Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  6. Joshua Childrey, Indago Astrologica: or, A Brief and Modest Enquiry into Some Principal Points of Astrology, As It Was Delivered by the Fathers of It, and Is Now Generally Received by the Sons of It (London, 1653), p. 9.

  7. Henry Coley, Nuncius Sydereus: or, The Starry Messenger for the Year of our Redemption 1687 (London, 1687), sig. C7v. The title of Coley's almanac was also that of a celebrated tract by Galileo. Not all astrologers accepted Copernicus. For an anti-Copernican argument, see James Bowker, Bowker, 1680: An Almanack for the Year of our Lord God 1680 (London, 1680), sigs C3v–C8. See Noriss S. Hetherington, “Almanacs and the Extent of Knowledge of the New Astronomy in Seventeenth-Century England,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 119, 4 (1975), pp. 275–9.

  8. One of the endearing peculiarities of the original Dictionary of National Biography was that virtually every major astrologer was noticed in it. They are also included in the new ODNB.

  9. Lilly was imprisoned in 1653 by Parliament, in 1661 by the royalist government. He complained in 1644 that his almanacs were censored by the Parliamentary licenser of the press, John Booker, a fellow astrologer. He was more quiescent in the 1660s and 1670s, when his almanacs were censored by the king's infamous licenser, Sir Roger L'Estrange. Booker himself complained of “obliterations” made in his predictions for 1665–6 concerning the Anglo-Dutch War: John Booker, Telescopium Uranicum Repurgatum et Limatum: or, Physical, Astrological and Meteorological Observations for the Year of Christ's Incarnation MDCLXVII (London, 1667), sig.C2. Astrological books could also be suppressed for their political content: for example, The Book of the Prodigies, or Book of Wonders in 1662. See Curry, Prophecy and Power, pp. 46–8, where a different interpretation is placed on this evidence.

  10. Joseph Blagrave, Blagrave's Introduction to Astrology (London, 1682). The copy in the Huntington Library (shelfmark 325764) belonged to John Evelyn.

  11. John Goad, Astro-Meteorologica, or Aphorisms and Discourses of the Bodies Celestial, their Natures and Influences (London, 1686); John Goad, Astro-meteorologia Sana: Sive Principia Physico-Mathematica (London, 1690).

  12. Goad, Astro-Meteorologica, pp. 12, 530.

  13. John Flamsteed, “Hecker,” in Michael Hunter, “Science and Astrology in Seventeenth-Century England: An Unpublished Polemic by John Flamsteed,” in his Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995), pp. 245–85, quotation on p. 281; John Gadbury, Cardines Coeli: or, An Appeal to the Learned and Experienced Observers of Sublunars and their Vicissitudes, Whether the Cardinal Signs of Heaven Are Not Most Influential upon Men and Things? (London, 1685), sig. A2v, p. 5.

  14. Flamsteed, “Hecker,” in Hunter, “Science and Astrology,” p. 273; and for Flamsteed and Goad, ibid., pp. 249–50, 251.

  15. A good starting place for understanding the practice of astrology is J.C. Eade, The Forgotten Sky: A Guide to Astrology in English Literature (Oxford, 1984).

  16. Alice Culpeper, “To the Reader,” in [Nicholas Culpeper], Mr. Culpepper's Treatise of Aurum Potabile … To Which Is Added: Mr. Culpepper's Ghost (London, 1656), sig. A5v.

  17. Lancelot Coelson, Uranicum: or, An Almanack for the Year of our Redemption 1687 (London, 1687), sig. C3v.

  18. [William Drage], Daimonomageia: A Small Treatise of Sicknesses and Disease from Witchcraft, and Supernatural Causes (London, 1665), p. 39.

  19. Josten, ed., Ashmole, vol. 2, p. 538; vol. 4, pp. 1608–32, and notes in the index under “Sigils.” According to Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 635, Lilly sent Ashmole “a trunkload” of sigils in January 1667. Lilly describes them only as “the greatest Arcana's any privat person in Euroap hath,” which could denote a variety of occult objects or even texts. As they belonged to Sir Robert Holborne, a devotee of astrology, Thomas is probably right in assuming that they included sigils. Josten, ed., Ashmole, vol. 3, p. 1076, citing B.L., Sloane Ms. 3822, f. 48. Henry Coley, Lilly's successor, was accused of making sigils in the 1690s, as will be seen below, in Chapter five.

  20. Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 180 (Booker), 183 (Booker), 339, ff. 176–9 (Booker), 426 (Booker), 427 (Lilly); 428 (Booker), 430 (Lilly); Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 305–22. It is not clear how Thomas derived social information from these casebooks. Curiously, nobody since Thomas seems to have made a systematic study of them, and nobody has yet broken Booker's shorthand.

  21. Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 427 (Lilly), ff. 200, 260.

  22. Wellcome Lib., Ms. 4279; Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds, The Diary of Samuel Pepys (11 vols, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000), vol. 9: 1668–9, pp. 100–1; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 12th Report, Appendix, Part 7: The Manuscripts of S.H. Le Fleming, Esq., of Rydal Hall (London, 1890), p. 55 n. 956.

  23. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 319, 330.

  24. The most important work on almanacs is Bernard Capp, English Almanacs, 1500–1800: Astrology and the Popular Press (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979).

  25. Cyprian Blagden, “The Distribution of Almanacks in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Studies in Bibliography, 11 (1958), pp. 108–17, Table 1. The treasurer's Warehouse Book on which Blagden relied is now available on microfilm as Records of the Stationers’ Company (RSC), reel 84. The collection is described in Robin Myers, ed., The Stationers’ Company Archive: An Account of the Records, 1554–1984 (Winchelsea and Detroit, 1990).

  26. Blagden, “Distribution of Almanacks,” p. 114.

  27. William and Robert Chambers, Chambers’ Encyclopaedia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People (London and Edinburgh, 1874), vol. 1, p. 162; [John Forbes], An Almanack or, New Prognostication (Aberdeen, 1666), sig. C5, for his response to a triennial almanac originating at Edinburgh. Forbes later wrote and printed The Mariner's Everlasting Almanack (2nd ed., Aberdeen, 1683).

  28. James Paterson, Edinburgh's True Almanack; or A New Prognostication for the Year of Our Lord 1685 (Edinburgh, 1685), sig. A2.

  29. A pamphlet that sold twenty thousand copies in the seventeenth century would have been considered a runaway bestseller. Several almanacs regularly reached that number, and a few surpassed it. No reliable figures for overall newspaper circulations exist before 1710, but it is likely they outsold almanacs on a yearly basis, even before the repeal of the Licensing Act in 1694. A bi-weekly journal with a circulation of 2,500 would sell 260,000 copies annually, which compares well with total almanac sales. On the other hand, even using a multiplier of three readers per newspaper, this would mean only 7,500 people were exposed to each issue. A successful almanac could reach twice as many people as that.

  30. The best recent treatment of the period is in Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London, 2005), chs 3–4, 6.

  31. Henry Coley, Nuncius Coelestis: or, Urania's Messenger, Exhibiting a Brief Description and Survey of the Year of Humane Redemption 1680 (London, 1679), sig. C5.

  32. Capp, English Almanacs, pp. 92–3; Gadbury, Cardines Coeli, p. 35. The information behind the “Meal Tub Plot” was discredited in court, which led to Gadbury's release: see The Case of Tho. Dangerfield (London, 1680), pp. 5–9, for Gadbury's testimony; Thomas Dangerfield, Animadversions upon Mr. John Gadbury's Almanack, or Diary for the Year of Our Lord 1682 (London, 1682), for the chief informer's response. Gadbury always denied being a Roman Catholic convert.

  33. Partridge changed the name of his almanac from the obscure EKKΛHΣIAΛOΓIA to Mercurius Coelestis in 1681 and Mercurius Redivivus in 1684. He also published Prodromus: or, An Astrological Essay upon Those Configurarions of the Celestial Bodies, Whose Effects Will Appear in 1680 and 1681 in Some Kingdoms of Europe (London, 1680), which contained reflections on the Popish Plot.

  34. John Tanner, Angelus Britannicus: An Ephemeris for the Year of our Redemption 1683 (London, 1683), sig. C4v.

  35. Capp, English Almanacs, p. 50.

  36. Coley, Nuncius Coelestis … 1680, sig. C6v.

&n
bsp; 37. Goad, Astro-Meteorologica, p. 39.

  38. Partridge, Prodromus, p. 5.

  39. Willliam Lilly, Christian Astrology (2nd ed., London, 1659), Dedication, sigs A4-A4v.

  40. Henry Coley, Astrologiae Elimata: or, A Key to the Whole Art of Astrology New Filed and Polished (2nd ed., London, 1676), sigs A3-A3v. This work was dedicated to Elias Ashmole, whose copy is in Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 150.

  41. William Lilly, Mr. Willliam Lilly's History of his Life and Times (London, 1715), pp. 11–12, 21–2, 31–2, 74, 115–16. The original is in Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 421, ff. 178–222v. The presentment at Middlesex sessions is found at ibid., f. 229.

  42. Lilly, History of his Life, pp. 98–103; Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 421, ff. 220–1.

  43. The most notable female astrologer was Sarah Jinner, who compiled an almanac full of radical social views in 1658–9: see Capp, English Almanacs, p. 87. Henry Coley wrote contemptuously of “many ignorant and illiterate Professors of both Sex”. Coley, Clavis Astrologia, sig. A4v.

  44. Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 240, ff. 284–303. For angels in astrology and ritual magic, see Owen Davies, “Angels in Elite and Popular Magic, 1650–1790,” in Peter Marshall and Alexandra Walsham, eds, Angels in the Early Modern World (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 297–319.

  45. Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (London, 1650), book 3, ch. 12, p. 379.

  46. Robert Fludd, Mosaicall Philosophy, Grounded upon the Essentiall Truth, or Eternal Sapience (London, 1659), section 1, book 4, ch: 2, pp. 59–60.

  47. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, in Geoffrey Keynes, ed., The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1964), p. 41.

  48. George Wharton, “A Brief Discourse of the Soul of the World, and the Universal Spirit Thereof,” in John Gadbury, ed., The Works of the Late Most Excellent Philosopher and Astrologer Sir George Wharton Bar[onet]., (London, 1683), pp. 645, 659.

  49. Booker, Telescopium Uranicum … MDCLXVII, Dedication, sig. A1v.

  50. Josten, ed., Ashmole, vol. 2, p. 537, n. 3.

  51. Lilly, Christian Astrology, pp. 465–6.

  52. Blagrave, Astrological Practice of Physick, “To all my Loving Country-Men.” Needless to say, the book was dedicated to Elias Ashmole. On p. 28, Blagrave states that “the stars are God's Messengers.”

  53. Ibid., p. 36.

  54. Ibid., p. 140.

  55. John Booker, Telescopium Uranicum: or, An Almanack and Prognostication, Physical, Astrological, & Meteorological, for the Year of CHRIST's Incarnation MDCLXIV (London, 1664), sig. C7.

  56. Gadbury, ed., Works of Wharton, Preface, sig. a2.

  57. John Gadbury, ΕΦΗΜΕΡΙΣ: or, A Diary Astronomical and Astrological for the Year of Grace 1664 (London, 1664), sig. C5v. For the accusation that Gadbury had once been a follower of Abiezer Coppe, the Ranter, see [John Partridge], Mene Tekel: Being an Astrological Judgment on the Great and Wonderful Year 1688 (London, [1689]), p. 2. The political implications of Gadbury and Partridge's new approaches to astrology are considered in Patrick Curry, “Saving Astrology in Restoration England: ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ Reforms,” in Patrick Curry, ed., Astrology, Science and Society: Historical Essays (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987), pp. 245–60.

  58. John Gadbury, ΕΦΗΜΕΡΙΣ: or, A Diary Astronomical and Astrological for the Year of Grace 1679 (London, 1679), sig. C8v.

  59. John Gadbury, Thesaurus Astrologiae: or, An Astrological Treasury (London, 1674), sig. A5v.

  60. Gadbury, Cardines Coeli, p. 15.

  61. Goad, Astro-Meteorologica, sig. a1v.

  62. Robert Moray, “Some Experiments Propos'd in Relation to Mr. Newton's Theory of Light,” in Philosophical Transactions, no. 80, 20 May 1672, pp. 4059–62. The full debate can be followed at the website of the Newton Project, beginning with Newton's letter to the Royal Society expounding his new theory, at http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/NATP00006.

  63. Goad, Astro-Meteorologica, p. 34.

  64. Ibid., pp. 390–43, 122, 151–4, 301, 321, 355 [sic: actually 362].

  65. Ibid., p. 156.

  66. Josiah Childrey, Britannia Baconica: or, The Natural Rarities of England, Scotland, & Wales (London, 1661), sigs B5–B5v.

  67. John Partridge, MIKPOΠANAΣTPΩN: or An Astrological VADE MECUM (London, 1693), p. 1.

  68. Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 2, f. 3; The Ladies Champion Confounding the Author of the Wandering Whore (London, 1660), title page. The latter was a furious response to Heydon's Advice to a Daughter (London, 1658), which in turn was a critique of Francis Osborne, Advice to a Son (Oxford, 1658). Osborne's witty and popular book was condemned by Heydon (or “Eugenius Theodidactus” as he styled himself) for misogyny, although much of Advice to a Daughter consists of self-promoting references to Heydon's other works. When the poet and lawyer Thomas Pecke blasted Heydon's lack of learning in Advice to Balam's Ass (London, 1658), the undaunted astrologer issued a second edition of Advice to a Daughter. It was apparently his most controversial work.

  69. [Heydon], Advice to a Daughter, p. 192. He repeated this statement in the second edition, p. 177.

  70. Robert Latham, ed., The Shorter Pepys (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985), p. 736. Heydon had also been arrested for sedition in 1663.

  71. The biographical details in this paragraph are derived from ODNB and from the Life by Frederick Talbot inserted in John Heydon, Elhavareuna or The English Physitians Tutor (London, 1665). Heydon's notes on his own birth are found in Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 339, f. 97. Ashmole also possessed the nativity of an illegitimate son of Heydon's father: Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 243, f. 169.

  72. John Heydon, Eugenius Theodidacticus, the Propheticall Trumpeter Sounding an Allarum to England (London, 1655).

  73. John Heydon, A New Method of Rosie Crucian Physick (London, 1658), sig. A3; Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles (Baltimore, 1999).

  74. Heydon, Rosie Crucian Physick, pp. 38, 52.

  75. John Heydon, The Rosie Crucian Infallible Axiomata, or Generall Rules to Know All Things Past, Present, and to Come (London, 1660), pp. 2, 34, 122.

  76. Heydon claimed to have been imprisoned with John Hewit, the Anglican divine who was executed in 1658 on a charge, which he denied, of giving shelter to the duke of Ormonde: Heydon, Rosie Crucian Infallible Axiomata, sig. A3v. After the Restoration, Ormonde made inquiries about the circumstances of Heydon's arrest (ODNB, “Heydon, John”). Buckingham supposedly met Heydon at an astrological gathering at the home of John Digby, who may have been the son of Sir Kenelm Digby (ODNB, “Villiers, George, Second Duke of Buckingham”). According to the “Astromagus,” one of his books saved the duke from an assassination attempt: John Heydon, Theomagia, or The Temple of Wisdom (London, 1664), Dedication, sigs A3v–A4.

  77. Heydon, Theomagia, Preface, sigs A2v–B4. The dietary laws of Heydon's Rosicrucians were motivated by principles quite different from those of contemporary vegetarians, like the Behmenist Thomas Tryon, who abstained from eating meat out of sympathy with other creatures. See Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York, 1983), p. 291.

  78. John Heydon, Psonthonphancia: Being a Word in Season to the Enemies of Christians and An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Mind of Man, Whether There Be Not a God (London, 1664), pp. 39–66.

  79. John Heydon, The Wise-Man's Crown: or, The Glory of the Rosie-Cross (London, 1664), sig. B1v.

  80. Heydon, Rosie Crucian Infallible Axiomata, p. xvii.

  81. John Heydon, The Harmony of the World (London, 1662), p. 99. The last piece of information must have been derived from the Genius himself, as it does not appear in Scripture. Heydon accepted the Copernican system (ibid., pp. 49–50), although it may not have made much difference to his astrological projections, which were based as much on numerology as on charting the planets.

  82. Ashmole, ed., Way to Bliss, pp. ii–iii. The offending volume by Heydon was entitled The Wise-Man's Crown, but I have not been able to discover an edition of this work that predates 16
64.

  83. Heydon, Harmony of the World, sig. C3.

  84. Heydon, A New Method of Rosie Crucian Physick, p. 38.

  85. Bodl. Lib., Ashmole Ms. 423, f. 232.

  86. Heydon, Harmony of the World, Postscript.

  87. Heydon, A New Method of Rosie Crucian Physick, p. 38; John Heydon, ΨON´OONΦANXΓA: or, A Quintuple Rosie-Crucian Scourge for the Due Correction of That Pseudochymist and Scurrilous Emperick, Geo. Thomson (London, 1665); George Thomson, Loimologia: A Consolatory Advice, and Some Brief Observations Concerning the Present Pest (London, 1665).

  88. Heydon, ELHAVAREVNA, p. 59.

  89. Heydon, Wise-Man's Crown, Dedication.

  90. Heydon, Theomagia, p. 314, B.L. 8632.b.49.

  91. “The First Journal of J. Roche,” in Bruce Stirling Ingram, ed., Three Sea Journals of Stuart Times (London, 1936), p. 75.

  92. Josten, ed., Elias Ashmole, vol. 2, p. 318.

  93. The best account of his life remains T.W.W. Smart, “A Biographical Sketch of Samuel Jeake, Senior, of Rye,” Sussex Archaeological Collections, 13 (1861), pp. 57–79. A list of the elder Jeake's works is found in Rye Museum, Jeake Ms. 4/4. After his death in 1690, his son undertook the publication of ΛOΓIΣTIKHΛOΓIA, or Arithmetick Surveighed and Reviewed (London, 1696), and drew up a nativity of the author that was attached to the dedication. The publication of Jeake senior's other book, Charters of the Cinque Ports, Two Ancient Towns, and their Members (Lonodn, 1728), was supervised by his grandson, Samuel Jeake III.

  94. Rye Museum, Selmes Ms. 16, sermon of 16 July 1665. Under the Five-Mile Act of that year, Jeake had to remove his congregation to a village near Rye.

  95. Michael Hunter, Giles Mandelbrote, Richard Ovenden and Michael Smith, eds, A Radical's Books: The Library Catalogue of Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1623–90 (Cambridge and Woodbridge, 1999), which is based on Rye Museum, Jeake Ms. 4/1.

  96. ESRO, FRE 4636, 4638, Blagrave to Jeake, 4 and 18 Oct. 1672. Blagrave refers in these letters, not to astrological works, but to a copy of the sermons of the Independent minister Matthew Meade, probably EN OΛIΓΩ XPIZTIANOΣ: The Almost Christian Discovered: or, The False Professor, Tryed and Cast (London, 1671).