The Mesmerism paradigm shift

'Mesmerism predisposed Americans to think not only of a lower unconscious but also of a mystical higher unconscious, and to abandon Scriptural based Christianity in favour of the psychological and experiential attempt to align oneself with higher or natural forces' (Robin Waterfield in his book Hidden Depths - the story of hypnosis).

In their survey of Hermetism, The Elixir and the Stone, in which they see Mesmerism as an integral part, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh argue that Hermetism 'refuses to accept the rational intellect as the supreme means of cognition, the supreme arbiter of reality, indeed it emphasises and extols the mystical or numinous experience - direct and firsthand apprehension of the sacred, direct knowledge of the absolute'.

Seen in this light, Mesmer passed on not just a medical methodology but unwittingly set in motion a massive paradigm shift, particularly in American culture, a shift away from Scripture and reason to experience.

Mesmer's theory postulated that a curious substance known as the Fluidium enabled astrological forces to act at a distance upon the human body. Moreover, Rosemary Guiley holds that Paracelsus was the original discoverer of Mesmerism, as she states, 'He believed the Hermetic principle that human beings had a 'vital' body (an etheric double created and energised by the universe) and that when the 'vital' body was depleted, physical ailment was the result... it... could be re-energised by bringing it into contact with another 'vital' body that had an overabundance of the 'vital' life force.'

The Hermetica, as Tobias Churton comments, is a blend of 'Platonist and Stoic philosophy' with many concepts floating around in Alexandria during the second to fourth centuries of our era.

It was a type of spiritual operations handbook, by which, as Garth Howden points out, 'the divine powers that pervaded the universe could be bound and loosed'.

Cosmos as a living soul

Erik Davis, in his book Techgnosis - myth, magic and mysticism in an age of information, describes the Hermetica as viewing 'the Cosmos as a living soul, a magnet of correspondences that linked the earth, the body, the stars and the remote spiritual realms of the godhead. This Anima Mundi could be accessed and tweaked by the symbolic rituals of ceremonial magic...'

Erik Davis describes Mesmerism as 'basically indistinguishable from Chinese medicine which also holds that a vital spirit infuses the body and that disease results from blockages in this dynamically balanced network of polarised energy flows'.

In the early 19th century, German Romantics developed a 'mystical magnetism', fusing ideas about Mesmerism with the esoteric ideas of Jacob Boherne and Emanuel Swedenborg.

As Robin Waterfield says: 'It isn't hard to see how Romanticism and Mesmerism were made for each other. The Romantics believed, for instance, in the existence of a world soul, which pervades the universe - just as Mesmer's magnetic fluid did. Novalis ... postulated the existence of two distinct sets of sense organs, one attuned to external events, the other to the inner world of the spirit ... then the main Romantic philosopher, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), saw the whole world as a set of polarities such as light and gravity, positive and negative electricity, the north and south poles of magnetism and so on... Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert [believed that] it is the nervous system centred on the solar plexus which gives us the ability to transcend the boundaries of space and time.'

More ominously there arose the spectacle of the 'magnetic seer', persons, who while in deep trance 'channelled' supposed revelations, such as the 'Ploughkeepsie Seer', Andrew Jackson Davis, who channelled, as Robin Waterfield relates, 'a vision of the divine powers and workings of the universe as a whole, which he came to see as the beginning of a new revelation for humankind'. Here we see a shift away from Scripture begin.

Furthermore, Mesmerism lends itself to a highly experiential approach. As Erik Davis describes, those in mesmeric trances 'ascended ... through a Neo-Platonic high rise of altered states ... feeling 'tingling sensations' or vibrations flowing through them. Some experienced 'waves of energy' and saw auras of light. In the deepest trances something like cosmic consciousness kicked in, as the subject's mind, it was said, achieved identity with the force of animal magnetism itself. Clairvoyance, telepathy and other para-psychological oddities emerged.'

Dualism

With this, a sense of Dualism emerged, that beyond the physical senses, mesmeric trance enabled one, as Henry Olcott argued, 'to get outside the illusion-breeding screen of the body and acquire an actual perception of the divine truth through the developed psychical senses'.

As Waterfield relates, 'Some of these seers like Davis and Harris, claimed religious status themselves, as prophets and dispensers of a new revelation.' With this emerged the New Thought movement which blended Christianity, Neo-Platonism, Swedenborgianism, German Idealism (e.g. Hegel) and various occult and Oriental ideas with mesmeric theory. The most famous of these new movements is undoubtedly Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy under the influence of former mesmerist Phineas P. Quimby.

Quimby's view is dualistic, opposing natural versus clairvoyant and matter versus wisdom. He distinguished between Jesus as a purely natural man and Christ. As Ann Taves comments in her book Fits, Trances and Visions - experiencing religion and explaining experience from Wesley to James, Quimby believed that 'Christ was never intended to be applied to Jesus as a man, but a truth superior to the natural man ... Jesus as a man knew nothing of Christ.'

Essek W. Kenyon is the bridge linking New Thought and Pentecostalism as Dan McConnell relates in his book A Different Gospel. Kenneth Hagin then propagated his ideas via a horde of imitators such as Kenneth Copeland, Charles Capps, Benny Hinn, that have deeply permeated certain sections of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement ever since.

The crux of my argument is that, like Russian dolls enclosed inside each other, the faith movement has brought into present day Christianity a whole host of ideas, concepts and practices which are as much influenced by non-Christian beliefs as by any purported insight into Scripture.

Coming full circle

History has now come full circle and, like the early church, we are seeing an insidious wave of Gnosticism entering the churches. Much of this is superficially very attractive: who does not want a deeper and fuller experience of God?

But as Irenaeus warned us so long ago, 'Error is not shown forth such as it is, for fear that when stripped it may be recognised, but is fraudulently adorned with persuasive attire and appears more true than the truth itself, ridiculous to say, thanks to this external appearance to the eyes of the ignorant.'

It is the deep hunger of the charismatic movement for insight that has led parts of it to be increasingly open to insights from what are in effect guru figures who appear to enjoy a flow of constant revelation from God himself. Thus the fervour for such personalities as John Wimber (I'm a sort of have-experience-will-travel kind of a person) and Rick Joyner.

Old heresies, new clothes

Thus large numbers of insights are, I believe, simply old heresies dressed up in new clothes.

Here are some examples:

Take John Wimber's statement: 'At the same time as I'm gathering information with my five senses, I'm also sending my antenna into the cosmic reality.' I see this as an echo of New Thought writer Warren Felt Evans's belief that 'spiritual senses' are 'our ordinary senses acting independently of our bodily organs'.

According to Ann Taves, Warren Felt Evans's books 'on religious healing synthesised elements from Methodism, Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism and esoteric Christianity'. She also comments that he drew upon 'the Hermetic tradition ... Intuition, he wrote, is thus the only faculty in man through which divine revelation comes or has ever come. By means of it we gain access to an interior and permanent region of knowledge, where are stored up all the truths which were ever known or can be known - the Universal Christ.'

Likewise, Kenneth Copeland's assertion that 'Adam in the garden of Eden was God manifested in the flesh' appears similar to the Hermetic statement that 'Man on earth is a mortal God'.

Again the horrendous advice given by some Faith teachers that the sick should ignore their bodily symptoms is similar to the Hermetic view that, 'Whoever, then by God's mercy attains a divine birth is freed from the bodily senses.'

Similarly the statement by Earl Paulk that 'dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, so God has little gods' is reminiscent of saying 87 in the (Gnostic) Gospel of Phillip: 'A horse begets horses, a human being begets human beings, deity begets deity.'

As Torbjorn Swartling fittingly states, 'In theory, movements like the Faith movement proclaim that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, but intermingled with biblical truths there is another gospel about another Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible.'