Solomon's Secret Arts (43 page)

To raise a man from the grave was a supernatural act that pulled mysticism into the realm of the occult. The failure of Dr Thomas Emes to renounce eternal rest, however, moved the Prophets towards more settled practices. Already, by the end of 1707, they had organized congregations in private houses in London and other towns, where they carried out “Prophetic Blessings” by the laying-on of hands. They began to engage in silent prayer, called “waiting on God,” to keep regular records of their assemblies and even to accept a system of grades marking spiritual progress.
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The language of the Prophets, however, remained passionate and frequently violent. It was centred on the Holy Spirit, who entered physically into their bodies. Even in such states of mystic rapture, they did not surrender their identities and continued to speak as themselves. Their human consciousness was suddenly elevated to a divine level, as in a magical ritual.

Parallels between the mysticism of the French Prophets and occult thinking may explain why the movement was so attractive to alchemists. Among the latter was Sir Isaac Newton's former assistant in alchemy the Swiss Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, who was one of three Prophets pilloried in 1707 for blasphemy. Fatio retained his fascination with alchemy until his death in 1753, when he bequeathed in his will a “Vegetable Menstruum” for the benefit of his friend and fellow French Prophet the apothecary Francis Moult. An enthusiastic scientist, Moult and his cousin George, a Fellow of the Royal Society, became the first marketers of Epsom salts. In 1721, Francis Moult had a vision of the alchemical “Powder of Projection,” which he described in a poem addressed to his friend Charles Portales, another French Prophet who had become an admirer of Jacob Boehme's works.
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The unfortunate Dr Emes, “Chirurgo-Medicus” as he called himself, was also an alchemist. Before refusing to rise from the dead, he authored two pamphlets on alkalis, a treatise attacking deism and a philosophical work in which, contrary to the materialists or “Spinozists,” he equated God with “meer Mind.”
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Perhaps the most extraordinary alchemist among the French Prophets, however, was Timothy Byfield, a tireless self-promoter who marketed a universal medicine, the
Sal volatile oleosum
. In the same cheerful, helpful tone that characterized his commercial publications, Byfield expounded his views on the reunion of the individual spirit with that of God. “In Man is a peculiar, vivifying innate Spirit,” he wrote, “which contributes both Light and Life to the Body.”
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Apparently, that spirit could be animated either by visionary preaching or by Byfield's miraculous elixir.

The teachings of Jacob Boehme, widely regarded as a portal to the occult, infiltrated the ranks of the French Prophets through two other mystical groups, the Scots Quietists and the Philadelphians. The Quietists arose within the Episcopal Church of Scotland, which had been disestablished at the Glorious Revolution and whose clergy had become Nonjurors.
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Their spiritual leader was George Garden, a professor at King's College, Aberdeen, who was deprived of his position in 1692. He became an admirer first of Antoinette Bourignon, and later of Madame Guyon.
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Eschewing emotional experience, Guyon's mysticism was based on a total renunciation of the outside world and immersion in quiet, inner prayer—an utterly different method from that of the French Prophets. The Scottish Quietists included Garden's brother James, who had corresponded with John Aubrey about second sight. In England, the movement was represented by two notable medical men, James Keith in London and George Cheyne in fashionable Bath. Another celebrated Scottish Quietist was Andrew Michael Ramsay, the son of a Presbyterian baker from Ayr who would later migrate to France, where he befriended Madame Guyon herself.
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Socially well connected and orthodox in their theology, the Scots Quietists regarded the occult as diabolic. Recounting in his Life of Madame Bourignon how she had discovered a nest of young witches at an orphanage in Lille, George Garden opined with horror that “when ever any of them [witches] are discovered and tried, if strict Enquiry be made about them, their number appears incredible.”
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A more unsettling (and amusing) episode of demonic spirits was recorded in 1718 by James Keith, based on the testimony of his friend Simon Ockley, professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, who had been briefly imprisoned for debt in Cambridge Castle. While incarcerated, Ockley was tormented by “a Cacodæmon” who moved under his bed, banged on the door, tapped, thumped and even attacked the venerable academic in “the House of Office”: that is, the privy. Keith was inclined to think it “a Ludicrous Spirit,” but Ockley insisted it was “a malignant evil Genius.”
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Keith knew that his friend and patient was under stress, but he did not question the veracity of his account.

The improbable link between the Scots Quietists and the French Prophets was provided by an impressionable gentleman of Barns in Fife, James Cunningham. He had encountered a group of Prophets in Edinburgh during the spring of 1709. Excited by the spiritual possibilities, he wrote to George Garden to ask his opinion, quoting Jacob Boehme to the effect that union with God must be through “the Increated superessential Light” of Jesus Christ. In a later letter, Cunningham asked Garden about “the characteristicks, fallible rules and marks laid down in Scripture for discerning betwixt good and bad spirits,” which suggests a Neoplatonic approach to the unseen world. The learned Garden was quick to discern the sources of his correspondent's
confusion. He recommended “the prayer of silence,” that is, internal meditation without agitation, and he reminded him that “[w]e are call'd to be the followers of our Lord J. Christ,” not of Jacob Boehme. As for “the Platonists,” Garden recognized their insights but condemned their intellectual pride.
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His cautionary words had an effect on Cunningham, who encouraged the Prophets to settle into regular meetings and to question some of their own predictions. Still, he shared in their public “warnings,” announcing on one occasion, as if in answer to Garden, that Scripture gave “Abundance of Characters, and distinguishing Marks, whereby to know a good, from a bad Spirit.” Journeying to London in 1712, Cunningham was almost drowned by a mob—like a witch—when he cried out, “Repent, Repent,” during evensong in St Paul's Cathedral. Three years later, he showed the strength of his political convictions by joining the rebellion in favour of the Stuart claimant to the throne. Captured by the Hanoverian army at the Battle of Preston, he died a prisoner.
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Cunningham's Behmenism may have been derived from the Philadelphians. They were more open-minded than the Quietists regarding spirits, but they did not all embrace spirit possession. Although they had officially disbanded by the time of Jane Lead's death in 1704, members of the group remained prominent in mystical and prophetic circles. London Philadelphians continued to meet at a congregation in Bow Street, where their chief spokesman was a German-speaking immigrant from Nuremberg, Andreas Dionysius Freher. A letter that he apparently wrote to Jane Lead from Utrecht in 1701 introduces Freher as a confident, dynamic personality, steeped in occult thought. Addressing Lead as “Blessed Virago, most endeared and remarkable Soul,” the letter praises “the highly illuminated Jac. Behme” and points to astrological predictions of dominion by the “fiery trigon,” a group of three zodiacal signs.
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The mixture of Theosophy and occult science was typical of Freher. His voluminous writings, none of them published, were carefully copied out by his followers Allen Leppington, a London hop merchant, and the artist Jeremias Daniel Leuchter. They exceed even Boehme in their lavish use of astrological and alchemical language. In one manuscript treatise, redemption is described as a “Process,” and the individual believer is referred to as “the Artist or Magus.” Union with the divine here takes the form of a chemical reaction:

Freher's overwrought imagery is far removed from Jane Lead's intimate style, even if it follows the same Behmenist pattern. As so many of the French Prophets were alchemists, however, it might have held a special appeal for them.

Freher's colourful language lent itself to visualization. His friend Leuchter obligingly devised a series of “Hieroglyphica Sacra, or Divine Emblems,” showing the religious principles of the Philadelphians in graphic form, no doubt as an instructional tool. Perhaps the most enduring invention of their partnership was the so-called “Three Tables,” which depicted the progress of humanity from “Primeval Man” to “Fallen Man” to “Angelical Man,” with surrounding zodiacal symbols of “his Exterior Astral & Elementary Life.”
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The baroque effect of these illustrations, which were made into prints and accompanied by extensive notes, contrasts with the simplicity and spontaneity of the “warnings” issued by the French Prophets. While the latter strove to articulate the words of a single informing spirit, Freher and Leuchter sought to illuminate a universe of diverse spiritual entities, accessible through occult knowledge.

Freher did not lead a unified Philadelphian group, such as had briefly existed in the 1690s. The mastermind of that earlier movement, Francis Lee, was not a member of the Bow Street church, and he was drifting away from prophecy. In 1709, he published an anonymous attack on Montanism, an early Christian heresy that emphasized ecstatic visions, which he believed to be demonic. So that nobody could miss the contemporary point, the treatise was bound together with two attacks on the French Prophets.
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Soon after, Lee began a study of the apocryphal Second Book of Esdras (also confusingly known as 4 Ezra), an apocalyptic work frequently cited by visionaries as foretelling future events.
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When it finally appeared in 1722, three years after the author's death, it constituted not a vindication, but a final renunciation of visionary religion. Although he admired some of the beautiful passages in 2 Esdras, Lee also found in it “such a multitude of Things to shock me, so that it was hard for me not to throw it presently away with the utmost Contempt and Indignation.” He felt as if the Church of England, by including it among scriptural texts, might just as well have given authority to Mother Shipton's prophecy or John Partridge's astrological predictions.
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Lee's growing aversion to prophecy was in part a horrified response to the French Prophets. By contrast, his Philadelphian colleague the Reverend Richard Roach embraced them. Roach persisted in using the language of John Pordage and Jane Lead, at least in his diary, where he enthused about “[t]he Magick Sight, the Magick Will,” and scrawled down alchemical recipes.
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On 1 June 1710, “Mr. Richd. Roach belonging to the People call'd Philadelphians” appeared at a meeting of the French Prophets in London, where Mary Keimer
was giving out blessings (her brother and fellow Prophet, Samuel, a printer, later moved to Philadelphia, where he took Benjamin Franklin as an apprentice). Roach proceeded to read out “w[ha]
^t
. he calld an Inspiration” spoken by Sarah Wiltshire. Wiltshire was a former Quaker who seems to have succeeded Jane Lead in Roach's estimation as a female fount of prophecy. Roach and Wiltshire had allies among the French Prophets. At least three of them—the wool-comber Abraham Whitrow, the watchmaker John Cuff and the lawyer Thomas Dutton—were said to be “sometime Philadelphians.” Three days after proclaiming the “Inspiration,” Roach and Wiltshire founded the “Polemica Sacro-Prophetica,” which called for a redirection of the message of the French Prophets towards love and peace rather than imminent destruction. Not surprisingly, some of the Prophets reacted badly to the proposal, denouncing Roach as a “Ranter” and even punching Wiltshire. Roach continued to attend their meetings, but was unable to steer them in a more pacific direction.
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He was not discouraged. Indeed, Roach's sojourn with the Prophets seems to have further unshackled his visionary powers. Why should he despair when he had access to angels? Visits from the Archangel Raphael continued throughout his life. On St John's Eve in 1726, he noted a “Change of Angel” that caused him to begin a new diary.
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Around the same time, Roach began to commit his mystical and prophetic thoughts to print. In the anonymously published
Great Crisis
(1727), he postulated that battles seen in the air, meteors, blood-red rainbows, fires in the sky and monstrous births in Scotland constituted “God's
Speaking
to mankind.” The divine message, however, was still one of love and peace, symbolized by the harmony of Solomon's rulership. Roach praised the “many Famous Inlighten'd Virgins” who had carried that message, from Teresa of Avila to Madame Bourignon and Jane Lead.
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In a sequel,
The Imperial Standard of Messiah Triumphant
, Roach openly revealed his vision of “the Imperial Standard,” which had appeared to him in February 1723. This foretold “the blessed
Millenium
, or
Solomonitical
Kingdom,” which would expire with the Second Coming of Christ. Most of “the Perfected Ones” would then reascend with Christ, but some would remain to witness a general decline of religion on earth, and the forming of Satan's army, “instructed in Witchcraft and in the dark
Magia
… Against these the Blessed Inhabitants, the
Divine Magi
fight in Spirit.” The result was the consummation of the world and a new creation.
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Like earlier radicals, Roach envisaged rule by the saints before the coming of Christ, but the evocation of a final confrontation between two types of magic, good and evil, was entirely his own.