Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  While the financial proceeds to the Company were certainly healthy, they do not express the full impact of almanacs, which involved a large number of printers and publishers. Each year, between twenty and thirty different almanacs were printed as books, others as individual sheets, at London, Cambridge and Oxford. The Stationers jealously guarded their monopoly, and pursued any interlopers who pirated editions. Scotland was beyond the Company's purview, however, and legitimate independent almanacs appeared there throughout the seventeenth century. The simply titled Almanack, or New Prognostication, printed by John Forbes at Aberdeen, was selling as many as fifty thousand copies annually in the late 1670s. Not surprisingly, Forbes soon faced competition from the printers of Edinburgh.27 In 1683, Edinburgh's True Almanack, compiled by the mathematician James Paterson, began to appear in the Scottish capital. Within a year, Paterson had to obtain legal protection from the Scottish Privy Council against the making of unlicensed copies of his work.28

  How many English book almanacs were printed by the Stationers’ Company in the late seventeenth century? The quantity was staggering: never fewer than 280,000 copies, and at times more than 400,000. It is important to keep in mind, however, that the number of copies sold did not equal the number of readers. Some people bought multiple almanacs, while a few possessed expensive bound volumes consisting of a dozen almanacs or more. Unlike pamphlets or newspapers, almanacs were designed for a single user, not for being shared by several readers or read aloud to an audience. As a result, the total number of printed copies was certainly greater than the number of purchasers or users. We have no way of knowing the exact ratio of copies to purchasers, but as the vast majority of people probably bought only one almanac, a multiplier of 1.5 might provide a rough estimate. We could guess, therefore, at 190,000 to 300,000 English purchasers of legally printed book almanacs every year (plus an incalculable number of purchasers of pirated, illegal or imported almanacs), which would place these little volumes among the biggest sellers of any books printed in the seventeenth century.29

  The peak of almanac production came during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679–81, when public anxiety over a possible Catholic overthrow of the government ran high among zealous Protestants, known as Whigs. Their opponents, called Tories, suspected Whigs and Dissenting Protestants of planning to establish a republic. Tories rallied to King Charles and his Catholic brother, James, and upheld the Church of England against its critics.30 Henry Coley predicted for 1680 that there would be “great reason to fear a general Dissatisfaction and Uneasiness amongst the People in general; also much Treachery and secret Plotting and Heart-burning one against another.”31 It seems incredible that anybody needed the stars to tell them that, but at least it alerted the public to continuing instability. Coley was staunchly loyal to the king, and might be considered a Tory, along with Saunders, Andrews and several other prominent almanac writers. Poor Robin's Almanac, of which 20,000–25,000 copies were printed every year during the Exclusion Crisis, was vehemently abusive towards Protestant Dissenters. In fact, jeering attacks on “Rumpers” and “Saints” constituted its only line of jest. The almanac written by John Gadbury, who was imprisoned for complicity in the alleged Catholic conspiracy known as the “Meal Tub Plot,” and twice burned in effigy by Whig demonstrators, also sold briskly during the Crisis, when 18,000–20,000 copies were printed every year.32

  The Whig side was represented by John Partridge, who made his debut as an almanac writer in 1678, by the old republican John Tanner and by the Protestant Almanack. The number of printed copies of Partridge's almanac, which displayed its Whig leanings mainly through a ferocious dislike of “Popery”—“Rome, Prepare thy self to entertain showers of Judgements,” etc—rose steadily from 4,000 in 1680 to an astonishing 23,000 in 1686.33 Tanner, who praised the Whigs as “true Patriots to their King and Country,” saw the production of his almanac increase from 12,000 to 15,000 copies during the Exclusion Crisis, while the virulently anti-Catholic Protestant Almanack peaked at 8,000 copies in 1683, before disappearing in the first year of James II's reign.34 The Stationers’ Company evidently did its best to respond to the shifting demands of a politicized public, although it is worth adding that most almanacs remained neutral during this turbulent period. If they encouraged commercial competition, the Stationers were also sensitive to pressure from the licensers of the press. In 1685, the archbishop of Canterbury compelled the Company to enforce a total ban on political predictions, which lasted throughout the short reign of the Catholic King James II.35

  From an occult point of view as from a political one, all almanacs were not created equal. It would be a mistake to assume that up to 300,000 people in England (plus perhaps thirty to forty thousand in Scotland) bought them in search of an annual dose of magical discourse. Most were far more mundane in their content. Almanacs of this period generally contained similar features: lists of upcoming eclipses, moveable feasts of the Church of England, country fairs, a tidal table, a table showing the phases of the moon, a table showing the zodiacal houses, a chronology and a calendar. Many also included an illustration showing the dominion of the planets over different parts of the human body. While medical information, such as the most auspicious times for purging or letting blood, was common, its astrological derivation was rarely a subject for comment. The calendar was usually accompanied by predictions, made from natural astrology and pertaining to the weather or important national events. Well-known astrologers like Lilly, Booker, Coley, Gadbury, Partridge, Saunders and Andrews personalized their almanacs with remarks addressed to the reader, which might contain discussions of astrological principles. The Scottish compilers of almanacs put mathematical problems into their remarks, and serious students of the heavens, like John Wing, provided descriptions of planetary movements. The satirical almanacs, like Poor Robin and Yea and Nay, were full of jokes and stories. Not surprisingly, the Cambridge almanacs, designed for a rural public, offered advice on husbandry and gardening.

  In short, the information provided by the almanacs of the late seventeenth century was overwhelmingly practical. Although much of it had an occult basis, it gave readers little understanding of the meaning and methods of astrology. Only occasionally did the celebrated prognosticators of the period deign to explicate the foundations of their art within the pages of an almanac. When they did, however, their attitudes could be revealing. Set alongside more substantial printed works on astrology, these rare comments in almanacs provide considerable insight into the changing nature of astrology towards the end of the century.

  What Made Astrology Occult?

  Astrology might be called occult by definition. As Henry Coley's almanac put it in 1679, “the Principles and Notions of this Art are so sublime and difficult to be found out by the most Sagacious Researchers of Humane Understanding, that they seem to require some supernatural Declaration.”36 What could be more occult than the idea that unexplained influences emanating from the stars had a role in determining human destiny? Some astrological writers, however, longed to give a natural explanation of those influences. “Planetary Aspects,” advised John Goad, “are no vain Terms of a Bawbling Art, but are Mysterious Schematisms of a secret Force and Power towards the Alteration of the Sublunar World, especially the Air.”37 Others had no desire to tarnish their art by an association with occult philosophy, or with any type of theoretical explanation, and instead represented it as purely experiential knowledge, gathered through careful observation. John Partridge opined in his Prodromus that “Astrology, like Physick, is but a Bundle of Experience; which the Industrious Observators have heaped up, as a Portion and Legacy to after Ages.”38 Unlike alchemists, who rarely feuded with one another, astrologers regularly launched into bitter debates over such principles. No clear winner emerged before the 1690s, so inquisitive readers were left with the open question: was astrology supernatural, natural or simply empirical?

  Members of the older generation of astrologers would have had no difficulty in answering that question. For
them, astrology was magic as Agrippa had defined it: that is, it reached supernatural results through natural means. They were not always eager to say so publicly, however, because it made their profession vulnerable to accusations of diabolism or conjuring. William Lilly's massive instructional guide Christian Astrology, which appeared in 1647 and went into a second edition in 1659, claimed to “lay down the whole naturall grounds of the Art, in a fit Method that thereby I may undeceive those, who misled by some Pedling Divines … conceived Astrology to be based upon Diabolical Principles: a most scandalous untruth.”39 Yet Lilly had nothing further to say about the “naturall grounds of the Art” in the 650 pages of his book. His pupil and successor Henry Coley called astrology “a part or member of Natural Philosophy, which teacheth by the Motions, Configurations, and Influences of the Signes, Stars, and Coelestial Planets, to Prognosticate, or Predict of the Natural effects and Mutations to come in the Elements, and these inferiour Elementary Bodies.”40 This sounded very empirical, although the causal link between heavenly signs and their worldly consequences remained wholly mysterious.

  That the connection between the stars and elementary bodies might be magical rather than physical was made more explicit in Lilly's memoirs, written at the request of Elias Ashmole and not published until 1715. Lilly returned again and again to the theme of magic, and especially to communication with spirits. As a servant in the early 1630s, he had become fascinated by the astrological sigils kept in a bag by his master's wife, including one that had been cast by Simon Forman. He later learned astrology from one Evans, “an excellent wise Man, and studied the Black Art,” meaning ritual magic. In a revealing passage, Lilly admits that Evans “had some Arts above, and beyond Astrology, for he was well versed in the Nature of Spirits, and had many times used the circular Way of Invocating”—that is, invoking spirits by standing in a circle. Lilly himself later used a copy of the Ars Notoria to perform ritual magic, “but of this no more.” He also recalled invoking angels in the early 1630s in the company of Dr Richard Napier. In 1654, however, he was charged at the Middlesex sessions court with using diabolic magic in giving a judgment on a theft, and testified “that I never had or ever did, use any Charms, Sorceries, or Inchantments.”41 We may doubt the veracity of this statement. For his own part, Lilly passed no further comment upon it.

  That court case may have made Lilly more cautious about revealing publicly his interest in magic, but it did not make him more reticent in relaying such matters to his friend Ashmole. The last part of his memoirs presents a gallery of ritual magicians and seers, with anecdotes about their lives: John a Windsor, a scrivener known to have invoked spirits; the celebrated John Dee and his sidekick, Edward Kelly; Sarah Skelhorn, “Speculatrix” to a physician in Gray's Inn Lane, who “had a perfect Sight, and indeed the best Eyes for that purpose I ever yet did see,” and who claimed to be followed by angels, “until she was weary of them” Ellen Evans, daughter of Lilly's tutor; one Gladwell of Suffolk, “who formerly had Sight and Conference with Uriel and Raphael, but lost them both by Carelessness” and Gilbert Wakering, who bequeathed to Lilly his beryl or crystal, the size of an orange and inscribed with the names of angels.42 The presence of two women among these crystal-gazers is interesting, as so few women are known to have become astrologers in the late seventeenth century.43 Lilly's confessions must have delighted Ashmole, and perhaps he was catering somewhat to his friend's fixations. Still, the old astrologer seems genuinely to have regarded conversations with angels as a “higher” form of supernatural prognostication, similar to reading the stars, although more direct and effective, because it did not involve complicated calculations or the possibility of human error. In 1680, Lilly even wrote an astrological history of the world, presumably for Ashmole, that fixed the name of an angel to each chronological epoch.44

  The comparison of the stars with angels was not unique to Lilly, of course. Agrippa argued that angels and stars performed the same duties for God, and that each planet and zodiacal sign had an angel attached to it:

  Now whatsoever God doth by Angels, as by ministers, the same doth he by heavens, Stars, but as it were by instruments, that after this manner all things might work together to serve him, that as every part of Heaven, and every Star doth discern every corner or place of the Earth, and time, species and Individuall: so it is fit that the Angelical vertue of that part and Star should be applyed to them, viz. place, time, and species.45

  Similarly, Robert Fludd had argued that “the Angels give life and vigour, first unto the stars, then unto the winds,” which in turn affect the earth.46 The celebrated physician and essayist Sir Thomas Browne wrote in his Religio Medici (1643) that “many mysteries ascribed to our owne inventions, have beene the courteous revelations of Spirites,” especially “prodigies and ominous prognosticks.”47 Ultimately, such notions may have derived from the Neoplatonic anima mundi or Soul of the World, which breathed spirit into all animate and inanimate things.

  Whether their source was Agrippa, Fludd, Marsilius Ficino or popular tradition, English astrologers were clearly familiar with the idea that angels guided the stars. According to George Wharton, the world was “Living, Animate, Intellectual … Where we term it Intellectual, we mean the Angelical Intellects, which are properly Perfect and Indivisible (according to Place,) in their Government of the Spheres.” The expression of Intellect was the Soul of the World, which acted through Spirit on the “Astral Soul” of Man, which was “infused from the Heavens and Stars, at the time of Generation.”48 On a less exalted plane, John Booker, writing a dedication to Elias Ashmole in the final almanac he ever produced, which happened to appear in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London, considered “the late notable Coelestial Phenomenons, which it hath pleased God to shew us … as Messengers, and Ambassadors to inform us of his divine will of Judgment or Mercy.”49 Nobody would have had to explain to Ashmole that the biblical messengers of God were angels. Any astrologer who had made sigils would have understood the reference. The manufacture of these mysterious talismans involved an invocation of the names of angels as well as “suffumigation;” both practices derived from ritual magic.50

  If astrology was understood as a type of angelic magic, then it should have been useful in undoing demonic magic. Indeed, for older astrologers, the occult foundations of their art were nowhere better revealed than through its ability to expose witchcraft. Lilly, for example, argued in Christian Astrology that horary charts could reveal a bewitchment, and he further proposed “Naturall Remedies for WITCH-CRAFT” that could be used to cure the victim.51 A considerable portion of Joseph Blagrave's Astrological Practice of Physick, first published in 1671, with further editions in 1672 and 1689, was devoted to the discovery and cure of diseases caused by witchcraft or sorcery. An admirer of Agrippa and friend of Ashmole, Blagrave asserted of astrology that God “hath given so much knowledge thereby (next unto the Angels) that he is able to reveale and make known in a great measure his Heavenly Will thereby unto his People.”52 He proposed a particular astrological method for determining the possibility of witchcraft. From observing patients who were bewitched or demonically possessed, Blagrave had discovered that “at the time of any strong fit, or when they are more than usually tormented, that then the ascendant together with its Lord doth exactly personate the sick; and at that very time, the Lord of the twelfth house doth one way or other afflict, either the ascendant, or its Lord.”53 In other words, victims of witchcraft were afflicted through the malign influence of a planet, and the remedy was usually a herb or plant sympathetic to that planet. Blagrave was convinced that “Witchcraft or Sorcery can no way be discovered, nor yet cured, but by the way of Astrology, except a Miracle be wrought.”54

  In Blagrave's imagination, witchcraft amounted to the inversion of astrology, a perversion of his own art. Its malevolent power was derived from the stars, just like the benign power of astrological healing. If this was a widespread conception, it might help to explain the appeal of astrology, which linked learne
d and popular culture in a way that alchemy was never able to imitate. In educated minds, astrology drew on the power of angelic magic; in the minds of the less educated, it stood for the opposite of the demonic magic that was thought to hide in every corner. The most widely read astrological almanacs, like John Booker's, were quick to associate misfortune with witchcraft and sorcery, suggesting that only astrology could discover such wickedness. “[I]t is to be feared,” wrote Booker in 1664, “much Sorcery and Witchcraft may be used, and many Venifices [sic] practiced, that I trust in God they may be discovered in due time, and have their reward.”55 This was a subtle form of self-advertisement. A reader troubled by suspected witchcraft knew exactly whom to consult in order to discover it.

  By the time Booker was writing, however, an alternative approach to the supernatural basis of astrology was already being championed by the young reformer John Gadbury. Better educated than most astrologers of the older generation, he had nonetheless enjoyed their support in rising to the heights of astrological fame. Gadbury was a protégé of George Wharton, and edited the works of that venerable figure, whose royalist politics he shared. It was Gadbury who first published Wharton's Neoplatonist treatise on the Spirit of the World, and he praised the writings of his mentor, including his tracts on chiromancy or palm reading, as “little less than a compleat Encyclopedia, or Summary of all Sciences.”56 Gadbury became celebrated as a foe to “conjuring” and a bitter critic of other astrologers, whose slipshod methods he deplored. Rightly or wrongly, he excoriated most of his competitors, including William Lilly, as religious Dissenters. Although he was accused of flirting with esoteric religious groups himself during the Civil War and Interregnum period, after 1660 Gadbury loudly declared his devotion to the Church of England and his undying hostility to religious sectarians, whom he now associated with fanaticism and fraud. “Dreams, Whimsies, Enthusiastical Nonsense and Blasphemies, under pretence of Divine Inspiration, will no longer befool this (of late twenty years) cheated Kingdome,” he wrote in 1663, adding: “The Imposture is discovered.”57 In an age of restored monarchy and religious uniformity, astrology should abandon the occult “fooleries” of Lilly and embrace a rational method.