Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  After an initial burst of enthusiasm, some Swedenborgians had second thoughts about magnetic healing, among them Benedict Chastanier. He served as assistant to Mainauduc for ten months, then began to offer lessons on animal magnetism himself. By 1786, however, Chastanier had moved away from conventional Mesmerist notions, endorsing the view that they were “not only vicious as to morality, but also very dangerous as to physic.”59 According to a Swedenborgian critic of animal magnetism, Dr William Spence, Chastanier “at last found out its evil tendency, and like an honest man first abandoned the practice and next exposed it.” In a 1787 work on the spirit world, Chastanier denounced animal magnetism as “modern quackery, which is a true branch of magic.”60 He meant diabolical magic, as he was not opposed to occult science; apparently, Chastanier practised alchemy “to distract himself.”61 Chastanier always followed his own lights, but his initial fascination with animal magnetism may be connected with a deeper religious issue: namely, universal salvation. He was well known in Swedenborgian circles as the possessor of certain original manuscripts by Swedenborg, passed on to him by Auguste Nordenskjöld. He insisted that they gave him an insight into “the Assessor's” mind to which no other follower could aspire. In 1791, in The New Magazine of Knowledge Concerning Heaven and Hell, he defended “universal restitution” as being part of Swedenborg's teachings.62 In short, the punishment of the wicked was not eternal.

  It seems odd that “universal restitution” should have become a divisive question for animal magnetists, but it did. Both John Holloway and John Cue attacked the doctrine, although neither was a Swedenborgian.63 Universal salvation, of course, provided a justification for human freedom and the perfectibility of society. It was conducive to radical political views. When the English Dissenters, on three separate occasions between 1787 and 1790, asked Parliament for the suspension of the Test and Corporation Acts, which kept them from holding political office, the spread of the doctrine of universal salvation among them—especially among Unitarians like Joseph Priestley—was a factor in the rejection of their demands.64 Animal magnetism could be seen as promising an earthly form of universal salvation, by which any ailment could be healed by an occult power. Critics perceived that this would distribute divine blessings indiscriminately. “Magnetic attraction,” one of them fumed, “seems to have levelled all distinctions; so that believers, and unbelievers, Turks, Jews, and Schismaticks, may be found mingled together in the number of its disciples.” In his own condemnation of animal magnetism, George Winter compared its alleged cures to tales of people being suddenly struck dead by the hand of God. “Can man perform such acts as the above?” he asked, answering sternly, “No.”65 Only divine power could decide who was fit to receive supernatural assistance.

  An association with controversial religious doctrines did animal magnetism no good in the eyes of loyalist commentators at a time when a supposedly “atheist” and utopian revolution was raging in France. Added to this, most of those in the upper ranks of society who had received treatment or lessons from magnetists were supporters of the Whig Party, some of whose leaders were accused of sympathy with the French. The practice of magnetizing was already declining by 1793, when the outbreak of war heightened the atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. At this point, animal magnetism almost disappeared. Evidence of classes and healing sessions virtually vanishes. The planned second volume of Mainauduc's Lectures never appeared, probably due to a lack of subscribers. The accounts by Sibly and Barrett were the only significant descriptions of the therapy published between 1795 and 1815. Magnetic healing did not revive again until after the conflict with France was over. In England, animal magnetism was effectively a casualty of war.

  If it depended so much on the occult, should animal magnetism be interpreted as exemplifying what Robert Darnton has called “the end of the Enlightenment”? No magnetist wrote of bringing the Enlightenment to an end, and none was dismissive of science. English animal magnetism mixed an older rhetoric of spiritual healing with the more recent, quasi-scientific language of Mesmer and his followers. No contradiction between the two was admitted. After all, the mutual attraction of invisible forces was compatible with various ways of interpreting the universe. It was the basis of Newtonian gravity, but also of Behmenist spirituality and of what Swedenborg had called “correspondences” between the spiritual and physical worlds. Recognizing this, the English magnetists tried to combine the languages of spirituality and science. They stressed the powers of the mind, which they equated with the spirit or soul, and sometimes even accepted that they were working through the imaginations of their patients. Yet they had no doubt that real physiological changes would result from their treatments. In a sense, they were stretching the Enlightenment concept of rationality to include things that might be regarded as irrational, just as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung would later attempt to do.

  The critics of magnetism also mixed reason and religion, and were quick to deny that they were rationalist sceptics. Some saw magnetists as falling into diabolic practices—if their claims to healing were true, then Satan must be at the bottom of it. Others believed that only God could carry out the cures to which animal magnetism aspired. As for opposition to magnetism from the scientific establishment, it was sporadic and uncoordinated, as one might expect in a nation that lacked a powerful source of intellectual authority. No leading scientist chose to write extensively on the subject, and no commission of the Royal Society was appointed to investigate it. In the end, it was political events, not science, that ended the convulsive rise of animal magnetism in England.

  Nephew of the Almighty

  Animal magnetism could generate prophetic visions. This became a source of fascination for Swedenborgians, who regarded the “Crisis” as an “exstatic state” that “can not be reconciled with all the psychological experiences that are known to us.”66 Prophecy that arose from a sensory link to the supernatural, rather than from reading Scripture, had always fascinated devotees of the occult. By the late eighteenth century, the Swedenborgians were actively looking for prophets, and they were not the only ones. The American and French revolutions seem to have revived the almost defunct spirit of prophecy in England, and given it a new edge. Those who now dared to predict the will of God, almost all of them ordinary people of the lower social ranks, tended to take an anti-establishment stance, criticizing the government and the Church while calling for immediate moral change so as to avert divine wrath. This tendency towards subversive prophecy had been seen before, of course, in the mid-seventeenth century. What was new was the extent to which prophets were listened to and even sponsored by learned people with occult interests. The most famous of these relationships involved Richard Brothers, “Nephew of the Almighty,” whose prophecies made a sensation in the mid-1790s. His case convinced the government that prophecy was potentially dangerous, and dragged members of occult circles into the glare of an unwelcome publicity.

  A pro-Brothers pamphlet of 1795 detailed other recent examples of prophetic powers. They included John Lambert of Leeds, who in 1770 told a visiting American minister that “a great man shall arise in your country, and you shall have a king and no king.” A few years later, Lord George Gordon read and took to heart the words of Martha Ery of Suffolk, who lived by spinning and was thought to be a lunatic. In 1764, she had written down a prophecy concerning “a young man of noble blood” who “shall come out of the North … and he shall trouble the money-changers, and he shall fall by the hands of the Queen … Kings shall die, and more kings yet!” Although this probably foretold an unlikely Jacobite restoration, Gordon believed that it referred to himself. A third prophet, Hannah Green of Leeds, a.k.a. Ling Bob, foretold in 1785 that kings and queens would lose their lives, and that “a distant nation, who have been dragged from their country, will rise, as one man, and deliver themselves from their oppressors.” Green's words were interpreted as a reference to the Haitian slave uprising. Two better-known prophets were also mentioned in this pamphlet: Ebenezer Sibly,
who had predicted a revolution in France as early as 1784, and Joseph Priestley, who had announced that the wars in Europe presaged the end of the world.67 Without doubt, local prophets like Lambert, Ery and Green had been casting forth similar predictions throughout the eighteenth century, but the American and French revolutions suddenly brought attention to these obscure figures.

  Brothers was not the only one to pick up the signal that many people in England were waiting for a prophet. In 1792, Henry Hardy published an account of waking on a Sabbath morning to the sight of “thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of angels, sitting down in regular ranks.” As he was carried up to heaven, the angels began to sing, asking God to protect him. He became infused with divine knowledge. The Lord told him that Britain was to become a special domain: “The kingdom of heaven was taken for the Jews, and is now given to this nation.” In order for this to be achieved, God had raised up a man “to put an end to the power of the Pope.” Who was that man? Hardy made it plain enough by assuring his readers that “I shall come forward when I am called for,” adding that he could be contacted through Mr James Ridgway, bookseller of St James's Square. This prophecy may seem patriotic rather than subversive, but Hardy condemned the Anglican bishops for ignoring him and warned that God would punish his enemies.68 He does not seem to have enjoyed much of a following, and he was mocked in one magazine as “either an inspired vessel, or a lunatic: for the sake of his humility, we should be glad to think him the latter.”69 By this time, however, Richard Brothers was already experiencing similar visions, which, when published in 1795, would make a far bigger impact. The difference was the outbreak of war with France.

  Meanwhile, the devotees of the occult continued their hunt for prophets. Whether they were trying to find a visionary successor to Swedenborg, or were simply interested in what the future might portend, is not clear. In 1788, the Reverend Richard Clarke, an Independent minister, sent General Rainsford an account that he had received from a colleague in West Auckland, Durham, regarding his maid, a young woman from Darlington named Margaret. She had experienced visions of an angel “who has told her the Lord was shortly about to destroy the Wicked from the face of the Earth.” More surprisingly, her employer, accompanied by another preacher, saw the angel appear in a wood near his house. Clarke was certain that this vision foretold “a wonderful Event to fall out this Year.”70 Then, in 1790, Suzette Labrousse, the Prophetess of Périgord, emerged in France. Piously Catholic and extraordinarily self-effacing, her inspired utterances favoured the French Revolution. Already a practitioner of magnetic healing by the time she became famous, Labrousse was adopted by occult enthusiasts and Mesmerists in Paris, who published her statements in the Journal Prophétique. Unfortunately, in 1792, Labrousse went on an ill-advised journey to Rome, to convert the pope to revolutionary principles, which resulted in six years of imprisonment.71

  The career of Suzette Labrousse provided a model for that of Richard Brothers. He first appeared on the public stage in 1794, in the midst of government prosecutions against the leaders of the London Corresponding Society and other radical clubs. These legal tactics failed, and in 1795 the London radicals began to organize mass meetings to demand universal manhood suffrage and peace with France. A growing dearth of foodstuffs increased the appeal of their message. When an attack was made on the king's coach, William Pitt the younger's government took the opportunity to propose both a Bill extending the definition of treason and a Seditious Meetings Bill, allowing magistrates to disperse public meetings. When these “Two Acts” became law, they effectively crushed the organizing activities of the radicals.72 Brothers had no personal connection with the democratic clubs, so far as is known, but he did favour peace with France. As the policy of the French government changed in 1794–5 from the furious patriotism of the Jacobins to the milder republicanism of the Directory, peace became thinkable for Britain's government; but the pressure of alliances, combined with French military successes, made negotiations difficult.73 As a result, Pitt's ministry desperately wanted to stifle any popular peace movement before it gathered momentum.

  Richard Brothers seems an unlikely man to have led such a movement. Born in Placentia, Newfoundland, he became a sailor in the Royal Navy and rose to the rank of lieutenant before being discharged at the end of the American War of Independence. He travelled through Europe, settling in London in 1787, where he worshipped as a Baptist, although Quaker influences may have induced him to become a vegetarian and refuse to swear oaths. Unable to draw his naval pension because he objected to taking the required oath, Brothers became destitute and was confined first to a workhouse, then to Newgate prison on a charge of non-payment of debts. He was finally released after accepting his pension, which he agreed to do only after striking King George's “blasphemous” titles from the document. He began receiving visions from God in 1791, and within two years became convinced that certain people in Britain were descendants of the ancient Jews, including himself. Only he could recognize these people, because he was the divinely designated “Prince of the Hebrews,” descended from James, brother of Jesus, and therefore “Nephew to the Almighty.”74 Two volumes of his prophecies were published in the summer of 1794 by George Riebau, a Swedenborgian who styled himself “Printer to the Nephew of the Almighty.” In the first volume, Brothers revealed that God had told him to “shew an example of precision to the Learned,” as well as to “give instruction to the Poor.” London, “the SPIRITUAL BABYLON,” marked by commerce and luxury, was to be destroyed, but the descendants of the Jews were to be saved. They must acknowledge, however, that “I am the Prophet that will be revealed to the Jews to order their departure from all Nations to go to the Land of Israel, their own country.”75

  The second volume was more politically explosive. Brothers identified the winged lion in the vision of Daniel with George III, and the plucking of his wings with “taking away the Power of the King.” He added that “the Revolution in France, and its consequences, proceeded entirely from the Judgement of God to fulfill this Prophecy of Daniel.” He predicted the destruction of Prussia, Spain and Sardinia, as well as a Dutch defection to the French side. He foresaw a new war with the United States. To bolster his credibility, Brothers recounted a vision foretelling the 1792 assassination of King Gustavus III of Sweden. A pointing finger had revealed to him “the speedy End of the present King of England and his Empire, like Belshazzar and Babylon.” His work culminated with an amazing statement: “The Lord God commands me to say to you, George the Third, King of England, that immediately upon my being revealed in London to the Hebrews as their Prince, and to all nations as their Governor, your Crown must be delivered up to me, that all your power and authority may instantly cease.”76 The government might have ignored even this, if Brothers's prophecies had not become so popular. In 1795, the year of corn shortages and mass meetings, four editions of his visions were published in London. Stirred to action, the Pitt administration had him questioned by a committee of the Privy Council, which decided to declare Brothers insane and have him confined to a madhouse. They did not, however, prevent him from publishing further works, or from keeping in touch with his supporters.77

  Scriptural prophecy, of course, is an established feature of Christianity, and while it may test the limits of conventional religion, it usually has nothing to do with occult ways of thinking. What connected Brothers to the occult? First, he claimed supernatural power, by representing himself, not just as the interpreter, but as the enforcer of the divine will. His belief in the “invisible Hebrews” related to hidden signs only Brothers could interpret. It was also reminiscent of the theory that the Druids were descendants of ancient Jews. Brothers may have been aware of the recent revival of interest in the Druids, spearheaded by the Welsh ex-stonemason and poet Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams), which led to meetings of the “Bardic Order” at Primrose Hill, north of London, in the early 1790s. Iolo was an admirer of the French Revolution and a believer in the transmigration of souls. He concocted
elaborate Druidic myths and designed fantastical costumes for initiates of his Order. Like William Stukeley, he envisioned the Druids as the inheritors of true patriarchal religion. He saw their descendants as the modern Welsh, however, and he did not claim to know them by visionary insight.78

  A second link between Brothers and the occult was revealed in later editions of his prophecies. In a peroration, which was twice repeated, the prophet addressed the noted chemist, alchemist and Fellow of the Royal Society Peter Woulfe: “And you PETER WOULFE—one of the Avignon Society, whom the Lord my God commands me to mention here as a testimony of his great regard—your Property confiscated in France will all be restored with interest, and much kindness shewn to you by the Members of its government.”79 Woulfe had already returned the compliment. In July 1794, he sent General Rainsford copies of the first edition of Brothers's work. Woulfe maintained that “they contain very wonderful things, and I fear we shall find all he says to be true. The Lord Allmighty prepare us to receive with patience & submission to his holy will, the afflictions which he is about to send us.” Woulfe was no radical—in fact, he finished his letter by exhorting God to protect the king and his family, for “would not he be in danger, if our vile english Jacobins were in Power?”80 Woulfe read the prophecies of Brothers not as promises of liberation from monarchical tyranny, but as a forecast of “afflictions.” It is impossible to say how many other readers interpreted them similarly.