The Reenchantment of the World (49 page)

The Philosophy of Natural Magic
, ed. L.W. de Laurence (Mokelumne
Hill, Calif.: Health Research, 1972 reprint of 1913 ed.). The following
quotations can be found on pp. 65, 71, 73, 77, 114, 210. Reprinted by
permission of Health Research, Box 70, Mokelumne Hill, California 95245).

 

 

10. Cf. the similarity of the French words aimant (magnet) and amant(e)
(lover).

 

 

11. This theme is elaborated upon in Keith Thomas,
Religion and the
Decline of Magic
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), and D. P. Walker,
Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella
(London: The
Warburg Institute, 1958).

 

 

12. On much of the following see Foucault,
The Order of Things
,
chap. 3. Part I of
Don Quixote
appeared in 1605.

 

 

13. Owen Barfield,
Saving the Appearances
, pp. 32n, 42. Much of the
argument given below follows the analysis developed in this work.

 

 

14. Stated in this way, the "common-sense" position that phenomena are
wholly independent of consciousness and always have been appears to
be so silly as to hardly warrant further comment. It is, however, the
common-sense position, as well as the basic premise of all intellectual
history or history of consciousness. Jaynes's study of human consciousness
(see note 4 of this chapter) is so squarely based on this premise that he
is ultimately forced to condemn every form of participating knowledge
(poetry, music, art) as deluded and atavistic, and to champion the
alienated intellect as the only reliable form of knowing (even though
he comes to question that form, his own work included, by the end of
the book). The Platonic ideal is thus taken to its ultimate psychotic
conclusion. I should add that despite my criticism of this scientific
ideal, I am in complete agreement with Barfield that a return to original
participation is neither possible nor desirable at this point in human
history.

 

 

15. From his book
De Vanitate
, and quoted by Carl Jung in
The Collected
Works of C.G. Jung
(hereafter CW), trans. R.F.C. Hull, 2d ed. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1961-79), vol. 14, p. 35. See also Wolf Dieter
Müller-Jahncke, "The Attitude of Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535)
Towards Alchemy,"
Ambix
22 (1975), 134-50. In England especially,
alchemy was often seen as a con game, and the alchemical quest as akin
to gambling fever. Chaucer ridiculed it in the "Canon Yeoman's Tale"
as a waste of time and money.

 

 

16. Jung, CW12, pt. 2. See also the fine collection in S. K. De Rola,
Alchemy: The Secret Art
(New York: Avon Books, 1973).

 

 

17. My desciption of Jung's work in this chapter is based on his CW,
12, 14, 15, and
Memories, Dreams, Reflections
, ed. Aniela Jaffé,
trans. Richard and Clara Winston, rev. ed. (New York: Vintage Books,
1965); Anthony Storr,
Jung
(London: Fontana, 1973); Harold Stone,
Prologue to Dora M. Kalff
,
Sandplay
(San Francisco: Browser Press,
1971); and B. J. T. Dobbs,
The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 26-34.

 

 

The word "gibberish," ironically enough, was first applied to the
language of alchemy by outsiders, and was taken from Geber, the name
of a thirteenth-century Italian or Catalan writer on the subject who
in turn took his name from that of the eighth-century Arabian alchemist
Jâbir ibn Hayyân.

 

 

18. I am following the terminology used by N. O. Brown in
Life Against
Death
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1970; orig. publ.
1959). For an interesting discussion of the language of dreams, see Ann
Faraday,
The Dream Game
(New York: Perennial Library, 1976), pp. 54-57.

 

 

19. CW 12, pt. 2.

 

 

20. Brown,
Life Against Death
, p. 316.

 

 

21. Of course, barbarism is hardly the prerogative of modern man,
although its scale probably is. Jung would conceivably have argued that
the creation of a technology necessary to effect the genocide of modern
times was itself part of the process of psychic repression.

 

 

22. "Sol et eius umbra perficiunt opus," from a work of 1618, quoted by
Dobbs in her study of Newton, p. 31 and n.

 

 

23. The experience has an allegory in "The Fisherman and the Genie" from
the Arabian Nights, in which the genie, once released from the bottle,
threatens to kill the fisherman and is not easily persuaded to return
whence he came. The Western version of this, naturally enough, deals with
technology, and is captured in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's gothic novel,
Frankenstein
.

 

 

24. Actually, this is an incorrect correlate. Psychosis is the attempt
to "salvage" the soul; it is only from the viewpoint of Western clinical
psychiatry that it is regarded as purely negative. See the concluding
pages of Chapter 4.

 

 

25. R. D. Laing,
The Politics of Experience
(New York: Ballantine Books,
1968).

 

 

26. R. D. Laing,
The Divided Self
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965;
orig. publ. 1959), pp. 220, 204-5.

 

 

27. Mircea Eliade,
The Forge and the Crucible
, trans. Stephen Corrin
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971; orig. French edition 1956), pp. 7-9,
30-33, 42, 54-57, 101-2.

 

 

28. Titus Burckhardt,
Alchemy
, trans. William Stoddart (Baltimore:
Penguin Books, 1971; orig. German edition 1960), p. 25. The discussion
of alchemical procedure that follows is taken from this book.

 

 

29. According to Frank Manuel,
A Portrait of Isaac Newton
(Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1968), p. 171, there were
a total of twelve basic procedures, which he lists (following the
system of Sir George Ripley, 1591) as: calcination, dissolution,
separation, conjunction, putrefaction, congelation, cibation, sublimation,
fermentation, exaltation, multiplication, and projection. The progress of
the work was also charted by the various colors that were produced in the
vessel, a type of index with obvious metallurgical roots. The "descent
into chaos" of the initial solution was characterized by a blackening,
or 'nigredo,' followed by a bleaching, or 'albedo,' and ending up (if
all went well) with a reddening, or 'rubedo.' But there was a whole
series of intermediate colors also, and hence the term 'cauda pavonis,'
or peacock's tail, is frequently employed in the texts. Mercury produced
a blackening, sulfur a reddening.

 

 

30. One of the best statements of the alchemical model of the human
personality, although it does not refer to alchemy as such, is Luke
Rhineharts hilarious novel,
The Dice Man
(London: Talmy, Franklin Ltd.,
1971). The religious and psychoanalytic interpretation can be found in
various sources, but I chose to paraphrase the interpretation provided
by James Hillman in a lecture given in San Francisco on 11 December
1976. Hillman is editor of
Spring
and author of a number of works on
Jungian psychology. A similar analysis of the nature of personality may
be found in Hermann Hesse's brilliant novel
Steppenwolf
.

 

 

The quotation from Laing is on p. 190 of
The Politics of Experience
and the Bird of Paradise
(Penguin Books, 1967). This book, like
The
Divided Self
, is a profoundly alchemical work.

 

 

31. On Perry's work, see his book,
The Far Side of Madness
(Englewood
Cliffs, N,J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974). The parallels between insanity and
alchemy, and premodern thought in general, are discussed briefly at the
end of Chapter 4 of the present work.

 

 

32. F. Sherwood Taylor,
The Alchemists
(New York: Henry Schuman,
1949), pp. 179-89. The testimony of Spinoza occurs in a letter he wrote
to Jarrig Jellis in March 1667, reprinted in his
Posthumous Works
.

 

 

33. On alchemy as the key to nature see the various authors quoted
by A. G. Debus in "Renaissance Chemistry and the Work of Robert Fludd,"
Ambix
14 (1967), 42-59. Agrippa discussed the relations between alchemy
and numerous craft processes (see the article by Müller-Jahncke cited
in note 15 of this chap.); and its relationship to mining, metallurgy,
and pottery is discussed at length by Eliade in
The Forge and the
Crucible
. The relationship between alchemy and medicine is the subject
of a large literature, and has been explored in the work of Paracelsus
and his followers by Allen Debus and Walter Pagel. Finally, alchemy as a
yoga has been discussed by Eliade, Jung, and a host of other writers. Of
particular interest are Burckhardt,
Alchemy
, and Maurice Aniane,
"Notes sur l'alchimie, 'Yoga' cosmologique de la chrétiené mediévale,"
in Jacques Masui, ed.,
Yoga, science de l'homme intégral
(Paris:
Cahiers du Sud, 1953),pp. 243-73.

 

 

34. Chinua Achebe,
Things Fall Apart
(New York: Fawcett World Library,
1959). The first three books of the Castaneda tetralogy,
The Teachings
of Don Juan
,
A Separate Reality
, and
Journey to Ixtlan
, deal with
the animistic world view mostly from the inside. The fourth,
Tales of
Power
, spells out the epistemology of sorcery in exact detail.

 

 

35. Reprinted by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons from
Seeing Castaneda
,
edited by Daniel Noel, p. 53. Copyright © 1976 by Daniel Noel.

 

 

36. Philip Wheelwright, ed.,
The Presocratics
(New York: The Odyssey
Press, 1966), p. 52.

 

 

37. Taylor,
The Alchemists
, pp. 233-34.

 

 

38. See Chapter 4 for a discussion of Newton's alchemy. Something
of a cottage industry has developed among historians of science
regarding Newton as an alchemist, and there is by now a good bit of
literature on the subject. The interested reader might wish to consult
any of the following: Frank Manuel,
A Portrait of Isaac Newton
;
J.E. McGuire and P.M. Rattansi, "Newton and the 'Pipes of Pan',"
Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London
21 (1966), 108-43;
Betty Dobbs,
The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy
; R.S. Westfall, "The
Role of Alchemy in Newton's Career," in M. L. R. Bonelli and W. R. Shea,
eds.,
Reason, Experiment, and Mysticism in the Scientific Revolution
(New York: Science History Publications, 1975), pp. 189-232, and also
his "Newton and the Hermetic Tradition," in A. G. Debus, ed.,
Science,
Medicine and Society in the Renaissance
, 2 vols. (New York: Neale Watson,
1972), 2, 183-98; P.M. Rattansi, "Newton's Alchemical Studies," in the
Debus volume, pp. 167-98; and the remarkable essay by David Kubrin,
"Newton's Inside Out! Magic, Class Struggle, and the Rise of Mechanism
in the West," in Harry Woolf, ed.,
The Analytic Spirit
(Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1981).

 

 

Christopher Hill provides a brilliant discussion of seventeenth-century
radical ideas, including those of the occult sciences, in
The World
Turned Upside Down
(New. York: Viking, 1972).

 

 

39. There is, furthermore, a still existing underground of practical
alchemists. See Jacques Sadoul,
Alchemists and Gold
(London: Neville
Spearman, 1972), and Armand Barbault,
Gold of a Thousand Mornings
,
trans. Robin Campbell (London: Neville Spearman, 1975).

 

 

40. Both quotations from Magritte can be found in Eddie Wolfram's
Introduction to David Larkin, ed.,
Magritte
(New York: Ballantine
Books, 1972). The link between alchemy and surrealism is mentioned
briefly by E.R. Chamberlin in
Everyday Life in Renaissance Times
(New York: Capricorn Books, 1965), p. 175.

 

 

41. See Walker,
Spiritual and Demonic Magic
.

 

 

42. Eliade,
Forge and Crucible
, pp. 172-73. Cf. Brown,
Life Against
Death
, p. 258.

 

 

43. Paolo Rossi,
Philosophy, Technology and the Arts in the Early
Modern Era
, trans. Salvator Attanasio (New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1970; orig. Italian edition 1962), p. 28. The idea that Hermeticism was
a major factor in the rise of the experimental method is now accepted
by many historians. In addition to Rossi, several of the authors cited
in note 38 talk in these terms, as does Eliade in
Forge and Crucible
,
Frances A. Yates in
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
(New York:
Vintage Books, 1969), and Christopher Hill in
Intellectual Origins of the
English Revolution
(London: Panther Books, 1972; orig. publ. 1965). See
also the Introduction in A. G. Debus, ed., John Dee,
The Mathematicall
Preface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara
, 1570 (New York:
Science History Publications, 1975).

 

 

However, Robert S. Westman has seriously questioned the thesis, and
J. E. McGuire has significantly distanced himself from his earlier
position, in essays published under the title of
Hermeticism and the
Scientific Revolution
(Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library, 1977).

 

 

44. Keith Thomas,
Religion and the Decline of Magic
.

 

 

45. Yates,
Giordano Bruno
, p. 99.

 

 

46. "Elim" was also an allusion to a biblical place name, mentioned in
Exodus 15:27 and 16:1. For a biographical sketch of Delmedigo see the