Solomon's Secret Arts (37 page)

In the flying snake, we might discern a winged dragon. Kircher was intrigued by dragons, which he discussed in
Mundus Subterraneus
(first published 1664–5), another classic of wonder-inducing speculation. He believed that such creatures existed in the Swiss Alps and were related to the dragons of legend.
⁷⁴
He would have been well aware of their alchemical significance. Pictures of winged dragons, variously representing the spiritualization of matter, a volatile spirit, sublimated mercury or mercuric acid, appear frequently in alchemical manuscripts, starting with the Ripley Scrolls. By the seventeenth century, they were perhaps the most familiar of all emblems in alchemy. Kircher's winged dragons closely resemble those found in alchemical texts, and their underground existence suggests that he linked them with metals. Moreover, he regarded alchemy as an Egyptian science, invented by Hermes Trismegistus. In
Oedipus Aegyptiacus
, Kircher equated the alchemical signs for metals with what he supposed to be the hieroglyphs of Egyptian gods and goddesses, as well as with those of the planets. He thought the particular hieroglyph of alchemy consisted of the winged circle with serpent motif hovering above a scarab. The mythic voyage of the scarab across the heavens traced not only an astrological journey but an alchemical process.
⁷⁵

Stukeley, of course, had seen a winged dragon in the sky, in the form of Draco, the never-setting constellation of the northern sky.
⁷⁶
Draco had various roles in mythology: as the protector of the golden apples of the Hesperides sought by Hercules and as the guardian of the Golden Fleece. Stukeley was particularly taken with the first of these myths, just as Newton had been with the second. He decided that the dragon's nemesis, Hercules, was none other
than the founder of Stonehenge and the first reader of the zodiac. In a 1752 letter, Stukeley argued that Midian, son of the patriarch Abraham, “formed the zodiac for use of Hercules of Tyre in navigation.” Hercules went on to build the first patriarchal temple, Beth-el, to the specifications of a celestial vision. Presumably steering by the northern stars, the hero then travelled to Britain, where Stukeley could not “see any absurdity” in the idea that he set up the sacrificial altar at Stonehenge.
⁷⁷
Thus, the treasure of the astrological-alchemical dragon, the secret of the zodiac, turned out to be the famous British temple itself. Draco the winged dragon guided Hercules to Stonehenge, to be re-created in stone through the serpent-like temple at Avebury.

In discussing the serpentine plan of Avebury, Stukeley referred to the brazen serpent raised by Moses to cure the Israelites of snakebites (the Nehushtan), which was accepted by theologians as a type of Christ. The brazen serpent, as illustrated for example in the famous seventeenth-century emblem book of George Wither, was wrapped around an upright cross, forming a shape similar to the Avebury serpent. Wither, however, also displays the emblem of the Orobouros or snake devouring itself, a symbol of infinitude that may have been in Stukeley's mind.
⁷⁸
Both emblems were common in alchemy. A flying serpent or dragon bent into an Orobouros was found in many German alchemical works, from the
Book of Lambspringke
(1577) to Michael Maier's
Atalanta Fugiens
(1618).
⁷⁹
Serpents rudely swallowing a virgin comprise the first “Hieroglyphic Figure” in a famous treatise falsely attributed to the medieval French alchemist Nicholas Flamel. The strange scene was usually shown in the form of an Orobouros gobbling up a young girl. The second of “Flamel's” hieroglyphs was the Nehushtan, “a
Crosse
where a
Serpent
was crucified.”
⁸⁰
Whether Stukeley ever read “Flamel” is unknown, but Newton knew the work well and made transcripts from it.
⁸¹

Stukeley's use of astrological and alchemical allusions helps us to understand his indulgent interpretation of Druidic magic. The text of
Stonehenge
did not mention magic at all, but in
Abury
Stukeley admitted that the Druids were magicians. He defined magic as “nothing else but the science that teaches us to perform wonderful and surprizing things, in the later acceptance of the world.” In other words, the Druids used
magia naturalis
, although supernatural magic is not ruled out here. Stukeley further asserted that the term
magus
was equivalent to priest, and derived from
maaghim meditabundi
, or “people of a contemplative, retir'd life.”
⁸²
Druidic magic, in short, was more akin to the quiet pursuits of rural vicars than to the spells and charms of village wise women. Stukeley would later write that the Druids were called magi “at first understood in its best sense: but it degenerated into the ill sense of magician.”
⁸³
Even “the best sense” of magus meant the possession of a power that verged on the
supernatural; this power might have survived into the present, in vulgarized form. On hearing of a Druidic “temple” in Shropshire, where “the mythologic report [local legend] … is of a Cow wh[ich] to good women gave as much milk as they desired: but to ill women, none,” Stukeley noted that this was “a remain of the notion of magic.” At another “temple” in Berkshire, an invisible blacksmith would shoe your horse for a penny. “I have often taken notice of these magic notions affixed to Druid temples,” observed Stukeley, without indicating whether or not he believed in them.
⁸⁴

Stukeley may have taken such “superstitious” beliefs seriously because he linked them with the hidden forces of nature, especially the
anima mundi
or Soul of the World. In his early writings, he ascribed supernatural effects in nature to what he called “animal spirits,” which existed both in the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of the human body. He compared these animal spirits to fire, and suggested that people “have been observed as it were encompass'd with a lambent Flame, when the Spirits have broke out in fiery Rays, upon the outward Surface of the body.”
⁸⁵
In passages like these, Stukeley employs a language that would have made sense to seventeenth-century alchemists. Occasionally, he may have borrowed directly from them—for example, in writing that “the earth has really veins & arteries, as well as an animal body,” which sounds like a passage from Sendivogius.
⁸⁶

In his later works, however, Stukeley abandoned “animal spirits” in favour of a more fashionable source of hidden power: namely, electricity. He was profoundly affected by the earthquake of February 1750, which many felt to be a divine warning to the British people. Searching for an explanation of the event that would satisfy both his religious and scientific beliefs, and convinced that one need not “lose sight of the theological purpose of these amazing alarms whilst we Endeavour to find out the Philosophy of them,” he decided that earthquakes were due to “electrical shock.” Soon after the London tremors, Stukeley presented a paper to the Royal Society on electricity and earthquakes, which drew on the interest generated by the experiments of Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania. Stukeley quickly found all manner of further applications of “electrical motion,” first as a cause of sickness, then as “the principle of all generation in animals.” By 1755, he was convinced that “sexual communion … is really an electrical operation in all respects,” and that electricity was “that great soul of the material world.”
⁸⁷
In other words, the
anima mundi
was fulfilled in electrical intercourse.

Stukeley's reading of sex was self-justifying. At the time he made this “discovery,” he was romantically involved with a “Druidess” whom he called “Miriam.” In pursuing the adulterous affair, he satisfied himself that he had a right to transgress moral boundaries, which were designed for “the vulgar, who
have not a proper command on themselves,” not for “a philosopher” like himself. The common people, he continued, had to be deceived by the wise man, who “hides his actions from the world.” What would be the reaction of the vulgar if they were told “there is no life hereafter[?] I need not tell the consequences of it. or were we to tell them the punish[men]t of hell is not eternal[?]”
⁸⁸
It is difficult to read this extraordinary private confession without wondering whether Stukeley's orthodoxy was a mere deception.

He was certainly unconcerned with spirituality. Stukeley's sense of the sacred was surprisingly mundane: it was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be unlocked, not a source of eternal awe. This is apparent in his definition of a symbol. As so much of Stukeley's work was devoted to the esoteric significance of symbols, one might expect that he saw in them the marks of divine authority. On the contrary: for him, they were simply the products of social and cultural necessity. “A symbol,” he wrote, “is an arbitrary, sensible sign of an intellectual idea. And I believe that the art of writing at first was no other, than that of making symbols, pictures, or marks of things they wanted to express.”
⁸⁹
So much for the sacred writing of Adam. Far from being dictated by God, it was no less arbitrary or intelligible than any other human system of expression. Of course, it required a “philosopher” to interpret the ideas behind symbols. Stukeley's brash self-assurance in reading the universe, which contrasts so markedly with the painful reticence of Newton, was characteristic of eighteenth-century natural philosophy, in which the inquiring mind of the individual stood supreme. The supernatural power of the
anima mundi
flowed through the observer, not through the symbol.

How unique was Stukeley among the Newtonians? He certainly imparted his opinions to close friends, like Martin Ffoulkes or Roger Gale, with whom he mingled in a multitude of clubs and societies. He also shared an outlook with less intimate associates like Sir Hans Sloane, the medical doctor whose vast collection of curiosities became the foundation of the British Museum. Sloane avidly sought out magical rings, healing charms and relics of the Elizabethan magus John Dee, who also interested Stukeley. Among the enormous number of manuscripts purchased by Sloane were almost four hundred volumes of alchemical writings.
⁹⁰
With Sloane as with Stukeley, however, occult items were mere props in a world of artifacts that was centred on the collector himself, who classified, arranged and displayed them.

The Newtonian who was closest to Stukeley in his varied interests, although certainly not in his religious opinions, was William Whiston. A gifted young scientist, he became Newton's successor as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. Whiston gained fame in 1696 through the publication of
A New Theory of the Earth
, in which he postulated the origin of the terrestrial globe in
“a confus'd Chaos,” formed from “the
Atmosphere of a Comet
.”
⁹¹
Chaos was beloved by alchemists, who saw it as the
prima materia
, and Whiston obliged them by including marvellous diagrams of the developing cosmos, strikingly similar to those of Robert Fludd. Whiston's
New Theory
was frequently republished, but his academic career was less successful. Deprived of his professorship in 1710 on account of his anti-Trinitarian views, Whiston became a public lecturer and popularizer of science.
⁹²

To trace his subsequent opinions is a bewildering task, because he frequently altered them. In 1716, he decried “the Folly of Judicial Astrology, and of all such Methods of Divination and Prognostication as the Vulgar Superstitious People are so fond of … if any thing be thus foretold, it is by a Power plainly Daemoniacal.”
⁹³
He later changed his mind. In October 1737, he met Stukeley at Tycho Wing's observatory in Rutland, where “we had a good deal of talk about Astrology. Mr Whiston says Dr. Halley foretold the month the [Glorious] Revolution happened: nov
^r
1688.”
⁹⁴
Whiston's new-found taste for astrology probably sprang from a passionate attachment to prophecy, which also motivated him to endorse the ancient Sibylline oracles—all of them, not just those that supposedly foretold the birth of Christ—as divinely inspired.
⁹⁵
On issues concerning the supernatural, Whiston came to his own offbeat conclusions. He suggested in 1717 that “miraculous Operations” were caused not by divine suspension of the laws of nature, but “by the means of Angels, or of some other Spiritual and Invisible Beings,” because natural laws were fixed and could not be altered. He accepted that demons existed in the world, but argued that the “
Magical Arts
” of witches and conjurors were “
Diabolical
or
Daemonical Delusions
,” whose effects were not real.
⁹⁶
Nevertheless, he continued to believe in “wonders” that seemed prophetic to him. At the end of his very long life, Whiston became notorious for asserting that the case of Mary Toft, a clothier's wife who falsely claimed that she had given birth to a litter of rabbits, had confirmed a prophecy that “menstruous women will bring forth monsters” in 2 Esdras 5:8.
⁹⁷

Like Stukeley, Whiston used diverse strands of occult thinking to support his arguments against vulgar “superstition” or religious scepticism. Unlike Stukeley, however, he did not labour to construct an interpretation of nature or history out of occult symbols; rather, he saw himself as verifying God's own design, even if it meant embracing the supernatural. In this respect, he was more akin to his mentor, Newton. Yet his dependence on public lecturing and the sale of sensational writings made Whiston a creature of the new commercial age, whether he liked it or not. He depended on a public always eager to read about prophecies, angels, demons and monsters. These readers were not much bothered by inconsistencies or lapses from orthodoxy. The reaction of the
educated elite was less favourable. The shipwreck of Whiston's academic ambitions demonstrates how heterodox religious beliefs could instantly relegate even a Newtonian to the margins of intellectual respectability. It was not Whiston's views on the Sibylline oracles that made him an outsider: it was his doubts about the Trinity.