Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  The dialogue remained unpublished, however, perhaps because Boyle had been sensitized to the difficulties of making even the most oblique public references to alchemy. In 1676, he published (under a pseudonym, with a Latin translation alongside it) an article in the Philosophical Transactions in which he hinted that he had discovered “that which the Chrysopaean Writers mean by their Philosophick Mercury,” allowing the transmutation of metals into gold. He also let it slip that the president of the Royal Society, viscount Brouncker, had already repeated his experiment. When he read the article, Isaac Newton was concerned enough to write to the journal's editor, Henry Oldenbourg, to register his doubts about the process and complain that such revelations could lead to “immense dammage to the world if there should be any verity in the Hermetick writers.” He recommended “high silence” to the “the noble Author.”63 The incident was not repeated. Boyle would thereafter maintain a distinction between public and private experiments. His reputation as a scientist would come to rest on his espousal of a mechanical philosophy rather than his conviction that the possessor of the Philosopher's Stone could hold conversations with angelic spirits.

  The foundation of the Royal Society in 1660 encouraged the discreet separation of mechanical and occult experiments that was demanded by Newton and accepted by Boyle. Of course, the Society attracted devotees of the occult, but they did not dominate its proceedings. John Beale became co-editor of the Philosophical Transactions, to which he contributed many papers, none of them on an occult subject. The public face of the Royal Society looked coldly on the occult.64 In his history of the Society, first published in 1667, the Reverend Thomas Sprat scorned those whom he labelled “Chymists” or alchemists, as if they were religious sectarians:

  in the Chase of the Philosopher's Stone, they are so earnest, that they are scarce capable of any other Thoughts … This Secret they prosecute so impetuously, that they believe they see some Footsteps of it, in every Line of Moses, Solomon, or Virgil. The Truth is, they are downright Enthusiasts about it. And seeing we cast Enthusiasme out of Divinity it selfe, we shall hardly sure be persuaded, to admit it into Philosophy.

  Nevertheless, some alchemists were moderate enough in their pursuits to be useful. Sprat went on to praise “the Advantages that accrue to Physick, by the industrious Labours of such Chymists, as have only the discreet, and sober Flame, and not the wild lightning of the others Brains.”65 We might read into this passage a contrast between the “sober” Robert Boyle and the “wild” Elias Ashmole—both of them prominent Fellows of the Royal Society. Yet the main distinction between the two was their level of discretion: Ashmole put into print ideas that Boyle only speculated about in private. From the first, the public meetings of the Royal Society had avoided discussion of “speculative” subjects like alchemy, which makes Boyle's blunder of 1676 all the more extraordinary.

  The alchemists, however, were not the only occult researchers within the Royal Society. Among its founding members was John Aubrey, a prominent experimental scientist and mathematician whose private interests tended towards ritual and popular magic. In 1674, Aubrey copied out a manuscript entitled “Zecorbeni,” a version of the fourth book of the Clavicula Salomonis, which he intended to include as part of a study of “the Remaines of Gentilisme,” the same expression that had been used so disdainfully by Hobbes. Aubrey's approach to this material, however, was the opposite of Hobbesian. In discussing the use of pentagrams, crystal balls and charms, Aubrey included many notes based on communications with friends and acquaintances, indicating that he knew a lot of educated people who shared a predilection for magic and were aware of its uses.66 He appended to this manuscript a variety of spells and incantations, many of which he had tried out himself, marking them “probatum est” (“It is proved”).

  In exploring such strange magical paths, which ranged from calling up a spirit in a crystal to expelling a witch, Aubrey was scrupulously following the rules of scientific inquiry: collecting and classifying observations, testing each procedure and recording the results. He recognized, of course, that he was dealing with questions that went beyond conventional science. The manner of the experiments was often outlandish—for example, to make a woman confess in her sleep, take “the tongue of a Frogge and lay it upon the womans brest & she shall confesse”—and he knew better than to submit any of them to the Philosophical Transactions.67 Nevertheless, in 1696 he would publish a catalogue of notes on apparitions, visions, crystals and magic under the generic title Miscellanies. “The Matter of this Collection is beyond Humane reach,” he stated, “we being miserably in the dark, as to the Oeconomy of the Invisible World.”68

  Robert Boyle carried out investigations similar to Aubrey's, although with more detachment. In the 1660s, he became intrigued by Valentine Greatrakes, known as “the Stroker,” an Irish healer who claimed to be able to cure various ailments by laying on his hands. As the curing of scrofula by touch was a traditional practice of the English monarchy which had been revived after the Restoration by Charles II, Greatrakes was making a politically sensitive assertion about himself.69 He was careful to avoid the suggestion of radical or sectarian motives, although some of his supporters were less scrupulous. Greatrakes was not invariably a success: he failed to rid Lady Anne Conway of migraine headaches, and he did not manage to convince the king of his powers when summoned to perform at court. Nevertheless, he impressed Boyle, whose brother happened to be his landlord back in Ireland. Greatrakes addressed his published autobiography to the famous scientist, including in it numerous testimonials signed by Boyle that confirmed the genuineness of the cures of “the stroker.” In private correspondence, however, Boyle was cautious about endorsing a miraculous explanation of Greatrakes's “stupendious Performances.” He was unsure as to whether he thought them to be supernatural or natural; if the latter, then they might be due to some corpuscular emission of “Effluvia,” reminiscent of Digby's weapon salve.70 Boyle was equally curious about “the Second Sight”, a power to predict the future that was enjoyed by certain Highland Scots who believed themselves to be in communication with fairies.71

  For established men of learning like Aubrey and Boyle, these investigations were not without risk. Ritual magic was condemned by the Church; magical healing was seen by many educated observers as superstition; and second sight was a popular belief, questionable on both religious and empirical grounds. Aubrey chose not to publish his researches until shortly before his death, and then did so in a calculatedly innocuous fashion. Boyle was undecided about why Greatrakes was successful, and he never proceeded very far with his examination of second sight. The methods used by both men were curiously conventional and unimaginative: they simply accumulated written and hearsay evidence, or watched the subject in operation. Aubrey may have “proved” some spells and charms, but we have no idea how he did so. The contemporary conviction that “disinterested” science should involve a direct unveiling of the principles of nature, rather than a controlled testing of hypotheses under artificially created circumstances, meant that nobody dreamed of subjecting magical practices to trial by experiment in the laboratory. Witnessing a phenomenon in nature, and bearing reliable testimony to it, was seen as a better experimental method than re-creating the phenomenon artificially. Whether controlled experiments might have made a difference to men like Aubrey or Boyle is of course debatable, since observation of the occult tends to verify what one already believes.

  What about Isaac Newton, that legendary scientist who wrote of himself as standing on the shoulders of giants, yet who had been so quick to condemn Boyle's Hermetic indiscretions? The mind-boggling scale of Newton's own alchemical obsession has been known to historians of science since the sale of his private papers in the 1930s, but its significance to his scientific thinking remains a matter of considerable debate. No wonder: almost all of the several hundred pages of alchemical manuscripts in Newton's hand consist of copied recipes, notes on experiments and extracts from various publications. Only in a few fr
agments does Newton offer his own comments on this vast body of material, and these are usually limited to practical considerations. Newton was liberal in his selection of sources: he copied out everything from Arnoldus de Villa Nova and the fictional Basil Valentine to Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum and the works of “Eirenaeus Philalethes.”72 While the emphasis in these manuscripts is on practical alchemical experiments, they also include a great deal of occult philosophy, from the Tabula Smaragdina to the writings of “Maria the Prophetess,” the supposed sister of Moses. In a document drawn up in the early 1680s, Newton listed “the best Authors” and writings as Hermes Trismegistus, the Turba Philosophorum (a thirteenth-century dialogue of philosophers), Morien (mythical father of Merlin), Artephius, “Abraham the Jew” and his disciple Nicolas Flammel, Paolo della Scala, Sir George Ripley, Michael Maier, the Rosarium Philosophorum (a sixteenth-century collection of aphorisms), Thomas Charnock, Bernard of Trevisan, “Philaletha” (i.e. George Starkey) and Jean d'Espagnet.73 Most of the writers on this list can be considered philosophical as well as practical alchemists, and while Newton may have read them for guidance on his experiments, he cannot entirely have avoided their speculative remarks.

  Yet he said almost nothing about them. Perhaps the closest we can come to a first-hand understanding of what Newton saw in alchemy is in the letter he wrote after reading Boyle's article on philosophic mercury. The results of Boyle's experiment, he suggests, should be judged by “a true Hermetic Philosopher, whose judgmt (if there be any such) would be more to be regarded in this point then that of all the world beside to the contrary, there being other things beside the transmutation of metals (if those pretenders bragg not) wch none but they understand.”74 In other words, a “true Hermetic Philosopher” would know that the Philosopher's Stone could do much more than make base metals into gold. What more, though? Would it offer communication with angels? Eternal life? A key to natural magic? Newton retained his own “high silence” on these, so any precise answer must be speculative. The most thoughtful conjectures on this vexed issue have been offered by Richard Westfall and Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs.75 Both have argued that Newton's alchemy has to be reconciled with his religious and scientific views, an immensely difficult undertaking. In religion, he maintained a fervent but secret adherence to the Arian heresy, which held Jesus Christ to be of a different substance from God and not co-eternal with the deity. Although divine, Jesus was a created being, made from some exalted form of matter and not part of a unified Trinity. Newton's fascination with the Hermetic concept of Chaos, the original substance from which the universe and everything in it was made, suggests that he may have perceived alchemy as a way to understand both the matter and process of Christ's unique genesis: in other words, to capture the essence of the Redeemer in a beaker.76

  Whether or not this was linked to Newton's great theories of the universe is an even more intractable problem. Newton's reading of the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius may have helped him to conceptualize the idea of gravity. Sendivogius argued that metals were planted as seeds in the centre of the earth and were drawn by cosmic forces towards the surface. Newton, reversing the argument, saw all things as pulled towards the centre. His favourite alchemical experiment involved the “Martian Regulus” of antimony, a combination of iron and stibnite that could be cracked open to reveal a star shape, with lines radiating towards a central point. Did Newton perceive a microcosmic illustration of gravity in the Martian Regulus? Perhaps he did, but if so, he never said so. Instead, in a famous comment made in the third part of the Principia Mathematica, he admitted that he had no explanation of the cause of gravity, “and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.” Paradoxically, he immediately went on to hypothesize about “a certain most subtle spirit which lies in and pervades all gross bodies,” but of this “electric and elastic spirit” he would say no more.77 His use of the term “spirit” must have been enormously exciting to anyone who had an attachment to occult beliefs, but he adamantly refused to give them any further satisfaction. Years later, in response to Leibniz's criticism of his theory of gravity, Newton wrote: “Occult qualities have been exploded not because their causes have been unknown to us but because by giving this name to the specific qualities of things, a stop has been put to all enquiry.”78 In other words, occult speculation led nowhere.

  Newton's sensitivity to the claim that his work had something to do with occult philosophy seems to have grown over time, perhaps in response to trends that he truly abhorred, like Kabbalism. Whether he feared that his discoveries would be labelled as heterodox, enthusiastic, superstitious or simply wrong is far from clear, but he became much more phobic about the taint of the occult than Boyle ever was. All the same, he spent an enormous amount of time and effort on alchemical work between the 1660s and the early eighteenth century. It might be conjectured that Newton's scientific writings tested implicit occult hypotheses about phenomena like gravity or the nature of light through the explicit application of purely mechanical or mathematical explanations, but this would deny the veracity of Newton's own words: “hypotheses non fingo” (“I feign no hypotheses”). In the end, the mind of the greatest scientist of the late seventeenth century remains a partially closed book. Newton was an extreme case of the ambivalence that affected so many experimental scientists of the period: pulled towards the occult by an ineffable attraction, yet prevented by the contrary pull of respectability and reputation from revealing what he wanted to find there.

  Ultimately, the most significant result of the occult experimentalism of the Restoration era was that it proved nothing at all. Alchemy, astrology, ritual magic and even popular magic were observed, described and occasionally tested, but never with the intention of finding out whether they were true or false. Rather, the emphasis of “disinterested” science was on how they worked; that is, determining the mechanical or supernatural character of occult phenomena whose existence was more or less assumed. Only the hardest of materialists denied their reality; only the most distracted of prophets warned that they could not be encompassed by human minds. To inquirers like Boyle, Aubrey and Newton, the secret meanings of such phenomena were a matter for speculation or hypothesis, not for experimental science. This did not mean that secrets were of no interest to the scholars of the Restoration; on the contrary, throughout this troubled period, secrets were a veritable obsession.

  The Nature of Secrets

  The late seventeenth century was an age of fearful secrets. King Charles II guarded his own: about his private religious views, the influence of his mistresses or the 1670 Treaty of Dover that he had made with France. Concerning these things, the public heard only rumours. The sectarians and republicans who conspired against him kept their plots secret, and while they seldom amounted to much, the public was encouraged to feel constant anxiety about the security of the crown. The fear of secret conspiracies extended to Roman Catholics as well: Jesuits were suspected of having lit the fire that incinerated much of London in 1666, and in 1678 the biggest secret of all, the so-called “Popish Plot” to assassinate the king and put his brother James on the throne, was revealed to an astonished public by the informers Titus Oates and his colleague Israel Tonge (an alchemist and acquaintance of John Aubrey).79

  The opening of secrets was fundamental to the success of the Restoration press—which included newspapers, periodicals, broadsheets, song sheets and pamphlets. The press was responsible for creating, exaggerating, misreading and overpublicizing the hidden operations that supposedly put the kingdom in jeopardy. The press gave a new urgency to the notion that keeping secrets was dangerous and that everything hidden should be subjected to public inspection. Memories of the Civil War and Interregnum alarmed contemporary observers about the potential of secrets to corrode and dissolve the body politic. In such an atmosphere, the hidden meaning
s of occult philosophy and science were bound to arouse suspicion. It would be better to bring them to light at once.

  Practitioners of the occult sciences, of course, did not agree. To be sure, the alchemists of the Restoration period were willing to publish their findings and theories to a far greater extent than their predecessors, but they used so much arcane jargon that their secrets were never fully exposed to view. If they were hesitant to tell all, it was because they held to an older understanding of secrets, one that persisted amid the new atmosphere of political fear. It connected “the secret,” not with operations, but with ultimate meanings. The alchemists aimed to uncover, not just the workings, but the significances of nature—precisely what Newton stated he did not wish to discuss. This entailed a personal quest that could not easily be related to others.

  The alchemists were not alone in trying to protect secrets. Many thirsted for private knowledge of the Bible's hidden mysteries, especially those pertaining to the final coming of Christ. On a more mundane level, apprentices were still trained for years in the “art and mystery” of a craft, the practice of which was forbidden to the uninitiated on pain of legal retribution.80 In the late seventeenth century, however, these remaining areas of exclusive knowledge were being transformed by social change. The signs of the impending Apocalypse were daily proclaimed in ephemeral publications, from the visionary effusions of self-styled prophets to the broadsheet and newspaper reports that recorded wonderful sights and occurrences. Meanwhile, those who wanted to explore mysterious techniques like glass-making or the workings of machinery no longer had to struggle through long apprenticeships. They could turn to a burgeoning literature, ranging from simple explanatory tracts to erudite works like John Wilkins's Mathematical Magick (1648). Secrets were no longer the domain of the scholar or learned acolyte; they could be unravelled by anyone who was able to read and had access to publications. Increasingly, “the secret” was a bookseller's gambit whose moment of inception was very close to the moment of revelation.