If there is no support for this experience as
bona fide Christian practice, then how are we to identify it? What is its true origin? According to the above-mentioned article in the
Times, the spate of 'religious fainting' to which it refers has its recent origins in a small church in Toronto, Canada -- hence it has recently been referred to as the 'Toronto Blessing'. This experience can certainly be transferred from one church to another -- usually through a visit by members of an affected church, or by an influential leader who encourages it during a service. But that is by no means the real wellspring of this phenomenon, which has always been around in one form or another in the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. In fact, it can be traced back even earlier than the beginnings of Pentecostalism at the turn of this century.
One of the earliest and most notorious advocates of this experience was an itinerant preacher in the so-called 'Holiness Movement', Maria Woodworth-Etter (1844-1924), who also gained a reputation for falsely prophesying that San Francisco would be destroyed by an earthquake in 1890. In her preaching in the 1880s, she advocated a religious experience which she called 'The Power', and she would often go into a trance during services, standing with her hands raised in the air for more than an hour. Nicknamed the 'trance-evangelist' and even the 'voodoo priestess', she was often accused of hypnotising people. And here we come to the very crux of the 'Slain in the Spirit' phenomenon.
What Maria Woodworth-Etter had discovered was the ancient art of hypnotism, the practice of which was first popularised in the West one hundred years earlier by the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). As one researcher of the occult has noted, '
the phenomena that are defined as 'hypnotic' emerged from the faith-healing activities of Mesmer at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries' (James Webb, 'The Occult Establishment', Open Court 1976, p. 352). Mesmer had developed his pantheistic theory of 'Animal Magnetism', which resulted in the famous faith-healing sessions at his clinic in Paris. In a major book on the occult (which was originally titled 'The Black Arts'), a description of these sessions reads as follows:
'Mesmer marched about majestically in a pale lilac robe, passing his
hands over the patient's bodies or touching them with a long
iron wand. The results varied. Some patients felt nothing at all,
some felt as if insects were crawling over them, others were
seized with hysterical laughter, convulsions or fits of hiccups.
Some went into raving delirium, which was called'The Crisis'
and was considered extremely healthful.'
(Richard Cavandish, 'The Magical Arts', RKP, 1984, p. 180).
In a book significantly entitled 'Three Famous Occultists', a record of Mesmer's clinics by a contemporary historian gives a similar portrayal of his manipulative sessions:
'Some are calm, tranquil and experience no effect. Others cough,
spit, feel slight pains, local or general heat, and have sweatings.
Others, again, are agitated and tormented with convulsions,
These convulsions are remarkable in regard to the number affected
with them, to their duration and force. They are preceded and
followed by a state of languor or reverie'.
(R.B. Ince, 'Three Famous Occultists', Gilbert Whitehead, 1939,
pp. 87-88).
Sometimes the participants in these sessions would hold hands to form a circle, and it was not uncommon for waves of communal singing to occur. There is an inescapable comparison here with the phenomena which have so bewitched numerous churches today. Although its practitioners are ignorant of the fact variations of the 'Mesmeric Crisis' experience are being repeated in Pentecostal-Charismatic meetings throughout the world today. Repetitive chorus-singing to create an intoxicating atmosphere, the laying on of hands, powerful physical sensations, agitation, hysterical laughter, raving delirium, convulsions, all followed by a deep sleep or state of reverie. Like its Mesmeric counterpart, this religious experience is induced as the result of the potent suggestions or physical touch (or even the mere presence) of an influential teacher. Furthermore, it is an experience that is available to anyone who is open to receive it, of whatever religious persuasion, and it has as little to do with Christian spirituality as a Dionysian rite.
However, the true significance of Mesmer's hypnotherapy sessions was well understood by some of his more perceptive contemporaries. Way back in 1784, the King of France wisely appointed a Commission to examine Mesmer's claims, consisting of reports from two reputable medical bodies: the Faculty of Medicine of the Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Medicine. This commission came to the highly discerning conclusion:
'That man can act upon man at any time, and almost at will, by striking
his imagination; that the simplest gestures and signs can have the
most powerful effects; and that the action of man upon
the imagination may be reduced to an art, and conducted
with method, upon subjects who have faith'
(R.B. Ince, op. cit., pp. 107-108).
Mesmer's discovery that his patients could be controlled by his will is acknowledged as being the great foundation-stone of modern hypnotism, as well as exerting a profound influence on succeeding generations of occultists of many traditions, ranging from the Cabbalist magician Eliphas Levi, to the U.S. Spiritualist Movement of the nineteenth century, which had discovered that in the Mesmeric trance a person could readily make contact with discarnate entities or 'spirit-guides' - the significance of which will soon become clear.
When Anton Mesmer discovered, in the late eighteenth century, the rudiments of manipulative hypnotism, the seeds of Western psychotherapy were sown -- a fact which is confirmed by a prominent psychiatrist in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine:
'What is important is the impact and influence [Mesmer] had on
the subsequent development of psychiatry. It would indeed be no
exaggeration to say that he was one of the world's first psychotherapists'
(J.R.S.M., Vol. 85, no. 7, July 1992, p. 383).
It is Mesmer's crude form of manipulative hypnotherapy which is being practised by the 'deliverance ministries' and 'healing' crusades of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement, through which the strong suggestions and even the mere touch of a powerful teacher can turn the lives of the guillible inside-out. But the origins of this hypnotically-induced 'Crisis Experience' can be traced back much further than the eighteenth century. For the hypnotherapists of today have simply rehashed the psychological and spiritist techniques of the ancient Shamans -- the witch-doctors and medicine men of pagan cultures -- in a modern guise. The New Age scientist, Dr. Fritjof Capra, physics professor at Berkley University, California, reveals that
'Shamans used therapeutic techniques such as group sharing, psycho
drama, dream analysis, suggestion, hypnosis, guided imagery [visualisation], and
psychadelic therapy for centuries before they were rediscovered
by modern psychologists'.
(Fritjof Capra, 'The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture',
Flamingo/Collins, 1982, p. 337). [emphasis added]
Just as the Western psychologists are proffering ancient Shamanistic practices in a guise which is more palatible to the uninitiated Westerners, so the professing Christian churches which peddle 'religious fainting' have simply made the Possession-Trance state of Shamanism more readily acceptable to the undiscerning sheep who attend their heated meetings. These are the true origins of the strange phenomena which are being so widely reported today and which are bringing the Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ into so much disrepute.
