Magic and science, empiricism and the supernatural: within alchemy, these were not in opposition, but constantly played off each other, combining and separating through a language both allusive and elusive, never fully merging but never wholly apart. Today we may regard the product of this alchemical marriage as an intellectual monster, an unnatural union of opposites, but Cooper and Chamberlayne obviously found it enchanting and believed it would bring forth the greatest secrets of nature. They were wrong. Cooper's Catalogue was the swansong of the alchemical heyday, not the opening for an even grander second act. If it had been updated a century later, very little that was new could have been added to it. Alchemical theory, along with ritual magic and other occult ways of thinking that were flourishing in late seventeenth century, began to fade away after 1688. This does not mean that alchemical practice disappeared—there is plenty of evidence that it did not—but few people wrote about it. Before the 1690s, few signs can be seen that occult philosophy was about to falter. Its chief opponent, however, was already very apparent: not the natural sciences, but religious orthodoxy. Did the accusation of demonic magic finally bring alchemy down?
Before we come to the question of why alchemy failed, we have to consider astrology, which followed a very different orbit. Astrology remained enormously popular in the late seventeenth century, although it was already beginning to lose some of its intellectual bearings. Astrologers governed over a highly commercialized occult science, which they had removed from the restricted sphere of intellectual speculation and allowed to circulate in the open marketplace. The fate of astrology has to be addressed before we can determine why Elias Ashmole, Thomas Vaughan and William Cooper would have no successors in the early eighteenth century.
CHAPTER TWO
The Silver Age of the Astrologers
IF THE late seventeenth century was the golden age of the alchemists, it was the silver age of the astrologers. Arguably, the intellectual peak of English astrology came earlier, perhaps between 1603, when Sir Christopher Heydon published his influential Defence of Judiciall Astrologie, and the 1650s.1 During the Civil Wars and Interregnum period when predictions and prophecies made a powerful political impact, the careers of numerous famous astrologers reached their height, among them John Booker, Nicholas Culpeper, William Lilly, Richard Saunders, John Tanner, George Wharton and Vincent Wing.2 Astrological almanacs circulated in impressive numbers—Lilly's Merlinus Anglicus reportedly sold thirty thousand copies in 1649. The spread of almanacs made astrologers into household names and obliged them to adopt a more public face. To show the respectability and collegiality of their profession, the astrologers of London organized an annual feast between 1647 and 1658.3 What better sign that the readers of the stars, no matter how humble their origins (many of them had in fact been skilled artisans before turning to the study of the heavens), formed a learned society, no less distinguished than that of doctors?
The analogy with physicians is not random; at its height, astrology was closely bound up with medicine.4 In the late sixteenth century, an irregular practitioner of healing like the astrologer Simon Forman could still land himself in trouble with qualified doctors (he was finally licensed to practise by Cambridge University in 1603), but by the early seventeenth century, such medical luminaries as Richard Forster, president of the College of Physicians, or Richard Napier, who specialized in mental disorders, freely consulted the stars in effecting cures.5 Regularly studied at the English and Scottish universities, astrology was accepted by many educated people as a subject that could be seriously debated, and whose methods could be changed by new information. Joshua Childrey, a clergyman who ended up as archdeacon of Salisbury after the Restoration, published a brief pamphlet in 1652 that endorsed the Copernican or heliocentric system and condemned the “old Astrology” as “pur-blind.”6 Within little more than a decade, several professional readers of the stars had abandoned the Ptolemaic or geocentric model, and were using heliocentric ephemerides, or tables of planetary movements, such as those calculated by Childrey, Vincent Wing and Thomas Streete. Henry Coley wrote in 1687 that “this Hypothesis of Copernicus, is now generally approv'd of by all, or most of the most learned Mathematicians [i.e. astrologers and astronomers] of all Nations.”7 Nothing better illustrates the intellectual vitality of astrology than this rapid alteration, among many important practitioners, of its most basic principles.
The popularity and acceptability of astrology did not change suddenly in 1660. Every year, thousands of clients were advised and hundreds of thousands of almanacs were sold. Lilly, Booker, Saunders, Tanner, Wharton and Wing lived on into the reign of Charles II, and were succeeded by younger professional astrologers like William Andrews, Henry Coley, John Gadbury, George Parker and John Partridge.8 Censorship became more rigorous after the Restoration, and the political views of astrologers occasionally landed them in trouble, as in earlier periods, but the abandonment of overt prognostications about the government probably did not make a great difference to the astrological profession, because so many of the younger practitioners were royalists. William Lilly, who was closely associated with the former republican regime, was exceptional in his experience of censorship, imprisonment and repeated legal difficulties. A political lightning rod, he had in fact suffered much the same treatment at the hands of the republican government.9
Meanwhile, simple “how-to” books for astrological beginners proliferated, among them the physician Joseph Blagrave's Introduction to Astrology, which appeared in 1682, dedicated to his patient Elias Ashmole.10 Lilly, Coley, Gadbury and Partridge wrote similar treatises on the basic principles of drawing up and reading charts. On the other hand, expensive and erudite studies of astrology were still being published, like John Goad's magnificent Astro-Meteorologica, a collection of astrological aphorisms that appeared in 1686. A few months after Goad's death in October 1689, a Latin version of his book appeared under the slightly altered title Astro-meteorologia Sana. It included a long preface studded with classical quotations, many of them in Greek, alongside references to the mathematician Isaac Barrow and the chemist Robert Boyle.11 Even if astrological prophecies, or “Vulgar Prognosticks” as Goad called them, had fallen into disrepute for political reasons since the restoration of the monarchy, it remained possible for him to claim that “Natural Astrology … conduceth to the advance of Religion.”12 Of course, there were opponents of the art, including the future astronomer royal John Flamsteed, who fumed in an unpublished manuscript of the early 1670s that “Astrology finds no ground to sustaine it in nature,” and complained of its “equal vanity and falsehood.” The astrologers had answers for them. “None ever yet condemn'd Astrology that thoroughly understood it,” counselled John Gadbury, adding that “the Noblest and Most useful Sciences, or Mysteries, are liable to Fraud and Deceipt … and yet in themselves are not the worse or less serviceable to Mankind.”13
Ultimately, however, not even the learned Goad, the only astrologer for whom Flamsteed had any respect, could wholly mask the religious and intellectual problems that plagued astrology, and were to steer its uncertain future. Was it compatible with Christian theology, particularly with doctrines like the omniscience of God and the responsibility of individual human beings for their own behaviour? Did it have a scientific foundation, or was it just an elaborate form of self-deception? Finally—and this was a question that astrologers tended to ask themselves—was it a purely practical art, without much theory, mystery or magic to it? Did it have anything original to contribute to occult philosophy or was it simply designed to satisfy the “superstitious Vulgar,” as Flamsteed claimed?14 The second section of this chapter will discuss how the community of professional astrologers tackled such questions, and how their responses changed over time. The final sections concentrate on two figures who characterize contrasting approaches to astrology: the ambitious plagiarist John Heydon, self-styled “Astromagus,” and the earnest, pious amateur Samuel Jeake of Rye.
Before we deal with astrology as a su
bject for learned discussion, however, we have to understand it as a thriving and expanding business. The steady commercialization of astrology would have profound consequences for its development as an intellectual discipline—or, perhaps more accurately, for its failure to develop as an intellectual discipline. While it would be misleading to argue that astrology was ruined by financial success, its focus was increasingly fixed on competition between popular astrologers rather than on serious study. Commercialization also contributed to a lessening of astrology's scholarly acceptability and the fraying of its connections with formal learning. As a result, the silver age would not last.
The Business of Astrology
Astrologers made money in two ways: first, as consultants to individuals who wanted to have a particular question answered, a specific problem solved, or the meaning of the present or the future revealed; and second, as the authors of books, pamphlets and almanacs. For most professional astrologers, the profits of the art lay in consultancy. This usually involved “judicial” rather than “natural” astrology: that is, giving answers to precise questions about individuals, rather than foretelling the weather or the general course of events. Judicial astrology in turn was divided into three main branches: genethliacal, horary and electional. The first involved the casting of a geniture or nativity, a birth chart with the client's name and birth date written on a diamond-shaped space in the middle, while the stars and planets that influenced the exact time of birth were inscribed on twelve triangles that surrounded the edges. A nativity could be interpreted in order to explain the present circumstances of the client, to predict what might happen in the future or to diagnose disease. Horary astrology answered specific questions posed by the client through a mapping of the heavens at precisely the moment at which the question was asked. Because the responses depended on vague “spiritual forces,” horary queries were particularly suspect to those who identified astrology with black magic or derided it as superstitious nonsense. Electional astrology worked backwards, in a sense, by setting up a propitious hypothetical chart for the initiation of an action, like marriage or travel or a business deal, then determining the time that best fitted such a configuration.15
An astrologer might follow up a consultancy by offering to sell the client a medicinal cure, like Nicholas Culpeper's Aurum Potabile (edible gold), “a rare Cordiall, and Universall Medicine,” which his widow, Alice, after his death in 1654, called “the TRUE LEGACY, which he left me.”16 Culpeper was known for his herbal remedies, but other astrologers associated themselves with the new metallic or iatrochemical medicines. In the late 1680s, Lancelot Coelson marketed his Elixir Proprietaris as “the great Antidote of the ancient Philosophers, Van Helmont, Paracelsus, and Crollius.” He sold it for a shilling a bottle.17 Astrologers also provided their clients with sigils, charms or talismans inscribed with zodiacal and planetary signs. They were supposed to confer good fortune or ward off evil by concentrating the beneficial aura of particular celestial bodies. The trade in sigils, however, was controversial, as it bore the taint of diabolic magic. One of the few published references to the use of a sigil in this period concerns a 1664 case of demonic possession, in which the astrologer Richard Saunders was consulted.18 No astrologer openly discussed the sale of sigils, although it was undoubtedly a widespread practice. Elias Ashmole cast his own sigils, and by the late 1670s was making them for a friend. William Lilly was impressed that Ashmole, “though a Gentleman and so educated … can ingraue, and cast medals or Sigills or any other the like curiositys.”19 Of course, Lilly must have made and sold many of them himself among his astonishingly large crowd of clients.
Lilly owed his considerable fortune to consultations. His voluminous consultancy records for 1644–66, along with those of John Booker for 1656–65, have survived among Ashmole's collection of manuscripts. While Lilly's casebooks are not complete—only horary figures are contained in them—they reveal that he saw more than two thousand clients a year. Unfortunately, Booker's meticulous records of horary figures and nativities were kept in indecipherable shorthand, but Keith Thomas counted about a thousand cases a year, reaching an astonishing total of 16,500 for the whole period. As Lilly apparently charged the average client half a crown, and those of high rank far more, he was making a very good living (at least £500 per annum) out of horary consultations alone. Unfortunately, he did not identify his clients in the surviving casebooks of the 1650s and 1660s, so nothing much can be said about their social backgrounds. Booker at least recorded the names of his customers, showing that men and women were about equally represented.20 The horary questions posed to Lilly usually concerned missing people and things, or decisions that had to be taken by the client. Women tended to ask about future marriage prospects (one who faced a choice between “a black haird man” and “a fair haird man” was told “fair will wynn”) or difficulties with their boyfriends. One customer wanted to know whether he would “obtain the Philosophers stones.”21 More typically, Lilly gave advice on medical ailments, marital complaints, sea voyages and various states of mind. Much of what he told his customers was based on common sense and experience rather than any supernatural insight.
Judging by the rapidity with which Lilly dealt with clients, horary astrology was a fast and relatively easy process. By contrast, calculating genitures or nativities often required considerable work, and they were probably the most expensive figures drawn up by astrologers. The nativities of famous people were often used as advertising, in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the astrologer's art to less exalted clients. Richard Edlyn, for example, drew up genitures for Charles II, his brothers James, duke of York, and Henry, duke of Gloucester, who died shortly after the Restoration. Other famous men whose nativities were calculated by Edlyn included the French scholar and astronomer Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (“Peireskius” in Edlyn's spelling), the anti-Trinitarian theologian Faustus Socinus and the Anglican martyr Archbishop Laud. He noted on the nativity of William of Orange (later King William III of Great Britain): “There was born in November 1650 A child who will subvert the Laws of that Countrey; saith Mr Lilly in one off his Almanackes.” This was the sort of prediction that might really impress a potential client, as it evidently did the antiquarian William Stukeley, the owner of this manuscript in the eighteenth century. Edlyn was also willing to draw up a nativity for an inanimate object, “His Maj.ties Great ship the Royall Charles 1st [sic—in fact, it was the Charles II] Lansht [i.e. launched] March 1667.” The subject of this figure was a replacement for the Royal Charles, the enormous vessel that had carried the king to England in 1660 and was captured by the Dutch in the Medway in June 1667.22 Plotting the ship's geniture must have been designed as a confidence-boosting exercise after the demoralizing loss of its predecessor.
Clients visited astrologers, Keith Thomas suggests, because “they hoped to lessen their own anxiety.” Lacking more effective means of resolving issues or addressing problems, they consulted those who claimed to be able to read certainty in the stars. Thomas also points out, however, that astrology provided “a coherent and comprehensive system of thought,” as well as “that greater freedom which comes from self-knowledge.”23 These aspects of astrology's appeal were important. Because we do not really know how clients reacted to astrological advice, it is hard to say whether or not their anxiety was substantially lessened by it, but at least they were given solutions and explanations that rested on an impressive body of learning and on a fairly strict methodology. As a way of reading the universe, and of interpreting one's life or situation within that universe, astrology made as much sense to seventeenth-century minds as any other natural system. Of course, its plausibility rested on the internal logic and consistency of its operations. A corpus of learned professionals, trained in seminaries of astrological learning and employed mainly by the elite, might have kept up the coherence of such a system for a long time, as was the case in China or India, but astrologers in England and Scotland received little systematic training in the
ir art, and were motivated as much by commercial as by intellectual factors. They had to cater to a broad audience that wanted to be awed and entertained as well as comforted. To maintain the intellectual plausibility of astrology in such a competitive universe required careful calculation indeed.
By the 1650s, the ruling planet in the astrological universe was the almanac. These little books, full of information both useful and arcane, vastly increased the public profile of astrology, and expanded its commercial possibilities.24 To be sure, few astrologers made much money from writing them. The main profits from the sale of almanacs went to the Stationers’ Company, which since 1603 had possessed a monopoly on printing them. Cyprian Blagden estimated that the normal payment for authors was £2, although the Company records for 1664 show that Vincent Wing was given £7, Richard Saunders £10 and John Booker £12, while William Lilly, quite exceptionally, received £48. Reportedly, by an arrangement of 1658, Lilly was to have £60 if sales of his almanac reached twenty thousand copies. These sums paid to Lilly were equivalent to the income of a skilled labourer. They added up to only a small proportion, however, of the yearly value of almanacs delivered to the Company's treasurer, which averaged around £2,500.25 Blagden demonstrated that the Company was clearing up to £1,500 per annum in profit from almanacs by the late seventeenth century.26 The Stationers were aware how important almanacs were to them financially, which explains why they made Obadiah Blagrave, publisher of astrological and occult works, their treasurer in the mid-1680s.
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