Abstract
Energy healing has evolved as a key component of the holistic milieu. A broad current of recent energetic practices can be traced to “animal magnetism,” a healing system introduced by the charismatic physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815). Rejected by the nascent science-based medicine of his time, Mesmer’s ideas and techniques were reinterpreted through the occult adoption of yogic transmissions. This chapter focuses on a particular line of this transcultural reception process by mapping out the synthesis of animal magnetism with the notion of prāṇa (“breath” or “vital principle”) at the end of the nineteenth century. It concludes that although mesmerism was rejected on scientific grounds, it survived through “Pranic Healing,” which is essentially a mesmeric technique reframed in the context of occult orientalism.
There in the Orient, where the light and the sun appear, we find in the promised lands the first humans in sacred harmony with nature, filled with the divine light of prophecy and poetry. In their early period of bloom, the Indians, Persians, Chinese, Egyptians, Israelites, and all the adjacent peoples indeed lived a magnetic life […]
Ennemoser 1819a: 185; my translation
They are using prana ignorantly and calling it “magnetism.” If they would combine rhythmic breathing with their “magnetic” treatment they would double their efficiency.
Ramacharaka 1905a: 59
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Notes
- 1.
Alternative healing practices here refer to methods whose underlying anthropology and explanatory models lie outside the conventional biomedical framework.
- 2.
King Louis XVI (1754–1793) had charged the Académie des Sciences and the Faculté de Médecine with the establishment of a scientific commission to investigate Mesmer’s claims. The Commissioners demonstrated that the force of suggestion itself was sufficient to generate the effects and thus concluded that the mesmeric states were caused by the patient’s imagination and collective expectation (Lanska and Lanska 2007: 308).
- 3.
The New Thought movement, also known as Mind Cure, refers to a form of self-help psychology that became popular during the 1870s and formed a significant segment of the American cultic milieu by the end of the century. Following a novel interpretation of mesmerism put forward by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802–1866), the adherents of New Thought upheld the idea that external reality, including illness and health, is primarily determined by one’s inner beliefs and expectations (Hanegraaff 1998: 484–487).
- 4.
In a later scripture, the Praśna Upaniṣad (c. fourth century BCE), prāṇa and rayi (matter) represent the two fundamental principles of creation, while prāṇa is ascribed a superior position among the elements and praised as the supreme agency that maintains the life of all creatures (cf. verses 1.4 and 2.1–6 in Müller 1884: 272).
- 5.
Cited in Winter 2013: 271.
- 6.
Windischmann lists several other synonyms for the vital spirit that were in vogue at his time and reflect the term’s broad semantic range that encapsulates matter, force, life, and spirit; for example, pneuma , “life force,” “life spirit,” “life ether,” “nerve spirit,” as well as animal or magnetic fluidum (Windischmann 1832: 1347–1348, note *).
- 7.
On its path towards the brain, the “etheric current” of Udana moves with the soul through the “Suschumua” [sic], the “vein of sweet sleep” (Windischmann 1832: 1351; see also n. 20 in this chapter). In the light of mesmerism, Windischmann described the soul’s substrate in the form of a subtle fluid that moves along bodily centres corresponding to stages of spiritual progress. His interpretation and his focus on the bodily and therapeutic aspect of meditation would prefigure the reception of kuṇḍalinī-yoga and the cakras by the late nineteenth-century occultists and second-generation theosophists.
- 8.
The Sphinx , launched and edited by the German Theosophist Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden (1846–1916), initially promoted monism and experiment-based occultism but eventually served as a Theosophical publication organ from the early 1890s onwards (Frick 1978: 296).
- 9.
Du Prel’s article “Die sympathetische Kurmethode” (1894) appeared in Die Zukunft (The Future), a Vienna-based weekly magazine that was published with interruptions from 1879 to 1896 and promoted revolutionary social-democratic and anarchistic ideas.
- 10.
Derived from the Norse god Odin, the term “Od” was coined by the German chemist Karl von Reichenbach (1788–1869) and describes a vitalist force that was believed to permeate and animate all biological organisms.
- 11.
Reuß concluded his article with an admonition that any abusive application of prana would amount to “black magic.” Only theurgists who recognise that the source of all vital force is divine may use it for the benefit of their fellow men (Regens 1894: 16).
- 12.
Emic literature produced after the swami’s death tended to exaggerate the influence of the Bengali mystic Ramakrishna (1836–1886) whom Vivekananda adopted as his guru during a brief period between 1884 and 1886. For example, while the Bengali text Sri Sri Rāmakṛṣṇa Kathāmrta (1907; The Nectar of Sri Ramakrishna’s Words) written by Mahendranath Gupta (1854–1932) contains no account of an explicit spiritual transmission to Vivekananda, the liberal English translation thereof penned by Swami Nikhilananda (1895–1973)—The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1984 [1942])—provides a polished narrative of Ramakrishna appointing Vivekananda as his spiritual heir. However, a more careful historical analysis of the available evidence underlines the more significant role of his former master Keshab Chandra Sen (1838–1884) in the moulding of Vivekananda’s neo-Vedāntic outlook, and in introducing him to Western esoteric and occult culture. Whereas Ramakrishna’s Hinduism was relatively free of Western influences, Sen’s teachings had adopted Christian, Enlightenment, Romantic, and spiritualist elements (de Michelis 2004: 49–50, 70, 100–108).
- 13.
As Elizabeth de Michelis (2004: 151–153) has observed, Vivekananda’s synthesis does not result in a rigorous, coherent worldview, but instead strings together three distinguishable approaches, namely the Prāṇa Model, the Samādhi Model, and the neo-Advaitic “mode of thought.”
- 14.
De Michelis (2004: 3) appraises the book as “seminal” since not only does it translate classical Hindu approaches to yoga history, concepts, and practices for Western audiences but actively reshapes them on secular terms. Drawing from earlier classifications, Vivekananda discerned between the four traditional yogas of karma (deeds), bhakti (loving devotion), rāja (king, i.e., royal), and jñāna (knowledge), and defined rājayoga as the superior path to realise divine truth (Baier 2009: 471–472).
- 15.
The eight limbs encompass yama (restraints); niyama (observances); āsana (postures); prāṇāyāma (regulation of breath); pratyāhāra (withdrawal of the senses); dhāraṇa (concentration); dhyāna (meditation); and samādhi (immersion) (de Michelis 2004: 15 note 3).
- 16.
This wording was suggested by Karl Baier (personal exchange).
- 17.
By the end of the nineteenth century, physicists had developed a notion of energy that served as a unifying concept for several theories including Newtonian mechanics and gravitation, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. Thus, identifying prāṇa with physical energy would bestow the Sanskrit term with the quality of a unifying idea based on sound science.
- 18.
Delsarte was a French teacher of acting and singing. He earned fame throughout Europe for developing a theory of aesthetic principles in the context of the pedagogy of dramatic expression. His spirito-physical exercises for the coordination of voice and breath with physical postures were popular beyond the professional circles of theatre and opera (Singleton 2010: 144).
- 19.
Stebbins became known as arguably the foremost representative of Delsartism in America and a pioneer of modern dance. Her theories drew on the ideas of the Delsarte-student Steele Mackaye (1842–1894), the system of gymnastic exercises developed by Pehr Henrik Ling (1776–1839), as well as yoga. Furthermore, she was a member of the Church of Light, which entertained close connections with a short-lived but influential occult and neo-Rosicrucian group of the mid-1880s, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor (Deveney 2006: 486–487). Accordingly, Stebbins focused on practice-oriented occultism and interpreted Delsarte’s ideas in esoteric terms (Singleton 2010: 144). Rejecting the notion that science opposes religion, she suggested that her breathing exercises not only had a positive medical effect but that they also enabled the practitioner to influence his or her mental state to the point of mystical ecstasy. Through breathing, not only air but also ether is being absorbed, which she identified as the divine life force (Baier 2009: 458–461). The vital energy accumulated in this manner possesses “both mental and magnetic powers” that become freely available to the practitioner (Stebbins 1892: 53).
- 20.
Vivekananda refers to the three major Nadis (tube, pipe), which are “Ida” (comfort) and “Pingala” (tawny, golden), each respectively running to the left and the right of the Sushumna (gracious, kind), the central Nadi stretching along the spine. First mentioned in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Chāndogya Upaniṣad (c. 500 BCE), the nāḍīs were thought of in later Yogic and Tantric texts as subtle nerve- or arteries-like channels that conduct prāṇa, the vital energy, between the cakras (Leland 2016: 25, 33).
- 21.
Vivekananda did not yet refer to these lotuses explicitly as cakras , but in passing mentioned their traditional tantric names. According to Kurt Leland (2016: 154), this passage in Râja Yoga is possibly the first instance that the Sanskrit names of the seven cakras appear on American soil.
- 22.
The name Oriflamme (from Lat. aureaflamma, golden flame) was derived from the battle standard of the Kings of France used by the French crusaders. High-grade Masonic rites in France have used the symbol as well, which, according to legend, had been depicted on the heraldic banner of Charlemagne (742–814) (Frick 1978: 469).
- 23.
Reuß first revealed the O.T.O.’s existence in the “jubilee edition” of the Oriflamme in 1912. The British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) had become involved with Reuß’s project only shortly before (Pasi 2006: 901). Through Crowley, the O.T.O. attained dubious international fame, while contributing significantly to the promotion and dissemination of tantric teachings in the West.
- 24.
Apparently, both Kellner and the leading German Theosophist Franz Hartmann (1838–1912) were involved in Reuß’s Masonic undertakings at least in the early days of the Oriflamme and contributed occasionally to his publication. Together with Reuß they seemed to have formed the arcane triumvirate referred to as the “Inner Triangle” (Pasi 2006: 899). There are no indications of rituals involving sexual elements in Kellner’s extant papers, and the notion of “sexual magic” does not appear in Reuß’s publications until Kellner’s death in 1906 (ibid.).
- 25.
Reuß claims that Paracelsus (1493–1541), Heinreich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535), and Mesmer among other physicians of renown were acquainted with this mystical art.
- 26.
For an overview of Blavatsky’s interpretation of subtle anatomy, see Leland 2016: 102–116.
- 27.
These lotuses are defined as “the Psychic Centres of the Body, within which force and life-energy are stored up” (Merlin 1913: 5–6). He adopts Blavatsky’s number of seven main lotuses or “cakras” that are of special importance and are listed by name (roughly resembling their original Sanskrit terms), location (although incompletely), and their corresponding number of petals: (1) Mudladhar Lotus at the base of the spine (4 petals); (2) Swadkisthan Lotus (6); (3) Manipur Lotus under the navel (10); (4) Anahat Lotus in the heart (12); (5) Vishudda Lotus (16); (6) Ajna Lotus between the eyes (2); (7) Sakasrar Lotus (1000).
- 28.
Without referring to Blavatsky, the passage on the Tattvas and the pituitary gland closely follows her Esoteric Instruction No. 3 (see Blavatsky 1980 [1897]: 611–618).
- 29.
The term “Pranic Healing” itself probably appears for the first time in a later book called The Science of Psychic Healing (1906), in which Atkinson presented it as a subcategory of a more elaborate healing concept rooted in mesmerist and New Thought ideas.
- 30.
Leadbeater (1922 [1911]: 287–297) instead refers to “force-centres,” thus following Blavatsky’s nomenclature. Apart from breathing control, several aspects of Pranic Healing were later popularised through Leadbeater’s books in the 1910s and 1920s.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Karl Baier for his substantial and steady advice, as well as the many helpful exchanges on the historical roots of energy healing practices.
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Zoehrer, D.S. (2021). From Fluidum to Prāṇa: Reading Mesmerism Through Orientalist Lenses. In: Pokorny, L., Winter, F. (eds) The Occult Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_5
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