Category: Isis Unveiled: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

"Among other important works which appeared between 1798 and 1824, when the French Academy appointed its second commission to investigate mesmerism, the Annales du Magnetisme Animal, by the Baron d'Henin de Cuvillier, Lieutenant-General, Chevalier of St. Louis, member of the Academy of Sciences, and correspondent of many of the learned societies of Europe, may be [...]

"The doctrine of Mesmer was simply a restatement of the doctrines of Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Santanelli, and Maxwell, the Scotchman; and he was even guilty of copying texts from the work of Bertrand, and enunciating them as his own principles. In Professor Stewart's work, the author regards our universe as composed of atoms with some [...]

"And now we will notice how, when Mesmer had imported into France his "baquet" and system based entirely on the philosophy and doctrines of the Paracelsites - the great psychological and physiological discovery was treated by the physicians. It will demonstrate how much ignorance, superficiality, and prejudice can be displayed by a scientific body, when [...]

"The theory of the sidereal influence on man was enunciated by all the mediaeval philosophers. "The stars consist equally of the elements of earthly bodies", says Cornelius Agrippa, "and therefore the ideas attract each other....influences only go forth through the help of the spirit; but the spirit is diffused through the whole universe and is [...]

"Van Helmont, who was a disciple of Paracelsus, says much the same, though his theories on magnetism are more largely developed, and still more carefully elaborated. The Magnale Magnum, the means by which the secret magnetic property "enables one person to affect another mutually, is attributed by him to that universal sympathy which exists between [...]

"The unity of the universe was asserted by Paracelsus, who says that "the human body is possessed of primeval stuff" (or cosmic matter); the spectroscope has proved the assertion by showing that the same chemical elements which exist upon earth and in the sun, are also found in all the stars. The spectroscope does more: [...]

"The next point for the physiologists to verify is his proposition that the nourishment of the body comes not merely through the stomach, "but also imperceptibly through the magnetic force, which resides in all nature and by which every individual member draws its specific nourishment to itself." Man, he further says, draws not only health [...]

"Of the substances known to compose the body of man, there have been discovered in the stars already, hydrogen, sodium, calcium, magnesium and iron. In all the stars observed, numbering many hundreds, hydrogen was found, except in two. Now, if we recollect how they have deprecated Paracelsus and his theory of man and the stars [...]

"And now to the doctrine of Paracelsus. His incomprehensible, though lively style must be read like the biblio-rolls of Ezekiel, "within and without." The peril of propounding heterodox theories was great in those days; the Church was powerful, and sorcerers were burnt by the dozens. For this reason, we find Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Eugenius Philalethes [...]

"The speech of Jules Favre is reported to have lasted an hour and a half, and to have held the judges and the public spellbound by its eloquence. We who have heard Jules Favre believe it most readily; only the statement embodied in the last sentence of his argument was unfortunately premature and erroneous at [...]