Solomon's Secret Arts (9 page)

Virtually every alchemical writer called
spagyria
a science. Does this mean that they saw the “great work” as falling into the same category as Boyle's experiments on gases or Robert Hooke's microscopic discoveries? Was it natural, transparent, perhaps even “mechanical” in the sense of having no need of a divine operator? Or did the alchemists acknowledge something supernatural in the spagyric process? These are crucial questions. To answer them, we will have to examine the writings of some of the alchemists themselves, focusing on theoretical rather than practical works.
⁴²
We will consider figures who commanded considerable individual attention in their own time, like Elias Ashmole and Thomas Vaughan. Both exploited the popularity of alchemy, but each had to come to terms with the problematic associations of occult philosophy, which dipped into enthusiasm, unorthodoxy and even ritual magic. To understand the commercial and cultural framework of alchemy, the last section of this chapter deals with a relative nobody, a London bookseller who never achieved fame, but nonetheless made an enormous contribution to the public image of the spagyric art in the late seventeenth century: William Cooper, publisher, of the Sign of the Pelican in Little Britain.

The Respectable Magus: Elias Ashmole

Examine late seventeenth-century alchemy as a theoretical philosophy, rather than as a set of practical operations, and it will not be long before magic makes
an appearance, directly or indirectly. Elias Ashmole and Thomas Vaughan were not intimidated by the term, which so alienated, frustrated and disgusted other educated minds of the time, not to mention historians of science today. And Ashmole and Vaughan were not alone, as a surprising number of their contemporaries shared their audacity. Indeed, for any aficionado of alchemy who was residing in England or Scotland, and who yearned to know more about supernatural magic, the unbridled 1650s and even the more staid 1660s and 1670s constituted a heady time. The forbidden subject had never been discussed more fully and openly, or in a greater variety of publications.

Any alchemist who was building up a collection of works on learned magic in the mid-seventeenth century might have started with a little book by a man who was certainly not orthodox. In fact, he was imprisoned so long for his offensive religious views that King James I opined his name should be “Never-Out.” The victim of this miserable pun was the sometime clergyman John Everard, “a perpetual heretic,” according to Christopher Hill, who was said to follow an egalitarian and utopian sect of the sixteenth century, the Family of Love. Everard dreamed of spreading his Neoplatonic philosophy “to the lowest of men … tinkers, cobblers, weavers, and poor beggarly fellows that come running.”
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Was he trying to address “the lowest of men” when he translated the works of Hermes Trismegistus into plain English? In late 1649, just before his death, Everard appeared as the translator, allegedly from Arabic, of an edition of
The Divine Pymander
, the first fourteen books of the
Corpus Hermeticum
, along with assorted Hermetic excerpts. In reality, Everard's translation was neither from Arabic nor Greek, but from Francesco Patrizzi's Latin version of 1593. The preface to this little volume was written by John French, physician to the Parliamentary army. One of its publishers was Thomas Brewster, later official printer to the Council of State under Cromwell.
⁴⁴
Clearly, in spite of Everard's notorious past, his work had friends in high places under the Republic. It may not have reached “poor beggarly fellows,” but, remarkably, it remained the standard English translation of the
Corpus Hermeticum
for 350 years.

The second classic that any alchemist would have wanted in his or her collection of magical texts was the 1651 translation by John French of Agrippa's
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
. The original, published in 1531, had long been available to readers of Latin, but this was the first complete English translation. It was preceded by an effusive poetic encomium to Agrippa, who is described as “Natures
Apostle
, and her Choice
High Priest
, Her
Mysticall
, and bright
Evangelist
.” This verse was written by a certain “Eugenius Philalethes,” the pen name of Thomas Vaughan. The book's dedication was to Dr Robert Child, whose life epitomizes the extraordinary range of careers and biographies of alchemists of the 1650s. Child, a correspondent of Samuel Hartlib, had managed
the Massachusetts ironworks of his friend and fellow alchemist John Winthrop the younger. Child fled New England in 1647 after his Presbyterianism landed him in trouble with the religious Independents who dominated the colony, and eventually settled in Ireland. The translator of Agrippa's
Three Books
praised Child for “being converted from vulgar, and irrational incredulities to the rational embracing of the sublime, Hermeticall and Theomagicall truths.”
⁴⁵
To read Agrippa's massive compendium of magic, apparently, was to enter the bosom of reason.

Agrippa's first book provides a definition of magic that is worth citing, because its influence spread throughout the occult thinking of the time:

If we leave out the “high mysteries,” which are not in any case made very specific, this definition resembles della Porta's “natural magic.” It too dealt with “secret things,” or at least hidden ones, through their power, quality, substance and virtues, with the aim of understanding the whole of nature. The word “Science” as used in Agrippa's last sentence would have carried more resonance in 1651 than it did when the author was alive, because by then it would have evoked the experimental methods espoused by Francis Bacon, and encouraged more recently by Samuel Hartlib.

When he suggested that magic was “the most absolute perfection of all most excellent Philosophy,” however, Agrippa implied that it gave insight into divine as well as natural things. This was a highly questionable position for orthodox Protestants, who recognized the divine only as it appeared in Scripture. Anything beyond that was suspect, because it might be inspired by the Devil. As D.P. Walker has pointed out, Agrippa was deliberately imprecise in distinguishing his ideas of magic from diabolism or devil worship.
⁴⁷
His second and third books rashly proceeded far beyond natural magic, into the realms of celestial magic (numerology, geometric figures) and ceremonial magic (the ritual evocation of
angels or demons). This terrain was particularly dangerous in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when diabolism was officially anathematized throughout Europe, leading to the execution of some sixty thousand alleged witches. In England, active witch-hunting revived in the late 1640s, with the encouragement of Parliament.
⁴⁸
Although its targets were elderly women, usually indigent or dependent on charity, rather than educated men, the possibility of running foul of the laws against witchcraft remained a real one for the devotees of Agrippa.

How could one reconcile Agrippa's problematic understanding of magic with intellectual respectability and Protestant religious orthodoxy? Some writers, like the botanist Robert Turner, were not much bothered by the question. In 1657, Turner translated and edited the first printed version of the
Ars Notoria
(the “Notory Arts of Solomon,” also known as the “Little Key of Solomon”), which was in fact a manual for summoning up spirits or angels, often condemned as a source for black magic. The
Ars Notoria
was the third book that every alchemical devotee of learned magic in the 1650s would have wanted to own, and probably the most subversive from an orthodox Protestant perspective. Turner was no obscure autodidact: he had studied at Cambridge, and was renowned for his translations of Paracelsus, as well as for a compendium of herbal remedies that included astrological notations. Nor was Turner simply a reviser of tired old magical formulae. Updating the fusty medieval prayers and rituals of the
Ars Notoria
, he included in his work “A certain Magnetick Experiment,” allowing “every Man or Woman” to convey thoughts telepathically to another person “by the virtue of the Loadstone,” that is, by magnetism.
⁴⁹
Apparently, Turner had no difficulty in uniting ritual magic with “
magia naturalis
.” He was also responsible for translating Agrippa's alleged
Fourth Book
, dealing with geomancy or divination by mathematical charts. Published in 1655, the edition proved popular enough to merit a reissue nine years later.
⁵⁰

By contrast with the radical Everard, the headstrong Agrippa or the mercurial Turner, Elias Ashmole was preoccupied not with publicizing magic, but with giving it intellectual respectability. If he never fully succeeded, at least he was able to cover his own occult thinking with an orthodox veneer. Ashmole was the editor of what must have been the most desirable addition to any collection of works on alchemy and magic in the 1650s, the magnificent
Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum
. This lengthy, beautifully produced, copiously illustrated anthology of alchemical works in verse by English authors—Thomas Norton, George Ripley, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Charnock, Edward Kelly, John Dee—was first published in 1652. Because it celebrated only
English
seekers after the Stone,
Theatrum Chemicum
can be read as a call to national unity at a time of political crisis. “Our
English Philosophers
Generally, (like
Prophets
)
have received little honour
…
in their
owne Countrey
,” wrote Ashmole, who intended to give it to them. English alchemists were ranked with those of ancient Israel, Greece, Rome and Arabia, implying a providential destiny for the nation as well as for those who shared in the great secret of the universe.
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Since Ashmole was a royalist, the longed-for rediscovery of the Stone may have been linked in his mind with the return of the Stuarts. Yet he avoided any mention of politics in the pages of
Theatrum Chemicum
, and nothing in his famous book would have been offensive to supporters of the Commonwealth. He strove to be accommodating towards those who held power, whoever they might be. Similarly, he tried to blunt any potential criticism from those who might object on religious grounds to the pursuit of alchemy.

In short, Ashmole was no Agrippa. Cautious and calculating, he preferred to edit rather than to author texts. Although his alchemical publications belong to the turbulent, sectarian 1650s, Ashmole remained, at least outwardly, a pillar of old-fashioned Anglicanism and respect for authority. Apart from a few brief passages in the “Prolegomenon” to
Theatrum Chemicum
, he never articulated a fully developed occult philosophy in print, although he was certainly familiar with the main Hermetic, Neoplatonic and Paracelsian authors, and had tried his hand at ritual magic. His own beliefs reflected an amalgamation of popular and learned sources that dealt with magic, including many texts of dubious origin or authorship, but he strove to present them as non-controversial, which involved him in some oddly twisted argumentation.

Ashmole's practical knowledge of alchemy was largely derived from his friend William Backhouse of Swallowfield, Berkshire, who “adopted” him as a “Son,” that is, as an alchemical pupil, in June 1651, just as the “Prolegomenon” was being written. On his deathbed two years later, according to Ashmole, Backhouse “told me in Silables the true Matter of the Philosophers Stone: which he bequeathed to me as a Legacy.”
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What “the true Matter” was, Ashmole did not reveal. Interestingly, Backhouse had also befriended Robert Turner, editor of the
Ars Notoria
, who dedicated a translation of Paracelsus to him, calling him a “worthy
Mecaenas
.”
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Unlike Turner's, however, Ashmole's published works never delved very deeply into the occult thought that originated in other European nations. Instead, they focused on English adepts, envisioning a national school of alchemy of which Ashmole was, in many respects, the inventor as well as the intellectual heir. He presented alchemy as “a Way to Bliss,” a road to personal fulfilment rather than to universal enlightenment. It was a narrow path open only to the educated few, not a broad way to which the many might aspire. This helped to separate Ashmole's work from the unorthodox writings of utopians or sectarians like John Everard, whose learning he nonetheless grudgingly admired.
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Ashmole was writing for the benefit of an elite, not for “poor beggarly fellows.”

No matter how respectable he may have wanted to appear, Ashmole was strongly attracted to magic, which continually peeps out from beneath the opaque surfaces of his prose. The “Prolegomenon” to
Theatrum Chemicum
is haunted by a barely disguised desire for the supernatural power that the alchemist might attain. In these remarkable pages, which represent his sole, brief public foray into theory, Ashmole freely borrowed from a strange, visionary sixteenth-century manuscript in his collection entitled “Epitome of the Treasure of Health.”
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Like its anonymous author, Ashmole imagined not one but four Philosopher's Stones, the Natural as well as the “
Vegitable, Magicall
, and
Angelicall
,” of which only the first could be reproduced by modern efforts, informed by the chemical knowledge that the Greek poet Orpheus brought out of Egypt. Ashmole was evidently most fascinated, however, by the last Stone, which “affords the
Apparition
of
Angells
, and gives a power of conversing with them, by
Dreams
or
Revelations
.” Unfortunately, it had been known only to Moses, Solomon and Hermes Trismegistus.
⁵⁶
In his musings on the Angelical Stone, Ashmole revealed an aspect of
spagyria
that was seldom discussed by alchemical writers: namely, its efficacy as a conduit to the world of spirits. While he lamented that such a marvel was now humanly unattainable, he may not genuinely have believed that to be the case, especially in light of the discussion that he presented in the endnotes to
Theatrum Chemicum
.