Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  36. Mainauduc, Plan for an Hygiæn Society, p. 10; Lefanu, ed., Betsy Sheridan's Journal, p. 124.

  37. Fara, “Attractive Therapy,” pp. 142, 165 nn. 80–3, citing Royal College of Surgeons, Ms. 42. e.1; George Winter, Animal Magnetism: History of; its Origin, Progress and Present State: its Principles and Secrets Displayed, As Delivered by the Late Dr. Demainauduc (Bristol and London, 1801), pp. 14–15; Mainauduc, Lectures, pp. [xiii–xiv].

  38. Fara, “Attractive Therapy,” p. 163 n. 58, p. 166 nn. 85, 87, 91. Yeldall's first name is not known.

  39. John Holloway, Animal Magnetism, broadsheet ([London], [1790?]), in B.L., shelfmark C.142.2.17; Martin, Animal Magnetism, p. 17; Winter, Animal Magnetism, pp. 17–18.

  40. Pratt, List of a Few Cures, pp. 7–9.

  41. The Times, nos 1253, 1259, 10, 17 Sept. 1789; Donna Andrews, “London Debates: 1789,” London Debating Societies 1776–1799, London Record Society 30 (1994), nos 1528, 1529, 1531, 1533, accessed at http://www.british-history.ac.uk.

  42. Elizabeth Inchbald, Animal Magnetism (Dublin, 1789), pp. 10, 34. The play was adapted from a French original.

  43. The Times, no. 1059, 29 April 1788; LeFanu, ed., Betsy Sheridan's Journal, p. 124.

  44. Martin, Animal Magnetism, p. 12; John Cue, Goliath Slain with his Own Sword (London, [1794]), p. 88.

  45. Fara, “Attractive Therapy,” p. 164 n. 67; [John Pearson], A Plain and Rational Account of the Nature and Effects of Animal Magnetism (London, 1790), p. 10, for Mainauduc being assisted by “several female pupils.”

  46. “Maria,” The Secret Revealed: or Animal Magnetism Displayed. A Letter from a Young Lady to the Rev. John Martin (2nd ed., London, [1791?]), p. 5. She was probably also the author of an article in The Times of 12 Jan. 1791, for which see note 30 above.

  47. Winter, Animal Magnetism, p. 18.

  48. Darnton, Mesmerism, pp. 68–70; Sjödén, Swedenborg en France, ch. 4.

  49. Martin, Animal Magnetism, p. 16; Wonders of Animal Magnetism Displayed, pp. 10–11.

  50. Bell, General and Particular Principles, p. 30.

  51. Wonders of Animal Magnetism Displayed, p. 14; Bell, General and Particular Principles, p. 45; Pratt, A List of a Few Cures, pp. 3–5.

  52. Ebenezer Sibly, A Key to Physic and the Occult Sciences (5th ed., London, 1814), pp. 276, 281; Allen G. Debus, “Scientific Truth and Occult Tradition: The Medical World of Ebenezer Sibly (1751–1799),” Medical History, 26 (1982), pp. 274–77.

  53. “Herman Boerhaave,” An Essay on the Virtue and Efficient Cause of Magnetical Cures (London, 1793), pp. 24, 25. The original was published in London in 1743, five years after Boerhaave's death, supposedly translated by a relative from a Latin original.

  54. Francis Barrett, The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; Being a Complete System of Occult Philosophy (London, 1801), book II, part 1, chs 1, 5.

  55. Martin, Animal Magnetism, pp. 21–3.

  56. Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago, 1998), ch. 8. See also Kapil Raj, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Basingstoke, Hants, 2007).

  57. Alnwick Castle, Rainsford Ms. 616, vol. 1, p. 77; vol. 2, p. 76. See also B.L., Add. Ms. 23,675, ff. 35–6, for two cures by magnetism that were reported to Rainsford.

  58. “Anthony Pasquin” [John William], Memoirs of the Royal Academicians (London, 1796), pp. 80–1; Pratt, A List of a Few Cures, p. 9; George C. Williamson, Richard Cosway, R.A. (London, 1905), pp. 57–9; Gerald Barnett, Richard and Maria Cosway: A Biography (Tiverton and Cambridge, 1995), pp. 177–8.

  59. “Remarques de M. le Marquis de Thomé, sur une Assertion des Commissaires Nommé par le Roi pour l'Examen du Magnétisme-Animal,” in Benedict Chastanier, Tableau Analytique et Raisonnée de la Doctrine Celeste de l'Église de la Nouvelle Jérusalem (London and The Hague, 1786), pp. 245–52, quotation on p. 250.

  60. William Spence, Essays in Divinity and Physic … with an Exposition of Animal Magnetism and Magic (London, 1792), pp. 58–9. Spence was a surgeon, a member of the Exegetical Society of Stockholm and an orthodox Swedenborgian; his pamphlet was published by Robert Hindmarsh. I have not been able to find a copy of the work by Chastanier from which Spence quotes.

  61. Sjödén, Swedenborg en France, p. 39. The source of this observation, Henry Servanté, was editor of the New Jerusalem Magazine.

  62. The New Magazine of Knowledge Concerning Heaven and Hell (2 vols, London, 1790–1), vol. 2, June 1791, pp. 269–72; July 1791, pp. 293–6.

  63. John Holloway, Restoration Unscriptural: in a Letter to a Friend (London, 1789); Cue, Goliath Slain, passim.

  64. Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1979), ch. 3; Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: A Study of his Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (University Park, Pa., 2004), pp. 268–76.

  65. [Pearson], Plain and Rational Account, p. 44; Winter, Animal Magnetism, pp. 209–10.

  66. B.L., Add. Ms. 23,675, f. 35.

  67. Wonderful Prophecies. Being a Dissertation on the Existence, Nature and Extent of the Prophetic Powers in the Human Mind (London, 1795), pp. 56–8, 63–7, 74–81, 83–4. For prophecy in the late eighteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic, see Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, 2003).

  68. Henry Hardy, A Vision from the Lord God Almighty, the Great and Mighty God of the Whole Earth (London, 1792), pp. 7–8, 10, 13, 24, 26, 32. This was a cheaper version of an earlier work, Mountain Engraved, which I have not been able to find.

  69. The English Review, or, An Abstract of English and Foreign Literature, 21 (1793), p. 154.

  70. B.L., Add. Ms. 23,675, ff. 28–31.

  71. Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore and London, 1975), chs 2–4. For the religious context, see Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990).

  72. Goodwin, Friends of Liberty, ch. 10.

  73. John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Reluctant Transition (London, 1983), chs 13–15.

  74. Garrett, Respectable Folly, ch. 8; J.F.C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850 (London, 1979), ch. 4; Juster, Doomsayers, pp. 179–96; and the biography of Brothers in ODNB.

  75. Richard Brothers, A Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (2nd ed., 2 vols, London, 1794), vol. 1, pp. 2, 39, 48.

  76. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 7–8, 17–20, 25, 70, 106.

  77. For the use of imagination in both the government response to Brothers and the radical appropriation of him, see John Barrell, “Imagining the King's Death: The Arrest of Richard Brothers,” History Workshop Journal, 37 (1994), pp. 1–33.

  78. Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (New Haven, Conn., 2009), ch. 5; Prys Morgan, “From a Death to a View: The Hunt for the Welsh Past in the Romantic Period,” in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 43–100; Geraint H. Evans, ed., A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg (Cardiff, 2009).

  79. Brothers, Revealed Knowledge, vol. 2, pp. 76, 102 (wrongly numbered as 98).

  80. B.L., Add. Ms. 23,670, f. 75.

  81. Brothers, Revealed Knowledge, vol. 2, pp. 87, 91; Richard Brothers, Notes on the Etymology of a Few Antique Words (London, 1796), p. 36.

  82. John Wright, A Revealed Knowledge of Some Things That Will Speedily Be Fulfilled in the World (London, 1794), pp. 20, 25–6, 27, 44, 62. William Bryan's account in A Testimony of the Spirit of Truth, Concerning Richard Brothers (London, 1795), pp. 9–29, is far less detailed.

  83. Wright, Revealed Knowledge, pp. 22–4; Bryan, Testimony, pp. 2–5.

  84. B.L., Add. Ms. 23,670, f. 75v.

  85. Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 161–2, 176–7; Mary Thale, ed., Selections from the Pape
rs of the London Corresponding Society, 1792–99 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 132–3, 167, 252, 256, 351, 469.

  86. Sarah Flaxmer, Satan Revealed or The Dragon Overcome (London, [1797?]), pp. 9, 12, 13–20.

  87. Richard Brothers, A Letter from Mr. Brothers to Miss Cott, the Recorded Daughter of King David, and Future Queen of the Hebrews (Edinburgh, 1798), p. 94.

  88. Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, Testimony of the Authenticity of the Prophecies of Richard Brothers, and of his Mission to Recall the Jews (2nd ed., London, 1795), p. 12. For Halhed's earlier work, see A Code of Gentoo Laws, or Ordinations of the Pundits, [trans. N.B. Halhed] (London, 1776). For Brothers on the Trinity, see “Wrote in Confinement. An Exposition of the Trinity: (18 April 1796),” which was attached to Brothers, Notes on the Etymology.

  89. A Word of Admonition to the Right Hon. William Pitt (London, 1795), pp. 13, 16.

  90. Anti-Brothers pamphlets include The Age of Prophecy! Or, Further Testimony of the Mission of Richard Brothers (London, 1795); A Letter to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, Esq. M.P. from an Old Woman (London, 1795); The Age of Credulity: A Letter to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, Esq. M.P. (London, 1795); George Horne, Occasional Remarks: Addressed to Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, M.P. (Oxford, n.d.); George Horne, Sound Argument Dictated by Common Sense (3rd ed., Oxford, n.d.). Those on the pro-Brothers side include J. Crease, Prophecies Fulfilling: or, The Dawn of the Perfect Day (London, 1795); [W. Sales], Truth or Not Truth: or A Discourse on Prophets (London, 1795); Samuel Whitchurch, Another Witness! Or Further Testimony in Favor of Richard Brothers (London, 1795); Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, The Whole of the Testimonies to the Authenticity of the Prophecies and Mission of Richard Brothers, the Prophet (London, 1794). Except for the last, all these pamphlets were printed by George Riebau and John Wright.

  91. Moses Gomez Pereira, The Jew's Appeal on the Divine Mission of Richard Brothers, and N.B. Halhed, Esq. to Restore Israel, and Rebuild Jerusalem (London, 1795); Moses Gomez Pereira, Circular Letter to the Corresponding Societies, in Great Britain (London, 1796). As none of Pereira's occult references actually relates to Judaism, it is possible that he was a non-Jew writing under a pseudonym.

  92. James K. Hopkins, A Woman to Deliver her People: Joanna Southcott and English Millenarianism in an Era of Revolution (Austin, Texas, 1982), pp. 24–33, 133–7.

  93. Richard Brothers, A Letter to His Majesty and One to Her Majesty … with A Dissertation; on the Fall of Eve (London, 1802), pp. 49–64.

  94. Richard Brothers, A Description of Jerusalem (London, 1801), quotations on pp. 34, 39, 75. George Riebau printed this work, but he was not as yet assisted by the Sandemanian Michael Faraday, who entered his employment in 1804: see James Hamilton, Faraday (London, 2003), p. 6.

  95. Eitan Bar-Yosef, “‘Green and Pleasant Lands’: England and the Holy Land in Plebeian Millenarian Culture, c. 1790–1820,” in Kathleen Wilson, ed., A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660–1840 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 155–75.

  96. The New Magazine of Knowledge Concerning Heaven and Hell, and the Universal World of Nature (2 vols, London, 1790–1), vol. 1, pp. 392–6. The petition was presented by Lord Rawdon, a Whig military officer who was a close friend of the duke of York.

  97. Leopold Engel, Geschichte des Illuminaten-Ordens (Berlin, 1906); René Le Forestier, Les Illuminés de Bavière et la Franc-Maçonnerie Allemande (Paris, 1915; reprint, Milan, 2001); René Le Forestier, La Franc-Maçonnerie Templière et Occultiste aux XVIIIe et XIXe Siècles (Paris and Louvain, 1970), pp. 642–8; J.M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies (New York, 1972), ch. 5. Among the few websites on the Illuminati that contain reliable information is http://www.bavarian-illuminati.info/, where a number of original documents can be found.

  98. Henry Sadler, Thomas Dunckerley; His Life, Labours and Letters (London, 1891), pp. 244–79, esp. pp. 260–1; Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rylands d.8, p. 1.

  99. Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 116–18; Roberts, Mythology of the Secret Societies, pp. 146–88. For the mixed responses to revolution of Freemasons in another southern French city, see Kenneth Loiselle, “Living the Enlightenment in an Age of Revolution: Freemasonry in Bordeaux, 1788–1794,” French History, 24, 1 (2010), pp. 60–81.

  100. This conclusion was first proposed in non-conspiratorial form by the historian Augustin Cochin, whose writings can now be approached through Nancy Derr Polin, ed. and trans., Organizing the French Revolution: Selections from Augustin Cochin (Rockford, Il., 2007). Cochin's explanations were famously revived by François Furet in Interpreting the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1981).

  101. Augustin Barruel, Memoirs, Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (3 vols, London, 1797–8), vol. 2, p. 358; Roberts, Mythology of the Secret Societies, pp. 188–202.

  102. Barruel, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. iv, 330. Barruel's translator, Robert Clifford, may have introduced the term “occult Lodges” into English. It is somewhat misleading: the original Arrières Loges suggests a system disguised from the public but not necessarily occult. Barruel was well informed enough to know that the Illuminati were not occult thinkers, but his translator may not been aware of it. Clifford went on to write his own treatise linking the United Irishmen and the British Corresponding Societies to the Illuminati: [Robert Clifford], Application of Barruel's Memoirs of Jacobinism, to the Secret Societies of Ireland and Great Britain (London, 1798).

  103. John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried On in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati and Reading Societies (London, 1797), p. 99.

  104. Ibid., pp. 269, 358.

  105. John Robison, Postscript to the Second Edition of Mr. Robison's Proofs of a Conspiracy against All the Religions and Governments of Europe (London, 1797), p. 23.

  106. Ibid., p. 27.

  107. B.L., Add. Ms. 23,668, f. 78.

  108. Ibid., f. 82.

  109. W.J. Hughan, Memorials of the Masonic Union of A.D. 1813 (London, Truro and Philadelphia, 1874), pp. 15–34.

  110. William Preston, “The Misrepresentations of Barruel and Robison Exposed,” first published in 1799, reprinted in George Oliver, The Golden Remains of the Early Masonic Writers (5 vols, 1847–50), vol. 3, pp. 274–300.

  111. Francis Dobbs, A Concise View from History and Prophecy, of the Great Predictions in the Sacred Writings, That Have Been Fulfilled; Also of Those That Are Now Fulfilling, and That Remain to Be Accomplished (Dublin, 1800), pp. 256–61; Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 118–19. Dobbs is noticed in ODNB.

  112. John Clowes, Letters to a Member of Parliament on the Character and Writings of Baron Swedenborg, Containing a Full and Compleat Refutation of All of the Abbé Barruel's Calumnies against the Honourable Author (Manchester, 1799), p. 281; see also Theodore Compton, The Life and Correspondence of the Reverend John Clowes, M.A. (London, 1874), p. 62.

  113. Mary Pratt's letters to Henry Brooke, copied out by Brooke's son-in-law F.H. Holcroft, are in DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43. They are discussed in Désirée Hirst, Hidden Riches: Traditional Symbolism from the Renaissance to Blake (London, 1964), pp. 259–61, 276–80, and E.P. Thompson, Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (New York, 1993), pp. 43–4, 138–9.

  114. Church of Latter-Day Saints, Genealogical Archive, source no. 942 B4HAV.47; source no. 0580904 (consulted online at www.familysearch.org); A List of All the Liverymen of London (London, 1776), p. 143; Marlies K. Danziger and Frank Brady, eds, Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789–1795 (New York, 1989), pp. 117–118, 239 (Courtenay), 250 (Seward); Roger Wakefield, Wakefield's Merchant and Tradesman's General Directory for London … for the Year 1790 (London, [1790]), p. 266; The Proceedings on the King's Commission of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol Delivery for the City of London (London, 1790–1).

  115. For middling and genteel households in the eighteenth century, see Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender and the Family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996), ch. 8; Amanda V
ickery, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (New Haven, Conn., 1998).

  116. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, pp. 326, 360. The “domestic dependence” of women in this period is discussed in Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (New Haven, Conn., 2010), ch. 7.

  117. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, p. 344. For nineteenth-century female imprisonment for madness, see Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980 (New York, 1985).

  118. Thompson, Witness against the Beast, pp. 139, 148–9, 154, 170.

  119. The New Magazine, vol. 1, pp. 229–31, 299–300. An article on the subject of madmen and the moon later appeared in the Astrologer's Magazine, vol. 1, Jan. 1794, p. 240.

  120. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 51–3, 139–42 (“Behmen” quotation on p. 140), 191–3, 245–7, 352–3.

  121. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 356–8.

  122. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 387–90, quotation on p. 388.

  123. Thompson, Witness against the Beast, chs 8–9.

  124. Minutes of a General Conference of the Members of the New Church (London, 1792), p. 7; G.E. Bentley, Jr., The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven, Conn., 2001), pp. 126–9.

  125. Thompson, Witness against the Beast, pp. 149–50; William Blake, “To Tirzah,” Songs of Innocence and of Experience, in Erdman, ed., Complete Poetry and Prose, p. 30.

  126. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, pp. 337–8.

  127. W.A. Clarke, A Bed of Sweet Flowers; or, Jewels for Hephzi-bah (London, 1778), p. xi.

  128. Pratt, A List of a Few Cures, p. 2.

  129. Ibid., pp. 5–6.

  130. Ibid., pp. 2, 8.

  131. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, p. 320. For Clarke, see Hirst, Hidden Riches, pp. 246–63, 271–6.

  132. DWL, Ms. Walton I.1.43, pp. 328–9, 341.

  133. Ibid., pp. 334–5, 358, 359–60, 361.

  134. Ibid., pp. 341, 360.

  135. Ibid., pp. 349, 364.

  136. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987).