Scientific Remote Viewing

History of Hypnosis

In The Beginning…
Hypnosis has existed in some form or other since before the dawning of recorded history. Anthropologists have observed that primitive peoples all over the world practice essential elements of hypnotic trance in religious rituals as far back as we have archeological evidence.

In the Ebers Papyrus (c. 1552 B.C.E.) we find some of the earliest written references to the use of hypnosis in Egyptian cures that included the laying of hands on the head of the patient while uttering sacred incantations. Similar practices have been attributed to King Pyrrhus of Egypt, Emperor Vespasian, Francis I of France, among others. It is from this ancient practice that we derive the term “the royal touch”.

The Egyptians also are attributed with the development of ‘sleeping temples’ that quickly spread to Greece and throughout all Asia Minor. Hippocrates may have been referring to hypnosis when he said, “the affliction suffered by the body, the soul sees quite well with the eyes shut.” Later, the Romans would adopt these practices, as with most things Greek. The famous Roman physician Aesculapius soothed his patient’s suffering with the laying of hands.
Hypnosis went into steady decline with the rise of Christianity in Europe during the Middle Ages because many Christian leaders considered the practice to be associated with witchcraft, and trance healing went underground for many centuries. Avicenna, in the tenth century, gave us a clue to the understanding of mind over matter when he declare that “the imagination can fascinate and modify man’s body either making him ill or restoring him to health.” But hypnotic theory would have to wait until the sixteenth century for Theophrastus Paracelsus to posit that certain celestial bodies affected men’s behavior. This thread would be taken up by such thinkers as Maxwell and Santanelli a hundred years later. They, together with Van Helmont helped set the groundwork for Mesmer’s magnatism theory. Nonetheless, hypnotic trance states have been cited in sacred works of the ancient Indians, Mongols, Tibetans and Chinese.