Saturday, December 2, 2023

Brigham Young on Biblical "animal magnetism" (hypnotism)

  

Dr. Jewett gave a long history of experiments on animal magnetism, and said it had nearly cured him of infidelity, and he thought the Mormons would understand the principle. I told him I did perfectly, that we believed in the Lord’s magnetizing, that he magnetized Belteshazar so that he saw the hand writing on the wall. (Brigham Young, March 3, 1846, in Manuscript History of Brigham Young, 1846-1847, comp. Elden J. Watson [Salt Lake City: Elden J. Watson, 1971], 62; as Watson notes, “Animal magnetism was the name for mesmerism or hypnotism” [ibid., 571 n. 8])

 

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