Baron du Potet

Baron du Potet; frontispiece of La magie dévoilée et la science occulte, 1852 edition.

Jules Denis, Baron du Potet or Dupotet de Sennevoy (12 April 1796 – 1 July 1881) was a French esotericist. He became a renowned practitioner of mesmerism—the theories first developed by Franz Mesmer involving animal magnetism.

Life He was born at Sennevoy-le-Haut, the son of Charles Jean-Baptiste Dupotet, seigneur de La Chapelle et de Sennevoy, and Pierrette Babeau Simone. He was married twice, to Aglaé Saunier in Paris in 1833, and the second time to Marie Isaure Hérault. He died in Paris and is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

Career Du Potet was a highly successful mesmerist. Some attributed this to the fact he was missing the thumb on his right hand. His reputation was such, apparently, that a man was convicted of murder and executed based on evidence given by "one of Du Potet's clairvoyantes". He operated a free school of magnetism in Paris from 1826 on, and from 1837 to 1845 practised magnetic healing in London, where he successfully treated epileptic girls at the North London Hospital

For du Potet, who was in correspondence with mesmerists worldwide, mesmerism was, not unlike Utopian socialism, an aid in bringing about social transformation, even a revolution. An 1890 article in the English occult magazine Lucifer praises him as an ardent supporter of mesmerism whose "powerful voice" might have stopped the "travesty" of hypnotism. Unlike Levi, he believed that trance enabled contact with the dead and with never incarnated spirits, and his circle believed in remote influence by means of magnetic currents.

Du Potet published and edited the Journal du magnetisme

Footnotes