Hypnotism may be employed with evil intentions for evil ends. In that case it comes very close to black magic, witchcraft, and sorcery and must be prohibited. But it may be employed also with good intentions for beneficent ends. In that case, and if the hypnotizer is of honourable character, and provided the welfare, rights, or interests of the hypnotized subject are fully respected, it is allowable, especially in the domain of the healing and surgical arts. If hypnotism is used by a person of dishonourable character or even by a person of average character flawed by some particular weakness, there is always the possibility that it may be used immorally. A crime may then be committed against the person submitting to it, or else he himself may be influenced to commit a crime against somebody to suit the hypnotizer's purpose, covering up the real criminal. These dangers are real and are dreadful enough to require that society be protected by limiting hypnotic practice to special trustworthy persons, and hypnotic objectives to allaying bodily pain and to inducing artificial unconsciousness, or sleep. Otherwise hypnotic passivity is undesirable for the same reason that mediumistic passivity is undesirable: both surrender the use of the subject's free will. In the one case it becomes enslaved to a living operator, in the other to a supposedly disincarnate one. Whoever gives it up to the control of another entity renders himself helpless and powerless against, and utterly at the mercy of, that entity. This is a dereliction of personal responsibility, sinful despite any benefits which may be sought and obtained.
-- Notebooks Category 16: The Sensitives > Chapter 13 : The Occult > # 104
