This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or psychological advice or suggestion to practice the techniques outlined in this article


The manipulation of biomagnetic energy has been a part of spellcraft since humanity started using magick. It was not until Franz Anton Mesmer in the mid 1700’s experimented with ‘Magnetic Fluid’ and found that the human body produced its own magnetic fluid that could be channelled for healing and other effects. This latter discovery was developed by a number of his students and aficionados and even after much of Mesmer’s work was attributed to psychology rather than “A new physical fluid” they carried on research based on Mesmer’s model. Less well known was that most of the scientific community of the day, including some of the committee set up by King Louis XVI to investigate the existence of Mesmer’s magnetic fluid, were also practicing alchemists and magick users. Due to public demonstrations by Mesmer and other people using his techniques both the theory and the practice spread into the magickal community in France, and then to the rest of the world.

While most hypnosis, both stage and therapeutic, followed the psychological model, the Pagan and magickal community worked on the findings developed from Mesmer’s work. These explained a possible principle behind charging items such as magickal tools, potions, and spellcrafting ingredients. Further investigation on mesmerism and its effects on the person themselves showed tremendous potential for use in magick and ritual from unifying the participants to contacting other planes of existence. The mesmeric trance has a vastly different ‘feel’ from a trance brought on by the psychological method of bypassing the conscious censor and focussing on one idea, possibly because of the use of biomagnetic energy in the mesmeric process. The interaction of the auras of the mesmeriser and the person being mesmerised act on an energetic level integrating them both, in addition to assimilating them both into the universal energy fields that interpenetrate a number of different realms.

The classical method of mesmerising someone is to pass your hands through their biomagnetic field, interacting with it via your own charged one as you do so. First build your charge by yogic breathing then, placing your hands just above their head, bring them down in a combing/sweeping gesture close to the body until reaching the waist then move them out and away. Some people like to augment this with verbal suggestions such as “With every pass you will enter deeper into a trance state in order to do ‘X’” in addition to infusing intent into your Chi/Prana/Bioplasmic energy. In most mesmerisations I have seen the operator finish the pass at the knees, turned their hands outwards and shake them before repeating the process.


This technique takes twenty minutes to half an hour to work, depending on the interaction of the auras, the personalities and a number of other factors including the intent of both parties. In mesmerism will/intent play an important part, which is one of the roots of the stories about one will dominating another as the mechanism of trance induction. Old books speak of ‘loading’ your ‘magnetism’ with intent and literally thinking the person being mesmerised into an altered state.

In ritual once the person has been mesmerised you can check the connection between you and your subject by a number of methods. When I saw this practiced in Mexico it was done either by seeing if the person responded to mental suggestions/movements of the mesmeriser, or magnetic influence from a permanent magnet. It’s very odd watching the last one, especially when magickal practitioners test the mesmerised person with two identical pieces of metal; one a permanent magnet, and one not. If the person only reacts to the magnet then they are deemed to be in a deep enough state for ritual, spellcraft, or divination. Mesmerism is particularly useful in the area of working with evoked entities, where the Mage and their assistant are inside a protective circle with a Triangle of Evocation just outside it.

The Mage evokes or commands an entity to appear in the Triangle by use of projected energy and intent, and the assistant tells them what they can perceive within it. This teamwork is necessary because it is very difficult to use the projective energies of the invocation and control while at the same time being in a receptive enough state of mind to perceive what is happening in the Triangle. Because of the psychospiritual nature of this sort of magick entities may occupy the area defined by the Triangle, but not on the physical plane. The mesmeric connection was active on several levels and could cope with this, especially as many of these contacts happened on the inner planes. The principle applied in divination too when there was a mirror, usually loaded with a special Elemental conductor to make contact easier, in the Triangle used either for remote viewing or to look at potential futures. Perhaps the most famous example of the latter technique was the team of the Mage Doctor John Dee and his assistant Edward Kelley ,in 1580’s Elizabethan England, who used a crystal instead of a mirror to contact spirits.

Another use for this was developing a communication channel. I was in Mexico in the 1970’s not only a long time before the use of mobiles (“cell ‘phones”) but in those days not many of the houses outside the urban areas had telephones. Indeed, several villages I knew of not that far from Mexico City had just the one public phone in the main square and one in the post office. So, when magick users went out into the countryside to perform rituals, work with earth energies, or go on vision quests, they were completely out of touch. But, by using mesmerism they were able to create a communication channel to stay in touch with at least one person.

The way they did this was to induce a deep mesmeric trance in one or more of their trusted pupils, then bringing them back to their normal waking state by thought alone. Then once they could do this they worked on inducing a trance by thought alone at increasing distances. Once this link was established it could be used to contact that person in emergencies, and to pass on knowledge or experiences. This may be the root of the “Learn from Occult Masters While You Sleep” advertised in the back pages of New Age and “Occult Light” magazines in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Since there was no mesmeric contact between the person placing the advert and anyone replying to it was an obvious ‘con’, but people still replied and sent money!

This use of Mesmerism is well worth researching if you can find the right group or people to learn from. I have seen the phenomena mentioned above practiced in various well established Pagan groups in different parts of the world under various names. I have even experimented with it when I was training to be a counsellor and hypnotherapist with fellow students as part of the history of hypnosis. However, because of the psychological and other energies involved you must check the background of anyone who practices it very carefully, and use your common sense.