Background

Andrew Jackson Davis was born on August 11, 1826 in Blooming Grove, Orange County, New York, United States. He was the son of Samuel Davis. His father, a stern, poverty-stricken shoemaker, given to drink, was totally uneducated, as was also his mother, a woman with a weak body but with strong visionary powers. They moved frequently from one small New York town to another without seeming to better themselves. Some time prior to 1842 they finally settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States, whence Davis later received his name of “the Poughkeepsie Seer”.

Education

Andrew's academic education consisted of a total of five months’ schooling acquired at different periods of a few weeks each. He declares in his autobiography (written about 1857) that he had read only one book, but this statement was probably not literally true.

Career

At the age of fifteen Andrew was apprenticed to a shoemaker and when he seemed incapable of learning the trade was employed by a merchant in a general store; but he was a failure at this latter occupation as well.

In 1843 at the age of seventeen, he allowed a Professor Grimes, who visited Poughkeepsie and performed mesmeric miracles at the town hall, to attempt to hypnotize him. The attempt was unsuccessful, but a few weeks later William Levingston, a local tailor and amateur mesmeric philosopher, succeeded in “magnetizing” him.

The result was such a “rare clairvoyance” that Levingston gave up his own business and devoted his whole time to Davis and to using his “clairvoyant” powers for the cure of disease.

After two years during which Davis was subject to the will and hypnotism of Levingston, he had his first “psychic flight through space” in January Davis supposed himself influenced while in the trance state by a number of persons and particularly by Swedenborg whom he believed to have guided his steps personally from the time he was twenty-one.

A “clairvoyant clinic” which he opened at Poughkeepsie and which extended to Bridgeport had but indifferent success.

By 1845 he felt the urge to turn from healing to writing.

He selected as magnetizer, Dr. S. S. Lyon, a Bridgeport physician, and as reporter and scribe, the Rev. William Fishbough.

From November 28, to January 25, 1847, he delivered in Manhattan, while in a state of trance, one hundred and fifty-seven lectures. These, copied down verbatim by the Rev. Fishbough, constituted his Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind, published in 1847. In this strange melange of occult history, mysticism, philosophy, and science, critics have discerned likenesses to the works of Swedenborg and Brisbane. Next came The Great Harmonia (1850- 52) and from 1851 to 1885 a long succession of twenty-six works in all, of which perhaps the most important, aside from two autobiographical works, were The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse (1856), The Penetralia (1856), A Stellar Key to the Summer Land (1867), Views of our Heavenly Home (1878), and The Children’s Progressive Lyceum (1893). The Great Harmonia and all subsequent publications were written without the assistance of magnetism; thus marking Davis’s transition from mesmerism to spiritualism. Davis was best knowm for his “clairvoyant” prescriptions for disease and for his idea of the Children’s Lyceum or Spiritualist Sunday School.

Davis belongs to the interregnum between mesmerism and spiritualism; he practised both but was wholly identified with neither.

Achievements

• Davis gave modern spiritualism much of its phraseology and first formulated its underlying principles.

Works

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  • The Harmonial Man: Or, Thoughts for the Age (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Harmonial Man: Or, Thoughts for the Age ...)

  • The Magic Staff: An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis (Classic Reprint)

    (Entered, according to A ct of Congress, in the year 1857,...)

  • The Harbinger of Health: Containing Medical Prescriptions for the Human Body and Mind (Classic Reprint)

    (Entered according to A ct of Congress, in the year 1801, ...)

  • The Great Harmonia

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Harmonial Philosophy

    (Andrew Jackson Davis is one of the most prestigious clair...)

  • Death and the Afterlife (Life on Other Worlds Series)

    (First published in 1865, Death and the Afterlife contains...)

  • The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind: Volume 1

    (This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 18...)

  • The Guardianship Of Spirits

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

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Views

In common with transcendentalism and the idealistic socialism of his day, Davis preached social reconstruction as going hand in hand with spiritual regeneration. He gave modern spiritualism much of its phraseology and first formulated its underlying principles.

Connections

Andrew Jackson Davis was twice married. His first wife died November 2, 1853.

Two years later he married Mrs. Mary (Robinson) Love, who, like his first wife, was a divorcee.

Wife:

Mary (Robinson) Love