Solomon's Secret Arts (10 page)

Those remarkable notes, which discuss magic in some detail, veer back and forth between the natural and the supernatural, the respectable and the radical. The definition of magic that Ashmole initially proposes is lifted, almost verbatim, from Agrippa's quasi-scientific formulation. “
Magick
,” Ashmole writes, “
is the Connexion of natural Agents and Patients, answerable each to other, wrought by a wise Man to the bringing forth of such effects as are wonderfull to those that know not their causes
.” Does this mean that magic consists simply of natural effects, or does “wonderfull” imply, as it did for Agrippa, something supernatural? Ashmole does not immediately elucidate. Instead, he turns his back on the darker side of Agrippa, by reassuring “the most
Pious
” that “here is no
Incantations
, no
Words
, no
Circles
, no
Charmes
, no other Fragments of invented
Fopperies
.” In short, no demonic magic is to be found in true alchemy, only “
Nature
(with whom true
Magicians
only deale).” The statement does not accord very well with Ashmole's own private practices. In fact, he was addicted to the use of astrological charms, talismans and sigils. He even used them to drive rats and moles from his house.
⁵⁷
In his 1650 preface to an alchemical tract by Arthur Dee, Ashmole had maintained that charms and spells “have their several powers, if judiciously and warily disposed and handled.”
⁵⁸
Two years later, in
Theatrum Chemicum
, he was more circumspect in addressing the detestation of magic by “the most
Pious
,” perhaps because he saw them as holding authority within the Commonwealth.

In the end, however, Ashmole could not confine his investigations to nature. He eventually admits that natural magic, or “the bare application of
Actives
to
Passives
,” cannot penetrate “those
Hidden Secrets
, which
God
would have conceal'd.” Yet it is precisely those secrets that the alchemist wants to reveal. He aims beyond the sub-celestial or natural region, to approach the celestial and even the super-celestial. According to Ashmole, this allows the “great work” of alchemy to become truly virtuous: “the Production of things is Naturall, but the bringing forth of the vertue is not Naturall: because the things are Create, but the Vertues Increate.” What exactly did Ashmole mean here by the unusual adjective “Increate”? Perhaps virtues, because they are of divine origin, can only be brought forth by a magic higher than nature: that is, by something that is
not
created, meaning God. As he approaches the “Increate,” the magician or alchemist transcends nature and, “wrought up to his
highest degree of Perfection
, he shall see things not fit to be written; for (may I aver it with awfull Reverence)
Angelicall wisdome
is to be obteyned by it.” Ashmole has returned, by a roundabout route, to the forbidden concept of an Angelical Stone that grants divine revelations. Far from being unattainable, it now appears within the grasp of the adept, who has reached the limits of nature. He will stand with Moses, Solomon and Hermes Trismegistus as the possessor of an ultimate supernatural wisdom and power. With a reticence befitting an adept, Ashmole writes no more about it.
⁵⁹

The tortured shifts in argument that can be detected in Ashmole's
Theatrum Chemicum
give an appearance of inconsistency. This is understandable: in an age of political and religious upheaval, Ashmole was trying to shape a national heritage out of a body of material that was rife with dangerous invention, not to mention enthusiasm verging on heresy. Craving both divine knowledge and worldly respectability, he wanted to gesture towards the supernatural aims of alchemy while simultaneously associating it with the natural philosophy that had become a fixture of English intellectual life. Extraordinarily, he seems to have succeeded, to the extent that his book enhanced rather than damaged his own reputation among the scholars who dominated public learning after the Restoration. Ashmole's role as a founding Fellow of the Royal Society was sufficient evidence of that. By then, he had given up alchemical publications, and the promised second volume of
Theatrum Chemicum
never appeared, although he told the bookseller William Cooper that he had finished it in the late 1650s.
⁶⁰
Instead, the canny lawyer devoted himself to antiquarianism, heraldry and the formation of a museum of curiosities at Oxford. To be sure, alchemy and magic were never far from his thoughts, as his vast manuscript collection attests.

Ashmole's publications illustrate the difficulty of dividing late seventeenth-century alchemists into two different camps: “practical chemists” and “mystics”
or “magi” who drew on occult philosophy.
⁶¹
Ashmole was always fascinated by practical chemical recipes that might lead him towards “the Natural Stone,” but at the same time his view of alchemy was unquestionably rooted in the supernatural. He registered little awareness of a tension between magic and experimentalism or natural science. On the other hand, he was acutely sensitive to potential friction between alchemy and the tenets of orthodox religion, which he tried to minimize. As for religious mysticism, it held no attraction for him. He probably identified mystical views, like those of Everard, with the radical sectarianism that had brought down the monarchy. Ashmole may not have been typical, but other alchemists were clearly entranced by the supernatural foundations of their art. Isaac Newton owned a copy of the “Epitome of the Treasure of Health,” while Robert Boyle apparently dreamt, like Ashmole, of an Angelical Stone that would allow him to talk with superior beings.
⁶²
Perhaps more tellingly, no practical alchemist saw fit to answer Ashmole's magical notions in print. They circulated widely on account of the fame of
Theatrum Chemicum
, but we may search in vain for an outright refutation of them by any alchemical writer.

Magic did not inspire every alchemist equally. It rarely figures in George Starkey's famous works, most of which were written under the pseudonym “Eirenaeus Philalethes” and published posthumously. To be sure, “Philalethes” expressed himself in the oblique and allusive jargon of alchemy, which could be interpreted as concealing an occult philosophy as well as setting out a way to make gold. He also endorsed the processes of George Ripley, a favourite of Elias Ashmole. Ripley had written of “the Magical
Chalybs
” and the “Magical Solution of
Sol
,” terms that do not seem to have bothered “Philalethes” any more than they did Ashmole. In a meditation inspired by his reading of Ripley, “Philalethes” is reassured by a female figure of nature that “what you admire in this strange Metamorphosis of me, know that it is by a Magical Vertue, which is alone given to me from GOD,” rather than arrived at by “Diabolic arts.”
⁶³
This suggests that divine magic lies at the heart of alchemy, and that “Philalethes” was sensitive, as Ashmole was, to the accusation of diabolism. Still, it would be rash to claim “Philalethes” as an occult writer. During his lifetime, George Starkey was best known for giving practical alchemical advice aimed largely at medical practitioners. Eager to advertise his expertise with a view to finding patronage, he was more interested in challenging the medical establishment than in discussing occult philosophy.
⁶⁴
The contrast with Ashmole was as much professional as intellectual.

Ashmole himself was hardly an innovative occult thinker. His awkward, derivative and somewhat rudimentary evocation of alchemical magic did not really amount to a coherent philosophy. It provides a stark contrast with the far more original and provocative views of Thomas Vaughan who, in spite of being
a priest of the Church of England, did not hesitate to publish the most effusive occult speculations. Unlike Ashmole, Vaughan was fiercely attacked, because he was not guarded enough in what he wrote about religion. He provides a clear example of what Ashmole feared so much: that an imaginative approach to the magical foundations of alchemy would attract vigorous condemnation from the outraged defenders of religious orthodoxy.

Thomas Vaughan, Theomagus

Ashmole identified a higher magic that dealt with divine things, but he did not dwell on its theological implications. He could not have done so without compromising his image of strict Anglican orthodoxy. This was where the most inventive magical writer of the 1650s, “Eugenius Philalethes,” added something of his own, which he called “Theomagia” or theological magic. “Eugenius Philalethes” was the pen name of Thomas Vaughan, the Welsh clergyman, royalist soldier, medical practitioner and alchemist. He invented it seven years before George Starkey began to call himself “Eirenaeus Philalethes,” so there is no question of who was imitating whom. Any serious collector of alchemical tracts in the 1650s would have eagerly awaited the appearance of Vaughan's publications, starting with
Anthroposophia Theomagica
(probably written in 1648, published in 1650), followed by
Anima Magica Abscondita
and
Magia Adamica
(both also 1650),
Lumen de Lumine
(1651),
Aula Lucis
(written in 1651, published under the pseudonym “S.N.” in 1652) and finally
Euphrates
(1655), not to mention his two comical replies to a scurrilous attack on his philosophy by Henry More,
The Man-Mouse Taken in a Trap, and Tortur'd to Death
(1650), and
The Second Wash, or The Moore Scour'd Once More
(1651).
⁶⁵
Although he had ceased to write before the Restoration, Vaughan's works continued to be both praised and attacked throughout the late seventeenth century.

Vaughan was a virtual one-man alchemical-magical industry in the early 1650s, and it is not surprising that Samuel Hartlib wanted to harness his protean energy. From reading
Magia Adamica,
Hartlib became convinced that Vaughan knew the formula of the “
Menstruum Universale
” or universal medicine. The German polymath had been alerted to the work of “this ingenious young man” by his friend Robert Child. It turned out that Child, Vaughan and another former royalist officer, Thomas Henshaw, had formed, probably at Oxford, an alchemical club modelled on the “College” or “Christian Learned Society” described by the German Rosicrucian writer J.V. Andreæ. It was to his fellow club members, those “truly reborn Brothers of the Rosy Cross,” that Vaughan dedicated his first published work.
⁶⁶

The little club is of some importance, because it represents the only group of self-styled seventeenth-century English Rosicrucians about which anything is known. Although the Rosicrucian Brotherhood had started out as a high-minded prank dreamed up by Andreæ and some friends, intellectuals throughout Europe took it very seriously, and the joke took on a life of its own.
⁶⁷
A supposed haven of fraternal tolerance, the mythical Brotherhood represented a kind of collective wish fulfilment for educated minds struggling through troubled times. They pictured the secretive Rosicrucians as possessors of universal or “Pansophic” knowledge, the same lofty intellectual target that Samuel Hartlib's circle aspired to hit. Some enthusiastic Rosicrucian publicists, like the German writer who called himself “Theophilus Schweighardt,” happily included magic in their fanciful visions of “Pansophia.”
⁶⁸
Vaughan was clearly a true believer, as he wrote an admiring preface to a 1653 edition of the
Fame and Confession
by “Christian Rosenkreuz,” the fictional founder of the Brotherhood. Like most would-be Rosicrucians, however, Vaughan ignored Rosenkreuz's inconvenient dislike of practical alchemy. The Welsh clergyman was also careful to deny his membership in the Brotherhood (a disclaimer that was required of all true Brothers), although he admitted, rather archly, that he knew their “Doctrine.”
⁶⁹

Vaughan's club lends a touch of credibility to the much-disputed theory concerning Rosicrucian influence on the Royal Society. Thomas Henshaw, the swashbuckling Cavalier to whom Vaughan dedicated
Magia Adamica
, calling him “my best of Friends,” became a founding member of the Society. So did Vaughan's protector Sir Robert Moray, who was called by Anthony Wood “a great patron of the Rosie-Crucians.” Nevertheless, Vaughan himself was never a Fellow, and none of the other founders can be connected with Rosicrucianism (which was in any case a highly amorphous phenomenon). At most, it can be said that the Royal Society attracted some members, like Henshaw and Moray, who shared a Rosicrucian disposition.
⁷⁰

For his part, Thomas Vaughan had no doubt that Rosicrucianism was favourable to magic, a word that appears in the titles of his first three books. He did not define the term in his first treatise, which is the most obscure and rambling of his works, and may have been intended for a select audience. In
Magia Adamica
, however, he starts out with this statement: “That I should professe
Magic
in this Discourse, and Justifie the Professors of it withall, is
Impietie
with Many, but
Religion
with Mee.” Ashmole would have been horrified. Vaughan makes magic into a personal religion, in opposition to that of the “Many,” meaning the godly Protestants then in control of the state. He continues: “It is a
Conscience
I have learnt from
Authors
greater than my Self, and
Scriptures
greater than both.” These “
Scriptures
” are the works of other
magical writers like Agrippa, as well as portions of the Bible on which magical interpretations could be placed. Vaughan then comes to the point: “
Magic
is nothing else but the
Wisdom
of the
Creator
revealed and planted in the
Creature
.”
⁷¹
More succinctly than his master Agrippa, Vaughan sums up here both the natural and the supernatural character of magical knowledge. For him, magic is not based on Aristotelian observation of manifest qualities; rather, it is divine wisdom, relating both to nature itself and to the supernatural purposes of creation. It is “revealed and planted” by God, meaning that science or experimentation can only uncover, by divine grace, the secrets that were once known to Adam and that are hinted at in Scripture.