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King consulted hypnotist who used mediums
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 UNITED KINGDOM. In the months before his abdication, Edward VIII was hypnotised by an English psychiatrist, Dr Alexander Cannon, who wrote extensively on the paranormal and is said to have used mediums to “advise” patients on how to counter alcoholism and other problems of addiction. A BBC television regional news documentary has just revealed the connection between the two, but it is unlikely that its explanation for the King’s consultation with the colourful Dr Cannon is the right one.
According to a two-part documentary on BBC1 Yorkshire’s Look North regional news programme (29 and 30 November), word reached Lambeth Palace and Downing Street, early in December 1936, that Cannon had been heard boasting that he was treating the King for alcoholism.
Dr Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Stanley Baldwin, the prime minister, and indeed the whole of Britain, were already greatly concerned with the King’s affair with Mrs Wallis Simpson, a divorced Roman Catholic American (right), which threatened the stability of the monarchy.
It was possible that the claim that the King was an alcoholic might have some bearing on events, or even that the consultation with Alexander Cannon could be used by the prime minister in his efforts to force Edward VII to give up the throne.
 The archbishop sought an opinion on Cannon from Dr William Brown, an eminent Harley Street psychiatrist, and was told that one of his own patients had consulted Dr Cannon (left) and described how he “put a medium into a trance and invited her to ask questions of the medium”.
As it happened, the King’s association with a hypnotist whose interest in the paranormal was seen as eccentric was not to be his undoing. On 10 December, Edward VII decided to abdicate and this was accepted by Parliament next day. He and Mrs Simpson later married and became the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Hypnotism was Dr Alexander Cannon’s speciality and he is said to have regressed more than 1,300 subjects to past lives. One of his many books dealt with this aspect of his work and is said to have inspired Morey Bernstein to experiment, resulting in the famous Bridey Murphy case.
So perhaps Cannon was exploring Edward VII’s previous lives?
Certainly, the idea that the King was an alcoholic is not viewed as a likely explanation for his consultations with Dr Cannon. Philip Ziegler, official biographer of the Duke of Windsor, told The Daily Telegraph: “I very much doubt that Edward would have consulted this man for alcoholism: it was the one thing his critics never accused him of and although, of course, he did drink, it did not become a problem.”
 It was possible, Ziegler conceded, that the King was being treated for a sexual problem and that even Dr Cannon, “a profound blaggard”, stopped short of committing that degree of indiscretion against his royal subject.
- Dr Alexander Cannon will be the subject of a profile in the first issue of Life and Soul Magazine (click to be advised), to be published early next year.
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Posted on Friday, December 01, 2006
Category: Paranormal
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