To see pagan goddesses as forms of the Hebrew God was doctrinally questionable, and should have been accompanied by a denunciation of “heathen” errors. Stukeley, however, did not spill much ink chastising the pagans, which may indicate an attraction to the heterodox notion, shared by the Neoplatonist Pico, that all religions remained essentially one, in spite of their decline from patriarchal purity. If this was what Stukeley really thought, he never spelled it out. The stated intention of his astrological theory was to deliver a mortal blow to the atheism and scepticism that he saw all around him. His anxiety over these issues became especially acute after he moved back to London in 1747.
From then until his death in 1765, Stukeley lived in Bloomsbury as minister of the church of St George the Martyr, a living bestowed upon him by the duke of Montagu. In the last phase of his life, his attachment to astrology waxed stronger, but he began to realize that he would not be successful in promoting it. He frequented the Royal Society, where he was periodically annoyed by the refusal to allow papers on astrology to be read. He supported a proposal, brought by the Jewish naturalist Emanuel Mendes da Costa, that “the Society had not acted judiciously, in rejecting all papers relating to longitude, squaring the circle, perpetual motion, philosophers stone & the like. tho’ those matters probably will never be discover'd: yet ‘tis notorious, such pursuits have brought forth many useful discoverys in medicine, mechanics, mathematics.” Stukeley was furious when the proposal was not adopted, complaining that governance of the Society had fallen into the hands of “a coffee-house junto, & those generally very young members, who never gave any entertainment to us.” He feared that the Society was on the wane, along with “learning in general,” due to the present spirit of licentiousness and irreligion. Later that year, he presented a book on the history of astronomy to the Society. This led him to write a long critique of Newton's Chronology, which he faulted for dating the voyage of the Argo three hundred years too late. He also tried to persuade the Fellows to print a paper he had read to the Royal Society on an ancient eclipse predicted by Thales of Miletus, but “the infidel part of the Council” rejected it.60
In 1762, at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was president, Stukeley refuted an author who “fancys” that the zodiac was of Egyptian origin, by “vindicating it to the Patriarchal times.”61 This episode may have prompted him to argue, in an essay on cosmogony published in 1763, that the zodiacal signs were “a part of the most antient manner of writing, not unlikely to be that of ADAM.”62 If this was the case, then Adam, not Hermes Trismegistus, was the inventor of hieroglyphics, and the sacred language of the first man could be seen in the zodiacal symbols found in any common almanac. Stukeley's failure to convince others that he was right can be taken as a final rejection of his astrological theories.
By then, of course, Stukeley had become famous for his depictions of the ancient British guardians of patriarchal religion: the Druids, priests of Celtic Britain in pre-Roman times. He had announced his findings about them in two important published studies of the architecture of Stonehenge (1740) and Avebury (1743).63 Ascribing these structures to the Druids had both a religious and a patriotic intention. Stukeley portrayed the Druids, not as pagans who practised human sacrifice, but as pillars of patriarchal religion. Furthermore, as he informed the princess of Wales in 1754, “the ch[urch] of England is exactly parallel to it [patriarchal religion], & in every particular,” which was why he perceived the Druids as forebears of the modern Anglican clergy.64 His close personal identification with them even led him to adopt a fictitious ancient British name, “Chyndonax,” and to organize his friends into a Druidic society, for which he composed elaborate rites. Stukeley took a fierce national pride in the greatness of the Druids. He told the princess of Wales, in answer to her question as to why he never travelled abroad, “that I lov'd my own country, & that there was curiosity & antiquity enough at home to entertain any genius.”65 The country in which he sought out curiosity and antiquity was England; apparently, he never visited Scotland or Ireland. For him, patriarchal religion survived in no Church other than the Anglican.
Stukeley did not “discover” the Druids. Since the Glorious Revolution, they had frequently been depicted by historians and antiquarians as a powerful clerical caste, similar to the clergymen of the Church of England but with even greater political authority. Writers on Druidism were indebted to the Abbé Pezron's glorification of the Celts as a mighty people whose kings, warriors and sages provided the models for ancient Greek gods and heroes.66 Drawing on this theory, the Welsh cleric Henry Rowlands, in a 1723 book on the antiquities of Anglesey, exalted the Druids as possessors of “the Patriarchal Cabala,” in which “the ante Diluvian Knowledge in all its Branches was carefully preserv'd.” Their “Cabalistick Traditions” included the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, doctrines associated with the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. Rowlands had no doubt that Pythagoras had learned these principles from the Druids.67 Even more extraordinary was their natural philosophy, which Rowlands held to be “Corpuscularian … more agreeable with the Sydonian [i.e. Phoenician] Philosophy, which was plainly Atomical.” Rowlands was referring here to the philosophy of Thales and Pythagoras, both of whom were said to have been of Phoenician ancestry, but the term “Corpuscularian” was derived from Robert Boyle's writings.68 Evidently, the Druids were not just priestly guardians of the prisca theologia; they were far ahead of their time in scientific thought as well.
Rowlands wanted to boost Welsh national pride through lauding the wisdom and “civility” of the Druids, but in theological terms their “Cabalistick Traditions” harked back to the heterodoxy of Kabbala Denudata. Like Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, the Druids accepted a doctrine of transmigration that pointed unmistakably towards universal salvation. The thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church flatly rejected such a possibility. High Churchman he may have been, but Rowlands did not seem willing to admit that the patriarchal religion might be in error on this point. Transmigration led him to the brink of heterodoxy, even if he was careful not to be seen tumbling into the abyss.
The theologically wayward Rowlands has usually been seen as an arch-traditionalist compared to John Toland, the famous deist and anticlerical writer whose Account of the Druids appeared posthumously in 1726. Yet Toland added surprisingly little to the account of Druidism given by his Welsh predecessor. To be sure, he was far less flattering in his depiction of the Druids, for whom he had no more respect than he had for the clergy of his own day. Relying on evidence from his native Ireland, Toland excoriated the Druids as a “Heathen Priesthood” dedicated “to beget Ignorance and an Implicite disposition in the People.”69 Yet he did admire one Druid: Abaris, a native of the Hebrides according to Toland, who reputedly studied sciences alongside Pythagoras. As to who taught whom the doctrine of transmigration, Toland was uncertain, and it did not seem to matter to him.70
Strikingly, William Stukeley's book-length studies of the Druidic “temples” of Stonehenge and Avebury (or Abury, as Stukeley called it) do not mention the transmigration of souls at all. Stonehenge insists that “the Druids were of Abraham's religion intirely, at least in the earliest times, and worshipp'd the supreme Being in the same manner as he did.” Abury deals only briefly with Abaris, who is introduced as a student of Pythagoras, not as his teacher. As to who was responsible for thinking up transmigration, Stukeley studiously avoids the issue.71 No hints of heterodoxy mar his account; on the contrary, he was so determined to prove that the patriarchal religion of the Druids was acceptable to a conventional Anglican of the eighteenth century that he even turned them into Trinitarians. The circle, snake and wings that he observed in the plan of the temple at Avebury supposedly represented the Father, Son and Holy Spirit or anima mundi.72 Just as he had buried Newton's Arianism, so Stukeley also buried the paganism of the Druids.
On the surface, Stukeley's theories about Stonehenge and Avebury may be orthodox, but they reveal a fantastical chain of alc
hemical as well as astrological allusions. Athanasius Kircher provided him with a wellspring of ideas and, for once, Stukeley acknowledged drawing from it. The all-important winged snake that he discerned at Avebury was by his own account derived from an Egyptian hieroglyph discussed by Kircher: a snake hanging from a circle with wings. The Jesuit writer beheld in this strange configuration a “symbol of the arcane mysteries,” by which he meant the mysteries of the essence of God, not simply the Holy Trinity. “By the circle,” Kircher wrote, “is signified the pure form of divinity, the eternal and immense God, abstracted from all base matter; by the serpent, the second form of divinity … or the Word of God … by the wings fixed on the globe, the third form of divinity, the Spirit pervading everything, is aptly expressed.” In his chapter on Egyptian astrology, Kircher placed this Trinitarian design, which he calls the Tetragrammaton or sacred name of God, at the centre of a graphic depiction of the zodiac.73 Stukeley could scarcely have missed it.
In the flying snake, we might discern a winged dragon. Kircher was intrigued by dragons, which he discussed in Mundus Subterraneus (first published 1664–5), another classic of wonder-inducing speculation. He believed that such creatures existed in the Swiss Alps and were related to the dragons of legend.74 He would have been well aware of their alchemical significance. Pictures of winged dragons, variously representing the spiritualization of matter, a volatile spirit, sublimated mercury or mercuric acid, appear frequently in alchemical manuscripts, starting with the Ripley Scrolls. By the seventeenth century, they were perhaps the most familiar of all emblems in alchemy. Kircher's winged dragons closely resemble those found in alchemical texts, and their underground existence suggests that he linked them with metals. Moreover, he regarded alchemy as an Egyptian science, invented by Hermes Trismegistus. In Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Kircher equated the alchemical signs for metals with what he supposed to be the hieroglyphs of Egyptian gods and goddesses, as well as with those of the planets. He thought the particular hieroglyph of alchemy consisted of the winged circle with serpent motif hovering above a scarab. The mythic voyage of the scarab across the heavens traced not only an astrological journey but an alchemical process.75
Stukeley, of course, had seen a winged dragon in the sky, in the form of Draco, the never-setting constellation of the northern sky.76 Draco had various roles in mythology: as the protector of the golden apples of the Hesperides sought by Hercules and as the guardian of the Golden Fleece. Stukeley was particularly taken with the first of these myths, just as Newton had been with the second. He decided that the dragon's nemesis, Hercules, was none other than the founder of Stonehenge and the first reader of the zodiac. In a 1752 letter, Stukeley argued that Midian, son of the patriarch Abraham, “formed the zodiac for use of Hercules of Tyre in navigation.” Hercules went on to build the first patriarchal temple, Beth-el, to the specifications of a celestial vision. Presumably steering by the northern stars, the hero then travelled to Britain, where Stukeley could not “see any absurdity” in the idea that he set up the sacrificial altar at Stonehenge.77 Thus, the treasure of the astrological-alchemical dragon, the secret of the zodiac, turned out to be the famous British temple itself. Draco the winged dragon guided Hercules to Stonehenge, to be re-created in stone through the serpent-like temple at Avebury.
In discussing the serpentine plan of Avebury, Stukeley referred to the brazen serpent raised by Moses to cure the Israelites of snakebites (the Nehushtan), which was accepted by theologians as a type of Christ. The brazen serpent, as illustrated for example in the famous seventeenth-century emblem book of George Wither, was wrapped around an upright cross, forming a shape similar to the Avebury serpent. Wither, however, also displays the emblem of the Orobouros or snake devouring itself, a symbol of infinitude that may have been in Stukeley's mind.78 Both emblems were common in alchemy. A flying serpent or dragon bent into an Orobouros was found in many German alchemical works, from the Book of Lambspringke (1577) to Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens (1618).79 Serpents rudely swallowing a virgin comprise the first “Hieroglyphic Figure” in a famous treatise falsely attributed to the medieval French alchemist Nicholas Flamel. The strange scene was usually shown in the form of an Orobouros gobbling up a young girl. The second of “Flamel's” hieroglyphs was the Nehushtan, “a Crosse where a Serpent was crucified.”80 Whether Stukeley ever read “Flamel” is unknown, but Newton knew the work well and made transcripts from it.81
Stukeley's use of astrological and alchemical allusions helps us to understand his indulgent interpretation of Druidic magic. The text of Stonehenge did not mention magic at all, but in Abury Stukeley admitted that the Druids were magicians. He defined magic as “nothing else but the science that teaches us to perform wonderful and surprizing things, in the later acceptance of the world.” In other words, the Druids used magia naturalis, although supernatural magic is not ruled out here. Stukeley further asserted that the term magus was equivalent to priest, and derived from maaghim meditabundi, or “people of a contemplative, retir'd life.”82 Druidic magic, in short, was more akin to the quiet pursuits of rural vicars than to the spells and charms of village wise women. Stukeley would later write that the Druids were called magi “at first understood in its best sense: but it degenerated into the ill sense of magician.”83 Even “the best sense” of magus meant the possession of a power that verged on the supernatural; this power might have survived into the present, in vulgarized form. On hearing of a Druidic “temple” in Shropshire, where “the mythologic report [local legend] … is of a Cow wh[ich] to good women gave as much milk as they desired: but to ill women, none,” Stukeley noted that this was “a remain of the notion of magic.” At another “temple” in Berkshire, an invisible blacksmith would shoe your horse for a penny. “I have often taken notice of these magic notions affixed to Druid temples,” observed Stukeley, without indicating whether or not he believed in them.84
Stukeley may have taken such “superstitious” beliefs seriously because he linked them with the hidden forces of nature, especially the anima mundi or Soul of the World. In his early writings, he ascribed supernatural effects in nature to what he called “animal spirits,” which existed both in the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the human body. He compared these animal spirits to fire, and suggested that people “have been observed as it were encompass'd with a lambent Flame, when the Spirits have broke out in fiery Rays, upon the outward Surface of the body.”85 In passages like these, Stukeley employs a language that would have made sense to seventeenth-century alchemists. Occasionally, he may have borrowed directly from them—for example, in writing that “the earth has really veins & arteries, as well as an animal body,” which sounds like a passage from Sendivogius.86
In his later works, however, Stukeley abandoned “animal spirits” in favour of a more fashionable source of hidden power: namely, electricity. He was profoundly affected by the earthquake of February 1750, which many felt to be a divine warning to the British people. Searching for an explanation of the event that would satisfy both his religious and scientific beliefs, and convinced that one need not “lose sight of the theological purpose of these amazing alarms whilst we Endeavour to find out the Philosophy of them,” he decided that earthquakes were due to “electrical shock.” Soon after the London tremors, Stukeley presented a paper to the Royal Society on electricity and earthquakes, which drew on the interest generated by the experiments of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. Stukeley quickly found all manner of further applications of “electrical motion,” first as a cause of sickness, then as “the principle of all generation in animals.” By 1755, he was convinced that “sexual communion … is really an electrical operation in all respects,” and that electricity was “that great soul of the material world.”87 In other words, the anima mundi was fulfilled in electrical intercourse.
Stukeley's reading of sex was self-justifying. At the time he made this “discovery,” he was romantically involved with a “Druidess” whom he called “Miriam.” In pursuing the
adulterous affair, he satisfied himself that he had a right to transgress moral boundaries, which were designed for “the vulgar, who have not a proper command on themselves,” not for “a philosopher” like himself. The common people, he continued, had to be deceived by the wise man, who “hides his actions from the world.” What would be the reaction of the vulgar if they were told “there is no life hereafter[?] I need not tell the consequences of it. or were we to tell them the punish[men]t of hell is not eternal[?]”88 It is difficult to read this extraordinary private confession without wondering whether Stukeley's orthodoxy was a mere deception.
He was certainly unconcerned with spirituality. Stukeley's sense of the sacred was surprisingly mundane: it was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be unlocked, not a source of eternal awe. This is apparent in his definition of a symbol. As so much of Stukeley's work was devoted to the esoteric significance of symbols, one might expect that he saw in them the marks of divine authority. On the contrary: for him, they were simply the products of social and cultural necessity. “A symbol,” he wrote, “is an arbitrary, sensible sign of an intellectual idea. And I believe that the art of writing at first was no other, than that of making symbols, pictures, or marks of things they wanted to express.”89 So much for the sacred writing of Adam. Far from being dictated by God, it was no less arbitrary or intelligible than any other human system of expression. Of course, it required a “philosopher” to interpret the ideas behind symbols. Stukeley's brash self-assurance in reading the universe, which contrasts so markedly with the painful reticence of Newton, was characteristic of eighteenth-century natural philosophy, in which the inquiring mind of the individual stood supreme. The supernatural power of the anima mundi flowed through the observer, not through the symbol.
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