Andrew Jackson Davis was descended from a humble family. He grew up in poverty. His mother was a simple, uneducated woman, and his father, between binges of drunkenness, earned a scanty living as a weaver and a shoemaker. Davis received a very elementary education. His psychic ability blossomed when he was only 17 years. He first developed his hearing. He heard voices that gave him good advice. His mediumship sight vision then came, when his mother died. He saw a beautiful bright area, supposed to be the place where his mother had gone. Later, Davis manifested a very interesting and rare ability: Davis described how the human body became transparent to his spirit eyes; this seemed to come from the centre of the forehead. Each organ stood out clearly with a special luminosity of its own which greatly diminished in cases of disease.
In 1844, Andrew Jackson Davis had an experience which was to change the course of his life. On the evening of 6th March, Davis was suddenly overcome by some power which led him to "fly" from Poughkeepsie, where he lived, and hurry off in a semi-trance state, upon a rapid journey. Upon gaining full consciousness the next morning, he found himself amidst the Catskill Mountains, some 40 miles away. There he met two very distinguished men, whom he later identified as the philosopher Claudius Galen (Galen had been a physician and philosopher in Greece, at about the 11th century AD, and his name became synonymous with physician) and the Swedish seer Emanuel Swedenborg, both of whom were dead. He also claimed to have experienced a great mental illumination and revelation.
In his spiritual vision he saw almost everything that Swedenborg described on the spiritual plane (let us open a parenthesis here to say that, Galen and Swedenborg identified themselves as his spiritual mentors during his transport to the Catskill Mountains).
Finally, on 31st March 1848 Andrew Jackson Davis recorded the following in his diary: "About daylight this morning a warm breathing passed over my face and I heard a voice, tender and strong, saying, 'Brother, the good work has begun - behold a living demonstration is born.' I was left wondering what could be meant by such a message." At that very moment, not too far away, in Hydesville, New York, the events which literally shook the world into looking at the very real possibility of communicating with those in Spirit were taking place. Indeed, the good work had begun.
Another curious thing about Davis was that when he was in a trance and someone asked him a serious and objective question, he said, "I will answer this in my book." When he turned 19 years of age, he concluded that it was time to write the book that he announced unconsciously.
A new hypnotist was then chosen for him. He was called Dr. Lyon, who was a qualified mesmerist and often induced the trance state upon Davis. From that day, when he went into trance, he could properly speak Hebrew and demonstrated deep knowledge of geology, biblical and history archaeology, mythology, the origin and affinities of languages as well as the march of civilization among the various nations of the earth. The skills demonstrated were of such a level that would honour to any student of that age, since it was as if he had consulted all the libraries in Christendom previously to be able to answer them.
We must consider that Davis left his profession as a shoemaker two years before that and when he was in his normal state he remained totally ignorant and slow in terms of understanding and intelligence.
His psychic development continued. When he was 21 years of age, he no longer needed to be magnetised into a trance. Since then, important facts were registered such as the fact he describe all the details of the disincarnation process of a lady. He was able to describe the disconnection of the perispirit from the physical body, as well as when the lady met with the spiritual entities that waited for her on the "other side". He was saying exactly what spirits like Andre Luiz and other authors say nowadays.
He also made prophecies and his prophetic power was indisputably proven by the success of his predictions. Since before 1856, he predicted the advent of the automobile and the typewriter, as noted in his book called "The penetralia; being harmonial answers to important questions (1856)".
In regards to Spiritism, Andrew Jackson Davis recorded in the book ‘Principles of Nature’, published in 1847: “It is a truth that spirits commune with one another while one is in the body and the other in the higher spheres - and this, too, when the person in the body is unconscious of the influx, and hence cannot be convinced of the fact; and this truth will ere long present itself in the form of a living demonstration. And the world will hail with delight the ushering in of that era when the interiors of men will be opened, and the spiritual communion will be established, just as inhabitants from Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have."