Lassaigne (1819-1885)

Le véritable abbé Faria, grand magnétiseur

Une mystification absolue. Sur le «souper de Cazotte»

It is perhaps time to revisit «Cazotte's supper» (emphasizing the version provided by Nerval in Les Illuminés). The episode, as recounted by La Harpe, is all too famous: in 1788, Jacques Cazotte is supposed to have predicted the Revolution and the executions by guillotine during the Terror. This «prophecy» aroused reactions which were contradictory, but less so than one might think: the tendency to nuance these opinions to the point of neutralizing them is not the least paradox provoked by this «supper». The aim is not really to «demistify» the prophecy (to refute the illuminism using positivist rationalism) but to unravel and deconstruct its complex mechanisms - in short, to question the essence of what can be described (or not...) as a mystification.

Enquêtes sur Rennes-le-Château 14

La fabuleuse découverte du curé aux milliards de Rennes-le-Château

La fabuleuse découverte du curé aux milliards de Rennes-le-Château

La fabuleuse découverte du curé aux milliards de Rennes-le-Château

Alfred Binet entre illusionnisme, spiritisme et cinéma des origines

De Mesmer à Puységur. Magnétisme animal et transe somnambulique, à l'origine des thérapies psychiques

At the close of the century of the Enlightenment, the development of animal magnetism (with Franz Anton Mesmer), followed by artificial somnambulism (with the marquis de Puységur) offered to a number of people whose illnesses could not be helped by medicine a new approach to care, a specific way of working, which was often effective though ambiguous, and which is still worth discussing today. This approach could be unpicked so as to reveal the way in which the workings of the mind interacted in a reciprocal way with the body, thus bringing into play other means of self-healing. The article traces the historical development of these new therapies, whose effectiveness was in large part connected to the emotional relationship between a therapist and a patient. This process suggests a discovery of the power of the imagination over reality and a dimension hitherto unknown in the human nature.

Un savoir occulté ou pourquoi le magnétisme animal ne fut-il pas pensé «comme une branche très curieuse de psychologie et d'histoire naturelle»?

The article covers two historical moments when animal magnetism was condemned by French academic authorities, in 1784 and in 1837. It attempts to understand the complex reasons which motivated the sidelining of this knowledge from which hypnosis (magnetic somnambulism) meanwhile originated. It offers cultural, political and social hypotheses to explain these condemnations.