The Theosophical Society's Position on Hypnotism

William Quan Judge · Black versus White Magic Series · 7 pages

Written for a general readership rather than for theosophists — it appeared first in the Omaha Daily Bee in March 1891 and then, lightly revised, in a New York monthly in 1893 — and it answers two plain questions: what hypnotism actually is, and what the Theosophical Society's position on it was.

Judge begins by separating two things commonly run together, since many held magnetism and hypnotism to be identical. The distinction matters for the argument that follows, because the Society's objection was never to the phenomenon but to the transfer of will it involves: one person's mind subordinated to another's, however benign the intention of the operator. That places the piece directly alongside 'No one has the right to control the mind of another' in the same section. For a document written to explain the Society's view to newspaper readers, it is notably free of evasion.

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