Category:Visions

Visions & Revelations (Home Page)

Visions refers to any "historical" knowledge acquired through mystical experience.

This page is edited by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan. <<WORK IN PROGRESS>>

Visions -- Overview

"Historical" accounts are the result of study and research by scholars, or of the imagination of authors of fiction. There is a third category, however--visionaries who claim to have received "historical information" through supernatural revelation or mystical experience. The first known example is the Mística Ciudad de Dios, a biography of Mary of Nazareth based on visions the author Maria de Agreda supposedly had from Mary herself in the years 1637-43 and 1655-60. Similar claims were made by Dionysius von Luxemburg in Germany (Leben Antichristi, 1682), Jane Lead in England (The Enochian Walks with God, 1694), and Rowland Cotton in the United States (Cain's Lamentations over Abel, 1795).

In the 19th century, great impact had the visions by Joseph Smith in the United States (The Book of Mormon, 1830) and by Catherine Emmerich in Germany (Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi, 1833; and Leben der heiligen Jungfrau Maria, 1852). In 1898 Rev Gideon Jaspar Ouseley claimed to have received in a vision a copy of a Gospel (The Gospel of the Holy Twelve), written in Aramaic and "now preserved in one of the Monasteries of the Buddhist monks in Thibet." Another gospel acquired through a vision appeared a few years later (The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus (1908 Dowling), vision), by Levi H. Dowling, which confirmed that Jesus spent in India his Hidden Years.

In the first half of the 20th century, Irish visionary Geraldine Dorothy Cummins published a long series of "historical" books, written "in light trance," supposedly channeling a spiritual revelation from "an unseen intelligence," who supplemented the narratives of the New Testament regarding the lives of Jesus and Paul and the experiences of the first Christians. Similar "historical" revelations came also through other mystics, notably, Edgar Cayce and William S. Sadler in the United States, Maria Valtorta in Italy, and Michel Potay in France. Their psychic and medium experiences were also recorded and published.

In more recent years, "historical" accounts based on mystical experiences have been published by Rahman Reuben and Sylvia Browne in the United States, and Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis in England.