Solomon's Secret Arts

by Paul Kléber Monod

  97. Michael Hunter and Annabel Gregory, eds, An Astrological Diary of the Seventeenth Century: Samuel Jeake of Rye, 1652–1699 (Oxford, 1988), p. 87.

  98. Rye Museum, Selmes Ms. 25, a notebook of 1666 entitled “Miscelanea.”

  99. Hunter and Gregory, eds, Astrological Diary, p. 117.

  100. Ibid., p. 92.

  101. Rye Museum, Selmes Ms. 32. Most of the individuals whose nativities appear in this folio volume were religious Dissenters, and it may be wondered whether Jeake was searching for a common thread in their charts that would allow him some insight into the duration of their sufferings.

  102. Rye Museum, Selmes Ms. 34, and Hunter and Gregory, eds, Astrological Diary, p. 106.

  103. Accounts of Rye in the Exclusion Crisis can be found in Paul Halliwell, Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650–1730 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 132–5, 268–76; Paul Monod, The Murder of Mr. Grebell: Madness and Civility in an English Town (New Haven, Conn., 2003), ch. 2.

  104. Hunter and Gregory, eds, Astrological Diary, pp. 143–5.

  105. Ibid., pp. 98, 132, 153–4, 193, 259.

  106. Samuel Jeake, junior, “Astrological Experiments Exemplified. In a Complete Systeme of Solar Revolutional Directions: Attended On by their Respectively Proporticable [sic] Effects. During the Space of One Whole Year,” Clark Library, Los Angeles, Ms. J43M3/A859, pp. 1–2.

  107. Ibid., pp. 7, 15–19.

  108. Ibid., pp. 3–4.

  109. Ibid., pp. 90–147.

  110. Hunter and Gregory, eds, Astrological Diary, pp. 206–8.

  111. Ibid., pp. 47–8, 51; Hunter, “Science and Astrology,” p. 251.

  Chapter Three: The Occult Contested

  1. Samuel Butler, Hudibras, ed. John Wilders (Oxford, 1967), first part, canto I, pp. 16–17, ll. 519–40; see also second part, canto III, pp. 168–81, ll. 575–1002, for the debate between Hudibras and Sidrophel.

  2. [William Cooper, ed.], “To the Reader,” Collectanea Chymica: A Collection of Ten Several Treatises in Chymistry Concerning the Liquor Alkahest, the Mercury of Philosophers, and Other Curiosities Worthy the Perusal (London, 1684), p. [i].

  3. Compare R.F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth Century England (2nd ed., Saint Louis, Mo., 1961), with Charles Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science (Cambridge, 1982). The idea of progress towards modernity, however, remains central to the concept of a seventeenth-century scientific revolution, which is championed by I. Bernard Cohen in The Newtonian Revolution (Cambridge, 1985).

  4. For this subject, see Jerome Friedman, The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press during the English Revolution (New York, 1993), and William E. Burns, An Age of Wonders: Prodigies, Politics and Providence in England 1657–1727 (Manchester, 2002).

  5. [Thomas Totney alias Tany], TheaurauJohn his Aurora in Translogorum in Salem Gloria. Or, The Discussive of the Law and the Gospel betwixt the Jew and the Gentile in Salem Resurrectionem (London, 1651), preface.

  6. Ariel Hessayon, “Gold Tried in the Fire:” The Prophet ThoreauJohn Tany and the English Revolution (Aldershot, Hants, and Burlington, Vt., 2007); also Hessayon's biography of Tany in ODNB.

  7. John Pordage, Innocencie Appearing, through the Dark Mists of Pretended Guilt. Or, A Full and True Narration of the Unjust and Illegal Proceedings of the Commissioners of Berks (for Ejecting Scandalous and Insufficient Ministers) against John Pordage of Bradfield in the Same County (London, 1655), pp. 66–71, for testimony concerning spirits; C.H. Josten, ed., Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) (5 vols, Oxford, 1966), vol. 2, pp. 518, 522, 554, 667–8; Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries (New York, 1984), pp. 220–42. Two volumes of Pordage's papers are in Bodl. Lib., Ms. Rawlinson A.404–5.

  8. J.P. [John Pordage], Theologia Mystica, or, The Mystic Divinitie of the Aeternal Invisibles (London, 1683), pp. 65, 98.

  9. S.P. [Samuel Pordage], Mundorum Explicatio, or, The Explanation of an Hieroglyphical Figure: Wherein Are Couched the Mysteries of the External, Internal and Eternal Worlds, Shewing the True Progress of a Soul from the Court of Babylon to the City of Jerusalem; from the Adamical Fallen State to the Regenerate and Angelical (London, 1661), p. 35.

  10. Ibid., p. 181.

  11. For her life and writings, see Serge Hutin, Les Disciples Anglais de Jacob Boehme au XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (Paris, 1960), ch. 4; D.P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment (London, 1964), ch. 13; B.J. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and its Development in England (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 7; Paula McDowell, The Women of Grub Street: Press, Politics and Gender in the London Literary Marketplace, 1678–1730 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 168–79; Paula McDowell, “Enlightenment Enthusiasms and the Spectacular Failure of the Philadelphian Society,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 35, 4 (2002), pp. 515–33; Julie Hirst, Jane Leade: Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (Aldershot, Hants, and Burlington, Vt., 2005); Sarah Apetrei, Women, Feminism and Religion in Early Enlightenment England (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 187–98.

  12. Jane Lead, The Revelation of Revelations Particularly as an Essay Towards the Unsealing, Opening and Discovering the Seven Seals, the Seven Thunders, and the New-Jerusalem State (London, 1683), pp. 38, 40, 51. Lead's first published work, The Heavenly Cloud Now Breaking (London, 1681), is a more conventional statement of Behmenist spirituality.

  13. Some Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Thomas Tryon, Late of London, Merchant: Written by Himself (London, 1725), pp. 26–7; Tryon's biography in ODNB; Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, pp. 115–16; Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility (New York, 1983), pp. 291–2.

  14. Thomas Tryon, A Treatise of Dreams and Visions (London, 1689); Thomas Tryon, Pythagoras his Mystick Philosophy Reviv'd; or, The Mystery of Dreams Unfolded (London, 1691).

  15. “Philotheus Phileologus” [Thomas Tryon], Friendly Advice to the Gentlemen-Planters of the East and West Indies (London, 1684).

  16. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1996), book 1, ch. 2, pp. 15, 18–19. The best treatment of Hobbes's views on the supernatural is in Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, c. 1650–c. 1750 (Oxford, 1997), ch. 2.

  17. Hobbes, Leviathan, book 3, ch. 37, p. 300.

  18. Ibid., book 3, ch. 37, p. 303.

  19. Ibid., book 4, ch. 45, p. 443.

  20. [John Wagstaffe], The Question of Witchcraft Debated; or A Discourse against their Opinion That Affirm Witches (London, 1669), p. 75. A second edition, with Wagstaffe's name on the title page, appeared in 1671. The pamphlet was reprinted at least twice in the early eighteenth century. See also Michael Hunter, “The Witchcraft Controversy and the Nature of Free-Thought in Restoration England: John Wagstaffe's The Question of Witchcraft Debated (1669),” in his Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1995), pp. 286–307.

  21. Anthony Grafton, “Protestant versus Prophet: Isaac Casaubon on Hermes Trismegistus,” in Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 145–61. See also Anthony Grafton, Joanna Weinberg and Alastair Hamilton, “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, Mass., 2011).

  22. Meric Casaubon, A True and Faithfull Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (a Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and Some Spirits (London, 1659), Preface, sigs E4–E4v; also Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, pp. 56–65. Mentioned by various early Church Fathers, the Book of Enoch was supposedly written by Adam's son, who had “walked with God” and knew the language of angels.

  23. Meric Casaubon, Of Credulity and Incredulity; In Things Divine and Spiritual (London, 1670), pp. 15–17.


  24. Ibid., pp. 171–91.

  25. John Webster, Academiarum Examen: or, The Examination of Academies (London, 1653), pp. 51, 106–7. The pamphlets are reprinted in Allen Debus, ed., Science and Education in the Seventeenth Century: The Webster-Ward Debate (New York, 1970).

  26. John Webster, Metallographia: or, An History of Metals (London, 1671), pp. 7, 33–5.

  27. Ibid., pp. 11–15.

  28. John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London, 1677), p. 7.

  29. Ibid., p. 266.

  30. Ibid., chs 16–17.

  31. The first of Glanvill's witchcraft collections was A Philosophical Endeavour towards the Defense of the Being of Witches and Apparitions (1666), which was reissued, with additional material, in two subsequent editions. Material from this work later appeared in Saducismus Triumphatus. For a discussion of Glanvill's works, see Bostridge, Witchcraft and its Transformations, pp. 73–7; Ferris Greenslet, Joseph Glanvill: A Study of English Thought and Letters of the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1900), ch. 6; Jackson I. Cope, Joseph Glanvill, Anglican Apologist (St. Louis, 1956), ch. 4.

  32. In a fascinating article, Michael Hunter has shown that, in his various accounts of the Tedworth drummer story, Glanvill changed his tone from ironic humour to moral seriousness in order to strengthen his message: “New Light on ‘the Drummer of Tedworth’: Conflicting Narratives of Witchcraft in Restoration England,” Historical Research, 78, 201 (2005), pp. 312–53.

  33. Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus: or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (London, 1681), p. 40.

  34. Ibid., pp. 43, 45.

  35. [Henry More], “The Easie, True, and Genuine Notion and Consistent Explication Of the Nature of a Spirit,” in Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, p. 174. A Latin version of this essay had previously appeared in More's Enchiridion Metaphysicum (London, 1671).

  36. Hartlib Papers, 18/1/9A.

  37. [Henry More], “Dr. H.M. his Letter with the Postscript to Mr. J.G.,” in Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus, pp. 13–14. For a different and more sympathetic view of More's position, see Allison Coudert, “Henry More and Witchcraft,” in Sarah Hutton, ed., Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary Essays (Dordrecht, 1990), pp. 115–36.

  38. Marjorie Hope Nicolson and Sarah Hutton, eds, The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their Friends, 1642–1684 (Oxford, 1992), p. 294.

  39. Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle, Philosophical Letters: or, Modest Reflections, upon Some Opinions in Natural Philosophy (London, 1664), pp. 298–303; for fairies, see p. 227. Cavendish's response to Glanvill is discussed in Jacqueline Broad, “Margaret Cavendish and Joseph Glanvill: Science, Religion and Witchcraft,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 38, 3 (2007), pp. 493–505.

  40. For the decline of English witchcraft, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), ch. 18; James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 1996), chs 9–11; James Sharpe, Witchcraft in Early Modern England (London, 2001), pp. 73–88.

  41. Brian Levack, “The End of the Scottish Witch-Hunt,” in Julian Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002), pp. 166–81.

  42. George Sinclair, Satan's Invisible World Discovered (Edinburgh, 1685), preface, sigs A4v–A5. For biographical details, see ODNB and the prefatory notice to the 1871 edition of the work, edited by Thomas George Stevenson and published by him at Edinburgh.

  43. For the book's long-lasting appeal, see James Sharpe, “Witch-Hunting and Witch Historiography: Some Anglo-Scottish Comparisons,” in Goodare, ed., Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, p. 195, citing the preface to the Stevenson edition, p. l.

  44. Steven Shapin and Simon Shaffer, Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985).

  45. For example, Hartlib Papers 7/126A-B; 8/28/1A-6B; 16/6/7; 16/9/9–17; 26/57A–B; 26/63A–B; 26/65/1A–B; 55/16/1A–14B.

  46. William Newman and Lawrence Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago, 2002), chs 3–5.

  47. Hartlib Papers, 31/1/56B: John Beale to Samuel Hartlib, 15 Sept. 1657.

  48. Hartlib Papers, 25/5/1A, 6A, Beale to Hartlib, 28 May 1657; also, 25/5/22B, Beale to Hartlib, 21 June 1657.

  49. Hartlib Papers, 25/5/18A, 19B, Beale to Hartlib, 8 June 1657. For more on the subject of visions, see Hartlib Papers, 60/1/1A–4B, a scribal copy of a letter from Beale to an unnamed correspondent, 28 Nov. 1659.

  50. Hartlib Papers, 16/9/3A.

  51. He was involved in the Blackloist Conspiracy, an attempt to obtain toleration for Catholics from Cromwell's government in exchange for their acceptance of an Independent church settlement. The conspirators had close links with Hobbes. See Jeffrey Collins, “Thomas Hobbes and the Blackloist Conspiracy of 1649,” Historical Journal, 45, 2 (2002), pp. 305–31.

  52. Sir Kenelm Digby, A Late Discourse Made in a Solemne Assembly of Nobles and Learned Men at Montpellier in France … Touching the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy (London, 1658), p. 3.

  53. For the older view, see Allen Debus, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2nd ed., New York, 2002), pp. 205–93, and the three articles by Betty Jo Dobbs, “Studies in the Natural Philosophy of Sir Kenelm Digby, Parts I–III,” Ambix 18 (1971), pp. 1–25; 20 (1973), pp. 143–63; 21 (1974), pp. 1–28. Newer interpretations are found in Elizabeth Hedrick, “Romancing the Salve: Sir Kenelm Digby and the Powder of Sympathy,” British Journal of the History of Science, 41 (2008), pp. 161–85; Mark A. Waddell, “The Perversion of Nature: Johannes Baptista van Helmont, the Society of Jesus and the Cure of Wounds,” Canadian Journal of History, 38 (2003), pp. 180–97; Bruce Janacek, Alchemical Belief: Occultism in the Religious Culture of Early Modern England (University Park, Pa., 2011), ch. 4.

  54. Digby, Discourse, pp. 23, 43.

  55. The dependence of the following paragraphs on Michael Hunter, Boyle: Between God and Science (New Haven, Cohn., 2009), esp. ch. 11, and Lawrence Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and his Alchemical Quest (Princeton, 1998), will be obvious to those who have read these two splendid studies.

  56. Robert Boyle, “Of the Study of the Booke of Nature,” in Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis, eds, The Works of Robert Boyle (14 vols, London, 1999), vol. 13, p. 156.

  57. R[obert] B[oyle], Some Motives and Incentives to the Love of God (Known as Seraphic Love), in Hunter and Davis, eds, Works of Robert Boyle, vol. 1, p. 66.

  58. Ibid., pp. 78, 132.

  59. Robert Boyle, “An Hydrostatical Discourse Occasioned by the Objections of the Learned Dr. Henry More, against Some Explications of New Experiments Made by Mr. Boyle,” in Hunter and Davis, eds, Works of Boyle, vol. 7, p. 183.

  60. The Devill of Mascon, trans. Peter Du Moulin, in Hunter and Davis, eds, Works of Boyle, vol. 1, pp. 13–39.

  61. “Robert Boyle's Dialogue on the Converse with Angels Aided by the Philosopher's Stone,” in Principe, Aspiring Adept, pp. 312, 315. The original is in Royal Society, Boyle Papers, vol. 7, ff. 134v–150. Unfortunately, this volume is not yet available at Boyle Papers Online, which can be viewed at http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle/boyle_papers/boylepapers_index.htm.

  62. Glanvill to Boyle, 7 Oct. 1677, in Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence Principe, eds, The Correspondence of Robert Boyle (6 vols, London, 2001), vol. 4, pp. 460–1.

  63. “B.R.” [Robert Boyle], “Of the Incalescence of Quicksilver with Gold,” in Hunter and Davies, eds, Works of Boyle, vol. 8, p. 561; H.W. Turnbull. ed., The Correspondence of Isaac Newton (6 vols, Cambridge, 1958–65), vol. 2, p. 2: Newton to Oldenbourg, 26 April 1676.

  64. Michael Hunter shows how the Society “sidestepped” occult matters in “The Royal Society and the Decline of Magic,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 65, 2 (2011), pp. 103–19.

  65. Thomas Sprat, The Histor
y of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (4th ed., London, 1734), pp. 37–8.

  66. Bodl. Lib., Ms. Aubrey 24. The diverse individuals cited in this manuscript would comprise a study in themselves. They include “Mr Wyld Clarke (who was a factor at Santa Cruce in Barberie 16 years),” Mr Lancelot Morehead, “a Divine & very learned man,” “Mr Hitchcock a Clerke in Chancery Lane, at the Rolls office he has been under sheriffe of Bucks” and “Dr. Ezekiel Tongue,” i.e. Israel Tonge, one of the original informers in the Popish Plot: ibid., ff. 56bv, 57, 92v, 101.

  67. Ibid., f. 92.

  68. John Aubrey, Miscellanies (London, 1696), Dedication.

  69. The classic treatment of the royal healing power is Marc Bloch, The Royal Touch, trans. J.E. Anderson (New York, 1990); for magical healing in general, see Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971), ch. 7.

  70. Hunter, Boyle, p. 149–51; Conway Letters, pp. 244–52, 261–74; Valentine Greatrakes, A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatraks, and Divers of the Strange Cures, by Him Lately Performed. Written by Himself in a Letter, Addressed to the Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1666), pp. 3, 43–9; Correspondence of Boyle, vol. 3, pp. 82–90, 93–107, quotation on p. 93.

  71. “Robert Boyle's Notes on his Interview with Lord Tarbat,” reprinted in Michael Hunter, ed., The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th-Century Scotland (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2001), pp. 51–3. The original is in Royal Society, Boyle Papers 39, fols 216–17. See also Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief (Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 174–6.

  72. The best overall guide to Newton's alchemical manuscripts can be found at the Newton Project website, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk, but see also Peter Jones, ed., Sir Isaac Newton: A Catalogue of Manuscripts and Papers Collected and Published on Microfilm by Chadwyck-Healey (Cambridge, 1991).

  73. KCL, Keynes Ms. 49, f. 1, M&P, reel 19.

  74. Correspondence of Newton, vol. 2, p. 2: Newton to Oldenbourg, 26 April 1676.