Mesmer Eyes: Let There
Be Light
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The light shines in the
darkness …
Gospel of John Eulogies were few at the time of Anton Mesmer’s passing. It was decades since he had been visible to the populace which survived the turmoil in Paris. He had grown old while many magnetists re-fashioned Mesmerism in their own images. The Marquis de Puységur took Mesmer’s teachings which were transformed before his very eyes into what he considered to be his True Magnetism. Still, he held the Teacher in high regard. He wrote his brother, “I continue to make use of the happy power for which I am indebted to M. Mesmer. Every day I bless his name; for I am very useful, and produce many salutary effects on all the sick poor in the neighbourhood.” J.P.F. Deleuze, a well-known naturalist and mesmerist, may have given the Doctor the greatest of praise when he wrote, “Those who knew Mesmer testified to his goodness of heart; he gave the same care to the poor as to the rich; and being of service was his greatest pleasure.” Deleuze added, in an interesting turn of words, that Mesmer was “an extraordinary man of energetic character with meditative turn of mind and a strong imagination.” Public and pundits alike could not help but see the man as genie or charlatan or both. Courtiers, academics, and physicians, who may have been intimidated by the luster and confidence of the man, called him charlatan: “Our Century, humiliating as it is to admit this fact, offers ridiculous examples of the influence of mere imagination, such as the secret of Dr. Mesmer.” Dr. Mesmer was to many eyes a thief and a charlatan. Yet, how extraordinary he must have been to incidentally help and cure thousands of nervous, sick and lame along the way. Patients and people who were touched by his talents had sometimes wanted to call him God. Maybe more amazingly, Mesmer was never blamed for injuring a single soul. Few physicians in any time period can make claim to such accomplishments of commission and omission. Mesmer’s theory and practice have yet to become part of the healing landscape, but students of history, psychology, and literature can easily find evidence that the Master’s touch persists. Historian Robert Darnton published his Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France in 1968 not intending to prove Mesmer or his theory, but rather to put their influences in the context of France in the Revolutionary era. He could not help but compose an effort which “would restore Mesmer to his rightful place, somewhere near Turgot, Franklin, and Cagliostro in the pantheon of that age’s most-talked-about men.” Darnton explained how Anton Mesmer helped to mold the thought and action of late eighteenth-century Europe and beyond. He was a revolutionary in his own right influencing minds and bodies of individuals, cities and nations. While Liberty and Health may not have been achieved in his time, it was not for any lack of effort on Mesmer’s part. “These Frenchmen found that mesmerism offered a serious explanation of Nature, of her wonderful, invisible forces, and even, in some case, of the forces governing society and politics. They absorbed mesmerism so thoroughly that they made it a principal article in the legacy of attitudes that they left for their sons and grandsons to fashion into what is now called romanticism.” The romantics of the 19th century almost literally fell in love with Mesmer and his universal fluid. A list of “affected” writers is long and impressive. Numbers of them became so enamoured that they took the time to learn and practice the mesmeric art. Great thinkers like Goethe, Fichte, and Schopenhauer recognized the importance of Mesmer’s experiments. The latter declared that, “from the philosophical standpoint [mesmerism was] the most pregnant of all discoveries.” While the name of Mesmer was fading from general scrutiny, some of the greatest of French writers took heart and soul from his endeavors. His touch can be readily recognized in the works of Balzac, Dumas, Flaubert, and Hugo. Honoré de Balzac was a keen follower of Mesmer. He reproached his generation for their lack of appreciation for the Doctor and his discovery, “si importante et si mal aprecée encore.” Balzac studied and practiced until he mastered the method and developed “the mesmeric eye.” He gave strong praise to the Master’s work in the Foreword to La Comédie Humaine. Victor Hugo did much the same in his “Préface philosophique” to Les Misérables. At the same time, Hugo took science to task for it, “under the pretext of miraculousness, has abandoned its scientific duty, which is to get at the root of all things.” “Science has turned pale at the sight of … magnetic trances.” The English-speaking world produced a long list of authors “under the influence.” Writers, poets and prophets took to mesmerism in many ways, many of them thanks to public demonstrations offered by Dr. John Elliotson. Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Barrett, Thackeray and Tennyson, Bulwer-Lytton and Shelley, Henry James and Du Maurier, Coleridge and the Carlyles, Darwin and Dickens were deeply intrigued. Charles Dickens became a practiced mesmerist, while Harriett Martineau wrote, “I owe my health, wholly and solely to mesmerism.” In America, Hawthorne and Melville and Poe became magnetized through their studies of the mass of literature spawned by Mesmer’s teachings. Poe was particularly enrapt when he produced his “Strange Case of M. Valdemar.” It is impossible to say how far and wide Anton Mesmer’s influence spread over two centuries. Regardless of whether his doctrine was true or false. Guided or misguided, his Discovery affects us to the present day. Anton Mesmer is long dead, but his name lives on. Believe it or not, the recognition of his Discovery already may have occurred. If not in name, then quite possibly in its spirit, virtue or practice. (See next chapter.) For the most part, modern biographers have been much less generous to Mesmer than were authors of the 19th century. A survey of biographies of recent decades leads us back to the introduction of this book and the question: charlatan or genius? There is a spectrum in viewpoints among investigators who have taken the time to study and write on Anton Mesmer. The final words have yet to have been written on the subject. Skepticism seems to have been a common characteristic among almost all of his biographers. Even Margaret Goldsmith who remarked in speaking of the 1784 Commissioners that, “None of them, not even Franklin, … ever wondered whether there was not some grain of truth in Mesmer’s fantastic theories.” That characterization seems to fit Madame Goldsmith and many of the rest of her writer comrades. Giving credit where credit is due, the best that most of them could do was to wonder about how great an effect Mesmer had on the development of hypnosis, of suggestion and imagination in therapy, and of modern psychology. “It is one of the strange ironies of history that a man who made no attempt to explain the workings of the mind set in motion a series of events that revolutionized the way we view the human psyche.” (Crabtree) Frank Podmore, a psychical researcher, considered Mesmer alongside Mary Baker Eddy in his 1909 book entitled Mesmerism and Christian Science. His crisp conclusion on the former was that, “The magnetic fluid was a chimera, and Mesmer, it may be admitted was perhaps three parts a charlatan. He had no pretensions to be a thinker: stole his philosophy ready-made from a few belated alchemists; his entire system of healing was based on delusion. His extraordinary success was due to the lucky accident of the times.” So, Podmore imagined and wrote. But, he had more to add on the Doctor. It is astonishing how writers and investigators like Frank Podmore can provide seemingly contradictory judgments in the span of a few pages. Despite his dim opinion of Anton Mesmer, the skeptical Podmore gave the Great Magnetist some extraordinary credits. “Mesmer’s first claim to our remembrance lies in this – that he wrested the privilege of healing from the Churches, and gave it to mankind as a universal possession. In rejecting the gift for themselves and their successors to the third and fourth generation, Bailly and his colleagues rejected more than they knew.” Secondly, Podmore said that Mesmer gave a rationale for the process to “explain it as wholly due to the operation of an indifferent mechanical force. He was also the first who, without claiming peculiar sanctity for himself, or avowedly exacting faith from his patient, was able to heal as effectually and on at least as large a scale as any saint or inspired healer who had gone before.” Writing in 1920, R.B. Ince tried to put things in clearer perspective, even had Mesmer been a charlatan. “If Mesmer is to be regarded as a ‘quack’ then the term must in justice be bestowed on every doctor, no matter what his diplomas, who has ever practised…. orthodox medical men – using drugs – also deal with forces that are far from being understood.” Writing in a similar vein but twenty years later than Podmore on Mental Healers: Mesmer, Eddy and Freud, Stefan Zweig was much more sympathetic. Although he considered Mesmer mistaken, Zweig believed that like Columbus, “he discovered a new continent, with innumerable archipelagos and unexplored regions; it was he who discovered psychotherapy. For all the recently opened domains of psychology – hypnosis, suggestion, Christian Science, psychoanalysis, and even spiritualism and telepathy – are to be found in that new continent which this tragically neglected man discovered unwittingly.” Quimby’s New Thought, followed by Eddy’s Christian Science, Coue’s suggestion and Freudian psychology owe much to Anton Mesmer’s bringing of animal magnetism to the public eye. As do the developments of spiritualism and trance, clairvoyant powers, telepathic and telekinetic experiments. According to Pierre Janet, it was Mesmer’s work “which first necessitated a study of the phenomena of concentration and deconcentration, of fatigue, and attention, and hypnosis, of nervous crises and of stimulation …” Like other biographers, Zweig was largely convinced that Mesmer had been misguided and deluded. “Until the day of his death, indefatigably, he continued his search for the universal driving-power. His life, his fortune, his social position, his every minute, were devoted to this one and only idea. Such obstinacy, such incorrigible and glowing perseverance, are both sublime and tragical; for the thing he was in search of, the magic and universal fluid, ever eluded his grasp; whereas what he actually did find, a technique for the treatment of the psyche, he was not looking for and never fully realized he had discovered.” Despite Zweig’s demeaning opinion, he gave Mesmer much credit for pointing unknowingly toward future studies and science. “If Mesmer’s every word, every theory, every thought had been wrong-headed, yet his work proved more productive of genuine values than that of all the other scholars and investigators of his epoch, for he pointed the way to a coming science whose advent was long overdue, and turned the eyes of the next generation towards the enigmatical sphere of the soul.” Zweig recognized Mesmer as a healer, but one who succeeded without knowing what he was really about: “… it is undeniable that all the psychotherapeutic methods of today derive by one route or another from the discoveries of Franz Anton Mesmer, who not only, as a pioneer, happened upon the recognition of the power of what we now call suggestion, but, however crudely and however mistakenly, maintained the practice of the first scientific method of mental healing against the laughter, the scorn, and the contempt of an unduly mechanical science. These facts suffice to give him a place in history. “Before Mesmer, no properly trained and accredited modern physician had understood and utilized with full awareness the healing power which a suggestive personality, its proximity, words, persuasion, commands, can exert for curative purposes.” In her 1934 biography, Margaret Goldsmith showed herself to be of a somewhat similar mind. Still although Mesmer was a man of some genius, she thought him slow and inept. She seemed to mirror that image into her writing as she got bogged down trying to follow Mesmer’s “groping” steps towards modern psychology. Mesmer traveled slowly and blindly towards rapport therapy and suggestive therapeutics. She came to the conclusion that he eventually passed beyond magnets and even touch to “move the fluid” with suggestion. Still, Goldsmith believed the Doctor’s life was a failure: “It was Mesmer’s tragedy to overlook the essential cause of his success.” “He never understood the real significance or importance [of his ideas].” “He had not acquired the slightest insight into the causes of his cures.” “Mesmer was doomed, chiefly because he was not blessed with a scientific insight into causes and effects.” But, who is it that really understood – or misunderstood? In the 1940s, Nora Wydenbruck was more generous in her considerations of Dr. Mesmer. She hailed him as a pioneer and not just in his supposed opening of the gates to modern psychology. His picture of harmony as the secret of the universe and the power of music to restore that harmony impressed her greatly. While the therapeutic value of music has still to be fully recognized, she believed his major recognition was that of the demonstration of functional as opposed to organic disease, and its curability. In the same decade, Gilbert Frankau pronounced Mesmer to be the “progenitor of modern psychotherapy” through Braid, Liebault, and on to Charcot, Breuer, Freud. Frankau was unsure about his fanciful Propositions, but he did recognize Mesmer as “an absolutely honest clinician, in whose case histories we are bound to believe. Such evidence, of course, is at best only circumstantial. Had we no more, except the man’s own words, to substantiate his contention that he both could and did effect permanent cures of nervous diseases … it would be difficult to dismiss the charge, so constantly levelled against him, of charlatanry. But, from the day he began his treatments to the day he retired into exile, independent witnesses, both lay and professional, to his success were legion …” It was not until the 1960s that biographers began to tune in to what Mesmer was really about, what he spent decades preaching, and what remains plentifully attested to in his own words and in testimony by thousands. D.M. Walmsley is one of those who “got it.” Walmsley recognized Mesmer as one of the greatest medical pioneers, one greatly misunderstood and neglected. He also saw Mesmer endeavoring to bring nerve-wracked bodies back together through his subtle method of animal magnetism. “The amazing effects often produced were due to the working of this [magnetic] current or force, not to some vague influence of mind over matter and far less to any supernatural or mystical power. Unfortunately for Mesmer, the strange phenomena had for centuries been attributed by the credulous to divine or diabolical causes, and hence by the sceptical to mere charlatanry.” In the 1970s, the writings of Jerome Eden and James Wyckoff seriously refashioned the whole landscape. Wyckoff resurrected the Great Magnetist as “one of the most extraordinary figures in medical history. And very likely the most controversial. He has been called the father of psychotherapy, as well as of Christian Science, the discoverer of hypnosis, the progenitor of clairvoyance, telepathy and communication with the beyond; and he has been denigrated as a rogue, a charlatan, an arrogant pursuer of social and monetary favor, a meretricious magician. In his day it was asserted he had sold his soul to the devil. More subtly, he has been cast as a visionary who unwittingly stumbled upon a discovery the value of which he was not able to see.” Wyckoff readily recognized Mesmer as the forefather of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich. But, he was much more. And, maybe less. Because he had no direct connection with hypnotism and would have been irritated to have his name mentioned with the idea. “The discovery that history has so cleverly assigned to Mesmer was not at all his principal achievement. And in apportioning to him the title of ‘discoverer of hypnotism’ the science of his day and ours has managed more or less successfully to hide his true discovery (or really, rediscovery), which he spent most of his lifetime trying to persuade others to see. It is just this evasion of the truth that has concealed Mesmer’s real contribution – the rediscovery of a universal energy, a different current of reality; what he called the Fluidum, and we, the Life Force.” In the same time period (1975), Vincent Buranelli wrote of Mesmer as The Wizard from Vienna. His title suggested one face of Anton Mesmer, but Buranelli ultimately turned back to seeing him as a systems man and the Columbus of modern psychology. “The basic ideas of Mesmerism––hypnotic trance, suggestion and autosuggestion, healing rays, stroking medicine––were in no sense original with the man who gave his name to the system. Mesmer contributed the controlled use of these ideas in a scientific, systematic manner capable of developing into something new, modern psychotherapy.” Still, his animal magnetism was a myth. Mesmer’s most recent biographer (1994) was psychologist Frank Pattie. Pattie, “one of the grand old men of hypnotism,” researched and studied the life of Anton Mesmer for most of the 20th century. Before Pattie died, he had amassed a library of hundreds of volumes devoted to Mesmer and animal magnetism. Pattie spent half his lifetime (1902 to 2000) following Mesmer and writing (sometimes with Jean Vinchon and Robert Amadou) on his findings. It is hard to fathom how a person invested so much of his life on another’s and came up with an entirely negative conclusion. “Mesmer was indeed a charlatan; he claimed to have knowledge which he did not have …” Pattie may have proved that to himself. He may also have proved that “It’s hard to see what you can’t see.” But, proofs are subject to review and visions change with the times. Let’s give Mesmer a break. Maybe he did have knowledge. Maybe he knew things others have denied before, during and after his 80 years on Earth. Maybe Mesmer did discover or re-discover a universal energy. Maybe he and Paracelsus, van Helmont, Maxwell and a host of others in past eras were really on to something yet to be taken seriously. Maybe they did learn to put a universal energy to use in healing the sick and restoring the lame. Maybe all manner of detractors and many supporters over the generations have been wrong or partly wrong about Anton Mesmer. Maybe he was the real item – like Galileo, Columbus, and Harvey. Maybe Mesmer’s greatest secret was the truth which he proffered in broad daylight for decades, but people rejected for so many reasons. Maybe he was endeavoring to share his gold, but his potential recipients had eyes that couldn’t distinguish the real thing from fool’s gold. How many of them were the real fools? The honest, true, and real fact may be that Anton Mesmer had a secret – or several secrets. He divulged only portions of his discoveries to his students. And, maybe he divulged only as much as could be transmitted and received. Charles d’Eslon was ever complaining that he withheld important information from him. The Marquis de Puységur thought Mesmer’s secret to be the power of will. But, many picked that idea up easily on their own. Speculations persisted for decades. It seems that few have closely studied Mesmer’s writings. Even his biographers overlooked numbers of indications which he gave about his greater secrets. We can tally some of what he gave out in his books and interviews. Anton Mesmer – 1) spent three months without words and learned to experience form differently than others. 2) developed a sixth sense as the result of his experiments. 3) could predict a patient’s predisposition to disease days in advance. 4) could prevent incipient disease from manifesting. 5) was able to tell from which part of the body a disease originated. 6) influenced the sick and the well at a distance as few others ever have. 7) performed acts which otherwise would have been considered magical. Mesmer would have laughed at the suggestion that he was a magician, but the title may have been little removed from the truth. Jacques de Horne considered him a “Thaumaturge, Prometheus, and Operator.” Writing in 1936, French psychiatrist Jean Vinchon, concluded in favor of Mesmer and his secrets. He was convinced that “Mesmer was a medium and possessed supernormal powers, particularly clairvoyance and the ability to predict.” Vinchon justified his belief, in part, from Mesmer’s statement that “animal magnetism in my hands should be considered as an artificial sixth sense.” The vehement adversary Jean-Jacques Paulet, in his Antimagnétisme, tacitly supported Vinchon’s conclusion. He nonchalantly reported that “Doctor Mesmer said one day, in a moment of enthusiasm to his Adepts & to his Patients, that since one forced him to explain himself on this point, it was very true as to the means of the sixth sense, he saw objects through the walls. M. de Montesquiou, M. Galinie among others were present.” Vinchon wrote that, “The Sixth Sense unites the magnetizer to the magnetized, when the first has to understand his subject by ‘a disposition beyond the rest of mankind.’ The education of this sense develops. This development gives to him its acquired artificial character. It thus becomes an instrument comparable to the microscope which carries the view beyond the limits imposed by the naked eye.” Amazingly when Vinchon’s Mesmer et Son Secret was republished in 1971, the editor deleted the last chapter of the original text. Entitled Le Secret de Mesmer, the finale in the original edition detailed the author’s studied evaluation of Mesmer’s unusual skills. In 1994 Frank Pattie, Vinchon’s occasional collaborator, distanced himself from such ideas, saying, “There exists no evidence of Mesmer’s supernormal powers.” We may repeat, It’s hard to see what you can’t see! But there is more, whether Mesmer was magical, clairvoyant, mediumistic or not. By now, the reader will have gotten sufficient hints that Anton Mesmer himself held both the answer and the problem for what became known as animal magnetism. Furthermore, Franciscus Antonius Mesmer was the answer and the problem. Mesmer was wont to make the observations that many Savants, regardless of their senses and his presentations, would deny the facts of animal magnetism because they had already rejected the theory. But, the situation was more complicated than it appeared to a man set on changing the world through his discovery. Anton Mesmer was a supremely confident man – a complicated man, according to Charles d’Eslon – comfortable in his skin and in his spirit. A man who knew what he knew: he had experimented and experienced. He could make all manner of marvelous and magical things happen that few could fathom or even imagine. While Mesmer may have had a sixth sense, it seems likely that his other senses were also heightened in awareness. He saw as all doctors, according to Paracelsus, ought. “The physician should be able to see that which is not visible to every body.” In his Précis, Mesmer gave a useful analogy of the Microscope in attempting to explain how his faculty worked. He tried to say that for those who have not seen or experienced or imagined the microscope, it might be considered an ingenious dream. Offering mere calculations and data to them on the eye and light would only “tax one into darkness.” Then when the inventor [this was in the 18th century] produced a microscope, would the Savants dare to say that the earlier information given did not explain the facts? Should the microscopist be held in bad faith because his descriptions had been insufficient for the other scientists? Mesmer might have added, “What if the inventor had excellent vision and the newcomers to the device were mostly near-sighted or blind?” Supposedly in the realm of the blind, the one-eyed man is king – or ought to be. Such was hardly the case in Mesmer’s time or most any other. Even then, the blind were leading the blind. They continue to do so, and thus we all fall in the ditch in different times and places. When a sighted or one-eyed person steps forward to show the way, the unsighted often ignore him and continue blindly not recognizing that which is right before them – even within them. In a manner of speaking, Mesmer came up with a new Invention – including the baquet, which he called a Machine – rather than Microscope. It was one which was really ancient, but had been long forgotten and little understood in most time periods over the centuries. In the past, present and future, many of those with the keys to the cupboard where the Invention is kept find themselves far ahead of the crowd. Some of their kin fall down in praise, others thrown stones or call for the police. Still others find a tree and look for a rope or nails. Mesmer knew many of the old stories. Surely, he hoped that his time would change the pattern and he would not be crucified. His curiosity and commitment to Truth and Humanity overrode whatever inconvenience and abuse might come his way. But, he could not avoid his destiny. For good, in bringing the Invention forward for the benefit of his fellows. For ill, in drawing wrath, jealousy, and common ignorance to the fore. Dr. Mesmer applied his analogy to, “Animal Magnetism, the considerations of which I present, and draw two main consequences. The first is that I continue in vain to hold the theory of my doctrine, without conditions: I do press on neither listened nor heard. The second is that when it is universally established, it will be present in practice in uniformity even to shallow eyes, while it will absorb all the intellectual faculties of people worthy to administer it.” “I have aspired to be able to establish the proofs with order, clarity & precision; but the object that I treat, escapes a positive expression. It only remains for my images, comparisons, approximations to be understood. Even when we use sound language, it still presents imperfect tales. I therefore address the following reflections to that portion of readers who read to understand …” The sense abilities of humanity are just beginning to catch up with those of Anton Mesmer. His sixth sense has appeared in only a tiny few in the world of 7 billion human souls. But, there is hope with the advance of time, dissemination of knowledge, and evolution of consciousness for more humans to open themselves to learning what he endeavored to pass on. The end of the 18th century was hardly the best time for Mesmer to present his system. There may yet to have been one. His Invention needed openness and receptivity, interest and willingness of viewers. Not just intellect. Mesmer was after all keen to argue “the incontestable axiom that everything of which a Savant must be convinced of the existence of my discovery in an hour of time, a peasant of the Swiss Mountains can do the same after treatment of several months.” Dr. Mesmer needed to find some way to reach the Savants. Or just leave them alone – and maybe let Nature take its course. Charles d’Eslon probably didn’t think about Nature taking its course in the situation, but he did counsel Mesmer in his early Paris days to keep his distance from the academicians. Mesmer didn’t listen. Later on, d’Eslon didn’t even heed his own advice and tried to force the river. The Scholars and Scientists simply would not listen to either of them, with their dramatically different ways and ideas. The salon and baquet were nothing like the 18th century consulting room and mesmeric passes were far removed from blistering and bleeding. Yet, Mesmer consoled himself that his opponents, “Denied the theory, then rejected the facts.” But, another angle might be worth pondering. Did the Savants reject the theory, or was it the theorist? As a presenter, Mesmer had some problems even for those followers who paid a hundred louis d’as a subscription. He was a foreigner, a German-Austrian in France. His reputation, for good and bad, followed him. He spoke weak French and was apparently not the best teacher at close hand. Mesmer also admitted his writing was far from fluent and understandable. Again, he told that his Précis had been considered unintelligible by many readers. To the Savants of the day, he presented a potent, intimidating, and intransigent challenge. He was a “complicated man,” according Charles d’Eslon who worked and struggled with him for some years. Like many of the greats, he was a walking, talking (and healing) contradiction. “Mesmer showed his isolation in some contradictory attitudes and we can admit that he was sincere in each. Thus he received around his baquets the poor and the rich, but at the same time he was a snob who wanted above all his entrance to the court. He proclaimed that he was disinterested, but clung desperately to his students’ money and wealth that might bring forth his discovery. He wanted to save humanity, but at the same time he wanted to keep the secret that gave him power. He wanted to communicate his knowledge to his disciples, yet he wanted to be the only one to know the truth. Being sincere in each of these attitudes, he did not see that they were contradictory.” (R. de Saussure) Nonetheless, Mesmer really did know things that others didn’t or maybe couldn’t know. He had studied at the foot of Nature in ways others have never dreamed of – like living in the world mutely for three months at one stretch. He must have left untold other unique experiments which he performed on himself. Some of the phenomena he produced in full light and for all interested eyes to see have been rarely reproduced. Mesmer was apparently contacted by the Great White Lodge on more than one occasion. His visit by Count St. Germain gives credence to the idea. His abilities and aspirations were recognized and used by beings in high places. Lastly, Mesmer had most unusual knowledge and gifts. Would it really make any difference if we knew Mesmer’s Secret? The world seems not to have done very well with the discoveries he gave out in his memoirs as well as the lessons offered at the Society of Harmony. Anton Mesmer was born at 8:02 am 23rd May 1734, in what is now Radolfzell, Germany. He came into the world with Cancer rising and the Sun in Gemini. Most importantly at the time of his birth, Jupiter acted as Sole Dispositor overruling all other influences in his horoscope and in his life. People with Jupiter prominent in their charts in one way or another appear like Zeus. The king of the mountain, robust and vibrant, optimistic and aspiring, benevolent and kind, healthful and helpful, exalted and expectant. But, there is a flip side to every coin and to every positive expression in a horoscope as in daily life. Mesmer’s Jovian self tended from birth to be ambitious and controlling and domineering, dreamy and unrealistic, arrogant and holy, pompous and patronizing. Like all of us, Mesmer had things to give and things to learn. He was no god, but an imperfect man. He had been admitted to some of the mysteries of Nature. At the same time, he failed to realize the immensity of the universe he attempted to fathom and the finiteness of his mind and experience – and more especially those of his audiences. Anton Mesmer’s opportunities to share a great discovery for the benefit of mankind came with built-in challenges. Mesmer not only had to bring forth his Discovery, but he also had to learn how to package and share and sell it – and himself. Looking back 240 years after Mesmer first began to offer his doctrine, it might be seen that Doctor Mesmer’s method of presenting his gifts to the public needed some dressing up – but not just in style and taste. Anton Mesmer found himself with a wonderful discovery but a most difficult path to usefully share it with the world. The presentation problem was not merely that the theory could be intimidating, that the Savants were resistant, that the sensitivities needed for appreciation were outside the norm. The powers-that-be did not only deny facts and theory, as Mesmer wished to believe. Mesmer might have done better to look at the obstacles he met from another standpoint: “Reject the messenger, deny the message.” Anton Mesmer was too smart, too knowledgeable, too ethereal – like his music, and too other-worldly to get his message across in the jaded places and times he lived. He had the Midas touch, or was it the Mesmer touch? One capable of many wonders. But, maybe there was something missing in him or in his approach that caused those who seemed most important in his humanitarian crusade to turn away from him. “It takes one to know one,” it has been said from ages past. Mesmer knew full well that he was many steps ahead of his confreres and colleagues. He had the Microscope, the Machine and the Invention. And, he had the Vision. They didn’t. The Scholars had their own lumières, but Mesmer never seemed to learn how to fit into their system and to use their lights. He merely wanted the doctors and academics to enter into his. Anton Mesmer may have taken on an impossible task. A large percentage of Mesmer’s audience could not or would not rise to his level of experience and expression. Mesmer had either to meet the Savants on their own field of play, or hand the ball over to another player like d’Eslon. But then, d’Eslon came up wanting in a number of ways. As would many others in future eras. Revolutions, wars and circumstances forced Mesmer to recede. But, he never gave up. And, the record remains to fulfill his story of Light and Nature. |