Canonico Mouls — Colui che Scoprì Donato/en
The Canon Mouls, former canon of the chapter of Bordeaux and a well-known political refugee, is the figure without whom Donato would probably never have become the father of modern fascination. It was he who, in 1874 in Brussels, recognized in the young Alfred d'Hont the qualities of a great magnetizer and convinced him to study and practice magnetism — from scratch, without books and without previous masters.
The decisive meeting of 1874
Donato recounts this meeting in his magazine Le Magnétisme as the founding event of his career. In 1874, Donato was still primarily a writer and scientific-literary lecturer. In Brussels, he attended a lecture by Mouls favorable to magnetism and publicly contradicted him, successfully. Mouls, without resentment, published an article the next day in his newspaper La Rénovation religieuse in which he praised Donato as a «writer of great talent, elegant and correct orator, philosophical spirit, possessing the uncommon art of arguing without offending the opponent» — and added: «Mr. Donato will be a very interesting orator if he agrees to address the discussions that are the object of our studies.»
The dialogue that changed everything
Mouls wants to convince Donato at all costs. The dialogue that follows, reported in the magazine, is one of the most revealing moments in all of 19th-century magnetism literature:
- — But, what then is this alleged magnetism? asks the future apostle of this doctrine.
- — The science of the future, replies Mouls. Magnetism is still in its infancy. Since Mesmer it has hardly grown. No one has been able to draw anything conclusive from it. It vegetates, waiting for an energetic and gifted man to transfuse his virile blood into it, to give it the necessary vigor to finally emerge from the swaddling clothes in which it has languished for a century. You can be that man!
- — How?
- — Everything about you reveals magnetic power: burning gaze, commanding voice, eloquent speech, above all an iron will — nothing is lacking for you to magnetize admirably, and, even better, to impose magnetism on the world and provoke its definitive triumph.
- — You are making fun of me, I am ignorant of the first principle of magnetism!
- — Until now, magnetism has no sure method. It is a fact, but not yet a science. Reading works on the subject could only mislead your research: they generalize exceptions, advance absurd facts, fall into puerile conclusions... Consisting of the influence that one man can exert over another, this influence, exercised by gaze, gesture, and word, has perhaps no limits. Try to influence your fellow man: little by little you will discern the most active and surest procedures to obtain it.
The result: a method created from scratch
Donato will do exactly this — and the result will be revolutionary. As he himself writes:
- «Having seen only this one magnetizer, Canon Mouls, having never read anything on the subject, I succeeded in creating new procedures and establishing a method...»
This is the key: Donato arrives at fascination without being conditioned by any previous school. He has not read Mesmer, he does not know Du Potet's passes, he has not followed Bernheim. He starts from zero, observes, experiments, and invents. His initial «ignorance» becomes his strength: his method is not a reworking of existing methods — it is original.
Mouls' role in the chain of transmission
Canon Mouls does not transmit a technique to Donato — he does not have one. He transmits a vision and confidence. He tells him: you are the one who can do this. This form of transmission — the recognition of potential by someone with more experience — is different from technical transmission, but no less important.
In this sense, Mouls is a link in the ISI-CNV chain in an indirect but essential way: without him there is no Donato, without Donato there is no Di Pisa, without Di Pisa there is no Paret.
Donato himself uses the term «donatiques» for the phenomena he produces — a new word that does not refer to any previous school. It is proof that he perceives himself as a beginning, not a continuation.
Documented anecdotes
The chronicles of Lyon, referred to in Donato's own lectures, attribute to Canon Mouls the initiation of the young Alfred d'Hont. Mouls is described there as a «bizarre et mystérieux personnage, fort savant», a refugee in Belgium around 1872, who would have made himself «l'abbé Faria de ce nouvel Edmond Dantès» by confiding to him the secret of his science. The very fact that, as early as 1874, the lawyer Cudell publicly attacked Donato in Liège shows that by that date the magnetist was practicing and was known: Mouls' initiation must therefore be placed before an already established practice.
- Sources of the anecdotes: G. Moréty 1886 (Drive) · autobiography Cosmopolitan (Drive).
Sources
- Donato (Alfred d'Hont), Le Magnétisme — Journal de Psycho-Physiologie, Paris 1886: fasc. 1-50, fasc. 50-104, fasc. 104-154, fasc. 154+, article «Cavailhon — L'Apôtre du Magnétisme» and autobiographical section
- Donato, Le Magnétisme expliqué par Donato (included in the magazine)
See also
- Le Magnétisme Expliqué par Donato — Come Tutto Iniziò — the article where Donato recounts in first person how he became a magnetizer after the meeting with Mouls
- Donato — Il Padre della Fascinazione
- Il Metodo di Donato — Tecnica Precisa della Fascinazione
- Donato — La Rivista Le Magnétisme (1880-1886)
- Baron du Potet — Il Maestro del Sonnambulismo Magnetico
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