Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  In most respects, Heydon was a traditionalist who sought to defend occult practices and concepts that were commonly held, especially by astrologers. For example, he was determined to vindicate the use of magical figures, sigils and telesmes. He argued—without offering any evidence—that they originated in the figures of cherubim and seraphim that were employed by the ancient magi of Persia.78 The Rosicucrians, naturally enough, employed “Telesmaticall Images” for all their magical purposes: “by them the dead are raised to life, by them they alter [,] change and amend bodies, cure the deseased prolong Life … by these Arts they know all things and resolve all manner of questions present or to come.”79 As for alchemy, Heydon provided much heat and little light. Although he constantly hinted that the Rosicrucians had knowledge of the Philosopher's Stone, because they had access to universal medicines, he gave no indication of how they had arrived at it, which probably reflected his own ignorance of alchemical practice. He even condemned “the ungodly and accursed Gold-making, which has gotten so much the upper hand.”80 In fact, Heydon could barely raise the subject of alchemy without falling back on sigils or figures.

  Like Lilly and other astrologers, Heydon believed that the planets were guided by angels, but he was willing to admit the point openly, and he suggested that angelic influences could be controlled by human beings. Thus, astrology and ritual magic might be combined. Heydon gave these angelic influences the remarkable name of “Genii,” which he must have derived from occult literature, possibly Agrippa. To know the name of the Genius that presided over one's own destiny was to gain great power. This required drawing up a nativity and projecting a larger figure from it, based on the shape of a pentacle. As Heydon explained, somewhat obscurely, “to find the name of my Genius, I look in the places of the fire Hylegiaus, and making projection always from the beginning of Aries, & the Letters being found out, and being joined together according to the degree ascending, make the name of my genius Malhitiriel, who had upon Earth familiarity with Elias.”81 The human body also had Genii—not just one, but three of them, whose names could be discovered through a combination of astrology, geomancy and “Cabala” that was unique to Heydon.

  Although he shared and voiced many of their own preoccupations, other astrologers were as hostile to the “Astromagus” as he was to them. Elias Ashmole was infuriated when Heydon published a poorly edited version of an alchemical poem, The Way to Bliss, that Ashmole himself was preparing for print.82 In turn, Heydon attacked Ashmole's friend William Lilly as “a Labouror or Ditchers Son, by education a Taylor” and “a Lying Sycophanticall Knave.”83 Churlishly, he lumped his wife's late husband, Nicholas Culpeper, in with Thomas Vaughan and “other Pretenders” who were “too young and childish” to penetrate Rosicrucian mysteries.84 Heydon turned against John Gadbury in 1664, writing of him to William Lilly, whose good opinion he sought to gain, as “[t]he scorpean that studies Mischiefe.”85 He also cited a grandiose list of writers and thinkers who “will testifie for me,” including Moses, Enoch, Hermes Trismegistus, Francis Bacon, Robert Fludd (whose theory of the relationship of planets to music he pilfered), Marsilius Ficino, Henry More, René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. It would be hard to imagine a writer who was further removed intellectually from the last three than Heydon.86 He presented no evidence of having read any of them. How familiar he was with Paracelsus is unclear, but he did not hesitate to lampoon the German doctor's “new, odd, cross, and unheard names,” or to condemn his iatrochemical remedies. He actually accused the medical writer George Thomson, a friend of the alchemist George Starkey, of plagiarizing him in a pamphlet that recommended chemical medicines to counter the 1665 London plague. The charge was patently false, but in defending Galenic medicine and the anti-Paracelsian position of the Royal College of Physicians, Heydon revealed himself to be a medical as well as an astrological traditionalist.87

  The novelty of the “Heydonian Philosophy” consisted in its revelation of secrets about which other astrologers were guarded or silent. He continually hinted that further Rosicrucian mysteries remained to be broadcast. The creation of earth and water, he confided to his readers in 1665, “is a very great secret, neither is it lawfull to publish it expressly, & as the Nature of the thing requires, but in the Magicall work it is to be seen, and I have been an eye witnesse of it my self.”88 By that date he had reached the height of his success. His printed portraits show that he was a lavish dresser with plenty of money to spend on expensive clothes. He addressed readers from “our Virgin Pallace in Hermupolis,” which sounds grand, whatever it might have meant. Around 1670, however, Heydon disappeared. No record of his death has come to light; perhaps he just dissolved into the ether. Although a few of his writings appear on William Cooper's lists of chemical publications in the early 1670s, they were hardly mentioned after that. The “Astromagus” vanished without trace.

  For all his pomposity, self-promotion and pretensions to learning, John Heydon was important. His brief success shows that astrology was not inevitably bound on a path of accommodation with contemporary science. It might have pursued a different course, towards cultivating an audience among those who wanted to unveil the secrets of nature without engaging in the bothersome experimental rigour of Boyle or Newton. Heydon was not an enemy to experimental science: he simply offered a quicker and easier method of achieving the same ends. He fearlessly put into print all the magical ideas that other astrologers were hesitant to publicize. While he added his own strange Rosicrucian spin on many of them, this can only have enhanced his appeal to those who were impressed by the idea of a society that already held the secrets of the universe—unlike the Royal Society, whose progress towards ultimate revelation was slow and painful.

  The alternative astrology represented by the “Astromagus” depended heavily on the protection of patrons at court such as like the duke of Buckingham. While he was a successful writer, Heydon could easily have run foul of the religious authorities. In fact, he was allegedly attacked in a sermon at St Paul's in May 1664, delivered before the lord mayor, in which a preacher “aspersed me with Atheism.”89 But for the protection afforded him by his social superiors, he might have been a prime target for clerical criticism on account of the occult extravagances of his thinking. The possibility of a confrontation was averted by his disappearance from public view in 1670, at the height of his fame. Whatever its cause, it preserved his reputation for later readers, who sometimes held a surprising admiration for “Heydonian philosophy.” A marginal comment from around 1817, found in a copy of Theomagia in the British Library, expressed wonderment at how “the learned John heydon after having brought this science to great perfection hath been much abusd there in, but w[h]o Ever will Examin the science Candidly will find it upon the Baises of truth and honesty.”90 Apparently, 150 years of scientific revolution had made little impression on this reader.

  The Amateur: Samuel Jeake of Rye

  The field of astrology was dominated by professionals concentrated in the English capital. The exceptions included the Scottish almanac-makers and the Wing family, who lived at North Luffenham and later Pickworth in Rutland. The anonymous compilers of the Cambridge almanacs probably resided in East Anglia, where the relatively flat terrain made it easier to observe the stars. Sir George Wharton worked at Oxford in the 1640s, and later lived at Enfield in Middlesex. Because of the importance of electional astrology to overseas merchants and sea captains, who had to choose propitious dates to set sail on voyages, it is likely that professional astrologers could also be found in seaports like Bristol and Plymouth.

  Unlike alchemy, however, astrology was not a widespread amateur pursuit or hobby. The reasons for this are not hard to grasp. To calculate the actual movements of stars and planets demanded a high level of mathematical expertise. To draw up and interpret charts based on published information was easier—one could use a variety of ephemerides as well as the instructions on chart-making found in Lilly's Christian Astrology—but it remained a difficult, time-consuming and po
tentially rather dull exercise. As a result, few amateurs attempted it, and those who did often had professional reasons for doing so. They included doctors like Joseph Blagrave, who specialized in astrological diagnoses, and sea captains like Jeremy Roche. The latter was an officer of the Royal Navy who drew up elections for the ships on which he sailed, inserting them in journals of his voyages from 1665 to 1692. A devotee of John Gadbury, Roche helpfully appended to his first journal a section on drawing up elections. With surprising candour, he admitted that he could not “absolutely affirm” their veracity, since “I can produce not many experiments to prove it.” Nevertheless, he sought to demonstrate that “all actions, designs and affairs” relating to his naval adventures were “attended or followed with successes suitable to such influences as the configuration of the Heavens and aspects of the Stars and Planets did then dispense.”91 He obviously wanted others to read his observations, which were beautifully illustrated with charts and charming drawings.

  Among those who practised astrology purely for their own edification or pleasure during the Restoration period, two figures are very well known: Elias Ashmole and Samuel Jeake the younger. The publication of Ashmole's autobiographical writings and of Jeake's diary, however, may have obscured how exceptional these two men were as serious astrological hobbyists. While they were certainly not unique, their remarkable devotion to the astral art set them apart, as did their burning desire to make their hobby both credible and respectable. They had certain traits in common. Both were men of the middling sort whose origins lay in provincial towns: Lichfield in Staffordshire and Rye in Sussex, respectively. Neither was born into the intellectual establishment, although Ashmole gradually worked his way into it. Proximity to the booksellers of the capital was important to both of them, as they depended on printed sources of astrological knowledge. Both felt personally oppressed by the political tumults and religious upheavals of their times; both sought to understand what was happening to them and their country through the stars. The restless ambition of the Oxford lawyer was matched in many ways by the indefatigable enterprise of the Rye merchant.

  In other important ways, however, they were very different. Ashmole was a royalist and Anglican whose cultivation of status and respectability masked a passion to uncover the secrets of ritual magic. Like his hero William Lilly, he was obsessed with horary predictions. Jeake was a republican and Nonconformist who had no yearning for social success. He seems never to have drawn up horary charts, restricting himself to natural astrology, genitures and elections. If Ashmole looked back to the golden age of astrology in the first half of the seventeenth century, Jeake wanted to rethink the art. Sharing the scientific views of Whig astrologers like John Partridge, he tested astrology by controlled experiments, but remained an entrenched opponent of the Copernican system. The most important difference between Ashmole and Jeake, however, may have been in their relationship to their fathers. Ashmole's was a saddler by trade, who, according to his son, “through ill Husbandry, became a great Enimy to himselfe, and poor Family.”92 His son acknowledged no debt to him. Jeake's father, by contrast, was an admired patriarch and the chief influence on his life. To some extent, astrology was a way for the younger Jeake to justify the opinions of his beloved sire, a man who embodied the radical sectarianism of the Commonwealth period.

  Samuel Jeake the elder was a Rye lawyer, accomplished mathematician, historian of the Cinque Ports and ardent puritan. He also served as town clerk of Rye until the Restoration, when he resigned rather than serve under the new monarch. He then became the leader of a congregation of religious Dissenters.93 Following the advice of one of his own sermons, that “the Saints must remove their stations from the Tents of ungodly men,” Jeake senior had no further involvement in town government for the next thirty years, until his death in 1690.94 His religion was an eclectic mixture, combining anti-Catholicism with the fierce independence of an Anabaptist and an emphasis on personal revelation that verged on Quakerism. A voracious reader, the elder Jeake aquired and catalogued a remarkable library of more than two thousand volumes later inherited by his son. It included four works by Paracelsus, ten volumes of Nicholas Culpeper's astrological and medical writings, Elias Ashmole's edition of Collectanea Chymica, Robert Fludd's Mosaic Philosophy, four volumes by John Gadbury, two tracts by Christopher Heydon and three by William Lilly, among many others that dealt with alchemical or astrological subjects.95 The collection was largely purchased through London booksellers, among them Obadiah Blagrave, the leading publisher of expensive astrological treatises.96

  Evidently, Jeake the elder was well versed in the occult philosophies of the period, although his voluminous correspondence provides few direct clues as to how he reconciled them with his religious views. The younger Jeake was educated by his father to pursue both a public business career and a life of private study. From an early age, he was heavily influenced by the supernatural. He remembered hearing about a “Prodigy,” a vision of Jesus Christ becoming king, in 1663, at the age of eleven. Although he was not sure whether it was true or false, it “was the first occasion of my Conversion, & serious thoughts about my future condition.”97 By the age of fourteen, he had read a number of books on medicine and natural history, as well as Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia.98 This last work does not appear in his father's library catalogue, but it has to be assumed that Jeake senior knew and approved of his teenage son's exposure to this notorious text. What effect it had on the young man is difficult to say. He did not mention it in the list of books that he had read by the age of fifteen, and his understanding of astrology does not seem to have been influenced by Agrippa's obsession with the role of spirits. Still, the younger Jeake remained a believer in the everyday power of supernatural forces that were not strictly biblical. For example, he recorded in his diary an incident that took place in June 1671, when two bed-staffs seemed to shift position during the night due to “the ridiculous and trifling actions of some of the meanest rank among the Infernal Spirits.”99

  Soon after his first reading of Agrippa, Jeake's father began to instruct him in the study of the heavens. The “astrological diary” that the younger Jeake drew up later in life notes the following for 25 June 1667: “About noon I began to learn Astrology.”100 In the summer of 1670, he drew up more than 150 nativities. Most of them were for his friends and neighbours in Rye, although some bore the names of the children of royalty, among then the duke of Monmouth.101 These were exercises to make him more proficient in the astrological art. At the same time, Jeake junior was engaged in writing a treatise on astrology entitled Diaposon: The Harmony of the Signes of Heaven. Its frontispiece was a “Hieroglyphick” depicting his own descent from the symbols of Jupiter and Venus, which he associated with his father and mother. It also included his own nativity and the horoscope for the moment of his conception, an odd subject for a teenager to contemplate.102 Evidently, astrology provided the younger Jeake with a language by which to define and express his personal identity, especially his devotion to his father. His past, present and future were, in a sense, contained in a bundle of astral signs, which his god-like father had taught him how to read.

  The politics of Rye in the late 1670s and early 1680s placed the Jeakes at the centre of a bitter and furious factional confrontation. The national struggle between Whigs and Tories was played out in the small town as a battle between radical Dissenters and moderates for control of the corporation. The Jeakes were the spiritual leaders of the radical party, although they were careful not to present themselves as its political standard-bearers.103 In the end, the radicals lost, and loyal adherents of the Church of England began to harass, fine and imprison Dissenters. The elder Jeake was obliged to leave Rye for London late in 1682, where he remained until the summer of 1687. His son later recalled a dream that he had had around November 1678, at the beginning of these events, in which his future troubles may have been foretold. He had seen a pale sun surrounded by “horsemen & their horses, all in Confusion; tramping upon one an
other; some riding, some overthrown.” Around them were the twelve signs of the zodiac, “all perfect only that of Pisces defective.” In interpreting this dream, Jeake emphasized its personal connotations, giving himself a central position: “I was signified by the Sun because he was Lord of the ascendant in my Nativity.” The paleness of the sun “portended that I should never be in any Place of Honor or Authority over others.” The horsemen were his enemies, seeking to destroy him, while the defective sign of Pisces was his father, who “should receive some prejudice & be partly separated from me; but not totally, nor for ever.”104

  Jeake's reading of this dream in personal rather than political terms was not due to concern over possible repercussions, as he was writing in the 1690s, after his enemies had been overthrown in the Glorious Revolution. Rather, it reflects his constant tendency to relate astrology to his inner self—a self that was highly restrained, rather depressive and apparently lacking in emotional outlets. He was by his own account prone to bouts of “excessive Melancholy,” which made him “pass some whole nights without sleep.”105 His conversations with himself through astrology were ways of coming to terms with his emotions as well as the events of his life. His father was always an important part of these conversations; his mother played a very minor role. As for the younger Jeake's wife, Elizabeth Hartshorne, whom he married in 1680 when she was just thirteen years old, she barely figured at all in his astrological musings.