Ancient Magic and Magnetism — Complete Set

What is in the bundle

1. 

   Notebook 1 of 5

   Ancient Magic

   In the America of the 1890s "magnetism" was a word everybody knew. A century earlier Franz Anton Mesmer had taught that an invisible fluid passes from one living body to another and can heal; by the 1890s mesmerists, hypnotists, spiritualist mediums and mail-order courses in "personal magnetism" all promised their readers a hidden power. In 1895 "The National Institute", at the Masonic Temple in Chicago, published Prof. L. H. Anderson's "Ancient Magic, Magnetism and Psychic Forces: The Key to Power". Its bold claim: what the ancients called magic, miracle or oracle was in truth magnetism — a natural power of the human mind and body.

   54 pages

   €8.49
2. 

   Notebook 2 of 5

   Hypnotism and Spiritualism

   In the 1890s hypnotism was entering medicine — doctors in Paris and Nancy argued about what it really was — while spiritualist séances, with rapping tables and mediums, had spread across America since 1848 and had their own weekly newspapers. Prof. L. H. Anderson's "Ancient Magic, Magnetism and Psychic Forces: The Key to Power" (Chicago, 1895) joins these worlds in one picture: for Anderson the hypnotist's trance, the mystic's ecstasy and the medium's séance are a single force seen at different levels.

   52 pages

   €8.49
3. 

   Notebook 3 of 5

   The Power of the Will

   Can one person's will make another think, feel and act? In the 1890s many Americans believed so: mesmerists and hypnotists gave public demonstrations, phrenologists read character from the shape of the head, and mail-order courses promised "personal magnetism" and influence over others. Prof. L. H. Anderson's "Ancient Magic, Magnetism and Psychic Forces: The Key to Power" (Chicago, 1895) builds a whole theory on it: every thought is a vibration of brain matter, and vibrations can be sent out, like waves across water, to set another brain trembling in the same way.

   56 pages

   €8.49
4. 

   Notebook 4 of 5

   Vital Magnetism

   Where does force come from, and what keeps a living body alive? The 1890s answered with a new vocabulary: the conservation of energy and the unity of electricity and magnetism stood beside psychometry, phrenology and "vital force". In this notebook Prof. L. H. Anderson's "Ancient Magic, Magnetism and Psychic Forces: The Key to Power" (Chicago, 1895) moves from cause to life and from life to spirit — and pictures God as the "Grand Electrical Focus" from which all thought flows.

   55 pages

   €8.49
5. 

   Notebook 5 of 5

   The Laws of Magnetism

   Prof. L. H. Anderson's "Ancient Magic, Magnetism and Psychic Forces: The Key to Power" (Chicago, 1895) ends where it was always heading: one magnetic force that runs through everything, from the lodestone and the compass needle to human love and the "Grand Celestial Magnet" that draws all things to God. In these last three chapters the book gathers what an American reader of the 1890s could hear in lecture halls, séance rooms and mail-order courses into a single system — and closes with the word FINIS.

   55 pages

   €8.49