Thursday, August 4, 2011

Andrew Jackson Davis


One of the grandfathers of self-help writing is Andrew Jackson Davis.


Known as the "Poughkeepsie Seer," Davis is seen by many as the father of spiritualism and at the height of his career he was a prominent figure throughout America. His long and rambling books (one of which I've read at the University of Sydney's Fisher Library) were exceedingly popular. Davis helped popularise in the new world ideas of mesmerism and animal magnetism.

He was a student of the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and could quote passages from Swedenborg's Arcana Coelestia by heart, complete with page references. Such was the learning style of the day. Davis set about copying Swedenborg's methods of spiritual contemplation, entering into altered states of consciousness where he said secrets of the universe were revealed to him by divine entities.

Interestingly, Davis was later to deny his own study, claiming that he was functionally illiterate and that his wisdom came direct from the heavens. But those who knew Swedenborg's work (and in the mid-nineteenth cntury Swedenborg's writings had quite a following in America) saw too much of it in Davis' philosophies to believe his claim of ignorance.

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