Curso de hipnotismo por correspondencia

About

This project’s baseline is the Hypnotism Course in Ten Lessons, edited and published in Estoril in 1950 by the enigmatic Dr. Kiernan (a mysterious figure, perhaps a pseudonym for a Portuguese scientist who did not want to reveal his real name). Dr. Kiernan sent each lesson to the students that showed interest in his work, along with a questionnaire that they had to fill in and mail back to a post address in Estoril for him to correct.

In 2018, Raúl Hevia bought the complete course at the Feira da Ladra in Lisbon (the city’s weekly flea market) and translated it from Portuguese. He illustrates its lessons through photographs that show some of the hypnosis’ processes and their different states, as well as the students’ trances and their consequences.

The whole course is understood as a self-learning process on how to communicate and control the environment. It is designed to develop the ability to hypnotize people, it helps directing one’s will, managing unfavorable and complicated situations, and making possible the impossible only through the force of suggestion. Lessons consist of theoretical directions, practical exercises and activities, being the most important ones summarized in here.

Either departing from old pictures belonging to Hevia’s private archive, used to exercise the power of control, or through individual or collective trance, this project shows a series of techniques, precise instructions, practical exercises and the required methodology to get hold of someone’s will by means of physical and psychical training through exercise and pictures itself.

Over the process of learning, the author gathered a collection of spoons and forks folded by Israeli mentalist Uri Geller to illustrate the ability to manipulate objects and people, as it is also shown here.