Dampierre, Antoine Esmonin De

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Réflexions impartiales sur le magnétisme animal. Geneva: Chirol; Paris: Périsse, 1784.

Dampierre was a theologian, magistrate, and president of the parliament of Bourgogne. A member of the mystical Lyons school of freemasons, he developed a philosophy of animal magnetism that viewed it as an aid to the healing and social evolution taking place according to hidden laws of nature. Dampierre delineates four different types of “magnetic crisis” that can be experienced by an individual suffering from illness. […] Out of these, the fourth type of crisis is that produced by the action of animal magnetism in susceptible persons who have a strong desire to remain in the state of crisis—this type being dangerous to the patient. Since none of these crises leads, with the possible exception of the first, to a fruitful conclusion, Dampierre and his colleagues at Lyons sought an alternate, positive healing crisis. Dampierre believed that the crises most often produced by animal magnetism as practiced by those who used the techniques of Mesmer were of the harmful type described. He considered these crises to be embarrassing and obscene for the patient and narcissistically flattering for the magnetizer. Dampierre’s solution was the magnetic technique developed by his fellow freemason at Lyons, the Chevalier Barberin. In contrast to that of Mesmer which relied on magnetic “passes” that involved physical contact, or were applied at the most a few inches from the body, the magnetizing of Barberin was done at a distance, sometimes a distance of miles. This Lyons brand of freemason animal magnetism was strongly oriented towards the occult worldview of the magical tradition of the West.

(Crabtree, 49)