Ancient Egypt
There are certain Egyptian paintings which show a person apparently asleep with others standing over them whose hands give the impression of making hypnotic passes. These paintings used to excite a great deal of interest in historians of hypnosis. But the interpretation of ancient wall paintings is difficult, and they would form a weak foundation on which to base any historical theory. Texts are somewhat less fluid, and there are a number of Egyptian magical texts preserved on papyrus. The most likely source of information about hypnotic practices is the famous Demotic Magical Papyrus, dating from the third century CE, which was discovered at Thebes in Egypt early in the nineteenth century, torn in two parts. Both parts, in demotic script, were bought by Jean d'Anastasy, the Swedish consul of the time in Alexandria, for his fabulous private collection, and were subsequently sold, one part to Leiden, and the other to the British Museum in London. Column 16 of this papyrus contains the text of a divinatory rite, which is typical of a number of practices preserved on this important papyrus. It begins with instructions for the careful preparation of the lamp which is to be used in the ritual. Then it goes on:
You take a boy and seat him upon another new brick, his face being turned to the lamp, and you close his eyes and recite these things that are written above down into the boy's head seven times. You make him open his eyes. You say to him: ‘Do you see the light?’ When he says to you, ‘I see the light in the flame of the lamp,’ you cry at that moment, saying ‘Heoue’ nine times. You ask him concerning everything that you wish.
What is going on here is typical of divinatory practices around the ancient Mediterranean world. Someone (here a ‘boy’, which perhaps means a slave) in a trance state is asked questions; because he is in a trance state, he is assumed to have contact with the world of the gods (as they thought dreamers did, for instance), and so his answers are taken to be significant. It has been said that this illustrates the technique of self-hypnosis using a light as a source of fixation, but it takes a certain amount of audacity to maintain such a view. At first the boy has his eyes closed, so he is clearly not hypnotizing himself by means of the lamp at this point. Subsequently, when he has his eyes open, he is only asked ‘Do you see the light?’, and there is nothing in the text to indicate that he is using the lamp for self-hypnosis at this point either. It's possible, but far from certain. At the same time, it's clear that the boy's interrogator is only an interrogator, someone who is consulting the gods to see what message they have for him, and that there is no question of his being an external hypnotist.
Practices similar to the one implied in this ancient Egyptian text continued for many centuries. For instance, we can find it referred to by Apuleius of Madaurus in his defence speech Pro Se De Magia (sections 42ff.), which was written in the second century CE, although rather than using a lamp, his seer (who is again a boy) is lulled into a trance by means of spoken spells or certain unspecified scents. Or, much later, the Elizabethan magus John Dee used Edward Kelley as his means of contacting the astral and angelic realms. Kelley would ‘scry’ (look into a mirror or a crystal ball or a pool of black ink) and tell Dee what he saw there. No one assumes either that Dee had hypnotized Kelley, or that Kelley had hypnotized himself; Kelley simply reported what he saw, and our Egyptian boy may just have used the flickering lamp to conjure up images suggestive of answers to the questions put to him. There may be no reason not to call this a trance state – but there is also no particular reason to call it a hypnotically induced trance state. The most interesting aspect of this Egyptian text for this book is that the belief that entranced subjects can contact the world of the gods, however that is envisaged, will recur in the nineteenth century and beyond; the persistence of the belief is remarkable.
The similarity between the ancient Mediterranean divinatory practice just described and the modern phenomenon of ‘channelling’ (which is also a descendant of nineteenth-century spiritualist mediumship, and of possession in religions such as voodoo) is striking. A ‘channel’ appears to go into a trance and then through him or her there speaks an alien entity, often supposed to be from another planet or another plane of existence. Later in the book we will see that in Victorian times interest in mesmerism and passion for spiritism went hand in hand; but at this stage we can conclude that channelling on its own is not a form of hypnosis. A person may be hypnotized or may hypnotize herself to act as a channel; but it is not necessary to be hypnotized to act as a channel.
I cannot resist concluding this section by debunking the idea, commonly found among tourists and others, that other ancient Mediterranean seers, such as the Pythia at Delphi and the Sibyl at Cumae, relied on drugs to attain their divinatory trance state. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. One even hears it said that at Delphi narcotic fumes would arise from the depths of the earth through a crack in the floor of the shrine – but no such crack has ever been discovered. In fact, the Egyptian text translated above gives us a more accurate idea of how these priestesses worked: they relied on their own resources to go into a trance.
Mesmeric Passes in the Old Testament?
In 2 Kings 5 we hear about Naaman, a Syrian general who had contracted leprosy. One of his slaves, a captive Israelite girl, tells his wife, her mistress, about the miracle-worker (she would have called him a nabi) from her native land called Elisha. ‘He would certainly be able to cure your husband's leprosy,’ she says. Naaman gets the Syrian king to send a letter to the Israelite king, along with a great deal of money and valuables. Elisha is happy to comply, and suggests that Naaman comes to Israel. But when Naaman does so, Elisha tells him – by messenger, not even in person – to wash seven times in the River Jordan. Naaman is not best pleased: what advantage does this river have over rivers back home? He's convinced that Elisha has some trick up his sleeve: ‘He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and move his hand up and down over the place, and recover the leper’ (2 Kings 5:11). His servants persuade him to try the washing anyway – and it works.
But what was Naaman expecting? The Hebrew word translated as ‘move up and down’ is also translated, in the King James version, as ‘strike’. Was Naaman then expecting physical contact? Most probably not: the root of the original Hebrew word is nuf, which commonly refers to some kind of rhythmical movement of the hands, such as waving. The Greek translators of the Old Testament, some centuries later, rendered the Hebrew word by the Greek verb epitithenai, the usual word for the laying-on of hands. But this was an interpretation, perhaps influenced by the kind of hands-on faith healing which was current in their day. Naaman, however, seems to have been expecting the nabi to make some healing passes over the affected part of his body. But although passes have been common in hypnosis and hypnotherapy, their presence does not constitute hypnosis. We would need, in addition, evidence of the induction of trance, and of course there is no such evidence.
Fundamentalist Christians have been known to cite Deuteronomy 18:10–11 as a biblical prohibition of the practice of hypnosis. The text reads: ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.’ The only two categories of prohibited practice which might be relevant are using enchantment and charms; but neither of them are hypnosis. In any case, this translation of the terms, from the King James version, is far from secure. Here is the New International version: ‘Let no one be found among you … who practises divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or a spiritist or who consults the dead.’ Clearly no mention of hypnosis there. An eminent professor, an expert on Hebrew and a practising Christian, has concluded that reference to these verses by Christians wanting to condemn hypnosis is ‘exegetically indefensible’. What he means is this. The word translated ‘charm’ in the King James version and ‘cast sp
ells’ in the New International version comes from the Hebrew root br, which means ‘to attach, join, or bind’. Since people who have spells cast on them are bound – spellbound – the word also means ‘to enchant, or cast spells’. It does not refer to hypnosis.
Curiously, Christian objectors to hypnosis appear to have missed the way this verse more plausibly supports their case. The word translated as ‘observer of times’ is me'onen. Now, the Talmud (at Sanhedrin 65b) gives an alternative interpretation of this word: ‘The sages say it means one who holds the eyes’, because they link me'onen to the Hebrew for eyes, einayim. If this interpretation is correct – and note that it is only one possible interpretation – and if it therefore refers to some hypnosis-like practice (perhaps the evil eye, which I discuss below), then the text could be understood as condemning such a practice. But the ‘ifs’ here have piled up; there is really no plausible case for reading the verse as banning hypnosis. In any case, it could be read as banning evil uses of a number of practices, but not as banning therapeutic uses of any of them.
There are myths, folk tales and legends from all around the world about how certain demonic or supernatural figures entrance humans and put them to sleep for a number of years. But magic sleep or forgetfulness, however caused – by the gods, music, wand, or charms – is not a hypnotic trance. This is what makes it nonsense to say that Genesis 2.21, with which I started this chapter, is a reference to hypnosis.
Here endeth, inconclusively, the lesson from the Old Testament.
Incubation
The other feature in the ancient world which chiefly excites the imagination of some writers on hypnotism is the practice of incubation, spending a night or two at a religious sanctuary. This took place in Egyptian temples as well, especially those of Isis and Serapis, but it is not certain that the practice originated in Egypt, as is often carelessly assumed; we have no evidence for incubation in Egyptian temples at a very early date, and it may have spread to Egypt from Greece. Certainly, our best evidence comes from Greek temples, and especially the temples of the healer-god Asclepius, though the same or similar practices occurred also at shrines sacred to Trophonius and Amphiaraus.
Suppose you were suffering from an ailment – though not an incurable one: the temple priests were canny enough to recognize that too many failures would challenge the reliability of the god's healing. One of the methods to which you might resort was incubation in the temple of the healer-god. After purifying yourself and making an offering at the shrine's altar, you entered the sacred centre of the temple and lay down to sleep. During the night, you hoped to have a significant dream, which would indicate what you had to do to cure your ailment. If it didn't come in the first night, you might stay as long as you could afford to, until the appropriate dream came along. Once you had dreamt your cure, you made a thanksgiving offering at the temple (which might typically be a terracotta sculpture of the part of your body that had been affected; hundreds of these sculptures have been recovered), and went on your way. You were not required to pay a fee, though no doubt many grateful patients did, and the whole procedure was carried out in a highly matter-of-fact fashion.
Though Epidaurus held the most famous temple of Asclepius in the Greek world, there were other eminent sites at Athens, Corinth and Troezen on mainland Greece; on the island of Cos; at Lebena in Crete; and at Pergamum in modern Turkey. Here are a couple of sample temple records of cures, found on inscriptions at the Epidaurian temple.
There came as a suppliant to the god a man one of whose eyes was so blind that it consisted of no more than the lids, which were entirely empty and contained nothing. Some people in the temple laughed at him for being so foolish as to think that he would see with an eye that was not there. Then he had a dream while he was asleep; after boiling some herbs, the god seemed to prise apart the lids and pour in the medicine. At daybreak the man left the temple seeing with both eyes.
A man had a stone in his penis. He dreamt that he was having sex with a handsome boy. Along with his seminal discharge he ejected the stone, which he picked up and carried out of the temple in his hands.
Not all the dreams healed you immediately; sometimes they suggested methods of treatment which you were to go away and carry out. A certain Marcus Julius Apellas, for instance, who was suffering from chronic indigestion, was given in a dream a long list of actions to perform – not just a special diet (cheese and bread, celery and lettuce), but also a regimen including running, sprinkling himself with sand and pouring wine over his body before entering the baths. In his dream he asked for a less complex way of curing himself, and had another dream in which he smeared his body with a paste of mustard and salt. After waking up he tried a mustard-and-salt poultice on his stomach, and the pain was cured.
The dreams were invariably direct and comprehensible by the dreamer, so that there was no need for interference by the temple priest or officials. Reporting his own experience, the second-century sophist Aelius Aristides says that even his doctor yielded his own professional opinion to the clarity of the dream (Sacred Discourses 47.57). It is important to remember that dreams were assumed to be god-given. They are, after all, mysterious – hence the continuing fascination of dream-interpretation dictionaries and so on. The practice of interpreting dreams as god-given messages is taken for granted in ancient Western literature, from Homer (Iliad 1.62–8) onwards.
Because dreaming was held to be as close as a mortal person got to direct contact with the gods, dreams were not seen (as nowadays we tend to see them) as stories, but as a series of symbolic still photographs. As a result the Greeks had become quite sophisticated at classifying dreams, and at giving the kind of thumbnail and superficial interpretations that modern dictionaries still give. In fact, this is another practice that goes back to ancient Egypt. A papyrus in the British Museum (BM Papyrus 10683), which dates from around 2000 BCE suggests, among many other things, that it is good to dream of eating donkey-meat, because it means promotion, but bad to dream of copulating with a female jerboa, because it means that a judgement will be passed against you! Such stock interpretations were known in the Greek world, and in the second century CE Artemidorus of Ephesus travelled around the Mediterranean to compile his dream dictionary from more ancient sources.
Incubation is a fascinating subject: after all, here we have evidence of hundreds of miraculous cures. What is one to do? Dismiss them? That would be foolhardy, and a clear sign of prejudice: in trying to understand ancient cultures, we do not so cavalierly dismiss other pieces of evidence which are more to our liking. Should we explain them as spontaneous remission? But surely there could not be so many. It is possible that there was embroidery of the facts, from either or both of the patients and the priesthood, for the greater honour of the god; but even allowing for a certain degree of embroidery, a solid residue of miracles remain. Two factors are relevant, I think. First, it is worth remembering that in all likelihood many patients will just have improved rather than being totally cured, and that in many cases the ailment with which they presented in the first place was not very severe. Second, faith healing and the cure of psychosomatic illness cannot be ruled out in a number of cases. The patient's faith would have been enhanced by the sight of the records of previous cures up on the walls in and around the temple – precisely the records that are still our main evidence for the cures, and a couple of which I quoted just now. In Chapter 11 I will return to the topic of how optimism and expectations can cure even organic illnesses.
However, when the topic of hypnotism was in everyone's minds in the nineteenth century, and it was seen that it could have remarkable therapeutic value, people began to assume that it must have been involved in Asclepius’ temples, and the idea has been perpetuated in many a tome on hypnosis. But it is clear from this brief survey of the subject that there is not the slightest possibility that hypnosis was involved. It could only have happened if there was interference from the temple officials, such that they could induce a trance in a patient and suggest
that he was cured. But there is no evidence that the temple officials were involved except to administer the temple, and in purely managerial capacities. In Aristophanes’ Wealth a witness sees the god healing a patient in the temple, and some writers have supposed that one of the priests disguised himself as the god and went around at night treating the entranced patients. But a comic play is hardly good evidence for this, and no scholar of ancient Greece believes that this is what happened. All the evidence shows that the god was seen in a dream world, not in this world; given the strictures of staging a play, Aristophanes projects the dreamt god into concrete reality.
Nor is there any evidence of hypnotic chanting, as has been suggested. In very rare cases one of the temple officials, the zakoros (who was sometimes a trained physician as well), might interpret an obscure dream – but if this is interference, it is interference after the event, and constitutes no kind of evidence for hypnosis. Nor is there any evidence of self-hypnosis. Incubation in some form survives under the auspices of the Church at shrines such as Lourdes and St Anne de Beaupré, but I have never seen any suggestion that hypnosis or self-hypnosis is going on there.
Further Evidence from Ancient Greece and Rome?
Aristotle's pupil Clearchus, writing perhaps at the end of the fourth century BCE, told a story in one of his works, On Sleep, of how a magician with a ‘psychopompic wand’ drew the soul out of a sleeping boy, leaving his body inert and insensitive to pain. This is suggestive, but should be treated with caution. In the first place, On Sleep was a fictional dialogue; in the second place, the actual work does not survive, and this report exists only as a fragment (fr. 7) in Proclus, an author writing 750 years later; in the third place, it looks as though the boy was already asleep, rather than being put to sleep by hypnosis; in the fourth place, the boy seems to have remained asleep, rather than being in the receptive hypnotic state.
Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis Page 8