Solomon's Secret Arts (24 page)

The Nature of Secrets

The late seventeenth century was an age of fearful secrets. King Charles II guarded his own: about his private religious views, the influence of his mistresses or the 1670 Treaty of Dover that he had made with France. Concerning these things, the public heard only rumours. The sectarians and republicans who conspired against him kept their plots secret, and while they seldom amounted to much, the public was encouraged to feel constant anxiety about the security of the crown. The fear of secret conspiracies extended to Roman Catholics as well: Jesuits were suspected of having lit the fire that incinerated much of London in 1666, and in 1678 the biggest secret of all, the so-called “Popish Plot” to assassinate the king and put his brother James on the
throne, was revealed to an astonished public by the informers Titus Oates and his colleague Israel Tonge (an alchemist and acquaintance of John Aubrey).
⁷⁹

The opening of secrets was fundamental to the success of the Restoration press—which included newspapers, periodicals, broadsheets, song sheets and pamphlets. The press was responsible for creating, exaggerating, misreading and overpublicizing the hidden operations that supposedly put the kingdom in jeopardy. The press gave a new urgency to the notion that keeping secrets was dangerous and that everything hidden should be subjected to public inspection. Memories of the Civil War and Interregnum alarmed contemporary observers about the potential of secrets to corrode and dissolve the body politic. In such an atmosphere, the hidden meanings of occult philosophy and science were bound to arouse suspicion. It would be better to bring them to light at once.

Practitioners of the occult sciences, of course, did not agree. To be sure, the alchemists of the Restoration period were willing to publish their findings and theories to a far greater extent than their predecessors, but they used so much arcane jargon that their secrets were never fully exposed to view. If they were hesitant to tell all, it was because they held to an older understanding of secrets, one that persisted amid the new atmosphere of political fear. It connected “the secret,” not with operations, but with ultimate meanings. The alchemists aimed to uncover, not just the workings, but the significances of nature—precisely what Newton stated he did
not
wish to discuss. This entailed a personal quest that could not easily be related to others.

The alchemists were not alone in trying to protect secrets. Many thirsted for private knowledge of the Bible's hidden mysteries, especially those pertaining to the final coming of Christ. On a more mundane level, apprentices were still trained for years in the “art and mystery” of a craft, the practice of which was forbidden to the uninitiated on pain of legal retribution.
⁸⁰
In the late seventeenth century, however, these remaining areas of exclusive knowledge were being transformed by social change. The signs of the impending Apocalypse were daily proclaimed in ephemeral publications, from the visionary effusions of self-styled prophets to the broadsheet and newspaper reports that recorded wonderful sights and occurrences. Meanwhile, those who wanted to explore mysterious techniques like glass-making or the workings of machinery no longer had to struggle through long apprenticeships. They could turn to a burgeoning literature, ranging from simple explanatory tracts to erudite works like John Wilkins's
Mathematical Magick
(1648). Secrets were no longer the domain of the scholar or learned acolyte; they could be unravelled by anyone who was able to read and had access to publications. Increasingly, “the secret” was a bookseller's gambit whose moment of inception was very close to the moment of revelation.

The popularization of secrets in the late seventeenth century is exemplified by William Salmon's curious publication
Polygraphice
, five editions of which appeared between 1672 and 1685. Salmon, a medical doctor, vendor of patent medicines and author of an astrological almanac, was an experienced publicist, determined to reach a very wide audience. He consequently provided a remarkable variety of information on subjects that might have enticed any ambitious young man wanting to learn the mysteries of a trade, the secrets of medicine or the processes of alchemy. The fifth edition of his compendium was subtitled “The Arts of Drawing, Engraving, Etching, Limning, Painting, Washing, Varnishing, Gilding, Colouring, Dying, Beautifying and Perfuming.” For good measure, Salmon added a section on chiromancy or palm reading, a translation of “The one hundred and twelve Chymical Arcanums of Petrus Johannes Faber,” and a collection of alchemical recipes “fitted for Vulgar Use, for curing most diseases incident to Humane Bodies.” Salmon flagrantly plagiarized Robert Boyle's research on colours, but he may not have imagined that anyone would notice, as he evidently did not think of his readers as connoisseurs of scientific tracts.
⁸¹
The simple, didactic tone of his writing suggests that he was addressing himself to people who wanted straightforward information on practical subjects. Salmon's description of chiromancy lacks any hint of mystery whatsoever. Avoiding “long or abstruse” explanations, he suggests that the lines of the hand can be read like a book, without any ambiguities or doubts. An extended
Cingulum Veneris
, for example, “shows intemperance and lust in both Sexes, a base and bestial Life; a filthy
Sodomite
, who abuses himself with beasts.”
⁸²
One can only imagine what a young apprentice would have done with that information.

Chiromancy was supposed to be a Jewish mystical art, a secret cherished by the Kabbalists, but Salmon did not bother to explain its origins. Learned readers might well have been annoyed by his lack of scholarship. They sought after secrets of a more profound sort—decipherments of nature and Scripture, not the rudiments of palmistry. Yet the idea that a single text would unlock these mysteries for them, dispelling any philosophical doubts they might have about spirits and resolving the discrepancies between the natural world and God's word, was intoxicating to many.

In 1677, a book arrived that promised to fulfil those aspirations. Its title was
Kabbala Denudata
or
Kabbala Unveiled
, and it consisted of Latin versions of medieval Jewish mystical works, including the
Zohar
, along with rabbinical commentaries and contemporary articles by well-known scholars. The editor and translator was Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, a German Lutheran alchemist and poet, who had studied the Kabbala with a rabbi in Amsterdam. He was described by a contemporary as “strange, but charming,” which is not a
bad description of his book, either.
⁸³
The frontispiece to the first volume was indeed strange and charming: it showed a scantily clad woman running between parting waves towards a tall closet with an open door inscribed “PALATIUM ARCANORUM”—“THE PALACE OF SECRETS.” The initial two volumes, organized with a bewildering lack of consideration for the reader, contained various contributions by Henry More, Rosenroth and Francis Mercurius van Helmont, a noted alchemist whose father, J.B. van Helmont, had been one of the leading theorists of the art. Because the compilation was intended for an international audience of scholarly readers, the essays were in Latin.
⁸⁴
The great secrets of Jewish mysticism—God's hidden attributes, the divine character of Adam, the reality of spirits—were now available to every educated person, although not to the apprentices, amateur artists and medical quacks who might have purchased William Salmon's
Polygraphice
.

Kabbala Denudata
was not designed for the vulgar public. It is an immensely complex work, and any attempt to sum it up in a few words will be inadequate. In broad terms, however, it can be understood as having three main purposes—three levels of secrets, as it were. The first and most obvious concerned the relationship between Christians and Jews. By drawing out the hitherto hidden parallels between Christianity and Jewish mysticism, Rosenroth and Van Helmont sought to encourage the conversion of the Jews, which was widely thought to be a harbinger of the end of time. As a result, they read the Christian Trinity into the Kabbalist
Sephiroth
or attributes of God, and interpreted Adam Kadmon, the cosmic figure who was central to the writings of the sixteenth-century rabbi Yitzchak Luria, as the Christian Messiah. “And precisely what with you is named Adam Kadmon, with us is called Christ,” notes the Christian philosopher conversing with a Jewish Kabbalist in the section titled “
Adumbratio
.”
⁸⁵
Thus, Christianity and its parent religion were happily reunited.

The reunion, however, took place on heterodox terrain. This was the second secret of
Kabbala Denudata
, one not easy for the uninitiated reader to comprehend, then or now. Rabbi Luria had imagined the souls or spirits of all living things to be contained in Adam Kadmon's body, which was composed of the traces of divine light. Through “the breaking of the vessels,” from which evil arose, the multiplicity of spirits had been forced out into the material world, but would eventually be reunited with the divine being through a process of restoration (
tikkun
). With his keen nose for heterodoxy, Henry More had quickly picked up on the problems inherent in the conflation of Adam Kadmon with Christ. Even before the publication of
Kabbala Denudata
, he had written to Rosenroth to register his objections. Pitting his own visionary experiences against those of the Jewish mystics, More claimed to have learned of their
errors from a strange dream. In this, an eagle flew in at his window and, as More stroked its head, turned into a boy. When questioned, the boy asserted that he believed not in one God but in many. The irate More began to kick the impious boy, at which point he changed into a bee. On waking, More started to suspect that his visitor represented the Kabbala, and realized just how dangerous the secret of Jewish mysticism was. It amounted to pantheism, the doctrine that God was in everything, a heresy represented at that time by the writings of the Dutch-Jewish philosopher Benedict Spinoza.
⁸⁶

Today we might interpret More's dream differently. The eagle and boy might remind us of the story of Ganymede, and of a type of erotic desire with which More's mentor Plato would have been familiar. Whether or not More shared such feelings is less important than his evident ambivalence towards the figures in his dream. As with so many occult ideas, he was both drawn to and irritated by them. Of course, he was right to see heterodoxy hidden within
Kabbala Denudata
. It was indeed a dangerous book, no matter how strenuously its editors strove to deny it. Van Helmont vigorously countered the assertion that God's divine spirit was equivalent to the souls of his creatures, but he also conceded that there was not a very big difference between the two.
⁸⁷
In the end, spirits were made of the same divine essence as God, which meant that the deity must be everywhere, imprisoned in the material world. This had further implications that might shock any conforming Anglican. First, if God was in every spirit, then should they not be as eternal as He was? Since matter decayed, however, this meant that spirits must change bodies in order to persist over time. Second, did it make any sense that God would condemn and punish for all eternity that which was part of Himself? What Van Helmont really wanted to draw out of the Kabbala was not pantheism, but an equally heterodox doctrine to which the Neoplatonist More was far less hostile: namely, the transmigration of souls, which led to the assumption that all souls were to be saved.
⁸⁸

Van Helmont recognized “the Revolution of Human Souls” in the Kabbalist myth of the dispersal of spirits from Adam Kadmon's body. He hinted strongly at this in
Kabbala Denudata
, but only revealed his hand fully in a pamphlet published in 1685. In that work, Van Helmont defended the idea that “God is a God of Order, who hath created every living thing … to the end that by a never-ceasing Revolution it might be still renewed.” The soul moved towards perfection through up to a dozen transmigrations. Van Helmont did not shrink from the corollary, that every soul would eventually be redeemed and there would be no eternal punishment: “For is not every Creature of God Infinite?”
⁸⁹
Universal salvation was hardly a new idea, but Van Helmont would give it renewed intellectual vigour, to the horror of those who believed in eternal judgment. The prophetess Jane Lead was one of the few who agreed
with him, although her key to secrets was personal revelation, not Jewish mysticism.

The third and deepest secret of
Kabbala Denudata
concerned alchemy. The first volume contained a Latin translation of the
Aesch Mezereph
or “Purifying Fire,” an allegorical treatise on metals dating from the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It consists of a mixture of alchemical recipes, numerology and arcane pronouncements on biblical verses. Because the editors of
Kabbala Denudata
believed the Kabbala to be ancient, this virtually impenetrable text would take on a great deal of importance for alchemists. In 1714, it became one of the first parts of Rosenroth's collection to be rendered into English.
⁹⁰
The similarities between the
Aesch Mezereph
and the
Corpus Hermeticum
were duly noted by Rosenroth, who pointed out that that the Kabbala expressed the values of an original, “Oriental” philosophy, “just as is to be seen in Hermes Trismegistus.”
⁹¹
This was not implausible, since the Kabbalists, who lived in western Europe, may have been influenced by the Hermetic writings, but Rosenroth meant to suggest a basic unity among ancient philosophers of the mysterious “Orient.” What he did not know was that ten centuries and the length of the Mediterranean separated the Jewish mystical texts from the works ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus.

Kabbala Denudata
made a considerable splash, but it also exemplified a basic problem with the revelation of secrets: namely, they were most convincing to those already disposed to believe them. Through her reading of the collection, as well as her friendship with Van Helmont, Lady Anne Conway was convinced of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which became central to her own philosophical writings.
⁹²
On the other hand, while John Locke read
Kabbala Denudata
with care and took copious notes on it, he objected to the ambiguities of the language and gave the title “Doubts about the Oriental Philosophy” to his observations.
⁹³
Isaac Newton, an enemy to Gnostics and Neoplatonists, also read
Kabbala Denudata
, but rejected its portrayal of lesser spirits as sharing in God's substance. His long search for a “religion of Noah” that would counter Jewish mysticism can be viewed as a response to the book.
⁹⁴
Its ultimate significance for “the sons of Hermes” may also be doubted. It was simply too complex for the average alchemist. Van Helmont himself was not very successful in applying it to the spagyric art. Admittedly, some of the “Chymical Aphorisms” that he published in 1688 have a Kabbalistic ring to them. Alchemy, he wrote, “is a Science whereby the Beginnings, Causes, Properties and Passions of all the Metals, are radically known; that those which are imperfect, incompleat, mixt and corrupt, may be transmuted into true Gold.”
⁹⁵
This statement may have been inspired by the Lurian concept of the restoration of souls to perfect unity with God, but, then again, the language is not very different from that of traditional alchemical texts. As for the
Aesch
Mezereph
, Van Helmont seems to have found its recipes and tables as indecipherable as they appear to readers today.