YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN
The Science of Hypnotism – Alexander Cannon
Alexander Cannon (1896-1963), the author of today’s book, was a British psychiatrist, hypnotist, occultist, magician and author. It is important some clocks are stopped on “updating” Wikipedia ‘facts’. So that’s that.
Born in Leeds, he gained his medical and psychiatric education in Leeds, London, Vienna, and Hong Kong. But it was his specialism in various Eastern spiritual disciplines that distinguished him as an occultist and healer of some repute. He studied yoga and travelled India, China, and Tibet, and his 1933 book, The Invisible Influence, chronicled the supposed miracles of his travels. (Though, as any old and binned “Bertha” or Anna O – or fine young Bond Busker – will tell you, the lines between showbiz and “You Shall Go To The Ball, Sweet Princess!” moments of ‘pick-up artistry’ in this age of global travel and hotel eventery photos/’photos’ are increasingly fine.
And so! As can happen with classy rich folk, these personal hobbies got confused with managing ‘Colonial’ (sorta code for reality smooshed together with love and sellotape and bureaucrats and jobs and boobs and births, etc) interests – legitimising yet more of the scam known as ‘hypnotism’. For instance, while in Hong Kong in the late 1920s and early 30s, Cannon held roles in its medical, penal, and judicial systems. And, upon his return to England in the 30s, he served as psychiatrist and research scientist at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, which, at its height, accommodated up to 2,500 people. So he’d had plenty of opportunity to explore and practise his unique approach before London County Council, concerned by his 1933 book, questioned whether an occultist mixing psychiatry with psychic free-styling ought to be in charge of a mental hospital. This is simply because they were so indistinguishable from nunneries and work houses and hostels, as ‘twas and perhaps remains part of The British Experience. We apologised in all the tight pots, as the kitchen crew would state, and The Flying Doctors were left to it. It’s called: progress and research, and it’s a long-standing commitment to humanity to… yes, keep calm and carry on.
Published in 1936, The Science of Hypnotism captures an intriguing moment in hypnotic history. Cannon successfully shook off the medical dismissal, but elected to go into private practice on London’s Harley Street. The book is a potent blend of his ‘Continental’ and ‘Oriental’ hypnotism, packed with what feel like authentic nuggets of occult and mystical ‘Science’. Cannon’s real and apocryphal commendations (he was “Master-The-Fifth of The Great White Lodge”, but later got busted for using “His Excellency Sir” to misleadingly denote high rank) proved the usual catnip to the British establishment, who were wowed with… um, such miracles as… Himalayan salt light therapy. His place in The Hypnosis Hall of Fame is secured by his role in King Edward VIII’s 1936 abdication from the throne to marry American socialite and divorcée Wallis Simpson. Cannon was reportedly treating the monarch for a minor alcohol hiccup using hypnotism, but society and the press swirled with rumours of erectile disfunction a dark ‘mesmeric’ influence upon the palace…
Like this fortune-telling book from that same turbulent year, this work is eerily timeless and upbeat – we are invited to dream-in a pep-talk script as a victorious general of battle, or we’ll learn to sleep on command, to precise times, using hypnosis, as Napoleon did. Psychiatry and occultism is a queasy brew to digest: Cannon’s research in, and use of, hypnotic recordings and his ‘Suggestion Somnique’ method (much of the focus) were certainly, er… zeitgeisty. It was, and is, to the great shame of the privileged few that wealthy adventurers furnished with protected medical credentials pursued this fad for occult-hypnotism; a theme of this blog. Cannon relocated to the Isle of Man in 1939, where he established the Clinic for Nervous Diseases. By May 1940, the Isle of Man was establishing camps for ‘aliens’, where foreigners ( a quick ‘friend’, ‘foe’, ‘hmm’ aura game) within Britain were divided up into ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ categories: ‘C’ being friendly, and ‘A’ and ‘B’ requiring interment. Accusations that Cannon was a Nazi sympathiser and spy were dismissed by British security service M15, which declared him a “quack and compulsive liar”.
Cannon’s notable hypnotic technique is to shine various configurations of coloured lights into patients eyes according to his colour-healing principles. Like the wheel of fortune game was for me to follow as a child because I was used to following roads and maps and pictures using a visual system me and dad worked out when I was three. Plus Cannon claims the ability to cure insanity with his strongest mesmeric glare, so that’s new for me to add to to my super powers. Quackery at its finest! Goop really oughta give it a rest but I’m supporting itchy-headed algorithmic Skittles bags group ‘vibes’ for my neighbourhood wellbeing project. That’s what is necessary when your street becomes a hen party and Airbnb property portfolio hub.
Cannon would have applied this sort of consideration to where his charges could be reasonably left; needlework people in Room A, jigsaw people in Cupboard B, gameshow people in Corridor C. Then it becomes a bigger thing; you need a running room for small/young jigsaw people and vast quiet civilised coffee table lawns for the 1,000 piece ones. It just goes on. Totally reasonable starting position. I really can appreciate that a lot of ‘musical mesmerism’ is true/’true’ no matter what some empty suit and a bunch of support workers tell you. I can sense the influence of the Victorian ‘human automata’ theories; of an imagination still gripped by the supposed mesmeric powers of orchestral conductors. But it’s blended with reveries of the European asylum systems and their then-recent apparent patient ‘successes’… and all wrapped in the narcissistic illusion of serious modern professional psychiatric expertise. That’s why I seek to capture the flow of ‘hypnosis’ through these ‘Continental’ asylums because conditions such as epilepsy got reported as hypnotic feats. Cited are Vögt, Förel, Bernheim, Charcôt, Liébeault, and Völgyesi as contemporary figures, and Cannon is also a fan of ‘Luysism’ (pronounced ‘Lewis-ism’), from the Luys’ Clinic in Paris, which used patient-to-patient mimicry to ‘transfer’ and alleviate symptoms. (A harmful nonsense, in case that needs stating. Time for new brooms to sweep cleaner, in my neutral and humble opinion.)
Much of the phenomena Cannon was eliciting and promoting is related to visual and auditory ‘magic’ – his ‘Hypnotic Colour Science’ and involvement in “The Colour Centre at Blackpool” are surely expressing ‘aura’-reading beliefs and systems and/or (his?) synesthesia. He is especially excited by the prospect of BBC – that is, the British Broadcasting Corporation – Magick. “I am looking forward to the time when the B.B.C. and music-halls will give their half-hour of SLUMBER MUSIC with appropriate colour combinations (used in television),” he writes.
I shudder to wonder who he was writing for/to... But that’s why you gotta keep on the lamb from the lore in Britain. On with the show, anyway… But whatever innovative audio-visual ‘Lunatics Ball’ he’d dreamed of leading and/or televising was quickly thwarted by British medical authorities, and his reputation as a psychiatrist never recovered. By 1945, he was producing live hypno-magic shows, where two female assistants in his thrall would provide physical and mental diagnoses. Some of the techniques were exposed as fraudulent in 1952.
‘Slumber Music’ came to James Alexander Cannon in 1963. He died, aged 66, on the Isle of Man.
King Edward abdicated in December 1936 and married Wallace Simpson in June of the next year.
Theirs was a relationship so special it required British Special Branch police to surveil Wallace’s mysterious mesmeric influence over ex-King Eddie.
Smiley face emoji.
I have a beef with homeopathy to settle. People in Britain project onto their grocery shopping. Data me.
