Ellen White and Mesmerism
By , Feb.
Long before skeptics accused Ellen White of fraud, many of her own contemporaries believed they already knew the source of her visions. They did not think she was inspired by God. They thought she was under the influence of mesmerism — the nineteenth century's wildly popular trance phenomenon also known as "animal magnetism."
The accusation was not made by ignorant outsiders unfamiliar with her manifestations. It came from people who had watched her enter vision, from rival Adventist leaders, from newspaper editors, and from individuals who had witnessed mesmeric demonstrations for themselves. To them, the similarities were too obvious to ignore.
The question deserves to be investigated. When Ellen White's reported manifestations are compared with documented mesmeric trances of the same era, the resemblance is striking enough to explain why the charge became one of the most persistent criticisms of her prophetic ministry.
Mesmerism Enters Adventism
Mesmerism was a hypnotic healing technique developed in the late 1700s by Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) that became popular in the 1800s. It was an early form of energy-healing. During a mesmeric session, an individual enters a trance-like state.1
Mesmerism creeped into Adventism around the time of the Great Disappointment of 1844. It got so pervasive that Millerite leader Joshua Himes complained of being in "mesmerism seven feet deep."2
Ellen Harmon's Introduction to Mesmerism
Ellen Harmon first encountered mesmerism as a teenager. In 1845, Joseph Turner, an Adventist minister in Maine, began practicing mesmerism on young girls and women. It is unknown if he practiced his mesmerism on Ellen at that time. However, it is possible, since Ellen was known to have been sickly at that time, and there was also at least one incident when she was alone with Turner in his home.
Later on, she accused him of trying to mesmerize her at a meeting in Poland, Maine. During that meeting she had a vision, and although she did not denounce him for practicing mesmerism, she did accuse him of giving too much attention to other women. After that vision, Turner accused Ellen of being under mesmerism herself. She left the room and went upstairs to warn a young lady in the home not to see him alone.3 Shortly thereafter, in another meeting, Ellen reports that Turner was giving Sarah Jordan "mesmeric passes, and she was having these so-called visions, and it was all mesmerism."4 Thus, Ellen had an early introduction to mesmerism and was aware that it could produce "visions" or hallucinations.
Ellen Accused of Mesmerism
In the early days of her career, when she was having public "visions," some accused Ellen White of practicing "mesmerism."5 She explained:
If I had a vision in meeting, many would say that it was excitement and that someone mesmerized me. ... I was told by some that I mesmerized myself.6
The editor of the “Advent Herald” has said that my visions were known to be “the result of mesmeric operations.”7
In 1851, James White acknowledged that mesmerism was a concern among early Adventists:
...many honest seekers after truth...are prejudiced against visions. Two great causes have created this prejudice. First, fanaticism, accompanied by false visions and exercises, [and] [s]econdly, the exhibition of mesmerism...8
Even SDA pioneer J.N. Loughborough was initially skeptical when he heard of Ellen White's "visions," suspecting they were nothing more than "either pretensions or mesmerism."9
James a Magnetizer?
While the SDA sect has heavily mythologized Ellen White's early visions as supernatural encounters with the divine, those who stood in the room watching the process described a far more earthly — and manipulative — phenomenon that closely resembled nineteenth-century mesmerism. At the time, popular practitioners known as “magnetizers” or hypnotists claimed they could cast subjects into deep, compliant psychological trances.
Multiple eyewitness accounts from this period suggest that James White acted less like a supportive spouse and more like a skilled magnetizer, demonstrating a bizarre ability to initiate, direct, and terminate his wife’s supposedly celestial trances. Far from being an independent conduit for God, the young Ellen appeared to operate in lockstep with her husband, who effectively served as the stage director and psychological handler of her visions.
Lucinda Burdick, who witnessed Ellen White's early "visions," reported that James had the uncanny ability to communicate to her while she was in vision, and to call her out of what Burdick described as Ellen's "trance condition."10
It was not long before another Adventist woman — Sister Ogden — began having visions similar to those of Ellen. While in vision, it appeared that others were controlling her. This reminded Adventists of how Ellen would go in and out of vision at James' command. Ellen complained that Ogden's behavior "confirmed the opinions of many that Brother White controls his wife and gives her visions."11 Notice, Ellen herself acknowledges that "many" believed James was manipulating Ellen to produce visions.
One Adventist minister's wife, Elvira Hull, witnessed Ellen in vision in the late 1850s, and observed the unusual involvement of James:
When any question came up among the members which was likely to cause trouble, it was referred to them [Ellen and James White], and they immediately made it a subject of prayer. As they knelt James would place his hands on Ellen’s head or shoulder, and she would almost immediately “come into communication with God,” and he would “put words into her mouth” which she would repeat to the brethren and the question was settled. Excommunication was the penalty for expressing a doubt concerning the truthfulness of one word of the glorious vision.12
This shows that even insiders thought that James was acting as a magnetizer or hypnotist, sending his wife into vision and telling her what to say.
Not surprisingly, some of Ellen White's early critics accused her of being a victim of mesmerism. Otis Nichols, an ardent supporter of Ellen White, reported that Turner, T. Haskin Harvel, and others were damaging the influence of the Whites by accusing James of mesmerizing Ellen. They suggested that Ellen "could not have a vision in Bro. W’s absence." To prove their opponents wrong, Ellen arranged to have a vision in their presence without James being present.13 This seems to have quelled the opposition temporarily.
The Whites brushed aside all these accusations and Ellen consistently denied being a victim of mesmerism, frequently writing of mesmerism as Satanic.14
Mesmerism Produces Visions
The physical manifestations exhibited during Ellen White's early visions were not unique. Long before she ever claimed to receive revelations from God, physicians, lecturers, and mesmerists had already documented remarkably similar phenomena. Deep trances. Rigid muscles. Apparent insensitivity to pain. Heavenly journeys. Visits to other planets. Even dramatic improvements in physical ailments. These experiences were being demonstrated publicly throughout America years before Ellen White became known as a prophet.
Even more significant is the fact that many of White's own contemporaries immediately recognized the similarity. Rather than seeing a supernatural miracle, they concluded her visions resembled the mesmeric trances that had become widely known in the 1840s.
Sunderland's Research on Mesmerism
Among the leading authorities on mesmerism was La Roy Sunderland. After decades of experimentation involving more than 5,000 mesmeric trances, Sunderland carefully documented the phenomena he repeatedly observed. His findings provide an intriguing comparison with Ellen White's early visions.
Religious Visions
One of Sunderland's most important discoveries was that mesmerized individuals frequently experienced vivid religious visions. Their experiences reflected their own beliefs and expectations, yet observers often regarded them as genuine supernatural revelations.
Many people have been deceived by the assumed visions of the Anabaptists, Quakers, Mormons and others.15
He described one such subject:
He put her into a trance. In this state she sung with an unearthly sweetness; and then such a calm, heavenly look! It was all beyond description. The audience was moved to tears.16
Perhaps even more remarkable, Sunderland discovered that people who entered trances during periods of intense religious excitement reported exactly the same kinds of experiences when he induced similar trances experimentally:
...[they] 'lost their strength,' as it was termed, and sometimes lay prostrate...they became perfectly rigid in their muscles... These persons...seemed to think they had actually entered the spiritual sphere... The accounts they gave of their dreams of 'heaven' and 'hell,' and the 'planets,' their visits to the moon... But I saw at once, that their testimonies did not agree, when speaking of the same things...I could perceive in almost every case, that each one gave the views on coming out of the trance, which were the most in agreement with those he held upon the same subject in his normal state...17
The similarities are striking. Deep trances. Journeys to heaven. Visits to other worlds. Conversations with heavenly beings. These are precisely the kinds of experiences reported by Ellen White during her early visions.
Contradictory Visions Reveal Their Human Origin
Sunderland made another observation that strikes at the heart of claims of supernatural revelation. Although people confidently described heaven, angels, planets, and the spirit world, no two accounts completely agreed.
I have not found any two of them who agree, exactly, about the spirit world.18
If these experiences originated with God, remarkable consistency would be expected. Instead, each visionary's account reflected his or her own theology and imagination. This observation helps explain why early Adventist visionaries such as Ellen White and William Foy claimed supernatural revelations while differing in significant ways.
Trances Could Produce Apparent Physical Healing
Sunderland also documented cases in which people experienced dramatic physical improvement while in mesmeric trances. He reported apparent relief from conditions including headaches, paralysis, insanity, stammering, deafness, loss of voice, toothache, and even blindness.19
Likewise, Ellen White frequently emerged from her visions with renewed strength or restored physical abilities. Such recoveries impressed her followers, but Sunderland's observations demonstrate that these experiences were already well known among mesmerists decades before Adventists cited them as evidence of divine inspiration.
Insensitivity to Pain and External Stimuli
Mesmerists also found that individuals in deep trances frequently became unresponsive to external stimuli. Sunderland reported that the senses of hearing, sight, and even pain could be temporarily suspended, allowing some patients to undergo surgical procedures without apparent discomfort.20
This provides a natural explanation for one of the most frequently repeated proofs of Ellen White's inspiration. Witnesses claimed they shined bright lights into her eyes, pinched her skin, or otherwise tested her responsiveness during visions without obtaining a reaction. Such behavior was not unique to Ellen White—it had already been documented as a characteristic of mesmeric trance states.
Legends of Suspended Breathing
Stories also circulated within mesmerist literature of extraordinary bodily functions being temporarily suspended during deep trances. One widely repeated account described Colonel Townshend allegedly stopping both his pulse and breathing for an extended period while observers searched in vain for signs of life:
...he suspended his breath and pulse, entirely, for half an hour, a clear looking glass being held over his face...21
These legendary stories were already circulating decades before Adventists pointed to similar claims surrounding Ellen White's visions as evidence of the supernatural. Such reports were part of the cultural landscape of the nineteenth century.
Experiments on Religious Women
Sunderland published numerous examples showing that deeply religious individuals could experience the same manifestations while under mesmerism that they had previously experienced during periods of intense religious excitement.
One of Sunderland's experiments was published in 1842, in The Magnet:
A lady in A, had been quite zealous in religion...she was known frequently to lose her strength,'...and remain hours in a state of apparent catalepsy. But, sometime since, she sunk into a state of mental despair, and supposed herself abandoned of God and doomed to perdition. On putting her to sleep...we not only removed her despair, but by exciting some of the organs, she declared herself perfectly happy...she instantly lost her strength and her limbs became rigid, precisely as she was formerly affected, under religious excitement. Indeed, she declared the two states to be precisely the same.
On February 15, 1843, the editor of the American Millenarian wrote of another similar experiment:
The first experiment was on an intelligent Christian lady of about twenty six. ...her eyes closed in a few minutes; and to all appearance, she was in a sound sleep...she said, [she] seemed elevated far above the body, and the things of this world. Her countenance assumed a most expressive and heavenly appearance, and she declared that her perceptions of the spiritual world, and the happiness of its inhabitants was as real as any thing she had ever seen with her eyes.
Still another participant immediately recognized the similarity between her religious experiences and the mesmeric trance:
...leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes in a state of trance. [She] said...It is heaven...I was then 'caught up to Paradise,' as St. Paul was, and where I saw Jesus and all the angels so happy...22
Again and again Sunderland encountered the same pattern: religious excitement and mesmeric trances produced remarkably similar experiences. Rigid bodies. Ecstatic joy. Heavenly visions. Out-of-body experiences. Claims of visiting Paradise. The participants themselves often insisted the two experiences were identical.
Conclusion
The evidence presents a serious challenge to the traditional Adventist explanation of Ellen White's visions. Virtually every outward manifestation cited as proof of her divine inspiration had already been documented by mesmerists years before she became a public figure. Deep trances, bodily rigidity, apparent insensitivity to pain, ecstatic religious experiences, journeys to heaven, visits to other worlds, and even apparent physical healing were all recognized features of mesmeric phenomena.
This demonstrates that no miracle is required to explain Ellen White's visions. The manifestations her followers regarded as compelling evidence of divine inspiration were already well known to physicians, lecturers, and mesmerists as natural psychological and physiological phenomena. Before jumping to a supernatural explanation for Ellen White's visions, readers should first inquire if such an explanation is even required. History suggests a more probable, natural explanation — one that was already being proposed while she was still alive. Thus, the real question becomes, what evidence remains that her experiences were supernatural?