Andrew Jackson Davis

Andrew Jackson Davis

Andrew Jackson Davis (born August 11, 1826 in Blooming Grove , New York , † January 13, 1910 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American spiritualist .

Life

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At the age of 16, Davis came under the influence of the somnambulist magnetizer Livingston as a shoemaker's apprentice , and showed surprising phenomena of clairvoyance . In 1843 he heard lectures on animal magnetism at Poughkeepsie and found that he had remarkable clairvoyance. This is how he managed to diagnose diseases, a skill that earned him the reputation of a seer . In the following year, according to his statements, he received spiritual messages from Galen and Swedenborg , which dictated his path in life. He took on a clergyman, William Fishbough, as an assistant and moved to New York . It was here in 1845 that he dictated his first and most important spiritualistic work: The principles of nature, her divine revelations and a voice to mankind . This book was written completely in trance and contains, in addition to a mystical philosophy, criticism of the infallibility of the Bible and the divinity of Jesus.

After completing this book, he no longer devoted himself to magnetism, but studied a lot, gathered a large number of followers and wrote or dictated about 30 works, according to his pretense, under the influence of invisible spirits and in a state of rapture.

Davis edited the New York weekly Herald of Progress from 1860–64 ; In 1863 he founded a Lyceum of Progress for Children and put his views on the establishment of Sunday Schools in a handbook .

He graduated with a degree in medicine in old age and ran a bookstore in Boston in the last years of his life selling occult books.

Works (selection)

• The Great Harmonia. (1850–60, 6 vols.).
• The Approaching Crisis. (1852, 2nd ed. 1869).
  • German: The civil war and its effect on the near future based on the “approaching crisis”. by Andrew Jackson Davis. Edit for now by Georg von Langsdorf . Better, Leipzig 1881.
• The Harbinger of health containing medical prescriptions for the human body and mind. Facsimile reprint der Ausg. New York, Davis, 1862. Kessinger Publishing , Whitefish approx. 2000. ISBN 0-7661-9193-1 .
  • German: The harbinger of health: containing medical prescriptions for the human body and mind in all possible cases of illness. Besser, Leipzig 1877. Microfiche edition 2002.
• Andrew Jackson Davis: The Penetralia: Being Harmonial Answers to Important Questions. Boston 1856.
• Views of our heavenly home; A sequel to a stellar key to the summer land. (1867, 5th edition 1868), partly also in German translation.
• The philosophy of spiritual intercourse: being an explanation of modern mysteries. Fowlers and Wells, New York 1853.
  • German: The philosophy of intellectual intercourse: an explanation of modern secrets. Better, Leipzig 1884.
• Directory of the English-American original works of the philosophical seer Andrew Jackson Davis. (with details of those that have so far been published in an authorized German translation). Leipzig 1881.

• His autobiography was titled The Magic Staff: an Autobiography. (1857, 8th ed. 1867). Reprint of the 1857 edition: New York: Brown & Co. ISBN 0-7661-2998-5 .

literature

• James Lowell Moore: Introduction to the writings of Andrew Jackson Davis. Reprint of the Boston: Christopher, 1930 (1930) edition. Whitefish: Kessinger 2003. ISBN 0-7661-3922-0 .
• John DeSalvo: Andrew Jackson Davis: The first American prophet and clairvoyant (1826-1910). Lulu.com, 2005.
• John Michael Greer: Encyclopedia of Secret Doctrines. edited and supplemented by Frater VD, Ansata Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-778-77270-8 .
• Howard Kerr and Charles L. Crow: The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives. Urbana Ill .: University of Illinois Press, 1983.

Web links

• Homepage on andrewjacksondavis.com (English)