The Secret Source. Maja D'Aoust

establishing his own methodologies. Quimby went to great pains to separate himself from the Mesmerists, most likely due to certain stigma becoming attached to them through the Spiritualism community.

      As my practice is unlike all other medical practice, it is necessary to say that I give no medicines and make no outward applications, but simply sit by the patient, tell him what he thinks is his disease, and my explanation is the cure. And if I succeed in correcting his errors, I change the fluids of the system, and establish the truth, or health. “The Truth is the cure.”¹⁹

      Quimby claimed to have “changed the fluids,” which is precisely what animal magnetism does. What is the difference between a “spiritual force” and a “cosmic fluid?” What exactly is the difference between mental influence and animal magnetism? The reality is that there is no appreciable difference, despite the different names.

      Mesmer was trying to prove that a physical force was at work, while Quimby went about trying to prove that it was a spiritual force. Mesmer removed the word “God” from his Hermetic sources, and Quimby put it back in. Instead of putting the patient into a mesmeric sleep, Quimby himself would go into a trance-like state.

      It is important to realize that this method dates back to shamanic traditions. Quimby would sit next to the patient and speak in hushed tones. Sometimes he would lay on hands and massage, after wetting his hands with water. Quimby said that sometimes he ran into resistance from the patient if he didn’t touch them, although he asserted that touch was unnecessary to bring about a cure.

      As you have given me the privilege of answering the article in your paper of the 11th inst., wherein you classed me with spiritualists, mesmerisers, clairvoyants, etc., I take this occasion to state where I differ from all classes of doctors, from the allopathic physician to the healing medium. All of these admit disease as an independent enemy of mankind . . . . Now I deny disease as a truth, but admit it as a deception, without any foundation, handed down from generation to generation, till the people believe it, and it has become a part of their lives . . . . My way of curing convinces [the patient] that he has been deceived; and, if I succeed, the patient is cured. My mode is entirely original.²⁰

      Well, not entirely original, since such faith-healing had in fact been used since the time of Hermeticists and shamans.

      There is no small amount of scientific research to support the fact that some form of energy can be transferred from one person to another through the windows of our eyes, the gateways to our souls. Rupert Sheldrake has laid forth his considerable research into this matter in his book Seven Experiments That Could Change the World: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Revolutionary Science. Sheldrake asserts that “Vision may involve a two-way process, an inward movement of light and an outward projection of mental images.”

      This means that our minds reach out and “touch” the things we see. If this happens, our minds can have some influence on what is within our vision. This is also corroborated by findings of quantum physicists such as Heisenberg, that our observation of electrons alters their behavior. In 1898, the psychologist Edward B. Titchener tested what people can sense when they are being stared at by another person; his findings were later corroborated by several scientists.²¹ That we can physically “feel” a stare certainly implies some form of energy exchange. This energy can be either helpful or malicious, according to various folk traditions, especially in the Middle East. The “evil eye” has been used for centuries to send bad energy to people, such as curses and diseases. It fits, then, that if one can send a disease to someone through their eye, they may heal them of it by the same means.

      As shocking as this may sound to some, it is by no means a new concept. The East Indian equivalent of hypnosis is called sammohan.

      Sammohan shakti has been practiced in India since Vedic times. It can be defined as the power of attraction. Sammohan is inborn in every human being. Even while I talk to you, there is a kind of hypnosis where I try to attract and hold your attention, planting subtle suggestions.²²

      In Hermetic literature, the world is thought of as a panoply of mental images, the mental images as contained within the intellect of the adept (and God) and projected upon the world. We “dream the world into being.” Once the mind of the adept is aligned with the mind of God, the adept can affect change in the world simply through thought.

      Having attained unity with the God whose thought was the universe, a Hermeticist was presumably empowered to work magic by commanding his thoughts. As a rationalization of already existing Hermetic practices of conjuring, Hermetic rebirth may, as Nock suggested, have been “a curious sacrament of auto-suggestion.”²³ The Corpus Hermeticum I concludes: “This is the final good for those who have received knowledge: to be made god.” We become the God-mind once we align ourselves to its thoughts.

Quimby and the Founding of Christian Science

      The effectiveness of the mind cure could not be denied. People were being cured of many diseases across the country by these ancient methods. Quimby successfully treated nearly 12,000 people in the last eight years of his life, and subsequently died from exhaustion. Among the many students and patients who joined Quimby and helped him commit his teachings to writing were Warren Felt Evans, Annetta Seabury Dresser and Julius Dresser (the founders of New Thought as a named movement) and Mary Baker Eddy (founder of the Christian Science movement).

      The less we know or think about hygiene, the less we are predisposed to sickness.

      —Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

      Christian Science is a system of mental healing marketed by Mary Baker Eddy, probably the most famous (and infamous) of all Quimby’s students. The Christian Science movement, which grew quickly, advocated no treatments by doctors of any kind. All illnesses could be healed by faith in Jesus Christ as a consciousness, according to the tenets of the church.

      Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910), born Mary Morse Baker, founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879. Her most noteworthy published work was Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and it was subjected to a still-ongoing controversy involving Quimby supporters. Eddy was chronically sick with many ailments, including paralysis, hysteria, seizures and convulsions. At twenty-two, she married her first of three husbands, George Glover (an avid Freemason), who died within six months from yellow fever. This led her to explore types of healing that were outside of the realm of traditional doctors, such as homeopathy and Mesmerism. After Glover’s death, she became an active Mesmerist²⁴ and involved herself in the Spiritualist community. It was her studies in Mesmerism that drew her to the office of Dr. Quimby in 1862. In the beginning of her studies of animal magnetism, Mrs. Eddy hailed its treatments. After Quimby passed away, however, she changed her tune regarding this practice. She began to refer to it as “malicious animal magnetism” or M.A.M. She wrote of it in her Church manual as mental malpractice. According to Mrs. Eddy, the M.A.M.s would send evil suggestions to her, sickening her.

      It was said by Quimby supporters that Mary Baker Eddy came into possession of her healer’s manuscripts, and borrowed their ideas and vilified their author after his death, despite relying on him exclusively for her treatments while he was alive.

      Mrs. Eddy has for many years persistently denied her indebtedness to Quimby and asserted the latter was only a Mesmerist, or that he healed by electricity. She has even claimed that, so far from being indebted [to him] for her own writings, it was she who corrected his random scribblings . . . . When Julius Dresser published some of the letters and articles in which Mrs. Eddy had lavished praise upon Quimby as her teacher, she invoked her serviceable fiend, Malicious Animal Magnetism: “Did I write those articles purporting to be mine? . . . For I was under the mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 till his death . . . my head was so turned by Animal Magnetism and will-power, under treatment, that I might have written something as hopelessly incorrect as the articles now published in the Dresser Pamphlet.”²⁵

      Later she would even deny that she had ever