Read Solomon's Secret Arts Online
Authors: Paul Kléber Monod
The Whig side was represented by John Partridge, who made his debut as an almanac writer in 1678, by the old republican John Tanner and by the
Protestant Almanack
. The number of printed copies of Partridge's almanac, which displayed its Whig leanings mainly through a ferocious dislike of “Popery”—“
Rome
, Prepare thy self to entertain showers of Judgements,” etc—rose steadily from 4,000 in 1680 to an astonishing 23,000 in 1686.
33
Tanner, who praised the Whigs as “true Patriots to their King and Country,” saw the production of his almanac increase from 12,000 to 15,000 copies during the Exclusion Crisis, while the virulently anti-Catholic
Protestant Almanack
peaked at 8,000 copies in 1683, before disappearing in the first year of James II's reign.
34
The Stationers’ Company evidently did its best to respond to the shifting demands of a politicized public, although it is worth adding that most almanacs remained neutral during this turbulent period. If they encouraged commercial competition, the Stationers were also sensitive to pressure from the licensers of the press. In 1685, the archbishop of Canterbury compelled the Company to enforce a total ban on political predictions, which lasted throughout the short reign of the Catholic King James II.
35
From an occult point of view as from a political one, all almanacs were not created equal. It would be a mistake to assume that up to 300,000 people in England (plus perhaps thirty to forty thousand in Scotland) bought them in search of an annual dose of magical discourse. Most were far more mundane in their content. Almanacs of this period generally contained similar features: lists of upcoming eclipses, moveable feasts of the Church of England, country fairs, a tidal table, a table showing the phases of the moon, a table showing the zodiacal houses, a chronology and a calendar. Many also included an illustration showing the dominion of the planets over different parts of the human body.
While medical information, such as the most auspicious times for purging or letting blood, was common, its astrological derivation was rarely a subject for comment. The calendar was usually accompanied by predictions, made from natural astrology and pertaining to the weather or important national events. Well-known astrologers like Lilly, Booker, Coley, Gadbury, Partridge, Saunders and Andrews personalized their almanacs with remarks addressed to the reader, which might contain discussions of astrological principles. The Scottish compilers of almanacs put mathematical problems into their remarks, and serious students of the heavens, like John Wing, provided descriptions of planetary movements. The satirical almanacs, like
Poor Robin
and
Yea and Nay
, were full of jokes and stories. Not surprisingly, the Cambridge almanacs, designed for a rural public, offered advice on husbandry and gardening.
In short, the information provided by the almanacs of the late seventeenth century was overwhelmingly practical. Although much of it had an occult basis, it gave readers little understanding of the meaning and methods of astrology. Only occasionally did the celebrated prognosticators of the period deign to explicate the foundations of their art within the pages of an almanac. When they did, however, their attitudes could be revealing. Set alongside more substantial printed works on astrology, these rare comments in almanacs provide considerable insight into the changing nature of astrology towards the end of the century.
What Made Astrology Occult?
Astrology might be called occult by definition. As Henry Coley's almanac put it in 1679, “the Principles and Notions of this Art are so sublime and difficult to be found out by the most Sagacious Researchers of Humane Understanding, that they seem to require some supernatural Declaration.”
36
What could be more occult than the idea that unexplained influences emanating from the stars had a role in determining human destiny? Some astrological writers, however, longed to give a natural explanation of those influences. “Planetary
Aspects
,” advised John Goad, “are no
vain Terms
of a Bawbling Art, but are Mysterious
Schematisms
of a secret Force and Power towards the Alteration of the
Sublunar
World, especially the Air.”
37
Others had no desire to tarnish their art by an association with occult philosophy, or with any type of theoretical explanation, and instead represented it as purely experiential knowledge, gathered through careful observation. John Partridge opined in his
Prodromus
that “
Astrology
, like
Physick
, is but a Bundle of Experience; which the Industrious Observators have heaped up, as a Portion and Legacy to after Ages.”
38
Unlike alchemists, who rarely feuded with one another, astrologers
regularly launched into bitter debates over such principles. No clear winner emerged before the 1690s, so inquisitive readers were left with the open question: was astrology supernatural, natural or simply empirical?
Members of the older generation of astrologers would have had no difficulty in answering that question. For them, astrology was magic as Agrippa had defined it: that is, it reached supernatural results through natural means. They were not always eager to say so publicly, however, because it made their profession vulnerable to accusations of diabolism or conjuring. William Lilly's massive instructional guide
Christian Astrology
, which appeared in 1647 and went into a second edition in 1659, claimed to “lay down the whole naturall grounds of the Art, in a fit Method that thereby I may undeceive those, who misled by some Pedling Divines … conceived Astrology to be based upon Diabolical Principles: a most scandalous untruth.”
39
Yet Lilly had nothing further to say about the “naturall grounds of the Art” in the 650 pages of his book. His pupil and successor Henry Coley called astrology “a part or member of Natural Philosophy, which teacheth by the Motions, Configurations, and Influences of the Signes, Stars, and Coelestial Planets, to Prognosticate, or Predict of the Natural effects and Mutations to come in the Elements, and these inferiour Elementary Bodies.”
40
This sounded very empirical, although the causal link between heavenly signs and their worldly consequences remained wholly mysterious.
That the connection between the stars and elementary bodies might be magical rather than physical was made more explicit in Lilly's memoirs, written at the request of Elias Ashmole and not published until 1715. Lilly returned again and again to the theme of magic, and especially to communication with spirits. As a servant in the early 1630s, he had become fascinated by the astrological sigils kept in a bag by his master's wife, including one that had been cast by Simon Forman. He later learned astrology from one Evans, “an excellent wise Man, and studied the Black Art,” meaning ritual magic. In a revealing passage, Lilly admits that Evans “had some Arts above, and beyond Astrology, for he was well versed in the Nature of Spirits, and had many times used the circular Way of Invocating”—that is, invoking spirits by standing in a circle. Lilly himself later used a copy of the
Ars Notoria
to perform ritual magic, “but of this no more.” He also recalled invoking angels in the early 1630s in the company of Dr Richard Napier. In 1654, however, he was charged at the Middlesex sessions court with using diabolic magic in giving a judgment on a theft, and testified “that I never had or ever did, use any Charms, Sorceries, or Inchantments.”
41
We may doubt the veracity of this statement. For his own part, Lilly passed no further comment upon it.
That court case may have made Lilly more cautious about revealing publicly his interest in magic, but it did not make him more reticent in relaying such
matters to his friend Ashmole. The last part of his memoirs presents a gallery of ritual magicians and seers, with anecdotes about their lives: John a Windsor, a scrivener known to have invoked spirits; the celebrated John Dee and his sidekick, Edward Kelly; Sarah Skelhorn, “Speculatrix” to a physician in Gray's Inn Lane, who “had a perfect Sight, and indeed the best Eyes for that purpose I ever yet did see,” and who claimed to be followed by angels, “until she was weary of them” Ellen Evans, daughter of Lilly's tutor; one Gladwell of Suffolk, “who formerly had Sight and Conference with Uriel and Raphael, but lost them both by Carelessness” and Gilbert Wakering, who bequeathed to Lilly his beryl or crystal, the size of an orange and inscribed with the names of angels.
42
The presence of two women among these crystal-gazers is interesting, as so few women are known to have become astrologers in the late seventeenth century.
43
Lilly's confessions must have delighted Ashmole, and perhaps he was catering somewhat to his friend's fixations. Still, the old astrologer seems genuinely to have regarded conversations with angels as a “higher” form of supernatural prognostication, similar to reading the stars, although more direct and effective, because it did not involve complicated calculations or the possibility of human error. In 1680, Lilly even wrote an astrological history of the world, presumably for Ashmole, that fixed the name of an angel to each chronological epoch.
44
The comparison of the stars with angels was not unique to Lilly, of course. Agrippa argued that angels and stars performed the same duties for God, and that each planet and zodiacal sign had an angel attached to it:
Now whatsoever God doth by Angels, as by ministers, the same doth he by heavens, Stars, but as it were by instruments, that after this manner all things might work together to serve him, that as every part of Heaven, and every Star doth discern every corner or place of the Earth, and time, species and Individuall: so it is fit that the Angelical vertue of that part and Star should be applyed to them,
viz.
place, time, and species.
45
Similarly, Robert Fludd had argued that “the Angels give life and vigour, first unto the stars, then unto the winds,” which in turn affect the earth.
46
The celebrated physician and essayist Sir Thomas Browne wrote in his
Religio Medici
(1643) that “many mysteries ascribed to our owne inventions, have beene the courteous revelations of Spirites,” especially “prodigies and ominous prognosticks.”
47
Ultimately, such notions may have derived from the Neoplatonic
anima mundi
or Soul of the World, which breathed spirit into all animate and inanimate things.
Whether their source was Agrippa, Fludd, Marsilius Ficino or popular tradition, English astrologers were clearly familiar with the idea that angels
guided the stars. According to George Wharton, the world was “Living, Animate, Intellectual … Where we term it
Intellectual
, we mean the
Angelical Intellects
, which are properly
Perfect
and
Indivisible
(according to Place,) in their Government of the
Spheres
.” The expression of Intellect was the Soul of the World, which acted through Spirit on the “
Astral Soul
” of Man, which was “infused from the
Heavens
and
Stars
, at the time of Generation.”
48
On a less exalted plane, John Booker, writing a dedication to Elias Ashmole in the final almanac he ever produced, which happened to appear in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London, considered “the late notable Coelestial Phenomenons, which it hath pleased God to shew us … as Messengers, and Ambassadors to inform us of his divine will of Judgment or Mercy.”
49
Nobody would have had to explain to Ashmole that the biblical messengers of God were angels. Any astrologer who had made sigils would have understood the reference. The manufacture of these mysterious talismans involved an invocation of the names of angels as well as “suffumigation;” both practices derived from ritual magic.
50
If astrology was understood as a type of angelic magic, then it should have been useful in undoing demonic magic. Indeed, for older astrologers, the occult foundations of their art were nowhere better revealed than through its ability to expose witchcraft. Lilly, for example, argued in
Christian Astrology
that horary charts could reveal a bewitchment, and he further proposed “Naturall
Remedies
for WITCH-CRAFT” that could be used to cure the victim.
51
A considerable portion of Joseph Blagrave's
Astrological Practice of Physick
, first published in 1671, with further editions in 1672 and 1689, was devoted to the discovery and cure of diseases caused by witchcraft or sorcery. An admirer of Agrippa and friend of Ashmole, Blagrave asserted of astrology that God “hath given so much knowledge thereby (next unto the Angels) that he is able to reveale and make known in a great measure his Heavenly Will thereby unto his People.”
52
He proposed a particular astrological method for determining the possibility of witchcraft. From observing patients who were bewitched or demonically possessed, Blagrave had discovered that “at the time of any strong fit, or when they are more than usually tormented, that then the ascendant together with its Lord doth exactly personate the sick; and at that very time, the Lord of the twelfth house doth one way or other afflict, either the ascendant, or its Lord.”
53
In other words, victims of witchcraft were afflicted through the malign influence of a planet, and the remedy was usually a herb or plant sympathetic to that planet. Blagrave was convinced that “Witchcraft or Sorcery can no way be discovered, nor yet cured, but by the way of
Astrology
, except a Miracle be wrought.”
54
In Blagrave's imagination, witchcraft amounted to the inversion of astrology, a perversion of his own art. Its malevolent power was derived from the stars,
just like the benign power of astrological healing. If this was a widespread conception, it might help to explain the appeal of astrology, which linked learned and popular culture in a way that alchemy was never able to imitate. In educated minds, astrology drew on the power of angelic magic; in the minds of the less educated, it stood for the opposite of the demonic magic that was thought to hide in every corner. The most widely read astrological almanacs, like John Booker's, were quick to associate misfortune with witchcraft and sorcery, suggesting that only astrology could discover such wickedness. “[I]t is to be feared,” wrote Booker in 1664, “much Sorcery and Witchcraft may be used, and many Venifices [
sic
] practiced, that I trust in God they may be discovered in due time, and have their reward.”
55
This was a subtle form of self-advertisement. A reader troubled by suspected witchcraft knew exactly whom to consult in order to discover it.