Solomon's Secret Arts (69 page)

The latter resulted in heightened competition between the two new political parties, Whig and Tory, with further dire consequences for occult thinking. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that one party was sceptical about the occult, while the other was more credulous or accepting. Alchemists who espoused heterodox religious ideas were more favourable towards the Whigs, because the party stood up for Dissenters. Astrologers were divided between the two camps, although the Whig John Partridge would eventually emerge as the most influential almanac writer of the early eighteenth century. Because they upheld the views of the Anglican clergy, the Tories were more likely to defend belief in witches, and to extend accusations of diabolism to others aspects of the occult, while Whig writers increasingly doubted the plausibility of witchcraft and disdained “vulgar” magical practices. In this polarized context, occult thinking began to retreat into the private sphere. New alchemical works became scarcer in the 1690s and eventually stopped appearing. Partridge went so far as to assert that astrology was a natural science, without any connection to supernatural forces. Ritual magic dwindled away almost entirely, at least among the educated elite.

The Hanoverian Succession of 1715 and the subsequent triumph of the Whig Party meant that the intellectual establishment would henceforth be dominated by followers of Newton. The great man himself had largely abandoned alchemy, but he retained a fascination with other aspects of occult thinking, which found their way into his last writings. His followers, like William Stukeley and William Whiston, were open to the influence of occult philosophy, but were careful not to speculate openly about such matters in their published works. Thus, the hidden past of Newtonianism endured, at least in a shadowy form, but it did not have much impact on the direction of science. At the same time, Freemasonry was attracting a growing number of initiates. While never a predominantly occult movement, Masonry harboured publicists like Robert Samber who sought to enhance the rituals and myths of
the Brotherhood through alchemical and even magical allusions. The most significant result of these efforts was the theory that Freemasonry originated in the mystery cults of the ancient world, a conclusion that could easily be deduced from a reading of William Warburton's
Divine Legation of Moses
.

While it was struggling among the educated elite, occult thought flourished in the first half of the eighteenth century among less educated members of the population, in both England and Scotland. At this social level, it intersected with popular magical beliefs, but it remained the domain of the literate, who had access to occult books. When it came to the occult, no clear separation existed between folk culture and print culture. The diary of John Cannon illustrates the survival of ritual magic in the west of England, partly through folk customs, partly through published texts. Fairy belief in Scotland was less reliant on literacy and remained more of a popular survival. Second sight became an object of fascination for observers of Highland life, although they tended to downplay its cultural significance. During the same period, examples can be found of learned men, compelled to live on the margins of respectability because of their religious or political disaffection with the Whig establishment, who preserved a strong attachment to occult thinking, which they were often shy to publicize. While they were wary of possession by spirits as promulgated by the French Prophets, they perceived the occult as a support to mystical religion. The most influential of them were John Byrom and William Law, both Nonjurors and Jacobites. Law would become central to the revival of the occult in the late eighteenth century, because he encouraged the republication of Jacob Boehme's writings.

The four fat volumes of that work fell on newly fertile soil. By the 1760s and 1770s, Methodism had begun to spread a religion of the heart to wide audiences. Sentimental poetry and Gothic novels reintroduced readers to the strange and wonderful. Terror became a sentiment to be relished rather than avoided. Occult forms of Freemasonry flourished not only in France and Germany, but within English lodges as well. The groundwork for a revival of the occult was being laid. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this revival depended mainly on the middling ranks of society rather than the elite, although it attracted some well-connected figures like General Rainsford and was even tolerated by the celebrated Joseph Banks. For the most part, however, the occult revival was a phenomenon of urban middling culture. The booksellers of London noticed its commercial potential and did everything they could to exploit it, by reselling old works and publishing new ones. Conjuring shows and magic acts captivated a broad public. The occult revival produced a burst of publications in astrology, notably those of Ebenezer Sibly, as well as a renewal of alchemical experiments. A theological underpinning to these developments was provided by the writings of Swedenborg, who disdained magic but whose visionary theology
proved particularly appealing to those who fervently read Boehme or who practised alchemy. By the early 1790s, it looked as if occult thinking might become a respected feature of middling culture in England—although not in Scotland, where it was effectively resisted by the Moderate Presbyterian establishment and never took root.

The occult revival was eventually undermined by political developments that branded it as radical, treasonable and (again) heterodox. The short-lived fad of magnetic healing, which mixed occult methods with quasi-scientific theory, began to subside when war with France broke out in 1793. The prophet Richard Brothers brought further suspicion on occult movements through his connection with the Freemasons of Avignon. By 1798, the occult lodges had been denounced as the fomenters of the French Revolution, an accusation that spread to include the whole Masonic fraternity. In these dire circumstances, William Blake began to write his prophetic poems, as a protest against the rule of “abstract reason” and a vindication of his own poetic conception of the occult. The long-standing, albeit awkward, relationship between occult thinking, on the one hand, and science and the Enlightenment, on the other, was rejected outright by Blake. In this respect, he stands at the beginning of an era of Romantic detachment from enlightened thought that would continue well into the nineteenth century.

War with France delayed the next stage of development for occult thinking. After 1815, a younger generation of Romantic writers would emphasize novel and imaginative occult themes, often centred on acts of creation, as epitomized in Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
. The occult movements of the nineteenth century, especially Spiritualism and Theosophy, would build on this Romantic heritage. A conception of the occult as inimical to the rationalist project of Enlightenment would endure into the twentieth century. At the same time, the occult would experience ups and downs in commercial popularity, as older forms of publicity like astrological almanacs fell out of favour, to be replaced by new ones like newspaper horoscopes. The yearning among practitioners of the occult to achieve respectability would never fully be realized, although it would be given a different twist after the advent of personal computers and the Internet. Today, thanks to the profusion of online sources and the changing relationship of public and private spaces which has created “virtual communities” that only exist through electronic communication, the occult is more widespread than ever, and probably more accepted as a feature of contemporary culture than it has been since the mid-seventeenth century. Whether that means more people believe in it today than did 350 years ago, however, remains dubious. Many are willing to dabble in various aspects of occult thinking without becoming intellectually attached to it as a system of belief.

Perhaps the single most important point to be derived from this discussion is that the occult was not killed off by science or the Enlightenment. On the contrary, it coexisted with them, borrowed from them and was rarely the object of attacks from scientific or enlightened writers. In turn, this suggests something about what can be called modernity—an ideologically charged concept, to be sure, but one that forces itself into any discussion of change over the past four centuries. Modernity is a prescriptive concept, not a descriptive one: it tells us what we should be, not necessarily what we are, or even what we have been in the past. To be modern has come to mean embracing the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, while casting aside magic and “superstition.” Yet this is not what many people did in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England or Scotland—on the contrary, they were able to retain both points of view, scientific and occult, at least in some measure. In Scotland, to be sure, the Enlightenment did eventually shake off the occult, but that did not happen in England, or in Germany or France, for that matter. The Scottish case was exceptional, and can be ascribed to a century of determined Presbyterian denunciation of anything occult as diabolical.

Throughout the emerging industrial countries today—China, India, Indonesia, Brazil—can be found occult practices and beliefs that owe their origins to very different traditions from those of western Europe. Modernity—or globalization, if one wishes to use an even more aggressively reductionist term—seems to demand that they disappear so the nation can progress into a prosperous future. In most of western Europe, however, the occult did not vanish. It remained an intellectual force of some importance until the early eighteenth century, and has since then experienced periodic revivals. It particularly appealed to those in the middling ranks of society, who have often been the engines of social and economic change. It did not retard or undermine intellectual development, and may have enhanced it, through liberating the imagination. While its survival is not assured, the occult cannot be interpreted as a sign of tragic backwardness. Of course, that should not be taken as an argument to put our trust in it, because it has always suffered from deep weaknesses as an explanatory system, as well as from an inability to sustain critical inquiry. On the other hand, we should be encouraged to lay to rest a conception of the occult as the eternal bogeyman of modernity, bent on the undoing of reason and progress. That bogeyman never really existed, except in the overheated imaginations of those who feared him. As with other devils in history, when we look beyond what frightens us, we may recognize a diminished evil. We may even notice a trace of the gleaming features of a former angel of light.

MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

1. Archives

Great Britain

British Library (B.L.), London.

Additional Mss. 5767–93: D.A. Freher papers.

Additional Ms. 15,911: letters to Simon Ockley.

Additional Mss. 23,667–70, 23,675–6: Charles Rainsford papers.

Additional Ms. 27,986: John Gadbury notebook.

Additional Ms. 39,781: John Flaxman letters.

Egerton Ms. 2378: John Partridge casebook.

Harley Mss. 6481–4, 6486–7: “Dr Rudd” papers.

Lansdowne Ms. 841: letters of James Keith.

Sloane Ms. 696: catalogues of books on magic.

Sloane Mss. 630, 1321, 2577A: alchemical collections.

Sloane Mss. 3632, 3646, 3697: Robert Kellum alchemical papers.

Bodleian Library (Bodl. Lib.), Oxford.

Mss. Ashmole 180, 183, 240, 421, 423, 426–8, 430: astrological papers of William Lilly and John Booker.

Mss. Ashmole 2, 243, 339, 1446: astrological and alchemical papers of Elias Ashmole.

Ms. Aubrey 24: “Zecorbeni” by John Aubrey.

Ms. Ballard 66: conjuring manual.

Mss. Rawlinson C.136, D.1067: Masonic records.

Ms. Rawlinson A.404–5: papers of John Pordage.

Mss. Rawlinson D.832–3, 1152–7, 1341: papers and diaries of Richard Roach.

Mss. Rawlinson Poet 11, 133–4b: Robert Samber papers.

Mss. Rylands d.2–4, 8–10: Masonic records.

Mss. English. Misc. c.533, d.455–6, d.719/1–22, e.127–40, e.196, 650: diaries and papers of William Stukeley.

Glasgow University Library (GUL), Glasgow.

Ferguson Collection.

   Mss. 5, 9, 28, 43, 85, 155–6, 204, 210, 253, 260, 274, 281–2: alchemical manuscripts.

   Mss. 22, 25, 46, 93, 311, 314, 322: Sigismund Bacstrom papers.

   Mss. 36, 40, 51, 62: notes on chemistry courses.

   Ms. 86: Samuel Hieron astrological casebook.

   Ms. 125: D.A. Freher's three tables.

   Ms. 128: astrological notebook.

   Mss. 99, 305, 310: Ebenezer Sibly transcripts.

Wellcome Institute (Wellcome), London.

Mss. 957: Tables of Rotalo.

Mss. 1027, 1030–1, 3657: Sigismund Bacstrom papers.

Mss. 1854: treatise on astrology, 1665.

Mss. 2946: astrological notebook 1794–1814.

Mss. 4021: Norris Purslow astrological diary, 1673–1737.

Mss. 4032–9: alchemical notes by Charles Rainsford.

Mss. 4594: alchemical works transcribed by Ebenezer Sibly.

Mss. 4729: astrology tracts belonging to William Stukeley.

Dr Williams's Library (DWL), London.