Solomon's Secret Arts (74 page)

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. C
₅
, 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. A
₂
.

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. C
₅
.

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. C
₄
v.

35.
Capp,
English Almanacs
, p. 50.

36.
Coley,
Nuncius Coelestis … 1680
, sig. C
₆
v.

37.
Goad,
Astro-Meteorologica
, p. 39.

38.
Partridge,
Prodromus
, p. 5.

39.
Willliam Lilly,
Christian Astrology
(2nd ed., London, 1659), Dedication, sigs A
₄
-A
₄
v.

40.
Henry Coley,
Astrologiae Elimata: or, A Key to the Whole Art of Astrology New Filed and Polished
(2nd ed., London, 1676), sigs A
₃
-A
₃
v. 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. 178–222
^v
. 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. A
₄
v.

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. A
₁
v.

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. C
₇
.

56.
Gadbury, ed.,
Works of Wharton
, Preface, sig. a
₂
.

57.
John Gadbury, ΕΦΗΜΕΡΙΣ
: or, A Diary Astronomical and Astrological for the Year of Grace 1664
(London, 1664), sig. C
₅
v. 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. C
₈
v.

59.
John Gadbury,
Thesaurus Astrologiae: or, An Astrological Treasury
(London, 1674), sig. A
₅
v.

60.
Gadbury,
Cardines Coeli
, p. 15.

61.
Goad,
Astro-Meteorologica
, sig. a
₁
v.

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 B
₅
–B
₅
v.

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. A
₃
; 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. A
₃
v. 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 A
₃
v–A
₄
.

77.
Heydon,
Theomagia
, Preface, sigs A
₂
v–B
₄
. 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. B
₁
v.

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 1664.

83.
Heydon,
Harmony of the World
, sig. C
₃
.

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).