How unique was Stukeley among the Newtonians? He certainly imparted his opinions to close friends, like Martin Ffoulkes or Roger Gale, with whom he mingled in a multitude of clubs and societies. He also shared an outlook with less intimate associates like Sir Hans Sloane, the medical doctor whose vast collection of curiosities became the foundation of the British Museum. Sloane avidly sought out magical rings, healing charms and relics of the Elizabethan magus John Dee, who also interested Stukeley. Among the enormous number of manuscripts purchased by Sloane were almost four hundred volumes of alchemical writings.90 With Sloane as with Stukeley, however, occult items were mere props in a world of artifacts that was centred on the collector himself, who classified, arranged and displayed them.
The Newtonian who was closest to Stukeley in his varied interests, although certainly not in his religious opinions, was William Whiston. A gifted young scientist, he became Newton's successor as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. Whiston gained fame in 1696 through the publication of A New Theory of the Earth, in which he postulated the origin of the terrestrial globe in “a confus'd Chaos,” formed from “the Atmosphere of a Comet.”91 Chaos was beloved by alchemists, who saw it as the prima materia, and Whiston obliged them by including marvellous diagrams of the developing cosmos, strikingly similar to those of Robert Fludd. Whiston's New Theory was frequently republished, but his academic career was less successful. Deprived of his professorship in 1710 on account of his anti-Trinitarian views, Whiston became a public lecturer and popularizer of science.92
To trace his subsequent opinions is a bewildering task, because he frequently altered them. In 1716, he decried “the Folly of Judicial Astrology, and of all such Methods of Divination and Prognostication as the Vulgar Superstitious People are so fond of … if any thing be thus foretold, it is by a Power plainly Daemoniacal.”93 He later changed his mind. In October 1737, he met Stukeley at Tycho Wing's observatory in Rutland, where “we had a good deal of talk about Astrology. Mr Whiston says Dr. Halley foretold the month the [Glorious] Revolution happened: novr 1688.”94 Whiston's new-found taste for astrology probably sprang from a passionate attachment to prophecy, which also motivated him to endorse the ancient Sibylline oracles—all of them, not just those that supposedly foretold the birth of Christ—as divinely inspired.95 On issues concerning the supernatural, Whiston came to his own offbeat conclusions. He suggested in 1717 that “miraculous Operations” were caused not by divine suspension of the laws of nature, but “by the means of Angels, or of some other Spiritual and Invisible Beings,” because natural laws were fixed and could not be altered. He accepted that demons existed in the world, but argued that the “Magical Arts” of witches and conjurors were “Diabolical or Daemonical Delusions,” whose effects were not real.96 Nevertheless, he continued to believe in “wonders” that seemed prophetic to him. At the end of his very long life, Whiston became notorious for asserting that the case of Mary Toft, a clothier's wife who falsely claimed that she had given birth to a litter of rabbits, had confirmed a prophecy that “menstruous women will bring forth monsters” in 2 Esdras 5:8.97
Like Stukeley, Whiston used diverse strands of occult thinking to support his arguments against vulgar “superstition” or religious scepticism. Unlike Stukeley, however, he did not labour to construct an interpretation of nature or history out of occult symbols; rather, he saw himself as verifying God's own design, even if it meant embracing the supernatural. In this respect, he was more akin to his mentor, Newton. Yet his dependence on public lecturing and the sale of sensational writings made Whiston a creature of the new commercial age, whether he liked it or not. He depended on a public always eager to read about prophecies, angels, demons and monsters. These readers were not much bothered by inconsistencies or lapses from orthodoxy. The reaction of the educated elite was less favourable. The shipwreck of Whiston's academic ambitions demonstrates how heterodox religious beliefs could instantly relegate even a Newtonian to the margins of intellectual respectability. It was not Whiston's views on the Sibylline oracles that made him an outsider: it was his doubts about the Trinity.
Ultimately, the Newtonian Magi were not successful in rehabilitating occult thinking. Newton's Chronology was widely criticized. Stukeley failed to make astrology acceptable to the Royal Society, and Whiston ended up as a joke due to Mrs Tofts the rabbit-woman. Nevertheless, their appropriation of the occult shows the inadequacy of setting up an eighteenth-century Newtonian Enlightenment in opposition to the occult “irrationalism” of a former age. The interchange between natural philosophy and occult thinking continued, albeit on a more abstract level. Perhaps the most enduring result of the interchange can be seen in the development of Freemasonry. Whether Whiston was initiated is unknown, but he was willing to tap into the favourite themes of the Masons. He translated the works of the Jewish historian Josephus, including an account of the Temple of Jerusalem, and in 1726 he supervised the construction of a model of Solomon's Temple, on which he gave numerous lectures, opining that the Jews would soon be restored to the Holy Land.98 As in so many other respects, his views were eccentric, but audiences were drawn to them by a fascination with the Temple that was sustained in large part by Freemasonry. Stukeley, a dedicated Mason, catered to the same spirit when he linked Stonehenge to the Temple of Solomon. “It seems likely,” he stated, “that when Stonehenge was built, the Druids had some notice from phoenician traders, of the nature of Solomon's temple.”99 British Freemasons would have been thrilled to learn that the sacred building from which the secrets of the Craft were derived had been rebuilt on their shores. Stukeley's greatest gift to Masonry, however, was to verify its ancestry in the mystery cults of the ancient world.
The Ancient Mysteries
In May 1738, William Stukeley was visited at his home near Stamford by his friend and clerical colleague William Warburton. “I observed to him,” noted Stukeley in his diary, “that our modern Free-masonry Ceremonys are derivd from the antient initiations of the Myst[er]ys, or descent into hell.”100 Stukeley was aware, of course, that the clergyman to whom he was speaking was the recent author of a controversial work, The Divine Legation of Moses, in which the belief in an afterlife was traced to the ancient mystery cults. He did not record Warburton's reply, but it is hard to imagine Stukeley making such a remark to somebody who would be unreceptive to it. In fact, Warburton's treatment of the mysteries upheld Stukeley's claim, which had become widespread among Freemasons. For some readers, The Divine Legation gave a dense, deeply learned reply to the question: what was Masonry about?
Freemasonry was about many things in the early eighteenth century. Within the official Grand Lodge, it was a means of bolstering Hanoverian loyalty and support for the government, through the election of grand masters who were connected to the ruling regime. It was also the forum for a quasi-democratic male sociability that brought members of the aristocracy and gentry together with representatives of the middling sort. It imparted the values of politeness, civility and religious tolerance. It provided a network of patronage by which artists and high-end craftsmen could establish links with potential customers. Finally, it had the allure of a secret society, whose arcane rituals offered a promise of hidden knowledge.101 The impact of Freemasonry was no doubt profound, but it should not be exaggerated. Although Masons might share certain attitudes, there was no single unifying Masonic project beyond the preservation of the secrets of the Craft.
Masonic secrets were handed down through initiation rites that related to death and rebirth. These ceremonies employed imagery (skulls, ladders, the zodiac, stars, pentacles) that was reminiscent of occult science or even ritual magic. Whether the secrets of Masonry amounted to knowledge of the supernatural, however, was a matter of opinion. Its rites could be regarded as purely symbolic or as opening an entrance to divine wisdom. Three writers whose works have been associated with early Masonry—John Toland, Robert Samber and Martin Clare—took very different approaches to the issue. Toland called for a priesthood
of Brothers, dedicated to pantheism and natural magic, while Samber flirted with the supernatural. Clare, like William Stukeley, dredged up aspects of occult philosophy in order to vindicate the tie between Masonry and the ancient mysteries.
Plenty of mystery surrounds the writings of these men. John Toland's relationship to the occult is as difficult to unravel as his personal background (he was reputed to be the illegitimate son of an Irish priest). His fervent admiration for the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600, may have originated in a shared opposition to what Toland called “priestcraft,” but it extended to Bruno's unorthodox opinions on religion and the universe as well. Egyptian polytheism, according to Bruno, was a pure form of the original religion, notably in its recognition of the divine in natural creatures. This observation alone would have placed Bruno perilously close to the flames of inquisitorial retribution. He believed in the infinitude of space and the existence of innumerable worlds, concepts that flew directly in the face of the Newtonian system.102 Toland endorsed all of these views, and even defended Bruno's use of the term Magia. “It is certain that by Magia in his writings nothing else is meant,” Toland wrote, unhelpfully, “other than learned and not vulgar, although especially natural, knowledge.”103 Did it also mean supernatural knowledge?
Bruno's theories of the universe were the starting point for Pantheisticon (1720). Written in Latin and aimed at a European audience that was as yet unfamiliar with Freemasonry, it introduced a “New Fellowship” of “SOCRATIC SOCIETIES” composed of “Pantheists.” The first part of Toland's work outlined a materialist philosophy of the universe, based on the idea that from “the infinite Whole [Totius infiniti] … innumerable species of things arise, of which every single individual is no less form than matter, as form is nothing else, than a disposition of certain parts in a body.”104 The number of elements is infinite, and each element is both eternal and indestructible. While the process by which elements are made has no beginning and no end, the “Hebrew Cabalists” and certain “gentile Philosophers”—meaning, no doubt, Francis Mercurius van Helmont—are chided for believing that anything can be created out of nothing. Toland displayed more sympathy towards alchemists, who seek to change the elements back to an original substance, although they too are to be disappointed: “Here, Spagyricists, alas! no hope is left of Chrysopoeia [i.e. gold-making].”105
Toland's pantheism left the spagyricists at a dead end. In a universe of infinite differentiation, with no prime mover and no ultimate resolution, alchemy was unable to reconstruct the orderly, purposeful stages of creation. The pantheist cosmos was certainly not Newtonian; neither can it easily be reconciled with the Masonic emphasis on the harmonious work of the divine Architect. Yet the Socratic Society described in the second part of Toland's work was very similar to Freemasonry: a brotherhood of equals, meeting for sociable and intellectual purposes. They were also priests. In spite of his contempt for “Priest-craft [Hierotechnen],” the pantheists are themselves called by Toland “Mystics and Hierophants of Nature.” Like the Druids, to whom they are explicitly compared, they are followers of Pythagoras and “seekers of occult things [quaestoribus occultarum rerum].”106
If Toland had the Freemasons in mind when he wrote of the Socratic Society, he was dreaming: they were not a band of modern pantheists, and they did not worship nature. More likely, he was encouraging the Masons to model themselves on his ideal brotherhood. He was not notably successful, although his writings may have contributed to negative images of Masonry. Toland's was in fact the first attempt to link the Craft to a specific philosophy of the universe. While it was extreme in its materialism and its rejection of revealed religion, it retained a healthy regard for hidden or occult knowledge. Toland was also the first to compare Masons openly to a Druidic priesthood. In this, he foreshadowed a generation of Masonic enthusiasts who would become prominent in the 1720s and 1730s, including Stukeley.
The writings of Robert Samber point in a more supernatural direction. Born into a prominent Protestant family of Lymington in Hampshire, Samber had a Catholic mother, and in his early twenties he entered the English College at Rome to pursue a clerical career. Changing his mind, Samber then scurried back to England, where he became a hack writer and translator. His best-known translations were of the racy novel Venus in the Cloister, for which the publisher Edmund Curll was prosecuted for obscenity in 1725, and Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose.107 Samber was extraordinarily well connected in Masonic circles. His 1722 translation of a French treatise on the art and architecture of Rome was dedicated to the earl of Burlington, the celebrated Whig nobleman and foremost instigator of the revival of classical architecture that became known as Palladianism.108 Burlington was almost certainly a Freemason, although he never served as an officer of the Grand Lodge and may have been a member of the rival York Lodge, based in northern England.109 Apart from Burlington, Samber attached himself to the duke of Wharton, the headstrong scion of an eminent Whig family who became grand master of the Grand Lodge in 1722–3. A secret Jacobite, Wharton later revealed his political sympathies and fled from England. Among Samber's papers is a letter written to Wharton in 1727, deploring a report that the duke had become a Catholic monk and begging him to throw himself on the mercy of King George II. In his own wayward youth, Samber had almost certainly been a Jacobite, but by the late 1720s he was eager to dissociate himself from the inconvenient cause of the exiled Stuarts.110
Samber's most significant Masonic relationship was with a staunch government Whig, the 2nd duke of Montagu, whose lavish patronage was also enjoyed by William Stukeley. In 1721–2, Montagu had become the first nobleman to serve as grand master of the Grand Lodge. Although a notorious practical joker, Montagu was also a man of learning and Fellow of the Royal Society. His London townhouse later became the site of the British Museum. Both the mischievous and the serious sides of Montagu's character would have been entertained by a bizarre French work translated by Samber in 1722, entitled Long Livers. The name “Eugenius Philalethes” appears on the title page, a reference of course to the alchemical philosopher Thomas Vaughan, although Samber was generous enough to bestow a Fellowship of the Royal Society on his pseudonymous self. Samber had recently used the same alias in a work recommending home remedies for the plague (including chemical antidotes) that was dedicated to Montagu. Long Livers was even more ambitious: it promised to reveal “the rare SECRET of REJUVENESCENCY” discovered by the thirteenth-century Aragonese alchemist Arnaldus de Villa-Nova, as well as to give the recipe for “the UNIVERSAL MEDICINE,” a by-product of the Philosopher's Stone.111
The verbose dedication of Long Livers to the “Fraternity of Free Masons of Great-Britain and Ireland” makes no secret of appealing to a Masonic audience. Like Toland, “Philalethes” extols the Freemasons as “a royal Priesthood.” In praising the wonders of creation, however, and in rejecting atheism, Long Livers stands in sharp contrast to Pantheisticon. Most of the dedication is a strange, rambling concoction of biblical history, anti-Catholicism and violent prejudices against lawyers, punctuated with thinly disguised Masonic themes. Moses, for example, is described as “a great Astonomer,” who, while casting out idolatry, preserved a religion of “pompous Sacrifices, Rites and Ceremonies, magnificent Sacerdotal and Levitical Vestments, and a vast Number of mystical Hieroglyphics.” Samber evidently had in mind the rituals, vestments and symbols of the Masonic fraternity. He made a single enticing reference to Rosicrucian lore by citing “the book M” (probably Magia), which Christian Rosenkreuz had translated from Arabic into Latin, and which contained the secret wisdom of ancient days. The dedication to Long Livers was rounded off with an alchemical tour of Solomon's Temple, in which the Holy of Holies becomes “the King of GEMMS,” a light emanating out of “that transparent Pyramid of purple Salt more sparkling and radiant than the finest orient Ruby.”112
Unlike Toland, Samber had few philosophical pretensions. He enhanced the air of mystery that surrounded
the Freemasons by suggesting that they possessed hidden knowledge of real value, similar to that of the alchemists and Rosicrucians. He even attempted to rewrite Masonic rituals in accordance with this occult programme. Among Samber's surviving manuscripts are a series of prayers and invocations for initiation ceremonies, which blend the alchemical imagery of Long Livers (“celestial Salt more precious and shining than the Orient Ruby”) with standard Masonic formulations.113 Whether they were actually used in any lodge is doubtful, but they were surely devised to impress the author's aristocratic patrons.
Samber's involvement with the occult went further than this. While the dedication to Long Livers does not refer to ritual magic, Samber's private papers do not avoid the topic. They contain the manuscripts of two treatises on the raising of spirits. The first, entitled “The Magician,” was purportedly an edition of some letters exchanged in 1704 between the Huguenot minister Pierre Jurieu and the Dutch scholar Gijsbert Cuper, concerning a vision of the English royal family seen in a “looking glass” by a Roman necromancer during the reign of Henry VII. Samber added to the work a long introduction, describing the “Teraphims” or cult images used by the ancient Israelites. He refers to them as “human figures, or perhaps mystical ones, and mixed with the figure or some animals, made under certain constellations, by the influences of which constellations, these figures or statues received the power of speech, when they were consulted about obscure matters.”114 Evidently, he was searching for a biblical justification for ritual magic, but the idea of prophesying images is curiously redolent of the alleged heresy of the medieval Knights Templar, who were accused of worshipping a talking head. A second, unfinished work among Samber's papers, bearing the intriguing title “Psychology,” deals with apparitions of spirits. In this, he admitted that some apparitions could be explained by natural causes, but asserted that many were real. Furthermore, he did not shrink from putting his readers in touch with them. One of the last, unwritten chapters of this work was devoted to “The way to conjure Spirits.”115
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