Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  The four fat volumes of that work fell on newly fertile soil. By the 1760s and 1770s, Methodism had begun to spread a religion of the heart to wide audiences. Sentimental poetry and Gothic novels reintroduced readers to the strange and wonderful. Terror became a sentiment to be relished rather than avoided. Occult forms of Freemasonry flourished not only in France and Germany, but within English lodges as well. The groundwork for a revival of the occult was being laid. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this revival depended mainly on the middling ranks of society rather than the elite, although it attracted some well-connected figures like General Rainsford and was even tolerated by the celebrated Joseph Banks. For the most part, however, the occult revival was a phenomenon of urban middling culture. The booksellers of London noticed its commercial potential and did everything they could to exploit it, by reselling old works and publishing new ones. Conjuring shows and magic acts captivated a broad public. The occult revival produced a burst of publications in astrology, notably those of Ebenezer Sibly, as well as a renewal of alchemical experiments. A theological underpinning to these developments was provided by the writings of Swedenborg, who disdained magic but whose visionary theology proved particularly appealing to those who fervently read Boehme or who practised alchemy. By the early 1790s, it looked as if occult thinking might become a respected feature of middling culture in England—although not in Scotland, where it was effectively resisted by the Moderate Presbyterian establishment and never took root.

  The occult revival was eventually undermined by political developments that branded it as radical, treasonable and (again) heterodox. The short-lived fad of magnetic healing, which mixed occult methods with quasi-scientific theory, began to subside when war with France broke out in 1793. The prophet Richard Brothers brought further suspicion on occult movements through his connection with the Freemasons of Avignon. By 1798, the occult lodges had been denounced as the fomenters of the French Revolution, an accusation that spread to include the whole Masonic fraternity. In these dire circumstances, William Blake began to write his prophetic poems, as a protest against the rule of “abstract reason” and a vindication of his own poetic conception of the occult. The long-standing, albeit awkward, relationship between occult thinking, on the one hand, and science and the Enlightenment, on the other, was rejected outright by Blake. In this respect, he stands at the beginning of an era of Romantic detachment from enlightened thought that would continue well into the nineteenth century.

  War with France delayed the next stage of development for occult thinking. After 1815, a younger generation of Romantic writers would emphasize novel and imaginative occult themes, often centred on acts of creation, as epitomized in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The occult movements of the nineteenth century, especially Spiritualism and Theosophy, would build on this Romantic heritage. A conception of the occult as inimical to the rationalist project of Enlightenment would endure into the twentieth century. At the same time, the occult would experience ups and downs in commercial popularity, as older forms of publicity like astrological almanacs fell out of favour, to be replaced by new ones like newspaper horoscopes. The yearning among practitioners of the occult to achieve respectability would never fully be realized, although it would be given a different twist after the advent of personal computers and the Internet. Today, thanks to the profusion of online sources and the changing relationship of public and private spaces which has created “virtual communities” that only exist through electronic communication, the occult is more widespread than ever, and probably more accepted as a feature of contemporary culture than it has been since the mid-seventeenth century. Whether that means more people believe in it today than did 350 years ago, however, remains dubious. Many are willing to dabble in various aspects of occult thinking without becoming intellectually attached to it as a system of belief.

  Perhaps the single most important point to be derived from this discussion is that the occult was not killed off by science or the Enlightenment. On the contrary, it coexisted with them, borrowed from them and was rarely the object of attacks from scientific or enlightened writers. In turn, this suggests something about what can be called modernity—an ideologically charged concept, to be sure, but one that forces itself into any discussion of change over the past four centuries. Modernity is a prescriptive concept, not a descriptive one: it tells us what we should be, not necessarily what we are, or even what we have been in the past. To be modern has come to mean embracing the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, while casting aside magic and “superstition.” Yet this is not what many people did in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England or Scotland—on the contrary, they were able to retain both points of view, scientific and occult, at least in some measure. In Scotland, to be sure, the Enlightenment did eventually shake off the occult, but that did not happen in England, or in Germany or France, for that matter. The Scottish case was exceptional, and can be ascribed to a century of determined Presbyterian denunciation of anything occult as diabolical.

  Throughout the emerging industrial countries today—China, India, Indonesia, Brazil—can be found occult practices and beliefs that owe their origins to very different traditions from those of western Europe. Modernity—or globalization, if one wishes to use an even more aggressively reductionist term—seems to demand that they disappear so the nation can progress into a prosperous future. In most of western Europe, however, the occult did not vanish. It remained an intellectual force of some importance until the early eighteenth century, and has since then experienced periodic revivals. It particularly appealed to those in the middling ranks of society, who have often been the engines of social and economic change. It did not retard or undermine intellectual development, and may have enhanced it, through liberating the imagination. While its survival is not assured, the occult cannot be interpreted as a sign of tragic backwardness. Of course, that should not be taken as an argument to put our trust in it, because it has always suffered from deep weaknesses as an explanatory system, as well as from an inability to sustain critical inquiry. On the other hand, we should be encouraged to lay to rest a conception of the occult as the eternal bogeyman of modernity, bent on the undoing of reason and progress. That bogeyman never really existed, except in the overheated imaginations of those who feared him. As with other devils in history, when we look beyond what frightens us, we may recognize a diminished evil. We may even notice a trace of the gleaming features of a former angel of light.

  MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

  1. Archives

  Great Britain

  British Library (B.L.), London.

  Additional Mss. 5767–93: D.A. Freher papers.

  Additional Ms. 15,911: letters to Simon Ockley.

  Additional Mss. 23,667–70, 23,675–6: Charles Rainsford papers.

  Additional Ms. 27,986: John Gadbury notebook.

  Additional Ms. 39,781: John Flaxman letters.

  Egerton Ms. 2378: John Partridge casebook.

  Harley Mss. 6481–4, 6486–7: “Dr Rudd” papers.

  Lansdowne Ms. 841: letters of James Keith.

  Sloane Ms. 696: catalogues of books on magic.

  Sloane Mss. 630, 1321, 2577A: alchemical collections.

  Sloane Mss. 3632, 3646, 3697: Robert Kellum alchemical papers.

  Bodleian Library (Bodl. Lib.), Oxford.

  Mss. Ashmole 180, 183, 240, 421, 423, 426–8, 430: astrological papers of William Lilly and John Booker.

  Mss. Ashmole 2, 243, 339, 1446: astrological and alchemical papers of Elias Ashmole.

  Ms. Aubrey 24: “Zecorbeni” by John Aubrey.

  Ms. Ballard 66: conjuring manual.

  Mss. Rawlinson C.136, D.1067: Masonic records.

  Ms. Rawlinson A.404–5: papers of John Pordage.

  Mss. Rawlinson D.832–3, 1152–7, 1341: papers and diaries of Richard Roach.

  Mss. Rawlinson Poet 11, 133–4b: Robert Samber papers.

  Mss. Rylands d.2–4, 8–10: Masonic records.

&nbs
p; Mss. English. Misc. c.533, d.455–6, d.719/1–22, e.127–40, e.196, 650: diaries and papers of William Stukeley.

  Glasgow University Library (GUL), Glasgow.

  Ferguson Collection.

  Mss. 5, 9, 28, 43, 85, 155–6, 204, 210, 253, 260, 274, 281–2: alchemical manuscripts.

  Mss. 22, 25, 46, 93, 311, 314, 322: Sigismund Bacstrom papers.

  Mss. 36, 40, 51, 62: notes on chemistry courses.

  Ms. 86: Samuel Hieron astrological casebook.

  Ms. 125: D.A. Freher's three tables.

  Ms. 128: astrological notebook.

  Mss. 99, 305, 310: Ebenezer Sibly transcripts.

  Wellcome Institute (Wellcome), London.

  Mss. 957: Tables of Rotalo.

  Mss. 1027, 1030–1, 3657: Sigismund Bacstrom papers.

  Mss. 1854: treatise on astrology, 1665.

  Mss. 2946: astrological notebook 1794–1814.

  Mss. 4021: Norris Purslow astrological diary, 1673–1737.

  Mss. 4032–9: alchemical notes by Charles Rainsford.

  Mss. 4594: alchemical works transcribed by Ebenezer Sibly.

  Mss. 4729: astrology tracts belonging to William Stukeley.

  Dr Williams's Library (DWL), London.

  The Walton Theosophic Library.

  Mss. I.1.4, 11, 23–4, 31–4, 39, 49, 54, 68, 70, 79: D.A. Freher papers.

  Ms. I.1.43: Henry Brooke letter book.

  Swedenborg House, London.

  Manuscripts A/26–9: papers of Benedict Chastanier.

  Manuscript A/187: commonplace book of J.W. Salmon.

  Library of Freemasonry, Grand Lodge of England (GLE), London.

  Ms. 1130 STU, vols 1–3: tracts by William Stukeley.

  Kew Botanical Gardens (KBG), Kew, London.

  Banks Papers 1–2: letters to Sigismund Bacstrom.

  East Sussex Record Office (ESRO), Lewes, East Sussex.

  Frewen Mss. 5421–5634: letters of the Reverend John Allin to Phillip Firth and Samuel Jeake the younger of Rye.

  Rye Museum, Rye, East Sussex.

  Jeake Ms. 4/1: library catalogue of Samuel Jeake the elder.

  Selmes Mss. 32, 34: astrological papers of Samuel Jeake the younger.

  Chetham's Library, Manchester.

  Mss. A.2.82, A.7.64, A.4.33: records of French Prophets.

  Ms. A.3.51–2: autobiography of John Clowes.

  Ms. A.4.98: Tractatus de Nigromatia.

  Ms. A.6.61–4: copies of Paracelsus.

  Alnwick Castle Archives, Alnwick, Northumberland.

  Mss. 573A–B, 581, 588, 595, 599, 603, 626, 629, 624: Charles Rainsford papers.

  United States

  Beinecke Rare Book Library (Beinecke Lib.), Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

  Mellon Alchemical Manuscripts.

  Mss. 62–3, 69, 89, 93, 124, 128, 140: alchemical works.

  Mss. 70, 78, 80: Isaac Newton papers.

  Mss. 134, 141: Sigismund Bacstrom notebooks.

  Getty Research Institute (GRI), Los Angeles, Cal.

  Manly Palmer Hall Collection (MHC).

  Box 18, vols 1–19: Bacstrom Alechemical Collections.

  Box 43: collection of drawings by J.D. Leuchter.

  William Andrews Clark Memorial Library (Clark Library), Los Angeles, Cal.

  Ms. J43M3/A859: Samuel Jeake, junior, “Astrological Experiments Exemplified.”

  2. Microfilm, Digital and Online Resources

  Records of the Stationers’ Company (RSC), 1554–1920, Ann Arbor, Mich., ProQuest, 1990.

  Stationers’ Company Archives.

  State Library of New South Wales (SL, NSW), Australia, http://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/banks/.

  Papers of Sir Joseph Banks.

  Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, http://www.rcpe.ac.uk/library/read/collection/ripley/ripley.php.

  Ms. BE.D.: The Ripley Scroll, ed. R.I. McCallum.

  Royal Society Archives, London, http://ttp.royalsociety.org.

  Ms. LXIX.a.2, William Stukeley, “Memoirs of Sr. Isaac Newton's Life 1752.”

  EC/1766/ 20; EC/1781/08; EC/1789/02: election certificates of Peter Woulfe, James Price and Robert Morse.

  The Hartlib Papers Project (Hartlib Papers), Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms, 1996.

  CD-ROM collection of Samuel Hartlib's Papers.

  The Manuscripts and Papers of Sir Isaac Newton (M&P), Cambridge, Chadwyck-Healey, 1991.

  Microfilm collection of Newton's papers.

  The Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk.

  Papers of Sir Isaac Newton.

  NOTES

  Introduction: What Was the Occult?

  1. This has been recognized in the works of Ronald Hutton, the pre-eminent historian of British pagan beliefs and their modern, occult versions. See his The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (Oxford, 1991); Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, 1996); The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford, 2001); The Druids (Ronceverte, 2007); Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (New Haven, Conn., 2009).

  2. Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R.F.C. Hull (2nd ed., Princeton, 1968), and Alchemical Studies, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton, 1967), in Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vols 12 and 13.

  3. The differences between ancient and modern concepts of the occult are discussed in Erik Hornung, The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, N.Y., 2001).

  4. Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 1–14.

  5. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (2 vols, London, 1755: 1-volume reprint, London, [1965]).

  6. A full-text search for the word “occult” at Early English Books Online, which contains 100,000 works printed in the seventeenth century, yielded 1,898 matches in 584 documents. A similar search at Eighteenth-Century Online, which includes about 150,000 works printed in the eighteenth century, resulted in 5,997 results (many of them different editions of the same work). Less than half of the uses of “occult” in the seventeenth century referred to occult philosophy or science. The percentage was lower among a sampling of works that used the word “occult” in the eighteenth century.

  7. Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches of the History of Man (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1774), vol. 1, p. 355.

  8. Walter Charleton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana: or, A Fabrick of Science Natural, upon the Hypothesis of Atoms (London, 1654), book 3, ch. 15, p. 343. See also Keith Hutchison, “What Happened to Occult Qualities in the Scientific Revolution?” Isis, 73, 2 (1982), pp. 233–53.

  9. John Baptist Porta [Giambattista della Porta], Natural Magick (London, 1658), book 1, ch. 2, pp. 1–2.

  10. Thomas Browne, Miracles, Works above and Contrary to Nature (London, 1683), p. 42 (sic: should be 61). The author is not the celebrated Sir Thomas Browne.

  11. See Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), chs 11, 14.

  12. John Henry, “The Fragmentation of Renaissance Occultism and the Decline of Magic,” History of Science, 46 (2008), pp. 1–48.

  13. This division between practice and theory has not been imitated by historians who work on other parts of Europe: for example, Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, 1994); Anthony Grafton, Cardano's Cosmos: The Worlds and Work of a Renaissance Astrologer (Cambridge, Mass., 2001); Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago, 2007).

  14. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971).

  15. This was forcefully expressed in the debate between Thomas and Hildred Geertz: “An Anthropology of Religion and Magic: Two Views,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975), pp. 71–109.

  16. Learned magic is directly discussed on pp. 222–31, 273, 437–8 and 643–4 of Religion and th
e Decline of Magic, a total of twelve out of 688 pages.

  17. Annabel Gregory, “Witchcraft, Politics and ‘Good Neighbourhood’ in Early 17th-Century Rye,” Past and Present, 133 (1991), pp. 31–66; James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in England, 1550–1750 (Philadelphia, 1995); Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: Witch-Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1995); Jonathan Barry, M. Hester and G. Roberts, eds, Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Culture and Belief (Cambridge, 1996).

  18. Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, c. 1650–c. 1750 (Oxford, 1997); Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester, 1999). Davies's other publications include Popular Magic: Cunning-Folk in English History (Hambledon, 2007) and Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford, 2009). With Willem de Blécourt, Davies has edited Witchcraft Continued (Manchester, 2004). For witch beliefs and magic outside Britain, see Steven Wilson, The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe (Hambledon and London, 2000); Owen Davies and Willem de Blecourt, eds, Beyond the Witch Trials: Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment Europe (Manchester and New York, 2004); Marijke Gijswit-Hofstra, Brian P. Levack and Roy Porter, eds, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1999).

  19. Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500–1800 (London, 1979); Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Princeton, 1989); Louise Hill Curth, English Almanacs: Astrology and Popular Medicine, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2008).

  20. Alan Macfarlane, “Civility and the Decline of Magic,” in Peter Burke, Brian Harrison and Paul Slack, eds, Civil Histories: Essays in Honour of Sir Keith Thomas (Oxford, 2000), pp. 145–60.

  21. The classic work on the subject is Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland (Baltimore, 1981). More recent assessments are found in P.G. Maxwell-Stuart, Satan's Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (East Linton, 2001); Julian Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2001), which contains an article by James Sharpe, “Witch-Hunting and Witch Historiography: Some Anglo-Scottish Comparisons,” on pp. 182–97; Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller, eds, Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland (Basingstoke, 2008).