At least one Behmenist visionary, however, embraced practical methods and made a fortune from providing medical advice: Thomas Tryon, a prosperous hatter who lived in the London suburb of Hackney. Tryon had experienced visions since the age of six, and as a young man studied astrology—“a Science too rashly decried by some,” he later opined, “who consider not the Subordinate Administration of the Almighty, by the Illuminated Powers of the Coelestial Regions, nor discern their Operations in Nature, and Influences on the Animal Life, in the complexions of Men and Things, and in the Generation and Preservation thereof.” Tryon did not seek to read fortunes, but “to discern the Complexion and Qualities of Animals, Minerals, and Vegetations” in order to diagnose ailments.13 It was his acquaintance with Boehme's writings that led him to quit an Anabaptist congregation in the late 1650s and follow his own beliefs, which increasingly centred on vegetarianism. Tryon began producing pamphlets on the subject in the early 1680s, connecting it with a mystical cleansing of the body. His admirers included the playwright Aphra Behn and, much later, Benjamin Franklin. Tryon was also a believer in dreams as a means of communication with the spirit world, which he advertised as part of the “Mystick Philosophy” of Pythagoras.14 Describing himself as a “Student in Physick,” he wrote on a variety of medical subjects, including madness, as well as on overseas plantations, which he heartily endorsed, although he argued for better treatment for slaves.15
Tryon was financially successful, but in his theological views he remained an outsider. No matter how much we may now wish to restore the reputations of visionaries and prophets, their open espousal of sectarian and heterodox principles made them a fringe element in British culture. Their insights depended on personal experience and testimony, not on acceptance by an established community of scholars. We will return to them later, but for now our attention will rest with those who struck out in a different direction, like Pordage's former patron, Elias Ashmole. For him, occult thinking rested on the hope that supernatural forces could be understood and employed in a physical endeavour that might be demonstrated publicly to others, especially to sceptics. This does not mean that occult thinking was merely functional or practical, because the process of understanding was for many of its adherents tantamount to evidence that it was “working.” Moreover, the mere promise of success could keep scholars toiling at their furnaces or staring at the stars for long periods of time. In one way or another, they were trying to test the occult, whether as a process or as a ritual or even as a pathway to visionary experience.
Belief, Doubt, Denial
Those who opposed occult thinking outright denied that it could ever be tested because it was based on error or delusion. The most extreme among these deniers was without doubt Thomas Hobbes, who combined a materialist approach to natural philosophy with a severely rationalist reading of Scripture. In his celebrated work Leviathan (1651), he ascribed “the opinion that rude people have of Fayries, Ghosts and Goblins; and of the power of Witches” to an inability to distinguish between sense impressions and dreams. Like all products of the imagination, dreams derived from “decaying sense”: that is, from weak and often erroneous impressions of reality that were left in the memory. While an omnipotent God certainly had the power to send dreams or apparitions into the material world, Hobbes saw no reason to believe that he did so very often.16
Hobbes's scrupulous deity was similarly stinting in his use of miracles. One of the most controversial passages in Leviathan defined miracles in a very precise way:
By Miracles are signified the Admirable works of God: & therefore they are also called Wonders … And there be but two things which make men wonder at any event. The one is, if it be strange, that is to say, such, as the like of it hath never, or very rarely been produced: The other is, if when it is produced, we cannot imagine it to have been done by naturall means, but onely by the immediate hand of God.17
Miracles, then, were very rare events, designed to reveal the mission of God's extraordinary ministers, like Moses and Christ. As no devil, angel or spirit could perform a miracle, any wonders ascribed to them “must either be by vertue of some naturall science, or by Incantation, that is, by vertue of words [i.e. deception].”18 Even the “Arts of Magick” supposedly employed by Moses in his competition with the Egyptian magicians—a favourite story among those who sought to justify the conjuring of spirits—were actually illusions, because they were not performed for the edification of the elect.
Hobbes drove home his attack on the occult in the fourth book of Leviathan, where he dedicated a chapter to the refutation of “Daemonology,” the theory that incorporeal spirits operated in the world. Firmly based on materialist assumptions, this was a response, not just to popular belief in devils and ghosts, but to Neoplatonic philosophy as well. Hobbes sought to disprove—not very convincingly, it should be admitted—that spirits, including angels as well as demons, ever appeared without bodies in Scripture. They were always corporeal, and therefore could not inhabit or possess another person or thing, since two bodies could not occupy the same space at the same time. When Christ was said to have cast out demons, he was actually using God's word “to command Madnesse, or Lunacy (under the appellation of Devils, by which they were then commonly understood), to depart out of a mans body.”19 Belief in spirits without bodies, according to Hobbes, was derived from the relics of “Gentilisme” or pagan religion. Such superstition had no place in true Christian faith.
Thus, Hobbes decried the common “Wonders” that were taken by the public as miracles or signs of divine providence, as well as the bodiless spirits that flitted through the literature of alchemy, astrology and ritual magic. Only bodies, extension and matter existed: all else was fantasy. His strict materialist approach, however, was too radical for most late seventeenth-century thinkers, even those who shared Hobbes's hostility to certain aspects of the occult. Perhaps the only contemporary writer on occult subjects who mirrored Hobbes's philosophical attitude was the Oxford scholar John Wagstaffe, known in his time as a “wit” and a hard drinker. He argued in 1669 that all scriptural references to spirits, magic and witchcraft were mistranslations of the original Hebrew. The real sources of witch beliefs, in Wagstaffe's opinion, were “Heathen Fables,” falsely propagated as Christian doctrine by “Papal Inquisitours.” Wagstaffe chose witchcraft as a specific target, but he was aiming at all “superstitious” beliefs, including those of Neoplatonists, who were “addicted unto Fabling and Allegorizing.”20
As materialists, Hobbes and Wagstaffe were suspected of denying the existence of the soul, and were equated with atheists. Their influence during the Restoration period could not compare with that of another writer on witchcraft, a pillar of Anglican orthodoxy with a highly respected surname, who was famous in his lifetime although he is now largely forgotten: the Reverend Meric Casaubon. In contrast to Hobbes and Wagstaffe, Casaubon argued that spirits were real and could exist in a disembodied form. He regarded communication with them as absolutely unlawful, however, and therefore held occult pursuits to be vain, dangerous and ultimately Satanic. Casaubon's position was, to a large extent, representative of Anglican orthodoxy during the Restoration period.
Meric Casaubon was the son of the renowned classical scholar Isaac Casaubon, who had shown that the Hermetic writings dated from the Christian era and not from ancient Egypt.21 (Few Hermeticists paid any attention to the findings.) Meric shared his father's suspicious attitude towards occult philosophy, which in his mind appealed mainly to religious enthusiasts and sectarians who were ultimately led astray by the Devil. To demonstrate the point, Casaubon published in 1659 a wordy, rambling preface to an edition of the experiments in ritual magic of the Elizabethan magus John Dee. Casaubon presented the experiences of Dr Dee as certain evidence of the reality of spirits, and therefore as a blow to atheists like Hobbes. He was in no doubt, however, that the spirits contacted by the “Skryer” or medium Edward Kelly were not angelic, as the deluded Dr Dee fondly imagined, but were instead manifestat
ions of the Devil. Casaubon extended this accusation of diabolism to the works of Paracelsus, to mystical alchemy (he called the Philosopher's Stone “a meer cheet”), to Kabbalism and even to the mysterious Book of Enoch, “a very superstitious, foolish, fabulous writing; or to conclude all in one word, Cabalistical, such as the Divel might own very well, and in all probability was the author of.”22
In a postscript, Casaubon even hinted darkly, without saying so directly, that Elias Ashmole, who had recently published excerpts from Dee's experiments in his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, was moving down the same dark path as his Elizabethan predecessor. This was a serious charge, which may have influenced Ashmole's decision not to publish the second part of his magnum opus. Unfortunately, Casaubon's pious purposes were partially undermined by his printer. Trying to lure the curious and the magically inclined to buy the book, he made Dee's name more prominent than the author's own on the title page, and added a frontispiece that depicted other famous practitioners of magic. Yet nobody could mistake the message of Casaubon's text—contact with spirits was never lawful.
Casaubon followed up the exposure of Dee with a learned tract entitled Of Credulity and Incredulity, published in 1668. It contained a crushingly sarcastic commentary on “the wonders of Chymistry: by some so much doted upon (right Mountebanks, and cheaters in this) that they would refer all mysteries and miracles, even of Religion, unto it.” Casaubon admitted nonetheless that he had been cured of a near-fatal illness by Dr Thory's pills.23 Seeking out a middle ground, he admitted the existence of occult qualities in nature, including celestial influences, because the ancients believed in them, but painted spiritual interference in the world as malign. To dissociate himself from Hobbesianism, Casaubon made a point-by-point answer to the “atheist” John Wagstaffe, whom he denounced as wrong about Scripture, wrong about the origins of witch beliefs and utterly wrong about the reality of witchcraft.24 The last point became crucial to Of Credulity’s success. Although the discussion of witches took up only twenty out of more than two hundred pages of dense theological reasoning, it clearly helped to sell copies. When a reprint appeared in 1672, after Casaubon's death, it was retitled A Treatise Proving Spirits, Witches and Supernatural Operations by Pregnant Instances and Evidences—a title Casaubon was unlikely to have agreed to, had he still been alive. Evidently, the public was perceived as wanting to read about witches, not about the heavier subjects of credulity and incredulity.
Casaubon's writings incensed one reader, the Lancashire schoolmaster John Webster. He was by no means a Hobbesian; rather, he was a practising alchemist whose views on occult philosophy were not very different from those of Elias Ashmole. Unlike Ashmole, however, Webster had a sectarian past—during the Civil War period, he had attached himself to the mystic William Erbery, an admirer of Jacob Boehme. He had already set off a major controversy regarding English higher education by publishing in 1653 an attack on what he saw as a university system mired in outdated Aristotelian values. To the intellectually impoverished undergraduates of his day, Webster recommended the study of astrology, singling out for praise “my learned, and industrious Countrymen Mr. Ashmole, Mr. William Lilly, Mr. Booker, Mr. Culpepper, and others.” He went on to endorse Plato, Paracelsus, J.B. van Helmont and Descartes, a quartet certain to enlighten (or thoroughly bewilder) any young man. A furious reply to Webster's book followed from John Wilkins, warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and the Oxford professor of astronomy Seth Ward. They defended the existing university curriculum from charges of backwardness and dismissed the “gullery” of astrology—although they were also careful to express personal respect for Ashmole.25
After the Restoration, Webster switched his politics to royalism and apparently conformed to the Church of England, but he remained an ardent alchemist, with a pronounced magical bent. In his 1671 work Metallographia, dedicated to the royalist hero Prince Rupert, he extolled the “natural and lawful Magick” of the Egyptians, while revealing his own preference for “the Mystical part of Chymistry.”26 He even took on the great Isaac Casaubon, explicitly rejecting his critical views on the antiquity of the Corpus Hermeticum.27
It might seem implausible that John Webster, alchemist, astrologer and magician, would become one of the leading denouncers of witch beliefs. That he did can only be understood as a reaction to those defenders of orthodoxy who, like Meric Casaubon, lumped witchcraft together with occult philosophy under the rubric of diabolism. The enormous book that Webster published in 1677 on what he carefully labelled “Supposed Witchcraft” explains his position pretty clearly, although it has often mystified students of the period who have read it in search of a sceptical critique of magic. Webster begins with the complaint that alchemists and writers on occult subjects, including John Dee, have been falsely suspected of practising witchcraft by “the monster-Headed Multitude.”28 This seems an odd way to attack Meric Casaubon, who had never courted popularity, but it may reflect the harassed feelings of a former sectarian living amid the loud triumphs of the revived Church of England. For Webster, witchcraft was essentially a scurrilous accusation that rubbed off on serious students of the occult.
That accusation was manifestly unfair, in Webster's opinion, because witches, unlike occult philosophers, were not able to do anything supernatural. While he accepted that not all witches were imaginary, he insisted that they could not possibly possess the powers that were ascribed to them. He agreed fully with Casaubon's point that evil spirits, even the Devil himself, existed as incorporeal entities. Demons could do nothing in the physical world, however, without the approval of God; so their followers were deluded, as were those who saw the works of Satan everywhere around them. While Webster accepted that “the force of imagination” might be responsible for strange physical effects, like the altering of fetuses in the womb, he hastened to add that “the Devil acteth nothing in it at all, but the setting of his will upon that mischief.”29 Webster devoted an entire chapter of his work to demonstrating that spirits might “separately exist,” apart from bodies and even souls—a point expressly denied by the materialists Hobbes and Wagstaffe. He was also inclined to believe in the efficacy of magical charms.30 Webster devoted as much attention to these topics as he did to debunking witchcraft, which may explain why his work was not reprinted in the eighteenth century by those who sought to remove witch beliefs from the law.
Webster's book was answered by one final, tremendous blast from the Anglican trumpet: Joseph Glanvill's celebrated Saducismus Triumphatus, published in 1681. Glanville was a more conflicted upholder of orthodoxy than Casaubon. A Neoplatonist and promoter of science as well as a clergyman, he had begun to publish stories recounting cases of witchcraft or supernatural events in the mid-1660s, in an attempt to undermine scepticism, or “Sadducism” as he called it. When John Webster cast doubt on some of his evidence, Glanvill responded by editing a bumper collection of tales, all supposedly true, which he did not live to see into print.31 Many of the stories dealt with cases of supernatural possession or apparitions rather than witchcraft, indicating how these categories were jumbled together in the worried minds of orthodox clergymen. Glanvill's main purpose was to illustrate through extended testimonies that evil spirits could move things, occupy the bodies of human beings and make general mayhem within the physical world. His personal experience of a particular haunting, involving “the drummer of Tedworth,” may have bolstered his credibility.32 The posthumously published compendium was a great success, and went through numerous editions by the early eighteenth century. It seems to have been just what readers wanted: a group of scary, well-documented and easily interpreted stories demonstrating a point everybody except Hobbes and his followers seemed to acknowledge: that supernatural events were commonplace and happened to very ordinary people.
Yet Saducismus Triumphatus was not only a story book; it also proffered an argument about invisible forces. It contained a long letter by Glanvill, addressing general objections to the reality of evil spirits: for example, that their acti
ons were absurd or that they had no need to resort to the assistance of poor old women. His characteristic response to such scepticism was to point to human inability to grasp the meaning of supernatural events. In philosophical terms, Glanvill fell back on what he called “the Platonick Hypothesis, that Spirits are embodied,” or rather that they could occupy and manipulate material substances.33 Unlike Casaubon, he did not regard all spirits as diabolical, and went so far as to assert “that much of the Government of us, and our Affairs, is committed to the better Spirits.” Human contact with these good spirits, however, “is not needful for the Designs of the better world,” so their operations remain beyond our understanding or control.34 This was a rather weak argument, which would never have persuaded a ritual magician to desist from importuning angels. Surprisingly, Glanvill did not answer Webster directly in this letter, perhaps because he shared some of his antagonist's assumptions about the spirit world.
Glanvill's friend the philosopher Henry More was even more careful in his response to Webster, but in the end just as ambivalent about benign spirits. More, whom we have already encountered as the chief opponent of Thomas Vaughan, edited Saducismus Triumphatus after Glanvill's death. Having abandoned Cartesianism for Neoplatonism, he openly accepted the reality of spirits, and he did not consider all of them to be evil. In the philosophical essay that he appended to Glanvill's book, More argued against Descartes, the “Hobbians” and others who doubted that spirits could exist without physical bodies. If this was so, he asked, what was to be made of thoughts, the soul or even God? Using geometric diagrams that gave his argument a scientific appearance, he demonstrated to his own satisfaction that spirits could join with and act upon matter, just as matter might mysteriously adhere to itself. As More put it, “the unition of Spirit with Matter, is as intelligible as the unition of one part of Matter with another.”35 What he did not explain in this essay was whether human contact with immaterial spirits was ever benign and lawful. A letter written by More to Samuel Hartlib in 1652, however, contains the reflection that “if good spiritts enter into any man, any how, I should not easily suspect that man to be a bad man, for I conceive all spiritts have sense and are passible and abhor from coming near unchast impure, and wicked men, as we do to come near a stinking dunghill.”36 On this occasion, More conceded that good spirits could indeed have contact with humans, and only with good humans at that.
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