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Invaluable research into the occult and folkloric beliefs that ran in the family of Joseph Smith appears in Early Mormonism and the Magic World View by D. Michael Quinn (Signature Books, 1998). The folklore of the Central New York region and Mormonism is considered in Whitney R. Cross’s The Burned-over District (Cornell University Press, 1950) and “Mormonism in the ‘Burned-Over District,’ ” by Cross, New York History, July 1944. Governor DeWitt Clinton’s remarks appear in his Discourse Delivered before the New-York Historical Society (James Eastburn, 1812). Dan Vogel’s Indian Origins and the Book for Mormon (Signature Books, 1986) provided the initial Clinton reference. An analysis of Mormonism and Freemasonry appears in The Refiner’s Fire by John L. Brooke (Cambridge University Press, 1994), No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie (Knopf, 1945), and Mormonism and Masonry by E. Cecil McGavin (Stevens & Wallis, Inc., 1947). A useful study of Mormonism’s esoteric influences appears in Lance S. Owen’s “Joseph Smith: America’s Hermetic Prophet,” Gnosis magazine, spring 1995. Other articles include: “What Is It about Mormonism?” by Noah Feldman, The New York Times, 1/6/08, and “As Mormon Church Grows, So Does Dissent from Feminists and Scholars” by Dirk Johnson, The New York Times, 10/2/93. Helpful passages on Smith are also found in Harold Bloom’s The American Religion (Simon & Schuster, 1993) and Omens of the Millennium (Riverhead, 1996).

Andrew Jackson Davis is quoted from The Magic Staff (J. S. Brown & Co., 1857), The Principles of Nature (S. S. Lyon and Wm. Fishbough, 1847), and The Harmonial Philosophy (Advanced Thought Publishing Company, 1917). His accounts of being Mesmerized appeared in The Great Harmonia, Vol. II (Crown, 1851) and The Magic Staff.

The Marquis de Lafayette’s letter to Washington is from Abnormal Hypnotic Phenomena, Vol. 4: The United States of America by Allan Angoff, edited by Eric Dingwall (J. & A. Churchill, 1968). Washington’s reply to Mesmer appears in Franklin in France, Volume II, by Edward Everett Hale (Roberts Brothers, 1888). The marquis’s visit with the Shakers is described in Spirit Possession and Popular Religion by Clarke Garrett (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987) and The Shakers and the World’s People by Flo Morse (University Press of New England, 1987). The role of Mesmerism in Poyen’s aversion to slavery is noted in “Charles Poyen Brings Mesmerism to America” by Eric T. Carlson, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (April 1960), and “How Southern New England Became Magnetic North” by Sheila O’Brien Quinn, History of Psychology (August 2007). Poyen’s relationship to the mayor of Lowell is noted in The Heyday of Spiritualism by Slater Brown (Hawthorn Books, 1970).

The credulity that greeted Poe’s fictional accounts of Mesmerism is noted by historian Michael Gomes in his pamphlet “Colonel Olcott and the Healing Arts” (Theosophical Publishing House, 2007). John B. Buescher’s The Other Side of Salvation (Skinner House, 2004) notes Poe reading in a trancelike state. Frank Podmore is quoted from Mesmerism and Christian Science (George W. Jacobs and Co., 1909).

Chapter Two: Mystic Americans

Olcott left a vast record of his affairs, most usefully his six-volume Old Diary Leaves (G. P. Putnam’s Sons/Theosophical Publishing Company, issued 1895–1935). His encounter with Andrew Jackson Davis is recounted in a prefatory note to an article by Anna Kingsford in The Theosophist magazine in May 1890. Biographies of Olcott are Yankee Beacon of Buddhist Light by Howard Murphet (Theosophical Publishing House, 1972, 1988) and The White Buddhist by Stephen R. Prothero (Indiana University Press, 1996). Olcott’s Civil War career is noted in The Web of Conspiracy by Theodore Roscoe (Prentice-Hall, 1959). Edison’s psychical experiments are described in Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I and “Edison Working on How to Communicate with the Next World” by B. C. Forbes, The American