa, California. The Brocton community, however, did not fully close until 1881, when Harris called its remaining members to Fountaingrove.56 As noted earlier, when Swedenborg fell into deep thought, he often suspended respiration, allowing him to breathe “inwardly” as the heavens were opened to him. The Brocton communitarians not only

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adopted Swedenborgianism but utilized the technique of “open respiration” used by Swedenborg, the Shakers, and the Ebenezers to reproduce the religious atmosphere of the earliest churches. The term they used to describe this technique was “afflatus.” John Humphrey Noyes, who founded the utopian community at Oneida, remained curious about the Brocton community’s efforts at “internal respiration,” but he doubted that the practice would help them in becoming selfsufficient. He concluded that it was more of a distraction and a weakness than it was something to hold the community together.57 The Swedenborgian colony that formed at Yellow Springs, Ohio, was the outgrowth of a society that organized in Cincinnati in 1811. This group had met with Robert Owen when he traveled to the “Queen City” in 1824 and not only accepted his social and economic theories but put them into practice. The colony formally organized in 1825 and moved to St. Louis to practice its theories of cooperation.58 The Le Raysville Phalanx, consisting of 1,500 acres and buildings that housed forty men, women, and children, was organized near the town of Pike in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. The participants, all of whom were members of the New Jerusalem Church, worked under the leadership of the Reverend Lemuel C. Belding to formulate school programs and industries around the ideas of Swedenborg. Had the enterprise succeeded, there is little doubt that the phalanx would have taken Swedenborgianism as its official religion.59 The Lenox community in Iowa owed its existence to Hermann Heinrich Diekhöner, a graduate of the University of Tübingen and disciple of Immanuel Tafel who had helped translate the Latin writings of Swedenborg into German. Having been drawn to Swedenborg’s writings, he arrived in St. Louis via New Orleans ready to combine New Church thought with communism. From St. Louis, he and his fellow Swedenborgians moved to Lenox Township in 1851, where they built a utopian society that they intended to be free of capitalism’s wage slavery as well as from the abomination of human slavery that had so engulfed Southern culture. By 1852, the colony controlled nearly a thousand acres. All teaching and preaching were done in German, with Luther’s Bible and Tafel’s translation of Swedenborg as the official anchors for the Church of the New Jerusalem.60

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Diekhöner not only drew ideas from Swedenborg but also from Fourierism. Indeed, the social and economic ideas embedded in Fourierism were difficult to distinguish from those espoused by the Swedenborgians. Both celebrated the achievements of science and the importance of cooperation as opposed to competition in economics. In addition, there seemed to be an easy accommodation between Fourier’s so-called “passional principle” and Swedenborg’s “conjugial love.” In both concepts there was the assertion that individual freedom and happiness were proportional to the ability to realize an orderly development of the passions that formed the essence of each soul. In 1853, however, the Lenox community gave up its communistic principles and divided the land among its members.61 Not everyone was pleased with the blending of Swedenborgianism and utopian socialism. One such critic was J. J. G. Wilkinson, who believed that principles of individual regeneration could not be transferred to social reorganization, and that there were irreconcilable differences between aspirations of creating a truly cooperative community and the self-interest inherent in human nature.62 Another skeptic was John Humphrey Noyes, who felt that pure Swedenborgianism had not been a good match with either Owen’s communism or Fourier’s phalanxes. “Swedenborg in his personal character was not a Socialist or an organizer in any way, but a very solitary speculator,” explained Noyes, “and the heavens he set before the world were only sublimated embodiments of the ordinary principle of private property, in wives and in everything else.” Nevertheless, the writings of both Fourier and Swedenborg, while different in their focus, led their followers to adopt methods that were strikingly similar. Both men sought unity in religion, science, and social order; and each sought to identify universal principles and a love of humanity and of God.63

Emerson’s Transparent Eyeball New England’s Unitarians and transcendentalists, such as James Freeman Clarke, William Ellery Channing, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, John Sullivan Dwight, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, pursued double vocations in ministry and letters. Their views of humanity and nature were filled with symbols of religion, philosophy, poetry, and

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the arts. The authors most read and discussed among them included Thomas Carlyle, Victor Cousin, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Swedenborg. Some of them were poet-priests, drawing intimate connections between humanity as an expression of moral and spiritual improvement and the appeal to the powerful imagery of literary romanticism. As religion became more liberal in its view of humanity, sin, and salvation, its cause became increasingly interrelated with the arts. The essentials of religion were no longer to be found solely in its dogmas but in the great moral truths that were rendered fresh and moving in the music, poetry, pulpit eloquence, and artistry of the period. Warm and vigorous, they summoned up a human form that, for Channing, was a likeness of God.64 “If a man is at heart just,” preached Emerson, “then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice.”65 This was their moral argument against Calvinism, which they replaced with a more ebullient tracking of the human soul on its path to immortality in the universal mind. The essence of Emerson’s “Man the Reformer,” “Compensation,” and “Self-Reliance” was individualism, the primacy of the mind, and the connection between individual intelligence and the divine mind. The authority of historical Christianity and its dull sermons had long since passed. From Swedenborg on— from Emerson’s point of view—the spiritual purpose of the Christian church was possible only within societies inspired by the newer revelations of Scripture and the communion of the individual soul with God. Until the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures had been breathed into life by the revelations given by God and the angels to Swedenborg, they remained fragmentary, discredited of either inspiration or integrity.66 Emerson’s interest in Swedenborg came by way of two friends, Sampson Reed and Thomas Worcester, both graduates of Harvard who were early members of the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem, founded in 1818. James Reed, Sampson’s son, became pastor of the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem, while Sampson served as editor of the New Jerusalem Magazine and wrote the popular Observations on the Growth of the Mind (1826), which went through numerous editions. During the years of Emerson’s pastorate of the Second Church in Bos-

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ton, he made frequent reference to Swedenborg and the articles written by Sampson Reed. Swedenborg’s mystical ideas not only resonated with the congregation, but with those who were more theistic and tied to the philosophical and literary movements of European romanticism and American transcendentalism.67 Emerson’s interest in Swedenborg also came from the writings of the French Catholic priest Guillaume Oegger, who he read in 1835 and from whom he had learned the doctrine of correspondences. Like Swedenborg, Emerson united “seer” with “sayer,” a harmony of inspiration and expression intended to reconcile the moral burdens of the day. Nevertheless, Emerson was by no means a Swedenborgian. Having moved a considerable distance from Christian creed, and having adopted such words as “influx” and “correspondences,” he nevertheless disdained enthusiasm for the New Church and chose deliberately to keep Swedenborgianism at arm’s length.68 As Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emerson’s biographer, explained, “His faith was too large and too deep for the formulae he found built into the pulpit, and he was too honest to cover up his doubts under the flowing vestments of a sacred calling.”69 Emerson believed it possible for every person to have an inward and immediate connection to what he described as the “over-soul” or universal essence. As explained by Harvard historian Perry Miller, Emerson’s ideas were intended to “persuade ourselves the next time we venture into the woods that we may become . . . transparent eyeballs, and that thereupon all disagreeable appearances . . . shall vanish and be no more seen.” But Miller cautioned readers not to take Emerson too literally when he proclaimed that his mystical and pantheistical beliefs derived from a “Saturnalia of faith” since, in truth, many of his views had derived from New England’s past, especially Jonathan Edwards, who revealed a uniquely Puritan tradition of enlarging the soul’s access to God by going directly to nature.70 Emerson not only gave the lecture “Swedenborg, or the Mystic” in 1845, later published in his Representative Men (1850), but made at least eighty distinct references to the Swede in his voluminous writings. He brought Swedenborg—not the New Church—directly into the intellectual world of New England by placing him among the most influential religious thinkers in America; he also included him with Plato,

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Shakespeare, Goethe, and Napoleon in terms of overall influence on the world.71 Emerson instinctively chose individuals who were not from the “city-building market-going race of mankind” but from the “world of morals or of will” whose ideas opened the doors to the universe by inspiring the will to seek out the “secrets and structure of nature by some higher method than by experience.”72 For Emerson, the moral insight of Swedenborg entitled him to a place among the truly great minds. The philosophic character of Swedenborg’s thinking was no doubt what drew him closest to the New England transcendentalist. “All things in the universe arrange themselves to each person anew, according to his ruling love,” wrote Emerson, explaining Swedenborg’s concept of heaven and hell. Everyone, after bodily death, gravitated to his or her celestial equivalent, the spiritual expression of the symmetry between one’s affections and one’s actions. Nevertheless, Emerson thought Swedenborg too dogmatic, particularly in the case of souls condemned to hell, for whom there was no mercy. He also considered Swedenborg’s mood too scholastic, reserved, didactic, and passionless—one who “denotes classes of souls as a botanist disposes of a carex [species of plant], and visits doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende! He has no sympathy. . . . He goes up and down the world of men . . . and with nonchalance and the air of a referee, distributes souls.”73

Brook Farm The utopian educational experiment at Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, was the brainchild of William E. Channing, George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Orestes Brownson, Frederick Henry Hedge, and others. Having acquired the title “transcendentalist” in their approach to literature, philosophy, and religion, this like-minded and generally agreeable circle of writers and readers designed a society of stockholders who owned in common two hundred acres of farmland and buildings nine miles outside Boston. For its founding members, Brook Farm was a “Yankee experiment” that combined Unitarianism, transcendentalism, communal culture, and the ritual of conversion to realize what they saw as Christ’s idea of society and thereby live in such a way as to utilize the fullness of the soul’s faculties.74

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In the autumn of 1843, Brook Farm came under the influence of Fourierists, particularly Albert Brisbane, and adopted the phalanx structure of community. It started with an article in The Dial, a magazine that, from 1840 to 1844, served as the official voice of transcendentalism. The article, written by the English American transcendentalist and abolitionist Charles Lane (1800–1870), questioned whether the traditional family and its marital structure was compatible with the socialist view of the “universal family” or community. In April 1844, educator Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804–1894) published an article in The Dial reporting on a convention of Fourierists held in Boston several months earlier and expressed a sense of openness to their doctrines and to the comments of Channing and others who pleaded for their adoption. At the conclusion of the article, she made note of the fact that the Brook Farm delegates at the convention had decided to form an Association dedicated to the social scientific ideas advanced by Fourier.75 According to Peabody, the Fourierists accepted the fact that it was a Christian world and that it was important to provide for free expression among the various Christian churches without lending them support on the material side. She remarked that, “unless the Fourierist bodies are made alive by Christ, their constitution will not march; and the galvanic force of reaction, by which they move for a season, will not preserve them from corruption.”76 It was within the phalanx that history would be written that served both the individual and the universal human, where the gratifications of human nature would be subdued, and where humanity became wedded to God. It was in the phalanx where the doctrine of universal unity and the law of groups and series would be fulfilled.77 The conversion of Brook Farm from its Unitarian and transcendentalist roots to Fourierism was facilitated by Channing’s magazine The Present (1843–44), which advocated Fourierism to the Brook Farm members. Within a year, Brook Farm had changed its constitution to become the Brook Farm Phalanx. Predisposed by its religious liberalism and social reform ideas to test various schemes for reconstructing society, Brook Farm struck out on a course of social engineering. Beginning in early February 1844, the Brook Farm Phalanx moved from being a pastoral and educational entity that offered a college prepara-

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tory boarding school to becoming a Fourierist community, embracing the departments of industry, arts, and sciences. Rather symbolically, the transition paralleled the last issues of the The Dial in 1844 and the commencement of subscriptions to The Phalanx, which recounted the conversion to Fourierism. The Phalanx would later appear under the title of The Harbinger.78 Originally, the intellectual center for Fourierism had been New York City, where Brisbane, Greeley, and Godwin published The Phalanx, and where the national conventions were held and the executive committee of the National Convention of Associates met. However, once Brook Farm moved to Fourierism, the intellectual center of the movement shifted to Massachusetts. Channing became known as the “Apostle of Fourierism,” succeeding the role of Brisbane as the chief engineer of Fourieristic experiments in the country.79 Having dedicated its work to the principles of “associative unity,” the Brook Farm Phalanx set out on the noble experiment of organizing itself on the basis of obedience to God, true brotherhood, and perfect justice. Its threefold motto was: Unity of man with man in true society, Unity of man with God in true religion, Unity of man with nature in creative art and industry.80

Along with the transformation of Brook Farm into a Fourieristic socialist community came a new direction in its religious orientation— Swedenborgianism. Ironically, while the Brook Farm experiment was intended to propagate socialism, its greatest success was in sweeping the participants of the experiment into Swedenborgianism and eventually into Spiritualism. According to John Humphrey Noyes, Swedenborgianism went deeper into the hearts of the people than the Socialism that introduced it, because it was a religion. The Bible and revivals had made men hungry for something more than social reconstruction. Swedenborg’s offer of a new heaven as well as a new earth, met the demand magnificently. He suited all sorts. The scientific were charmed. . . . The mystics were charmed. . . . The Unitarians liked him. . . . Even the infidels liked him. . . . His vast imaginations and magnificent promises chimed in exactly with the spirit of the accompanying Socialisms. Fourierism was

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too bald a materialism to suit the higher classes of its disciples, without a religion corresponding. Swedenborgianism was a godsend to the enthusiasts of Brook Farm; and they made it the complement of Fourierism.81

For Channing, the proliferation of denominations and sects had been detrimental to Christianity. He hoped that the movement of which he was a part would enable humankind to realize a “unitary church” capable of producing a society whose individuals were in harmony with God. “Ours is a calling,” he recounted in one of his speeches, “to conquer the world, and to bring it in subjection to truth, love and beauty, that the living Christ may at length return and enter upon his Kingdom of Heaven on the earth.”82 Channing’s church of the future would accept the idea of divine immanence by calling attention to the divinity of the human race in place of the individual soul. His scheme for society, which followed the Fourierist plan of social organization, was based on a combination of secularized Christianity and a harmony of human interests. It was Christianity without dogma, and a human society that countered excessive individualism with a sense of duty, collective divinity, and social reform.83 In October 1847, a fire at Brook Farm ended both the phalanx and the idea. Following the fire, the members dispersed, and The Harbinger returned to New York for publication. The end of Brook Farm represented the end as well of Fourierism in the United States. While one or two phalanxes lingered on for a short time, both Fourierism and The Harbinger had for all practical purposes dissolved. According to Brisbane, the fundamental cause for Brook Farm’s dissolution had been much deeper. Like the other associative efforts of the time, Brook Farm “had been established without science, and without the means of applying principles concretely.” Perceiving opportunities outside their small communities that were in greater harmony with their personal feelings and aspirations, they turned away from their ideals “to mingle again with the outside world in broader and more complex spheres of action.”84

Steps toward Spiritualism As noted earlier by John Humphrey Noyes, after 1847 the term “Swedenborgianism” was replaced in the American lexicon by the word “Spiritualism.”85 There seemed to be a marked degree of correspondence

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between Fourier’s socialism and Swedenborg’s spiritual knowledge. As explained by Parke Godwin in his Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier (1844), Swedenborg and Fourier were “commissioned by the Great Leader of the Christian Israel, to spy out the promised land of peace and blessedness.”86 The same connection was drawn by the English Fourierist Hugh Doherty, whose article in The Phalanx on September 7, 1844, reinforced the close identity of the two men and their movements. I am a believer in the truths of the New Church, and have read nearly all the writings of Swedenborg, and I have no hesitation in saying that without Fourier’s explanation of the laws of order in Scriptural interpretation, I should probably have doubted the truth of Swedenborg’s illumination, from want of a ground to understand the nature of spiritual sight in contradistinction from natural sight; or if I had been able to conceive the opening of the spiritual sight, and credit Swedenborg’s doctrines and affirmations, I should probably have understood them only in the same degree as most of the members of the New Church whom I have met in England, and that would seem to me, in my present state, a partial calamity of cecity. I say this in all humility and sincerity and conscience, with a view to future reference to Swedenborg himself in the spiritual world, and as a means of inducing the members of the New Church generally not to be content with the superficial or limited knowledge of their own doctrines.87

Approximately twenty-three million Americans were counted in the census of 1850. There was evidence of a fluid religious scene, with Millerites, Swedenborgians, Friends, Unitarians, Spiritualists, and Universalists among the many denominations who expressed some form of Christian doctrine. The Universalists and similar movements revolted from the rigidity of orthodox Protestantism. Others, like the Spiritualists, had spawned from a combination of mesmerism, revivalism, Unitarianism, socialism, abolitionism, and other impulses and enthusiasms. Spiritualism represented a powerful solvent to those groups— irrespective of class—who were operating on the fringe of Protestantism and looking for greater intellectual freedom.88 Swedenborgianism found numerous fellow travelers among the supporters of animal magnetism, phrenology, and the followers of Owen

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and Brisbane. Mesmerism was the first, and probably the most disruptive, of its early companions, creating a brood of descendants that migrated into Spiritualism, Theosophy, New Thought, Christian Science, and other imitators. The connection between Swedenborg’s experiences with “inner respiration” and mystic revelations seemed to be similar to the experiences of trance-speaking and mediumship with the spirit world common to mesmerism. The easy inference drawn between mesmerism and Swedenborgianism was confirmed over and over again by supporters as well as critics. Had not Swedenborg communicated with departed souls? Had he not spoken with numerous people in his spiritual travels? Over and over again, the more creative among Mesmer’s followers found lucrative and meaningful connections between the baquet and the spirit world as the process of mesmerization was used to produce clairvoyant and telepathic episodes. The attention given to mesmerism prepared the way for the later acceptance of the many varied elements of Spiritualism. In the early years, healing and trance mediums played a significant part of Spiritualism’s activities as the populace was inundated with various electric, Odic, and magnetic theories. Much of this was helped along by sympathetic editors, the circuit of popular lyceum speakers, and social reformers who swept across the eastern seaboard, along the Erie Canal, and into the Midwest. Numerous Owenite and Fourierist socialists became willing Spiritualists who found common cause with Swedenborg and his doctrine of correspondences. Communities founded under both secular and religious impulses were openly friendly to these ideas.89 During the immediate post-Civil War decades, perfectionism looked more inwardly toward faith healing as the centerpiece for spiritual renewal. Using a variety of scriptural anchors (i.e., 1 Cor. 12:28; James 5:14–16; Exod. 15:26; Matt. 8:16–17; and Mark 16:15–18), healing by faith became synonymous with the “second blessing,” or the sanctification that followed the conversion experience. Having repudiated mainstream Christianity’s assertion that the age of miracles had long since passed, they linked healing not only with Jesus and the early days of Christianity, but with the testimony of Origen, Augustine, and Luther.90 That said, perfectionism did not give up entirely on its more out-

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ward social experimentation. When late nineteenth-century reformers such as Henry George and Edward Bellamy contemplated the malevolent economic forces aborting the American faith in democracy and economic opportunity, they looked back wistfully to Jeffersonian views on property and natural rights, to Emerson’s celebration of democratic individualism and self-reliance, and to the social and spiritual theories of Swedenborg as interpreted by the disciples of Owen and Fourier.91

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chapter 5

Competing Mediums It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead. —H. P. Blavatsky

In 1848, in a farm house at Hydesville, near Rochester, New York, America was introduced to a new form of communication that broke earthly bounds when the “voice” of a murdered peddler penetrated the ether and contacted two young girls. With the girls asking the questions, and the peddler answering by way of tapping or rapping sounds, the public was presented with plausible evidence of communication with the spirits of the dead. Society rushed to acceptance, giving rise to a generation of mediums whose séances and ghostly apparitions captured the public’s imagination. At the time, Spiritualism meant little more than a belief in the potential for individuals known as mediums to contact otherworldly spirits. What made this phenomenon so unique was the apparent choice made by these spirits to communicate with the natural world by means of “raps,” table-tilting, automatic writing, and inexplicable movements of lifeless objects before moving on to thought transference, telepathy, apparitions, and collective hallucinations.1

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According to psychical researcher Frank Podmore, modern Spiritualism stood in “direct historical succession” to animal magnetism, which had, in the decades before the Rochester rappings, “attained an exceptional development.”2 The hypothesis underlying animal magnetism was that the “radiant effluences” between the living body and a mineral-based magnet suggested a kinship between corporal beings and the stars. Podmore saw both animal magnetism and Spiritualism as separate but parallel movements which eventually fused during the decade of so-called “enthusiasms” of the 1840s. These enthusiasms included the promise of an imminent Second Coming as expounded by the Baptist preacher William Miller in New York, and the promise of a new kingdom on earth organized along socialist lines propounded by French social scientist and reformer Charles Fourier and his American disciple Albert Brisbane. The first of these enthusiasms found favor among the uneducated, while the latter appealed to the more educated classes. Both were reflections of deep-seated issues originating in historical Christianity and the dissatisfaction that had come from the economic, financial, and social turmoil that accompanied the early years of the Industrial Revolution. Thus constituted and prepared, America’s new generation of magnetic clairvoyants and mediums found ready listeners to their discourses on spiritual influx, social justice and reconstruction, universal salvation, and spiritual wonders.3 As explained by R. Laurence Moore in his In Search of White Crows (1977), the popularity of Emanuel Swedenborg—whose brilliance as a scientist had been trumped in later life by his descriptions of conversations with spirits and his detailed revelations of heaven and hell—had helped to lay the groundwork for America’s acceptance of Spiritualism. In addition to Swedenborg’s influence on a generation of distinguished literary figures, his teachings resonated among growing numbers of mediums seeking validation for their claims of a spirit land contiguous with the natural world. Before long, “the ability to contact the spirits of dead humans, which had been one of the special divine powers imparted to Swedenborg, became a widespread gift among the common folk.”4 Spiritualism appealed to the sympathies of men and women eager to realize the promises of imminent change in both their material and

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spiritual lives. This newest “ism” was a combination of pseudoscience, revelation, social reconstruction, clairvoyance, and other signs and wonders. Thus inspired, a new gospel of hope, of free will, and of immanence replaced the older gospel and its slim offerings of piety, humility, sin, death, and eternal damnation. Popular eruptions of rappings, table-turnings, trance-speaking, and automatic writing quickly spread from private households to public gatherings. Accompanying these manifestations was an evolution from amateur to professional charlatans whose deceptions and exploitations of the credulous evolved into a high art form.

Early Sightings Modern Spiritualism began with the discovery of the remains of a murdered peddler in the cellar of the John D. Fox family home in Hydesville, New York, and the sensational news of mysterious “rappings” heard by family members on March 31, 1848. The peddler, Charles Rosna, having allegedly been murdered two years earlier by the former owner of the house, had been interred in the basement, where his anxious spirit remained. As his spirit made itself known to the sisters Maggie and Kate, ages twelve and fifteen, all levels of society (especially Quaker communities already practicing spirit communication) seemed eager to hear more. Once the family took on a press agent— a matter that factored large in the sisters’ rise to fame—and favorable public endorsements were given by Horace Greeley in his New York Weekly Tribune of their capacity to deliver messages from the spirit world, the sisters (expanded to three with addition of older sister Leah Fish) became a popular entertainment favorite at Barnum’s Hotel in New York City. They later traveled through the United States and Europe, enlightening crowds with their knockings from the other world. In time, however, the sisters found themselves struggling in a competitive world where the effort to retain popular appeal required more elaborate deceptions.5 The “Rochester Rappings” took place on an American stage whose audiences had been “entertained” by the prior work of Millerites, the Society of Friends (Quakers), Unitarians, Universalists, phrenologists, mesmerists, Owenites, Fourierists, Swedenborgians, and medical sec-

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The Fox Sisters (1852): Kate (1838–92), Leah (1814–90), and Margaret or Maggie (1836–93).

tarians. Persons from all socioeconomic levels attended the séances of the Fox sisters and those of their successors. In their collective presence, tables moved, clothing was touched and pulled, objects flew through the air, voices spoke, and strange lights and stray arms appeared. The line between conjuring, magic, and mediumship became a function of cunning and voyeuristic curiosity as nineteenth-century entertainers acted out the full range of spirit power for amused and baffled audi-

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ences. There was a close correlation between the séances employed by mediums and the baquet used by Mesmer and his disciples. In both situations, the participants gathered together, often holding hands in order to complete a circle, thus augmenting unseen fluid forces to work their magic. Spiritualists found it easy to embrace mesmerism, since both were dependent on a fluidist theory connecting all things in the universe. The theory, which postulated the ebb and flow of energy between and among heavenly bodies, the earth, and animal bodies, helped to unravel the mystery of thought transference and the strange rappings and interactions of objects.6 Unlike mysticism and other “inward” forms of illumination, Spiritualism was an observable phenomenon that invited investigation from empirical science. The gap between scientific theory and popular knowledge with respect to electricity and the work of Benjamin Franklin, Luigi Galvani, André Ampère, and Michael Faraday had done much to provoke believability in the mysterious happenings around the séance table. Certainly, too, the works of New York philosopher John Bovee Dods on animal magnetism (and his subsequent influence on Mary Baker Eddy) and the research of German philosopher Baron Karl von Reichenbach (1788–1869) on the hypothetical vital energy he called Odic force contributed as well.7 The rappings were also authenticated by such notables as James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, and others, whose support helped catapult Spiritualism and mediumship into the forefront of popular discussion.8 Mediumship was lionized by all classes in American society. Séances formed the bedrock of fashionable leisure-time activities among the middle and upper classes, while the working classes were drawn to the less successful but no less remarkable conjuring of itinerant trancespeakers. What happened among the middle and upper classes was highbrow and semireligious in character, while the more popular bluecollar Spiritualism was admired more for its capacity to entertain. Regardless of class, however, Spiritualism represented a direct challenge to the authority of mainline Protestantism by offering an alternative that was anticlerical, nondenominational, conducted without the normal Christian symbols, and lacking in adherence to such doctrines as humanity’s depravity, God’s absolute sovereignty, and the irresistibil-

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ity of saving grace. While the spirit messages assured believers of some type of afterlife, the particular form this took was left to individual imagination. God became more of a principle or an immanence that blurred the distinction between the natural and supernatural.9 As a cultural phenomenon, Spiritualism dominated the discussions of Americans before and after the Civil War. The claims made through mediums in their numerous public and private séances stirred countless clergymen, professors of the physical sciences, and scholars to describe this communion of spirits as an outcome of the confused state of Protestantism which accompanied the weakening of Calvinist orthodoxy and the nation’s unsettled social conditions brought on by accelerated industrialization. In this sense, Spiritualism fulfilled a need that the religious and medical orthodoxies were unable to satisfy.10

“Seer of Poughkeepsie” As a youth, Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910) lived with his parents in Dutchess County, New York, where he worked for a local farmer. Having grown up in a Presbyterian household, he nonetheless concluded early in youth that mainstream Protestantism and its Calvinistic doctrines of election and reprobation were too harsh in their application. These predispositions initially led him to the millennial yearnings of the Millerites and later to the ambitious disciples of mesmerism. After the death of his mother in 1838, he moved with his father to Poughkeepsie, where he apprenticed with Ira Armstrong, a local shoemaker.11 In 1843, Davis attended a series of lectures on animal magnetism conducted by attorney J. Stanley Grimes, author of A New System of Phrenology (1839) and president of the Western Phrenological Society. As one of many local citizens mesmerized by Grimes, young Davis was much taken by the experience, and, following the end of the lecture series, he allowed himself to be mesmerized by William Levingston, a local tailor. During those experiments, Davis exhibited strong powers of clairvoyance, including the ability to read books while blindfolded and describing places he had never visited. Although Davis had no formal training in anatomy or medical therapeutics, he was also able in this clairvoyant state to examine, diagnose, and prescribe treatment for sick and diseased patients. As knowledge of his powers spread among

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Andrew Jackson Davis (1826–1910)

the local population, Davis left his apprenticeship and became an employee of Levingston, who traded his profession of tailor for that of an itinerant healer. Together, the two entrepreneurs quickly transformed themselves into popular local healers. By progressive stages, Davis demonstrated greater and greater powers, including not only the ability to carry messages from the spiritual world to living relatives and friends, but also to dispense diagnostic and healing advice.12 Davis worked with Levingston from March 1844 through August 1845, operating in and around Poughkeepsie as well as the Connecticut cities of Danbury and Bridgeport. During this time, Davis launched into a series of scientific and spiritual lectures while in his clairvoyant state. After one of these mesmeric trances, he had difficulty sleeping

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and was directed by a voice to arise, dress, and travel to a local cemetery, where he supposedly met Swedenborg and the Roman physician Galen (129–216 AD), from whom he received the gifts of a scroll and a highly polished magnetic staff. The staff was intended to give him access to knowledge of “those laws breathing forth the animal kingdom; and, in their next stage of ascension, developing, sustaining, and protecting men.”13 After this episode, which lasted several hours, Davis found himself in a state of illumination during which he produced a rambling set of teachings collected in a pamphlet titled Lectures on Clairmativeness (1845). In it, he recounted the nature of human magnetism and the affinity of the particles in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms to each other and to health.14 As R. Laurence Moore explained, Davis “provided the most direct link between the teachings of Swedenborg and those of Spiritualism,” since it was during his reputed visit with Swedenborg and Galen that he was urged to become a clairvoyant healer and, through the gift of the “magic staff,” had learned how to conceptualize the ailing organs of a sick person and prescribe the appropriate cure.15 During their travels, Davis and Levingston befriended Dr. Silas Smith Lyon, a physician and Universalist from Bridgeport and another strong believer in the powers of clairvoyance, who had requested their assistance in several difficult cases. Out of this association, Davis and Dr. Lyon entered into a partnership, and the two moved to New York City, where it was agreed that Lyon would replace Levingston as the magnetizer for Davis. Together, the two men opened a medical practice. In addition to healing, Davis consented to be magnetized for several hours each day so that he could dictate a series of revelations on different scientific and philosophic subjects. During these dictations, Davis recounted numerous facts, principles, and theories dealing with cosmological, theological, and spiritual subjects. Both Davis and Lyon claimed that the information had been obtained by “sympathetic influx” and “interior promptings” from the spiritual world. In order to preserve these findings, they arranged for William Fishbough, a Universalist minister, to take Davis’s dictation and put his revelations on paper. Davis was “to present the idea, leaving the niceties of the verbal clothing to be adjusted by myself,” explained Fishbough, “with the re-

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striction that the corrections should be such as not to destroy the peculiarities of the general style and mode of expression.”16 In all, Davis gave 157 lectures while in a clairvoyant state, thus forming the basis of his eight-hundred-page Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind (1847) on the mysteries of the material and spiritual universe. Davis’s book focused extensively on Scripture, the role of Christ as a moral reformer, and on a preferred system of socialism. Among those who witnessed Davis’s clairvoyant lectures was Dr. George Bush (1796–1859), a Swedenborgian and professor of Hebrew at the University of New York, who authenticated Davis’s trancelike state and his ability to speak Hebrew and read Arabic and Sanskrit. Bush confirmed that Davis had met Swedenborg’s ghost in 1844 and 1846, receiving a commission to carry out Swedenborg’s mission and teachings.17 The author of Treatise on the Millennium (1832) and The Valley of Vision, or, the Dry Bones of Israel Revived (1844), Bush was a leading advocate of numerous movements in the first half of the nineteenth century, including mesmerism and Swedenborgianism. When he left the university, he spent the remainder of his professional career ministering to the Swedenborgian Church in Brooklyn. He considered Swedenborgianism to be on a “higher plane” than mesmerism, but was convinced of the relevance of both when assessing the trance-revelations of Davis.18 If the theoretical foundation of mesmerism was true, argued Bush, the same had to be said of Swedenborg’s spiritual world. What was open to the mind’s eye in one applied to the other as well. No longer was humankind estranged from the verities of the spiritual world. “The world of spirits is no longer a land of dim shadows peopled with the creatures of our dreams,” he wrote. The divine hand had “lifted the veil interposed for ages between the world of matter and the world of mind.”19 In Mesmer and Swedenborg; Or, the Relation of the Developments of Mesmerism to the Doctrines and Disclosures of Swedenborg (1847), Bush explained the extent to which mesmerism coincided with the spiritual and interior principles associated with Swedenborg. Mesmerism demonstrated the ability to uncover the spirit in the body, the relationship between the two, and the elements of Swedenborg’s inner illumination. Mesmerism provided verification to those who doubted the disclosures of Swedenborg and the divine origin of his revelations. “The

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phenomena of Mesmerism have unfolded a new phasis of our nature,” Bush wrote, “replete with novel, striking, and momentous bearings upon the philosophy of mind.” Mesmerism’s demonstrations of mental communications between one spirit and another gave validation to Swedenborg’s claim to have held conversations with the spiritual world and to “lay open to human view its otherwise inscrutable mysteries.” Swedenborg made it possible for humankind to understand the nature of heaven and hell and the “veritable state of human spirits after their departure from the body.” Thus, all the mental manifestations demonstrated in the mesmeric trance were known, if not under that precise name, to Swedenborg. The phenomena of mesmerism, taken in conjunction with the revelations of Swedenborg, “open a new chapter in the philosophy of the mind and in man’s relation to a higher sphere.”20 Davis’s spiritual and cosmological views closely mimicked Swedenborg’s Oeconomia Regni Animalis, which had recently been translated into English.21 Actually, Davis and Fishbough had shown a remarkable talent for “intuiting” (while claiming to be ignorant of) the literary output of numerous authors, including Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of Creation (1844) and La Roy Sunderland’s Pathetism (1843). Moreover, the views on socialism espoused by Brisbane and Fourier played a large role in the layout of Davis’s Principles of Nature—as did the Fourierist newspaper The Phalanx, which began publication in 1843.22 Davis’s clairvoyant abilities catapulted him into the public eye, and, following publication of The Principles of Nature, he became affectionately known as the “Poughkeepsie Seer.” The Principles of Nature was followed by the magazine Univercoelum and Spiritual Philosopher (1847–49), through which Davis promoted economic reorganization based on socialist principles. This, he explained, was the first step toward the millennium. Those invited to write for the magazine included Horace Greeley, land reformer J. K. Ingalls, and La Roy Sunderland.23 From the articles in this magazine Davis prepared his five-volume The Great Harmonia, Being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe (1850–59).24 Davis’s works circulated widely among the American populace, and “for all their vacuity,” explained Robert C. Fuller, “the materials written ‘by and through’ Andrew Jackson Davis espoused an eminently respectable religiosity.”25

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In time, Davis spearheaded a movement known as harmonial philosophy, a system of thought predicated on millennialism and spirit communication between worlds. His concept of harmonial philosophy began with the evolution of the vast universe (Univercoelum), from which he proceeded to explain the solar system, its various planets and their life forms, and the appearance of the human race as well as that of the spirit world. It is a truth that spirits commune with one another while one is in the body and the other in the higher spheres—and this, too, when the person in the body is unconscious of the influx, and hence cannot be convinced of the fact; and this truth will ere long present itself in the form of a living demonstration, and the world will hail with delight the ushering in of that era when the interiors of men will be opened, and the spiritual communion will be established such as is now being enjoyed by the inhabitants of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.26

Inspired heavily by Swedenborg and Fourier, Davis called for reform in all aspects of society—from religion to politics, economics, and science. Employing a combination of hypnotism, electricity, and magnetism to express his particular form of Spiritualism (which he called harmonialism), and supported financially and emotionally by his wife, Catherine, he set in motion an effort to merge all reforms into a Harmonial Brotherhood whose New England and Midwest members were organized into “circles.”27 “We are not merely disciples to the science of human magnetism and to its sublime and spiritual phenomena,” Davis wrote, “we are not merely anti-slavery, anti-capital punishment, and prison reformers, but we openly avow ourselves henceforth to be the germinal constituents of a Harmonial Brotherhood.”28 Harmonial philosophy became a filter through which terms such as “nature,” “spirit,” “influx,” “soul,” “feeling,” “divinity,” “mysticism,” “intuition,” “infinity,” “communion,” “harmony,” and “immanence” found common ground. It was a place where both science and theology enjoyed a sympathetic ear.29 Davis built a cottage industry around his ideas, transforming the town of Hartford into a regional capital for magnetism, clairvoyance, and advice manuals. He set forth in his trance-lectures a form of social-

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ism that included the reorganization of society into phalanxes of cooperators.30 Although invited to participate in several of these communal living societies, he chose to keep a distance between himself and the proponents of these enterprises.31 The simplicity in Davis’s manner lent added credence to the Spiritualist movement in the 1850s as Swedenborgians and a host of other groups—both secular and religious—identified with spirit communication. In his search for a mechanism to carry harmonialism into the public arena, and especially into the hearts and minds of youth, Davis devised what he called a “conversational” or secular counterpart to the Sunday church sermon. Using Socratic dialog as his pedagogical method, he organized a Sunday school for youth that emphasized a combination of music, song, and an open conversation between teacher and pupil.32 Davis appropriated numerous components of Swedenborgianism, including the elements of conjugal love, correspondence, and communication with other worlds. Like Swedenborg, he provided intimate and appealing descriptions of the “Summer-Land” (heaven) to his readers and listeners, drawing upon the achievements of science and particularly the telegraph to explain the “great Body of humanity” and the channels of communication that connected the earthly and spiritual worlds.33 When Davis spoke of the Great Positive Mind, his term for the physicality of the universe, it was an echo of the Swedenborgian Universal Human. Over time, Davis’s cosmology transformed his Great Positive Mind and its magnetically charged body into the “Father-God” and “Mother-Nature.” The marriage of these two representations of mind and matter, along with their “celestial copulations,” yielded a new version of Swedenborg’s spiritual marriage. It was a formulation that became uniquely American in its religious expression.34 Davis traveled the Chautauqua lecture circuit in the company of other noted reformers and established himself as one of the pioneers in the Spiritualist movement. In tours that crisscrossed the country, he and his colleagues spoke before audiences large and small that were anxious to experience firsthand the wonders of magnetism, the ability to converse across worlds, and the ever-expanding capacity of individuals to take control of the forces around them. The emphasis of Davis

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and his fellow reformers on social and religious regeneration came as a direct challenge to the receding pockets of Calvinism that stood guard over the doctrines of atonement and election. In 1880, the United States Medical College of New York, a school founded on the principles of eclecticism (i.e., drawing useful elements from all medical philosophies for purposes of healing), captured Davis’s attention. When the New York legislature prohibited magnetic healers from practicing medicine, Davis urged them to enroll in the school, since its faculty was open to Spiritualism and other esoteric forms of healing and students could graduate with a medical degree and obtain a license to practice. As a form of encouragement, the Harmonial Association endowed a chair in the college, and Davis himself entered as a student and later became a member of the school’s board of trustees. The school lost its charter in 1883—in part, no doubt, because of its non-biomedical biases—but not before granting numerous medical degrees to those practicing magnetic healing, including Davis.35 Despite his many supporters, Davis was accused by his critics of having pursued a course that was in league with Satan, atheism, anarchy, abolitionism, women’s rights, and superstition. But for those who had found comfort in a more rationalist approach to religion, the demonstration in Davis’s writings of the vanishing beliefs in the vengeful God of Calvinism came as a welcome sign.

Spiritualism after Davis As the popularity of spirit séances claimed greater and greater attention, the early rappings and mesmeric performances were augmented by other physical phenomena, including poltergeists; table-turning; ringing of bells; levitation; Odic light; mental telegraphy; trance communications from deceased friends and relatives; communications with noted historical heroes such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Jefferson; spirit writing on slates; spirit autographs; angel voices; red marks on arms and foreheads; spirit hands; and speaking in tongues. Each year, mediums added more audacious modes of communication between the natural and spirit worlds in order to remain in the public’s favor. Spiritualism became the rage as ardent believers from all sectors of society seemed willing to accept

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“Clairvoyance,” 1845 etching by George Cruikshank. Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

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the possibility of spirit communication. A product of the democratic fervor of American society as it approached mid-century, Spiritualism represented a criticism of Christian orthodoxy, particularly of its privileged clergy, their authoritative monopoly over dogma, and their claim to be the sole dispensers of sacerdotal grace. Irrespective of education, gender, or class, each individual had the potential for making direct contact with the spirit world. Among the more noted trance-speakers were women such as English-born Emma Hardinge Britten, poet Lizzie Doten of Boston, and trance-lecturer Cora Hatch, whose inspirational messages and sentimentalism were generously received by an approving public.36 To be sure, skeptics abounded, particularly as investigators succeeded in exposing frequent frauds; nevertheless, individuals from all walks of life continued to gather in séance rooms to await the manifestations of spirit. Included among the believers were abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison; author and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson; author Harriet Beecher Stowe; journalist and political reformer Horace Greeley; poet and editor William Cullen Bryant; journalist James Fenimore Cooper; and engineer John Roebling.37 Among the arguments used against Spiritualism were its perceived alliance with the occult; its overly materialistic philosophy; its crude association with radical reformers, including abolitionists; its perceived threat to morality; the antielitist and pro-egalitarian bias of many of its disciples; and the skepticism, if not outright opposition, from doctors and scientists.38 Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809–1894), a member of Boston’s high society and Parkman professor of anatomy and physiology at Harvard Medical School, said of Spiritualism, While some are crying out against it as a delusion of the Devil, and some are laughing at it as an hysteric folly, and some are getting angry with it as a mere trick of interested or mischievous persons, Spiritualism is quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state which have been and are still accepted—not merely in those who believe in it, but in the general sentiment of the community, to a larger extent than most good people seem to be aware of. . . . And the Nemesis of the pulpit comes, in a shape it little thought of, beginning with the snap of a toe-joint, and ending with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of it is heard in all the ministers’

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studies of Christendom! Sir, you cannot have people of cultivation, of pure character, sensible enough in common things, large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd business-men, men of science, professing to be in communication with the spiritual world and keeping up constant intercourse with it, without its gradually reacting on the whole conception of that other life. It is the folly of the world, constantly, which confounds its wisdom. Not only out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, but out of the mouths of fools and cheats, we may often get our truest lessons.39

Included among the dissenters was the poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who identified mediumship as one of the “new professions” (along with phrenology) that seemed to have turned to sorcery. In 1859, he announced that the American experiment in Spiritualism was little more than a fraud. “I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study,” he announced in his lecture on “Success.”40 By the 1870s, he had turned even cooler toward Spiritualism, calling it a tasteless exhibition of “superstition” and “midsummer madness.”41 “No inspired mind ever condescends to these evidences,” he observed. Spiritualism represented “the rat hole of revelation.”42 In an essay titled “Demonology,” which was published in the North American Review in 1877, Emerson described Spiritualism as a form of theology in which its adepts had “mistaken flatulency for inspiration,” and “snores and gastric noises to the voice of any muse.”43 Henry James Sr., noted in an earlier chapter as among the supporters of New Church, cautioned against the activities of the mediums and their conversations with the dead.44 As the claimants to Spiritualism multiplied, James responded with two articles in the Atlantic Monthly, one in 1872 and the other a year later. In the first, James argued that Spiritualism was prejudicial to Christian dogma in that it represented life and immortality “as the mere extension of our personal consciousness beyond the grave.”45 He believed it wrong for individuals to “receive truth from others [mediums], instead of . . . perceiving it for themselves.” Exalting man’s egotism and relegating faith to the “demoralizing testimony” of mediums constituted a rejection of the Scripture and a sense of reality greater than God’s reality.46 If the mediums with

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their “current infestations” really wanted to understand the world of spirits, he urged them to turn their attention to Swedenborg, whose intellectual system explained creation and the true connection between the worlds of matter and spirit.47 Despite these criticisms, numerous Swedenborgians, Unitarians, Universalists, and freethinkers rushed to Spiritualism, thinking it would be a wholesome addition to their existing beliefs without the encumbrances of mainstream Protestant dogma—replacing outdated liturgical practices with a higher plane of communication with the Divine. However, Spiritualism’s lack of interest in Christology eventually led the Church of the New Jerusalem to remain at arm’s length. Notwithstanding the fact that individual Swedenborgians adhered to Spiritualism, the church refused to officially sanction the movement, claiming that séances were wholly unlike the spiritual intercourse that Swedenborg had experienced and through which he had conveyed God’s numerous revelations. The Quakers and Shakers, while open to the spirit world, also held back from any formal alliance or support of the movement.48

Spiritualism in Great Britain The acceptance of Spiritualism in Great Britain proved to be a more gradual phenomenon than the deluge of competing mediums that inundated the American landscape. The Crimean War and the later Indian Mutiny preoccupied the hearts and minds of the British public during the 1850s and delayed the migration of Spiritualism from American shores. When it did arrive, Spiritualism’s popularity was first evident among the Society of Friends and the Church of the New Jerusalem before spreading to other dissident groups. Eventually Spiritualism cut deep into Britain’s class structure, much more so than on the Continent, where opposition from the Catholic Church was especially strong. In England, where numerous leaders in the Episcopal and Methodist Churches had found common cause with the ideas of Swedenborg, Spiritualism was welcomed as a novel form of spirit communication. Among the more popular English Spiritualist magazines were the Spiritual Telegraph (1855–59), published in Keighley, a town in West Yorkshire; The Spiritual Herald (1856), published in London and in-

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fluenced by the Swedenborgians; Biological Review (1858–59), published in London as an organ of Spiritualism, homeopathy, electrodentistry, astrology, mesmerism, and phrenology; and Spiritual Messenger (1858–59), published in London and mesmerist in content. The pages of these magazines contained excerpts from the New York Spiritual Telegraph and other American papers quoting the trance conversations of Andrew Jackson Davis, Thomas Lake Harris, New York Judge John Worth Edmonds, Wisconsin Governor Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, John Bovee Dods, Dr. E. C. Rogers, and others.49 Later magazines, such as the Spiritual Magazine, Human Nature, and Spiritualist, focused on new versions of Scripture, philosophic essays, and instances of automatic writing, spirit-drawings, and hallucinatory experiences. The Spiritualist movement made significant conquests in the 1860s and 1870s as a continuous stream of American mediums made their way to British shores, including George Redman, J. B. Conklin (who claimed that Abraham Lincoln was sympathetic to Spiritualism), J. R. M. Squire (one of the editors of Banner of Light), and Charles Henry Foster, among others.50 Following the invasion of American mediums, native Spiritualists emerged and gave both public and private sittings. Although many of these new mediums used techniques common in America, such as trance-writing, speaking in tongues, levitation, table-turning, clairvoyance, and messages from the dead, others opened new vistas by introducing spirit photography (likenesses of deceased relatives) and materialization (“a visible and palpable figure, purporting to be a spirit form temporarily materialized for the occasion”).51 Among Britain’s more noted Spiritualists was Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home (1833–1886), who spent much of his youth in America, where, after the Hydesville rappings, he began conducting his own séances for individuals and groups in the New York region. Upon his return to England in 1855, he gave séances to numerous members of the upper class in exchange for room, board, and hospitality. In 1859, he married a daughter of Russian nobility and for the next decade continued his mediumship activities in England and on the Continent. Following the death of his wife, Home was supported by several patrons who, in 1866, founded a society called the Spiritual Athenaeum, which paid him a salary.52

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Another noted British Spiritualist was Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge (1851–1940), author of more than half a dozen books on physics and the nature of the universe. He identified ether as the “connecting link” between the material and spiritual worlds that filled space to its furthest limits. Since humans lacked a sense organ capable of discerning its substantial reality, the ether appeared empty; nevertheless, it functioned to weld atoms together by cohesion, bound the planets and stars together by gravitation, and transmitted vibrations from one piece of matter to another. The ether was “the primary instrument of Mind,” Lodge explained, “the vehicle of Soul, the habitation of Spirit. Truly it may be called the living garment of God.”53 As in America, British Spiritualism had its critics. Christian apologist and author G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), for example, seemed quite perplexed by the ascent of Spiritualism among the members of his class. When I was a young man, practically every person with a large circle had one or two friends with a fancy for what would still have been called mediums and moonshine. When I was middle-aged, great men of science of the first rank like Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge claimed to have studied spirits as they might have studied spiders, and discovered ectoplasm exactly as they discovered protoplasm. At the time I write, the thing has grown into a considerable religious movement, by the activity of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, much less of a scientist, but much more of a journalist.54

In contrast to the American and British experience, Continental Spiritualism sought to bring the phenomena of thought transference within the confines of known materialistic forces rather than accept the prospect of otherworldly spirits. Both on the Continent and in Great Britain, there was far less involvement by the advocates of Spiritualism in the reforming, humanitarian, and other freethinking movements that coursed through the veins of American Spiritualism. Unlike the North American scene, where a myriad of enthusiasms—socialism, abolitionism, Grahamism, temperance, and women’s rights—accompanied the spiritual utterances of mediums, the European scene was not only more conservative, but showed little restraint in exposing

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the trickery associated with the practice. Europeans proved to be much more searching in their approach, demanding ample evidence before turning to an examination of cause and effect. Rather than accept anecdotal reports of communications with the dead, they chose to view clairvoyance as a phenomenon resulting from heat rays, electricity, nervous force, Odic emanations, or some other physical effect. For Europeans, thought transference was more an expression of molecular matter than evidence of a spiritual realm. By the late 1870s, Spiritualism had devolved into little more than a host of magician’s tricks designed to attract audiences, cultivate attention, and empty pockets. Given the competition, mediums were forced into inventing new powers in order to stay ahead, exposing the ploys of their rivals, and hoping to outguess and outperform the investigative talents of cynics and skeptics. In America, the decline of Spiritualism was a byproduct of the growing popularity of the more occult movement known as Theosophy, while in Europe, there was a predilection among neurologists to consider mediumship as evidence of an organic nervous disorder treatable with strychnine, electricity, sleep, and diet.55 Spiritualism remained important to the collective psyche in Britain and on the Continent after the First World War, but not to the degree it had been during the previous half century. During this later period, the Society for Psychical Research, an organization founded in 1882 to investigate psychic phenomena using scientific methods, carried out much of its investigative work. While its members revealed extensive fraud, condemnation was held in abeyance as families sought to connect to sons, husbands, and loved ones lost in the devastation of the Great War.56

Theosophy Within the broad-based phenomenon known as Spiritualism was Theosophy (“god wisdom”), a spiritual movement that served as a bridge between the unchurched traditions of the Christian faith and a revival of the occult in what became known as New Thought and its successor, New Age. One of its co-founders, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831– 1891), was born into an aristocratic family in the Ukraine and had

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claimed paranormal experiences and supernatural companions from an early age. At seventeen, she married Nicephore Blavatsky, a Russian widower and government official twenty-five years her senior, whom she left after a few months. A twenty-year sojourn took her to France, Egypt, the Indian subcontinent, Tibet (where she claimed to have studied the teachings of the “Masters” or “Mahatmas” who had discovered the secrets of the universe and who promised to instruct humanity in those secrets), as well as to North and South America. While in Paris in 1858, she encountered Daniel Dunglas Home, from whom she learned the techniques of mediumship, becoming a popular Spiritualist. She remarked that “Mesmerism is the most important branch of magic; and its phenomena are the effects of the universal agent which underlies all magic and has produced in all ages so-called miracles.”57 Fleeing from accusations of fraud, in 1873 she moved to New York, where she intended to report on Spiritualism as a journalist. Instead, she formed an association with journalist Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) and the Irish-born mystic and occultist William Quan Judge (1851– 1896), with whom she shared common interests. Together, they formed the Theosophical Society, an organization dedicated to Spiritualism and the occult. Olcott was a native of New Jersey, a graduate of Columbia University, an attorney, and an Army veteran. He had sat on the three-man commission looking into the Abraham Lincoln assassination and later served as a reporter for the New York Sun and the Daily Graphic. Intrigued by the whole phenomenon of Spiritualism, he devoted much of his early years to writing articles in the Spiritual Telegraph and other publications. He was also active in a number of different reform activities, including abolitionism, civil service, and agricultural reform.58 In 1874, as Olcott was investigating the Spiritualist claims of the Eddy brothers (William and Horatio) of Vermont, he met Blavatsky, and the two quickly discovered shared interests. They co-authored articles in the Spiritual Scientist, using its pages to step back from the more raucous aspects of mediumship and put forward a more philosophical system. For them, Theosophy represented an effort to open the human mind to the possibilities of universal wisdom outside the closed system of religious orthodoxy. Olcott’s theories and Blavatsky’s charisma

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came together in a novel partnership that denounced mediumship as a fraud, attacked its advocates as socialists, and advanced new doctrines of karma and reincarnation, emboldened by their belief that they had access to higher knowledge. In place of mediums who functioned as passive conduits between the living and the dead in an environment of darkness, they introduced the use of “adepts” who worked in light and had the ability to connect to spirits because of their personal knowledge (“ksha”) of ancient mysteries and the occult.59 While Spiritualism was based on the premise that, following death, an individual’s spirit could contact living persons through the aid of a medium, Theosophy insisted that most spirits of the deceased progressed to their intended spiritual existence. Those few spirits who remained earthbound were there because of their reprobate lives and served only to deceive the credulous with their rappings, voices, slate writings, and levitations. Despite some differences in approach and philosophy, however, they were surprisingly similar to the Spiritualists in their beliefs. Both avoided the pitfalls of dogma as they looked to the universality of their precepts, and both held the belief that human life had meaning beyond death and the stark Darwinian prospect of a purposeless universe.60 In 1875, Olcott, Blavatsky, and Judge formed the Theosophical Society of New York to study and teach the latent powers of an ideal humanity that they called the Universal Brotherhood. The Universal Brotherhood was a reconception of the Universal Human as “essentially a soul undergoing a course of spiritual development.”61 While Olcott drew from Western Europe’s occult traditions and viewed Theosophy as a source of moral and philosophical reform, Blavatsky turned to the East (especially India) and to the discovery of those sources that would bring science and religion into harmony. Olcott saw his role as taking Theosophy into the public eye, while Blavatsky chose a more private and elite group of participants who were more Bohemian in their interests. Nevertheless, as religious historian Stephen Prothero explained, both sought to “gentrify” and “aristocratize” American Spiritualism.62 Theosophy represented an elitist attempt to rise above Spiritualism’s more vulgar aspects and “to transform the masses of prurient ghost-seeking Spiritualists into ethically exemplary theorists of the as-

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tral planes.”63 For Prothero, the most common misconception regarding Theosophy was that its presumed intent from the beginning was to promote Eastern religious traditions. Clearly this became an eventual objective of the movement, but was by no means its initial goal; indeed, references to such traditions were “conspicuously absent” from its early literature, which was predominantly focused on Spiritualism.64 Blavatsky’s first major book, the two-volume Isis Unveiled: A MasterKey to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (1877) presented the elements of wisdom drawn from her travels in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Its contents, she claimed, had been communicated to her from “the Masters” of the Great White Brotherhood who, having escaped the cycle of reincarnations, chose to aid humankind. She followed this with The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (1888) and The Key to Theosophy (1889), which endeavored to demonstrate a fusion of science and religion. Ironically, there was nothing even vaguely scientific in her method or in her outcomes, particularly when she turned decidedly toward karma and reincarnation, the Hermetico-Kabbalistic philosophy of Paracelsus, Neoplatonism, and the Christian Gnostics.65 Evident among the early Theosophists was an emphasis on “vortices” that served as channels for the flow of energy within and out of the human body. For Blavatsky, the chasm between matter and spirit was bridged by seven energy bodies, beginning with the human body and ending with the spirit body. The lower four bodies were predominantly physical, while the upper three were composed of intelligence, the soul, and spirit.66 The person who popularized this concept of energy flow in the West was one of Blavatsky’s students, Charles W. Leadbeater (1854– 1934) whose The Chakras (1927) became the classic text of clairvoyance among the followers of Theosophy.67 By combining European and South Asian mysticism, he announced the existence of “chakras” (Sanskrit for “wheels”) that operated on the surface of the “etheric double of man” and served as “points of connection” for the flow of energy from one body to another.68 For Blavatsky and her devoted followers, the Theosophical concept of God and the universe was pantheistic. The evolved world was unreal, a temporary illusion derived from the Absolute and ultimately ab-

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sorbed into the Absolute. Contemptuous of monotheistic religions, she preached the Hindu principle of karma, underscoring the idea of rebirth until, as explained by author Henry Sheldon, one’s “score has been paid.”69 Blavatsky also had a fascination with astrology, a personal fixation not always supported by her devotees. While she taught that each individual had a destiny outlined “within its proper constellation or star,” even close associates like G. R. S. Mead—Blavatsky’s personal secretary and assistant editor of her magazine Lucifer—ridiculed this as rank superstition and charlatanism. As a general rule, however, Theosophists had a difficult time magnifying the worth of the occult and the mystical while at the same time showing an indifference to astrology. Their teachings about the powers of disembodied persons or the instructions given by the so-called Masters of Tibet seemed to require a belief system not so very different from one in which a horoscope outlined a person’s destiny according to the movements of the stars and planets.70 Although Olcott and Blavatsky made efforts to accommodate each other’s differences, the task clearly was difficult. In Blavatsky’s opinion, Olcott’s magazine, The Theosophist, failed to encompass the full measure of the society, thereby forcing her into publishing Lucifer to enlarge upon her more esoteric and occult agendas.71 Blavatsky scorned Christianity, claiming that its sacred books had been appropriated from older religions. She respected Jesus “as noble and loving” but viewed him and Christianity as less important than the leading philosophers and philosophies of India.72 For his part, Olcott saw his role as disseminating the Oriental spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism to the West and objected to the excessive veneration extended to Blavatsky and her work. Ultimately, he considered Blavatsky a fraud and claimed that she forged bogus communications between herself and the “Masters” of the Brotherhood.73 Until Theosophy, Westerners had been selective in their perceptions of Indian thought and culture. Buoyed by a romantic portrayal of the Indian subcontinent as seen through the eyes of Emerson and the transcendentalists, they had centered their attention on the concept of self-realization through Indian spiritual practices such as meditation. Later approaches to Indian thought, including that taken by Blavatsky, began with self-realization but quickly moved to pantheism, karma, re-

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incarnation, magic, and evolutionary cosmology. Blavatsky was more willing than Olcott to stress the occult aspects of Eastern philosophy, including a cosmology in which the universe was divided into different physical and spiritual planes and governed by the planetary motions.74 Blavatsky’s peculiar brand of occultism came at an opportune time in the late Victorian era’s crisis of faith. While liberal Christianity, as explained by historian Mark Bevir, was “trying to loosen Christian dogma so as to bring Christianity into line with modern secular knowledge,” including organic evolution and natural selection, Blavatsky found the transition between faith and rationality far easier. For her, occultism and mysticism met the challenge of modern science by embracing an immanent rather than a transcendent God. It was a God, wrote Bevir, “who created the world slowly through natural processes.” For her part, Blavatsky turned to ancient Indian wisdom as the alternative to liberal Christianity. The India of old was the cradle of all the great religious—Hinduism, the Vedas, and even Buddhism—as well as the occult and natural magic traditions.75 This form of Orientalism became the vehicle for reconciling science and religion and its beliefs helped pave the way for the later New Age movement. Rumors of plagiarism and of fake psychic phenomena led to a decision by the Society for Psychical Research to send a professional debunker, Dr. Richard Hodgson (1855–1905), to investigate Blavatsky’s work. Despite Hodgson’s accusations of deception and outright fraud, Theosophy became a worldwide movement, and by the time of Blavatsky’s death in 1891 had drawn to its fold such notables as Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), American civil rights leader Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), and women’s rights activist and writer Annie Besant (1847–1933), who as Blavatsky’s successor continued to preach the insights of the Mahatmas of Tibet. Olcott, who had once been in Blavatsky’s continual company and who had edited most of her writings, wrote that “if there ever existed a person in history who was a greater conglomeration of good and bad, light and shadow, wisdom and indiscretion, spiritual insight and lack of common sense, I cannot recall the name, the circumstances, or the epoch.”76 Following Blavatsky’s death and the assumption of leadership by Besant, the movement faced a schism caused by Judge, the society’s

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vice president. Accused of forging letters from the Mahatmas, Judge broke away from Olcott and Besant and took with him the majority of the members. After Olcott’s death, Besant looked east to Adyar, India, for the sources and strength of the movement. Judge died in 1896 and was succeeded by Mrs. Katherine Tingley (1847–1929), founder of the socialist Point Loma colony in California. She changed the name of her branch of the Theosophists to the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society. Tingley was succeeded in 1929 by Dr. Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942), who attempted unsuccessfully to heal the schism with the Adyar Theosophists. Another branch split off from the Tingley group and formed a separate community in 1898 known as the Temple of the People. Led by Dr. William H. Dower (1866–1937) and Francia La Due (1849–1922), they moved first to Syracuse, New York, and then to California in 1903. There they organized as the Temple Home Association, which operated on socialist principles and focused its work on the Halcyon Sanatorium for the treatment of alcohol and drug addiction. Theosophy claimed to be a synthetic philosophy, having joined together science and metaphysics in a new understanding. Its aims were remarkably similar to Swedenborgianism in that it bemoaned the conflict between reason and religion and struck an alliance between and among Eastern religions, ancient philosophy, occult practices, and science. Whatever knowledge it discovered by scientific inquiry or packaged in the clothes of reductionism was eclipsed by the visions of theological speculation. While science and biblical criticism had caused the suspension of belief among many Christians, the proponents of Theosophy promised an intermingling of matter and spirit that would return meaning and purpose to the universe.

Anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) of Austria-Hungary was awakened at an early age to invisible worlds and apparitions from the souls of dead relatives. By the age of fifteen he had involved himself in the occult and, after taking a degree in science from the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, sought to unify science and religion in his first book, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, published in 1894. By his thirties, Steiner

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had discovered what he thought to be the true meaning of the Incarnation and the transference of the Christ principle into humanity.77 In 1902, Steiner took a leadership role in the Theosophical Society in Germany. However, disappointed in its emphasis upon Eastern philosophy and its indifference to the role of Christ, he left Theosophy to form his own group. The action precipitating the split occurred when Annie Besant, president of the Theosophical Society, presented the Indian child Jiddu Krishnamurti (1896–1986) as the reincarnated Christ. Despite considerable differences with historical Christianity, Steiner viewed Christ as playing a central role in evolution of human consciousness, in the reincarnation of the human spirit, and in unifying all religions. His Anthroposophical Society, which he founded in 1912, focused attention on humanity’s spiritual growth through the senses, imagination, inspiration, and intuition. Steiner wanted to find a path to inner development and wisdom that would rival the precision, clarity, and rigorousness of the scientific method. Today, branches of his society operate in approximately fifty countries with numerous institutions based on its principles.78

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 by a group of scientists and philosophers connected with Trinity College Cambridge. Its aim was “to examine without prejudice or prepossession and in a scientific spirit those faculties of man, real or supposed, which appear to be inexplicable in terms of any generally recognized hypotheses.”79 Among the originators of the society were philosopher Balfour Stewart, Lord and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, physicist William Fletcher Barrett, psychical researcher Edmund Gurney, and ethicist Henry Sidgwick. Within the society there were six committees formed for the study of thought-reading or thought-transference; mesmerism; Reichenbach’s experiments with electric currents; apparitions and haunted houses; physical phenomena; and data collection. Members, many of whom were avowed Spiritualists, took pride in their synthesis of science, Spiritualism, and the duality of worlds. In fact, they were entirely open to the possibility of communication between the dead and the living.80

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An American Society for Psychical Research soon followed, becoming a branch of the British society and functioning in Boston under the leadership of Richard Hodgson, who had investigated a number of alleged psychics, including members of the Theosophical Society. The society reorganized in 1885 independent of the British organization and established headquarters in New York City. Membership included both scientists and philosophers, including Harvard psychologist and professor of philosophy William James (1842–1910). The society, whose first president was the Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician Simon Newcomb (1835–1909), brought a degree of legitimacy and scientific respectability to séances, telepathy, and the paranormal in general. Other members included George S. Fullerton of the University of Pennsylvania; Edward Pickering of the Harvard College Observatory; Dr. Henry Bowditch of Harvard Medical School; philosopher Josiah Royce; diplomat and author Andrew Dickson White; publisher Henry Holt; professor Charles Eliot Norton of Harvard; and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. The society’s journal was initiated in 1907 with the intent of examining in a scientific manner those human experiences, real or supposed, which appeared to be inexplicable on any generally recognized hypothesis.81 For both the British and American societies, the occult became an invisible realm worthy of examination. The discovery of so many unimagined physical phenomena suggested to members that the world of the mind contained many secrets that had yet to be understood. If it was possible to send electromagnetic waves through the ether, could not other planes of reality exist as well? Could the spiritual essence or soul of each individual consist as some form of electromagnetic wave within the ether? And was it not also possible to explain ghosts, spirit rappings, and the reports of poltergeists and knockings during séances by these electromagnetic waves? Both societies attempted, in an age of increasing materialistic science, to conclude that the universe was friendly and that it was possible, indeed plausible, for the mind and consciousness to regain center stage in a universe that was not only complex, but potentially operating with no one at the controls.

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Spirituality for the Times Spiritualism fed the appetites of many Americans in the decade prior to the Civil War. For a number of social historians, it represented a reflection of the restlessness and eclecticism that spread across society, marking the landscape with any number of intense groups—from medical sectarians (Thomsonians, botanics, physio-medicals, eclectics, and homeopaths), to religious sectarians (Mormons, Shakers, and Millerites), to more secular social reformists (Grahamists, abolitionists, pacifists). Society was in ferment, as reflected in heavy immigration, industrialization, urbanization, social mobility, and changing technology.82 In a population of twenty-three million in the 1850 census, Spiritualism claimed nearly two thousand mediums serving an estimated one to two million supporters.83 These explanations, however, fail to capture the full force of Spiritualism at mid-century. Nor, for that matter, do they explain why later historians were embarrassed to spend much time on the topic, viewing the phenomenon as uncharacteristic of other key elements of the American character. For a nation founded on the pragmatic wisdom of the Enlightenment, the picture of the nation’s elite sitting around a table in a darkened room waiting to communicate via rappings with spirits from another world seemed not only foolish but embarrassingly stupid. Perhaps their only saving grace in the minds of future historians was that the séances were not overly ritualized. Being the grandchildren of the Enlightenment, the participants in these séances preferred a universe that was more orderly than occult, and they were more interested in finding an empirical basis for verification than relying simply on some supernatural cause. Spiritualism came at a time when discoveries, inventions and research in the physical sciences challenged many of the age-old assumptions in religion. With these breakthroughs came serious changes in the public mind, including the rise of materialistic thinking. Joseph Rodes Buchanan, the mesmerist and ardent Spiritualist, spoke of three distinct divisions in the movement: the “Christian Spiritualists,” the “freethinking Spiritualists,” and what he called the “idle, curious, and selfish wonder-mongers.” The Christian Spiritualists accepted Scripture as well

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as the existence of angels and other disembodied spirits who were a regular part of Christian belief. The freethinking Spiritualists, in Buchanan’s view, confused the moral idealism of Christianity with dogmatic theology, pointing out how narrow-minded the Church had been through the ages and how intolerant it had been of scientific progress. Thus, in their battles for freedom, the freethinkers viewed the Church as a reactionary entity bound forever in unreasonable dogma. Buchanan viewed the last group, the “wonder-mongers,” as the real “bane of Spiritualism” whose carelessness and greed had caused the defamation of the movement with their tricks and frauds.84 After numerous scandals, the tricks of Spiritualism were held up for what they were. The séance was exposed in case after case and came to finality in 1888, when Margaret Fox explained to a New York audience how she and her sisters produced their rappings.85 In his two-volume Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, Frank Podmore defined Spiritualism as both a religious faith and a department of natural science, capable of interpreting the communication between human beings and “the spirits of dead men and women.”86 The manifestations of their communication were of two distinct types: trance-speaking, automatic writing, and visions; or physical manifestations such as rappings, elevated tables, rope-tying, or flying spoons or plates. While the former manifestations were common across the centuries and across cultures, the latter were particularly American in their origin. Both, however, were an outgrowth of the study or practice of animal magnetism or participation in clairvoyant séances.87 In the ferment of ideas and “isms” that characterized nineteenthcentury American culture, Spiritualism provided an emotional anchor. Despite significant evidence of deceit, it survived the tempests of doubt because of its ability to attract high-spirited believers who seemed able to achieve a higher consciousness. For women who had been denied access to religious ordination, mediumship guaranteed them an audience and the séance a pulpit. Rejecting the Christian doctrines of eternal punishment and atonement, Spiritualism embraced a view of the soul’s upward progression and provided an atmosphere that was emotionally satisfying and intensely personal. However, for most mainstream Protestant denominations as well as the Catholic Church, Spiritualism represented a prohibited, diaboli-

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cal practice. The only channel of communication between God and humanity was the Bible, and those who allied themselves with Spiritualists sought advice from spirits doing the devil’s business. Of course, the very ban against mediumship from the established religions indicated an acceptance by their clergy of the existence of good and bad spirits.88 Spiritualism was not so much a new religion as it was an effort to embrace a nonmaterial view of the universe—a universe that did not require a close literal reading of the Old and New Testaments. As explained by historian Janet Oppenheim, Spiritualism offered “a path away from uncompromising materialism when secularist zeal faltered as well as a buttress for faith when Christian optimism sagged.”89 Nevertheless, America’s clergy channeled an inordinate amount of their time into Spiritualism, no doubt signifying a flirtation with the possibility of human-spiritual communication that might energize their flagging congregations. To their lament, this enthusiasm seldom translated into observable manifestations, merely acquiescence to a principle in search of a home. America’s clergy read widely in theology (especially Swedenborg), philosophy, the new discipline of psychology, and in Eastern mysticism with the ultimate hope of connecting space, time, and death into a plausible theory of the psyche. In their readings, they hoped to discover the Universal Human and the possibility of communicating across the fault lines that separated life and death. While the secular press persisted in questioning the claims of mediumship and showed open hostility to its more bizarre aspects, there were sufficient numbers of believers from all classes to support private as well as public circles. For families whose children had died in infancy or at a young age, parents who had lost a soldier son in war, and husbands and wives who had lost their life partner, the joy and peace brought by mediums left no doubt that the market in spirit communication was real. Writing in rapturous prose, literary Spiritualists took up their pens to capture touching scenes of loved ones surviving blissfully in the afterlife. Despite a fascination with the Spiritualist movement among some members of the clergy, Spiritualism and its cadre of mediums prompted more mainstream church leaders to caution against trafficking with what they perceived to be the Satanic side of the spirit world. Tabletipping and rappings were impious in their very nature and not a genu-

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ine manifestation of a Christian worldview. Yet it would be in error to say that Christianity and Spiritualism were at fundamental odds with each other. Established religion fulminated against mediums, especially since most Spiritualists stood apart from such doctrines as original sin and eternal punishment. Individual Christians, however, turned to them in much the same manner that they turned to sectarian medicine—hoping to find solace in both established religion and in Spiritualism without having to repudiate either one. The reassurance provided by religion served to reinforce their support and sympathy for Spiritualism. Together they proved to be a successful weapon against the secular and materialistic tendencies of the age, and tended as well to blunt the differences that separated one mainstream Christian group or denomination from another. Although life after death failed strict empirical authentication, there were enough nonempirical phenomena, including theological conviction, to justify belief in a unified cosmos and that the human personality survived death. Besides, it was more comforting than agnosticism and the absence of God from the universe. The nineteenth century’s veneration of science was not diminished by the popularity of Spiritualism, which welcomed its experiments at every occasion. Science commanded the public’s rapt attention, as all areas of knowledge seemed to fall under its laws. The methods of science permeated all aspects of intellectual inquiry, and any ambivalence that had once existed seemed to disappear amid scientific discoveries such as the development of wireless communication first demonstrated by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844. Spiritualists were comforted in the knowledge that they could now test their cosmic phenomena using laboratory experimentation and in the idea that immortality might cease to be an object of personal faith and assume the status of scientific verity. What the Spiritualists failed to admit, explained Janet Oppenheim, was their intent “to redefine science in their own terms and to argue against the contemporary concept of positivistic science.” Time and again, they “sought to stretch the boundaries of the natural world beyond physical causes and effects into the realm of spirit.”90 In the postCivil War decades, Spiritualism became a religious net for the modern skeptic who supported science but refrained from asserting that the world was without meaning or direction.91

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chapter 6

From Mental Science to New Thought The trouble is in the mind, for the body is only the house for the mind to dwell in. . . . Therefore, if your mind has been deceived by some invisible enemy into a belief, you have put it into the form of a disease, with or without your knowledge. —Phineas P. Quimby

The mind-cure or mental-science movement that originated in the midnineteenth century was separate from the Spiritualistic movement that began with the Fox sisters; nevertheless, it drew upon many of the same sources, including a set of religious and metaphysical beliefs that connected the individual nervous system to the cosmic forces of the universe. Its representative leaders provided a new approach to physical, mental, and spiritual healing by drawing their visionary ideas from Mesmer and his devotees; from perfectionist elements in American Protestantism; from early health reformers such as Presbyterian evangelist Sylvester Graham, who taught the interdependency of spiritual and physical health; and from the writings of Swedenborg.1 Like the movements that came before it, mind cure sought to satisfy the spiritual emptiness left in the wake of the Enlightenment with its emphasis upon empirical reasoning. Its proponents viewed truth as something

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that would be continually revealed, with no one viewpoint having a monopoly. Their vision, embraced within the overall philosophies of vitalism and eclecticism, was optimistic about the creative powers of humanity and of the inspiration, understanding, and health that came from God’s indwelling presence. They emphasized the spiritual nature of the universe and the comforting assurance that sin and disease were merely the outcome of incorrect thinking. While drawing heavily on the teachings of Jesus in the movement’s early years, proponents turned to more secular principles in the later decades.

Phineas P. Quimby Born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, Phineas P. Quimby (1802–1866) moved with his parents to Belfast, Maine, where he spent most of his boyhood years. Poorly educated in a family of modest means, he claimed only to have learned enough to spell and punctuate. He exhibited an early interest in mechanics, and his first occupation was as a clockmaker. After a period of poor health, his interests moved beyond mechanics to mental phenomena, including mesmerism. Having observed the public lectures and experiments of the visiting French mesmerist Charles Poyen in 1838, he learned as much as possible about the subject, attempting to place friends and family into a mesmeric sleep. In the course of these undertakings he met and partnered with Lucius Burkmar, who claimed he possessed the power to discern the state of a patient’s health without a word being communicated.2 Like others in his day eager to educate a culture that was just as eager to listen, Quimby traveled the lyceum circuit, where he and Burkmar employed a combination of mesmerism and clairvoyance to diagnose and prescribe for a wide range of illnesses. Up to this point, the two healers were not unlike Andrew Jackson Davis and William Levingston. Convinced over time, however, that patient cure was the result of the power of suggestion, Quimby theorized that ailments were matter of belief (or the lack thereof) and were best addressed by correcting patients’ false understandings and using their own reasoning powers to bring harmony to their physical and spiritual natures. To the extent that patients were able to achieve this harmony by channeling their own intelligence and willpower, Quimby and Burkmar were able

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to move away from mesmerism. Their choice of technique varied depending on the patients’ abilities to utilize their own mental forces.3 Initially, Quimby sat opposite the patient, holding hands and looking intently into the eyes until the individual went into a hypnotic sleep. Believing that he possessed powerful clairvoyant or intuitive powers that could discern a patient’s needs without the help of Burkmar, he dropped the use of mesmerism altogether. Eager to understand the truth about disease, Quimby explored the method and theory of spiritual healing, hoping to grasp the “Truth” so that he and others could understand and practice healing. His interests led him to study Jesus’s teachings in the New Testament, the religious excitement of the Millerites, and the self-induced inner states of Greek Neopythagorian philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, the prophet Muhammad, and Swedenborg. The more he became engaged, the more he believed that disease was not real in itself but represented an error of the mind. As a result, rather than placing his patient in a hypnotic state, Quimby sat beside the person, and, after using clairvoyance to understand the illness, he sought to explain the causes and correct the error in the patient’s mind.4 Contemporaneous with similar discoveries in homeopathy, Quimby learned that certain products which had no known curative power were as useful in healing as other standard medicines. Realization of this led him to speculate that the mind rather than the material medicine was the operative element in healing—it was not the medicine but the confidence that the doctor, healer, or clairvoyant brought to the patient that produced the cure. Concluding that there was a deeper explanation than material science and a fuller understanding than that found in existing religious creeds, he set out to understand how the mind worked under the influence of suggestion. “Instead of gaining confidence in the doctors,” he observed, “I was forced to the conclusion that their science is false. Man is made up of truth and belief; and, if he is deceived into a belief that he has, or is liable to have, a disease, the belief is catching, and the effect follows it.”5 Quimby concluded that sickness had its causation in the mind and that faulty or erroneous beliefs were the root cause. “Destroy the cause,” he reasoned, “and the effect will cease.” This approach depended on his adherence to vitalistic theory: the magnetic force or fluid that flowed

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Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866). Image courtesy of the Phineas Parkhurst Quimby Resource Center.

from the depths of the mind and into the nervous system was affected positively and negatively by physical stimuli. When individuals allowed these stimuli to control or otherwise impinge on the mind, the flow of magnetic force was disrupted to the point of undermining the health of the individual.6 As historian Robert C. Fuller explained in his Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, Quimby’s idea of mind cure was one of “beautiful simplicity,” suggesting that “right beliefs channel health, happiness, and wisdom out of the cosmic ethers and into the individual’s psyche.”7

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In his study of the unconscious or subconscious of the sick patient, Quimby theorized that there was always a portion of the soul that was not sick and that the challenge was to summon this portion into a fuller awareness of itself. Once this was accomplished, the impediments caused by the patient’s mental errors could be cast off. Quimby’s silent spiritual treatment was designed to awaken that inner, healthy portion of the soul. As explained by New Thought pioneer Horatio W. Dresser (1866–1954), a disciple of Quimby’s, “the treatment was spiritual rather than mental since the thought or idea was secondary to the power, the human agent or organ secondary to the divine wisdom.”8 These changes in Quimby’s thinking had a corresponding effect on his approach to patients. As a mesmerizer in his earlier years, he had tried to read and then control the patient’s mind. As a spiritual healer, however, he became a “lamp-bearer disclosing the way out of the dark places of the soul.” In this new approach, the healer was not an agent and, in fact, made no effort to control the patient. Rather, the focus was on allowing patients the freedom to choose for themselves.9 In moving to this latter method of treatment, Quimby distinguished between the lower mind, which was preoccupied with the material world, and the higher mind, which knew one’s true nature as a spiritual being. It was the difference between the opinions of an earth-bound individual and one whose knowledge and power derived from God, the source of all wisdom. My theory is founded on the fact that mind is matter; and, if you will admit this for the sake of listening to my ideas, I will give you my theory. . . . All knowledge that is of man is based on opinions. This I call this world of [spiritual] matter. It embraces all that comes within the so-called senses. Man’s happiness and misery are in his belief; but the wisdom of science is of God, and not of man . . . the world of opinions is the old world: that of science is the new; and a separation must take place, and a battle must be fought between them.10

Quimby’s mesmeric period, which lasted from 1838 to roughly 1847, provided him with the clues to later hypotheses and, eventually, to his own particular approach to healing. From 1847 to 1859, he pioneered a form of spiritual healing wholly distinct from his earlier methods. His spiritual healing excluded the common techniques used by

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secular mesmerists and instead became Christian in context, adopting Christ as the ideal.11 This involved a transformative change in his philosophy of life. As explained by Dresser, Quimby’s theory of spiritual healing now recognized a “guiding principle” that dwelled in everyone. The soul was in immediate relation with the divine mind. This represented a shift from “human beliefs in relation to bodily processes to divine causality and its meaning in the progress of the human soul.” Quimby began viewing disease treatment as only incidental to his discovery that people were spiritual beings “living an essentially spiritual life in the higher world above the flesh.” By this, Quimby meant that all healing took place according to that guiding principle which he attributed to the divine in humanity.12 At one point during this period, Quimby came to the conclusion that he was taking the sufferings of patients into his own body, thereby learning the way of Christ and the purpose of love.13 Quimby’s patients reported a feeling of a “religious experience” or “spiritual quickening” as a result of his silent healing techniques.14 Although Quimby belonged to no church, he was deeply religious and held firm to his belief in God as the first cause; he also believed in immortality and some form of spiritual progression after death. He held that Jesus’s mission had been to cure the sick and claimed to have understood how it had been done.15 “My religion is my life, and my life is the light of any wisdom that I have,” he wrote. “So that my light is my eye, and if my eye is the eye of Truth my body is light, but if my eye or wisdom is an opinion my body is full of darkness.”16 As a result of Quimby’s transition from mesmerism to Spiritualism and then from Spiritualism to the study of the human personality, he developed a faith in an inner self that, with correct thinking, opened to the divine presence and the mind of Christ. He made this discovery not by reading the Bible but through a personal quest for mastery of his own faculties. “Minds are like clouds,” he explained, “always flying, and our belief catches them as the earth catches seeds that fly in the winds.”17 Patients were awed by Quimby’s insights into their character. He always told them at the first sitting what constituted their disease, what circumstances caused the trouble, and how they fell into “error.”18 As

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long as patients were open to suggestion, Quimby knew the power of his own mind would affect or influence them. There was, he concluded, much more to the human mind than was commonly understood. From this, it was a short step to the adoption of the principle that as thought could influence another’s mind, so spiritual power was capable of achieving a similar influence.19 Quimby used the rituals of mesmeric passes, laying on of hands, and baptismal water, and even talked of an aura or vapor that surrounded his patients. He admitted that these techniques possessed no healing power of their own; nonetheless, he found that rituals had a beneficial effect on patients and improved their ability to understand and take ownership of their particular difficulties.20 His approach to mind cure was one of channeling the patient’s thoughts toward that of health and right living; encouraging the discovery of inner peace with one’s self; and recognizing that to the degree the patient sought guidance from Christ, both body and soul were aligned inwardly and outwardly to the forces the cosmos. True healing required patients to participate in their own cure; without an understanding of the problems, and without an understanding of the range of options, a healer could not turn the soul of a nonparticipating and uninvolved patient. Quimby’s work centered not on matters of sin and salvation but on the patient’s inner life. It represented a new path quite distinct from the denominational feuds that consumed most church-based discussions of spirituality. He identified the “science of health” as a healing power associated with the higher wisdom of Christ. Disease, on the other hand, was to be found in superstition. The new scientific people were free of sickness in the same manner that they were free of sin. It seems clear that although he lacked a word for it, Quimby was working in the area later called the “subconscious.” His writings used a variety of terms to explain the disturbing mental pictures that took hold of the mind, the disturbing emotions brought about by the mental processes, and the suggestions that he introduced into the patient’s mind in place of medical and sacerdotal opinion.21 Like Swedenborg, Quimby had little tolerance for Christian dogma, believing much of it to be foolish. He denied the body’s resurrection as well as the forms and ceremonies of organized religion. For him,

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“Christian science” was based on the idea of the “Christ within” and that all causation was mental and spiritual. Like Swedenborg, he did not wish to establish a new religion based on his own understandings. This did not prevent others, however, from taking his expressions of “Christ,” “truth,” and “science” to formulate their own brand of “Christian science.” Quimby endeavored to reinterpret the Bible, revealing a symbolic spiritual meaning underneath that which the churches had set forth. The Bible contained what Swedenborg called the “Word,” teachings which could only be properly understood through a system of spiritual correspondences. For both men, the Bible was a much different book from what most believed and unaffected by the wiles of crafty theologians. For Quimby, it taught only that which was practiced by Jesus, which became the “science of health.”22 The extent of Swedenborg’s influence on Quimby remains a matter of speculation. Quimby’s son, George, referenced his father’s interest in the Swede, but Dresser remarked otherwise: “The most we can say is that Quimby belonged to the New Age whose coming Swedenborg foretold.”23 According to Dresser, who edited The Quimby Manuscripts, Quimby was not a reader of either philosophy or theology and in no way could be viewed as having borrowed from Swedenborg. Having taken up the theory of mesmerism and found it wanting, he built a healing system out of his own practices, beginning with the silent method of healing and then moving to the idea of God as an “indwelling Wisdom.”24 Dresser pointed to only one reference of Swedenborg in Quimby’s writings, namely, a reference to “self-induced inner states.”25 What made Quimby a watershed figure in this period was his decision to divest mesmerism of its mediums, with their showy rituals and eccentricities, and recast its physical and mental healing attributes to accommodate a whole new philosophy of living. As Robert C. Fuller explained, Quimby was “the rightful father of the many self-help psychologies which to this day help churched and unchurched Americans alike achieve inner wholeness.”26 To his credit, Quimby cast doubt on the existence of animal magnetism—a critique already evident in Europe—and wondered whether his patients’ illnesses were actually “in the mind of belief.”27 To the extent that he considered this, explained Fuller, Quimby “moved mesmerism one step closer to mod-

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ern psychiatry.”28 The same was said by inspirational author Stewart W. Holmes, who regarded Quimby as having anticipated the later discoveries of psychiatry and the connection between semantics (i.e., influencing beliefs) and health.29 As a precursor to many of the later self-help psychologists, Quimby earned lasting presence within the metaphysical movement through disciples who looked to him for ideas on theology and nature. These included Julius Dresser and Annetta G. Seabury, who organized what was known as New Thought; Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science; and Warren Felt Evans, who established a mind-cure program in Salisbury, Massachusetts. Other popularizers of Quimby’s ideas were the Dressers’ son, Horatio W. Dresser; philosopher Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958); New Thought advocate H. Emilie Cady (1848–1948); selfhelp author Frank Channing Haddock (1853–1915); motivational author Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924); Emma Curtis Hopkins (1849– 1925), who started the Hopkins College of Metaphysical Science in 1885; Nona L. Brooks (1861–1945), who founded the Church of Divine Science in 1887; Charles (1854–1948) and Myrtle (1845­–1931) Fillmore, who founded the Unity Church in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1899; and Ernest Holmes (1887–1960), author of The Science of the Mind (1926) and founder of the Church of Religious Science.30 The mind-cure movement, drawing as it did on the evolving ideas of Quimby, sought to understand the relationship between three entities—the soul, the mind, and the body—believing this relationship to be the key to humanity’s relationship to God and therefore to life. Quimby viewed the mind as a spiritual “something” existing between soul and body. It was this unconscious or subconscious mind, which Swedenborg called the “limbus,” that received impressions of good and bad. The mind was the basis of people’s happiness and their misery since, as the divine flowed into every soul, it lodged within the mind to the extent that the divine found impressions corresponding to itself. When such impressions were perverted, the correspondence was lost. Thus, a person’s mind either incorporated or rejected the divine. As people opened themselves to the influx of the divine, they became receivers of life and health; to the extent that they closed themselves to this influx, they found unhappiness and sickness.31

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Mary Baker Eddy Mary M. Patterson (1821–1910), better known as Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, grew up in central New Hampshire near the Shaker village of Canterbury. An early patient and admirer of Quimby, she devoted her life to building a bridge between religion and mental health. Her Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures (1875) took Quimby’s spiritual medicine and wrapped it in a more defined form of Christian idealism. Distancing herself from the vocabulary of mesmerism, magnetic fluid, and vitalism, and embracing one that bore the distinctive imprimatur of Scripture, she built a school of mental healing based on the principle that sickness was the result of mental error. Mrs. Eddy (then Mrs. Patterson) consulted Quimby from May 29, 1862, through July 25, 1865; it was during this period that Quimby loaned her a few of his original manuscripts. Having experimented unsuccessfully with hydropathy, homeopathy, electromagnetism, and animal magnetism for chronic invalidism, she turned to Quimby.32 It seems clear that Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science movement could not have originated without the work of Quimby. His method of silent spiritual healing, along with its emphasis on a divine presence, were the sheet anchors of Eddy’s own Science of Health. Indeed, the terms “Science,” “Science of Health,” “Christ Principle,” and “Science of Life” were expressions that the patients of Quimby had heard over and over again in his healing conversations.33 Only after Quimby’s death in 1866 did she disown her indebtedness to him, calling him a mesmerist, and revealed her own version of spiritual science that she called “Christian Science.”34 In formulating her particular system of mental healing, Mrs. Eddy explained that health was not a condition of matter, but of mind. A healthy individual was in harmony with truth. “Divine Science,” “Spiritual Science,” “Christ Science,” or “Christian Science” rose above all physical theories, eschewing what Eddy called natural science as having been built on man-made laws founded on material conditions. Divine or Christian Science relied only on the laws of God by replacing the objects of the material senses with spiritual ideas. It was this new

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Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)

science—related to mind, not matter—that replaced natural science with divine truth, the principle of all science.35 While animal magnetism, hypnotism, occultism, Theosophy, and Spiritualism relied upon mortal minds and mystical hypotheses, Christian Science rested on divine principle. It was mortal minds, for example, that produced table-rappings and gave Spiritualism and other false systems their credibility. The teachings of these groups were material in nature, and until one realized that the body could not be saved except through the divine mind, such creeds, doctrines, and hypotheses stood as incomplete and fragmentary premises. Only the mind science of Christian Science was free of error; only through Christian Science were religion and medicine inspired with a divine nature and essence.36 To the degree that mortal minds divested themselves of beliefs in phrenology, animal magnetism, hypnotism, Spiritualism, and other systems controlled by material law and opinion, humankind would re-

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main separated from the capacity to heal by the truth. To the extent that doctors implanted disease in the thoughts of their patients by declaring them to be fixed facts, the body would continue to face harm. Only when the human mind superseded the laws of matter and entreated the divine mind to heal the sick would humankind see the full demonstration of the sacred power of the mind. Just as Jesus healed the sick with truth-power, so the Christian Scientist made mind the natural stimulus of the body, giving it power over every physician’s therapeutic methods. This action of the healer’s mind upon the receptive patient reached every part of the body and restored its harmony. “Both Science and consciousness,” explained Eddy, “are now at work in the economy of being according to the law of Mind, which ultimately asserts its absolute supremacy.”37 Properly understood, mind became the remedy for every kind of error. Just as Christ never employed drugs, neither did the Christian Scientist. Nor did the Christian Scientist “will” the sick to recover, as did the magnetizer and hypnotist. Similarly, although the various medical systems substituted fashionable drugs for the power of God, these curative powers were at best imaginary.38 Eddy argued that metaphysics had taught her that Christian Science was the logical step beyond the homeopathic system of Samuel Hahnemann. Having observed how homeopathic medicines were sometimes attenuated to the point where their therapeutic potency was in inverse proportion to their drug materiality, she concluded that the divine mind was the true healer, since no material presence remained in the drug.39 “Christian Science exterminates the drug, and rests on Mind alone as the curative Principle, acknowledging that the Divine Mind has all power,” she wrote. “Homeopathy mentalizes a drug with such repetition of thought-attenuations, that the drug becomes more like the human mind than the substratum of this so-called mind, which we call matter; and the drug’s power of action is proportionately increased.”40 Eddy’s Christian Science benefited from an extensive medical and religious legacy. From the days of Descartes, medical orthodoxy as well as its numerous apostates had been searching for “systems” and “laws” to explain the mind-body duality and its implications for health and disease. Was it material factors or was it the soul or anima (as postu-

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lated by Georg Ernst Stahl and Swedenborg) that regulated the body and explained the source of life? For Stahl, the mind-body dichotomy posed by Descartes was false, since health depended on a harmony of mind, soul, and cosmos. For Eddy, nothing existed but God; evil had no reality. The physical healing carried out by her “practitioners” resulted from the operation of divine principle, “before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation.”41 Along with other New Thought advocates, Eddy denied Spiritualism, arguing that there could be no correspondence, communion, or communication between the material and spiritual worlds. The dead and living did not and could not commune together, “for they are in separate states of existence, or consciousness.”42 Eddy’s “Christian Science” represented one of the more nonrational forms of healing in American history, denying the existence of sickness, sin, death, and even matter. Spawned among New England’s urban middle classes, it flourished along with other transcendental, metaphysical, and spiritual movements seeking to master the inner self. As both a religious sect and a healing faith, it eschewed the occult and linked personal salvation with the abrogation of selfishness, ignorance, sin, moral confusion, sickness, and all material-minded concepts. Divorced from mainstream medicine, which it viewed as the detritus of crass materialism, and sidestepping the ceremonial and sacerdotal aspects of mainstream religion, including those minor sects practicing faith healing, the followers of Eddy’s Science and Health dispensed a system of mental healing that stressed correct belief, affirmation, opposition to error or false belief (“malicious animal magnetism”), inner perfection, silent argument, self-correction, and personal control over one’s self.43 The rise of Christian Science was due in part to the greater tolerance gained by the Unitarians and other liberal movements, which helped undermine the animosity and suspicion directed at unconventional religious ideas. It was also assisted by the challenges to traditional theological beliefs brought about by newer theories on the physical universe and awakened opposition to dogmatic beliefs. Absent rites and rituals, Eddy took an unconventional approach to the church service, replacing

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it with a religious message that quickened the conscience, promoted moral idealism, and made its members recognize the truth of a person’s real self as a reflection of the divine life.44

Warren Felt Evans A native of Rockingham, Vermont, and a farmer’s son, Warren Felt Evans (1817–1889) was educated at Chester Academy, Middlebury College, and finally Dartmouth College, but left before graduating to enter the Methodist ministry in 1838. In 1863, after having read much of Swedenborg, he left Methodism to join the Church of the New Jerusalem. During this same period, he suffered a nervous affliction and found little relief from regular physicians and their medicines. Having learned of the healing powers of Quimby, he visited him in Portland, Maine, and quickly became a disciple. Not only was he healed by Quimby, but he was also encouraged to learn Quimby’s method and undertake his own practice of mental healing. In 1867, Evans and his wife Charlotte opened a practice in Claremont, New Hampshire, before moving to Boston in 1867, and later to Salisbury, Massachusetts. Evans may have further enhanced his healing credentials by obtaining a medical degree from Worcester Medical College in Massachusetts, an independent Thomsonian (physio-medical) medical college.45 One of the more prolific thinkers in the area of mental healing, Evans authored numerous books, including The Mental Cure (1869); Mental Medicine (1872); Soul and Body (1876); The Divine Law of Cure (1881); The Primitive Mind-Cure (1885); and Esoteric Christianity and Mental Therapeutics (1886). Better educated than Quimby, Evans embarked on his new profession as a way to heal and to spread the teachings of Swedenborg. This was evident in his book The New Age and Its Messenger (1864), in which Evans drew upon the writings of Swedenborg to lift minds “above the realm of sense, and to disclose the solid realities of an everywhere present spiritual world.” He viewed Swedenborg as having restored the idea of God’s unity, forsaken at the Council of Nicaea, and restored as well knowledge of the spiritual world and of the time when men “lived in communication with angels.” In bringing this about, Swedenborg had employed the law of correspondences, which, as Evans explained, utilized illuminated reason to make Scrip-

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ture understandable to everyone.46 Evans’s book The Mental Cure represented the first in a series of mental healing books he wrote over several decades. It was followed by Mental Medicine, which espoused a four-step healing process: (1) the desire to be healed; (2) use of remedies; (3) confidence in the healer; and (4) correspondence between the mind of the patient and that of the doctor. Above all else, his mind-cure process stressed the importance of thought and its transference between doctor and patient to correct the patient’s mind, proving that disease was mental, not physical.47 Evans praised Quimby for bringing the healing of the sick into harmony with the Divine. Not hampered by the educational limitations experienced by his mentor, Evans was able to take Quimby’s ideas and infuse them with Swedenborgian words and phrases. Having studied Swedenborg, he found it easy to expand Quimby’s ideas, using terms like “influx” and “correspondences” to explain the presence of the Divine in the human soul. For Evans, the starting point for spiritual healing was always the inner person.48 In his Divine Law of Cure, Evans laid out the principles of mental healing, stressing that the basis of mind cure originated in the Middle East, where it had reached its highest culmination in the healing practices of Jesus and the apostles.49 Evans explained that every disease was a bodily expression of a morbid idea in the mind. Removing this outward expression of the mind required the individual to think, feel, and believe in regeneration, which in Swedenborgian terms was a process of development as a spiritual being. If the healer were on the path to spiritual regeneration, then what he or she imagined, thought, and believed could be transferred to the patient through silent treatment, spiritual influx, and correspondence. Of particular significance to Evans was Swedenborg’s law of correspondences, his reliance on angels and spirits to convey knowledge of other worlds, his prophetic revelations, and the importance of love.50 Evans likened the “interior state” or condition of the brain and mind to the “affectional states” of the angels, whose calm, parity, and tranquility made the soul “vibrate in concord with heavenly harmonies.”51 Although there were gaps in the transition, Evans facilitated the intellectual evolution from Swedenborgianism to the New Thought

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movement.52 Horatio W. Dresser closed the circle by noting that disease and sin were of the same species; by understanding the sin, and addressing it properly, it was possible to remove the spiritual causation for disease.53 Evans was an eclectic thinker, drawing from a multitude of sources, assimilating and integrating into his own thinking all he considered useful. The canon from which he constructed his healing system included Swedenborgian, Hermetic, and Kabbalistic literature; philosophical idealism; Eastern religious thought; mysticism; science; and Christianity.54 Influenced by the French philosopher Victor Cousin, who successfully steered France’s educational system on a course that remained independent of Catholic hegemony, Evans formulated a system of mind cure that combined the best aspects of idealism, mysticism, materialism, and skepticism. He saw all genuine science and philosophy “drifting” in a single direction to unite divinity and humanity.55 He accepted Cousin’s belief that all philosophies had elements of truth and that they turned false only when they became exclusive. The most perfect system of philosophy, therefore, was one that combined “into a harmonious unity the excellences of all other systems.” He felt the same applied to religion, claiming that Swedenborg had found a way to harmoniously combine the best of ritualism, intellectualism, and mysticism. The Church of the New Jerusalem was neither a sect nor a system of dogmas; it was a “newer and higher life—the life of love.”56 For Evans, the coming of the New Jerusalem—the entrance into a new phase of spiritual history—represented a separation from the lost moral force of contemporary churches and a return to an earlier age when God was not the object of “dread and aversion,” but presented in the form of love.57 As with many of his contemporaries living in the wake of the Enlightenment and the free-will assault on Calvinism, Evans was a critic of orthodoxy from whatever source—religious, legal, or medical. “Many a person has been doctored into the graveyard, by treating him for a disease he never had, and thus administering to him the wrong medicines,” he wrote.58 Encouraged by the times, and particularly by the writings of Swedenborg, he was convinced that Christianity was moving into a new epoch, one dedicated to restoring the healing powers of

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Christ and the apostles. Evans viewed Jesus as the “soul-germ” found in all human souls and the “highest illustration in the history of mankind of a fully and harmoniously developed humanity.” Mental healing was the natural outcome of the healing message of Christ and the early evidence of healing in the Christian churches.59 Utilizing Swedenborg’s law of correspondences to articulate how the material world was an externalization of the divine, Evans went on to explain how correspondences applied to health and disease. Since the organs of the body corresponded to areas of the mind, all physical disease could be related to mistaken or wrong ideas which, if identified, could be replaced.60 “All disease, so far as it has a material or bodily expression,” he explained, “must have a preexistence in us as a fixed mode of thought, that is, as an idea. To expunge from the mind and obliterate from our soul-life the idea of it, is to remove the cause of it, and hence to cure the malady.”61 While a considerable amount of his mind-cure healing practices derived from Quimby, Evans clearly borrowed from a multitude of scientists, philosophers, and theologians as he focused on the mind as the dominating force of healing, disease as unreal, and healing as an individualized process of union with the divine influx. Mind cure stressed thought transference from the healer to the patient’s own mind, the openness of the patient to the flow of thought, the removal of negative thoughts and attitudes from the patient’s mind, and the substitution of healthy ideas for the former diseased ideas.62 Along with his criticism of Christian orthodoxy, Evans castigated medical orthodoxy, excoriating doctors for their overreliance on dangerous and addictive drugs, their blindness to the mental side of healing, and their ignorance of spiritual needs in viewing the totality of a patient’s well-being. Despite his harsh view of contemporary institutions, he expressed great optimism in the future, believing that society was progressing toward what he called the “Swedenborgian Age of the Holy Spirit.”63 For Evans, a healthy body reflected the Greek concept of balance among the “humors” or temperaments. Just as primal matter consisted of four elements (earth, air, fire, and water), these qualities either singly or in combination formed the humors or radical fluids (blood, phlegm,

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yellow bile, and black bile) in the animal frame. In effect, the humors were to the human body what the elements were to the world. From the Greeks onward, health was interpreted as an equilibrium of the four elements in the human constitution. While a specific humor might predominate, giving an individual a peculiar temperament, health presupposed a proper balance of the remaining humors. When, on the other hand, there developed a morbid predominance of one or more of the humors, the abnormal mixture turned to disease, with corresponding psychological changes and bodily manifestations. Each living body was benefited by an innate capacity to restore a proper balance (vis medicatrix naturae), but doctors had sometimes hastened this natural harmony through purging, puking, cooling, or heating of the body.64 Where the Greeks attributed the imbalance to the humors, which had both a material and nonmaterial basis, Evans attributed the imbalance entirely to humanity’s immaterial mental state. Disease may have had a material expression, but its causation was brought about by wrong thoughts or ideas. Only by expunging the erroneous ideas from the mind could one remove the cause and thereby cure the particular disease. Thus the path to health was through spiritual enlightenment.65 When there was a harmony between the will and the understanding, unity existed in a person’s inner life, evident in both bodily and spiritual health. Disease represented a loss of balance between the will and understanding. Evans saw his obligation as a spiritual healer to trace this discord between the will and understanding as it was recorded in the health of the body, and to work with the patient in developing a new relationship between the body and the soul—between disease and the patient’s inner nature. In achieving this, he took Quimby’s teachings and added Swedenborg’s concept of the spiritual spheres that surrounded every individual and exerted silent influence. “If the mental state be joy or melancholy, gladness or sorrow, contentment or impatience, faith or fear, it affects others with a like feeling, in a degree proportional to their impressibility,” explained Evans. “In this way the mind propagates its own prevailing condition, and all our mental states are contagious.”66 Evans believed he possessed the power to detect the state of mind that underlay a patient’s disease and to see how to change the inner life. Evans saw this ability as due not simply to the power of

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suggestion, but to what he identified as “influx” from the divine life.67 Like Swedenborg, Evans was a mystic who believed in the immanence of God and the ability of the individual to participate in this immanence through passive and intuitive reception of divine influx. He viewed mental healing as a function of this mystical experience by associating the healing process with an inner mystical awareness. It was in a conscious union with God that the individual was healthy in the fullest sense of the word, for in that condition lay peace of mind and harmony with God.68 Not surprisingly, Evans referred often to the theological writings of Jonathan Edwards, considering him “the greatest of American metaphysicians,” who embraced the philosophy of Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) with respect to the external world. “When I say the material universe exists only in the mind,” wrote Edwards, “I mean that it is absolutely dependent on the conception of the mind for its existence. The human body and the brain itself exist only mentally, in the same sense that other things do.”69 Evans was much more of an intellectual than those who followed him into New Thought. Versed in Eastern, mystical, scientific, and occult literature, he served as a transitional figure between mind cure and the much less intellectualized movement known as New Thought. He was most articulate when it came to the espousal of philosophical idealism; those who came after him, however, disregarded much of this legacy for a more pragmatic approach.70 Evans became an important link between Quimby’s work in the 1830s through the 1860s and the rise of the New Thought movement in the 1890s. He certainly influenced Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Much of what Eddy claimed in her Science and Health could be found in the mental healing ideas of Evans. Indeed, Evans even used the term “Christian science” fifteen years before Eddy did.71 According to historian John F. Teahan, Evans’s ideas of mental healing were an echo of American romanticism, particularly transcendentalism, as well as a precursor of New Thought. They represented “an idealistic expression of late nineteenth-century mental healing” that was “more loosely organized” than Christian Science, portrayed God as an “immanent Spirit,” and viewed human beings as “an embodiment of God.”72

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Emmanuel Movement In addressing the mounting social problems of poverty, disease, and urban decay in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, increasing numbers of the middle and upper middle classes turned to their churches for direction, hoping to discover a social gospel that would address society’s disparities without upsetting their personal satisfaction with the gospel of wealth. Across New England and the nation at large, the intellectual currents of so-called progressivism were making their mark, exposing the problems and weaknesses in democracy’s underpinnings. Under pressure from critics who felt that America’s churches had neglected their earthly responsibilities, ministers attempted to reconstitute their social obligations in a manner that served both the psychological needs of the giver and the material needs of society’s unfortunate. This psychotherapeutic approach to stewardship, known as the Emmanuel Movement, was the work of the Reverend Elwood Worcester (1862–1940), rector of Emmanuel Church in Boston from 1904 to 1929. The movement quickly spread to church groups across North America and several other continents as well.73 A native of Massillon, Ohio, Worcester studied at Columbia College and the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, both in New York City, before receiving his doctorate at Leipzig University in 1889. There he studied idealistic philosophy, the higher criticism in religion, and the work of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) in experimental psychology and Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) in physiological psychology. On his return to America, Worcester taught psychology and philosophy at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, before taking a pastorate at St. Stephen’s Church in Philadelphia, where he became a friend of the neurologist and author Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914). In ­1904, he accepted the Episcopal rectorship at Emmanuel Church in Boston, serving the city’s fashionable Back Bay.74 As rector, Worcester and his assistant, Dr. Samuel McComb, lamented the standardized regimen of the ministry, thinking that the obligations that went with their calling had somehow been lost from Christian religion. Hoping to return to modern people the healing ministry of Christ and the apostles, they established clubs, workshops,

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and other activities designed to connect the church with the city’s sick and needy. Drawing upon their mutual interest in abnormal psychology, and with the willing cooperation of a few local physicians, the two men embarked on a healing ministry designed to redirect the men and women in their church—many of whom had been diagnosed with neurasthenia (from neuro, nerve, and asthenia, weakness) or nervous exhaustion—to more rewarding activities in the service of the poor. In similar fashion, they sought out the city’s neediest citizens and, with the support of the bishop and parishioners, provided a host of support services, most in individual and group therapy sessions.75 Nervousness or neurasthenia had been identified by New York neurologist George M. Beard (1839–1883) as the disease of civilization. In American Nervousness, published in 1881, Beard saw it as one of the ominous signs of the time, a condition brought about by the greater complexity and increased demands of modern life. Among its certain causes were the overtaxing of the human brain in childhood; the habit of self-abuse (masturbation); the quickening of knowledge and its impact on the human brain; the increased dimension of the mechanical and material world; the lack of spirituality in everyday life; the uncertainty of the business world; and the increased demands upon memory, rapid judgment, and the higher faculties. Beard had designated neurasthenia as a particular affliction of the rich and of the nation’s brainworkers—its clergy, financiers, scientists, and scholars.76 The ideal candidate for this disease, explained Worcester and McComb in an article about the moral aspect of these nervous disorders, was the native-born American, marked by “fine soft hair, delicate skin, nicely chiseled features, small bones . . . frequently accompanied by a slight physical and muscular system.” Such constitutions were the product of a high form of civilization, marked by baldness in men, increased sensitiveness to pain and temperature, indigestion, a susceptibility to alcohol and narcotics, a greater sensitivity to the action of medicines, and a nervous temperament.77 Inspired by a desire to find a more meaningful purpose for those parishioners who were suffering from neurasthenia, Worcester and McComb set out in 1903 to treat both their own parishioners and the city’s needy. Under the medical direction of Dr. Joseph H. Pratt, they estab-

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lished a tuberculosis clinic that combined standard medical treatment with various moral components such as encouragement, hope, friendship, and discipline. The success of the clinic convinced the church’s leadership that they had a mission to fulfill in both religion and medicine. This was followed in 1906 by consultations with prominent New England neurologists and a decision to establish a clinic for the treatment of nervous disorders, including those parishioners diagnosed with neurasthenia. Here again, the treatment involved the use of medical and surgical specialists, a record-keeping system borrowed from the Massachusetts General Hospital, and assistance from various civic and religious agencies.78 The Emmanuelists, whose motto was “Back to Jesus,” believed they were living in the midst of a new era of religious fervor. The catalyst had come not from established religion but from less-known but fastgrowing groups like the Christian Scientists, social agencies, and leaders in psychology. In particular, they credited Harvard psychologist William James and his research on the subconscious powers of the mind with having transformed psychology from a theoretical science to a powerful, practical behavioral science. In 1909, Lyman P. Powell, rector of St. John’s Church in Northampton, Massachusetts, published The Emmanuel Movement in a New England Town, in which he showed how the principles established by Worcester and McComb were executed in Northampton on cases identified as nervous functional disorders. For Powell, the Emmanuel movement represented the first serious effort of responsible clergy to find common ground between the various denominations of the Christian church. In doing so, it intended to rob no faith of principles, but rather to invite the various churches to account for their stewardship by becoming “a new creature in Christ Jesus.”79 It offered to make ministers expert in moral and spiritual pathology, enabling them to relieve “many of the ailments of the body which are dependent upon mental or moral conditions.”80 The issue addressed by Powell was whether or not the clergy were sufficiently trained in psychotherapy to be able to provide the ordinary ministrations needed to make the Emmanuel idea its own. He noted some of the criticism coming from the medical profession, but

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reaffirmed the fact that most skeptics were operating from the misapprehension that clergy were treating patients without the aid of the medical profession. This, Powell pointed out, was simply not true. No patient was accepted unless referred by a physician. “No case has been treated save after diagnosis and approval by a reputable doctor,” wrote Powell, “and to make the diagnosis as accurate as possible a staff of experts is ever in attendance.” In effect, the Emmanuel movement made no claim to which medicine had clear title. It remained a supportive entity, using faith as an added element to the power of suggestion, operating together with more conventional forms of treatment within the boundaries of scientific medicine.81 Although mainstream medicine remained openly hostile to this mix of religion and applied psychology, the Emmanuel movement worked magic in the churches by addressing the moral and psychological issues of both parishioners and the needy. Common treatment consisted of relaxation exercises, suggestion, positive thinking, prayers, sermons, hymns, diet, and a work therapy that focused parishioners’ attention outward from themselves to society’s less fortunate.82 Besides the Episcopal churches, these healing or psychotherapeutic ministries were also found among the Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians, and Universalists, where arrangements were made with local physicians, hospitals, and various eleemosynary and social service organizations. To many in these churches, the Emmanuel movement represented a return to the original work of the Apostolic Church and had the backing and loyal support of parishioners.83

What’s in a Name? In contrast with Europe, where the medical profession had already begun to chart a parallel course with a cadre of professional psychiatrists, the United States had no such tradition until the early twentieth century. This freed American consumers to indulge in a host of initiatives whose presenters claimed mysterious powers and whose efforts were profit-directed and fashioned for the consumer’s taste. Late nineteenth-century America was inundated with irregulars intent on linking health to some form of mental healing modality. From New England to the West, the neurotic, the convalescent, and the rheumatic

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gathered with childish credulity around newly minted practitioners (many educated in eclectic medical schools) as they noisily trumpeted their cures. So inextricably were these metaphysical philosophies mixed with fraud, religious cant, and chicanery that a national distrust emerged alongside the growth of legitimate psychotherapeutics. The terms “divine healing” and “spiritual healing” were used interchangeably to describe the set of practices centered around the notion of unorthodox healing. On the surface, “divine healing” seemed to be associated with a set of specific doctrines or canon belonging to Christianity, while “spiritual healing” suggested a broader and less restrictive origination. That said, the two terms carried many different and ambiguous contextual usages which defied any single interpretation. The phenomenon of physical and spiritual healing had been part of biblical tradition since the ancient Israelites, carried forward into Christianity by Jesus, the apostles, and the saints. By the beginnings of the twentieth century, systems known popularly as “New Thought,” “mental healing,” “Christian Science,” and “psychopathy” were frequently discussed among those who believed in the power of divine healing. This new group of healers often referenced the philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg, but they usually had only partial knowledge of his teachings concerning degrees, influx, and correspondences. Nonetheless, they all sought to expand the full potential of humanity’s spiritual, intellectual, and moral capacity. Not until humanity accepted the unity of life and the “subsistence of the creature from the constant expression of the Divine,” explained New Church minister Clyde W. Broomell in 1907, would the physical body find order, harmony, and consequent health.84 Insofar as humanity’s gratifications were indulged as ends in themselves there would be no “inflowing, healing life” from the Creator. When people who had previously been focused on sensory pleasures elevated their power of thought by turning to the Divine, they would become recipients of the “heavenly influx.”85 For those who drew their ideas from Swedenborg, the concept of a “sound mind” implied the power and presence of the Divine in human consciousness. When this was fully understood, explained Broomell, it would be possible for one individual to cure another. Simply making a

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“verbal contradiction” of another’s disease was not enough. Provided that both the body and soul of a diseased person were open to the spoken word of truth, thoughts that overflowed with tender sympathy and were directed voluntarily from the healthy mind to the sickened one could result in cure.86 Various terms such as Science of Being (Chicago and New York); Metaphysical Healing (Boston); Christian Metaphysics (Kansas); and Higher Thought (England) rivaled the more generic New Thought.87 These terms generally implied a rejection of old beliefs, including orthodox theology and orthodox medicine. For Warren Felt Evans, the true representative of this new age was none other than Swedenborg, with Quimby as his best expression.88 William H. Holcombe (1825–­ 1893), a staunch Swedenborgian and homeopath, was the first to actually use the term “New Thought” in his pamphlet Condensed Thoughts about Christian Science, published in 1887. His use of the term Christian science was not meant to connote the movement begun by Mrs. Eddy, but rather the terminology used by Quimby.89 Until Darwin’s theory of natural selection, orthodox science had taught that human beings were a special creation, owing little or nothing to the kingdoms of animals beneath them. For New Thought believers, the theory of natural selection not only shattered the older beliefs but left human beings isolated from other planes of their being and existence. Refusing to accept that humanity’s physical plane was all there was, New Thought spokesman M. Douglas Fox insisted that the dead “were not far away; but living and loving still; nearer than ever, only on a different plane of life.”90 The New Thought movement came into existence, explained Dresser, “because mankind built it with their desires.”91 In looking at the writings of the early twentieth century on the theory of evolution and its application to the realms of knowledge, the Reverend W. T. Stonestreet, a Swedenborgian and New Thought advocate, made note of English naturalist Alfred Wallace’s (1823–1913) remark that humanity’s entire nature—moral, intellectual, and spiritual—had been derived from its rudiments in the lower animals and that religion, as one of the elements in humanity’s nature, could be traced back to fetishism and totemism. The consequence of this assertion, complained

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Stonestreet, was that religion came not from divine revelation but from the unconscious and conscious self-development of the primitive mind. If humanity had risen by its own powers out of primitive barbarism to varying degrees of mental and moral culture, this inferred no divine guidance whatsoever but simply a natural progress by the inherent forces of human nature.92 Stonestreet argued that there was a distinct difference between the savage mind with its fetishisms and modern humans with more complex brain structures. The earliest human beings described in the Bible were a celestial race that had received the impress of divine truth. While these people had progressed by means of evolution, this was never self-evolution, but rather “the unfolding of the human capacities under the influence of incessant personal relations, by dreams and visions, by the presence of angelic instructors, and the conscious realization of the ever-present world of eternity.”93 Another important, if not remarkable, effort to bring science and religion together on a new plane was Edward C. Hegeler’s (1835–1910) Open Court Publishing Company, located in La Salle, Illinois. Its editor, Paul Carus (1852–1919), achieved international renown for publishing a broad array of titles on philosophy, religion, ethics, science, and mathematics. Through the publication of two journals, The Open Court (1887–1936) and The Monist (1890–present), Carus sought to identify a home for “souls”—both past and present—amid the detritus of formulations, errors, and superstitions that had so tarnished religion. Both Carus and his publisher were intent on establishing religion on a scientific basis, purged of its formalism and of its dogmas, publishing books such as David Abbott’s Behind the Scenes with the Mediums (1907), Carus’s Whence and Whither; The Nature of the Soul, Its Origin and Its Destiny (1900), Henry Ridgely Evans’s The Old and the New Magic (1906), and Gustav Theodor Fechner’s On Life After Death (1906).

Rationalism, Religion, and Beyond The psychic and psychological phenomenon known as New Thought was a late nineteenth-century expression of liberalism that drew from a number of different sources. It included the metaphysics of India and Greece; the pervasive influence of Unitarianism and Universalism; the illumination and optimism of Ralph Waldo Emerson; the religious

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inspiration of Robert Browning’s Christian idealism; and, to a lesser extent, the popularity of the Eastern occult as taught by Madame Blavatsky. It postulated a spiritual transference from healer to patient based on the premise that the healer represented a higher level of truth and that material disease was a reflection of a spiritual malaise.94 The prophets of New Thought came close to making a religion out of their views on healing. Many held, with Emerson, that “the material universe is part of the creation of the Infinite Mind”; that the use of suggestion was an appropriate “therapeutic agent”; and that “all men are governed to a greater or lesser extent by the mental impressions and images that are constantly being received, directly through other minds, or through literature.” They urged followers to free themselves of material limitations by seeking transcendence of mind over matter, expanding their inner consciousness, being one with the Infinite, exercising right thinking and correct mental habits, and making a commitment to self-actualization. Here was a philosophy that operated outside the boundaries of ecclesiastical thinking, but which channeled the energies of the human spirit into proper ethical conduct and a social gospel built around spiritual renewal, positive thinking, and community building.95 Identified as the “liberal wing” of the mental-healing movement by Horatio W. Dresser, New Thought came into its own in the 1890s, and by the end of World War I had become an international movement. For its many adherents, New Thought represented a reaction to the materialistic philosophy of evolution by working backwards to a belief in life and mind that presumed a divine purpose. It was an idealism that went beyond the works of German idealist Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762– 1814) and Hegel as well as beyond the devotees of the higher biblical criticism, arriving at a mental science which argued for an expression of spirituality that stood apart from the material brain. It was a healing movement that witnessed a return to apostolic Christianity, to the Bible, and to a celebration of what Emerson liked to call “self-reliance” but which, for purposes of New Thought, meant a rediscovery of humanity’s inner life.96 New Thought recognized its debt to Spiritualism’s belief in the continued existence of the human spirit following death. It censured the

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orthodoxies of Protestantism and Catholicism along with the ecclesiasticism of the historical Christian church. It also questioned the singular sanctity of the Bible, suggesting that God could just as well have spoken through the great poets as through Moses and Paul. Moreover, the devotees of New Thought viewed Jesus as purely human. “He may be characterized as a God-man,” wrote Henry Sheldon, “but not as the God-man.”97 Jesus may have been an extraordinary person, standing before humankind as its moral ideal, but that was the extent of it. Even his miracles did not set him apart from the rest of humanity. They were perfectly compatible to what any person might use “if he would but enter upon his full inheritance.”98 The New Thought movement was not an organized religion, as members of its various organizations were not asked to leave any churches or denominations to which they belonged. Instead, they were asked to become better members of their churches and, in doing so, to have greater inner powers than before, more self-reliance, more belief in the unity of the universe, and a more ennobled sense of personal dignity. New Thought was nothing more than “Christ Thought” without the ceremonies and sacerdotal forms and appeals of the churches.99 It was not a new religion but a “new light on every religion”—an exercise of freedom that allowed its devotees to worship in the churches and temples of their choice.100 According to Dresser, the aims of the New Thought movement were constructive, affirming humanity’s inner life over the servitude of orthodox religion and medicine and all other materialistic bondages. It was optimistic in the tradition of Emerson’s essay on self-reliance by projecting a belief in the independence of the individual over his many social surroundings. New Thought stood for affirmation and called attention to the interior person as the generator of both health and disease.101 Only by appealing to the inner self could an individual change and, in doing so, affect others. Discovering the inner life required a return to the gospel of Christ and living life according to divine law. Health and happiness were to be found in a “life of integrity,” bringing man “to his true estate as a spirit living even now in the spiritual world.”102 As explained by author and occultist William Walker Atkinson (1862–1932), this was a movement without creeds, but one that con-

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tained “hints” at truths that had been discussed and debated in the schools of ancient Greece. Within it were the best writings—from sacred books to poetry and literature—from all ages. Its spiritual and psychic thought was seen as sweeping away the dogmas, creeds, materialisms, superstitions, and tyrannies of the past. It stood for freedom, independence, tolerance, health, success, and happiness. It was a movement holding that as humanity unfolded in spiritual consciousness, it became aware of the existence and immanence of a Deity who was not the wrathful God of the Old Testament but one of love. The idea included the belief that sin was simply ignorance of the truth. Humanity was undergoing a spiritual evolution in which all people were growing and developing in spirituality. As members of human society, all people were approaching the plane of cosmic knowing.103 New Thought was both a method of healing and a philosophy of life—an affirmation of a gospel of healing, which is to say a belief in recognizing the Christ within each individual and his role in both health and the whole of life.104 Reminiscent of the early writings of Swedenborg, New Thought advocates viewed thoughts as vibrations that traveled with varying intensity and that could affect others near and far. Individuals constantly sent forth thought-waves whose vibrations, according to the laws of telepathy, could affect persons with whose minds they came in contact— either sitting side by side or at a distance. These thought waves traveled the world, but every person was still the master of his or her own mind, and nothing entered it unless the individual permitted it to happen. “Only the thoughts that harmonize will find a congenial shelter within his mind,” wrote Atkinson.105 Those who came to New Thought did so mostly by way of mental healing. The most popular plan of treatment began with the patients’ proper education, i.e., recognizing the powers within their own minds in healing themselves. Once the patients understood this, permanent cure was possible and future disease preventable. All the different practices—from Christian Science and mental science to suggestive therapeutics, faith cure, and divine science—used the same underlying philosophy. Their only difference was in the preferred method of application. For each and all, patients had to understand and recognize the

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healing power that lay latent within and, when treated by another or by themselves, realize that the cure was actually the “calling into life” of that healing power.106 New Thoughters drew heavily upon mesmerism and Swedenborgianism for their view of the cosmos and the gatekeeper role the mind played in accessing the higher energies. As individuals became conscious of their oneness with the Divine and opened themselves to its influx, so the individual became empowered with the ability to find peace, harmony, and health. By thus channeling their thoughts, they were energized with a degree of vitality that opened the unexplored recesses of the mind, bridged the material and spiritual worlds, and allowed them to realize the self-actualizing potential that lay in each human being. The message of New Thought is still delivered today through television, pulpits, and secular services; and through store shelves full of tapes, CDs, and books classified under categories such as “self-help,” “religion,” “medicine,” “business,” and “holistic.” Some examples of the inheritors of New Thought include Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention (2004), Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles (1996), the books of Deepak Chopra and Gary Zukav, and the motivational talks of Tony Robbins.

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chapter 7

Biomedicine’s Kindred Spirits Diseases correspond to man’s affections, and the diseases that are upon the human race today are but the outward expression of man’s interiors, and it is true if the diseases are such they represent the interior forces of man. —James Tyler Kent

The views of alchemist Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541), better known as Paracelsus, were a major source of alternative medical theories in the early nineteenth century. In an age when constitutional pathology anchored therapeutics, and the armamentarium of purging, salivating, vomiting, sweating, and bleeding was thought to “balance” the rightful proportions of the humors, various alternative and complementary healers turned to Paracelsus’s alchemical view of the body, which involved infusing chemical materia medica with a spiritual character. His writings stimulated a vitalistic challenge to the materiality of Western medicine, thereby nurturing an occult, mystical, and divine worldview.1 For Paracelsus, the natural world had been infused with a directing intelligence that could be discerned intuitively, much like animals’ reliance on instinct. It was this directing intelligence or “inner alchemist” that governed the life processes in the

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The homeopathic principle of similia similibus curantur. Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

living organism. The term that Paracelsus used to describe this invisible vital force was the archeus. As explained by Matthew Wood in The Magical Staff (1992), “just as the alchemist in the laboratory, through the agency of fire, separates all things into their constituent parts, the archeus separates the useful from the useless, incorporating them into the organism.” Because each organ had its own spirit (archei) and was controlled by the all-governing archeus, the therapy used by Paracelsus was sometimes directed to the individual organ and at other times to the whole organism.2 A number of concepts introduced by Paracelsus were borrowed by subsequent system-builders and used to reinforce not only the prevailing paradigm of humoral pathology but a broad range of alternative and complementary therapeutic systems. Among the concepts was his doctrine of correspondences, which held that all the elements in the natural world received their meaning from the spiritual world. This con-

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cept that every material thing had a primordial archetype from which it derived was not unlike Plato’s eternal ideas, which gave meaning to his search for wisdom and knowledge by looking beyond the world of shadows (the physical world). In linking each organ to a corresponding primordial archetype, or each disease to a corresponding perversion of a primordial archetype, Paracelsus gave substance to the concept of a Primordial or Divine Human.3 Besides this doctrine of correspondences, Paracelsus introduced his doctrine of signatures, meaning that the particular virtue, shape, smell, or taste of a medicinal agent complemented the manner in which a particular organ was used. For example, a yellow plant might suggest an application for treating the liver (yellow bile), or an orchid with roots shaped like testicles might be used as a treatment for the sexual organs.4 Finally, Paracelsus is credited with introducing the law of similars (similia similibus curantur, meaning “like cures like”) as distinct from the prevailing law of contraries (contraria contrariis curantur), meaning that disease was best treated by its opposites. The law of similars eventually became the bedrock of homeopathic medicine, whose founder, Samuel Hahnemann, challenged the very foundations of medical orthodoxy.5

The Eclectics The long history of eclectic theory within medicine began with Athenaeus of Attaleia and continued with his pupil Claudius Agathinus (first century AD) of Sparta, followed by Paracelsus, Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), English physician and anatomist William Harvey (1578–1657), and the spread of eclectic philosophy in early nineteenth-century France. Believing that no philosophy had garnered the whole truth, but that elements of truth could be found in all philosophic systems, Victor Cousin and others in France, including the founders of the Paris Clinical School, urged the cultivation of new methods and philosophies. Beginning with the principle of toleration—a belief that every system originated from spontaneous intuition and that each contained an element of truth—eclecticism became “the arbitrator among the diverse systems.” As such, the eclectics forged a place amid the ambiguities of medicine, asserting openness to all of medicine’s inheritance.6

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In North America, eclectic theory drew sustenance from an ongoing public discussion among regulars and irregulars alike on the need for a truly “American” or “reformed” practice of medicine. Having proclaimed independence from the Old World, patriots such as Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson spoke of a desire to rid medicine of the onerous claims and counterclaims of Europe’s numerous systembuilders. Extending to medicine the same principles found in the Declaration of Independence, they urged physicians to free themselves from the tyranny of the existing schools of medical thought. As one eclectic explained, eclecticism “is the republican element descended into the domain of science and philosophy . . . and stands out in striking antithesis to the servile, exclusive and pedantic dogmatism which so extensively characterizes the . . . fossilized systems of the past.”7 Another catalyst in the rise of eclecticism was the Scottish political economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790), who urged the breakup of special interests and a commitment to the free-market system. This implied an end to medical orthodoxy’s special protections in the law. Despite eclecticism’s European origins, its American proponents showed their disdain for foreign influences (including France), encouraging a nativistic blend of different types of practical medicine untrammeled by medical orthodoxy and expressing a preference for the indigenous plant life of the Western Hemisphere.8 American eclectics viewed the canon of medical literature as partially verified by experience but often unacceptable and unreliable. The inconclusiveness of medical knowledge meant that eclectics had to enlarge their experience, train their judgment, and decide for themselves. While wanting to be guided in their decisions by the accumulated wisdom of the past, they realized they could not be bound by such unverifiable theory. The task of the modern eclectic was to understand that in the disbelief of past authorities lay the opportunity to practice independent, rational medicine. The American eclectics were strong advocates of the proposition that the physician’s role was to assist nature, not stand in the way. This meant discarding past medical systems and shunning the antiphlogistic and depletive practices (bleeding, purging, and blistering) that had so terrorized patients and undermined the inherent vitalism or active principle in the human organism. These reformers considered it their duty

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to assist nature by administering only those remedies that acted in harmony with the vis medicatrix naturae. Although the opponents of eclecticism were ready and willing to brand it as a rootless, unprincipled philosophy subject to the whims of individual taste, for supporters it remained a coherent system whose roots were founded on the excesses of traditional medicine. One such defender was the physician John M. Scudder (1829–1894) who, in 1862, became owner, dean, and teacher (theory of medicine and pathology) at the Eclectic Medical Institute (EMI) in Cincinnati. The college, formed as a joint-stock company in 1845, had gone through numerous internecine feuds before succumbing to difficult financial straits during the Civil War. Scudder, a successful practitioner and graduate of the school, was a sharp businessman who took over the reins of the college and bought out its stockholders. He then led the school into its golden years, when it became the flagship of eclectic medical schools and the Mecca of eclectic thinking, contributing the majority of textbooks and additions to the materia medica for the reformist system.9 Like the homeopaths, Scudder attenuated his medicines, but never to the point that they lost their material identity. While he made every effort to discern the properties of his drugs, he opposed as worthless the homeopath’s lengthy list of “provings,” or medicinal substances tested on healthy subjects to discover the symptoms they are capable of producing. Instead, he relied heavily on the practitioner’s senses, including intuition, to discern the underlying symptoms or patterns drawn from a careful study of the pulse, tongue, and complexion. With the publication of Specific Medication (1870) and Specific Diagnosis (1874), he laid out a new direction that was distinctly less eclectic in the choice of therapeutics and more clearly a “school” with its own particular principles.10 Unlike homeopaths, Scudder avoided the assertion of universal laws governing cure; instead, he fell back on a combination of empiricism (remedies are given because they work) and vital force. Disease represented the outward signs of an individual’s so-called “wrongs of life”; it was the external manifestation of an interior disturbance in the vital force. By recognizing the telltale signs, a properly trained physician could identify the interior problems and prescribe the appropriate intervention. While homeopaths identified a specific drug based on a

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compilation of symptoms and their reconciliation with set patterns of provings in their repertoires, Scudder depended upon the sharpened senses of the trained physician to detect the patient’s “wrongs” or pathological condition. He thought it possible to provide a picture of the patient, including a psychological profile, which could then be addressed by medicinal interventions. Specific medications were called upon for specific conditions independent from the existing classifications (nosology) of disease.11

Samuel Hahnemann Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), the founder of homeopathy, was born in the town of Meissen, Germany. After studying medicine at universities in Leipzig, Vienna, and Erlangen, he set up a practice in the town of Mansfield in Germany’s Saxony region. Although he had written many articles critical of medical orthodoxy, his formal break came as a result of two events: his translation in 1790 of William Cullen’s A Treatise of the Materia Medica (originally published in 1773), and his decision to test the virtues of Peruvian bark (Cinchona succirubra) to treat intermittent fever. Taking several drams of the bark, he discovered to his surprise that the dose produced symptoms similar to those of malarial or intermittent fever. Hahnemann concluded that he had found one of nature’s great secrets—that diseases are cured by medicines capable of inducing in healthy persons symptoms similar to those of the disease. Discounting the body’s inherent force (vis medicatrix naturae) as too weak to effect its own cure, he advocated the identification of a symptom complex similar to the original disease and the use of this stronger artificial medicinal disease to repulse the weaker illness. His development of the law of similars (which he called “nature’s law”) encouraged Hahnemann to discount the prior findings of anatomy, physiology, and pathology and strike a new bargain between symptomatology and a set of remedies—not remedies for specific diseases, but for observable symptoms.12 Hahnemann’s contribution to medicine came at a time in Germany when philosophers such as Lorenz Oken (1779–1851), Carl Gustav Carus (1789–1869), and Friedrich W. J. Schelling (1775–1854) were rebelling from the rigid reductionism of objective science and seeking to devise

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Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843). Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

laws or principles that would reveal an all-controlling unity in nature. In their idealistic philosophy existed an overarching force that reconciled not only nature and mind, but matter and spirit. Hahnemann found himself resonating with the romantic notions of these natural philosophers (Naturphilosophie) and questioned the dosages needed to cure disease, believing that single drugs delivered in small doses possessed potency equal to or greater than the same drugs in larger doses. Just as nature worked by eternal laws and simplicity, so doctors could

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imitate nature in an effective and efficient manner. In Organon der Rationellen Heilkunde (Organon of the Rational Art of Healing), published in 1810, Hahnemann laid out a full exposition of his principles in 271 aphorisms. Revolutionary in their intent, the aphorisms spelled out what Hahnemann viewed as errors of orthodox medicine and then set forth his own distinct system of healing.13 In articulating his philosophy, Hahnemann built upon a belief that specific symptoms required specific medicines and that old-school doctors who prescribed medicines to effect change in the patient’s general constitution were in error. Disease, he reasoned, represented a derangement of the body’s vital principle or force, and the derangement was verifiable by identifying a series of morbid symptoms. The power to remove disease came only from agents that could produce the same symptoms in a healthy body. By creating a similar, more powerful artificial disease using an active substance that mimicked the symptoms of the sick person, it was possible to displace the disease. Adopting from Paracelsus the principle of similars, or like cures like, Hahnemann claimed to hold the key to the art of healing.14 Through numerous writings, Hahnemann propagated a medical system distinct from conventional or orthodox medicine. Chief among the legacies he left to the medical world was the schism between the socalled “highs” and “lows,” a reference to those proponents who broke into opposing schools over the size or degree of the appropriate dilution or attenuation to effect cure. Until the early twentieth century, the “lows” controlled the majority of homeopathic medical schools. Hahnemann’s most controversial writings came between 1825 and 1830, when he revised the Organon. In later editions, he added measurably to his original principles, intensified his differences with medical orthodoxy, formulated a spiritual conception of disease, and claimed that the powers of his medicinal substances increased exponentially in their pathogenic or symptom-producing power as well as in their disease-curing power through the principle of potentization or dynamization. With each additional dilution or attenuation, Hahnemann claimed that his medicines acquired a new degree of power by virtue of the rubbing or shaking they underwent. He applied the term succussion (i.e., forceful striking of the diluted substance against a semi-harded surface)

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to explain the process that changed a crude substance such as chalk or salt into a spiritually dynamized medicinal agent. Doses scarcely thought to be material because of their dilution or attenuation could, because of dynamization, exert an enormous effect on the organism. Thus, a real distinction existed between a normal dilution, which consisted of adding water or alcohol to a medicinal substance until it lost its curative power, and a dynamization, in which the latent powers in a crude substance were set free to act spiritually upon the body’s vital forces.15 After proper preparation and vigorous shaking, a grain of the most inert substance could perform therapeutic wonders upon a patient. Medicines acquired a new degree of power, developing “inherent virtues” that changed crude substances into spiritually dynamized, medicalized agents.16 In his effort to identify the catalyst behind these latent powers, Hahnemann speculated that the individual who shook the dilution could have transferred his or her mental power to the medicine. The mind was capable of acting upon a material substance (i.e., salt), energizing it to the point of transcending its material origins and affecting the body’s vitalistic components. Mind, in this instance, was a source of restorative power, producing in the human body a stronger inner vitality or capacity for life. Like many in his day, Hahnemann had a fascination with Mesmer’s theory of animal magnetism. As noted earlier, Mesmer had used the “touch” of his hands, the use of a wand, or “passes” (moving his hands slowly down along the patient’s arms) to distribute magnetic fluid to the afflicted part of the patient’s body.17 For Hahnemann, the most effective mesmerizers were those in “full vigor of life” who had “an abundance of the subtle vital energy” essential in communicating with patients through the “medium” of touch. Such was the strength of mind over matter. The same talent, he surmised, existed in the homeopath, who, during succussion, was able to transfer some of his or her own vital energy into the rarified dilutions. Although Hahnemann chose not to make a direct connection between his nonmaterialistic medicine and the magnetism imparted by the mesmerizer as he slowly passed his hands over the body of his patient, he clearly saw a relationship between his own principle of potentization and the energy field postulated by Mesmer.18

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Hahnemann disapproved of diluting or triturating his medicines beyond the thirtieth power, believing that at some point there would no longer be an active substance remaining in the medium. He nevertheless opened the door to more spiritual or nonmaterial interpretations when he began treating patients by olfaction, a process of breathing in the scent of a medicinal globule of indeterminate volume. Besides, many of his most ardent disciples ignored his cautions and took their medicines to the 1,500th attenuation and beyond. Thus, while the actual presence of the material medicine declined to the point of nonexistence, Hahnemann would later come to accept that the organism was strongly affected by the diluted remedy’s spiritual or immaterial imprint.19 Hahnemann suggested that the course symptoms took progressed from the innermost to the outermost parts of the physical organism. Nonetheless, the so-called “law of direction of cure” was not officially proposed until one of the fathers of American homeopathy, Constantine Hering (1800–1880), used the term in 1845 to explain the healing process by which symptoms disappeared from the body in reverse order from the way they came. This implied that an internal mechanism governed the organism and acted in a set manner.20 Later, in an 1865 article published in The Hahnemannian Monthly, Hering referenced Hahnemann’s rules concerning drug symptoms, noting that progress acted in the opposite direction from the disease symptoms, moving “from within outward, from up downward, and from the most essential organs to the less essential, and from the brain and nerves outward and down to the most outward and the lowest of all organs, to the skin.”21 In his Analytical Therapeutics, published in 1875, Hering noted that “only such patients remain well and are really cured, who have been rid of their symptoms in the reverse order of their development.”22 Hahnemann’s Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, Chronic Diseases (1828), and Lesser Writings (1834), all of which were recognized by subsequent homeopaths for their consistency in thought, were supported by the writings of Hering, Baron Clemens Maria Franz von Boenninghausen (1785–1864), and G. H. G. Jahr (1800–1875), who elaborated on Hahnemann’s aphorisms and recorded provings; constructed the earliest repertoires of symptom complexes; and expounded upon

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the materia medica. Within the context of these authors and their writings, the law of similars, the single remedy (administering only one drug at a time), the minimum dose, the law of direction of cure, and the concept of potentization became the pillars of homeopathic practice.

Swedenborgian Homeopathy The children of the American Enlightenment who embraced mesmerism’s secular approach to healing found it easy to transition to Hahnemann’s early theories of low- to medium-potency medicines. But this rationalist view, which prevailed through the 1820s and 1830s, was dominant for only a short time before homeopathy turned to highand ultra-high-potency materia medica that drew their strength from spiritual realms rather than from physical characteristics. Hans Burch Gram (1786–1840) of Boston, the earliest of the American homeopaths, nurtured his loyal circle of disciples by exploring topics such as mesmerism, craniology, psychology, and the spiritual levels of the soul. A devout Swedenborgian, he no doubt colored the group’s choice of discussion topics—both material and spiritual. For Gram, Swedenborgian ideas substituted for the more materialistic mesmerism and formed the basis of what became known as classical homeopathy. This Swedenborgian approach gave American homeopathy a lasting set of characteristics and a direction substantively different from the pattern in most other countries.23 Swedenborg considered disease to be nothing more than evil and falseness that sapped away health from the “internal man.” Because the life of every person derived from the spiritual world, every disease corresponded to its spiritual evil. As the spiritual life sickened, evil entered into the natural life, or the internal person, and became a physical disease.24 As Swedenborg wrote in Secrets of Heaven: All diseases in man have correspondence with the spiritual world; for whatever in universal nature has not correspondence with the spiritual world cannot exist, having no cause from which to exist, consequently from which to subsist. The things that are in nature are nothing but effects; their causes are in the spiritual world, and the causes of these causes, which are ends, are in the interior heaven.25

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Swedenborg went on to explain that diseases which corrupted people corresponded to the lusts and passions of those who dwelt in the various levels of hell. When the person’s spiritual interior was destroyed, the exterior body suffered, leading to disease and ultimately death. When the heat arising from lust, vengeance, quarrel, or lasciviousness acted on the body, it induced a disease indicated by fever; when it ceased, the disease ceased.26 Every natural disease derived from sin and corresponded with the iniquities in spiritual life. Noting the role of faith in the healing process, Swedenborg made frequent reference to passages from the gospels concerning healing. Divine miracles proceeded from divine truth and occurred when it pleased the Lord. Their preponderance signified the robust state of the church. By contrast, magical miracles were the product of evil, and while they might appear as divine miracles, they signified the destructive state of the church.27 The early disciples of Swedenborg took the concept of mind and made it fit wonderfully into homeopathy and its laws of similars and infinitesimals. Instead of diseases being affected by changes in the body’s material structures, they were affected instead by dynamic changes to the body’s spiritual existence. Disease, being an obstruction to the free operation of vital energy, was best treated by remedies that acted in harmony with nature’s laws. The human mind, a microcosm of the divine mind, acted by way of the law of correspondences to arrive at the appropriate combination of spirit and matter. Both sin and disease had a common ancestry; both were the result of a system thrown out of balance, of the mind falling prey to misdirected energies, and of disbelief in God’s providence. There is no evidence that Hahnemann had ever read anything of Swedenborg’s, only that of Mesmer. Nevertheless, homeopathic articles frequently referenced Swedenborg’s teachings, and New Church believers openly embraced homeopathy as their preferred system of therapeutics. Whether or not he was directly influenced by Swedenborg, Hahnemann’s views were remarkably similar: disease was an aberration of the spirit; all physical manifestations of disease had their counterpart in a spiritual disorder. Disease derived from intemperances and ungoverned mental passions that ate away at the “interiors” of a person and eventually destroyed his or her “exteriors” as well.28

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Homeopathy appealed to a more educated audience—individuals who had sought to escape from the staid formality of the Enlightenment—and its approach to the healing arts was clearly aligned to both Swedenborgianism and mesmerism in that they posited a connection between the worlds of matter and spirit. Of the two, however, Swedenborgianism was more closely allied with Scripture and with the deep spiritual appeal that Protestant Christianity claimed on the American psyche. Both mesmerism and Swedenborgianism inspired a mystical worldview—the infusion into the inner recesses of each physical, material body of a spiritual energy that worked in harmonious unison with the universe—but it was Swedenborgianism that held the strongest appeal. Homeopathic physicians such as William E. Payne, Richard De Charms, William H. Holcombe, and William M. Murdoch saw a direct correlation between the theory of homeopathic cure and divine influx, and between the evil spirits of hell and the molecular use of the spiritual essence of poisonous drugs to cure the evil effects of disease. According to religious historian Marguerite Block, the fact that so many New Church physicians were homeopaths explains in part why New Church members openly entertained the practice of spiritual healing. Homeopathy reaffirmed that element among New Church members.29 In the United States, Swedenborgianism and homeopathy became entwined to such an extent that Francis E. Boericke (1826–1901) and Adolph J. Tafel (1839–1895) of Boerick & Tafel in Philadelphia, and Otis Clapp (1835–1886) of Boston, homeopathic manufacturers and publishers, became the principal publishing houses of New Church literature in the nineteenth century. The homeopathic theories on potentization and vitalism were especially compatible with the Swedenborgian concept of divine energy that pervaded the body and gave it life. In addition, the Swedenborgian relationship between the material and spiritual worlds via the doctrine of correspondences provided an easy link with the law of similia. Finally, the miasm theory, which explained the existence of chronic disease as the product of three separate forces that disrupted the body’s flow of energy (sycosis, syphilis, and psora), became in the eyes of some Swedenborgians a moral taint passed along through generations as original sin.30

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One unintended consequence of this close alliance was the accusation of esoteric and occult alchemical elements in both movements; for homeopathy, Hahnemann’s membership in Freemasonry; his miasmatic doctrine; his belief in vitalism; the ritual surrounding shaking of his ultra-high potencies; the use of remedies whose supernaturalseeming healing abilities came from beyond the atoms or molecules of the original substance; and the support he gave to the doctrine of animal magnetism. For Swedenborg, it was his claim of special access to etheric wisdom; his clairvoyant abilities; his law of correspondences; his emphasis on celestial influx; and his belief in the connections between the physical and spiritual worlds. The 1842 lectures of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) on “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions,” given before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge and reprinted in his Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science (1861) and Medical Essays, 1842–1882 (1891), are testimony to the derision heaped on that relationship. Grounded in the clinical medicine of the Paris hospitals, Holmes found too many differences between the competing worlds of matter and spirit for him to accept the unholy alliance of homeopathy and Swedenborgianism.31

Swedenborg and the Doctors The strong concordance between Swedenborg’s philosophy and homeopathy meant that a number of prominent Swedenborgians were also homeopaths. This included Charles J. Hempel, whose The True Organization of the New Church, as Indicated in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and Demonstrated by Charles Fourier (1848), served as a bridge between the materialistic forces of mesmerism and the spiritualistic promise of Swedenborgianism. Once chair of materia medica and therapeutics at the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia, he later moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he engaged in a large practice. Like Hahnemann, he considered himself a vitalist, believing that the material substances that composed the living organism were activated by an immaterial dynamic force. Disease, which represented an abnormal condition in the organism, could be cured by the active substance in medicine, which produced a dynamic change in the organism’s vital condition. Every true drug contained this dynamic force or

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property. While the medicines used by old-school doctors modified the physiological functions of an organism, Hempel believed that the homeopathic drug contained a “cosmic principle” of the order and magnitude needed to counter the disease.32 Considered a maverick among Hahnemann’s supporters, Hempel rejected the claims of high dilutionists who believed it possible to prepare efficacious medicines in potencies above the two hundredth attenuation. Hempel was convinced that while it was possible to detach the drug force from its material foundations, natural limitations existed. He viewed the claims of the ultra-dilutionists as having foisted “hypermetaphysical . . . nonsense” upon those with “highly-wrought” minds and a “morbidly excited imagination.”33 Any theory that explained drug effectiveness as contingent upon the breaking up of its molecules to the point of “disengaging the spirit and securing its perfect activity” represented a direction he was unwilling to take. The absolute disintegration of the drug molecule to the point of spiritualization was a “fruitless abstraction.” Any drug which lost its material basis was no drug at all. By the same token, matter without an “indwelling spirit” remained “a shapeless, mechanical juxtaposition of molecules, utterly destitute of power, either for good or evil.”34 In 1854 Hempel published a treatise titled Organon of Specific Homeopathy, in which he sought to improve upon a homeopathic practice he viewed as incomplete and “partially unsound.” Believing that a drug remedy had to “invade the organism” in the same way that the morbific principle (microorganism) affected the organism’s health, he argued that the similarity which was the essence of homeopathic dogma had to extend deeper than simply the resemblance of the drug-symptoms to the symptoms of the disease. Borrowing from Swedenborg, he argued that there should be a “perfect correspondence between the drugdisease and the natural pathological disturbance” and urged homeopaths to regard “correspondentia correspondentibus curantur” as the proper substitute for Hahnemann’s “similia similibus curantur.” The proposition that there existed a correspondence between all things spiritual and physical, and that the key to curing the physical was to address the spiritual aspect of the disease, was clearly attuned to Hempel’s New Church thinking.35

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Englishman James John Garth Wilkinson studied medicine and established himself as a homeopathic doctor in 1834. Attracted to Swedenborg early in his professional career, he edited many of the Swede’s treatises and authored a biography of him in 1849. In a letter Wilkinson wrote to Robert T. Cooper, a doctor at the London Homeopathic Hospital, he asserted that Swedenborg was in no sense a traditional scientist. Unlike English naturalist Charles Darwin, German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), English botanist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), and English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), who were students of nature and accumulated facts as knowledge for its own sake, Swedenborg “preached from the floor of his science that divine use was intended by it.” Swedenborg’s scientific accomplishments, explained Wilkinson, were performed in order that “God may be seen.” When Swedenborg approached the human body, whether to observe or to dissect, his efforts were directed at discovering the “ruling soul.” His scientific persona, fixated toward the soul and therefore toward heaven, was developed so that he could use science to shed light on immortality.36 Wilkinson likened Swedenborg’s efforts to those of Hahnemann, who came upon the chaos of orthodox medicine and, discovering the ancient doctrine of similia similibus curantur, founded the reformed school of medicine known as homeopathy. Swedenborg’s laws and doctrines brought forth new ways of doing things and, in their wake, a better understanding of the self and the soul.37 Wilkinson likened Hahnemann’s infinitesimal medicines, particularly those from the third to the two hundredth dilution, to Swedenborg’s doctrine of degrees. The dilutions represented different levels of spirituality, moving from the various parts of the body to the muscles, nerves, fibers and membranes, and finally to the brain, mind, and soul.38 Wilkinson encouraged his fellow homeopaths to study Swedenborg—not as a scientist but as a theologian and as a medium of “new revelation” to humankind. He recognized that it was a temptation for many physicians to be adverse to spiritual views and personal revelations; indeed, it was easy to show intolerance to anything but what they saw in the material body. This view, Wilkinson argued, was what made both Swedenborg and Hahnemann difficult to understand, let alone

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appreciate. Yet, both were masters of the law of correspondences, seeing God’s infinity “in the least things and in the greatest.”39 Wilkinson believed that Swedenborg’s message was especially relevant to physicians because they had the privilege of studying the body, and through it they could understand the Word. “Man in the body, that is to say, the body itself with the life in every part,” wrote Wilkinson, “is the basis and the type of humanity itself, and the image and likeness of the Divine Humanity.” Life was the influx of the Creator into the organism. The brain was but a simile of a higher form. Human beings were but God’s receptacle, “its spiritual, organically-planned similitude.”40 According to Wilkinson, the time was coming when the world of medicine would discover “new insights and capacities” as a result of Swedenborg’s spiritual accomplishments. Surgeries would cease and hospitals no longer be the educational laboratories “in which the poor are the clay which the doctor moulds into the costly and mortal chalice of orthodox practice for the rich.” Nonmedical boards would decide upon the actions of doctors; vivisection would be banned; huge fees end; inoculations for diseases be judged “heinous”; medicines be administered in infinitesimal doses; and so-called orthodox medicine be “disestablished” and shorn of its legal protections.41 Wilkinson was critical of vaccination, claiming that the statistics on smallpox deaths in past centuries were little more than fabrications.42 In Epidemic Man and His Visitations, published in 1893, he urged that the victims of epidemics such as cholera and influenza remain untouched except by their closest family members. Epidemic diseases were like sleeping dogs which when “roused, provoked . . . and put through panic,” became totally unruly. Doctors and hospitals only aggravated the mischief. For Wilkinson, the origin of epidemic disease was to be found in the evil states of people’s will and understanding, which made them “liable and susceptible to influences from a world which is not material but spiritual, whose substances are good and evil characters, whose discernments are the differences between good and evil, and whose preferences are for heaven or for hell.” Cholera, as with all epidemics, plagues, and pestilences, was due to “judgments and visitations of heaven.”43 Wilkinson explained that in the New Testament, God healed all manner of diseases by means of Christ’s virtue. Every age had its own

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particular pestilences. If “new perversions” of will and mind occurred, a different disease would result in the body, which was “inseparably connected” to the soul. The transmission of these diseases came from the mental races in the West, which Wilkinson regarded as more powerful, and subsequently infected the bodily races in the East.44 The peoples of the Orient, having undergone God’s judgment long ago, were now “passive to the influx of the more powerful nations which have the Word of God.”45 Wilkinson coined the word teledeme to express a state of disease that fell upon a people from a distance. Borrowing his analogy from the telegraph and telephone, he argued that because the whole of humanity was like a single body, all people were connected and could be influenced by each other if the people at the receiving end were open to the projecting force on the other. Disease was the result of evil infused at one end of the connection and transmitted to others. Wilkinson theorized that any force could become teledemic—including crime, religious fanaticism, popular unrest, and disease—if the people on the receiving end were open to the evil influence rather than to the influx of love from the Divine.46 Wilkinson viewed modern medicine as atheistic. Its marriage with science had “quickened its degradation, and despoiled its veins,” making it reckless to any but “the fast-degrading social conscience.” Hence medicine tended to become more and more materialistic in its means and ends. Only homeopathy, with its infinitesimal drugs, knew how to cure disease safely, quickly, and agreeably. Unfortunately, scientific medicine “refused the torch of a new light and a new age brought to it by Hahnemann.” Medical materialism, having no true belief, had become a chartered corporation that used the state to enforce its orders and sanctions. The challenges for the future were to redeem the profession of its materialism, open the mind to a more theological pathology, and use correspondence to understand the condition of the body and the soul.47 The Reverend Lewis Pyle Mercer, president of Urbana University in Ohio and a prominent Swedenborgian, reinforced the need for medical students to be instructed in both Christianity and in the scientific method. Although science could neither affirm nor deny “a supernatural world of causes and pre-existent spiritual forms,” Mercer was con-

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vinced that the “finger of science” pointed to an “ascending series in the body, which, if logically carried over into the unseen, must lead to a superincumbent organism to be called spiritual, and conceived as the cause of vital processes, the arbitrator of will, and the last receiver of thoughts which come from the world under the dresses of sensations.” Ultimately the mind had to infer the existence of spiritual forms as the efficient cause of scientific or material evidence. A “universe of spiritual forms” made water seek its level, made the sap flow in plants, and the blood circulate in animals. While the brain and spinal cord were classed as matter, they nonetheless were “married” to a spiritual body of supernatural forms. Revelation allowed human beings to see God’s plan, which was within nature but discrete from it—leading to an understanding of the world of spirits that once walked on earth in human form but now moved “among phenomenal realities not of earth.”48 In a lecture before a class of homeopathic medical students, Mercer urged students to study the principles and doctrines of Swedenborg as they expanded their knowledge of the body and of its nervous system. Doing so made them ministers of souls, keeping their patients sound in body until they were ready “to enter without fear into the grander theatre of life in a spiritual world.” Better that they learn as physicians that the diseases they treated were really “moral disorder requiring moral treatment.”49 In The Soul and the Body, he wrote: [Recognizing the immoral action of disease] must lend to your science new interest and dignity, as the study, not alone of vital mechanics and the functions of material organizations under the laws of a dead and mechanical world, but the study as well of the states of the will and understanding in their organic determinations under the laws of a living world of conscious activities. It must lead the mind into the study, comparison and classification of the states of consciousness, and the co-relation of them with the normal and abnormal activities of the body. It must lead to the study of the soul’s influence upon the body; of the influence of one soul upon another, or the nature of spiritual spheres and influx; and the relations of moral contact to pathology.50

William H. Holcombe of Lynchburg, Virginia, son of a regular physician, enjoyed visits to his father’s office where, amidst “imposing

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shelves of portly volumes,” “jars of hideous specimens,” “odors of paregoric and lavender,” a grinning skeleton, and stores of vials and pillboxes, he came to the opinion that physicians were “the wisest and greatest and best of mankind.”51 After receiving a classical education, which included studies at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in medicine in 1847. Holcombe remembered having first heard of homeopathy during his early days in medical school, but he dismissed it as being irrelevant to the needs of modern medicine. Not until years later did he come to rely more on his own observations than on the opinions of others. Having initially regarded homeopathy as a “doctrinal monstrosity,” he nonetheless decided to test its efficacy during the scourge of Asiatic cholera which struck Virginia in 1849. In all, he was impressed with its results but continued to practice as an allopath, employing homeopathy only in “obscure, difficult, obstinate, or incurable cases.” Eventually, he came to recognize that these more difficult cases succeeded with homeopathic care with less pain and more comfort.52 In 1850, Holcombe moved to Cincinnati, where he opened a successful practice as an allopath. “I could not boast, either to myself or others, of the special superiority of homeopathy over the old system in dysentery, because my father’s allopathic practice was quite as successful as mine,” he observed. Nevertheless, as his own professional skills sharpened, he began taking a greater interest in homeopathy, occasionally prescribing according to the law of similia similibus curantur but avoiding homeopathic physicians. In the spring of 1851, however, he found himself the lone physician on a boat trip up the Mississippi during which cholera broke out among a group of German passengers. Discovering that the boat had a medical chest that contained both allopathic and homeopathic remedies, he decided to treat his “Teutonic travelers” with homeopathic pellets only. The success of this treatment caused him to redouble his reading of Hahnemann’s writings, learning more of homeopathy’s materia medica. He also began to practice homeopathy openly and to seek the acquaintance of other practicing homeopaths.53 While living in Cincinnati, Holcombe converted not only to homeopathy but also to the doctrines of Swedenborg. Two years later, he

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moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where he distinguished himself in the treatment of yellow fever victims. In 1864, he and his family moved to New Orleans where, over a period of thirty years, he achieved prominence and respect both as a homeopath and as an author. Over the course of his professional life, Holcombe authored numerous works, including The Scientific Basis of Homeopathy (1852), Yellow Fever and Its Homeopathic Treatment (1856), The Homeopathic Family Guide (1865), and How I Became a Homeopath (1869). In 1875, he was chosen president of the American Institute of Homeopathy, and for years he served as one of the editors of the North American Journal of Homeopathy, for which he wrote numerous articles and commentaries. In 1868, Holcombe wrote Our Children in Heaven in the hope of alleviating parents’ sorrow upon the loss of a child, something which Holcombe and his wife twice experienced. In many ways, the book represented a personal journey to find meaning behind the loss of an innocent child and solace in the midst of the painful and often crushing despair that followed. Unfortunately, explained Holcombe, neither the speculations of poets and philosophers nor the Apostolic Church with its strict, literal interpretation of Scripture provided much wisdom or solace to the bereaved parents of a dead child. “The Word of God, so perfect in its moral law, so wonderful in its letter, so heavenly in its spirit, makes no specific and detailed revelations of the state of man after death,” he wrote.54 However, drawing upon Swedenborg’s spiritual interpretation of the Word of God, he was able to explain his new understanding of the spiritual and natural worlds and reveal the “manners and customs of the life after death.” The treasures of New Church provided comfort to the bereaved.55 Referring to the revelations of Swedenborg, Holcombe replaced what he believed were the false assumptions of the Christian church on the material resurrection of the body with a more comforting view of a deceased person being resurrected into a spiritual state that drew sustenance from the influx of God. Holcombe explained that all children went to heaven, and in fact, no individual under the age of twenty was fully lost, for children could not be condemned until they could discern, analyze, judge, and decide for themselves in the exercise of their free will.56 Once in heaven, children from birth to five years of age were

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attended by celestial angels, and from ages five to twenty by spiritual angels. Both sets of angels worked “to break or modify the hereditary tendency to evil, and to prevent the formation of a selfish character.”57 As a result of those efforts, some children went to a lower heaven while others went to a higher one—all in accordance with their innate nature. Each was “sent to the precise point where his spiritual cultivation [could] be best effected.” Infants, having experienced nothing of earthly existence, grew to childhood in heaven and were placed nearest to God.58 In 1871, Holcombe authored The Other Life to explain the life to come as drawn from the visionary writings of Swedenborg. These were not “speculations of fancy” or “wandering dreams of imagination,” he wrote, “neither had they anything to do with Spiritualism.”59 For too long, Holcombe explained, the pretensions of tradition and authority had blinded humankind from understanding the true meaning of Scripture. Hearing these cries from the “despairing mind of man,” God had chosen Swedenborg to be his instrument to illuminate people’s rational understanding by revealing the spiritual sense of the Word of God and the full meaning of Scripture.60 For Holcombe, Swedenborg was the bridge that connected this reassuring understanding of the spiritual realms with homeopathic practice. In 1882, Holcombe wrote four essays for the New Church Independent titled “Opening of the Interiors,” “The Lord’s Descent through the Heavens,” “The Lord’s Descent into the Natural Plane of the Human Mind,” and “The Lord’s Kingdom on Earth—the New Life.” These essays were pertinent to the American reader because of Holcombe’s affirmation of the ability of mediums to connect the human mind with the entire universe without ever leaving the natural body. It was possible for living souls to be brought into visible, audible, emotional, and tactile contact with celestial beings in the universe.61 The ability to achieve this connection was no small feat, and Holcombe praised Andrew Jackson Davis for his ability to accept communications from the “interior.” He praised as well the religious and spiritual life of the Quietists, Moravians, and Quakers, who were able to illuminate their understanding of the influx from the higher spiritual realms and the importance of correspondence in the lower realms.62 In particular, he

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praised the Methodists for their great revival of religious affections and their burst of humanitarian, missionary, socialistic, and cooperative undertakings.63 Notwithstanding the mediumship abilities of a few noteworthy Spiritualists, Holcombe looked down upon the “crude, earthy, and unchristian Spiritualism of modern mediums,” for they too often denied the divinity of Christ and added nothing of value to human knowledge. Only through Swedenborg, he believed, was it possible to pierce the veil of mischief that surrounded these so-called spiritual communications. The Spiritualism of the New Church, based upon the doctrines of Swedenborg, bore the singular sign and seal of Jesus Christ, avoiding the sensationalism, séances, and communications that had detracted from the former.64

Kentianism Although men like Hempel, Wilkinson, Holcombe, and Mercer were early bridge-builders between homeopathy and Swedenborgianism, the principal catalyst for this conjoining of ideas was James Tyler Kent (1849–1916). He graduated in 1871 from the Eclectic Medical Institute of Cincinnati, where he was a student of John M. Scudder, Benjamin L. Hill (1813–1871) and Eli Jones (1850–1933), all three of whom were prominent Swedenborgians. Upon receiving his medical degree, Kent opened a practice in Woodhull, New York; several years later, he moved to St. Louis, where he continued to practice as an eclectic. When his wife became ill and requested the services of a homeopathic physician, Kent reluctantly consented. However, impressed by her quick recovery, he became more open to homeopathic thinking and soon advocated on behalf of the system. Kent followed up his enthusiasm by completing a second medical degree at the Homeopathic Medical College of Missouri, graduating in 1879. Soon after, he joined the school’s faculty, where he served as professor of surgery; in 1883, he assumed the chair of materia medica. Kent began his career as a homeopath by employing the lowerpotency drugs common among his colleagues. Before long, however, he joined the growing cadre of classical homeopaths who insisted upon strict adherence to the principles of Hahnemann, including single doses

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of high-potency medicines. In 1887, he was elected president of the International Hahnemannian Association, which had been founded in opposition to the more liberal wing of homeopathy centered in the American Institute of Homeopathy. Kent moved to Philadelphia in 1888 and, following the death of his wife, married Clara Louisa Tobey, a homeopathic physician and member of the Swedenborgian church. The reason for Kent’s move was to join the Post-Graduate School of Homeopathy as dean and professor of materia medica. The school, designed along lines of the earlier Allentown Academy (the first homeopathic school in America), provided additional study in homeopathy for those men and women who had already received their M.D. degree. At the same time, Kent joined with a number of the city’s more prominent homeopaths (including William Boericke, Constantine Hering, Albert Farrington, and Adolph Tafel) as members of the Church of New Jerusalem. In 1900, Kent moved once again, this time to Chicago, to become a professor of materia medica at the Hahnemann Medical College (1903–1909) and later at Hering Medical College and Hospital (1909– 1916), where he remained until his death in 1916. While at the Hahnemann Medical College, Kent published Lectures on Homeopathic Materia Medica (1905), breaking new ground with his idea of constitutional prescribing, a concept which, for some, represented a reincarnation of the errors of allopathic medicine. During his tenure at the college, he constructed his uniquely Swedenborgian approach to Hahnemannian medicine. As Matthew Wood noted in The Magical Staff (1992), both Hahnemann and Kent were Aristotelians in thought and tradition, adhering to a methodology that included a heavy emphasis on logic, cause and effect, and the concept of a world composed of descending levels of being that emanated from the Divine.65 An element of Aquinas was present as well, since it was Aquinas who enabled the Western world to accept Aristotle in Christian garb. While the popular literary view of Swedenborg’s theology included angels and devils, heaven and hell, and populations of souls living as part of the Universal Human, the essential component of Swedenborg’s theology was that a human being’s interior or spiritual life was real and organized by degrees in an orderly descent from the divine mind.

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Swedenborg divided the mind into the “will” and “understanding.” The will concerned what the individual desired on a deep inner level and brought to realization. As such, it was dominant and more interior or spiritual than understanding, which involved rational knowledge. Together, the will and understanding functioned as a unit, and when there was a disharmony between the two, the interior descended to the exterior, creating disease. Kent adopted Swedenborg’s structure, including the concepts of internals and externals as well as gradations in degrees. In his Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy (1900), he provided a full description of Swedenborgian philosophy, spelling out a human being’s interior and external worlds, the influx from the internal to the external, and the dependency of the whole on the Divine. Despite his heavy reliance on Swedenborg’s thinking, Kent was selective in his choice of concepts, and in particular decided not to accept Swedenborg’s world of angels, spirits, and devils. Instead, as Wood explained, “Kent saw a field of immaterial substance that was ruled by relatively impersonal universal laws.”66 Kent’s early training among Swedenborgian teachers at EMI—especially John M. Scudder—and his later conversion to homeopathy and then to Swedenborgianism provided a bridge between the mystical doctrines of Swedenborg and the philosophical and methodological foundations set forth by Hahnemann. Specifically, homeopathic medicine under Kent became less aligned with the biomedical and reductionist standards of the day—particularly the influence of the Paris clinical school and German pathological science—and more attuned to the laws of correspondences and influx. Symbolism, revelations, intuition, imagination, the use of analogy, and the Hermetic tradition predominated as Kent introduced the theories of signatures, medicinal personalities, outer form and inner spirit, polycrests, generals, mentals, the octave scale of dynamizations, the primacy of a person’s inner state, and the frequent use of the terms will and understanding. He transformed Constantine Hering’s Guiding Symptoms of Our Materia Medica (1879–91) into a system of medicinal typologies wherein he classified both patients and medicines according to personality type. Discarding the long lists of isolated symptoms compiled from earlier repertories, he used the law of similars to identify individual susceptibilities and

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match disease personality with drug personality. Kent referred to these personality types as “word-pictures.”67 Just as mainstream medicine tended to obscure the individual patient by referring to the “tubercular” or “cancer” case, Kentian homeopaths came to view their patient as the “sulphur” or “pulsatilla” case, grouping them into specific constitutions or remedy types. Each of Kent’s medicines had a “personality” that corresponded to the constitution of the patient. His word-pictures for common homeopathic remedies—sulfur, calcarea carbonica, lycopodium clavatum, natrum muriaticum (table salt), silica, rhus toxicodendron (poison ivy), etc.— combined drug characteristics with the physical and psychical characteristics of patients, thereby transforming Hahnemann’s provings into a more useful armamentarium. Rather than treating the specific organ or lesion, Kent aimed his medicines at the pattern exuded by the patient’s soul. Kent’s grouping of patients by type was an echo of Swedenborg’s characterization of the spiritual realms, where Swedenborg described communities of angels gathering according to their personality and function to form the organs of a vast Universal Human that made up the whole of the heavens. In his writings, Swedenborg characterized spirits as, for example, “angels of the kidneys” or “angels of the lungs,” ascribing these souls of the deceased with characters and functions that corresponded with those organs.68 Kent’s approach created a schism within homeopathy, particularly among those seasoned practitioners who considered such constitutional prescribing contrary to Hahnemann’s teachings. Nevertheless, Kentianism attracted a new breed of homeopaths, many of whom were lay persons unaware of the historical implications of the attributions they assigned to constitutional prescribing. At a time when homeopathic medical schools were closing and the ranks of “low energy” or adjectival homeopaths were being replaced by a new generation of lay believers, constitutional prescribing became a quick substitute for genuine medical training. Kentianism unintentionally undermined the homeopathic canon, giving credence to a new and more spiritualized vocabulary as well as an antagonism toward organic processes and the materialistic view of disease. It paved the way for a “New Age” homeopathy that ignored physiological and organic medicine, replacing it with

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a faith-based system more attuned to the subtle vibrations emanating from the cosmos.69 By the first decade of the twentieth century, classical homeopaths had been replaced by Kentians, who, praising Hahnemann and Swedenborg as their prophets, removed homeopathy from its historical grounding in clinical observation and experimentation. Kent spoke often of the ancient origin of constitutional remedies as it applied to the doctrine of temperaments—choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, and melancholic. While in centuries past, a particular type of constitution (i.e., phlegmatic) was considered to have certain predilections and susceptibilities requiring a range of medicines and techniques to maintain proper constitutional balance, under Kent, a single medicine whose symptomatology in health correlated to an individual’s susceptibilities and predilections was sufficient to keep the person in health and cure him or her in disease. Instead of a layered treatment based on the individual’s pathognomic symptoms, Kent choose the exclusive use of pulsatilla, calcarea, or other remedies on the basis of their correspondence to the individual’s total constitution.70 Critics accused Kent of introducing metaphysics into the science of homeopathy, but Hahnemann had done the same when he embraced mesmerism and introduced the concepts of dynamization, vital force, miasmas, and high dilutions. Hahnemann’s respect for Freemasonry and the alchemical aspects of Paracelsus’s writings gave ample precedent for Kent’s own thinking. Kent simply reinforced what Hahnemann had divined, and did so at a time when the adjuvant or progressive form of homeopathy was moving closer to the reductionist and biomedical stance of allopathic medicine. Repulsed by the effects of adjuvant homeopathy, Kent spent his creative talents turning homeopathy inward to discover the nature and presence of the vital force and its influence over the human body. This innermost principle gave context to Kent’s teachings and his reliance on Swedenborgian philosophy. Kent’s writings on the simple substance; his use of the series, degrees, and harmonics in potency; his emphasis on the internal; and his focus on the dynamis or universal life force represented an effort to retain the centuries-old vitalistic traditions and the doctrine of correspondences against the claims of the mechanistic schools of thought.71

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.

Kent’s Swedenborgian bias took homeopathy far beyond its historical boundaries by entwining it with concepts that made it uncomfortable for many. Although Swedenborg’s writings were compatible with Hahnemann’s, the similarities appeared to be in their respective use of analogy (i.e., the law of correspondences and law of similia) rather than in their essential principles. Here the Kentians held firm, claiming that there was much more to Swedenborg than his arcane language, dreams, revelations, conversations with angels, and complicated symbolism. Their allegiance to the Swede coincided with growing dismay at Western medicine’s reductionist and materialistic character and reflected a resurgence of interest at the turn of the twentieth century in neo-vitalism.72 The question as to whether Kent lost his homeopathic bearings because of his Swedenborgianism is dependent in large measure on a proper interpretation of Hahnemann’s Organon. The fifth edition of the Organon, revised in Hahnemann’s final years and published posthumously, was substantially different from earlier editions in that it complemented the metaphysical parameters of Swedenborg’s mysticism.73 Hahnemann’s initial choice of small doses (less than the thirtieth dilution) was not the result of any metaphysical concept or a priori principle but a decision to avoid brinkmanship therapeutics. Later, when trying to reconcile his dilutions with patient outcomes, he factored in the methodological process of succussion and its connection to dynamization and the release of the drug’s spiritual properties. This connection led Hahnemann to the principle of vitalism and its presence, even if dormant, in every natural substance. A simple element, when appropriately dynamized by dilution or succussion, unleashed a vital force capable of inhibiting disease. While in his early years Hahnemann had limited the extent of his attenuations to the thirtieth dilution, he eventually began speaking favorably of attenuations of the sixtieth, one hundred fiftieth, and three hundredth potency. On balance, Kent found Hahnemann’s later views more compatible with his own Swedenborgian worldview, allowing him to infuse into classical homeopathy the elements of his own metaphysical beliefs. This included his concept of the vital force; his view of psora (the miasm or underlying cause of skin disease) as a form of original sin; of homeopathy being wedded to

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Christian theology; and the replacement of the pathognomonic signs of disease, including germ theory, with a more subjective mental and psychic symptomatology. This latter interpretation led to Kent’s transformation of vitalism from an unconscious force into a more mystical, divinely ordered, and intelligently directed energy.74 Vital force was at the very heart of Kentian homeopathy, but it was a vitalism substantively different from Hahnemann’s, which, as noted earlier, was blind and uncoordinated. Kent’s vitalism, by contrast, ruled the human body and held it in balance or harmony (vis medicatrix naturae). The corollary of this belief was that individuals could not be made sick or cured except by an equivalent vital force. Disease came not from any materialistic (i.e., molecular) notion of external causation but by some internal defect or derangement in the vital force, and it was cured by that same vital force. Vitalism explained every mechanism and process of the body in both health and disease. It explained the cause of disease, the spiritual miasm, which Kent viewed as a defect in the vital force that could only be corrected using the appropriate high-potency (spiritual) medicine. Both disease causation and disease amelioration came through the body’s nervous system; material factors such as pollutants, bacteria, viruses, and poisons were irrelevant. Only the subtle, ethereal nature of the vital force could cause the organism to become sick or cured. To Kent’s critics, this was not so much a scientific position as one based on religious beliefs.75 Another area where Kent broke from Hahnemann was the view that it was impossible to truly understand the internal condition of the organism. Hahnemann, more a child of the Enlightenment than his spiritualistic disciples, believed in an understanding of the organism by its effects, i.e., through the careful compilation of its observable symptoms. Kent, on the other hand, believed that it was possible to sense or intuit the internal condition of the patient, a view he no doubt learned from Scudder. “With the true physician discrimination is not with the eye alone,” wrote Kent. “The consciousness of discrimination seems to occupy his entire economy.”76 While Scudder referred to “wrongs of life,” Kent referred to “wrongs of thought” and “wrongs of doing.” Both Kent and Scudder viewed the healing process as dynamic, though in different ways. While they both accepted the idea that the physician

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had the capacity to perceive the vitality of the patient through a combination of intuition and observable symptoms, Kent further argued that the drug as well as the physician possessed a dynamic capacity, affecting the disease in an equally dynamic manner.77 Every organism was maintained in health by the power of what Kent called the Prime Mover. From this all power and energy devolved. To the degree that this power flowed smoothly from interior to exterior levels, there was health and function; to the degree that it was disrupted in its flow, the result was disease.78 Kent used this ratiocination to rule out germ theory as the cause of disease. Bacteria were not the cause but the benign products that followed a diseased action.79 The true cause of disease stemmed from the dysfunction in the flow from internal to external. This assertion was consistent with Swedenborg, who viewed everything in creation as having a glorifying purpose; nothing created by the divine mind was destructive of life. As explained by Matthew Wood, [Kent] attempted to reorganize the entire philosophy and practice of homeopathy according to ‘government from center to circumference.’ He taught how to take a case from interiors to exteriors. This meant that the physician gave the highest rank to symptoms pertaining to the will and understanding, then the more important symptoms pertaining to the organism as a whole, then the modalities (likes and dislikes), and finally the particulars, or incidents pertaining to the local parts. Symptoms which pertained to the organism as a whole he called ‘generals’ and those of the parts he called ‘particulars.’ (These terms appear in Aristotle and Swedenborg.) He organized the repertory so that it ran from internals to externals, from generals to particulars.80

As noted earlier, Kent viewed the human organism as having been formed from three elements: the will and understanding, which made up the interior person; the vital force, which was immaterial; and the body, which was material. People were what they willed, and disease represented wrong willing. Based on this premise, medicines operated first upon the mind and moved from there to the other parts of the body. For this reason, psychology played an important role in the action of a drug and in the corrective direction taken to repair the dis-

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juncture between the will and understanding. Kent called the vital force the “vice-regent,” the medium by which impulses from homeopathic drugs moved from the soul to the body. The body, in its crudest form, was merely a shell for the soul and vital force. Everything that happened to the body originated from the soul or the vital force; the body was a mirror of the individual’s interior state. The physician’s first duty, then, was to the spiritual side.81 Kent, following both Paracelsus and Swedenborg, posited the belief that every particular in the natural world, including the body’s organs, corresponded to counterparts in the interior, spiritual world. The interior world followed the design of the Universal Human. Each of the organs mirrored societies of spirits constituting heaven and had spiritual functions that reflected the organ’s function in the human body. In Kent’s case, however, this correspondence lacked the accompaniment of spiritual beings.82 In Kent’s Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy his metaphysical connection with Swedenborg became most evident. Written in the form of commentaries on Hahnemann’s Organon (fifth edition), he viewed Hahnemann as having been divinely chosen to discover the law of similars. Adamant in this belief, Kent became an intimidating teacher, showing no sense of doubt, but speaking as one who not only knew the truth, but knew it to be divinely ordained. Like Hahnemann, Kent was short-tempered, uncompromising, arrogant, and outspoken, and he frequently repeated his views in order to carry his point. His homeopathy, as well as his religion, was based on a set of conceptions that were a priori, unhistorical, unscientific, and divinely ordered. Kentian homeopathy spread abroad, attracting Dr. Margaret Tyler (1857–1943) and Sir John Weir (1879–1971) in Great Britain, Pierre Schmidt (1894–1987) in Germany, and Denis Demarque (1915–1999) in France. While elements of vitalism and Swedenborgianism were noticeable among these disciples, the Kentian penchant for wordpictures (constitutional prescribing) of medicines became almost a high art form and quickly fell into the hands of lay practitioners who popularized them even more. No longer did practitioners and their patients need to work through repertoires with their narratives of provings; one merely had to divine the patient’s constitution and then, dis-

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regarding specific disease symptoms, give the most appropriate remedy (“polychrest”) based on the so-called “mentals” or “generals” that best described the patient’s constitution. A strong correlation (similia) between the drug’s word-picture and the patient’s constitution sufficed to keep the patient in good health. This technique, however broadly or narrowly applied, ignored Hahnemann’s clear admonition that doctors treat each patient with an individualized prescription based on the totality of symptoms.

Latter-Day Architects Numerous other physicians on the fringe of medical orthodoxy found common cause with some combination of mesmerism and Swedenborgianism. Two such were Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917), the founder of osteopathic medicine, and Daniel D. Palmer (1845–1913), the founder of chiropractic medicine. Both systems were founded in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and continue into the present day, the former having joined with regular medicine, while the latter has retained its separate existence. As medical revisionist systems, both initially employed manual adjustments of the spine as the means of aligning the magnetic forces of the universe with those energies circulating within the body. Disappointed by the overreliance on drugs and surgery by the medical profession, Andrew Taylor Still, son of a Methodist circuit rider and self-taught physician, concluded that practitioners should return to nature for reeducation into the healing process. Having entered the profession as an apprentice in his father’s practice, and later serving as a surgeon in the Civil War, he grew wary of the competing theories and modalities of mainstream medicine and looked for a simpler and more comprehensive system of healing.83 Before long, Still had built a popular practice around a healing technique that combined the components of magnetic healing or magnetism with manipulation of the muscles and bone cartilage. His experiments with the body manipulation caused him to view the true healer as a “master mechanic” whose purpose was to keep the machinery of the body “perfectly adjusted and in line in order to get perfect work.”84 He discovered that by adjusting the body’s bone structure, and in particular, the connecting framework for the head, neck, thorax, abdomen, and pelvis, he could cure most dis-

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eases. “When all parts of the human body are in line, we have health,” he explained. “When they are not the effect is disease.” The work of a true healer was to “adjust the body from the abnormal to the normal.” This led him to the conclusion that a true physician was little more than a mechanical engineer operating in the world of healing.85 Andrew Still belonged to the vitalist school of thought, which viewed life as a “force” superior to the sum of the elements in the universe. Life, he wrote, “is the God, the wisdom, the power and the motion of all.”86 He frequently cited “magnetic healing” in his writings and had originally advertised himself as “A. T. Still, Magnetic Healer.” This nomenclature placed him in the company of Andrew Jackson Davis, Phineas P. Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, Warren Felt Evans, and others in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who wrote or spoke of balancing the flow of “spirits” or “fluids” in the body and whose healing techniques incorporated hand manipulations to the head, neck, and spine. The term “magnetic healing” served as a metaphor for the unobstructed flow of vital fluid (i.e., blood, vibrations, electricity) through the body and, by inference, the body’s alignment with the energies at work in the universe.87 In reviewing the history of medicine, with its myriad of pathologists, chemists, allopaths, homeopaths, eclectics, and hydropaths demonstrating their “lamentable failures,” Still concluded that little in their armamentarium resembled a true science of healing. His alternative, which he called osteopathy, was a “very sacred science” that healed without the use of surgery; without instruments such as thermometers, X-rays, and syringes; without vaccinations, serums, and drugs; and without the knowledge of bacteriology.88 Osteopathy was an independent system that could be applied to “all conditions of disease, including purely surgical cases.”89 Still’s intent was to make osteopathy into a philosophy of physiological manipulation grounded in reason with a full understanding of the form and function of all the bones in the human body. With this knowledge of the articulations of the bones and how best to adjust them, the body could be plumbed and squared to assure its “good working order.”90 For Still, the human body was a fully contained vessel of life holding within itself all the chemicals, energies, and medicines essential for

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Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917)

good health. This allowed him to deny the biological basis upon which modern pathology had been built and to assert that the spinal lesion was the main etiological actor in disease causation. Given that nature had bequeathed to the body its own defensive system against disease, the osteopath’s duty was to “find it, fix it, and leave it alone.”91 By manipulating the tissues of the body, and especially by removing the “subluxations” that affected the flow of energy in those tissues that constituted the support system for the spinal column and its system of nerves, the osteopath could give immediate and profound relief to the body. Such manipulations unleashed the patient’s internal healing mechanisms (i.e., proper blood flow), making osteopathy the first truly effective drugless medical system.92 Still’s school of osteopathy was a dis-

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tinctively American healing system which, by 1910, claimed some five thousand osteopaths tending to the business of healing.93 Still’s personal journey into healing and the system he eventually called osteopathy bore the imprint of ideas whose legacy derived principally from Mesmer. Nonetheless, one of Still’s early students, William G. Sutherland (1873–1954) of Wisconsin, entered the American School of Osteopathy in 1898 and developed a form of diagnosis and treatment called “osteopathy in the cranial field” based on the subtle rhythmic motion of the brain and its affect on the intracranial and intraspinal membranes. Sutherland developed his ideas on cranial dysfunctions in the 1920s, began practicing and teaching them in the 1930s, and continued to develop them until his death in the 1954. This idea of the brain’s subtle expansion and contraction and its connection to the lung’s respiratory motion, or what Sutherland called the “breath of life,” had many of the hallmarks of Swedenborg’s writings about the physiology of the brain and the spirituous fluid that animated the body. In fact, Sutherland was familiar with the works of Swedenborg; in later years made several references to Swedenborg in his own writings. Sutherland is also known to have met the Reverend Alfred Acton (1867–1956), dean of the Theological School at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, who had translated Swedenborg’s writings on the brain and was in contact with many contemporary practitioners of osteopathy. Today, the Cranial Academy, a department of the American Academy of Osteopathy, continues to teach Sutherland’s ideas on cranio-osteopathy.94 Twenty years after Still introduced his healing system, Daniel D. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa, brought forward a system to which he gave the name chiropractic. Like Andrew Still and Phineas Quimby, Palmer began his career practicing the “magnetic system” of healing. Indeed, as J. Stuart Moore noted in his Chiropractic in America: The History of a Medical Alternative (1993), Palmer had begun in the cradle of Spiritualism before turning to magnetic healing.95 Palmer offered to give relief, using the artful use of his hands, to the three hundred articulations in the skeletal frame, particularly the fifty-two in the spinal column, correcting the “subluxations” (a term both he and Still used, although they were medical rivals) where the articulating surfaces had lost their

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proper connection. By freeing impinged nerves that controlled all the vital functions of the body, including dreams, he claimed the ability to cure 95 percent of the diseases affecting the human body. He concluded, for example, that the most prevalent throat diseases (i.e., goiter, croup, diphtheria, bronchitis, quinsy, and tonsillitis) were due to nerves originating in the right side of the spinal column that served the stomach.96 Palmer’s intent was to not only place chiropractic on an objective and scientific basis but also position it “within the reach of the humblest intellect.”97 Palmer’s writings demonstrated the differences that separated his chiropractic medicine not only from that of osteopathy, but also from allopathy, eclecticism, homeopathy, Christian Science, magnetism, electricity, hypnotism, and massage. The chiropractor relied solely on symptomatology derived from the skeletal frame, condemning the armamentarium of electricity, X-rays, drugs, and anything considered therapeutic or medical—though contemporary chiropractors now consider the X-ray to be of significant value and frequently make use of homeopathic herbals. “The body is a living mechanical nerve machine, liable to be injured by accidents which may displace some portion of its skeletal frame,” Palmer wrote. The nerves constituted the life of the body, and when all parts of the skeletal frame were in proper apposition, health abounded. The challenge was to find the displacements that obstructed the natural functions and, through adjustment of the skeletal frame, return it to its normal position.98 David Palmer and his son and partner “B. J.” thought it possible for a chiropractor to make five hundred adjustments in a day, thus outperforming other practitioners for the patient’s pocketbook. While allopaths studied anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, and hygiene, the chiropractor could revolutionize two thousand years of old-school methods with simple adjustments accomplished in intervals of a few minutes each.

All in the Mind During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the healing powers inherent in the body were often confused with the curative properties of the mind. Sometimes the terms “body” and “mind” connoted

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cosmic properties that were secular in context; on other occasions, they were the outer garment of God and part of an undetermined plan. Mutually supportive and intertwined, body and mind were difficult to separate, much less to distinguish. This confusion, evident within mesmerism and Swedenborgianism, was also present in magnetic healing, phrenopathy, Christian Science, New Thought, and a multitude of lesser-known movements that operated on the borderlands of the biomedical paradigm. Accepting body and mind as integral to healing did not necessarily imply that the curative process entailed an overtly religious ratiocination. There has been—and continues to be—both a secular and a religious side to the nation’s metaphysical healing systems.

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chapter 8

New Age Healing Those who strove to get beyond explaining the universe in terms of a mechanism for the most part lacked the courage to admit that the habit of thinking which had led to it must be overcome also. —Rudolf Steiner

Historian John Lukacs, in At the End of an Age (2002), recalled the point in his life when he first recognized that objectivity (meaning the “absolute and antiseptic separation of the observer from the subject or object of his observation”) had “lost its unalloyed golden validity.” Inclined to subjectivism, but realizing also its futility, he concluded that both objectivity and subjectivity were “two sides of the same outdated and debased coin.” His crisis of faith in objectivity, which he first noted in the humanities and soft sciences, caused him to rename his methodological process for writing history “honesty” instead of “objectivity.” This crisis of faith in objectivity also came with the observation that since the genesis of science in the modern age, the value given to the term scientist had become inflated, with the effect of disconnecting the objectivity of the researcher from any fallibility as a complex human organism. Referring to the revolution in physics that occurred in the first quarter of the twentieth century, and to Max Planck’s and Albert Einstein’s introduction of quantum theory and relativity,

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Lukacs concluded that “one can no more separate the philosopher from his philosophy than one can separate the physicist from his physics.” Moreover, adding time (“whose existence is one thing, but whose measurability is nothing but a human endeavor”) to the equation of energy and mass changed the outcome, defying classical objectivity and the Enlightenment’s fundamental axiom of the mind-body separation. Now, it was more important to know how the scientist knew something than what he knew. The “facts” of science were the result of a scientific community’s consensus around an observation.1 For Lukacs, a scientific fact could not exist independently, isolated, or separate from the scientist’s acceptance of it. “Any ‘fact’ that is beyond or beneath our cognition, or consciousness, or perception, is meaningless to us,” he reasoned, “which is why we must be careful not to dissociate ‘facts’ from the what in which they are stated. Every ‘fact’ is not only dependent on but inseparable from our statement of it.” Without scientists, there was no science.2 Since the time of Democritus in the fifth century BC, and most certainly since the Enlightenment, Western scientists had been designing laws, mathematical formulations, and mechanical causalities to package and explain the universe. The change from Aristotelian physics to Newtonian science entailed the replacement of final cause (telos, purpose, or end) with a natural science whose preoccupation was with quantity, efficient causes, and which viewed the world as a machine rather than as an intelligent organism. The laws of nature were not as much immanent in the world as they were imposed by a God who created the world and then left it to its own devices. This was a basic shift in philosophical perspective. No longer organic, the universe consisted of laws imposed by God upon the world—laws that God bound himself to follow.3 Besides the scientists who espoused this worldview, there were others seeking to arrive at a unified theory of the universe. But Planck’s explanation of ultimate matter as energy pulsating in quantum jumps threw the scientist’s instruments out the window. Planck’s theory not only precipitated a break with Newtonian physics but forced scientists to reconsider the “tremulations” of Swedenborg and the similar claims of numerous philosophers and mystics before and after him. Modern

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physics seemed more at home with Eastern metaphysics—Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism—than with the rational enterprise of Western science. “Physics has ended by explaining away matter itself,” reasoned Lukacs, “leaving us with an ever increasing skeleton, a more complex but essentially empty scaffolding of abstract mathematical formulae.” Quantum theory’s challenge to long-held classical assumptions opened a whole new range of speculations by postulating that the probability of events could be altered by the act of observation.4

New Age Swedenborgians The term “New Age” was found in Swedenborgian literature long before its appropriation by today’s devotees. The expression New Christian Age was used during the World’s Parliament of Religion of 1893, whose president, Charles Carroll Bonney, was a Swedenborgian.5 As religion commentator Jean-François Mayer explained in 1998, “Swedenborg’s writings can be understood as an attempt to renew the Christian faith in face of the challenges of the Enlightenment, not to discard Christianity for replacing it through some new, post-Christian religion. From the perspective of history of religion, the Swedenborgian impulse has provided elements to alternative religious strains . . . but this doesn’t prevent Swedenborg and the New Church from remaining in the orbit of Christianity.”6 What Swedenborg described as a new spiritual age was different from what later became known as New Age, but he most certainly served as an influence (some might say godfather) to the key principles of New Age thinking. “Spiritualists of all kinds, up to the ‘channeling’ movement, mention the name of Swedenborg as a precursor . . . but it would be very hard to find any Spiritualist circle having doctrines in agreement with the major tenets of Swedenborg’s theology,” wrote Mayer, one of the founders of the Religioscope Institute in Fribourg, Switzerland. At best, what Mayer called “selective interest” kept Swedenborg alive to successive generations.7 New Church minister Michael W. Stanley suggested a similar connection: “Both [Swedenborg’s] teachings and much of subsequent New Age writing can be said to be a fresh revelation of ancient universal truth in a form suited to modern scientific man living in the aftermath of the historical incarnation of Christ.”8

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Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958), author of numerous books including What All the World’s a-Seeking (1896) and In Tune with the Infinite (1905), was one of the leading figures of the New Thought movement, and his ideas and writings reached into the mid-twentieth century. He served as an important intergenerational “carrier” of the wisdom of Swedenborg, Emerson, and other significant contributors to American thought and culture. A dedicated admirer of Swedenborg, he held that the spirit of infinite life and power was behind all manifestations in and through the universe, and that all that was, is, or would be had originated from that self-creating principle of life. “We are partakers of the life of God,” he wrote, “and though we differ from Him in that we are individualized spirits, while He is the Infinite Spirit including us as well as all else beside, yet in essence the life of God and the life of man are identically the same, and so are one.”9 The spirit of life came by opening oneself to the divine influx and being “changed from mere men into Godmen.”10 Citing the law of correspondences, Trine explained that individual existence began on the “sense plane of the physical world” and rose through successive gradations to a corresponding “ethereal planet, or soul world” of which the physical was but the “external counterpart and materialized expression.” This ethereal world became home to “arisen humanity” and the embodiment of the soul. There, too, individual life continued “in the other form.” Life was a continuous evolution where the spirits of the deceased lived in many different levels and types of existence, reflecting the quality of the each individual’s interior life.11 Along with James Tyler Kent, Phineas P. Quimby, and Warren Felt Evans, Trine viewed regular medicine and its reliance on drugs as wholly artificial and unconnected with the life forces within. The mental act of thinking “good health” set into motion essential vital forces (“divine inflow”) that substituted the conditions of disease for harmony and health. No disease could enter the body or remain there unless it found something corresponding to itself. [I]n just the degree that you realize your oneness with this Infinite Spirit of Life, and thus actualize your latent possibilities and powers, you will exchange dis-ease for ease, in-harmony for harmony, suffering and pain for abounding health and strength. And in the degree that you realize this

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wholeness, this abounding health and strength in yourself, will you carry it to all with whom you come in contact; for we must remember that health is contagious as well as disease.12

Unlike Swedenborg, Trine advocated a “universal” religion that grasped the truths of the inspired Christ, the inspired Buddha, the inspired Vedas, and other sacred books and their writers. He thought it absurd that the Infinite Spirit could be limited to a single religion. Trine applauded the power of God to enter the holy souls of numerous writers and thinkers across continents and across religions. “The great fundamental principles of all religions are the same,” he reasoned. “They differ only in their minor details according to the various degrees of unfoldment of different people.” The moment this concept was lost, the spirit of true religion evaporated.13 Trine’s book In Tune with the Infinite sold over two million copies and was read by such luminaries as Henry Ford, who attributed much of his success directly to having comprehended its contents. So convinced was he of the book’s importance that he ordered it distributed among fellow industrialists.14

Prospects and Paradigms While a myriad of alternative and complementary healing practices have continued into the twenty-first century, there has been a decided preference among them for terms such as “meditation,” “energy,” and “spiritual,” suggesting a retreat from church-based or specialized authority to a more secularized notion of body, mind, and spirit. This change in terminology implies that an individual can have a spiritual relationship with “otherness” without holding to an organized set of beliefs or precepts. The new terminology connotes an encounter with the self or between the self and “otherness” that results in a clearer expression of values, purposes, or direction in life. Unlike the prayer treatment of a Christian Science practitioner and patient who operate on a mutually accepted set of beliefs, today’s New Age practitioners use multiple techniques not necessarily contingent upon both the healer’s and patient’s subscribing to the same faith or belief. Modern-day healers have encouraged patients to draw upon a variety of nonreligious traditions or modalities—reiki, therapeutic touch, light

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therapy, acupuncture, laying on of hands, massage, qigong, homeopathy, yoga, aromatherapy, crystal therapy, distant healing, transcendental meditation, etc.—that calm the mind and inspire the transfer of energy from, through, or outside the practitioner to support the healing experience.15 In such instances, the term “energy” has acquired a much broader definition, moving closer to the principle of “vitalism” or “life force,” and is used to describe a force that is transmitted or channeled into the mind, soul, or consciousness of the patient to mediate physical, mental, or emotional needs.16 The New Age movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to represent a philosophic restatement of reality—both material and immaterial—and a commitment to live in accordance with that worldview. Foundational principles include intuitive insight; God as an impersonal life force; Jesus as one of many Christs (Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad, etc.); reincarnation; and man’s essential goodness. New Age adherents advocate a philosophy that is secular, multicultural, and synoptic—a direct challenge to the Judeo-Christian worldview. Its aim is selfactualization, or unity consciousness, defined as the seventh state of consciousness in transcendental philosophy.17 Moreover, the movement has become an international phenomenon whose constellation of beliefs derive from a combination of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Druidism, Hellenistic mystery religions, medieval magic, alchemy, Plato’s dualism, Swedenborgianism, mesmerism, and vitalism. In America, it also draws sustenance from Unitarianism, Universalism, Spiritualism, transcendentalism, Quimbyism, Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and Olcott’s and Blavatsky’s Theosophy.18 Not surprisingly, the New Age movement has faced considerable criticism. Opponents view it as dangerous and seductive, promising all and nothing. Supporters, on the other hand, have argued that it is a legitimate movement with deep historical roots, worthy of respect and scholarly study. They argue that the New Age movement is not really new at all, but a broad-based system of self-consciousness and introspection that developed into respectable transatlantic and East Asian systems of spiritual healing. New Age theology includes the same subject matter as most major religions, i.e., the nature of the cosmos, the attributes of God, the obligations of humankind, personal responsi-

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bility, the nature of the spirit worlds, and the meaning of death and its aftermath. Additional themes cover holism, the interrelatedness of all things, and a concept of cosmic evolution based on the writings of Teilhard De Chardin that includes both self- and God-realization.19 Not unlike the proponents of the earlier New Thought movement, New Agers express an indifference to organized religion. Moreover, as advocates of modern metaphysical spirituality, they demonstrate an openness to new scientific paradigms (i.e., evolution, quantum theory, chaos theory, string theory, biofields, etc.) that place them in a strategic role of potentially “sabotaging” the very science whose vocabulary they so liberally and generously endorse.20 As religion scholar Catherine Albanese explained in a recent article, New Age authors have shown little reluctance in mixing the language of modern science with that of their metaphysical world. Indeed, New Agers have used the two so interchangeably that they seem indistinguishable. New Age thinkers, wrote Albanese, are “preoccupied with issues about energy and its transmutation into matter.” Having appropriated terms like “matter,” “energy,” “atomic structure,” “energy field,” and “quantum physics,” they have formulated a cosmology that integrates the language of physics with the religious and philosophical visions emanating from New Age psychics and spiritual healers.21 In this new paradigm, wellness is centered on the workings of the soul, a metaphor for a force or energy that, although undetectable by the tools of materialistic science, is nonetheless thought to be consistent with quantum theory and its new vision of “reality.” Welcoming post-Einsteinean physics, New Agers are content to argue that consciousness creates a reality that exists within a vibrational cosmos of many dimensions. In this world, subjective truth derived from telepathy, remote viewing, and channeling is just as valid, if not more so, as that defined by material realism. Phrases such as “paradigm change,” “probability waves,” “string theory,” “chaos theory,” “new physics,” “ectoplasm,” “near-death experience,” “spirit-release therapy,” “disassociative phenomena,” and “quantum theory” are trotted out to rebut claims of quackery, or of transgressing the laws of physics. This has resulted in anointing belief systems that are subjective, intangible, paranormal, inner experience (psi), and delusional with a legitimacy equivalent to

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empirically based laboratory experiments. This explanation challenges the discrete boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity by including consciousness in the reframing of objective reality, and does so in the ambitious language of quantum theory.22 Among the elements of quantum theory quoted by New Age advocates is the concept of “entanglement,” meaning the ability of split particles to maintain an interaction with each other after going their separate ways. They extend this concept, which applies to living cells as well as inanimate particles, to the mind, suggesting that two autonomous brains could be interconnected with each other and with the universe.23 Not surprisingly, quantum physics has also become a shibboleth for this energy model, using spiritual interpretations of light—which were part of Christian and non-Christian mysticism—and equating them to the behavior of the light in particle or wave theory. In the Spiritualist ritual known as the séance, spirits that communicated across the two worlds did so by “lowering their vibrational rate to synchronize with that of a medium’s body, and after the inner, or astral, body of the medium was projected outward, using it as scaffolding for the ectoplasm that enabled them to materialize.” For New Agers, the medium was replaced by “channeling,” which was thought to be analogous to a radio or television channel that transforms waves of energy into sound and a picture. Thus, in the relative world of quantum physics, the human channel serves as a conduit between the limits of the individual body and those personalities or collective groups that dwell beyond.24

Auras For New Agers, energy is visibly manifested in the form of a subtle aura that surrounds the body, much like the halo effect in the paintings of the early Christian saints. This energy, identified variously as “auric light,” “sheaths,” “magnetic fields,” and “biofields,” has become an integral part of the language of spiritual healing used by New Agers.25 The halos that artists in past centuries painted around the heads of saints as evidence of their holiness are interpreted by New Agers as real energy fields that belong to all matter because of its atomic structure and that can be seen and measured. The aura, or halo effect, radiates from every substance in the universe and can be seen by certain individuals

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(sensitives), like clairvoyants, who are capable of sensing or visualizing these emanations. The idea of auras can be found in the writings of Paracelsus, Mesmer’s animal magnetism, Swedenborg’s doctrine of divine influx, Hahnemann’s vital principle, Daniel Dunglas Home’s séance, Blavatsky’s chakras, Trine’s thought forms, and Baron Karl von Reichenbach’s theory of Odic force, which posited the existence of an aura emanating as colored flames from various substances. All claimed access to this etheric and spiritual field of luminous radiation that was thought not to be actual light but some unknown sensory experience. Medical electrotherapist Walter J. Kilner (1847–1920) not only claimed that the human aura was visible in ultraviolet light but described it as consisting of three fluctuating layers (vital or etheric, inner, and outer) whose dimensions and color varied in sickness and health.26 Following Kilner, Russian inventor and researcher Semyon Davidovich Kirlian (1898–1978) claimed in 1939 that high-frequency auras or energy fields could be confirmed through color photography, and that understanding these coronas of light captured on film allowed physicians to more effectively diagnose and treat the physical and mental ailments of patients. Kilner’s and Kirlian’s work complemented the concept of meridian flow in Chinese medicine, and by combining these ideas, modern New Age healers concluded that the free and unimpeded flow of auric energies was the reason for an organism’s health, and their interruption was the cause of the organism’s sickness.27 Having established the existence of the aura, New Agers such as healer Rosalyn L. Bruyere, Stanford professor William A. Tiller, magazine editor Wanda Romer Taylor, psychiatrist John Pierrakos, and healer Barbara Ann Brennan developed the theory that the aura could be manipulated to increase or decrease the energies that formed it. Biophoton imaging, electron microscopy, and magnetic field testing were thought to validate the existence of an energy field surrounding and penetrating an organism.28 Healer, scientist, and entrepreneur Barbara Ann Brennan learned quickly that there was a market in New Age therapy. In 1987, her Hands of Light became a bestseller, followed by Light Emerging in 1993. Millions of copies of these two books, plus audio editions, have been sold and translated into many languages.29 Like her contemporary New Age healers, Brennan, who has a degree in atmospheric physics from the

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University of Wisconsin and worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, combined the language of Spiritualism with that of a mystic’s view of physics. She became interested in bioenergetics (mind-body study) and trained at the Institute for Psychophysical Synthesis, the Community of the Whole Person, and the Institute of Core Energetics. From these encounters and the use of high sense perception (HSP), she claimed to see auras which funneled from the universal life energy field into the body by way of chakras. These observations eventually developed into a formalized healing system using human energy fields. Her texts provided a bio-energetic map for analyzing the different layers of aura and the meaning behind their patterns and colors.30 With HSP, she claimed the ability to extend the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) with the additional senses of intuition, direct knowing, emotions, and love. She also reintroduced a variation of “internal breathing” as a means of arriving at a mystical oneness with God.31 In 1982, Brennan opened the Barbara Brennan School of Healing in East Hampton, New York, (also in southern Florida, Austria, and Japan) offering a four-year certificate in healing science. For her and her followers, the world of modern physics explained the human organism as a physical structure composed of molecules whose consistency was that of an energy field. Each body, in its totality, took on a distinctive structure that was the product of seven energy bodies and their associated chakras or vortices. Through the vortices a quantity of energy flowed between the aura of an individual and the universal energy fields. Over time, wrong living habits affected these energy fields and were transmitted to the body in the form of disease. Thus, each individual produced a qualitatively different light emission or aura that was measurable. A discerning healer could make an accurate clinical diagnosis based on the aura itself.32 Brennan identified five forms of energy blocks between matter and spirit that produced illness. These blocks, emotional in nature, were classified as schizoid, oral, psychopathic, masochistic, and rigid—each with its own auric pattern or “fingerprint.” The job of the healer was to identify the problem and then to treat it.33 Brennan interpreted each disease from a spiritual-psychological-physical point of view. The heal-

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er’s function was to reawaken the soul by channeling spiritual energy into the patient’s energy field.34 Using a similar form of treatment, Buddhist Mikao Usui (1865– 1926) linked spirituality and wellness through the technique of reiki, which employed the use of hands to direct energy (“universal life-force energy”) to the ill patient. According to Usui, a “white-light” energy that originated outside of the universe flowed through the hands of the practitioner to the energy field of the patient. This transcendental light-energy, which moved in spirals and represented “the dance of life energy,” could be utilized to complement regular medicine as well as other healing modalities. The healer did not touch the patient but kept his or her hands an inch or so above the body.35 Barbara Weber Ray, the author of The Reiki Factor and founder of the Reiki Center in Atlanta in 1978, the American Reiki Association in 1980, and the American-International Reiki Association in 1982, drew heavily from the work of Usui as well as from the writings of Helena Blavatsky, Teilhard de Chardin, Jean Charon, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Fritjof Capra, and others to support her healing system. Similar to the Chinese chi, the Hindu prana, Victor Inyushin’s bioplasmic energy, Mesmer’s magnetic fluid, Reichenbach’s Odic force, Robert Beck’s Schumann waves, and Kilner’s aura, reiki became a method of natural healing focused on balancing the energy in the body with that of the universe by aligning the seven principle chakras or energy centers found between the base of the spine and the top of the head. Ray, an astrologer and practicing clairvoyant, traced the source of reiki to ancient Tibet and its master teachers, who used hidden symbols to pass information on the healing art from teacher to student across continents. Ray’s cosmic energy science, better known as the “radiance technique,” treats stress, addictions, and physical and emotional pain in humans; it is also used to heal animals and even plants.36 Nurse and Theosophist Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz, an intuitive healer and past president of the Theosophical Society of America, originated the modality known as therapeutic touch. Their theories and practices in the use of subtle energies drew heavily from the Theosophist Charles W. Leadbeater and his writings on chakras. Krieger, who had been mentored by Kunz, lectured widely on the system and

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also popularized it through the media as well as through her book The Therapeutic Touch. Krieger chose the concept of prana, a South Asian term for life force or breath which in healthy individuals could be transferred to one in need. The origin of the life force, like that of reiki, came as an energy flux from the universe itself.37

Retrospective “Healing is a profoundly cultural activity,” observed historian Robert C. Fuller. “Labeling a disease and prescribing treatment express a healer’s commitment to a very particular set of assumptions about the structure of physical existence.”38 Since the Enlightenment, this labeling has been especially relevant in explaining the competing roles of vitalism and materialism as the causal factors in disease etiology. While Western medicine has advanced along lines that are positivistic and reductionist in nature, unorthodox medicine has continued to thrive by advocating an alternative view of reality whose forces exist beyond the boundaries of contemporary scientific theory. Some of these realities are drawn from religious rituals, such as divine healing, found originally in the earliest forms of Christianity; others articulate a supernaturalism or cosmic metaphysics that emphasize subtle energies known variously as “life force,” “cosmic harmony,” “holism,” and “aura.” Central to these energies is the presumption that they are coextensive with the physical universe and, when fully articulated, produce a wholeness of body, mind, and spirit. For these systems, all disease is psychosomatic in nature, demanding a new approach to healing that is compatible with post-Einsteinian physics as well as a supernaturalistic interpretation of health and individual well-being.39 Clearly, one of the persistent themes in American culture has been the robust nature of its holistic healing systems, which have operated independently but occasionally in tandem with scientific medicine. What makes them fascinating to the historian is that, almost without exception, they are grounded in the metaphysical framework of either mesmerism or Swedenborgianism. From these two distant inheritances grew such unorthodox systems as eclecticism, homeopathy, mind cure, Christian Science, Theosophy, New Thought, chiropractic, osteopathy, psychic healing, crystal healing, therapeutic touch, channeling,

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and New Age medicine. A connection existed between their healing practices and the competing and sometimes complementary spiritual elements of these two metaphysical frameworks. Even today’s newest healing systems are not without their indebtedness, as metaphors and images drawn from Mesmer and Swedenborg continue to resonate in and through these modalities. The dualistic labeling of body and mind in Western medical science since the days of Descartes has served to complicate the relationship of religion and medicine.40 Religious explanations for health and disease were thought to be attributes of superstition. As a result, the two were content to divide their respective labors so that religion would take on the cure of souls while the medicine would focus its energies on the cure of the body.41 The advocates of medical orthodoxy welcomed this dualism and moved quickly away from the nonmaterial side of healing; the advocates of the supernatural seemed for a time satisfied to relegate physical healing to the more routinized roles and responsibilities of medical doctors. However, as we have seen, they soon tired of their limitations and aspired to expand their hegemony. Despite this artificial division of labor, practitioners—both orthodox and unorthodox—have expressed beliefs that encompass spiritual or supernatural explanations of healing. For orthodox medical doctors, the conceptualization of a higher spiritual agency was founded not on biomedical reductionism but on the willingness to accept a system of healing where science and religion were able to function together without recrimination, deferring ultimately to the patient’s own sense of well-being. By contrast, the advocates of unorthodox modalities, whether opting for a sense of transcendence or immanence, merged religion and healing into a highly articulated and organic encounter. As Fuller explained, the particular character of these systems is that “they utilize vocabularies and techniques designed to induct individuals into a worldview predicated upon the ‘fact’ that under certain conditions extramundane forces enter into, and exert sanative influences upon, the human realm.” The acceptance of this presumed, for both the healer and the healed, the addition of a “more” or an “other” into the material world, thereby creating a new reality.42 The terminology used to describe these supernaturalist systems

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evolved over time, from eclecticism, homeopathy, mesmerism, Grahamism, sarcognomy, and psychometry to Christian Science, Theosophy, and ultimately to New Age healing. In each, and with varying intensity, was the desire to achieve a harmony of spiritual and physical health. Also in each was the acceptance of a cosmos that encompassed multiple levels of reality. In this cosmos, each of the physical and the metaphysical realms drew energy from an unseen and immeasurable force, deriving purpose and existence from an assortment of laws and doctrines. Rather than existing at the whim of an arbitrary and capricious God, the relationship of the individual to this “other” highlighted a rapport, serenity, and piety that embraced the cosmos with love and reconciled the individual with some unspecified but purposeful plan. Reality was more than just what positivistic science demonstrated to be true. Higher realities and higher energies were at work in the cosmos, affecting health and healing. The advocates of this supernaturalism embraced the existence of a vital force or energy that came from “outside” the material world to explain the difference between things that were inanimate and those that were animate. Supernaturalism was common among both orthodox and unorthodox healing systems in the first half of the nineteenth century, but increasingly, unorthodox healers became more wedded to the idea and used it to define themselves within America’s pluralistic culture. While orthodox healers turned to a view of health that involved the interaction of the individual and the environment, unorthodox healers accepted a metaphysical causation for life and the healing process. The metaphysical systems deriving from Mesmer and Swedenborg, in their competition for the hearts and minds of America’s largely Protestant culture, became unorthodoxy’s principal form of identity.43

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Endnotes Introduction 1. Clarke Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late EighteenthCentury England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 67. 2. R. H. Thouless, “The Present Position of Experimental Research Into Telepathy and Related Phenomena,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 47 (1942): 1–19; R. H. Thouless and B. P. Wiesner, “The PSI Processes in Normal and ‘Paranormal’ Psychology,” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 48 (1948): 177–96; Dean I. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (San Francisco: Harper Edge, 1997), 13–21; D. Scott Rogo, Parapsychology: A Century of Inquiry (New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1975), 282–94. 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men, Seven Lectures (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1900), 101. 4. Sigfried T. Synnestvedt, ed., The Essential Swedenborg: Basic Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), 1–3. 5. Cyriel Odhner Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic: The Life and Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (New York: Bookman Associates, 1952), vii–viii. 6. Herbert Dingle, Swedenborg as a Physical Scientist (London: Swedenborg Society, 1938), 22–23.

Chapter 1 1. Marguerite Beck Block, “Jesper Svedberg (1653–1735): Watcher on Sion’s Walls,” Church History 13 (1944): 42–44. Read Jesperi Swedbergii, Parentis optimi, canticum svecicum, vngdoms regel och alderdoms spegel, ex ecclesiast: c. XII. Latino carmine exhibitum ab Emanuele Swedbergio, filio (Skara: Kielbergianis, 1709). 2. Inge Jonsson, Emanuel Swedenborg (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1971), 15–17, 42–43. See also Thomas S. Hall, Ideas of Life and Matter: Studies in the History of General Physiology, 600 B.C.–1900 A.D., 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969);

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Christopher U. M. Smith, The Problem of Life: An Essay in the Origins of Biological Thought (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976); Norman Kemp Smith, New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes (London: Macmillan, 1952). 3. Daniel Stempel, “Angels of Reason: Science and Myth in the Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 63–78; Jacques Roger, “The Mechanistic Conception of Life,” in God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, 277–95 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 4. Alfred H. Stroh, “Swedenborg’s Contributions to Psychology, With Some Account of his Early Education and Philosophy,” in Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, London, July 4 to 8, 1910 (London: The Swedenborg Society, 1912), 152. 5. Block, “Jesper Svedberg (1653–1735): Watcher on Sion’s Walls,” 42–55. 6. Signe Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), 32–33. 7. Block, “Jesper Svedberg (1653–1735): Watcher on Sion’s Walls,” 45–55. 8. James John Garth Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography (London: William Newbery, 1849), 4–6; Ernst Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg: Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2002), 4; Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, 14. 9. Stroh, “Swedenborg’s Contributions to Psychology,” 153. 10. Stroh, “Swedenborg’s Contributions to Psychology,” 154. 11. Johann F. I. Tafel and J. H. Smithson, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg (New York: Otis Clapp, 1847), 125. 12. Tafel and Smithson, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 1109. 13. Tafel and Smithson, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 143. 14. Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late EighteenthCentury England,” 68–69. 15. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (minor), Publilius Syrus (Syrus), Emanuel Swedenborg, L. Annaei Senecae et P. Syri Mimi, forsan et aliorum Selectae sententiae, ed. J. F. Emanuel Tafel and Joseph Justus Scaliger (William Newbery, 1840). 16. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 8–9. 17. J. G. Dufty, Swedenborg the Scientist (London: Swedenborg Society, 1938), 17–18. 18. Marguerite Beck Block, The New Church in the New World (New York: Octagon Books, 1968), 5. 19. Dufty, Swedenborg the Scientist, 28–29. 20. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 14. 21. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 15–17. 22. Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg, 93–94; Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 15. 23. Alfred H. Stroh, “Swedenborg’s Early Life, Scientific Works, and Philosophy,” The New-Church Magazine (1915): 400–403. 24. Emanuel Swedenborg, Some Specimens of a Work on the Principles of Chemistry, with other Treatises, trans. C. E. Strutt (Boston: Otis Clapp, 1847).

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25. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 22–23. 26. Tafel and Smithson, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 889. 27. Emanuel Swedenborg, On Tremulation (Boston: Massachusetts New Church Union, 1899), 11. 28. Swedenborg, On Tremulation, 6, 15, 34–51. 29. Konrad Akert and Michael P. Hammond, “Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and His Contributions to Neurology,” Medical History 6 (1962): 259. 30. Swedenborg, On Tremulation, 6. 31. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 18–19, 20. 32. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 28, 41. 33. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Principia, or The First Principles of Natural Things, trans. James R. Rendell and Isaiah Tansley (London: Swedenborg Society, 1912), 2:297– 300. 34. Swedenborg, The Principia, 2:161–162. 35. Rev. Professor Tansley, “Swedenborg as Cosmologist,” Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, 82. 36. Swedenborg, The Principia, 1:36. 37. Reuben P. Bell, “Scientist to Revelator: Two Swedenborgs or End, Cause, and Effect?” The New Philosophy, http://www.thenewphilosophyonline.org/journal/article .php?issue=107b&page=1016. 38. Dufty, Swedenborg the Scientist, 44; Jonsson, Emanuel Swedenborg, 36–40. 39. Tafel and Smithson, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:909. 40. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Soul or Rational Psychology, ed. and trans. Frank Sewall (New York: The New-Church Press, 1887), 97–110, 215–19. 41. Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, 73, 87. 42. Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Love and Wisdom, trans. George F. Dole (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2003), §226–229. 43. David Kubrin, “Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967): 325–46; Robert H. Kargon, Atomism in England from Hariot to Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); Thomas S. Hall, “Descartes; Physiological Methods,” Journal of the History of Biology 3 (1970): 53–79. 44. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation, trans. J. J. G. Wilkinson (London: Swedenborg Society, 1847). 45. Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, 88–89. 46. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically (London: W. Newbery, 1846), 2:202. 47. See Emanuel Swedenborg, Three Transactions of the Cerebrum, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1938–40). 48. In the files of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm are some forty pages (Codex No. 55) explaining Swedenborg’s ideas on the anterior lobes of the cerebrum and his theory of localization. These writings remained unpublished until 1882–1887 when Dr. Rudolf Leonard Tafel included the manuscript in his two-volume translation The Brain. Swedenborg’s writings anticipated by a century and a half the later work of

Endnotes to Chapter 1  241

neurophysiologists G. Fritsch, E. Hitzig, V. Horsley, D. Ferrier, C. S. Sherrington, and H. Cushing. 49. Charles G. Gross, “Emanuel Swedenborg: A Neuroscientist Before His Time,” The Neuroscientist 3 (1977): 146. 50. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 42. 51. Akert and Hammond, “Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and His Contributions to Neurology,” 262–63. 52. Gross, “Emanuel Swedenborg: A Neuroscientist Before His Time,” 144. 53. Bo Norrving and Patrick Sourander, “Emanuel Swedenborg’s Theories on the Structure and Function of the Nervous System,” in Neuroscience Across the Centuries, ed. Frank Clifford Rose, 68–69 (Nishimura: Smith-Gordon, 1989); Francis Schiller, “Social Systems Reflected in the History of Basic Neurophysiololgy,” in Rose, Neuroscience Across the Centuries, 59–60. 54. Gustav Retzius, “Emanuel Swedenborg as an Anatomist and Physiologist,” The New Philosophy 7 (1904): 18. 55. Gross, “Emanuel Swedenborg: A Neuroscientist Before His Time,” 142. 56. Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, 99. 57. Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic, 154. 58. F. H. Pratt, “Swedenborg on the Thebesian Blood Flow of the Heart,” Annals of Medical History 4 (1932): 434; Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, 96. 59. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 24–25. 60. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 1:222. 61. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:181–83. 62. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D. (London: James Speirs, 1895), 25–30. 63. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 32. 64. Gross, “Emanuel Swedenborg: A Neuroscientist Before His Time,” 142–43. 65. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Brain: Considered Anatomically, Physiologically and Philosophically, vol. 2, trans. Rudolf L. Tafel (London: James Spiers: 1882–1887), §602. 66. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:197. 67. Jonsson, Emanuel Swedenborg, 76. 68. Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, 107–111. 69. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:202–3. 70. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:214–15, 220. 71. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:223–24, 231. 72. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:35, 211, 216, 233. 73. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, 2:237, 253–55. 74. Mark D. Altschule, “Swedenborg and Stahl: Opposite—and Wrong—Sides of

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the Same Coin,” Studia Swedenborgiana 6 (1988), 4; Marie Boas, “The Establishment of the Mechanical Philosophy,” Osiris 10 (1952): 412–41. See also Philip C. Ritterbush, Overtures to Biology: The Speculations of Eighteenth Century Naturalists (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964); Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 75. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 44–45. 76. Alfred Acton, “The Order and Plan of Swedenborg’s Physiological Works,” The New Philosophy 20 (1917): 137–50; Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg, 118–37. 77. Martin Lamm, Emanuel Swedenborg: The Development of His Thought (West Chester, PA.: Swedenborg Foundation, 2000), 66; Theodore M. Brown, “From Mechanism to Vitalism in Eighteenth Century English Physiology,” Journal of the History of Biology 6 (1973): 259–81. 78. Emanuel Swedenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg’s Diary, Recounting Spiritual Experiences during the Years 1745 to 1765 (Bryn Athyn, PA: General Church of the New Jerusalem, 1998), §3464 79. E. J. Broadfield, opening session comments, Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, 9–10. 80. Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity, vol. 1, trans. Jonathan S. Rose (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation 2006), §103. 81. Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic, 156. See also Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York: Meridian Books, 1959); Theodore Dwight Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), 44–54. Bozeman notes the distinctions drawn by American historians, with some characterizing the Enlightenment as a marriage of science with morals and religion and others viewing it as being little more than frank paganism.

Chapter 2 1. Swedenborg, On Tremulation, 2, 13–14. 2. Swedenborg, The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically, §251–52. 3. Bell, “Scientist to Revelator: Two Swedenborgs or End, Cause, and Effect?” http://www.thenewphilosophyonline.org/journal/article.php?issue=107b&page=1019. 4. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Worship and Love of God, trans. Alfred H. Stroh and Frank Sewall (Boston: Massachusetts New-Church Union, 1914), §8–11, 24–27. 5. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 79. 6. Lamm, Emanuel Swedenborg: The Development of His Thought, 214. 7. Swedenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg’s Diary, Recounting Spiritual Experiences during the Years 1745 to 1765, §397. 8. Enoch Pond, Swedenborgianism Reviewed (Portland, ME: Hyde, Lord and Duren, 1846), 18, 23–28. 9. Swedenborg quoted in Tafel, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:139.

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10. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Word Explained, 9 vols., ed. and trans. A. Acton (Bryn Athyn, PA: Academy of the New Church, 1928–1951), §6905. 11. Wilson Van Dusen, The Presence of Other Worlds (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1991), 25–27. See also Swedenborg, The Word Explained, §1893. 12. Carl T. Odhner, Annals of the New Church (Bryn Athyn, PA: Academy of the New Church, 1904), 1:7. 13. Swedenborg, “Swedenborg’s Spiritual Experience in 1744,” in Tafel, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:186; Eugene Taylor, A Psychology of Spiritual Healing (West Chester, PA: Chrysalis Books, 1997), 91, 168–71. 14. Brian M. Talbot, “Swedenborg’s Alleged Insanity,” New-Church Magazine 22 (1996): 228; 23 (1996): 228; 24 (1996): 46. 15. J. Johnson, “Henry Maudsley on Swedenborg’s Messianic Psychosis,” British Journal of Psychiatry 165 (1994): 690–91. See also Jonsson, Emanuel Swedenborg. 16. Read W. A. Hauser, J. P. Annegers, and V. E. Anderson, “Epidemiology and the Genetics of Epilepsy,” Research Into Nervous and Mental Diseases 61 (1980): 705–10; O. Temkin, The Falling Sickness (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945), 39; F. Cirignatta Todesco and E. Lugaresi, “Temporal Lobe Epilepsy with Ecstatic Seizures,” Epilepsia 21 (1991): 32; 811. 17. Emanuel Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams, 2nd ed. (Bryn Athyn, PA: Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1989), 51. 18. Frank Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism (London: Methuen and Company, 1902), 1:15. 19. Swedenborg, The Word of the Old Testament Explained, §475; Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity, vol. 1, trans. Jonathan S. Rose (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2006), §281. 20. Quoted in the introduction written by Thomas Hartley, in Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell; Also, the Intermediate State, or World of Spirits; a Relation of Things Heard and Seen (London: Swedenborg Society, 1885), iv, vii, xi. 21. James Reed, Swedenborg and the New Church (Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Co., 1880), 16. 22. Lamm, Emanuel Swedenborg: The Development of His Thought, 214, 223. 23. Gottlieb Florschütz, “Swedenborg’s Hidden Influence on Kant,” The New Philosophy (1993–1996): 96–99. See also Gregory R. Johnson, A Commentary on Kant’s Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (Dissertation: The Catholic University of America, 1999); Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Spirit Seer and Other Related Writings (New York: Vintage Press, 1969); Richard Smoley, “The Inner Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg,” in Scribe of Heaven: Swedenborg’s Life, Work, and Impact (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2005). 24. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 28–29. In his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer (1766), Kant rejected the claims and mocked Swedenborg in very demeaning terms. Strangely, however, Kant again reversed himself, and in students’ notes taken during Kant’s lectures, which lasted until 1793, the philosopher’s tone is much more conciliatory and even complimentary. According to Gregory R. Johnson, the hostility evident in Kant’s book could actually have been the author “simply dissembling his interest in Swedenborg in order to avoid the censorship and persecution that could be expected from an endorsement of Swedenborg’s controversial and heretical ideas.” This could

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explain the difference between Kant’s public and more private thoughts on the matter. See also Gregory R. Johnson, review of Swedenborg’s Hidden Influence on Kant: Swedenborg and Occult Phenomena in the View of Kant and Schopenhauer by Gottlieb Florschütz, Journal of Scientific Exploration 13 (1999): 547. 25. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 94–95. 26. See Dante Alighiere, The Inferno (Edinburg: David Douglas, 1833); John Milton, Paradise Lost (Cambridge: The University Press, 1907). 27. Van Dusen, The Presence of Other Worlds, 71–74. 28. William H. Holcombe, Our Children in Heaven (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1868), 107. 29. James Reed, Swedenborg and the New Church, 102–103, 116. The Rev. Frank Sewall, president of the Swedenborg Scientific Association of Philadelphia, addressed Swedenborg’s distinct and unique contributions to philosophy and what may be called his enlarged “weltanschauung” that posited a world of spirits intermediate between God as infinite spirit and nature as finite creation; between God as end and nature as effect. The relationship was similar to that of the soul in a rational man to the individual’s physical body. See Frank Sewall, “Comments,” Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, 10 (London: Swedenborg Society, 1912), 137–38. 30. Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, trans. George F. Dole (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2000), §457. See also §445–450 for a description of the awakening process. 31. Emanuel Swedenborg, Life on Other Planets, trans. John Chadwick (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2006), §4–5. 32. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, §54. See also Ulrich Simon, Heaven in the Christian Tradition (London: Salisbury Square, 1958). 33. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, §547–548, 561, 584–585. 34. Kant, Dreams of a Spirit Seer and Other Related Writings, 82. 35. Read (for example) Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954); Helen Keller, Light in My Darkness (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1994). 36. Ernst Benz, “Spiritual Vision and Revelation,” trans. Alfred Heron, The New Philosophy Online, http://www.thenewphilosophyonline.org/journal/article.php?page= 1013&issue=103; Taylor, A Psychology of Spiritual Healing, 92, 164, 168, 173. 37. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, §94, 96 38. Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven, vol. 1, trans. Lisa Hyatt Cooper (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2008), §637 39. David Loy, “The Dharma of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Buddhist Perspective,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 16 (1996): 24. 40. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, §89. 41. Antoine Faivre and Jacob Needleman, eds., Modern Esoteric Spirituality (New York: Crossroads, 1992), xi–xvii; Hugo L. Odhner, Principles of the New Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Bryn Athyn, PA: Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1986), 22. 42. Simon, Heaven in the Christian Tradition, xii. See also C. Rider Smith, The Bible Doctrine of the Hereafter (London: Epworth Press, 1958). 43. Carolyn A. Blackmer, “Psychological Basis of Swedenborg’s Spiritual World

Endnotes to Chapter 2  245

Experiences,” Studia Swedenborgiana 1, no. 3 (1975): http://www.baysidechurch.org/ studia/default.asp?ArticleID=13&VolumeID=3&AuthorID=5&detail=1 44. Swedenborg, True Christianity, §192. 45. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg: A Biography, 86. 46. James Reed, “Swedenborg’s Teaching on the Divinity and Humanity of Jesus Christ,” Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, 10 (London: Swedenborg Society, 1912), 241–42; Taylor, A Psychology of Spiritual Healing, 30, 32. 47. Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia, vol. 8 (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1995), §6597. 48. Emanuel Swedenborg, Apocalypse Revealed, trans. John Whitehead. 2 vols. (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1997). 49. Emanuel Swedenborg, The Five Ages: Swedenborg’s View of Spiritual History, ed. P. L. Johnson (London: Swedenborg Society, 2008). 50. Emanuel Swedenborg, Last Judgment and Babylon Destroyed, in Miscellaneous Theological Works, trans. John Whitehead (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1996). 51. Swedenborg, The Five Ages, 192–193. 52. Swedenborg Foundation, http://www.swedenborg.com/AboutSwedenborgKeyConcepts. 53. Tafel, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:282–83. 54. Olaf Ekebom, “Charges Against Swedenborg, March 22, 1769,” in Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:287–88. 55. Andrew John Aurell, “Letter of Assessor Aurell to Bishop Filenius,” in Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:312. 56. Gabriel A. Beyer, “Dr. Beyer’s Defence,” in Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 2:328–29, 338. 57. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 31–32. 58. Swedenborg quoted in Frank Sewall, Swedenborg and the ‘Sapientia Angelica’ (London: Constable, 1910), 35. 59. Kant, Dreams of a Spirit Seer and Other Related Writings, 101. 60. Benz, “Spiritual Vision and Revelation,” http://www.thenewphilosophyonline. org/journal/article.php?page=1013&issue=103 ; Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg, 216–17. 61. Gregory R. Johnson, introduction to Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a SpiritSeer and Other Writings (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation 2002), xvi–xix. 62. Benz, “Spiritual Vision and Revelation,” http://www.thenewphilosophyonline. org/journal/article.php?page=1013&issue=103 63. Benz, “Spiritual Vision and Revelation,” http://www.thenewphilosophyonline. org/journal/article.php?page=1013&issue=103 64. Quoted in Benz, “Spiritual Vision and Revelation,” http://www.thenewphilosophyonline.org/journal/article.php?page=1013&issue=103; Ernst Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg, 203–204, 521–23. 65. Block, The New Church in the New World, 57. 66. Block, The New Church in the New World, 58–60. 67. Sewall, Swedenborg and the ‘Sapientia Angelica,’ 116–17.

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68. Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late 18th Century England,” 67, 69. 69. Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late 18th Century England,” 75–77. 70. Reed, Swedenborg and the New Church, 8. 71. For an interesting correlation of Methodism, madness, and religious enthusiasm read Jonathan Andrews and Andrew Scull, Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). The author’s chapter on religion and madness provides an important perspective on understanding post-Restoration England when the Newtonian and Cartesian underpinnings of the Scientific Revolution brought heightened skepticism to bear on the spiritual transports and evangelism of the Methodists. With religious enthusiasm identified increasingly with fanaticism, England’s mad-doctors became part of a campaign to police religious sectarians who were seen as a threat to the body politic. Almost 10 percent of the patients in Bethlem Hospital at Moorfields in the 1780s were confined because of their religious enthusiasm, an eccentric condition reputedly improved by appropriate purging and bloodletting. 72. Wesley quoted in Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late 18th Century England,” 79. 73. Block, The New Church in the New World, 52–53. 74. Synnestvedt, The Essential Swedenborg, 34–35. 75. Block, The New Church in the New World, 61. 76. Block, The New Church in the New World, 65–66. 77. R. R. Rodgers, “Swedenborg, the Philosopher and Theologian,” in Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, 280. 78. Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion, vol. 2, trans. John C. Ager (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1996), §779. 79. Freda G. Griffith, The Swedenborg Society, 1810–1960 (London: Bloomsbury Way, 1960), 4. In 1840, J. J. G. Wilkinson became librarian for the society. 80. Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late 18th Century England,” 72–74. 81. Charles Arthur Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” Church History 6 (1937): 212. 82. Block, The New Church in the New World, 76–78. 83. Block, The New Church in the New World, 93–100. 84. Block, The New Church in the New World, 84–88. 85. Block, The New Church in the New World, 55. 86. Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” 209. 87. Block, The New Church in the New World, 79–80. 88. Block, The New Church in the New World, 100–111. 89. Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” 212–213. 90. Block, The New Church in the New World, 119–21. 91. Block, The New Church in the New World, 121–22. 92. Block, The New Church in the New World, 123. 93. Rodgers, “Swedenborg, the Philosopher and Theologian,” 282–83.

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94. Swedenborg, Apocalypse Revealed, §82. 95. Sewall, Swedenborg and the ‘Sapientia Angelica,’ 118–19. 96. Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” 210. 97. Henry James Sr., Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the Earnest of God’s Omnipotence in Human Nature: Affirmed in Letters to a Friend (Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Co., 1879), 64–70. 98. Frederick C. Dahlstrand, Amos Bronson Alcott; An Intellectual Biography (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982), 271–97. 99. Tim Martin, “Swedenborgianism,” http://www.watchman.org/profile/swedenborgpro.htm; see also Tim Martin, “Swedenborgianism,” The Watchman Expositor, 16 (1999). 100. Block, The New Church in the New World, 10–11. 101. Herbert W. Schneider, A History of American Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 285. 102. James, Society the Redeemed Form of Man, 264. 103. Robert C. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 49. 104. Perry Miller, “Jonathan Edwards to Emerson, New England Quarterly 13 (1900): 598. Woodbridge Riley, American Thought: From Puritanism to Pragmatism and Beyond (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1959), 28–36. 105. Miller, “Jonathan Edwards to Emerson,” 602. 106. Rufus Suter, “An American Pascal: Jonathan Edwards,” Scientific Monthly 65 (1949): 338–42.

Chapter 3 1. Garrett, “Swedenborg and the Mystical Enlightenment in Late 18th Century England,” 67, 69. 2. Block, The New Church in the New World, 52–53. 3. Martha Baldwin, “Magnetism and the Anti-Copernican Polemic,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 16 (1985): 155–74; Margaret J. Osler, ed., Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 231–32. 4. Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind Body Medicine (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), 39; George Sandby, Mesmerism and Its Opponents (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844), 154–55. 5. Ernst Benz, Theology of Electricity: On the Encounter and Explanation of Theology and Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1989), 5–23; H. C. Erik Midelfort, Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of Eighteenth Century Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Adam Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 4, 6, 9. 6. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:44–45; Frank Podmore, From Mesmer to Christian Science: A Short History of Mental Healing (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963), 55–60; Vincent Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna: Franz Anton Mesmer (New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1975), 20–21.

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7. Michael E. Stone, “Mesmer and His Followers: The Beginnings of Sympathetic Treatment of Childhood Emotional Disorders,” History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974): 663. 8. Franz Hartmann, The Life and the Doctrines of Phillippus Theophrastus, Bombast of Hohenheim, Known by the Name of Paracelsus (New York: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1910), 348. 9. Harry Whitaker, C. U. M. Smith, and Stanley Finger, Brain, Mind and Medicine: Essays in Eighteenth Century Neuroscience (New York: Springer, 2007). See also MichelAugustin Thouret, Recherches et dontes sur le Magnétisme Animal (Paris: Chez Prault, 1784); Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 61–66. 10. Fred Kaplan, “‘The Mesmeric Mania’: The Early Victorians and Animal Magnetism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974): 691–93; Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 67, 86–87. See also Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); Margaret L. Goldsmith, Franz Anton Mesmer: The History of an Idea (London: A. Barker, 1934); D. M. Walmsley, Anton Mesmer (London: Hale, 1967). 11. Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 99–100; John S. Haller Jr., American Medicine in Transition, 1840–1910 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 100–104; Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:52–54. D’Eslon would eventually establish his own Parisian clinique in competition with that of Mesmer. 12. Benz, The Theology of Electricity, 13–23; Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:55, 73–75, 78. See also Rapport des commissaries chargés par le Roi de l’examen du Magnétisme Animal (Paris: De l’Imprimerie Royal, 1784). In 1831, a second French Commission report was published that gave recognition to the peculiar trance state called somnambulism and the power of the somnambulant to make predictions based on the power of suggestion. The Commission’s work on somnambulic trances, along with other studies made of animal magnetism and its derivatives, looked to the natural sciences for physical forces to explain the phenomena. 13. Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 28–29; Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:56–57. 14. Slater Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1970), 1–6, 8, 20–24; Peter McCandless, “Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston: ‘Enough of the Marvellous,’” Journal of Southern History 58 (1992): 202; Marquis de Puységur Chastenet, Mémoires pour server à l’historie du magnétisme animal (Paris: Dentu, 1784). 15. See Henri Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York: Basic Books, 1970). 16. Geoffrey Sutton, “Electric Medicine and Mesmerism,” Isis 72 (1981): 392. 17. See Goldsmith, Franz Anton Mesmer: The History of an Idea. 18. Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism, 4–5; Robert C. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 11; Benjamin Douglas Perkins, The Influence of Metallic Tractors on the Human Body (London: J. Johnson, 1798); Jacques M. Quen, “Elisha Perkins, Physician, Nostrum-Vendor, or Charlatan?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 37 (1963): 159–66; Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 117–20; Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 46–53. 19. Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism, 5–7; see J. P. F. Deluze, Practical Instructions

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in Animal Magnetism, 2nd ed. (New York: Samuel Wells, 1879); Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 116–18. 20. See Charles Poyen, A Letter to Col. William Stone of New York (Boston: Weeks, Jordan, and Co., 1837). 21. Read Poyen’s personal account in his Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England (Boston: Weeks, Jourdan, and Co., 1837), 63. 22. T. M. Parssinen, “Popular Science and Society: The Phrenological Movement in Early Victorian Britain,” Journal of Social History 8 (1974): 1–3; Stanley Finger, Minds Behind the Brain; a History of the Pioneers and Their Discoveries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 119–36. 23. G. N. Cantor, “The Edinburgh Phrenology Debate: 1803–1828,” Annals of Science 32 (1975): 197. See Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspr Spurzheim, Anatomie et physiologie du systême nerveux en général, et du cerveau en particulier, avec des observations sur la possibilité de reconnaítre plusieurs dispositions intellectuelles et morales de l’homme et des animaux, par la configuration de leurs têtes (Paris: Shoell, 1810–19). 24. George Combe, Notes on the United States of America During a Phrenological Visit in 1838–1839–1840 (Edinburgh: MacLachlan, Steward, and Co., 1841), 1:148, 2:70–84; Anthony A. Walsh, “Phrenology and the Boston Medical Community in the 1830s,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 50 (1976): 261–73; McCandless, “Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston,” 204–205. According to Robert C. Fuller, the New York publishers Orson Fowler, Lorenzo Fowler, and Samuel R. Wells were “metaphysical dilettantes” who dabbled in a broad spectrum of activities, including Spiritualism, Grahamism, mesmerism, vegetarianism, phrenology, and hydropathy. They served as willing conduits for unorthodox medical systems and, in the process, advanced an intellectual synthesis of science and religion that belied their many trenchant differences. See Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 28–29; Owsei Temkin, “Materialism in French and German Physiology of the Early Nineteenth Century,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 20 (1946): 322–27. 25. Parssinen, “Popular Science and Society: The Phrenological Movement in Early Victorian Britain,” 5. See also George Combe, Essays on Phrenology (Edinburgh: Bell and Bradfute, 1819); George Combe, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (Boston: W. D. Tichnor, 1855); and George Combe, Moral Philosophy; Or, the Duties of Man Considered in His Individual, Social and Domestic Capacities (Edinburgh: MacLachlan, Stewart, and Co., 1840). 26. Parssinen, “Popular Science and Society: The Phrenological Movement in Early Victorian Britain,” 6. 27. Parssinen, “Popular Science and Society: The Phrenological Movement in Early Victorian Britain,” 4; Earl A. Walker, “The Development of the Concept of Cerebral Localization in the Nineteenth Century,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 31 (1957): 99–121. 28. David Bakan, “The Influence of Phrenology on American Psychology,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2 (1966): 200–203; Anthony A. Walsh, “The American Tour of Dr. Spurzheim,” Journal of the History of Medicine 27 (1972): 187–205; Walsh, “Phrenology and the Boston Medical Community in the 1830s,” 261–73. 29. William H. Cook, “Connection Between Phrenology and Physic,” American Medical and Surgical Journal 1 (1851): 13, 16.

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30. McCandless, “Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston,” 199–230. Read also Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls; and John D. Davies, Phrenology: Fad and Science: A Nineteenth Century American Crusade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955). 31. Parssinen, “Popular Science and Society: The Phrenological Movement in Early Victorian Britain,” 13–14. 32. George Rosen, “John Elliotson; Physician and Hypnotist,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 4 (1936): 600–603; Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 210. 33. John Elliotson, Numerous Cases of Surgical Operations in the Mesmeric State Without Pain (London: H. Baillière, 1843). 34. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:129; Robert Collyer, The Manual of Phrenology (Dayton: B. F. Ellis, 1838). 35. Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism, 117–18, 118–19, 121–22; Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:156–57; La Roy Sunderland, Pathetism; With Practical Instructions (New York: P. P. Good, 1843). 36. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 28–29. See also Robert H. Collyer, Mysteries of the Vital Element: In Connection with Dreams, Somnambulism, Trance, Vital Photography, Faith and Will, Anesthesia, Nervous Congestion and Creative Functions: Modern Spiritualism Explained (London: Henry Renshaw, 1871), 92–110; Robert H. Collyer, Lights and Shadows of American Life (Boston: Brainard and Co., 1838). 37. Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism, 18; James Stanley Grimes, New System of Phrenology (Buffalo, NY: Oliver G. Steele, 1839); John Bovee Dods, Spirit Manifestation Examined and Explained (New York: Davenport, 1854); David Chapin, Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 48. 38. John Humphrey Noyes, The History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1870), 84. Robert Dale Owen, who helped to found the community at New Harmony, became an early believer in Buchanan’s theories on the nervous fluid and his discovery that through the laying on of hands, this fluid could pass from one person to another to produce both physical and mental effects. Like his father, Owen was a religious skeptic who eventually turned to Spiritualism. See John Humphrey Noyes, The Berean: A Manual for the Help of Those Who Seek the Faith of the Primitive Church (Putney, VT: Office of the Spiritual Magazine, 1847), 72–78. 39. “Periscope: Joseph Rodes Buchanan, M.D.,” Eclectic Medical Journal 90 (1930): 524; Joseph R. Buchanan, “The First Number,” Journal of Man 1 (1849): 3–4; Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 226–27. 40. Joseph R. Buchanan, “Psychometry,” Journal of Man 1 (1849): 53–54; Joseph R. Buchanan, Manual of Psychometry: The Dawn of a New Civilization (Boston: Holman Brothers, 1885), 3–4, 8–10, 21–23. 41. Buchanan, Manual of Psychometry: The Dawn of a New Civilization, 192–93; Joseph R. Buchanan, Therapeutic Sarcognomy. The Application of Sarcognomy, the Science of the Soul, Brain and Body, to the Therapeutic Philosophy and Treatment of Bodily and Mental Diseases by Means of Electricity, Nervaura, Medicine and Haemospasia, with a Review of Authors on Animal Magnetism and Massage, and Presentation of New Instruments for Electro-Therapeutics (Boston: J. G. Cupples Co., 1891), 66–72, 307. 42. Joseph R. Buchanan, “Introductory Lecture,” Eclectic Medical Journal 1 (1853): 1.

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See also Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 53, 55, 65–67; Chapin, Exploring Other Worlds, 93. 43. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:156; see Joseph Buchanan, Outlines of Lectures on the Neurological System of Anthropology (Cincinnati: Buchanan’s Journal of Man, 1854). 44. “Present State of Medical Science,” Journal of Man 1 (1849): 446. 45. Robert Hare quoted in “The Spirit World,” Journal of Man 5 (1855): 332. 46. Buchanan, Therapeutic Sarcognomy, 55, 19; Joseph R. Buchanan, “Notices,” Journal of Man 2 (1850): 620. 47. See Joseph Rodes Buchanan, Primitive Christianity. 2 vols. (San Jose, CA: selfpublished, 1897–98). 48. McCandless, “Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston,” 228–29. 49. Kaplan, “‘The Mesmeric Mania’: The Early Victorians and Animal Magnetism,” 702. 50. James Braid, Neurypnology; Or, the Rationale of Nervous Sleep (London: John Churchill, 1843). 51. A. A. Liébeault, Du sommeil et des états analogues (Paris: Masson, 1866); Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 155–56, 278–79. 52. Ilza Veith, “From Mesmerism to Hypnotism,” Modern Medicine (1959): 195–205; Kaplan, “The Mesmeric Mania: the Early Victorians and Animal Magnetism,” 697; John Elliotson, Human Physiology, 5th ed. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1840), 680–81. 53. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 57, 126. 54. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:67. See also Alexandre Bertrand, Traité du Somnambulisme (Paris: Dentu, 1823); Alexandre Bertrand, Du Magnétisme Animal en France (Paris: J. B. Baillière, 1826); Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, 54–60; Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 164–68, 319–25. 55. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:95. 56. Carl Kluge, Versuch einer Darstellung des animalischen Magnetismus, als Heilmittel (Vienna: Franz Haas, 1815); H. M. Wesermann, Der Magnetismus und die allgemeine Weltsprache (Kreveld: J. H. Funcke, 1822); Arnold Wienholt, Seven Lectures on Somnambulism (Edinburgh: Black, 1846). 57. John Heinrich Jung-Stilling, Theory of Pneumatology, trans. Samuel Jackson (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1854), 230. 58. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 72, 78–81. 59. Tafel, Documents Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg, 134; Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 90.

Chapter 4 1. The English historian and traveler William Hepworth Dixon (1821–1879) identified western New York as the “Burnt District” because of its revivals and reform gatherings. See John Leland Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism (New York: Abingdon Press, 1956); Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 267. Also read Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America From the Revolution to the Civil War (New York:

252  Endnotes to Chapter 3

Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), chapters 1–3; Stow Persons, American Minds: A History of Ideas (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958), 174–77; Timothy Merritt, The Christian’s Manual: A Treatise on Christian Perfection (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1836); Phoebe Palmer, The Way of Holiness, With Notes by the Way; Being a Narrative of Religious Experience Resulting from a Determination to be a Bible Christian (New York: Printed for the Author, 1854). 2. Charles Eliot Norton, ed., Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834–1872 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1897), 1:308. Read also Ronald G. Waters, American Reformers, 1815–1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); and Edward Pessen, Most Uncommon Jacksonians (Albany: SUNY Press, 1967). 3. Carl J. Guarneri, “Reconstructing the Antebellum Communitarian Movement: Oneida and Fourierism,” Journal of the Early Republic 16 (1996): 468. See also Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States; From Personal Visit and Observation: Including Detailed Accounts of the Economists, Zoarites, Shakers, the Amana, Oneida, Bethel, Aurora, Icarian, and Other Existing Societies, Their Religious Creeds, Social Practices, Numbers, Industries, and Present Condition (New York: Harper and Brothers, Publishers, 1875). 4. Noyes, The Berean: A Manual for the Help of those who Seek the Faith of the Primitive Church, 52. 5. Noyes, The Berean: A Manual for the Help of those who Seek the Faith of the Primitive Church, 54, 65. 6. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 3–10. 7. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 17–18, 24, 655. 8. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 25, 27. 9. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 538. 10. John Humphrey Noyes, Alfred Barron, and George Noyes Miller, Home-Talks (Oneida, N.Y.: Published by the Community, 1875), 251. 11. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 540. 12. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 342. 13. Robert Owen, The Book of the New Moral Order, Containing the Rational System of Society, Founded on Demonstrable Facts, Developing the Constitution and Laws of Human Nature and of Society (Glasgow: H. Robinson and Co., 1840), iii, vii, 33; Rowland Hill Harvey, Robert Owen; Social Idealist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), 213–19. 14. Harvey, Robert Owen; Social Idealist, 95–99. 15. Richard W. Leopold, Robert Dale Owen, a Biography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1940), 42; George B. Lockwood and Charles A. Prosser, The New Harmony Movement (New York: Appleton, 1905), 105; Robert Owen, The Life of Robert Owen by Himself (London: Effingham Wilson, 1857–58), 22; Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 192; Anne Taylor, Visions of Harmony: A Study in Nineteenth Century Millenarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Frank Podmore, Robert Owen; A Biography (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1971), 1:285–324; Robert Dale Owen, Threading My Way; an Autobiography (New York: A. M. Kelley, 1967); John Duss, The Harmonists: A Personal History (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1972).

Endnotes to Chapter 4  253

16. Podmore, Robert Owen; A Biography, 1:325–462; Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 196–211. See also Paul Brown, Twelve Months in New Harmony (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1972); Robert Bruce Taylor, Communistic Societies in America (New York: Scriber, 1913); Mark Holloway, Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America, 1680–1880 (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 88–116. 17. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 91. 18. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 61–62. 19. J. F. C. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World; Robert Owen and the Owenites in Britain and America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969), 176–85. 20. Quoted in Frank Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, 2:18–19; Podmore, Robert Owen; A Biography, 2:600–614. 21. Robert Dale Owen, “Some Results from My Spiritual Studies. A Chapter of Autobiography,” Atlantic Monthly 24 (1874): 722; Robert Dale Owen, The Debatable Land Between This World and the Next (London: Trubner, 1871); Robert Dale Owen, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1860). 22. Charles Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements (New York: Gordon Press, 1972); M. C. Spencer, Charles Fourier (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981), 15–16; Jonathan Beecher, Charles Fourier; The Visionary and His World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 15–56, 161–75. Muiron espoused the writings of Swedenborg and often urged Fourier to seek verification of his own ideas in those of the Swede. 23. Spencer, Charles Fourier, 60–75, 153; Beecher, Charles Fourier; The Visionary and His World, 66, 346–52. 24. J. F. C., “Fourierism,” The Christian Examiner and Religious Miscellany 37 (1844): 57–78. In an unpublished manuscript titled Le Nouveau monde amoureux (The New Amorous World) written in 1818, Fourier provided a much more erotic interpretation of life within the phalanx, including a guaranteed minimum of sexual pleasures. See Oeuvres complètes de Charles Fourier, (Paris: 1966–68), 7:438-45; Jonathan Beecher, “Parody and Liberation in ‘The New Amorous World’ of Charles Fourier,” History Workshop 20 (1985): 125–33. 25. Albert Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man: or, Association and Reorganization of Industry (Philadelphia: C. F. Stollmeyer, 1840), 282. 26. Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man, 37, 82–83. 27. Redelia Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, A Mental Biography with a Character Study by His Wife Redelia Brisbane (New York: Burt Franklin, 1969), 73, 83. 28. Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, A Mental Biography, 150. 29. See Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, A Mental Biography, 196–205; Albert Brisbane, Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1844); and Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man. 30. Quoted in Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 204–205; Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 32–33, 36–39, 42–44. 31. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, 174–218; Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 194–95, 197. 32. Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man, 26, 34–35; Holloway, Heavens on Earth, 136–41.

254  Endnotes to Chapter 4

33. Arthur E. Bestor Jr., “Albert Brisbane, Propagandist for Socialism in the 1840s,” New York History (April 1947), 128–58. 34. Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man, viii, 98–100. 35. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, 85–86, 104–106, 109–110; Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 206. 36. Adin Ballou and William Sweetzer Heywood, The History of the Hopedale Community, From its Inception to Its Virtual Submergence in the Hopedale Parish (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1972); Adin Ballou and William Sweetzer Heywood, Autobiography of Adin Ballou, 1803–1890 Containing an Elaborate Record and Narrative of His Life from Infancy to Old Age (Lowell, MA: Vox Populi Press, 1896); Holloway, Heavens on Earth, 124–25. 37. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, The Teaching of Charles Fourier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); Bestor, “Albert Brisbane, Propagandist for Socialism in the 1840s,” 148; Carl J. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” Church History 52 (1983): 38–39. 38. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” 39. 39. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” 42. 40. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” 40; Parke Godwin, A Popular View of the Doctrines of Charles Fourier (New York: AMS Press, 1974). 41. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” 36–37. 42. Henry James Sr., The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1885), 324. 43. Giles Gunn, “Henry James, Senior: American Eccentric or American Original?” Journal of Religion 54 (1974): 225. 44. Henry James Sr., What Constitutes the State? (New York: J. Allen, 1846), 17. 45. Quoted in Rollo Ogden, ed., Life and Letters of Edwin Lawrence Godkin (New York: McMillan Co., 1907), 2:117–18. 46. Charles Eliot Norton, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton with Biographical Comment by his Daughter Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 2:379. 47. Charles J. Hempel, The True Organization of the New Church, as Indicated in the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, and Demonstrated by Charles Fourier (New York: AMS Press, 1972), 12, 13, 18, 28; Block, The New Church in the New World, 154–55. 48. Hempel, The True Organization of the New Church, 12, 14, 17. 49. Hempel, The True Organization of the New Church, 23–24. 50. Hempel, The True Organization of the New Church, 24, 34–35, 283, 290. 51. Hempel, The True Organization of the New Church, 444–45, 453. 52. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” 40. 53. Quoted in Paul Kagan, New World Utopias: A Photographic History of the Search for Community (New York: Penguin Books, 1975), 19; Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 574–76.

Endnotes to Chapter 4  255

54. Block, The New Church in the New World, 138. 55. Block, The New Church in the New World, 140–41. Read also Arthur A. Cuthbert, The Life and World-Work of Thomas Lake Harris (Glasgow: C. W. Pearce and Co., 1909). 56. Read Thomas Lake Harris, The Arcana of Christianity: An Unfolding of the Celestial Sense of the Divine Word (New York: AMS Press, 1976); W. P. Swainson, Thomas Lake Harris and His Occult Teaching (London: William Rider and Son, 1922); Herbert W. Schneider and George Lawton, A Prophet and a Pilgrim (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942). 57. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 591. 58. Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” 214. 59. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 550. 60. Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” 216, 220. 61. Hawley, “Swedenborgianism and the Frontier,” 217. 62. Guarneri, “The Associationists: Forging a Christian Socialism in Antebellum America,” 48. 63. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 548–49, 589. 64. William Ellery Channing, “Likeness to God,” The Works of William Ellery Channing (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1903), 3:228. Read also Katherine Burton, Paradise Planters, The Story of Brook Farm (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1939). 65. Quoted in Edward W. Emerson, ed., Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1903–04), 1:122. 66. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Man the Reformer,” Dial 1 (1841): 530; Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation, Self Reliance and Other Essays (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1907). 67. Clarence Paul Hotson, “A Background for Emerson’s Poem ‘Grace,’” New England Quarterly 1 (1928): 124–32. 68. Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Transcendentalism in New England (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1880), chapter 9. Frothingham called Emerson “The Seer.” 69. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1892), 324. 70. Miller, “Jonathan Edwards to Emerson,” 591, 593; Riley, American Thought: From Puritanism to Pragmatism and Beyond, 165–71; Arthur Christy, The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A Study of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 73–78; Richard G. Geldard, The Esoteric Emerson; The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), 53–54, 58. 71. H. C. Goddard, Studies in New England Transcendentalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), 104; L. F. Hite, Swedenborg’s Historical Position (Boston: Massachusetts New Church Union, 1928), 158. 72. Emerson, Representative Men, 93. 73. Emerson, Representative Men, 142; Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, 47–49. 74. Anne Rose, Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981); Tamara Plakins Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life Among the Boston Elite, 1785–1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 114–15; Henry L. Golemba, George Ripley (Boston: Twayne, 1977); Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative.

256  Endnotes to Chapter 4

75. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, “Fourierism,” Dial 4 (1844): 473; Lindsay Smith, Brook Farm, Its Members, Scholars, and Visitors (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1900), 270–71. 76. Peabody, “Fourierism,” 483. 77. Charles R. Crowe, “The Unnatural Union of Phalansteries and Transcendentalists,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 495–502. 78. Read Sterling Delano, The Harbinger and New England Transcendentalism: A Portrait of Associationism in America (Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983); Charles R. Crowe, “Fourierism and the Founding of Brook Farm,” Boston Public Library Quarterly (1960). 79. Marianne Dwight Orvis and Amy Louise Reed, Letters from Brook Farm, 1844– 1847 (Poughkeepsie, NY: Vassar College, 1928), 73. 80. William Henry Channing, “To the Associationists of the United States,” Harbinger 13 (1846): 16. 81. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 538–39. 82. William Henry Channing quoted in Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 535. 83. William R. Hutchison, The Transcendentalist Ministers; Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 169–71; T. D. Seymour Bassett, “The Secular Utopian Socialists,” in Donald D. Egbert and Stow Persons, eds., Socialism and American Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 1:176–80. 84. Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, A Mental Biography, 218–19. 85. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 540. 86. Godwin quoted in Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 541. 87. Doherty quoted in Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 542–43. 88. See David Robinson, The Unitarians and Universalists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985). 89. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:209–210. 90. Raymond J. Cunningham, “From Holiness to Healing: The Faith Cure in America, 1872–1892,” Church History 43 (1974): 499–513. See also Peters, Christian Perfection and American Methodism; William E. Boardman, Faith Work under Dr. Cullis in Boston (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1874); Charles Cullis, Other Faith Cures: Or, Answers to Prayer in the Healing of the Sick (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1885); and John W. Conley, Divine Healing and Doctors; What Says the Bible? An Examination of the Attitude of the Biblical Writers Toward the Use of Medicines and the Employment of Physicians (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1898). 91. Read Daniel Aaron, Men of Good Hope: A Story of American Progressives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), 3–20, 55–91, 92–132.

Chapter 5 1. Ernest Isaacs, “The Fox Sisters and American Spiritualism,” in The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives, ed. Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow, 79–110 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983).

Endnotes to Chapter 5  257

2. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, 2:349–50. 3. George Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death: a Study of the Spiritualist Religion (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1932); E. Douglas Branch, The Sentimental Years, 1836–1860 (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1934). 4. R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 10. See also Howard Kerr, Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature, 1850–1900 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1972). 5. Chapin, Exploring Other Worlds, 43–45, 99; R. Laurence Moore, “Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings,” American Quarterly 24 (1972): 478; John B. Wilson, “Emerson and the ‘Rochester Rappings,’” The New England Quarterly 41 (1968): 248; Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. B. Ford and Co., 1869), 234–41; William Alexander Linn, Horace Greeley: Founder and Editor of the New York Tribune (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1903), 90; Reuben Briggs Davenport, The Death-Blow to Spiritualism, Being the True Story of the Fox Sisters, as Revealed by Authority of Margaret Fox Kane and Catherine Fox Jencken (New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1888); Herbert G. Jackson Jr., The Spirit Rappers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1972), 1–12, 76–87. 6. Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 218–19; Ruth Brandon, The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), 6–8, 11; Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism, 98–125; Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 207–210; Chapin, Exploring Other Worlds, 47–48. 7. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 29–30, 45; Brandon, The Spiritualists, 19–23. 8. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:191; Uriah Clark, Plain Guide to Spiritualism, A Handbook for Skeptics, Inquirers, etc. (Boston: William White and Co., 1863), 27–28; Lawton, The Drama of Life After Death, A Study of the Spiritualist Religion, 292–93. 9. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 51–53; Rossell Hope Robins, “The Rochester Rappings,” Dalhousie Review 45 (1965): 153–64. 10. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:184–85. For a strong critique of mediumship, read Orestes Brownson, The Spirit-Rapper: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1854); Eliab Wilkinson Capron, Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanaticisms, Its Consistencies and Contradictions (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1855); Emma Hardinge Britten, Modern American Spiritualism: a Twenty Years’ Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits (New York: The Author, 1870). 11. Andrew Jackson Davis, The Great Harmonia; Being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe (Boston: Mussey and Company, 1850), 1:26, 31. See also Andrew Jackson Davis, The Magic Staff; An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis (New York: A. J. Davis and Co., 1864). 12. Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind (Boston: William White and Company, 1871), x–xi, xiii. See also Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 97–100. 13. Davis, The Magic Staff; An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis, 239.

258  Endnotes to Chapter 5

14. “Andrew Jackson Davis Biography,” Spiritwritings.com, http://www.spiritwritings.com/andrewjacksondavis.html. 15. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 11. 16. William Fishbough, introduction to The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, By and Through Andrew Jackson Davis (New York: S. S. Lyon and W. Fishbough, 1852), xviii–xix. 17. Noyes, The History of American Socialisms, 539–40. This is not to say, however, that Davis’s representations were the same as Swedenborg, which they certainly were not. Indeed, it appears that Davis had his own theological ideas when it came to the divinity of Christ; accordingly, Bush would eventually break with Davis for having moved too far from Swedenborg. See Block, The New Church in the New World, 137; Crabtree, From Mesmer to Freud, 229–31. 18. George Bush, Memoirs and Reminiscences of the Late George Bush (Boston: s.n., 1860), 15, 129–30. 19. George Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg; Or, the Relation of the Developments of Mesmerism to the Doctrines and Disclosures of Swedenborg (New York: John Allen, 1847), 161. 20. Bush, Mesmer and Swedenborg, 16–17, 19, 137. 21. “Andrew Jackson Davis Biography,” Spiritwritings.com, http://www.spiritwritings.com/andrewjacksondavis.html. 22. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:165–66. 23. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:173–78. 24. “Andrew Jackson Davis Biography,” Spiritwritings.com, http://www.spiritwritings.com/andrewjacksondavis.html. 25. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 98. 26. Davis, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, 675–76. 27. Robert W. Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet of American Spiritualism,” Journal of American History 54 (1967): 46. 28. Quoted in Delp, “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850–1854,” New England Quarterly 53 (1980): 351. See also Davis, The Great Harmonia, Being a Philosophical Revelation of the Natural, Spiritual, and Celestial Universe. 29. Andrew Jackson Davis, The Harmonial Philosophy; A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Seer of Poughkeepsie, Including His Natural and Divine Revelations, Great Harmonia, Spiritual Intercourse, Answers to Ever-Recurring Questions, Inner Life, Summer Land and Heavenly Home, Fountains of New Meanings, Harmonial Man, Death and the After-Life, Spirit Mysteries and Divine Guest (Chicago: Mahendra Publishing Company, 1918), 379–79, 388–93. 30. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:164. 31. Delp, “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850–54,” 349–50. 32. Delp, “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850–54,” 352. 33. Davis, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind,

Endnotes to Chapter 5  259

vi; Andrew Jackson Davis, Death and the After-Life and Views of Our Heavenly Home (Los Angeles, CA The Austin Publishing Co., 1928), 21, 37, 39; Andrew Jackson Davis, Views of Our Heavenly Home. A Sequel to A Stellar Key to the Summer-Land (Rochester, N.Y.: The Austin Publishing Co., 1910), 9, 32, 41, 176–79. 34. Catherine L. Albanese, “On the Matter of Spirit: Andrew Jackson Davis and the Marriage of God and Nature,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60 (1992): 8. 35. Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet of American Spiritualism,” 54. 36. Mary Farrell Bednarowski, “Women in Occult America,” in The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives, 177–95. 37. Moore, “Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings,” 474–75. 38. McCandless, “Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston,” 218–27. 39. “The Professor at the Breakfast Table,” Atlantic Monthly 3 (1859): 90. 40. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903–1904), 7:290. 41. Quoted in Wilson, “Emerson and the ‘Rochester Rappings,’” 252. 42. Quoted in Wilson, “Emerson and the ‘Rochester Rappings,’” 248–58. 43. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Demonology,” North American Review 124 (1877): 190. 44. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 18. 45. Henry James Sr., “Spiritualism, Old and New,” Atlantic Monthly 29 (1872): 360. 46. James Sr., “Spiritualism, Old and New,” 361. 47. Henry James Sr., “Spiritualism: Modern Diabolism,” Atlantic Monthly 32 (1873): 219–24. 48. Moore, “Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of Spirit Rappings,” 484. See also The Pythonism of the Present Day: The Response of the Ministers of the Massachusetts Association of the New Jerusalem to a Resolution of that Association Requesting their Consideration of What is Usually Known as Modern Spiritualism (Boston: G. Phinney, 1858). 49. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, 2:23–24. Read also John W. Edmonds, Letters and Tracts on Spiritualism (London: J. Bums, 1874). 50. Read George Redman, Mystic Hours or Spiritual Experiences (New York: Charles Partridge, 1859); Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, 2:52. 51. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, 2:95. 52. Brown, The Heyday of Spiritualism, 226–48; Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, 2:225. 53. Sir Oliver Lodge, Ether and Reality (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1925), vii, 154, 179. 54. G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1969), 85. 55. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 135–37. 56. Jenny Hazelgrove, Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 13–41; E. S. Turner, Dear Old Blighty (London: Michael Joseph, 1980); Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Frame of Mind (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968); Lawton, The Drama of Life After Death: A Study of the Spiritualist Religion; Rogo, Parapsychology: A Century of Inquiry, 50, 55, 257. 57. Quoted in Buranelli, The Wizard from Vienna, 207. See also Howard Murphet,

260  Endnotes to Chapter 5

When Daylight Comes: A Biography of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1975). 58. Stephen Prothero, “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition,” Religion and American Culture 3 (1993): 200, 202–203. Read also Mary K. Neff, comp., Personal Memoirs of H. P. Blavatsky (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1967), 189–213; Brandon, The Spiritualists, 65. 59. Prothero, “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition,” 203–205; Henry Steel Olcott, Inside the Occult: The True Story of Madame H. P. Blavatsky (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1975), 7–8, 20. 60. H. P. Blavatsky, Personal Memoirs of H. P. Blavatsky (New York: Dutton, 1937), 255–61; Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914, 164–65; 166–69; Robert S. Ellwood Jr., “The American Theosophical Synthesis,” in The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives, 111–34. 61. H. P. Blavatsky, “The First Object of the Theosophical Society,” Theosophical Quarterly 22 (1924): 156; H.P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy (Pasadena, CA: Theosophical University Press, 1946), 27–28, 192–93; Catherine L. Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 275–77. 62. Prothero, “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition,” 208. 63. Prothero, “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition,” 198. 64. Prothero, “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition,” 198–199. For a look at her discussion of Theosophy and Spiritualism, see H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings (Los Angeles, CA: Philosophical Research Society, 1950), 1:36–65; Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, 277. 65. Neff, Personal Memoirs of H. P. Blavatsky, 262­–70; H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1888); Catherine L. Albanese, “The Aura of Wellness: Subtle-Energy Healing and New Age Religion,” Religion and American Culture 10 (2000): 42; H. P. Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy. 66. Catherine L. Albanese, “The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67 (1999): 313. 67. Albanese, “The Aura of Wellness: Subtle-Energy Healing and New Age Religion,” 43–44. 68. Albanese, “The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality,” 314. Leadbeater was a close associate of the reformer and secularist Annie Besant, co-authoring with her Thought Forms, published in 1905. 69. Henry C. Sheldon, Theosophy and New Thought (New York and Cincinnati: The Abingdon Press, 1916), 52–54, 81; Blavatsky, The Key to Theosophy, 22, 26. 70. Quoted in Sheldon, Theosophy and New Thought, 29. 71. Prothero, “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition,” 210. 72. Quoted in Sheldon, Theosophy and New Thought, 33.

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73. Reed Carson, “H.S. Olcott vs. H.P.B.,” Blavatsky Net—Theosophy, http://www. blavatsky.net/theosophy/judge/articles/hsolcott-vs-hpb.htm. See also Henry Steel Olcott, Old Diary Leaves: The True Story of the Theosophical Society (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1895). 74. Mark Bevir, “The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62 (1994): 749. 75. Bevir, “The West Turns Eastward: Madame Blavatsky and the Transformation of the Occult Tradition,” 752, 754, 758. See also H. P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled: A Masterkey to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 2:588. 76. Olcott quoted in Sheldon, Theosophy and New Thought, 16; Sylvia Cranston, H.P.B.: The Extraordinary Life and Influence of Helena Blavatsky (New York: Tarcher/ Putnam, 1993). 77. Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner, An Autobiography (Blauvelt, NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications, 1977), 350, 360–63. 78. Steiner, Rudolf Steiner, An Autobiography, 257, 370–76, 384–88. See also Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of Higher Worlds (New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1970); Robert McDermott, The Essential Steiner (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 3–11. 79. Quoted in Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 138; Renée Haynes, The Society for Psychical Research, 1882–1982 (London: MacDonald and Co., 1982), xiii. 80. Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research, 153–99, 340–55. 81. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 143. 82. Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment, 212, 374–77. See also Geoffrey K. Nelson, Spiritualism and Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969). 83. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:303. 84. Benjamin O. Flower, Progressive Men, Women, and Movements of the Past TwentyFive Years (Boston: The New Arena, 1914), 185–86. 85. Read Davenport, The Death-Blow to Spiritualism. 86. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:xi. 87. Podmore, Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism, 1:xiv. 88. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 28–29. Read Brownson, The Spirit Rapper, an Autobiography. This novel is also a biography explaining the connection between Spiritualism, reformism, and faith. 89. Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914, 62. 90. Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914, 200. 91. Lester Ward, Glimpses of the Cosmos (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), 1:96–98.

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Chapter 6 1. See Sylvester Graham, Lectures on the Science of Human Life (London: Horsell and Shirrefs, 1854); Sylvester Graham, A Lecture to Young Men, on Chastity (Boston: George W. Light, 1838). 2. Phineas P. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, ed. Horatio W. Dresser (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1921), 30. 3. Catherine L. Albanese, “Physic and Metaphysic in Nineteenth Century America: Medical Sectarians and Religious Healing,” Church History 55 (1986): 497–98. 4. Charles S. Braden, Spirits in Rebellion: The Rise and Development of New Thought (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963), 48–49. 5. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 33, 35. 6. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 180, 319. 7. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 60. 8. Horatio W. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1919), 53. 9. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 49–50. 10. Quoted in Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 53–54. 11. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 17. 12. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 44. 13. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 69. 14. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 71. 15. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 42. 16. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 277. 17. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 61. 18. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 14. 19. Quoted in Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 46–47; Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 76–80. 20. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 63. 21. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 68–69. 22. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 381, 389. 23. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 141; see also Block, The New Church in the New World, 167. 24. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 18. 25. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 57. 26. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 118. 27. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 180. 28. Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls, 121. 29. Stewart W. Holmes, “Phineas P. Quimby: Scientist of Transcendentalism,” New England Quarterly 17 (1944): 356–380; Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 86–87. 30. See “Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866): Father of New Thought,” SelfImprovement-eBooks.com, http://phineasquimby.wwwhubs.com; Emma Curtis Hopkins, Esoteric Philosophy in Spiritual Science (Cornwall Bridge, CT: High Watch Fellowship, n.d.); Nona L. Brooks, Basic Truths (Denver: College of Divine Science, 1921); Emilie H. Cady, God a Present Help (New York: Rogers Brothers, 1908). 31. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 290.

Endnotes to Chapter 6  263

32. Quimby, The Quimby Manuscripts, 153–54. 33. Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, 112–13; Fuller, Mesmerism and the Cure of Souls, 137–37; Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, 285–87. 34. Stephen Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2006), 35–36, 73, 267, 281; Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 97–125. 35. Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures (Boston: First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1906), 124. The terms “Christian science” and “divine science” were used interchangeably in the early years before Mrs. Eddy laid claim to the former. Since then, the terms have become more distinct. 36. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, 97–99. 37. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, 423. 38. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, 146. 39. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, 156. 40. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, 157. 41. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, xi. 42. Eddy, Science and Health, With Key to the Scriptures, 73–74. 43. Walter I. Wardwell, “Christian Science Healing,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 4 (1965): 175–181. See also Charles S. Braden, Christian Science Today (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1958); Edwin F. Dakin, Mrs. Eddy: The Biography of a Virginal Mind (New York: Scribners, 1930); R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 105–27. 44. Gottschalk, Rolling Away the Stone, 74–77; Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 27–45. 45. Braden, Spirits in Rebellion, 89–91; Fuller, Mesmerism and the Cure of Souls, 146–49; Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, 303–305; C. Alan Anderson, “The Healing Idealism of P. P. Quimby, W. F. Evans, and the New Thought Movement,” New Thought Movement Home Page, http://www.websyte.com/alan//healism.htm. 46. Warren Felt Evans, The New Age and Its Messenger (Boston: T. H. Carter and Company, 1864), 6, 15. 47. John F. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing: Romantic Idealism and Practical Mysticism in Nineteenth Century America,” Church History 48 (1979): 74; Taylor, A Psychology of Spiritual Healing, 35. 48. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 76. 49. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 71. 50. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 64–65. 51. Warren Felt Evans, The Mental-Cure, Illustrating the Influence of the Mind on the Body, Both in Health and Disease (Boston: Colby and Rich, 1886), 347. 52. Block, The New Church in the New World, 168. 53. Horatio W. Dresser, Health and the Inner Life: An Analytical and Historical Study of Spiritual Healing Theories, With an Account of the Life and Teachings of P. P. Quimby (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), 3, 9–10. 54. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 64. 55. Warren Felt Evans, The Divine Law of Cure (Boston: H. H. Carter and Company,

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1884), 16; Riley, American Thought: From Puritanism to Pragmatism and Beyond, 389–97; Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, 307. 56. Evans, The New Age and Its Messenger, 81–82, 84. 57. Evans, The New Age and Its Messenger, 43–44. 58. Warren Felt Evans, Mental Medicine; A Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Medical Psychology, 15th ed. (Boston: H. H. Carter, 1885), 185. 59. Evans, The Divine Law of Cure, 79. 60. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 68. 61. Warren Felt Evans, The Primitive Mind-Cure: The Nature and Power of Faith; or, Elementary Lessons in Christian Philosophy and Transcendental Medicine (Boston: H. H. Carter and Karrick, 1886), 10. 62. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 73–75. 63. Quoted in Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 67. 64. See Haller, American Medicine in Transition, 1840–1910, chapter 1. 65. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 70. 66. Quoted in Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 81. 67. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 84. 68. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 72. 69. Quoted in Evans, The Divine Law of Cure, 169. 70. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 77–80. 71. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 77. 72. Teahan, “Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing,” 78. 73. See Raymond J. Cunningham, “The Emmanuel Movement: A Variety of American Religious Experience,” American Quarterly 14 (1962): 48–62; Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb, The Christian Religion as a Healing Power: A Defense and Exposition of the Emmanuel Movement (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1909); Persons, American Minds: A History of Ideas, 422–25. 74. See Elwood Worcester, Life’s Adventure: the Story of a Varied Career (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932). 75. See also John G. Greene, “The Emmanuel Movement, 1906–1929,” The New England Quarterly 7 (1934): 495–96. Elwood Worcester and Samuel McComb, Body, Mind and Spirit (Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1931); Elwood Worcester, Samuel McComb and Isador H. Coriat, Religion and Medicine: The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders (New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1908). 76. George Beard, American Nervousness, Its Causes and Consequences: A Supplement to Nervous Exhaustion (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1881), vi–xviii, 96–192; Fuller, Mesmerism and the Cure of Souls, 112–13; John S. Haller Jr., “Neurasthenia: Medical Profession and Urban ‘Blahs,’” New York State Journal of Medicine 70 (October 1, 1970): 2489–97; John S. Haller Jr., “Neurasthenia: The Medical Profession and the ‘New Women’ of the Late 19th Century,” New York State Journal of Medicine 71 (February 15, 1971): 472–82; Janet Oppenheim, “Shattered Nerves”: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 92–93; Thomas S. Dowse, On Brain and Nerve Exhaustion: ‘Neurasthenia.’ Its Nature and Curative Treatment (London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox, 1880), 35; Barbara A. Sichermann, “The Uses of a Diagnosis: Doctors, Patients, and Neurasthenia,” in Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers,

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eds., Sickness and Health in America: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 25. 77. Worcester, McComb, and Coriat, Religion and Medicine: The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders, 170–71; Charles E. Rosenberg, “The Place of George M. Beard in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 34 (1960): 331–54; F. G. Gosling, Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870– 1910 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 9–29; Gregory Zilboorg, Mind, Medicine, and Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1943), 187–224. 78. Worcester, McComb, and Coriat, Religion and Medicine: The Moral Control of Nervous Disorders, 1–4. 79. Lyman P. Powell, The Emmanuel Movement in a New England Town; A Systematic Account of Experiments and Reflections Designed to Determine the Proper Relationship Between the Minister and the Doctor in the Light of Modern Needs (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), 154. 80. Powell, The Emmanuel Movement in a New England Town, 155. 81. Powell, The Emmanuel Movement in a New England Town, 34. 82. John Gardner Green, “The Emmanuel Movement, 1906–1929,” The New England Quarterly 7 (1924): 503. See also Thomas P. Boyd, The How and Why of the Emmanuel Movement: A Hand-Book on Psycho-Therapeutics (San Francisco: The Whitaker and Ray Company, 1909). 83. Cunningham, “The Emmanuel Movement: A Variety of American Religious Experience,” 57. 84. Clyde W. Broomell, ed., Divine Healing: The Origin and Cure of Disease as Taught in the Bible and Explained by Emanuel Swedenborg (Boston: George H. Ellis, Company, 1907), 7–8. 85. Broomell, Divine Healing, 8–9. 86. Broomell, Divine Healing, 10. 87. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 148. In time, mental science societies became the newest “churches” of worship, with silent treatment substituting for prayer. The names given to these independent societies included the Church of the Divine Unity, the Church of the Higher Life, the Procopeia, and the Metaphysical Club (Boston); Higher Thought Centre (England); Circle of Divine Ministry (New York City and Brooklyn); Divine Science (Denver and San Francisco); The Society of Silent Unity and Unity School of Christianity (Kansas City); and the School of Applied Metaphysics (Philadelphia). Others included the Home of Truth in San Francisco and Los Angeles; the Pacific Coast Metaphysical Bureau, latter called the Christian Science Home in California; The Chicago Truth Center; the Missouri College of Divine Science in St. Louis; the Power School of Truth incorporated in 1916 by Charles E. Prather of Denver; the Mental Science Center of Seattle; The Fellowship Society of Portland, Oregon; the League for the Larger Life in New York; Church and School of the New Civilization in Boston, New York, Cleveland, Buffalo, Chicago, Denver, California, and London; the New England Federation of New Thought Centres, of which there were thirty-three; the New Thought Temple Society in Cincinnati, organized by Miss Leila Simon; Order of the White Rose and the College of Divine Sciences and Realization in Cleveland, organized by the Rev. J. F. C. Grumbine; and the Psycho Science Society of

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Cleveland. Eventually, many of these organizations coalesced into the National New Thought Alliance. 88. See Evans, The New Age and Its Messenger; Evans, The Mental-Cure. 89. Ruth C. Engs, The Progressive Era’s Health Reform Movement: A Historical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003), 235. 90. M. Douglas Fox quoted in Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 258. 91. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 260. 92. W. T. Stonestreet, “Indications Confirmatory of a Primal Religion,” Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress Held in Connection with the Celebration of the Swedenborg Society’s Centenary, (London: The Swedenborg Society, 1912), 10:260–61. 93. Stonestreet, “Indications Confirmatory of a Primal Religion,” 264. 94. Flower, Progressive Men, Women, and Movements of the Past Twenty-Five Years, 176–77. 95. Flower, Progressive Men, Women, and Movements of the Past Twenty-Five Years, 178. 96. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 12. 97. Sheldon, Theosophy and New Thought, 139. 98. Sheldon, Theosophy and New Thought, 140. 99. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 226–27. 100. William Walker Atkinson, The Law of the New Thought (Chicago: The Psychic Research Company, 1902), 17. 101. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 324. 102. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 329. 103. Atkinson, The Law of the New Thought, 11, 16. 104. Dresser, A History of the New Thought Movement, 191. 105. Atkinson, The Law of the New Thought, 21–22. 106. Atkinson, The Law of the New Thought, 37.

Chapter 7 1. See Henry M. Pachter, Magic Into Science, The Story of Paracelsus (New York: Henry Schuman, 1951); Walter Pagel, Paracelsus, An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel, Switzerland: S. Karger, 1958); Elizabeth Danciger, Homeopathy, From Alchemy to Medicine (Rochester, VT: The Healing Arts Press, 1988); Harris Coulter, Divided Legacy: A History of Schism in Medical Thought, vol. 1, The Patterns Emerge; Hippocrates to Paracelsus (Washington, D.C.: Weehauken Book Co., 1977); Matthew Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1992); John M. Stillman, Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim Called Paracelsus (Chicago: Open Court, 1920). 2. Wood, The Magical Staff; The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 15–17. 3. Ludwig Edelstein, “Greek Medicine in Its Relation to Religion and Magic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 5 (1937): 201–46; Ludwig Edelstein, “Platonism or Aristotelianism? A Contribution to the History of Medicine and Science,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8 (1940): 757–69; Wood, The Magical Staff; The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 18–19.

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4. Wood, The Magical Staff; The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 20–21. See also Franz Hartmann, The Life of Paracelsus and the Substance of His Teachings (San Diego, California: Wizard’s Bookshelf, 1985). 5. Linn Boyd, A History of the Simile in Medicine (Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel, 1936). 6. S. A. Merrill, “Eclecticism,” Eclectic Medical Journal 2 (1856): 109–110. 7. Merrill, “Eclecticism,” 109. 8. This included yellow dock, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, birch bark, elecampane, comfrey, sassafras, plantain, yellow poplar, dandelion, snakeroot, hardhack, horseradish, and peppermint. 9. Harvey W. Felter, Biographies of John King, M.D., Andrew Jackson Howe, A.B., M.D., and John Milton Scudder, M.D., Accompanied by Many Valuable and Historical Portraits and Other Illustrations (Cincinnati: J.U. and C.G. Lloyd, 1912), 238–39. 10. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 116–17. 11. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 119–21, 126. See also John M. Scudder, Specific Diagnosis: A Study of Disease With Special Reference to the Administration of Remedies (Cincinnati: Scudder Brothers, 1874), 24–27. 12. J. Rutherfurd Russell, “Sketch of the Origin and Progress of Homeopathy,” British Journal of Homeopathy 1 (1843): 3; Joseph Hooper, “Sketch of the Life of Hahnemann,” American Homeopathic Observer 3 (1836): 184–85. 13. Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Homeopathic Medicine (Allentown, PA: Academical Bookstore, 1836), 143–45. 14. Samuel Hahnemann, “Spirit of Homeopathic Doctrine of Medicine,” in The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann, ed. Robert Ellis Dudgeon, 617–21 (New York: William Radde, 1852); Samuel Hahnemann, “The Medicine of Experience,” in The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann, 447–48. 15. Hahnemann, Organon of Homeopathic Medicine, 143–45, 200–201; Bernhardt Fincke, “Improved Process of Preparing Homeopathic Medicines,” Amerian Homeopathic Observer 9 (1872): 10–11; B. F. Joslin, Principles of Homeopathy: In a Series of Lectures (New York: William Radde, 1850), 40–41. 16. Hahnemann, Organon of Homeopathic Medicine, 208. 17. John S. Haller Jr., The History of American Homeopathy: the Academic Years, 1820– 1935 (New York: Haworth Press, 2005), 29–31, 74. 18. Hahnemann, Organon of Homeopathic Medicine, 210–211; Samuel Hahnemann, “How Can Small Doses of Such Very Attenuated Medicine as Homeopathy Employs Still Possess Great Power?” in The Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann, 733. 19. Haller, The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820–1935, 74. 20. See James Tyler Kent, “Correspondence of Organs, and Direction of Cure,” in Minor Writings on Homeopathy (Heidelberg: Karl F. Haug, 1987), 610. 21. Constantine Hering, “Hahnemann’s Three Rules Concerning the Rank of Symptoms,” Hahnemannian Monthly 1 (1865): 6–7. 22. Constantine Hering, Analytical Therapeutics (Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel, 1875), 1:24. 23. Haller, The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820–1935, 39–41.

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24. Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia, vol. 10, trans. John Clowes (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1995), §8364. See also Broomell, Divine Healing, 27. 25. Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia, vol. 7, trans. John Clowes (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1998), §5711. 26. Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia, vol. 7, §5715. 27. Broomell, Divine Healing, 52–53. 28. Haller, The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820–1935, 41, 59, 66, 150–51, 237–42; Taylor, A Psychology of Spiritual Healing, 30–32. 29. Block, The New Church in the New World, 162–65, 169. 30. James Tyler Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 126–52; Taylor, A Psychology of Spiritual Healing, 31–32. 31. See Oliver Wendell Holmes, Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science. With Other Addresses and Essays (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1861); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Medical Essays, 1842–1882 (New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891). 32. Charles J. Hempel, Homeopathy, A Principle in Nature. Its Scientific Universality Unfolded; Its Development and Philosophy Explained; and Its Applicability to the Treatment of Disease Shown (New York: C. T. Hurlburt, 1860), 70–71. 33. Charles J. Hempel, “What Might and Should Be the Social and Political Relations of Homeopathy to the Dominant School of Medicine,” American Homeopathic Observer 3 (1866): 416–23. 34. Charles J. Hempel, “The Dose,” American Homeopathic Observer 4 (1867): 362–63; 366–67. 35. Alexander Wilder, History of Medicine. A Brief Outline of Medical History and Sects of Physicians, from the Earliest Historic Period; With an Extended Account of the New Schools of the Healing Art in the Nineteenth Century, and Especially a History of the American Eclectic Practice of Medicine, Never Before Published (New Sharon, ME: New England Eclectic Publishing Co., 1901), 337–38. 36. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 3. 37. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 5. 38. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 18–19. 39. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 9–10. 40. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 11–12. 41. Wilkinson, Swedenborg Among the Doctors; A Letter to Robert T. Cooper, M.D., 44. 42. James John Garth Wilkinson, Epidemic Man and His Visitations (London: James Speirs, 1893), 39. 43. Wilkinson, Epidemic Man and His Visitations, 32–33, 40, 48, 53. 44. Wilkinson, Epidemic Man and His Visitations, 53, 55. 45. Wilkinson, Epidemic Man and His Visitations, 32–33, 40, 48, 53. 46. Wilkinson, Epidemic Man and His Visitations, 57. 47. Wilkinson, Epidemic Man and His Visitations, 67, 82, 120–21. 48. Lewis Pyle Mercer, The Soul and the Body; A Sermon to Medical Students (Chicago: Gross and Delbridge, 1883), 9–13.

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49. Mercer, The Soul and the Body; A Sermon to Medical Students, 20–21. 50. Mercer, The Soul and the Body; A Sermon to Medical Students, 19. 51. William H. Holcombe, How I Became a Homeopath (Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel, 1892), 3. 52. Holcombe, How I Became a Homeopath, 20–21. 53. Holcombe, How I Became a Homeopath, 20–21. 54. Holcombe, Our Children in Heaven, 22. 55. Holcombe, Our Children in Heaven, 31. 56. Holcombe, Our Children in Heaven, 104. 57. Holcombe, Our Children in Heaven, 118. 58. Holcombe, Our Children in Heaven, 125. 59. William H. Holcombe, The Other Life (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1871), 13. 60. Holcombe, The Other Life, 34. 61. William H. Holcombe, “The Lord’s Descent into Ultimates,” in Letters on Spiritual Subjects in Answer to Inquiring Souls (Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1885), 331. 62. Holcombe, Letters on Spiritual Subjects in Answer to Inquiring Souls, 350–56. 63. Holcombe, Letters on Spiritual Subjects in Answer to Inquiring Souls, 368–69. 64. Holcombe, Letters on Spiritual Subjects in Answer to Inquiring Souls, 235–38. 65. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 140. 66. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 142–43; Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine, 20, 28–29. 67. Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine, 33, 127; F. Treuherz, “The Origins of Kent’s Philosophy,” Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy 77 (1983): 130–49; Andre Saine, “Fads, Trends and Dogma Undermining the Quality of the Practice of Homeopathy in America,” Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy 87 (1994): 197–207. 68. See Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Coelestia, vol. 4, trans. John Clowes (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 1998), §3624–3625. A detailed description of the Universal Human, called the “Grand Man” in older translations, is spread out over volumes four through seven of Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven). 69. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 164–65. 70. Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine, 196–202. 71. Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine, 40–47, 77–85. 72. Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine, 102–106, 133–140, 203–15. 73. The original 1810 edition was not translated into English until 1913 by C. E. Wheeler. It was published as a historical document for Everyman’s Library by J. M. Dent and Sons in London and E. P. Dutton and Company in New York. This translation was used to explain Hahnemann’s earliest thinking. But the first American edition was published in 1836, translated by Robert F. Dudgeon and prepared from the 1833 British translation of the fourth German edition. Other editions include the eighth American edition (1923) translated from the fifth edition by Dudgeon, and the sixth edition translated into English in 1922 by William Boericke. 74. See James Tyler Kent, Kent’s Minor Writings on Homeopathy (New Delhi: B. Jain, 1987); Julian Winston, The Faces of Homeopathy: An Illustrated History of the First 200 Years (Tawa, New Zealand: Great Auk Publishing, 1999), 166–67, 190–95.

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75. Haller, The History of American Homeopathy: The Academic Years, 1820–1935, 241–42; Kent, The Art and Science of Homeopathic Medicine, 77–89. 76. Kent quoted in Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 143. 77. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 144–45. 78. James Tyler Kent, Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy (Worthington: Insight Editions, 1985), 69. 79. Kent, Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, 22, 24, 52. 80. Wood, The Magical Staff: The Vitalist Tradition in Western Medicine, 147. 81. Kent, Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, 24, 71, 112. 82. Kent, “Correspondence of Organs, and Direction of Cure,” 610–12. 83. Andrew Taylor Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice (Kirksville, MO.: Published by the Author, 1910), 20. 84. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, vii. 85. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, vii. 86. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, 511–12; Andrew T. Still, Philosophy of Osteopathy (Kirksville, MO: A. T. Still, 1899), 65–66. 87. Norman Gevitz, The D.O.’s: Osteopathic Medicine in America, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 14–17. 88. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, 7, 10. 89. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, 14–15. 90. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, 45–46. 91. Still quoted in M. A. Lane, Dr. A. T. Still: Founder of Osteopathy (Chicago: The Osteopathic Publishing Co., 1918), 25. 92. Lane, Dr. A. T. Still Founder of Osteopathy, 48. 93. Still, Osteopathy; Research and Practice, 507. 94. See Theodore Jordan, “Swedenborg’s Influence on Sutherland’s ‘Primary Respiratory Mechanism’ Model in Cranial Osteopathy,” International Journal of Osteopathic Medicine 12 (2009): 100–105; David B. Fuller, “Swedenborg’s Brain and Sutherland’s Cranial Concept,” The New Philosophy Online (Oct.–Dec. 2008): 619–50; Adah S. Sutherland, With Thinking Fingers: The Story of William Garner Sutherland, D.O. (Kansas City, MS: The Cranial Academy, 1962); William G. Sutherland, Contributions of Thought: The Collected Writings of William Garner Sutherland, D.O. (Portland, OR: Rudra Press, 1998). 95. J. Stuart Moore, Chiropractic in America: the History of a Medical Alternative (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 5–7. 96. D. D. Palmer and B. J. Palmer, The Science of Chiropractic: Its Principles and Adjustments (Davenport, IA: The Palmer School of Chiropractic, 1906), 58. 97. Palmer and Palmer, The Science of Chiropractic: Its Principles and Adjustments, iii, vii. 98. Palmer and Palmer, The Science of Chiropractic: Its Principles and Adjustments, 15, 23.

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Chapter 8 1. John Lukacs, At the End of an Age (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 88–89, 90, 96, 103. 2. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 133. 3. Francis Oakley, “Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise of the Concept of the Laws of Nature,” Church History 30 (1961): 433–57. 4. Lukacs, At the End of an Age, 131; Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau, The Conscious Universe: Parts and Wholes in Physical Reality (New York: Springer, 2000), 6–7. 5. L. P. Mercer, ed., The New Jerusalem at the World’s Religious Congresses of 1893 (Chicago: Western New-Church Union, 1894), 9. See also Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden: Köln, 1996). 6. Jean-François Mayer, “Swedenborg: a Herald of the New Age?” Offen Tore. Beiträge zu einem neuen christlichen Zeitalter 4 (1998): 186–99. This article may be found online at http://www.cesnur.org/testi/Swedenborg.htm. 7. Mayer, “Swedenborg: a Herald of the New Age?” 186–99. 8. Michael W. Stanley, “The Relevance of Emanuel Swedenborg’s Theological Concepts for the New Age as It Is Envisioned Today,” in Swedenborg: A Continuing Vision, ed. Robin Larsen et al., 354–60 (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1988). See also Ursula Groll, Emanuel Swedenborg und das neue Zeitalter (St. Goar: Reichl Verlag, 1993). 9. Ralph Waldo Trine, In Tune with the Infinite or Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty (London: George Bell and Sons, 1905), 11–12. 10. Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, 16, 18. 11. Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, 29–30. 12. Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, 56. 13. Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, 208. 14. “Ralph Waldo Trine (1866–1958): One of the Most Widely Read of All New Thought Writers,” Self-Improvement e-Books.com, http://ralphwaldotrine.wwwhubs .com/ 15. Michael H. Cohen, “Healing at the Borderland of Medicine and Religion: Regulating Potential Abuse of Authority by Spiritual Healers,” Journal of Law and Religion 38 (2002–2003): 384. See also Robert N. Sollod, “Integrating Spiritual Healing Approaches and Techniques into Psychotherapy,” in Comprehensive Handbook of Psychotherapy Integration, ed. George Stricker and Jerold Gold (New York: Plenum Press, 1993). 16. Fred P. Gallo, Energy Psychology: Explorations at the Interface of Energy, Cognition, Behavior, and Health (New York: CRC Press, 1999). 17. John Beloff, Parapsychology: A Concise History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 8–13, 182–200. 18. Among the many organizations representative of the movement have been the California New Age Caucus, New World Alliance, World Goodwill, The Church Universal and Triumphant, The Theosophical Society, The Forum, The Club of Rome, Church Universal and Triumphant, Christian Science, Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, and The Unity School of Christianity. The movement has no one leader or spokesperson, no central headquarters or authority, and no common membership list. Nevertheless, its influence has been evident in multiple disciplines—from the arts,

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business, ecology, and education, to government, medicine, psychology and sociology. Journals have included Body Mind Spirit, Clarity, East West, Millennium Being, New Age Journal, Noetic Sciences, and Yoga Journal. Among the movement’s representative groups is the Church of Scientology, founded by L. Ron Hubbard in 1954, which drew heavily from Aleister Crowley’s (1875– 1947) Magic in Theory and Practice (1929) and The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929–30). Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950) advances a theory of reincarnation that has attracted an unusually high number of high-profile personalities. Other representative spokespersons of New Age healing include Andrew Weil with his “integrative medicine” approach to healing; Deepak Chopra with his grounding in Ayurveda; physician Bernie Siegel with his “creative visualization”; medical mystic Caroline Myss with her “intuitive energy medicine”; Helen Cohn Schucman (1910–1981), whose early work in Theosophy and Christian Science led to her formulation of the “inner voice” or “inner Jesus”; and clairvoyant Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) whose “life readings” prepared the way for channelers Jane Roberts and J. Z. Knight. George Gurdjieff ’s (1866–1949) “Fourth Way”—a mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism and Sufi mysticism—made use of body movement, including dance, to achieve awareness. His Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, with branches in New York and San Francisco, influenced the establishment of the Esalen Institute at Big Sur in 1962 and Erhard Seminar Training (EST) in San Francisco in 1971. Elements of the New Age movement are also evident in Abraham Maslow’s (1908–1970) theory of “selfactualization”; Carl Rogers’s (1902–1987) Encounter Groups (1970), which advanced a client-centered, non-directive therapy; Wilhelm Reich’s (1897–1957) concept of “orgone energy” that fills the universe much like Mesmer’s animal magnetism; Berliner Elsa Gindler’s (1885–1961) free dance and breathing movements, which became the basis of Charlotte Selver’s (1902–2003) Sensory Awareness Foundation established at Mill Valley in California in 1971; Norman Vincent Peale’s (1898–1993) The Power of Positive Thinking (1952); televangelist Robert H. Schuller’s program Hour of Power; and New Age writer and self-help advocate Wayne W. Dyer. 19. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, 365–66. 20. Albanese, “The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality,” 315–16. 21. Albanese, “The Aura of Wellness: Subtle-Energy Healing and New Age Religion,” 30. 22. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena, chapter 1; Kafatos and Nadeau, The Conscious Universe: Parts and Wholes in Physical Reality. 23. See Dean I. Radin, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality (New York: Paraview Pocket Books, 2006). See also “Entangled Minds—Dean Radin,” Daily Grail, http://www.dailygrail.com/node/4220. 24. Albanese, “The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality,” 311. 25. Read John White, ed., Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1974); also Albanese, “The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality,” 314.

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26. See Walter J. Kilner, The Human Aura (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1965).­ 27. Albanese, “The Subtle Energies of Spirit: Explorations in Metaphysical and New Age Spirituality,” 305–25. See also Trine, In Tune with the Infinite. 28. Albanese, “The Aura of Wellness: Subtle-Energy Healing and New Age Religion,” 31. 29. Albanese, “The Aura of Wellness: Subtle-Energy Healing and New Age Religion,” 31–32. 30. Barbara Ann Brennan, Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), 99–128; Barbara Ann Brennan, Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), 3–6, 89–90, 177–79. 31. Brennan, Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing, 4–5. One way that New Agers view the chakra, or wheel, is as a vortex that spins at high speed and through which the life force penetrates the body. The seven major chakras or energy centers in the body (i.e., the channels through which the energy passes) are located along the spinal column. Chakras measure an individual’s life force and determine its condition of health or sickness. The colors of the chakras—identified by the clairvoyant or picked up by scanning devices—reveal not only the condition of the body but the location of a particular problem. 32. “Brennan Healing Science,” Barbara Brennan School of Healing, http://www .barbarabrennan.com/welcome/healing_science.html. 33. Brennan, Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing, 205–206. 34. Brennan, Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing, 216. 35. Barbara Weber Ray, The Reiki Factor: A Guide to Natural Healing, Helping, and Wholeness (Smithtown, NY: Exposition Press, 1983), 4. 36. Ray, The Reiki Factor, 45. 37. “Therapeutic Touch,” The Skeptic’s Dictionary, http://skepdic.com/tt.html. See also Delores Krieger, Therapeutic Touch Inner Workbook: Ventures in Transpersonal Healing (Santa Fe, N.M.: Bear and Co., 1997). 38. Robert C. Fuller, “Unorthodox Medicine and American Religious Life,” The Journal of Religion 67 (1987): 50. 39. Albert Einstein, “How I Created the Relativity Theory,” in Subtle is the Lord, ed. Abraham Pais, 131 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). See also Ambrose Worrall and Olga Worrall, The Miracle Healers (New York: Signet Books, 1968); Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics (Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Press, 1975). 40. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 5. 41. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 6. 42. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 7. 43. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 10.

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JOURNALS American Magazine American Medical and Surgical Journal American Quarterly Annals of Medical History Annals of Science Arion; A Journal of Humanities and the Classics Atlantic Monthly Boston Public Library Quarterly Botanico-Medical Recorder British Journal of Psychiatry British Homeopathic Journal British Medical Journal Buchanan’s Journal of Man Buddhist-Christian Studies Bulletin of the History of Medicine Canadian Academy of Homeopathy Chrysalis: Journal of the Swedenborg Foundation Church History Dial Eclectic Medical Journal Harbinger (The)—Devoted to Social and Political Progress History of Childhood Quarterly History of Religions Homeopathic Advocate and Guide to Health Homeopathic Links Isis Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

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Bibliography  301

Index A Abbott, David, 183 abolitionism/anti-slavery movement, 59–60, 105–6, 123 Acton, Rev. Alfred, 222 acupuncture, 230 Adams, John Quincy, 99 adepts, 147 Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden, 49 Adventism, 93 Advocates of Association, 104 afflatus, 115 afterlife, xvi, 208–9. See also heaven; hell Aftonbladet, 56 Akert, Konrad, 13 Albanese, Catherine, 231 alchemy, 188, 230 Alcott, Dr. William A., 60 Alighieri, Dante, 40, 41 American Academy of Osteopathy, 222 American Institute of Homeopathy, 211, 208 American School of Osteopathy, 222 Ampère, André, 130 anatomy, 18 angels: celestial or spiritual, 209; communication with (see communication, spirit); make up Universal Human, 42, 43–44, 213; as spirits of the dead, 41, 42–43 anima, 23–25

Animal Kingdom (Swedenborg), 26–27 animal magnetism, 155, 233; criticized/ investigated, 71, 74, 165, 201; as cure, 71, 72, 90; as ether, 70–72, 89; in Germany, 90; Hahnemann on, 196, 201; influence of, 75, 90, 127, 130, 196, 201; as materialistic, 71; Mesmer’s theory of, xviii, 68–69, 70–72, 74, 75, 196; Quimby on, 165; to restore balance, 72; as Spiritualism, 127; Swedenborg influences, 123 Anthony, Susan B., 150 anthroposophy, xv, 151–52 Antioch College, 100 apocalypticism, 53 Apocalypse Revealed (Swedenborg), 46, 47, 48–49, 62 Apollonius of Tyana, 160 apparitions, 126. See also séances; visions Aquinas, Thomas, 5, 211 Arcana Coelestia. See Secrets of Heaven Aristotle, 5, 23, 27, 211 Arminianism, 67, 106–7 Armstrong, Ira, 131 aromatherapy, 230 associationism. See communitarianism astrology, 149 Athenaeus of Attaleia, 190 Atkinson, William W., 185–86 Augustine, 124

  303

Augustus Wilhelm, crown prince of Prussia, 39 auras, 15, 24–25, 71, 164, 232–36 Aurell, Andrew J., 49 B Baader, Franz von, 52 Baglivi, Giorgio, 12 Bailey, Francis, 58 Bailly, Jean-Sylvain, 74 Balfour, Arthur, 152 baptism, 57, 164 baquet, 78, 124, 130 Baronius, Robert, 23 Barrett, William F., 152 Bartholm, Thomas, 23 Beard, George M., 178 Beck, Robert, 235 behaviorism, 78, 81, 82, 179 Behm, Sarah, 6 Belding, Rev. Lemuel C., 115 Bell, Rev. Reuben P., 16, 32 Bellamy, Edward, 125 Benz, Ernst, 43, 51, 52–3 Benzelius, Anna, 7 Benzelius, Erik, 7–8, 10, 12 Bergasse, Nicolas, 76 Bergia, Sara, 7 Berkeley, George, 176 Bernheim, Hippolyte, 89 Bertrand, Alexandre, 75 Besant, Annie, 150–51, 152, 261n68 Bevir, Mark, 150 Beyer, Gabriel A., 8, 49 Bible: healing based on, 181, 184; Quimby reinterprets, 165; Swedenborg reveals/interprets, 32–33, 38, 40, 45–46, 47, 52, 165 Bible Christians, 60 Bible Communism, 93 Bichat, Marie-François Xavier, 88 bile, 174 bioenergetics, 234. See also mind-body relationship Biological Review, 143 Blake, William, 43

304  Index

Blavatsky, Helena Petrova, 126, 151, 230, 235; on astrology, 149; chakras of, 233; on Christianity, 149, 150; Eastern religions influenced, 146, 147–48, 149–50; on energy flow, 148; influence of, 184; investigated, 150; on karma, 148, 149; as medium, 146; as mystic/occultist, 149–50; as pantheist, 148–49; on reincarnation, 148, 149; Theosophy founded by, 145–50 Blavatsky, Nicephore, 146 Block, Marguerite, 56, 64, 200 blood, 174; circulation of, 21, 22; as vehicle for soul, 21, 22 Blue Springs, IN, 99 body, 217; brain controls, 77; character of, 85, 86; spiritual fluid in, 23–25, 213. See also mind-body relationship Boehme, Jakob, 44, 52, 53 Boenninghausen, Baron C. M. F. von, 197 Boerhaave, Herman, 19 Boericke, Francis E., 200 Boericke, William, 211 Boericke & Tafel, 200 Bonet, Théophile, 20 Bonnet, Charles, 26 Bonney, Charles Carroll, 227 Borel, Pierre, 72 Borellus, Alphonsus, 12 Boston Society of the New Jerusalem, 117 Bowditch, Henry, 153 Braid, James, 75, 89 brain: Buchanan on, 86; function/role of, 13, 21–24, 77, 78, 85; Gall on, 77, 85; gray matter in, 21; in homeopathy, 197, 203; mind is located in, 78, 80–82; in osteopathy, 222; phrenology on, 80–82; soul is located in, 17, 18, 19, 23–25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 86; Spurzheim on, 78; Swedenborg on, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20–24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 34, 222 breathing, internal: to attain knowledge, 45; by Brennan, 234;

hallucinations from, 28; Noyes on, 115; by Swedenborg, 8, 28, 33, 34, 35, 45, 114–15, 124 Brennan, Barbara, xiv, 233–35 Brisbane, Albert, 93–94, 95, 109, 121, 124, 127, 135; on abolition, 105–6; and Brook Farm, 120, 122; as Fourierist, 104–8 Britten, Emma H., 140 Britton, Isaac S., 61 Brockmer, John Paul, 36 Brocton, NY, community in, 113–14 Brook Farm, 119–22; as Fourierist phalanx, 106, 120–22; Swedenborg’s influence on, 106, 121–22 Brooks, Nona L., 166 Broomell, Clyde W., 181–82 Browning, Robert, 184 Brownson, Orestes, 119 Bruyere, Rosalyn, 233 Bryant, William Cullen, 130, 140 Buchanan, Joseph Rodes, 83; neurological system of, 85–86; on over-soul, 88; phreno-mesmerism of, 85–88; as Spiritualist, 154–55 Buddhism, 149, 150, 230 Burkmar, Lucius, 159 Burnt District, 93, 252–53n1 Bush, Dr. George, 134–35 C Cady, H. Emilie, 166 Campbell, Henry F., 20 Capra, Fritjof, 235 Carlyle, Thomas, 43, 117 Carpenter, William Benjamin, 20, 89–90 Carter, Robert III, 59 Carus, Carl Gustav, 193 Carus, Paul, 183 chakras, xiii, 148, 233, 234, 235 Chambers, Robert, 135 channeling, 232. See also mediums; New Age Channing, William Ellery, 100, 116, 117, 119; as Fourierist, 120, 121, 122

Chapman, John (Johnny Appleseed), 59 character, 104, 163–64; study of (see phrenology) Charcot, Jean-Martin, 90 Charles XI of Sweden, 2, 5, 6 Charles XII of Sweden, 9 Charon, Jean, 235 Chautauqua lecture circuit, 137 Chenevix, Richard, 83 Chesterton, G. K., 144 chiropractic, xv, 219, 222–23 Chopra, Deepak, 187 Christ. See Jesus Christianity: alternatives to, 150 (see also Eastern religions; New Thought; Spiritualism); apostolic, 179, 180, 184, 185; criticized/considered dangerous, 54–55, 61–62, 117, 140, 154, 155, 157, 164–65, 174, 184–85, 208; healing based on, 163, 173, 174, 181–82, 184; in Spiritualism, 154–55; Spiritualism against, 130–31, 141–42, 155–57; Swedenborgian view of, 40, 47–48, 227 Christian Metaphysics, 182 “Christian science” (term): Evans uses, 176; Quimby uses, 164–65, 182 Christian Science, xv, 124, 166, 167–71, 181, 229, 230; on divine principle, 167–68, 170; on drug use, 169; influence of, 170–71; influences on, 167, 169; on mainstream medicine, 170; on mind as stimulus of body, 169; on Spiritualism, 168; thought transference in, 13. See also Eddy, Mary Baker Church of Divine Science, 166 Church of Religious Science, 166 Church of the New Jerusalem (New Church), 33, 47, 54–64, 106, 171, 173, 227; as communitarian, 61, 100, 109– 10, 112, 113–16, 123; on dangers in Christianity, 54–55, 61–62; enemies of, 51, 62–63; on God’s nature, 62; Hempel on, 111–13; and homeopathy, 199, 200, 202; influence/

Index  305

Church of the New Jerusalem (cont.) appeal of, 51, 60, 208; journal of, 56; locations of, 56, 58–59, 60, 61, 64, 100, 134; role of, 48; schism in, 60, 62–63; secularized, 63–64; and Spiritualism, 142, 210; as unitarian, 62. See also Swedenborgianism clairmativeness, 133 clairvoyance, 76, 77, 85, 87, 143, 145, 148, 155, 233; Davis’s, 131–33, 134, 135–37; to heal, 90, 159, 160; Quimby’s, 159, 160; Swedenborg’s, 39, 201 Clapp, Otis, 200 Clarke, James Freeman, 116 Claudius Agathinus of Sparta, 190 Clowes, Rev. John, 56–57 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 43, 117 collectivism, 105. See also communitarianism; Fourierism Collyer, Robert H., 83, 84–85 Combe, Andrew, 79 Combe, George, 78–79, 80 communication, spirit, 35, 69, 90, 135; with angels, 8, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 42, 171, 172, 201; criticized/investigated, 152, 170, 201, 210; by Davis, 132, 136, 137, 209; with the dead, 37–38, 39, 41, 42–43, 100, 126, 128–29; via dreams, 35–36; to explain/reveal, 29, 38, 47, 53, 66; manifestations of, 126, 128, 138, 155 (see also rapping; séances); via medium, 54, 126, 127, 128–30, 143; by Quakers, 128; by Spiritualists, 138–41, 142, 155; by Swedenborg, 8, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35–36, 37–38, 39, 42, 47, 51, 53, 65, 66, 127, 172, 201; in Theosophy, 147; with other worlds, 34, 137 communitarianism: in Brook Farm, 119– 22; in Church of the New Jerusalem, 61, 100, 109–10, 113–16; Fourierist, 102–3, 104–8, 109–10, 112–16; in Oneida, 93–94; Owenist, 96, 98–101, 116; perfectionist, xv, 93–94, 95–97, 99; as reform, 105–6, 107; socialist, 93–98; spirit communication in, 35; Swedenborg influences, 106, 107–8;

306  Index

Swedenborgian, 113–16; utopian, 41, 119–22 Condy, John, 58 Conklin, J. B., 143 Consistory of Gothenburg, 49 constitutional prescribing, 195, 211–14, 218–19 Cook, William H., 81 Cooper, James Fenimore, 130, 140 Cooper, Robert T., 203 Cooperative Society (PA), 99 correspondences: communitarians use, 102, 107, 108, 113; criticism of, 50, 201; disease explained by, 171, 174, 198–99, 228–29; via dreams/ visions, 35, 172; existence/nature explained by, 31–32, 35, 44–45, 88, 228–29; and homeopathy’s law of similars, 200, 202, 212, 213, 214, 218; Paracelsus’s doctrine of, 189–90, 218; scripture explained by, 45–46, 47, 52; Swedenborg’s doctrine of, 13, 17, 28, 29, 31–32, 35, 40, 42, 43–44, 44–46, 47, 50, 52, 107, 108, 118, 124, 137, 165, 171, 172, 174, 198–99, 200, 201, 202, 212, 214 Cousin, Victor, 104, 117, 173, 190 Coxsackie, NY, 99 craniology, 198 cranio-osteopathy, 222 creation: Edwards on, 29, 30; Swedenborg explains, 11–12, 14, 15–16, 17, 18, 32 Cross, Whitney R., 97 crystallography, 11 crystal therapy, 230 Cullen, William, 193 cure, law of direction of, 197, 198. See also healing; homeopathy D Dalton, John, xvii Darwin, Charles, xiii, 182, 203 da Vinci, Leonardo, xvi Davis, Andrew Jackson, 85, 143, 159, 220; as anti-Calvinist, 138; as clairvoyant,

131–33, 134, 135–37; “conversed” with Galen, 133; “conversed” with Swedenborg, 133, 134; harmonialism of, 136, 137; as healer, 131, 132, 133, 138; on heaven, 137; influence of, 136–37, 209; influences on, 134–35, 136, 137; on magnetism, 133; on mesmerism, 131, 134–35; as Millerite, 131; revelations of, 133–34; as social reformer, 136, 137–38; spirit communication by, 132, 136, 137, 209; as Spiritualist, 131–38; as trance-speaker, 136–37 Davis, Catherine, 136 death: life after, 184–85, 208–9; soul after, 41, 42, 43; spirit communication after, 34, 37–38, 39, 41, 42–43, 126, 128–29 De Charms, Richard, 200 de Jussieu, Antoine Laurent, 74 Deleuze, Joseph F., 76–77 Demarque, Denis, 218 Democritus, 226 Descartes, René, xiii; influence of, 3–7, 16, 17, 27–28; on location of soul, 23; on matter, 2–4, 26; mind-body duality of, xv, 169, 170; science of, 3–7; thinking subject of, 17; on vital force, 12; worldview of, 16–17 D’Eslon, Charles, 72–73, 249n11 Destutt de Tracy, Comte Antoine, 26 The Dial, 120, 121 Diekhöner, Hermann H., 115–16 disease cause/origin, 221; animal magnetism explains, 70–71; correspondences explains, 171, 174, 198–99, 228–29; at a distance, 204; Eddy on, 168–70; energy explains, 234–35; eclecticism studies, 192–93; as mental or spiritual disorder, 160–61, 163, 164–65, 166, 167, 169–70, 172–73, 175, 184, 199, 204–5, 206, 216– 17; Hahnemann on, 195, 199; intuited, 216–17; mediumship as, 145; miasm theory, 200, 215–16; Mesmer on, 70– 71; Quimby on, 160–61, 163, 164–65, 166; sin as, 172–73, 198–99, 204–5, 215;

Still on, 220–221; Swedenborg on, 198–99, 212; vitalism on, 195, 236 Dixon, William H. 252–53n1 Dods, John Bovee, 85, 130, 143 Doherty, Hugh, 123 Doten, Lizzie, 140 Dower, William H., 151 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 144 dreams, Swedenborg’s, 35, 36 Dresser, Horatio W., 162, 163, 165, 166; on disease and sin, 172–73; and New Thought, 182, 184, 185 Dresser, Julius, 166 drug therapy: attenuation in, 192, 195–96, 197; Christian Science on, 169; dilutions in, 202, 203, 214, 215; dynamization in, 195–96, 198, 214; eclectic, 191, 192–93; Evans on, 174, 228; Hahnemann’s, 193–94, 195, 196–97, 203, 214, 215, 219; Hempel on, 201–2; homeopathic, 169, 192, 193–94, 195, 196–97, 198, 200, 201–2, 203, 214, 215, 219; individualized, 219; Kent on, 210–11, 212–13, 217–18, 228; plantbased, 191; psychology in, 213, 217–18; in regular medicine, 228; single, 193–94, 198 Druidism, 230 Duché, Jacob, 58 Dunkers, 95 Dupleix, Scipion, 23 Dwight, John Sullivan, 116 Dyer, Wayne, 187 dynamization, 195–96, 198, 214 E Eastern religions: as alternative to Christianity, 150; as occult/mystic, 150, 156; in Theosophy, 146, 147–48, 149–50 Ebenezers, 35, 115 eclecticism, xv, 138, 159, 181, 190–93; basis of, 191–92; catalysts for, 190– 91; disease study in, 192–93; on drug use, 191, 192–93; in France, 104, 190; homeopathy compared

Index  307

eclecticism (cont.) to, 192–93; as reform medicine, 191; Swedenborgianism in, 210, 212 Eclectic Medical Institute, 86, 87, 192, 210, 212 Economy, PA, 99 Economy of the Animal Kingdom (Swedenborg), 19, 21, 22–25, 26–27, 31, 32, 45, 135 Edinburgh Phrenological Society, 78 Eddy, Horatio, 146 Eddy, Mary Baker, 85, 166, 220, 230; Christian Science founded by, 167–71; on disease, 167; on drug use, 169, 170; influences on, 130, 167, 170, 176, 182; on mind’s role in health, 167, 168–69, 170; Science and Health of, 167–70, 176; on spirit communication, 170 Eddy, William, 146 Edmonds, John W., 143 education, medical, 171, 190, 210; spiritual aspect of 166, 205–6. See also Eclectic Medical Institute Edwards, Jonathan, 18; on the Creator, 29, 30; influences on, 176; on mind, 176; on nature, 118; Swedenborg compared to, xviii, 64, 65–67 Einstein, Albert, 225, 235 Ekebom, Olaf A., 49 electricity, 130 electric psychology, 85 electric therapy, 75 Elliotson, Dr. John, 83 Emerson, Ralph Waldo: on God, 117; on India, 149; influence of, 108, 109, 183, 184, 228; on over-soul, 88, 118; on self-reliance, 184, 185; on social reform communities, 93; on Spiritualism, 141; on Swedenborg, xv, xvi, 43, 62, 117–19; transcendentalism of, 116–19 Emmanuel Church of Boston, 177 Emmanuel Movement, 177–80; as apostolic Christianity, 179, 180; clergy practice medicine in, 178–80; psychology in, 179–80

308  Index

energy, 238; as animal magnetism, 70; aura as, 232–33, 234–35; chakras as centers of, 148, 235; as fluid force, 82–83, 89, 130, 200; health controlled by, 221, 234–35; as influx, 68; life force as, 235–36; of light, 235; as matter, 15, 16; Mesmer on, 68–69; New Age on, 229, 230, 231, 232–33; quantum science on, 226–27; reiki directs, 235; Swedenborg on, 15, 16, 17, 68–69, 200; vital, 196, 199, 200, 216; vitalism on, 200, 216, 230, 238. See also motion Enlightenment, xiv, xviii, 68 Epicurus, 17 epilepsy, 36–37 Episcopalianism, 177–80 Esdaile, James, 89 ether, 17, 24, 25, 41, 153, 233; Spiritualists on, 144; as universal fluid, 70–72, 76, 90; world of, 228. See also animal magnetism etherology, 85 Evans, Charlotte, 171 Evans, Henry R., 183 Evans, Warren Felt, 166, 220; on “Christian Science,” 176; on Church of the New Jerusalem, 171, 173; on disease cause, 172, 174–75; on drug therapies, 174, 228; on humoral imbalances, 174, 175; influence of, 176; influences on, 171, 173, 174, 176; on influx, 175, 176; on Jesus as healer, 172, 173–74; mind cure/mental healing of, 171–76; as mystic, 176; New Thought and, 172–73, 176, 182; on orthodoxy, 173–74; on Quimby, 172, 175, 176, 182; and Swedenborg, 171, 172–73, 174, 175; on thought transference, 171, 172, 174; writings of, 171–72 evolution, 182–83, 228 F faith, 44, 92; healing via, 124, 155, 163, 170, 180, 186, 199. See also Christian Science; New Thought; Spiritualism; Theosophy

Faraday, Michael, xvii, 130 Faria, Abbé de, 77 Farrington, Albert, 211 Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 177, 183 Ferrier, David, 20 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 184 Ficino, Marsilio, 44 Fillmore, Charles and Myrtle, 166 finites, Swedenborg on, 15, 16, 17, 18 Finney, Charles G., 92, 96 Fish, Leah Fox, 128 Fishbough, William, 133–34, 135 Flamsteed, John, 9 fluid theory. See animal magnetism; energy; Mesmer, Franz Anton; mesmerism; Spiritualism Ford, Henry, 229 Forestville, IN, 99 Foster, Charles Henry, 143 Foster, Edward, 20 Foster, Michael, 20 Fountaingrove, CA, 114 Fourier, Charles, 61, 94, 95, 101–8, 114, 125, 127, 135, 136; disciples of (see Fourierism); on division of labor, 102; influences on, 80, 107, 108; on laissez-faire, 102; Owen compared to, 105; passional principle of, 116; as perfectionist, 96; Swedenborg and, 107, 108, 123; universal analogy of, 108; writings of, 101 Fourierism, 95, 98, 101–8; in Brook Farm, 106, 120–22; of Channing, 120, 121, 122; as collectivism, 105; as communitarianism, 102–3, 104–8, 109–10, 112–16; of Davis, 135, 136; of Greeley, 104–5; Hempel on, 111–13, 201; of Henry James Sr., 109–10; journals of, 106, 113, 121, 135; Owenism compared to, 105, 116, 124; phalanxes in, 102, 104–5, 107, 109–10, 113, 115; science and religion linked in, 111–12; as Spiritualist, 124; Swedenborgianism linked to, 96, 106–8, 109–10, 111–16, 121–22, 123, 201 Fowler, Lorenzo, 79–80

Fowler, Orson, 79–80 Fowler and Wells, 80 Fox, John D., 128 Fox, M. Douglas, 182 Fox sisters (Kate and Margaret), 87, 101, 158; communicated with dead by rappings, 126, 128–29, 155; as fraudulent, 155. See also Fish, Leah Fox France: eclecticism in, 190; education in, 89, 190; hypnosis in, 89–90, mesmerism in, 72–74; Swedenborgianism in, 52–54 Franklin, Benjamin, 74, 130 Franklin, NY, 99 Freemasonry, 201, 214 freethinkers, 107, 142, 154, 155 Freneau, Philip, 59 Freud, Sigmund, 90 Fuller, Margaret, 119 Fuller, Robert C., 65, 237, 250n24; on Davis, 135; on healing as cultural, 236; on mesmerism, 90–91; on Quimby, 161, 165–66 Fullerton, George S., 153 G Galen, 133 Gall, Franz Joseph, 77–78, 79, 81, 85 Galvani, Luigi, 130 Garrett, Clarke, xiv, 54, 68 Garrison, William Lloyd, 140 Gassner, Johann Joseph, 70 George, Henry, 125 Germany: animal magnetism in, 90; pietism in, 2, 35, 51–54; Swedenborg’s influence in, 51–54; Theosophy in, 152 germ theory, 216 Glen, James, 56, 58 God: Cartesian view of, 4; communitarian view of, 120, 121, 122; as creator/first cause, 29–30, 32, 47, 163; Davis on, 137; as divine humanity, 109, 172, 204 (see also Universal Human); Emerson on, 117; homeopathy view of, 199; as

Index  309

God (cont.) impersonal, 230; as infinite, 228; mind cure view of, 159, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 176; New Age view of, 231, 234; Spiritualist view of, 131, Swedenborg illuminates, 209; Swedenborg on nature of, 14, 15, 17, 25, 31–32, 35, 44–45, 46, 62, 66, 68, 109; Theosophy view of, 148, 149, 150; Trine on, 228, 229 Godkin, Edwin, 110 Godwin, Parke, 121, 123 Goethe, J. W. von, 43, 117 Graham, Sylvester, 60, 158 Gram, Hans Burch, 198 Grand Man. See Universal Human Great Britain: mesmerism in, 76–77; Spiritualism in, 142–45; Swedenborgianism in, 56–57, 64 Greeley, Horace, 95, 109, 135; as Fourierist, 104–5, 121; on Fox sisters, 128; as Spiritualist, 140 Grimes, James S., 85, 131 Gross, Charles G., 19, 20, 23 Guarneri, Carl, 108 Guillotin, Joseph-Ignace, 74 Guizot, François, 104 Gunn, Giles, 110 Gurney, Edmund, 152 Gustavus II Adolphus, 5 H Haeckel, Ernst, 203 Haddock, Frank C., 166 Hahnemann, Samuel, 169, 193–98, 205, 207, 210, 233; criticized/attacked, 201, 212–17; on dilutions, 203, 214, 215; on disease origin, 195, 199; on drug attenuation, 195, 196–97; on dynamization, 195–96, 201, 214; on individualized drug, 219; infinitesimals of, 203; influences on, 190, 195, 196, 199, 214, 215; law of similars of, 190, 193, 195; on mesmerism, 214; on miasm, 201, 214; Organon of, 195, 197, 215, 218,

310  Index

270n73; on single drug, 193–94; Swedenborg compared to, 203–4, 215; on symptoms, 193, 195, 197; on vis medicatrix naturae, 193; on vital force, 195, 201, 214, 215, 216 Haller, Albrecht von, 23 Halley, Edmond, 9 hallucinations, 28, 126. See also visions halos, 232–33. See also auras Hammond, Michael P., 13 The Harbinger, 113, 121, 122 Hare, Robert, 87–88 harmonialism, 136, 137 Harris, Thomas Lake, 114, 143 Hartley, Rev. Thomas, 38 Harvey, William, 190 Hatch, Cora, 140 healing: via animal magnetism, 70–71, 72, 76, 90; aura’s role in, 233; Christian, 55, 163, 169–70, 173, 174, 181–82, 184, 186; clairvoyance in, 90; as cultural, 236; by Davis, 131, 132, 133, 138; distant, 230; energy in, 232–35; faith’s role in, 124, 155, 163, 199 (see also Christian Science; New Thought; Spiritualism; Theosophy); holistic, xv, 231, 236; hypnotism in, 89; by Jesus, 172, 173–74; magnetic, 70, 71, 83, 84–85, 138, 160–61, 219, 220, 222; Mesmer on, 69, 70; mind’s role in, xiv, 162, 164–66, 167, 171–76, 181, 184, 186–87, 223–24; in New Thought, xv, 184, 186–87; rituals in, 164; spiritual, 69, 70, 159–66, 170, 181, 200, 217 (see also Spiritualism); thought transfer in, 90, 159–60, 184 heart, role of, 22–23 heaven: children in, 208–9; Dante on, 40, 41; Davis on, 137; individualized, 40–41, 43; limbo before, 41, 42; Milton on, 38; spiritual, 111, 112; Swedenborg describes, 38, 40–43, 44, 46, 51, 60, 111, 112, 198; Swedenborg visited, 34 Heaven and Hell (Swedenborg), 41–42, 43, 44, 46, 60

Hedge, Frederick H., 116, 119 Hegel, G. W. F., 52, 104, 184 Hegeler, Edward C., 183 Hell, Father Maximilian, 70, 72 hell: Dante on, 40, 41; individualized, 40–41, 42; limbo before, 41, 42; multiple, 38; Swedenborg on, 38, 40–43, 44, 46, 60 Hellenism, 230 Helmont, Jan Baptist von, 72, 88 Hempel, Charles J., 110–13, 210; on Fourierism and Swedenborgianism, 111–13; on homeopathy, 201–2 Hering, Constantine, 197, 211, 212 Higginson, Thomas W., 140 Higher Thought (movement), 182 high sense perception (HSP), xiv, 234 Hill, Benjamin L., 210 Hill, Rev. William, 59 Hiller, Joseph, 60 Hindmarsh, James, 57 Hindmarsh, Robert, 56, 57 Hinduism, 149, 150, 230, 235 Hippocrates, 23 Hobbes, Thomas, 16 Hodgson, Richard, 150, 153 Hohenheim, Theophrastus von. See Paracelsus Holbach, Baron Paul d’, 26 Holcombe, William H., 41, 200, 206–10; on afterlife of innocents, 208–9; first to use “New Thought,” 182; on mediums, 209, 210; on mind-body relationship, 209; on Spiritualism, 210; Swedenborg influences, 207–9; writings of, 208, 209 holism, xv, 231, 236 Holmes, Ernest, 166 Holmes, Oliver Wendell Sr., 118; on homeopathy, 201; on Spiritualism, 140–41 Holmes, Stewart W., 166 Holt, Henry, 153 Home, Daniel Dunglas, 143, 146, 233 Homeopathic Medical College of Missouri, 210

homeopathy, xv, 160, 230; appeal of, 200; attenuation in, 192, 195–96, 198; Christian Science as successor to, 169; criticized, 201; on dilutions, 195, 202, 203, 214, 215; on disease, 199; drug therapy of, 169, 192, 193–94, 195, 196–97, 198, 201–2, 203, 214, 215, 219; eclecticism compared to, 192–93; influences on, 198–210; influx in, 200, 212; Kentian, 210–19; law of similars in, 190, 193, 195, 198, 200, 202, 207, 212; medical education in, 210, 211; mesmerism in, 198, 200; New Age, 213–14; pillars of, 198; progressive, 214; schism in, 195, 213–14; spiritualized, 19, 212–14; Swedenborgian, 198–210, 212–15; as true medicine, 205 Hopkins, Emma C., 166 Hopkins College of Metaphysical Science, 166 Howells, William Dean, 110 Human Nature, 143 humors, 80, 174–75, 188 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 203 hypnotism, 75, 89–90; to achieve visions, 34–35. See also mesmerism I India, 149, 150. See also Eastern religions infinite, 228; Swedenborg on, 16, 17, 18, 29 influx: Davis on, 133, 136; energies as, 68; Emerson on, 118; Evans on, 172, 174, 175, 176; in healing, 166; in homeopathy, 200, 206, 212; in mesmerism, 91; in New Thought, 187; Swedenborg on, 24, 30, 47, 64, 68, 200, 201, 212, 233; Trine on, 228 Ingalls, J. K., 135 Internationl Hahnemannian Association, 211 intromission, 38 intuition, of disease, 192, 216–17 Inyushin, Victor, 235

Index  311

J Jackson, Andrew, 92 Jahr, G. H. G., 197 James, Henry Jr., 109 James, Henry Sr., 64, 104, 108–10; Emerson influences, 108, 109; as Fourierist, 109–10; on Spiritualism, 141–42; Swedenborg influences, 43, 63, 109–10 James, William, 109, 114, 153, 179 Janet, Pierre, 90 Jasper Colony, 61 Jefferson, Thomas, 191 Jesus: as healer, 124, 169, 172, 173–74, 181; as human, 109, 110, 185; intromission by, 38; mind cure on, 159, 160, 163, 165; New Age on, 230; New Thought on, 185; as one of many Christs, 230; reincarnated, 152; Swedenborg on, 62; in Theosophy, 149, 152 Johnson, Gregory R., 51–52, 244–45n24 Jones, Eli, 210 Journal of Dreams (Swedenborg), 35–36 Judge, William Quan, 146, 147, 150–51 Jung, Carl G., 43 Jung-Stilling, J. H., 52, 90 Jupiter, 34 K Kant, Immanuel, xvii, 15, 117; on Swedenborg, 39, 43, 51–52, 244–45n24 Kaplan, Fred, 89 karma, 147, 148, 149 Keller, Helen, 43 Kendal, OH, 99 Kent, James Tyler: broke from Hahnemann, 212–17; constitutional prescribing of, 212–14, 218–19; on disease, 188, 216, 217; on drug therapy, 212–13, 215, 217–18, 228; on germ theory, 216; as homeopath, 210–19; influence of, 210, 211, 218; influences on, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216–17, 218; on intuiting, 216–17; on law of similars, 212–13; metaphysics of, 212–16; on miasm,

312  Index

215; on Prime Mover, 217; on psora, 215; on regular medicine, 228; spiritualized homeopathy, 212–14; as Swedenborgian, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 217; on temperaments, 214; on vital force, 215–16, 217–18; on will, 212, 217; writings of, 211, 212, 214, 218 Kilner, Walter J., xiii, 233, 235 Kircher, Athanasius, 70 Kirlian, Semyon Davidovich, 233; auras of, xiv Kluge, Carl, 90 Krieger, Dolores, 235–36 Krishnamurti, Jiddu, 152 Kunz, Dora, 235 L La Due, Francia, 151 Lane, Charles, 120 Laplace, Pierre-Simon, xvii, 15 Last Judgment of 1757, 47–48 Latter-Day Saints, 93 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 52 Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent, xvii, 74 laying on of hands, 164, 229, 230; Mesmer’s, 196 Leadbeater, Charles W., xiii, 148, 235 Ledru, Nicolas-Philippe, 75 Lee, Anne, 95 Leeuwenhoek, Anton van, 3, 20 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 16, 17, 50 Lenox, IA, 113, 115–16 Le Raysville, PA, 113, 115 Levingston, William, 131, 132, 133, 159 levitation, 138, 143, 147 Liébeault, Ambroise-Auguste, 89 light: behavior of, 232; therapy, 229 limbus, 166 Lodge, Sir Oliver J., 144 Louis XVI of France, 74 Louisa Ulrika, Queen of Sweden, 39 love, conjugal, 40, 46, 114, 116, 137 Lukacs, John, 225–26, 227 lungs, role of, 12–13, 21, 22–23 Luther, Martin, 53, 124

Lutheranism, 2, 5, 6, 49–50, 51, 53–54 Lyon, Dr. Silas Smith, 133 M McCandless, Peter, 88 McComb, Samuel, 177–79 Macdonald, A. J., 95 Magnet, 83 magnetism, 17, 70, 133; healing by, 70, 71, 83, 84–85, 136, 138, 219, 220, 222. See also animal magnetism Malebranche, Nicolas, 3 Malpighi, Marcello, 3, 20, 23 Manget, Jean Jacques, 20 manipulation, 219–22 Marie Antoinette, 72 marriage: complex, 93; spiritual, 114, 137 Mars, 34 Marterville, Louis de, 39 massage, 230 materialism, xviii, 71, 82, 95, 107, 154, 156, 173, 184, 205, 236 matter, 2–4, 26; as motion, 16 Maudsley, Henry, 36 Mauduyt de la Verenne, P. J. C., 75 Maximilian Joseph III, 70 Mayer, Jean-François, 227 Mead, G. R. S., 149 Mead, Richard, 70 meditation, 149; to achieve visions, 34–35; transcendental, 230 mediums, 41, 87, 97, 143–44, 145, 209, 210; adepts as, 147; Blavatsky as, 146; books about, 101, 183; channeling replaced, 232; criticism of, 141, 156­–157; fraudulent, 147, 155; mesmerist, 124; solace provided by, 156, 157; Spiritualist, 126, 127, 130–31, 142–43, 154, 157; Swedenborg as, 203; Swedenborg influenced, 54, 127; techniques of, 138, 143, 145 (see also rapping; séances; table turning; trance-speaking). See also Fox sisters mental healing. See mind-cure Mercer, Rev. Lewis P., 205–6, 210 Mercury, 34

Merritt, Timothy, 92 Mesmer, Franz Anton, xv, 59, 68–77, 158; on animal magnetism, xiii, xviii, 68– 69, 70–72, 74, 75, 89, 90, 127, 130, 165, 196, 201, 235; on aura, 233; baquet of, 78, 124, 130; on cause of disease, 70– 71; cliniques of, 73–74; early years, 69–70; disciples of (see mesmerism); on energies, 68–69; on ether 70–72; in France, 73–74; on healing, 69, 70; on human as microcosm of universe, 72; influence of, 72–74, 76–77, 196, 199, 222, 236–37, 238; influences on, 70, 71–72; investigated, 73–74, 75; on motion, 68–69; optimism of, xviii; on science and religion, 70; secret organization of, 74; Swedenborg compared to, 68–69; in Vienna, 70, 72 The Mesmeric Magazine, 84 mesmerism, xv, 74–87, 123, 219, 230; as alternative medicine, 91; Buchanan’s, 154; criticized, 82; doctor-patient relationship in, 76; in Great Britain, 76–77; healing via, xix, 83, 91, 236; in homeopathy, 196, 198, 200, 214; as magic, 146; mediums in, 124; in New Thought, 187; by Owen, 100; psychological basis of, 75, 76; Quimby’s, 159–60, 162–63, 164, 165– 66; in religious enthusiasms, 97; as secular, 89–90; in Spiritualism, 124, 130; Swedenborgian, xviii–xix, 58, 90, 91, 134–35; trance-speaking in, 124. See also phreno-mesmerism metaphysics, xvi–xvii, 183, 226–27, 238; in New Age, 231–32 Methodism, 56, 92, 210 miasm, 200, 201, 214, 215 millenarianism, xiv, 59, 68, 91, 135, 136 Miller, Perry, 118 Miller, William, 93, 127 Millerites, 123, 131, 160 Milton, John, 40, 41 mind: brain as organ of, 34, 78, 80–82, 234; Descartes on, 17, 26; disease as error of, 160–61, 166; divided into

Index  313

mind (cont.) will and understanding, 212; Great Positive, 137; in homeopathy, 196, 199, 217; lower vs. higher, 28; and matter, 26; New Thought on, 184, 186–87; phrenology on, 80–81; Swedenborg on, 166, 212; transcendentalism on, 117, 184; unconscious, 166. See also thought transference mind-body relationship, 234, 237; Buchanan on, 85–86; Christian Science on, 169; Descartes on, xv, 169, 170; Holcombe on, 209; implications for healing in, 72, 166, 169–70, 223–24; Quimby on, 166; sarcognomy on, 85; Stahl on, 170 mind cure, xiv, xv, xvi, 158–59, 181, 223, 224, 236; doctor-patient relationship in, 171, 172, 174; Eddy’s, 167–71; in Emmanuel Movement, 179–80; Evans’s, 171–76 (see also New Thought); Graham on, 158; as new church, 266–67n87; and psychiatry, 180; Quimby’s, 159, 160–66; as relationship between mind, soul and body, 166; as spiritual, 175, 176; Swedenborg’s influence in, 181–82; thought transference in, 13, 171, 172, 174 Mitchell, Dr. Silas Weir, 177 Mohammad, 160 Monro, Alexander, 19 Monroe, James, 99 Moore, J. Stuart, 222 Moore, R. Laurence, 127, 133 Moraeus, Johan, 7 Moravians, 95, 209 Morden, Orison Swett, 166 Morse, Samuel F. B., 157 motion, 68–69, 200; of brain, 222; creation explained by, 15–16; finite point consisting of, 15–17; lungs as foundation of, 12–13; matter as, 11, 12, 16; planetary, 150; tremulations, 12–13 Mountain Cove, VA, 113, 114 Muiron, Just, 101

314  Index

Murdoch, William M., 200 mysticism, 148, 150, 156, 173, 176, 232; Swedenborg’s xvi, 18, 33, 36–37, 118, 124. See also Spiritualism N Nashoba, TN, 99 National New Thought Alliance, 266–67n87 natural selection, 182 nature, 25; laws of, 225; Paracelsus on, 188–89 Neoplatonism, Swedenborg’s, 28 neo-vitalism, 215 nervaura, 86–87 Nettesheim, Heinrich von, 44 Nettleton, Asahel, 92, 96 Neuburger, Max, 20–21 neurasthenia, 178–79 neuroscience, Swedenborg’s, 18–23 “New Age,” Swedenborg on, 227 New Age, xv, 145, 150; aims and principles of, 230–31; on aura, 232–33; on behavior of light, 232; as blend of objectivity and subjectivity, 231–32; on channeling, 232; criticized, 230–31; on energy, 229, 230, 231, 232–33; healing in, 225–236; and homeopathy, 213–14; as holistic, 231; influences on, 227–29, 230, 235, 236–37; as introspective, 230–31; as secular, 229– 30, 231; as Swedenborgian, 227–29; techniques of, 229–30 New Church. See Church of the New Jerusalem Newcomb, Simon, 153 New Harmony, IN, 96, 99 New Jerusalem Magazine, 60 New Thought, xv, xvi, 124, 145, 166, 170, 181–87, 228; aims of, 185–86; on cause of disease, 184; on Christian dogma, 184–85; Emerson influenced, 183, 184; on evolution and natural selection, 182–83, 184; as healing, xv, 184, 185, 186–87; on Jesus as human, 185; as philosophy, 186; as reaction

to materialism, 184; as return to apostolic Christianity, 184, 185; as secular, 231; as social gospel, 184; sources of, 172–73, 176, 182, 183–85, 186–87, 228; on Spiritualism, 170, 184–85; on suggestion, 184; and Swedenborgianism, 172, 182, 186–87; on thought transference, 13, 184; on thoughts as vibrations, 186 Newton, Sir Isaac, 9, 17, 18, 50, 66 New York Spiritualist Telegraph, 143 New York Weekly Tribune, 128 Norton, Charles Eliot, 110, 153 Noyes, John Humphrey, 93–97; on internal respiration, 115; on perfectionism, 94–95, 96; on religious revivalism, 96–97; on spirit communication, 95–97, 116, 121–22; on Swedenborg and Swedenborgianism, 96–97, 116, 121–22 O objectivity, 225–26, 227, 231–32 occultism: Blavatsky’s, 149–50; in Eastern philosophies, 150; investigated, 153; in Spiritualism, 140, 141; Swedenborg’s, 28. See also Theosophy Odic force, 124, 130, 138, 145, 233, 235 Oeconomia Regni Animalis. See Economy of the Animal Kingdom Oegger, Guillaume, 61, 118 Oetinger, Friedrich Christoph, 53 Oken, Lorenz, 193 Olcott, Col. Henry Steel, 146–47, 148, 149, 150, 151, 230 Oneida community, 93–96, 115 Oppenheim, Janet, 156, 157 Origen, 124 osteopathy, xv, 219–22; on cranium, 222; Swedenborg influences, 222 over-soul, 88, 118 Owen, Robert, 60, 95, 101, 104, 114, 115, 123, 125; communitarianism of (see Owenism); Fourier compared to, 105; as mesmerist, 100; new moral

order of 98–99; as perfectionist, 96; as socialist, 99; on social reform, 98; and Spiritualism, 98, 100–101; Swedenborg influenced, 100 Owen, Robert Dale, 96, 101, 251n38 Owenism, 95–96, 97–101; Fourierism compared to, 105, 116, 124; in New Harmony, 85, 96, 99; as perfectionism, 99–100; as socialism, 85; as social reform, 100; as Spiritualist, 124; Swedenborgians and, 61, 113–16, 124–25 P Palmer, Daniel D., 219, 222–23; founded chiropractic, 219; as Spiritualist, 222 Palmer, Phoebe, 92 pantheism, 148–49 Paracelsus, 44, 68, 148; alchemy of, 188; on auras, 233; on correspondences, 189–90, 218; influence of, 71, 188–90, 214, 218; law of similars of, 190, 195; on magnetism, 71; on natural world, 188– 89; on power of will, 72; Primordial Human of, 190; on signatures, 190; on vital force, 188–89 Parssinen, T. M., 80–81 Pascal, Blaise, xvi Patterson, Mary M. See Eddy, Mary Baker pathetism, 84, 135 Payne, William E., 200 Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer, 120 perfectionism, 92, 106, 124, 158; communities of, xv, 93–97, 99–100; revivalism and, 96–97; spiritual (see Spiritualism); Swedenborgians on, 96, 106 Perkins, Elisha, 76 Peruvian bark, 193 Petit, François Pourfour du, 19 The Phalanx, 121, 135 phalanxes, 94, 102, 104–5, 107, 109–10, 115, 120, 122, 137; Swedenborgian influence, 111–12, 113–16. See also Fourierism

Index  315

photism, 34 Phrenological Journal, 78 Phrenological Society of London, 83 phrenology, xv, 77–82, 123, 131, 141; behaviorism in, 78, 81, 82; as guide to character, 80; influence of, 78, 80, 83; journals of, 78; magnets used in, 83, 84–85; as materialistic, 82; on mind located in brain, 80–81. See also phreno-mesmerism phreno-magnetism, 82 phreno-mesmerism, 82–89; Buchanan’s, 85–88; electricity in, 85; as reform medicine, 86; Spiritualism and, 85. See also mesmerism; phrenology phrenopathy, 82 physician, 203–4; as mechanic, 219–20; -patient relationship, 76, 171, 172, 174, 184 physics, 226–27; New Age uses, 231, 232, 234 physio-medicals, 154, 171 Pickering, Edward, 153 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 44 Pierce, Charles Sanders, 153 Pierrakos, John, 233 Planck, Max, 225, 226 Plato, 27, 64, 107, 190, 230 Plutarch, 8 Podmore, Frank, 71; on Spiritualism, 127, 155 Polhem, Christopher, 10 Powell, Lyman P., 179–80 Poyen, Charles, 77, 159 prana, 235, 236 Pratt, F. H., 21 Pratt, Dr. Joseph H., 178 Presbyterianism, 92 Prescott, Margaret Hiller, 60 Prescott, Samuel Jackson, 60 Prime Mover, 217 “primitives,” 17 progressivism, 177 Prothero, Stephen, 147–48 psi, xiv–xv psora, 200, 215

316  Index

psychiatry, 90, 165–66, 180 psychology: as behavioral science, 179; in drug action, 217–18; Eastern, 156; electrical, 85; in Emmanuel Movement, 177, 179–80; in homeopathy, 198, 217–18; William James on, 179; in mesmerism, 75, 76; phreno-mesmerism as, 82; Quimby anticipates, 165–66; Swedenborg’s, 17, 27, 34 psychometry, 85 psychopathy, 181 psychotherapeutics, 180–81 Publilius Syrus Minus, 8, 9 Purucker, Gottfried de, 151 Puységur, Armand M. J. Chastenet, Marquis de, 75, 76, 77 Q qigong, 230 Quakers (Society of Friends), 60, 123, 128, 142, 209 Quietists, 209 Quimby, George, 165 Quimby, Phineas P., 85, 158, 159–66, 220, 222, 228, 230; on animal magnetism, 165; anticipated psychiatry, 165–66; on cause of disease, 160–61, 164–65, 166; on Christian dogma, 164–65; on healing, 163; “Christian science” of, 164–65, 182; clairvoyance used by, 159, 160; on faith to heal, 163; on God as first cause, 163; on human character, 163–64; influence of, 166, 167, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 182, 230 (see also Christian Science; New Thought); as mesmerist, 159, 162, 164, 165–66; mind-cure of, 159, 160–66; on power of suggestion, 159–60, 163–64; on regular medicine, 228; reinterpreted Bible, 165; rituals used by, 164; as spiritual healer, 159–60, 162–66; Swedenborg compared to, 164, 165; Swedenborg influenced, 160, 165; as vitalist, 160–61

R radiance technique, 235 Rapp, George, 99 rapping, 130, 138, 143, 153; antecedents of, 128–29; by Fox sisters, 87, 126, 128–29, 155 Rappites, 96, 99, 105 Ray, Barbara Weber, 235 Redmon, George, 143 Reed, James, 41, 117 Reed, Sampson, 117–18 reform medicine. See eclecticism; homeopathy; phreno-mesmerism regeneration, 55, 60, 91, 96, 98, 112, 116, 138, 172 Reichenbach, Baron Karl von, 130, 233, 235 reiki, 229, 235 reincarnation, 147, 148, 149, 230; of Christ, 152 religion: Eastern, xiv, 146, 147–48, 149–50; enthusiasms in (revivalism), 56, 92–93, 96–97, 109, 121–22, 123–25, 127, 179, 247n1; New Thought as, 184–85; primal, 182–83; -science duality, 2, 3–6, 13–14, 51, 64, 70, 82, 111–12, 115, 147, 148, 151, 182–83, 237; Spiritualism vs. established, 155–57; transcendentalism on, 117, 119; universal, 229. See also Christianity; Church of the New Jerusalem; Theosophy Religioscope Institute, 227 respiration, 21, 22. See also breathing, internal Retzius, Gustav, 20 Reuchlin, Johann, 44 revivalism. See religion, enthusiasms in Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., 106–7 Ripley, George, 109, 116, 119 Robbins, Tony, 187 Rodgers, Rev. R. R., 61–62 Roe, Daniel, 100 Roebling, John, 140 Rogers, E. C., 143 Rosén, Johan, 49

Rosna, Charles, 126, 128 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 117 Royal Society of Medicine (France), 75 Royal Society of Sciences of Uppsala, 10 Royce, Josiah, 153 Rudbeck, Olof, 5 Rush, Benjamin, 191 Russell, Joseph, 59 S Saint-Martin, Louis Claude de, 54 Saint Simon, Claude-Henri de, 61, 104 sarcognomy, 85, 86 Saturn, 34 Scammon, Jonathan Young, 61 Schafer, Edward, 20 Schelling, Friedrich W. J., 52, 193 Schiller, Friedrich, 117 Schlatter, William, 59 Schmidt, Pierre, 218 Schneider, Herbert W., 64 science: of health, 164, 165, 167; modern medicine and, 205–6, 220, 237; New Age and, 231; objectivity and, 225–26, -religion duality, 2, 3–6, 13–14, 51, 64, 70, 82, 111–12, 115, 147, 148, 151, 183, 237; Spiritualism and, 50, 130, 152, 154, 157, 231–32, 234. See also Christian Science; evolution; physics Science of Being. See New Thought Scott, Rev. James L., 114 Scriver, Christian, 35 Scudder, John M., 192–93, 210; influence of, 212, 216–17 Seabury, Annetta G., 166 séances, 126, 130, 143, 154, 155, 232. See also Spiritualism second blessing, 124 Second Coming, 48, 108, 127 Second Great Awakening, 92, 96, 97 Secrets of Heaven (Swedenborg), 40–43, 46, 51, 60, 198 self-help cures, 162, 164–66, 187. See also mind cure Seneca, 8–9 sensitives, 232–33

Index  317

series and degrees, Swedenborg’s concept of, 17, 24–25, 26, 64, 107, 181, 203, 211, 212, 214 Sewall, Frank, 62, 245n29 Shakers, 95, 105, 115; on spirit communication, 35, 142 Shaw, George Bernard, 150 Sheldon, Henry C., 149, 185 Sidgwick, Henry, 152 similars, law of: homeopathic, 190, 193, 195, 198, 199, 200, 202, 203, 207, 212; Kent on, 212–13, 215, 218; Paracelsus’s, 190, 195. See also correspondences Smith, Adam, 191 Smith, Joseph Jr., 93 social contract, 110 socialism, 60–61, 115, 116, 123; communitarian, 93–98, 107–8; Fourierist, 101–3, 104, 105, 108, 115, 116, 120–22, 123, 127; Owenite, 85, 98–101; and Swedenborg, 96, 102, 109, 112, 113; utopian, 116, 151 social reform: Davis’s, 134, 135, 136–38; via churches (social gospel), 177–80, 184; to improve human character, 104; Henry James Sr. on, 109–10; New Church and, 58, 63; Owenist, 98, 100; phrenology and, 80; Saint Simon’s, 104; Spiritualism and, 93, 97–98 Society for Psychical Research, 145, 150, 152–53 Society for Universal Harmony, 74. See also Mesmer, Franz Anton somnambulism, 75, 77, 249n12 soul: after death, 40, 41–42, 43, 51; blood as vehicle of, 21, 22; brain as seat of, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23–25, 30, 31, 32, 34, 81, 86; Descartes on, 23; Diekhöner on, 116; divine connection to, 91, 117, 163, 164, 172, 173–74, 209, 229; Kent on, 213, 218; linked natural and spiritual worlds, 18, 25, 28, 31, 90; materiality of, 24; measuring (psychometry), 85; Mercer on, 206; nature of, 27; over-, 88, 118; Quimby on, 162, 163, 164, 166; regeneration of, 98; as spiritual

318  Index

fluid (anima), 22, 23–25, 169–70; Swedenborg on, xvii, 16–17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23–25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 34, 40, 41–42, 43, 51, 203; tremulations in, 12, 17; Universal Brotherhood as, 147 Spencer, Herbert, 203 Spiritual Athenaeum, 143 Spiritual Experiences (Swedenborg), 28, 33 The Spiritual Herald, 142–43 Spiritualism, xv, xvi, 39, 87, 88, 123, 126– 57, 163, 222, 230, 234; appeal/influence of, 98, 100–101, 124–25, 127–28, 130–31, 140, 142, 154–55, 184–85, 232; challenged Christianity, 130–31, 140, 142, 154, 155–57; communitarianism and, 107, 121; of Davis, 136, 137, 138; defined, 126; divisions of, 154–55; fluid theory of, 130; in Great Britain, 142–45; investigated/criticized, 130, 140–42, 144, 145, 146, 155, 156, 168, 170, 209; journals of, 142–43, 146; on life after death, 184–85; mediums in, 130–31, 154, 156, 157; in mesmerism, 124, 130; as occult/superstition, 140, 141; in phreno-mesmerism, 85; and religious enthusiasms, 92, 93, 127; -science duality, 157, 231–32, 234; social reform and, 93, 97–98; spirit communication in, 138–40, 142, 155; as successor to animal magnetism, 127; Swedenborgian, 38, 54, 96–97, 114, 122–24, 127, 133, 142, 209, 210, 227; techniques of, 13, 138, 232; Theosophy replaced, 145, 147–48; women’s role in, 155 Spiritualist, 143 Spiritual Magazine, 143 Spiritual Messenger, 143 Spiritual Scientist, 146 Spiritual Telegraph, 142, 146 Spurzheim, Johann Gaspar, 78–79, 84 Squire, J. R. M., 143 Stahl, Georg Ernst, 88, 170 Stanley, Michael W., 227 Steiner, Rudolf, xv, 151–52, 225

Stewart, Balfour, 152 Still, Andrew Taylor, 219–22; on cause of disease, 221; founded osteopathy, 219; as magnetic healer, 220; as vitalist, 220 Stonestreet, Rev. W. T., 182–83 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 140 subluxations, 222 succussion, 195–96 suggestion: hypnotism as, 89; power of, to heal, 76, 89, 159–60, 163–64, 180, 184; susceptibility to, 74, 84 Sunderland, La Roy, 83–84, 135 supernaturalism, 236–38 Sutherland, William G., 222 Sutton, Geoffrey, 75 Svedberg, Jesper, 2, 6, 7 Sweden, 51. See also University of Uppsala Swedenborg, Emanuel, 87, 90, 100, 110, 156, 158, 164, 207–8, 233; on anatomy and physiology, 18–27; on anima (spiritual fluid), 23–25; on blood/circulation, 21, 22; on brain, 17, 18, 19, 20–25, 27, 30, 31, 32, 34, 222; childhood/education of, xvii, 6–9; as clairvoyant, 39, 201; communitarianism influenced by, 95, 106, 107–8, 109–10, 110–12; correspondences, doctrine of, 13, 17, 28, 29, 31–32, 35, 44–46, 47, 50, 51, 107, 108, 118, 124, 137, 171, 172, 174, 198–99, 200, 201, 202, 212, 214; on creation, 11– 12, 14, 15–16, 17, 32; Davis influenced by, 133, 136, 137; on disease as evil, 198–99; ecstatic experiences (spiritual crises) of, xviii, 27–28, 31–39, 209, 244–45n24; Edwards compared to, xviii, 64, 65–67; Emerson on, xv, xvi, 43, 62, 117–19; epilepsy as cause of visions of, 36–37; Fourier influenced by, 103; on the finite, 15, 16, 17, 18; German pietism influenced by, 51–54; on God and natural-divine relationship, 26, 29–30, 31–32, 35, 38, 44–45, 62, 109, 209; Hahnemann

compared to, 203–4; on heaven and hell, xvi, 38, 40–43, 44, 46, 51, 60, 111, 112, 198; hermeneutics/theological works of, 8, 9, 29, 32–33, 34, 38, 40–43, 44, 45–48, 49, 50, 52, 62, 165, 203–4; influences on, 2, 6–8, 16, 17, 20, 27–28; on internal respiration, 8, 28, 33, 34, 35, 45, 114–15, 124; on limbus, 166; mental health/mind-cure movements influenced by, 160, 165, 170, 171, 172–73, 174, 175, 181–82, 228; Mesmer compared to, 68–69; on motion, 12–13, 15–17, 68–69, 200; as mystic/ visionary, xvi, 18, 19, 20, 33, 36–37, 65, 124, 203; neuroscience influenced by, 19–20; New Thought influenced by, 186, 187; on organism, 12–14; as phenomenological psychologist, 27, 34; philosophy influenced by, 64; on respiration/lungs, 21, 22; as scientist, xvii–xviii, 1, 9–10, 11–12, 14, 15, 26, 203; on Second Coming, 48, 108; on soul, 16–17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23–25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 34, 41–42, 43; on spirits, 18–19, 34, 35–36, 41, 42, 50, 133, 213; on spiritual marriage, 114, 137; Spiritualism influenced by, 127; theistic science of, xvii–xviii, 26, 29, 51–52; on thought transference, 13; translated, 21, 27, 48, 53–54, 58, 59, 60, 115; travels of, 9–10, 11, 15, 18, 33, 39–40; on tremulations, 13–14, 31, 32, 226; as unitarian, 50–51, 62; Universal Human of, 32, 42, 43–44, 109, 111, 112, 137, 147, 156, 211, 213, 218 Swedenborgianism, xv, 54–64, 230; on afterlife, 208; on animal magnetism, 123; on antislavery movement, 59–60; in communitarianism, 96, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110–16, 121–23; on dangers of Christianity, 57; and eclecticism, 210, 212; in homeopathy, 198–210, 211–15, 217, 218; and mesmerism, xviii–xix, 90–91, 134–35, 219; New Age and, 227–29; on perfectionism, 96

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Swedenborgianism, (cont.) and phrenology, 123; as religion of socialism, 96–97; schism within, 56–57; as Spiritualism, 96–97, 122–24, 127, 133, 137, 142, 210; Theosophy influenced by, 151; as unitarian, 62. See also Church of the New Jerusalem Swedenborg Scientific Association of Philadelphia, 18 Swedenborg Society (England), 57 symptoms, Hahnemann on, 193, 195, 197 T table-turning, 126, 128, 138, 143, 155 Tafel, Adolph J., 200, 211 Tafel, Johann Friedrich Immanuel, 53–54, 61, 115 Tafel, Dr. Rudolf Leonard, 19, 21, 27 Tallmadge, Nathaniel P., 143 Taoism, 230 Taylor, Johnston, 58 Taylor, Wanda R., 233 Teahan, John F., 176 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, xv, 231, 235 telepathy, xvi, 76, 126. See also communication, spirit; thought transference temperaments, 13, 214 Temple Home Association, 151 Temple of the People, 151 Theosophical Society, 152, 153, 235; in Germany, 152; of New York, 147; Universal Brotherhood and, 151 The Theosophist, 149 Theosophy, xv, 124, 145–51, 230; adepts in, 147; and astrology, 149; Besant as head of, 150–51, 152; Blavatsky in, 150–51; Eastern religions influence, 146, 147–48, 149–50; influence of, 150, 235; investigated, 150, 153; on Jesus’s role, 149, 152; journals of, 149; on karma, 147; on mediums, 147; on reincarnation, 147; replaced Spiritualism, 145, 147–48; schism in, 149, 150–51; societies of, 146, 147, 152; on spirit communication, 147;

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Swabian, 53; Swedenborg influenced, 151; Universal Brotherhood in, 147; vortices in, 148 therapeutic touch, 229, 235–36. See also laying on of hands Thomsonianism, 171 thought transference, 13, 77, 126, 130, 144, 145; in healing, 76, 87, 90, 159–60, 171, 172, 174, 184; study of, 152 Thouless, Robert, xv Tiller, William A., 233 Tingley, Katherine, 151 Tobey, Clara Louisa, 211 Toffler, Alvin, 235 tongues, speaking in, 138, 143 trance-speaking, 124, 128, 136–37, 138, 140, 143, 155 transcendentalism, xv, 61, 116–18, 149, 176, 230; journals of, 120, 121; utopian experiment of, 106, 119–22. See also Brook Farm; Emerson, Ralph Waldo tremulations: brain’s role in, 13; as soul’s essence, 17; Swedenborg on, 12–14, 31, 32, 226 Trine, Ralph Waldo, xiii, 166, 228–29, 233 trinitarianism, 50–51 True Christianity (Swedenborg), 46, 57, 58 Tuke, Daniel Hack, 89 Tyler, Margaret, 218 U Ulrika Eleanora, Queen of Sweden, 14 Unitarian Church, 107, 116, 119, 120, 123, 142, 170, 183, 230 unitarianism, 8, 50–51, 62 United States Medical College of New York, 138 Unity Church, 166 unity consciousness, 230 Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, 151 Universal Human (Swedenborg’s Grand Man), 120, 137, 147, 156, 211, 218; angels form, 42, 43–44, 213; God as divine

humanity in, 109; spiritual heaven designated by, 112; as union of science and religion, 111; visions revealed, 32 Universalists, 123, 142, 183, 230 University of Nancy, 89 University of Uppsala, 2; Cartesianism at, 4, 5, 7; Swedenborg at, xvii, 7 University of Vienna, 70, 72 Usui, Mikao, 235 utopianism, 68, 80, 108; communities of, 61, 115–16, 119–22 V vaccination, 204 Vedas, 150 Vesalius, Andreas, 23, 190 vibrations, 12, 17, 144, 186, 214, 231, 232. See also tremulations Vieussens, Raymond de, 20 Villemain, Abel-François, 104 visions: clairvoyant, 85; explain God, 38; from God, 183; via meditation or hypnosis, 34–35; physical cause of, 36; Spiritualist, 155; Swedenborg’s, xvi, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34–35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 52, 95, 209, 244–45n24 vis medicatrix naturae, 175, 191–92, 193 vital force, 2, 159, 201–2; Descartes on, 12; disease as derangement of, 195, 236; Hahnemann on, 195, 196, 201, 214, 215, 216; in homeopathy, 199, 200, 206; Paracelsus on, 188–89; Scudder on, 192; Swedenborg on, 12, 17, 29, 215; von Reichenbach on, 130 vitalism: Buchanan’s, 86, 88; eclecticism and, 191; as energy, 230, 238; Hempel’s, 201; Kent’s, 214, 215–16, 217–18; mind cure influenced by, 159; Quimby’s, 160–61; Still’s, 220; Swedenborg’s, 12, 200, 215; Trine’s, 228

W Wallace, Alfred, 182 Weir, Sir John, 218 Wells, Samuel R., 250n24 Wepfer, Johann Jakob, 20 Wesley, John, 54, 56 White, Andrew Dickson, 153 Whitefield, George, 54, 58 Wienholt, Arnold, 90 Wilkinson, James John Garth, 15, 87, 116, 210; as homeopath, 203–5; on spiritual causes of disease, 204–5; on Swedenborg, 19–20, 22, 26, 203–4; on vaccination, 204 will, 72, 212, 217. See also mind Williamson, Marianne, 187 Willis, Thomas, 20, 23 Winsløv, Jacques-Bénigne, 19 Wolff, Christian, 23 Wood, Matthew, 189, 211, 212, 217 Woodworth, Samuel, 59 Worcester Medical College, 171 Worcester, Rev. Elwood, 177–79 Worcester, Thomas, 117 Wordsworth, William, 117 Wright, Thomas, 15 writing: automatic, 126, 128, 143, 147, 155; spirit, 138 Wundt, Wilhelm, 177 Y, Z Yellow Springs, OH, 99, 100, 113, 115 yoga, 230 Young, John, 58 Young, Thomas, xvii Zinn, J. G., 23 Zion’s Watchman, 83 Zoarites, 95, 96 Zoroastrianism, 149 Zukav, Gary, 187

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