Franz Anton Mesmer
1734 – 1815 German-Austrian physician, theorist of animal magnetism
Physician whose theory of animal magnetism seeded later occult and spiritualist movements.
- Religion
- No esoteric creed. He proposed animal magnetism as a natural force, though his ideas took on a quasi-mystical life among followers.
- Affiliations
- No occult order. His followers formed Societies of Harmony to practice his methods.
Franz Anton Mesmer proposed that an invisible natural fluid he called animal magnetism flowed through all living things and could be channeled to heal disease. Scientific commissions rejected his theory, but his practice of inducing trance states, later called mesmerism, spread widely. His work fed into hypnotism, Spiritualism, and the psychic themes of later occultism.
Connections
- influenced Helena Blavatsky — Mesmerism informed the psychic ideas Blavatsky later drew on.