Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  As he matured, Jeake may have begun to harbour feelings of competitiveness with his father. Above all, he wanted to vindicate the art of astrology in terms that his father would not have recognized: namely, as an experimental science. Following his father's return to Rye, Jeake began an ambitious attempt to achieve this goal. For a full year, from 5 July 1687 to 5 July 1688, he kept daily notes on every significant occurrence in his life, from King James II's alteration of corporations to allow “the putting in of Whigs & dissenters,” to attacks of melancholy “by reason of the disappointments about wooll,” to his being “stung under the left knee with an Humble bee.” His stated purpose was to vindicate astrology from the accusation that “her Prognostiques are not deprehended [sic] to have equal Certitude with those of other Arts.” He therefore set out to examine “a Large Exemplification of such Experimental impressions, as being formed by their genuine Astral causes.” In his role as “Experimenter,” he was to “deveste himselfe entirely of all his prejudices & prepossessions; either in specificating the Effects of Directions, or in imagining great Successes in his proper Themes.” He must renounce both “Tradition” and “a passionate & inordinate self Love; whereby all things are drawn violently to signify such preconceptions as the mind had fancied to it self.” After all, a self-interested mind, “failing of her desired effect, becomes fill'd at last with a continued Scepticism, if not a total renunciation of the credit of every Aphorism.”106

  The denial of self-interest is particularly interesting, since the main object of Jeake's astrology was to know himself better. His treatise begins, somewhat paradoxically, with a list of facts about himself entitled “The Native's Condition at the Revolution.” It includes an admission that his “Complexion” was “Choleric Melancholy.” His friends, who presumably comprised the readers of the treatise, were “few, but firme,” while his enemies included “The Magistrates of the Place, Customehouse officers, & Debauchees.” He mentions his father and his mother-in-law, his wife, one child and two servants as the members of his family, but nothing more is said about them. Once we have met the man, we are introduced to his method. Jeake explains that, in calculating the daily directions of ascendant planets, he will employ the theories of the French astrologer Jean-Baptiste Morin, as laid out in Astrologia Gallica (1661).107 In short, this was not to be his father's astrology. On the contrary, his treatise would propound to its readers a new, experimental philosophy, worthy of the name science and equal to any in certitude.

  It took Jeake almost four years to write up his data. In the interval, King James II had fallen from power, an event that could have been foreseen, according to Jeake, by a change in the revolution or yearly position of the sun.108 This observation, made in hindsight, confirms that Jeake was not about to use his grand experiment to disprove astrology. On the contrary, his aim was to vindicate the art, and of course he succeeded. His account of the events of the year ended with a set of “Theoremes insurging from the Contemplation of the Preceding Experiments,” of which the first was that “Sublunary Causes frequently incline the Effects to deviate from the commensurate time of their Directions.” In other words, conditions on earth might retard the influence of the stars. This was an honest admission, but it seriously damaged his hypothesis, since if astral causes were not felt immediately, it was not clear how they could be proven to exist at all. Jeake was not deterred by this finding: he proceeded to enumerate thirteen further “Theoremes,” most of them having to do with the significance of specific planets.109 In short, his experiment had been a resounding success, at least in his own mind.

  By 1692, when he finished writing up his experiment, Jeake's father was dead, and he may have needed the consolation of astrology more than ever. As the elder Jeake lay ill, his son carefully recorded daily astral directions. He also wrote down their final conversation: “When I said farewell Dear Father, & kist his dying lips; he answered; Farewell my Dear lamb, The Lord bless thee, & prosper all that thou undertakest.”110 It is the most emotional passage in the diary. Jeake was by then a man of substance, having made a small fortune as a merchant, and would soon begin investing his money in public funds, including Bank of England stocks. To some extent, he was turning his back on the austerity and self-denial of his father's puritanism. At the same time, he was more eager than ever to validate the truth of astrology. The diary, which he transcribed in 1694, recorded the occurrences of his entire life, along with the planets that influenced each day. He did not add any new “Theoremes” or conclusions to the manuscript, but if he had, they would no doubt have upheld the faith in the stars that he had inherited from his beloved father.

  This account has stressed the personal aspects of Samuel Jeake the younger's astrology, because they illustrate so emphatically that reading the stars could play a complex psychological role. It was not simply a matter of explaining the unpredictable or alleviating the anxiety caused by misfortune; astrology could also be a way of interpreting oneself. To be sure, the younger Jeake was not a typical astrologer. He deliberately avoided predictions, and he was fascinated by every influence, no matter how slight, that the stars might have on his everyday life. After his childhood, he did not exhibit much interest in occult philosophy, but his acceptance of “Astral Causes” reveals that he perceived the stars to have direct effects on “Sublunar” events. While those effects could be delayed by earthly conditions, they were constant, fixed by the character of the ascendant planet. No matter how much of an experimentalist he may have been, Jeake never questioned the assumption that the heavens guided what happened on earth. He flatly ignored the advice of John Flamsteed, who counselled him in 1698 that “he may Imploy his time much better then in the study of Astrology.”111

  Jeake's purposes in pursuing astrology were markedly different from those of Elias Ashmole, who was obsessed with its more occult aspects and spent many hours drawing up horary predictions. The two men illustrate the variety of social meanings that astrology might hold. Given this complexity, and the strength of astrology as a business in the period from 1650 to 1689, one might have predicted that the silver age of the celestial art would have lasted for many decades longer. In fact, it ended pretty abruptly in the twenty years after the Glorious Revolution. To understand why, we have to take a closer look at how occult ways of thinking were integrated with the broader intellectual world of the late seventeenth century. Was it the professed enemies of astrology or its bickering friends who eventually brought it crashing down from the skies?

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Occult Contested

  Thus Ralph became infallible,

  As three or four-legg'd Oracle …

  For mystick Learning, wondrous able

  In Magic, Talisman, and Cabal,

  Whose primitive tradition reaches

  As far as Adam’s first green breeches …

  A deep occult Philosopher

  As learn'd as the Wild Irish are,

  Or Sir Agrippa, for profound

  And solid Lying much renown'd:

  He Anthroposophus, and Floud,

  And Jacob Behmen understood;

  Knew many an Amulet and Charm,

  That would do neither good nor harm:

  In Rosy-Crucian Lore as learned,

  As he that Verè Adeptus earned.1

  Thus, in the person of Ralpho, the semi-educated, gullible squire of Sir Hudibras, Samuel Butler satirized occult philosophy in the first canto of his classic mock epic of the 1660s, Hudibras. The poem makes merciless fun of Hermeticists, Rosicrucians, ritual magicians, alchemists, astrologers, almanac-makers, conjurors and those who believe in the black magic of witches. All are associated with vulgar ignorance, credulity, fraud and the fanatical religious sectarianism that precipitated the Civil War. All, in Butler's view, were equally ridiculous and contemptible.

  Hudibras reminds us that, even in the golden age of alchemy and the silver age of astrology, occult philosophy might be altogether rejected. To be sure, the poem affirms that mid-seventeenth
-century England was teeming with occult practitioners, like Sidrophel the false conjuror, who has a run-in with the hero in the third canto. Yet Hudibras also suggests that these alchemists, astrologers and ritual magicians were justified in their continual anxiety about the intellectual acceptability of their interests. “[W]e know that our Philosophy is the Worlds Contempt,” moaned William Cooper in the 1684 preface to Collectanea Chymica, “and its Professors their scorn and derision.”2 The absurd figure of Ralpho should lead any historian to wonder: how integrated were occult philosophy and science in the intellectual life of the second half of the seventeenth century? Were they part of a cultural mainstream, or were they associated with marginal thinkers and fringe movements? To what extent were they challenged and undermined by scepticism, rationalism and empirical science?

  The answers to these questions would once have seemed self-evident. Before the renewal of interest in Paracelsian medicine in the late 1950s, the rehabilitation of spiritual and demonic magic in the 1960s and the rediscovery of Newton's alchemy in the 1970s, few would have questioned that modern science and reason were relentlessly driving occult thinking out of the realm of intellectual respectability.3 Today, however, most historians have changed their minds about this. They are more likely to respond to questions like those posed above by remarking that supernatural beliefs were deeply rooted in the mentalities of the seventeenth century, so that the credibility extended to occult science and philosophy should not surprise us. After all, people believed in prodigies, prophecies and special providences until well into the eighteenth century; why should they not also have accepted alchemy, astrology and ritual magic?4

  This is not an entirely satisfactory response to our initial questions, for two main reasons. First, by the mid-seventeenth century, if not earlier, it was possible to doubt and even deny the everyday occurrence of supernatural events. Some people limited their possibility to instances of direct divine intervention in which the laws of nature were clearly overturned; others simply demanded empirical proof that they had happened. Second, belief in human power over supernatural events often collided with religious orthodoxy, a matter of increasing concern to those who governed the Church of England after 1660. The defenders of Anglicanism—like Samuel Butler—did not deny that supernatural happenings might take place, but they regarded with deep suspicion those who claimed to be able to channel, initiate or control them. Such people were at best misguided, at worst diabolists. The defence of orthodoxy after the Civil War period posed a much more formidable challenge to occult thinking than did experimental science.

  The answers to our initial questions, then, turn out to be complicated. The occult may have been everywhere in British culture, but nowhere was it uncontested. For some, it was a legitimate source of knowledge, while for others, it was diabolical and taboo. Prophecy that drew on occult sources, the subject of the first section of this chapter, was anathematized by established authorities. The late seventeenth-century debate over witchcraft, on the other hand, was more muddled, because witch beliefs became for orthodox clergymen a mark of resistance against scepticism. Unfortunately, historians have often discussed witchcraft as if it were a defining feature of occult beliefs, when it was actually tangential to them, and was frequently used to taint or disparage them. One could deny witchcraft and believe in occult philosophy. Conversely, it was possible to condemn occult philosophy while arguing passionately for the existence of witches. The second section below tries to sort out such distinctions. Even those who were prepared to grant a measure of truth to the occult, however, might argue that its claims should not be accepted without being tested. This might take the form of an experiment, such as the compilation of a set of observations. The third section deals with attempts by scientific thinkers to test occult claims. The pursuit of hidden knowledge or secrets was another enticing area of learning, which is considered in the final section of this chapter. When revealed in print, secrets lost their allure. They could be preserved through restricting access to them, so that only initiates would know them. This was the driving principle of the secret societies, of which Freemasonry would be the most enduring.

  The Prophets

  Proof of the claims of occult knowledge might be entirely personal, individual and spiritual. If it could elevate the believer to a higher state of awareness of the divine, of scriptural prophecy or of the meaning of the world, then the occult might be justified by what seemed to be irrefutable evidence. As the Church of England disintegrated in the 1640s and 1650s, prophets proliferated, and it was not uncommon for them to claim certainty about occult matters through divine revelation, rejecting rational, scientific or worldly thinking. Among these prophetic souls was Thomas Totney, a goldsmith of London who renamed himself TheaurauJohn (that is, The-aurora-John) Tany after experiencing a vision that convinced him that he was God's emissary in preparing the world for the Second Coming. Tany's prophetic message, which denied hell and damnation, was supposedly based on revelation alone. “[T]ake notice scholars,” he instructed, “I am not book-learned, but I am heart-knowledged by divine inspiration.”5 In reality, like so many other prophets of the time, he drew upon written sources, particularly alchemical texts (not surprising for a goldsmith), astrology, the Corpus Hermeticum, Agrippa and Boehme. Calling himself “High Priest of the Jews,” Tany believed it was his mission to gather up the remnants of the Jewish people throughout England—an aspiration that would be revived in the 1790s. Arrested for blasphemy but acquitted of the charge in 1652, he went on a rampage in the lobby of the House of Commons three years later, attacking the doorkeeper with his sword after hearing that Oliver Cromwell was to be offered the crown. Tany probably died in 1659; he left no movement behind him.6

  A more influential, and better-connected, prophet of the Interregnum was the Reverend John Pordage, who with his wife, Mary, headed a small group of Behmenists in their Berkshire parish. The parish was in the gift of Elias Ashmole, who admired the vicar enough to send him a copy of his Fasciculus Chemicus in 1650, and who commended his knowledge of astronomy. Pordage was deprived of his clerical living in 1654 after being accused of blasphemy, scandal, necromancy and communicating with spirits.7 In forced retirement, he wrote works of mystical theology that were published after his death by his followers. In them, he insisted that mysteries could only be revealed by visions, “when the Spirit of the mind is thorowly illustrated, or enlightened by a Raie, or Beam proceeding from the Holy Spirit.” He was contemptuous of “the Rational [Power], which the confounding Jesuit would make the pure Religionist beleev to be Mechanism (the Diana of this inquisitive Age) and the whole Encylopaede of Arts and sciences but a brisk circulation of the Blood.”8 Evidently, he had in mind Cartesian mechanical philosophy. Although a learned man with an interest in alchemy, Pordage had no patience for the experimental science that was gaining ground after the Restoration. His theology was indebted to Boehme, but his conception of a universe brimming over with innumerable spirits owed a good deal to Neoplatonism as well.

  Pordage's son Samuel, who shared his parents’ religious views, published an enormous poem in 1661 that offered a mystical explanation of the universe. It concludes with an alchemical quest for the Stone that can command devils, angels and all spirits. In verses more passionate than mellifluous, Samuel Pordage urged his jaded contemporaries to abandon the “natural Magic” of worldly science for the “higher Magic” of the spirit:

  Magick is threefold: this world's natural,

  Sacred the light, dark, diabolical:

  Great is the Magic of this world, but yet

  Greater the dark, the light more great than it.

  When this worlds secrets, Man knows from the light,

  He knows the Magic of this world aright,

  But otherwise he deals preposterous,

  Lets go a Jewel; doth a bauble choose.9

  Unlike Elias Ashmole, Samuel Pordage was suspicious of astrology, which could lead the unwitting into necromancy, and dismissive of practical alch
emy. He further advised “the worldly Wise” to avoid philosophers like Plato or Hermes Trismegistus, along with “Magii” like Paracelsus or Agrippa, who proclaimed their own knowledge rather than that of God. Instead, the true magician should follow the path of a spiritual pilgrim, seeking the eternal virgin Sophia, “The Spouse of Christ, and all the Saints beside.”10

  The tendency of mystical writers to borrow occult language and concepts while distancing themselves from occult science began with Boehme, and would survive the Pordages. Their writings inspired a female prophet of the next generation, Jane Lead. She came from a minor gentry family and married her cousin, a wealthy London merchant, who left her destitute after his death in 1670. Her close contact with the Pordages gave her spiritual if not material capital, and she edited John Pordage's works after his death in 1681.11 Her powerful visions were centred on Magia, or “the created Power of the Holy Ghost” which would bring forth “fruitful Gifts and high working Powers” from the womb of a hermaphroditic Virgin (“both Male & Female for Angelical Generation”) named Sophia or Wisdom.12 Lead's mystic language was infused with her own imaginative and highly gendered interpretations of spiritual things. To a far greater extent than her mentors, she came to reject reason and science. Her aversion to them may have been due in part to a feeling of exclusion—few women had access to scientific knowledge, and none was a member of the Royal Society—but it also stemmed from an ardent attachment to prophecy, and from an inspired reading of Behmenism. She would be at the centre of a significant religious movement in the 1690s.