Magic and Masculinity: Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era 9780755621439, 9781780765594

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A River runs through it and his name is Eridanus.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

During the long birthing process of this book, I have incurred several debts. In the first place, I might have become an English literature major during my undergraduate days if not for the inspiration of my first history professor Fiona Harris-Stoertz, whose medieval history course put me on this path. Her ongoing support has been invaluable ever since. The doctoral thesis on which this work is based was supervised by Professor Barbara Todd, whose unflagging encouragement from the inception of my dissertation to the completion of this project was offered with loving support. Thanks also to the other members of my dissertation committee and examiners: Professor Jennifer Mori, Professor David Wilson, Professor Nicholas Terpstra and Professor Lyndal Roper. Valuable criticisms and suggestions were offered by the Norns, the most awesome writing support group ever! And a very special note of appreciation goes out to my friend and colleague Ariel Beaujot, for all those bitching sessions where great ideas were incubated (and the occasional glass of wine drunk). I am also grateful for academic support from the history departments at the University of Toronto, Trent University and the University of Victoria. I am heavily indebted to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council’s Canada Graduate Scholarship program. Special thanks to Rebecca Hayes of the Grand Lodge of Ireland for her efforts to procure the image of the Lurgan floor cloth. And the generous comments from

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the two anonymous readers of this manuscript were greatly appreciated. Last, but not least, a special thank you to my editor Joanna Godfrey, who was enthusiastic about the project from the word go. And I would be negligent if I didn’t extend a thank you to my supportive family and friends who encouraged me on this path. You know who you are. Samhain, 2013

CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Quotations from manuscript sources are taken from my own transcriptions. Spelling has been modernised and punctuation may have been altered to clarify meanings. Citations of B.L. Add. 20006-7 note the page numbers from the author’s own notations rather than folio numbers. Add. B.L. Bod. DNB ERO ESRO OED PRO Q/SR SRO STAC TNA

Additional British Library, London Bodleian Library, Oxford Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (www. oxforddnb.com) Essex Record Office, Chelmsford, Essex East Sussex Record Office, Lewes, Sussex Oxford English Dictionary (www.oed.com) Public Record Office Quarter Session Rolls Somerset Record Office, Taunton, Somerset Star Chamber Records The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. “A type or figure of the circle for the master and his fellows to sit in, shewing how, and after what fashion it should be made” from Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1651). Image courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Hollis number 006876065.

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2. Title Page of Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atqve technica historia in duo volumina secundum cosmi differentiam diuisa (Oppenhemii, 1617– 19). Image courtesy of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

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3. “Diagram of consciousness” from Robert Fludd, Tomvs secvndvs, part of Utriusque cosmi [. . .] historia (1619 edition). Image courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Hollis number 005477824.

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4. Frontispiece of Arthur Dee, Fasciculus Chemicus or Chymical collections (London, 1650). Image courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Hollis number 005128024.

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5. Floor Cloth of Masonic Lodge 394. Image reproduced by kind permission of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland.

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6. “Of the proportion, measure and harmony of man’s body” from Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1651). Image Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Hollis number 003937948.

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7. Robert Moray’s “Mason’s Mark,” from a letter dated 26 January–5 February 1658 from Sir Robert Moray to Alexander Bruce, 2nd Earl of Kincardine. Edinburgh University Kincardine Papers, M.714. q Copyright the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland. Reproduced by kind permission.

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Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Siue Avreliæ Occvltae Philosophorvm, Materiam Primam, Et Decatatvm illum Lapidem Philosophorvm (Francofvrti, Typis ac sumptibus Ioannis Bringeri, 1613). Image courtesy of New York Public Library.

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9. Frontispiece of Robert Green, The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay As it was lately plaid by the Prince Palatine his Seruants (London, 1630). Image courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Hollis number 009630736.

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10. Anne Bodenham and her imps from R.B., The Kingdom of Darkness (London, 1728). Image courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, Hollis number 005093992.

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INTRODUCTION

The world of magic opens a fascinating window into the late Renaissance world of early modern England. New ideas concerning religion, philosophy and science were emerging at the same time as traditional views based on the metaphysics of the ancients were fading from view. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were a time of transition from the ancient worldview to the modern one, and this included a change in gender ideologies. The medieval values of martial manhood were gradually shifting to the eighteenth-century model of the polite gentleman. The performance of ritual magic reflects this shift in performances of manhood. This study focuses on some of the magical practices in early modern England. Historians have employed various strategies to analyse magical practices in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. In the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, interest in the occult arts was limited to anthropologists, folklorists and antiquarians. Magic and witchcraft were regarded as ‘superstitious’ and irrational, an anomaly in an otherwise progressing society. Astrologers and alchemists were considered to be charlatans who preyed on a gullible public.1 In the mid-twentieth century, historians initiated a more positive discussion of the occult as they began to explore the relationships between magic, religion and science.2 Other scholars linked the emergence of Renaissance magic with neoplatonism, hermeticism and kabbalah.3 These approaches to magic acknowledged

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the difference between witchcraft and ceremonial magic and gave the study of magic legitimacy. Early studies focused on well-known male figures such as Ficino, Agrippa, Bruno and Dee, whom we shall meet in the following chapters. Not only did these men leave records of their thoughts and practices, but historians were able to place their magic in the wider context of the new science and Renaissance philosophy.4 All of this attention led to a more liberal approach to the subject of magic and witchcraft. In the 1970s and 1980s, a new crop of social and cultural historians began to explore magic in the context of early modern society. French sociologists interpreted magic as an artefact of social interaction while historians borrowed techniques from functional anthropology to develop theories on the social function of magic.5 These new studies placed magic firmly at the centre of early modern culture and opened the door to new interpretations of the role of magic in society. For the most part, they focused on the role of magic as an arena for social conflict as well as a mechanism for conflict resolution.6 However, the question of why the prosecution of magic and witchcraft practitioners rose and then fell in the early modern period drew most of the attention. Effects of historical meta-narratives such as the Renaissance, the Reformation and scientific enlightenment were analysed to understand how historical changes affected magic. The ways in which magical beliefs and practices may have affected society or intellectual ideologies were not a primary concern. However, ritual magic is a meeting place of opposing cultural forces, such as nature and culture, and the real and the imagined. Therefore, magic is an ideal location to examine how individuals employed cultural symbols, images and identities to transform their personal social experiences. The practice of magic was also a vehicle for broader social change since culture and society are mutually constitutive. Of course, the cultural symbols employed by magicians are gendered. In the 1980s and 1990s, feminist historians began exploring witchcraft using theories of gender. Historians of magic, on the other hand, have been more reluctant to apply gender theories.7 However, ritual magic was yet another site for the performance of manhood and masculinity. Not surprisingly, magical practices reinforced gender ideologies; nevertheless, magic could also be employed to challenge

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existing ideologies, which reflects the shifting construction of what it meant to ‘be a man’ in the early modern period. Magic as practised by women also validated gender ideologies for the most part. But although a woman’s life performance was expected to be submissive, magic could sometimes be used to purchase agency and undermine the status quo. One major difference between male and female magicians was that female magicians tended to align their practices with nature and the body. This contributed to the continuing degradation of magic as practised by women and men of lower status. Male magicians of higher social status, on the other hand, stressed the theoretical and learned aspects of magic and incorporated magical techniques and symbols into male-dominated institutions such as medicine, religion and freemasonry. The magical manuscripts, published and unpublished diaries and autobiographies, court records, pamphlet literature and literary material of the period used in this study reflect the belief system in which practitioners of magic operated. The premodern world was populated with a multitude of spirits that played an important role not only in religion, but also in society more generally. We cannot get inside the mindset of the early modern magician if we dismiss the ubiquitous belief in the supernatural. Even the fantastical and symbolic elements of texts that underwrite a narrative must be taken into account. The following cultural analysis acknowledges that magical practices existed in a context of animating conditions that reflect broader social and cultural issues. One twenty-first-century definition of magic is the exertion of the human will on the unfolding of the universe. It would be anachronistic to apply this definition to medieval and Renaissance ritual magic. However, a body of texts discovered in the Renaissance contributed to a renewed interest in the power of the will and the imagination as the driving force of magic: “for imagination is nothing but begetting.”8 Imagination acted as a bridge between the macrocosm and the microcosm, allowing the magus to alter the material world. Imagination also played a role in what Stephen Greenblatt terms “Renaissance self-fashioning.” He argues that the sixteenth century witnessed “an increased self-consciousness about

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the fashioning of human identity as a manipulable, artful process.”9 This is in line with Natalie Zemon Davis’s argument that early modern individuals created meaning in their lives through the narratives they used to construct their life experiences.10 Early modern ritual magic was yet another narrative that allowed a person both to self-fashion herself or himself and to purchase individual identity. As you read the following analyses and case studies, remember that magic is about real people experiencing real life. Traditionally, inscribing a circle around something was a claiming ritual, as in the case of rogation ceremonies. The person or persons making the circumambulation marked a boundary and claimed possession of what lay inside that boundary, symbolically protecting it from external harm.11 The circle was also employed in ritual magic. In addition to creating separate space, the magic circle inscribed boundaries that marked gender and social divisions.

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Here followeth how Circles must be made, and how you must enter into them Your Circles must be made with the aforenamed knife, wherefore when you will work, strike the knife in the midst of the place, and measure 9 foot on both sides from the knife but remember to leave a space open, whereby you may go in, and out: A foot behind the circle make another circle, betwixt the 2 greater circles, make the pentacles with the names of our Creator, as in the next leaf shall be showed. In the circumference of the greater circle make crosses; Also a foot behind the latter circle make a Quadrangle, in the top of every corner make a circle, one to sett the pot of tools in, and in another let there stick a sword, a foot space from the pot: All which being done, let the Master bring in the companions by the gate of the circle, and let one of his followers standing toward the East, have pen and ink in his hand, and each of the other a naked sword, let them take heed they mar not the pot; Things being thus ordered, let the Master go forth to kindle the fire, and cast therein the perfumes, and light him a great candle exorcised as shall be said hereafter, which he shall put in a Lantern, and then let him shut the gate of the Circle, after this let him perfume himself, and his fellows, and the place with water, All which done, the Master standing in the midst of the circle, his knife being stuck at his foot let him begin the Conjurations towards the East.12

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One evening in 1632, an entourage of more than thirty men descended on Westminster Abbey. David Ramsay, King Charles I’s Groom of the Bedchamber, had learned that there was treasure buried in the cloister of the Abbey. He had obtained permission from Dean Williams, the Bishop of Lincoln, to retrieve it. Accompanied by an unnamed magician from Pudding Lane in the Eastcheap area of London and armed with hazel divining rods, Ramsay and his companions set out to find the hidden hoard. Luckily, there was another magician, William Lilly, in the party. When “so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a Wind” arose, Lilly was able to banish the demons who were guarding the treasure.1 So why wasn’t Lilly arrested and accused of witchcraft for dealing with devils? And what were elite men, in service to the king, doing looking for buried treasure with the help of a magician and magic wands? Hollywood movies and popular novels, like the Harry Potter series, have led the general public to believe that magic wands were used by witches for casting spells. But the women suspected of witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were seldom accused of using technical aids or mechanical skills to cause maleficium, which was defined as harm caused by supernatural means. The witch’s vengeful nature, with the assistance of the devil, could kill children or harm cattle with simply a touch or a glance.2 The generous body of contemporary pamphlet literature pertaining to witchcraft cases in England supports this understanding of witchcraft as largely a social/psychological phenomenon.3

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Ceremonial or ritual magic, on the other hand, involved complex operations. Some scholars break the category of ceremonial magic down into divisions of (1) image magic, which dealt with the mechanical aspects of astrological and astral magic, and (2) ritual magic, which depended on rituals (often derived from Christian liturgy) to draw down otherworldly powers. The second category can be further subdivided into astral, angelic, demonic and theurgic magic; however, these elements were frequently combined in practice.4 For the purposes of the following discussion, the terms ceremonial or ritual magic will refer to any operations of a learned sort, which were often combinations or adaptations of several of the types listed above and were sometimes mixed with popular or folk magic. In the case of John Pordage, discussed in Chapter 5, I cast my circle more widely to include interactions with angels that might be classified as mystical rather than magical. The main point here is that the magic explored in the following pages is not witchcraft. Witchcraft, for the most part, was a social construction whereby a person was accused of being in league with the Devil to cause harm. Magic was an actual practice that sought to manipulate the natural world or engage with the spirit world. The objectives of ceremonial magic could be for lofty purposes such as mastery of the arts, attainment of knowledge, or union with the divine. But magic could also be used for more selfish aims, such as finding hidden treasure, discovering lost and stolen goods, achieving victory in battle or gaining favour at court. In the case of causing impotence or inciting love or hate, the end goal might border on maleficium.5 Ceremonial magic was a complex synthesis of science, religion and philosophy. This chapter will explore the mechanical aspects of ritual magic and then examine the theories that underwrote early modern magic, which were drawn from classical and medieval sources. By the sixteenth century, Renaissance hermeticism and neoplatonism had been added to the mix, which facilitated the employment of fantasy and the imagination. ***

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In contrast to the poor, illiterate village women who were generally the targets of witchcraft accusations, ritual magic was usually performed by educated men. Among the many prominent sixteenthand seventeenth-century men who took an interest in magic were university-educated physicians, lawyers and theologians. For the most part, they were well-respected in their communities and were sometimes influential in state politics. Christopher Marlowe’s (1564– 93) depiction of Doctor Faustus represents the stereotypical magus. Know that your words have won me at the last To practice magic and conceale`d arts. Philosophy is odious and obscure, Both law and physic are for petty wits, Divinity is basest of the three – Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile. ’Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me! Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt And I [. . .] Will be as cunning as Agrippa was.6 The same group of men who dabbled in magic and astrology also practised alchemy. Alchemy involved the search for the occult ingredient, the Philosopher’s Stone. The ‘occult’ simply referred to what was hidden or unknown, not something demonic or necessarily supernatural. Alchemy was widely practised as chemistry, not as magic per se. However, alchemy crossed over into the magic realm when magicians employed the spirit world in their alchemical pursuits.7 We know what magicians did because Agrippa and other real-life magicians left records of their thoughts and practices. One type of record is a sort of recipe book that evolved throughout the middle ages. For ease of reference, I will use the word ‘grimoire’ to describe these magic manuals, although the term was not employed in England until 1849.8 The fact that instructions were written down at all reflects the high educational level and social status of the practitioners of magic and separates ritual magic from the the oral

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tradition of folk magic. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century grimoires were often an eclectic blend of information garnered from unpublished magical manuscripts, as well as excerpts from printed works. As manuscripts were compiled and circulated, owners edited and modified the texts according to their own personal experiences and revelations. Astrological material was liberally intermixed with pseudo-medical recipes, charms and spells. During the middle ages, the transmission of magical manuscripts had been carried out by monks and clerics. The clergy were among the few literate members of society who could read Latin, which was the intellectual language of medieval Europe. Grimoires were often attributed to a saint or pope to give them more weight and authority. By the seventeenth century, grimoires were often written in the vernacular rather than in Latin. This may have been a function of the Protestant Reformation, as the vernacular inherited the numinous qualities previously assigned only to Latin liturgy.9 Alternatively, works published in the vernacular may have been intended for a non-learned audience.10 But manuscripts were in circulation among educated men, for whom Latin would not have posed a problem. For the clerics who copied and modified the classical manuscripts during the middle ages, the theoretical and theological foundations of magical operations were important. They needed to Christianise the rituals in the same way that Augustine and Aquinas had Christianised Plato and Aristotle, respectively. Fortunately for them, placing pagan precepts within a Christian cosmological worldview was not difficult or irrational. Medieval church doctrine promoted the belief in divine intervention in all aspects of the physical world. Justifying the control of demons as a Christian practice was partially accomplished by attributing magical texts to the biblical King Solomon, the son of David who famously fought Goliath. This Old Testament figure was allegedly the author of the Clavicula Salomonis, or the Key of Solomon, which prescribed preparations and rituals for various undertakings such as finding treasure, seeking love and acquiring invisibility. Another text attributed to Solomon was the Ars Notoria, or the Notary Arts, which consisted of rituals, meditations and long prayers to angels for the purpose of attaining improved memory, heavenly

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knowledge and enlightenment.11 Assigning authorship to a biblical character granted both religious sanction and elite lineage. For the learned men who practised magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this contributed to the authenticity and, therefore, to the effectiveness of the ceremonies. Magicians were proud of the ancient roots of magic. One manuscript in the British Library traces the sources of the contents from Zoroaster and Solomon through Cyprian, Origen, Virgil, Bacon, Agrippa and Bungay, among others.12 The attribution of magical texts to Solomon was based on a myth surrounding the construction of the famous temple in Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The Testament of Solomon, recorded in Greek between the first and third centuries CE , tells the story of how the archangel Michael gave Solomon a magic ring inscribed with the pentalpha, or Seal of Solomon.13 With this ring, he controlled demons and employed them in building the temple. The style of ritual magic that was inherited from the middle ages often used painstaking preparations, the casting of circles, suffumigation, animal sacrifice and long, complex invocations. A list of contents from an English translation of the Clavicula Salomonis demonstrates the type of information that might be included in a grimoire.14 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

In what hour experiments ought to be wrought. How the conjurer must behave himself. How the follower must behave himself. Of fasting and watching. Of how the bath must be made. The blessing of the Salt [for the bath water]. Of apparel and shoes. Making of the knife. Making of the circle and entering it. How to exorcise the water. Concerning herbs and the hazel wand. Of fire and light. Of pen and ink. How to remove bat’s blood [from the bat, not the laundry]. How to make virgin parchment.

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16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

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How to work with virgin wax. About needles. How to make perfumes. Preparation of cloth to keep tools in. Aut totum: aut nihil [All or nothing]. What hours to work in. The colours of the planets. A diagram of how to mark the Pentacle.

As the list indicates, there was a great deal of preparation involved before the magician could invoke the spirits. Special tools were required, including “a new sharp knife, never used on which knife let be written on the blade þ Alpha þ on the one side, and þ Omega þ on the other side.”15 Knives were used for preparing the materials used in the ritual, as well as for casting the circle. In another manuscript, the magician was admonished to “cut nothing with this knife, but only all things belonging to this Art.”16 One of the uses for the magical knife was to cut wands, which were used for divining or opening the ground during treasure hunting. They were to be “cut of Hazel rods of one year’s growth in the day, & hour of [Mercury],”17 and then consecrated with certain words.18 Other ritual items included virgin parchment for inscriptions, preferably made from the hide of a kid prepared on the day and hour of mercury when the moon was increasing,19 and special ink concocted from the blood of a bat.20 Tools were fumigated with various perfumes, including frankincense and myrrh mixed with rose water, a little sweet smelling wine and gum arabic. Sacrifice might be in the form of a blood sacrifice from a cock or a bat, or simply a food offering.21 The magus also had to prepare himself via fasting, ritual bathing, chastity and sobriety.22 In one manuscript, the magician is advised to practise “abstinence & chastity for 9 days & with all quietness of mind, being in perfect Love & charity with all, & free from all Lewd Company & sin, & being chaste from thy wife at least 3 days & having washed & put on clean & sweet Linen & other clothes, likewise & well fumed” before beginning the ritual.23 Ceremonial

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clothing might be a priest’s garment or simply clean linen.24 Grimoires devote a considerable amount of space to the importance of cleanliness, abstinence, fasting, chastity and penitence.25 Once the preparations were complete, the magician cast a circle and summoned up the spirits to aid him in his endeavour. The circle could be drawn on a cloth or directly on the ground. Special words and characters were written around the perimeter of the circle including the word AGLA (Ata Gibor Leolam Adonai), which is Hebrew for “Thou art mighty for ever, O Lord.” The circle was either for the protection of the magician or a place for the demons to be contained.26 One manuscript clearly states that a second circle should be cast in which the spirits will become visible.27 According to the magician Mary Parish, the circle protected the magician from demonic forces. She said “that without [outside] the circle she made, she saw one as a man in black stand 3 hours together off and on, roaring & making a dreadful noise & work, but she fear’d him not; and afterwards some of her company not keeping close to her but stepping out of the circle had been like to be pull’d to pieces.”28

1. A Sample Circle From Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1651).

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In contrast to the elaborate preparations detailed in the Clavicula Salomonis, some instructions were quite simple: When you would work; go presently to a woods, and first hold a bright sword in thy hand and say these words [. . .] then arise on thy feet and make a circle four square with the said sword; and in every corner of the circle make Solomon’s pentacle and between every pentacle a cross, and then stand against the east in the midst of the circle with thy sword in thy hand saying the words aforesaid.29 The word ‘pentacle’ was used rather loosely to refer to any magical symbol used in ritual. Technically, it is a five-pointed star, or pentangle; however, the six-pointed double triangle, which is now known as the Jewish Star of David, was frequently referred to as a pentacle, in addition to other configurations.30 The symbols could be inscribed inside the circle or drawn on parchment to be held in the hand or pinned to the chest.31 Special words were also inscribed, especially the Hebrew word of four letters known as the Tetragrammaton: YHWH (Yod He Wau He) or Yahweh, the sacred name that God revealed to Moses (Exodus 3:14; 5:2). Inside the circle, the spirits were summoned with long and complex invocations. Part of the power of this process was the power of the word. Words and symbols expressed the essence of things. The Catholic Church’s practice of transubstantiation had long contributed to the belief that certain words, said in a ritual manner, could alter material substance.32 In fact, anti-papist Protestants such as the Anglican clergyman John Tillotson suspected that “in all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the Priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation.”33 Magicians called upon various entities, including the power of the Trinity, saints, apostles, angels, the elements and demonic hierarchies.34 Magic manuals are full of prayers to God, as well as to saints, the Virgin Mary and Christ. Obviously, magicians did not view themselves as devil-worshippers or witches but as good Christians who

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could access heavenly power to control demons or invoke angels. Men often used magical rituals to seek insight into the heavens in accordance with Christian philosophy. Contact with the spirit realm was an aspect of magic that was probably derived from ancient religious observances. In Homer’s wellknown tale of Ulysses (c.700–650 BCE ), the sorceress Circe directs the hero on how to consult with the spirit of the prophet Tiresias. Ulysses pours libations, offers grains, sacrifices a black ram and prays to the dead. Classical scholars argue that there is no reason to believe that Homer understood Ulysses’s actions as magical.35 Ulysses’s control of the spirit world was based on paying homage to the dead. But during the middle ages, classical necromancy, or the raising of the deceased for the purpose of prophecy, developed into summoning demons from the underworld. Eventually, the term necromancy came to be used derogatorily to describe any form of magic.36 The demons and angels invoked by magicians were drawn from Persian, Egyptian, Hellenistic Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian sources as well as from Arabic folklore.37 Each of the spirits had particular qualities and could wreak a certain kind of havoc. Demons of disease could be countered by calling on their antithetical angels.38 The spirits included in the Testament of Solomon were borrowed from the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Although the Book of Enoch was attributed to Noah’s great-grandfather, it was excluded from both the Judaic and Christian canons. Enoch tells the story of how certain angels led by Azaˆzeˆl lusted after human women and took them as wives; the children of these unions became evil spirits on earth.39 After the spirits were summoned, they had to be controlled. In addition to liturgical elements, such as the use of holy water and the sign of the cross, the Catholic clergy contributed their knowledge of exorcism.40 The practice of dispelling demons drew on the story of Jesus’s experiences with unclean spirits, as recorded in the Gospels (Mark 1:23– 7; 16:17). Techniques included the sprinkling of holy water, making the sign of the cross and wearing holy amulets such as the Agnus Dei and blessed rosary beads. By the sixteenth century, there were several exorcism manuals available in print for anyone who could read Latin.41 However, the rite was not standardised until the

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Rituale Romanum was published in 1614.42 This handbook instructs the priest on preparation, including what clothing to wear as well as what sacred words to utter. The Catholic exorcism rituals were adapted for the purpose of summoning, controlling and banishing demons in the magic circle. The astrologer-physician Richard Napier recorded a typical ritual, which echoes the elements of exorcism: I charge thee thou wicked & unclean spirit or spirits by what title soever thou be called, I charge & command thee by the living god, the true god, & the holy god & by their virtues & powers which have created both thee & me & all the world, I charge thee by these holy names of god Tetragrammaton þ Adonay þ Saday þ Sabaoth þ Jehova þ____ þ Omnipotens þ Sempete___ þ Dominis Dominantiu þ Rex regnum þ by thou virtues & powers & by all their names by the which god gave power to man both to speak or think [. . .].43 Spirits could be contained and controlled by other means as well. Grimoires often give directions on how to bind the spirits invoked into a crystal. Instead of conjuring spirits into a circle, magicians could communicate with the spirit world by the art of scrying. The ancient art of catoptromancy was the practice of seeing images in a reflective surface such as a mirror or stone. Lecanomancy, or divination with a bowl, and lychnomancy, divination with a lamp, were recorded as early as the second century BCE in Greek magical papyri.44 The ancients believed that the images that appeared on the surface of the water or in the flame of the lamp were ghosts, making scrying a form of necromancy, or raising of the dead for the purpose of divination. However, following Augustine’s demonisation of the Greek daimones and pagan gods in the fourth century CE , the manifestations were considered to be either demons or angels.45 The art of scrying could be enhanced with other ritual elements, such as sacrifice, invocation, the burning of incense and the application of magical ointments to the scryer’s eyes.46 A variety of reflective objects were employed for scrying. The magus John Dee used a six-centimetre quartz sphere as one of his

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‘showstones’ as well as a highly-polished obsidian stone, which was apparently brought from Mexico, where the Aztecs had used it for divination.47 The physician Richard Napier was in possession of a “Philosopher’s beryl glass.”48 According to the antiquarian John Aubrey, “A Beryl is a kind of Crystal that hath a weak Tincture of Red; it is one of the Twelve Stones mentioned in the Revelation.”49 An Essex man, Mr Blumfield, used a looking glass seven or eight inches square to reveal possible thieves.50 Even a jar of clean water freshened with lemons would serve, as demonstrated by the wise woman Mary Parish.51 The scryer might see visions in the medium for the purpose of divination, or the angels and other spirits might inhabit the scrying medium. The success of scrying depended on the skill of the scryer, but there was often some credit given to the object used for scrying. John Dee told his scryer that his stone, which was given to him by a friend, was “answerable Aliqui Angeli boni.”52 That is, the stone itself was already inhabited with good angels who just needed to be accessed. In a letter to Dr Richard Napier, an unknown correspondent, ‘W.P.’, told him that his beryl glass was “made for things to come” and would have cost him many miles of riding and much expense.53 According to this source, the quality of the stone used was important to the success of the enterprise. But in the case of the wise man Blumfield, his client Thomas Lynforde looked in a common mirror. Lynforde deposed that “looking in the said glass, [he] did see the face of him that had the said linen, which had been stolen.”54 In this case, the power resided in the mirror itself. This could have been a strategy on Blumfield’s part to avoid being accused of practising magic. In a similar case, Simon Rose of Berwick Bassett (c.1654) consulted a wise man about some stolen sheep. When the man requested that Rose look at the image of the thief in a glass, Rose told the authorities that he had declined.55 This practice of letting the client do the actual scrying could explain why these men did not get into trouble with the authorities more often. They facilitated a magical practice but often did not do the actual magic. It would hardly be considered illegal to own a common mirror or a glass of water.

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The elaborate preparations, rituals and prayers were also employed to draw down the power of the stars and planets into talismans, amulets and magical rings, which could be used for healing or protection or to get closer to the divine.56 Although the terms talisman and amulet are frequently used interchangeably, there was a difference between the two in the magical lexicon. An amulet was considered a natural object that drew its power from some natural property without involving any demonic spirits. A talisman, on the other hand, was artificially endowed with power by being inscribed with magical symbols or images, and was constructed on an astrologically appropriate day and hour to capture the divine elements.57 They might also be suffumigated with incense.58 The astrologer-physician Simon Forman constructed a ring for himself to ward off witchcraft and devils, to gain favour and to overcome his enemies. A coral stone engraved with the sign of Jupiter was laid over a fine virgin parchment on which was written the character of his astrological sign Virgo and its ruling planet Mercury . The ring was to be worn on the little finger of his left hand.59 Astrological elements of this sort had been increasingly employed since the twelfth century, when many Greek and Arabic texts were translated into Latin. The Renaissance witnessed a further interest in astrology, promoted in the European courts and universities. The humanist enthusiasm for ancient texts contributed several new sources and translations of astrological manuals that had been lost to the West during the middle ages. Humanism also encouraged a more mathematical approach to astrology based on the works of the classical mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy. For a magician who knew how to read the stars, astrology was a rational and understandable discipline. The practitioner chose the correct astrological moment to draw down the astral powers that were an element of nature.60 The only occult aspect of astrology was the hidden powers of the planets, which could be harnessed to manipulate the natural world.61 By the sixteenth century, the ceremonial magic outlined above sometimes got intermixed with folk magic. In addition to material from authoritative authors, grimoires often included information on

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things such as getting rid of worms, or instructions on how to make a purse from mole’s skin, which would make money spent return to you.62 For example, a charm entitled ‘pro Amore’ combines simple herbal magic with ceremonial aspects: Go into a garden where selueyne [celandine?] grows on a Thursday by the rising of the and kneeling on thy knees say thus, In nomine patrie I sought thee; In nomine filii I have found thee: in nomine spiritus sancti I conjure thee that thou man or woman love me that I touch with thee, and so gather it and keep it for thy use.63 *** Although these techniques might appear ‘superstitious’ to the modern reader, they were firmly rooted in the natural philosophy of the time. The study of natural phenomena was the forerunner to modern physics. The entire universe was evidence of God’s divine activity. The pseudoscientific aspects of magic involved drawing out the unseen or occult elements of the divine, natural world. Magia naturalis was the mechanical or practical aspect of natural philosophy.64 A magus was a man who had the knowledge of how to manipulate the powers and properties of the natural world in order to govern the supernatural world. But from a strictly theological perspective, magic was unorthodox because it implied that man could coerce God, or at least God’s creation. Ironically, one repercussion of defining magic in terms of manipulating nature is that it opened the door to the mechanical worldview in which the universe acts according to preset natural laws rather than the daily interaction of the divine.65 The possibility of manipulating the natural world was underwritten by belief in the correspondences between the macrocosm (the spiritual realm of the heavens or the universe) and the microcosm (the material realm of earth, of which man was one example). The doctrine of the macrocosm originated with Plato, who identified four elements in man and four in the universe that were held together by the anima mundi, or world soul.66 If mankind could interpret the signs and understand the

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connections between nature and the divine, then the workings of nature would be revealed. According to natural philosophy, the heavenly world was organically linked to earthly things, as expressed in the Emerald Tablets: “That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below.”67 This classical concept survived the middle ages and was rejuvenated during the Renaissance. Of course, it was Christianised along the way. The seventeenth-century English neoplatonist and Paracelsist physician Robert Fludd (1574– 1637) explained the relationship between man, the cosmos and the godhead in Utriusque Cosmi [. . .] Historia (1617).68 In the many detailed copperplate illustrations, Fludd uses DaVinci’s Vitruvian man as a symbol of divine and human proportions.69 The image on the title page depicts

2. From the title page of Robert Fludd’s Utriusque cosmi [. . .] historia.

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an outer circle that represents the macrocosm of fixed stars and planets as well as the elements. Man, the microcosm, is ruled by the planets (represented by the signs of the zodiac) and the four bodily humours (further discussion below). The sun and moon at the top of the figure’s head represent spirit and soul.70 The correspondences between the macrocosm and the microcosm were outlined in astrological and medical texts as well as tracts on botany, mineralogy, alchemy and the pharmaceutical powers of the stars. A great deal of these texts developed in the syncretic GrecoEgyptian culture of Egypt during the Hellenistic period (approximately 323 BCE to 30 BCE ). Classical scholars attributed many of these works to the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. This legendary figure was derived from the merging of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. Hermes was a messenger god and the god of magic. Thoth was the god of writing and wisdom. In addition to various other functions, both gods were conductors of the dead to the underworld.71 These magical and astrological texts that outline the practical procedures of the occult are referred to by modern scholars as “technical hermetica.”72 As the Muslim territories in Spain were conquered by Christian forces, hundreds of Arabic works emerged between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. Christian, Jewish and Islamic scholars cooperated to translate astrological and alchemical texts into Latin. These sources had been lost to a newly-emerging Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth century but were kept alive in the Arab world.73 The most widely-known text of technical hermetica was the Picatrix, probably composed in Spain in the eleventh century and translated from Arabic into Latin in 1256.74 Another medieval work was the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum or Secret of Secrets. This translation of the Arabic text Kita¯b sirr al-asra¯r was allegedly a letter from Aristotle to Alexander the Great. It combined medical material, including “the nature of certain herbs and stones” with leadership advice.75 Medieval scholars had a great deal of respect for classical authors and went out of their way to retain their ideas whenever possible. For example, the English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (1214– 94), who studied and taught at Oxford, annotated the

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translation of the Secretum. He refuted the idea that it contained magical lore, stressing instead the astrological aspects. Although modern scholars consider Bacon an “apostle of natural science,” he had achieved a reputation as a magus by the early modern period.76 In the sixteenth century, Robert Greene promoted Bacon’s image as a magician in his play, The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay.77 Although the legendary aspects of Bacon’s life can be discounted, his association with magic granted authority and legitimacy to magic manuals.78 The firm medieval base of magia naturalis was not rejected by Renaissance humanist scholars. If anything, it was strengthened as part of the Renaissance search for man’s place in the divine plan. The revival of ancient learning, which is a signature of the Renaissance, resulted in an academy in Florence sponsored by Cosimo de’ Medici that was dedicated to translating the works of Plato. Marsilio Ficino (1433– 99), a Catholic priest, was the head of the academy. In 1460 a Byzantine monk discovered a manuscript allegedly written by Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient Egyptian sage who supposedly predated both Moses and Plato.79 Cosimo de’ Medici directed Ficino to turn his attention to the newly-discovered manuscript immediately. Ficino translated the majority of the text from Greek into Latin, which was published as the Pimander in 1471. The three tracts that Ficino did not include in the Pimander were subsequently translated by the humanist philosopher Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447– 1500).80 The resulting body of work, known as the Corpus Hermeticum, drew attention all over Europe. John Dee was aware of the work of Ficino by the mid-1550s.81 In England, interest in the text lasted well into the seventeenth century, when John Everard translated the Pimander into English.82 The Corpus was not a magical text per se but rather a theoretical and philosophical one. The importance of the Corpus Hermeticum as a philosophical framework in the revival of Renaissance magic has been rigorously debated. The debate was fuelled by Dame Frances Yates.83 Yates conceded that there was a great deal of continuity between medieval magic and Renaissance magic,84 but, at the same time, she asserted the notion that there was a Renaissance ‘hermetic movement’

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dating from Ficino, using Giordano Bruno as evidence. Her emphasis on a hermetic philosophy that existed in conjunction with Renaissance neoplatonism raised issues.85 Historians of medieval magic and hermeticism have since demonstrated that hermeticism was not new to the Renaissance, but the interpretation of the Corpus did contribute a philosophical aspect to magic that was concerned with the quest for gnosis (knowledge of spiritual things, including knowledge of one’s self and the divine, gained through revelation). The attainment of gnosis could facilitate magic since the magician would share in God’s divinity and powers of creation. In other words, the spiritual quest for union with the divine allowed the magician to perform magic rather than magic being an instrument for attaining union with the divine.86 One of the ways in which medieval magic was transformed into Renaissance magic was the “shift from logic to mysticism, rhetoric, and poetry,” which was part of Renaissance humanism and neoplatonism.87 In any case, the discovery of the Corpus, as well as the complete body of Plato’s works as translated by Ficino, fed a widespread enthusiasm about magic in the late fifteenth century and into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Corpus was not a practical guide to magic, alchemy or astrology but was concerned with the origins and nature of the divine, and man’s path to salvation. The Corpus instructed the student to rise above the realm of the four elements and the physical body in order to achieve union with the supreme being.88 But, one might ask, how did this contribute to magic? The answer lies in the fact that Ficino and his peers viewed natural magic as a means to a higher, spiritual goal. The technical hermetica were often used in preparation for union with the divine rather than for other ends. In De Vita Coelitus Comparanda (1489) Ficino described how the power of the stars and planets could be channelled into material things such as talismans and medicines.89 Building on Plato’s concept of a world soul, Ficino suggested that a cosmic spirit, or spiritus mundi, permeated the entire world. This fine corporeal substance provided a channel between astral bodies and earthly bodies. The modern reader might compare this concept to the invisible phenomenon of electromagnetic waves used for radio and

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satellite transmissions.90 According to Ficino, some things that contained an abundance of pure cosmic spirit were wine, white sugar, gold, music and the scent of cinnamon and roses.91 (If Ficino were alive today, I am sure he would add dark chocolate to the list!) The magician attracted and accumulated this divine spirit in material objects, which could then be used for particular purposes. As Ficino put it, “the principle of magic [. . .] enables men to attract to themselves celestial presences by means of inferior things utilised at opportune moments and corresponding to higher things.”92 In seventeenth-century England, Robert Fludd presented the cosmic spirit as God’s spirit, which emanated from the godhead to work on all things in the earthly realm.93 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola of Florence (1463 – 94), a theologian of noble birth and a disciple of Ficino, continued to build on his mentor’s work.94 He incorporated concepts from the kabbalah into magic, which emphasised the metaphysical power of words and names. Kabbalistic literature is the theosophical interpretation of Jewish scripture.95 At the end of the thirteenth century, Rabbi Moses de Le´on, a poor Jew from Spain, published the Zohar. At the time it was considered to be an ancient text, although it was probably written by de Le´on himself. The Zohar was the basis for the practice of kabbalah, which, among other things, attributes a numerical value to each of the Hebrew letters. Divine meaning can then be revealed in the scriptures. Kabbalists also call on angels and the ten sephiroth. Each sephiroth represents a different emanation or attribute of the divine. By altering one’s perception of God, one can achieve union with the godhead. By the seventeenth century, kabbalah was understood as a form of magic in Paracelsian and Rosicrucian discussions.96 Ficino and Pico’s combination of the metaphysics of neoplatonism with the technical hermetica of medieval astral magic influenced later magicians such as the German humanist Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486– 1535).97 Agrippa attempted to position magic as a reputable science in his treatise, De Occulta Philosophia, or Three Books of Occult Philosophy, published between 1531 and 1533. In his work he explained the hows and whys of the process of

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harnessing astral power. He divided magic into three divisions: natural (earthly), celestial (astral) and ceremonial (angelic). Excerpts from his work were often included in seventeenth-century manuscripts, indicating the high level of respect it received within the ceremonial magic community. No other name recurs as frequently in the magical manuscripts.98 De Occulta was almost immediately placed on the Index of Prohibited Books by the Catholic church, which probably contributed to its success. There were many translations, although it was not available in English until 1650.99 Agrippa’s treatise was not a how-to manual for ritual magic; rather, it was a theoretical and philosophical tract that linked the properties of the stars with animals, stones and herbs. The Fourth Book of Agrippa, however, is a different story. Published after Agrippa’s death and attributed to him at the time, its authorship was immediately debated. The pseudo-Agrippa volume deals more directly with the ‘how-to’ aspects of ritual magic, similar to the Key of Solomon. Nevertheless, the pseudo-Agrippa work gave intellectual and scientific credibility to many magical beliefs and practices at the time because of its supposed authorship.100 In summary, the Corpus Hermeticum supplied the philosophical side of magic, but it did not provide a cohesive theory of hermetic magic. However, the alleged age and author of the text provided an ancient genealogy, which offered authority and prestige to Renaissance magic. Ficino’s greatest contributions to Renaissance magic were largely garnered from classical neoplatonists rather than the Corpus.101 He added neoplatonic concepts to medieval technical hermetica to explain how the magician could take advantage of those propitious moments when natural determinism could be manipulated.102 So how did a magician employ “the supernal and celestial ones [spirits] for learning and the miracles of magic?”103 As we have already seen, the concept of the macrocosm and microcosm dictated that the body was influenced by the heavens’ actions. Ancient physicians such as Aristotle and Galen believed that matter was composed of four elements: fire, air, earth and water, which were related to the qualities hot, cold, dry and wet. During digestion, the elements became four basic fluids called humours: blood, phlegm,

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yellow bile and black bile, which nourished the body. Deficiency or excess of humours resulted in disease, which could be remedied with food or medicines of the opposite qualities. This was known as the treatment of contraries.104 But Ficino believed that “man’s thinking soul is not subject to the heavens.” That is, the soul is free from the influences of astrology or destiny. Any agitation to the soul caused by astrological influences on the humours could be overcome by man’s free will: this was an early version of mind over matter.105 The Corpus emphasised this connection: “[T]he spirits who are set as attendants beneath each star according to what each birth merits, take possession of each one of us at the moment we are born and are given breath [. . .] But the rational part of the soul stands free of the tyranny of these powers and remains fit to receive God.”106 In other words, the soul of man was rational and distinct from the body, which remained a part of nature. Man’s soul or free will was the link between the eternal divine and the temporal. But the mind still needed to employ the body as a tool to access knowledge from the earthly realm, and the celestial mind still needed to connect with the corporeal mind of the individual.107 The solution was found in the role of fantasy and imagination. Not surprisingly, these were configured as physical components of the body, which interacted with the passions of the mind and soul as well as the physical realm.108 Like most concepts in the early modern period, the understanding of the imagination was rooted in classical sources. Although Plato did not outline an explicit theory of the imagination, or phantasia as he called it, he considered it one of four divisions of the soul along with reason, understanding and conviction. Imagination participated in the art of imitation of ‘ideas’ (discussed below) by constructing images or representations of real, physical objects. In other words, imagination was a process that followed the act of perception and allowed the person to have an awareness of what they perceived.109 Plato’s student Aristotle further developed these concepts. He explained imagination as an interpretive faculty that formed images from the material collected by the five senses. Humans share this speculative aspect of imagery formation with animals. What sets humans apart from beasts is the deliberative aspect of imagination.

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3. “Diagram of consciousness” (illustration of parts of the head) from Robert Fludd, Tomvs secvndvs.

Humans use the images formed by the sensory faculties as part of the rational process of thinking. We manipulate images in our mind to govern our actions.110 For example, to write a book, the author visualises what materials are necessary, what research needs to be done, what the finished product will look like, etc. The classical neoplatonists placed imagination in an intermediary position. Since it was closer to a bodily function than an intellectual one, it held a

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place between sensory perception and reason. Part of Augustine’s Christianisation of platonic ideas was to posit the imagination as a tool to direct the soul to union with God.111 In Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Agrippa describes how this works physically. The five faculties of sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch, located in the front part of the brain, collect data from the world around us. Imagination and fantasy receive these sensory perceptions for sorting and discern what is represented by the collected data. Images are formed that can be recalled later by the memory, located in the back of the brain.112 By the seventeenth century, the English writer Robert Burton described the brain using the medical terminology of cavities and ventricles, which were the receptacles of sensory perceptions.113 A “Diagram of Consciousness” in Robert Fludd’s Utriusque cosmi [. . .] historia illustrates how this was conceived.114 The imagination was not understood as the same thing as knowing and understanding, but it was, nevertheless, subject to the will.115 The deliberative aspect of the imagination allowed humans to direct the use of images using rational consciousness. Just to clarify, the physical senses were the source of information for the imagination. However, the imagination, in turn, could affect the physical body because the rational mind could direct the images that were formed. For instance, if the mind dwelt too long on grief and sadness, the physical body could be affected. As explained by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy, “so most especially it rageth in melancholy persons in keeping the species of objects so long, mistaking, amplifying them by continual and strong meditation, until at the length it produceth real effects.”116 In his treatise, Burton explores how the imagination could be potentially harmful and then suggests ways the physician could treat the imagination to cure spiritual illnesses.117 This idea was inherited from the physician Galen, who interpreted imagination in terms of the four humours. He linked disturbances in phantasia to disturbances in the body.118 The imagination could also affect the unborn. It was considered dangerous for a pregnant woman to see deformed people or to suffer psychological shocks. The horror of the experience could be translated by the woman’s imagination into physical deformities in

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her child.119 Desires experienced by the woman while pregnant had similar repercussions. Agrippa maintained that: “The imagination of a woman with child impresseth the mark of the thing longed for upon her infant.”120 Paracelsus went so far as to say that imagination could cause a woman to give birth to cattle or other monsters.121 These ideas about imagination had a long shelf life. Some people in the twentieth century still believed that a baby born with a hemangioma, commonly called a strawberry birth mark, had been affected by the mother’s craving for strawberries while pregnant.122 The imagination was so powerful that it could extend beyond the person’s body to affect others, as explained by Robert Burton: So diversely doth this phantasie of ours affect, turn & wind, so imperiously command our bodies [. . .] as Ficinus adds, that it can work upon others as well as our selves [. . .] the forcible Imagination of the one party, moves and alters the spirits of the other [. . .] this imagination is the medium deferens of passions, by whose means they work and produce many times prodigious effects.123 This theory offered one explanation of how witches could fascinate or bewitch children and cattle with merely a glance. Agrippa maintained that imagination could transport the physical body for “so great a power is there of the soul upon the body, that which way soever that [the soul] imagines, and dreams that it goes, thither doth it lead the body.”124 This would have been helpful to the demonologists who were struggling to explain the flight of witches. As a tool of desire, the imagination could affect the material realm. To understand how imagination acted as a bridge between the macrocosm and microcosm, we need to understand the classical platonic concept of ‘ideas,’ which was revived by Renaissance neoplatonists. The concept of ‘ideas,’ or what Aristotle referred to as ‘form,’ was constructed on an earlier concept by Pythagoras, a fifthcentury BCE mathematician and natural philosopher. During the middle ages, Aristotle’s ideas were developed into the concept of ‘substantial form.’ There were two elements of substantial form:

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‘form’ and ‘matter.’ The matter of an object determined the individual physical characteristics; for instance, one of my cats is black and white and weighs fifteen pounds, which distinguishes her from my other cat, who has long grey hair and is not overweight. The form of an object, on the other hand, is the immaterial ordering principle that grants the essential ‘catness’ of both cats. This enables us to identify them as cats rather than dogs. In other words, pure form was the essence that defined things, which existed in a separate, metaphysical world. Form could only be imitated in the natural, physical world, which was considered inherently transitory. In other words, the physical, earthly cat is an immanent and temporary copy of the transcendent and eternal ‘idea’ of a cat. When form is manifested in matter, it has substance: that is, substantial form. My cats Lizzie and Marley exist as particular cats, but their colour and size do not exist apart from them: those elements are what Aristotelians referred to as ‘accidents.’ Lizzie’s accident of weight can change without affecting her substantial form. The accidents are perceptible and changeable, but the substantial form remains occult or hidden.125 The next step is to understand how the imagination affects the accidents of the body. Since the imagination was influenced by the five senses, ritual techniques such as burning incense (smell), fasting (taste), meditating on symbols (sight), playing music and speaking particular words (hearing) could assist the person in conditioning the imagination to receive divine knowledge. This theory was in accordance with ideas promulgated by the Islamic philosopher al-Kindi (died c.870) in De Radiis Stellicis. According to his theory, everything in the world emanated rays, including words and the imagination, which could affect celestial harmony.126 Al-Kindi built on the ideas of Plato and Aristotle and also drew on classical neoplatonists. After having conceived the image of the thing, [man] judges whether the same thing is useful or not and desires it or rejects it in his mind. Subsequently, if the thing were considered worthy of desire, he desires accidents through which the thing may come forth into actuality according to the opinion he has taken up [italics added].127

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Both the astral powers and the imagination were affected by sensory perceptions; therefore, magicians could use the imagination in conjunction with the technical hermetica to draw down celestial influences.128 This created a bridge between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The Dominican friar and magus Giordano Bruno (1548– 1600), who was burned alive for his heretical notions, maintained that “there is nothing which, coming from the senses, can reach the intellect without the intermediary of phantasy.”129 Agrippa agreed: The phantasy, or imaginative power hath a ruling power over the passions of the soul, when they follow the sensual apprehension. For this doth of its own power, according to the diversity of the passions, first of all change the proper body with a sensible transmutation, by changing the accidents [nonessential properties] in the body, and by moving the spirit upward or downward, inward or outward, and by producing divers qualities in the members.130 Imagination was an integral element of magic, especially as it related to the concept of human autonomy via man’s power of the will. Agrippa expressed the will as one of the three powers of the soul: the sensual, rational and intellectual. He believed that the magician must “vehemently, imagine, hope, and believe strongly” to attain positive results.131 The power of the will and desire in relation to the imagination was especially emphasised by Paracelsus. Imagination could be focused and directed by the will. He recommended that the “intent of your imagination be firmly fixed.”132 To clarify, man’s free will was one aspect of the rational soul, which was the connecting link between man’s physical senses (and therefore the earthly realm) and the divine. The significance of this complex theory is that it allowed magicians to explain how magic worked. In short, imagination was an active force, which had the power to manifest and affect the physical realm. The Corpus Hermeticum states: “Things that are begotten belong only to imagination. For imagination is nothing but begetting.”133

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All of these theories came together in Ficino’s conception of the cosmic spirit discussed above. The concept of spiritus mundi, which linked the macrocosm and the microcosm, allowed for everything in creation to be an expression of God as the One. This included anything that man, the microcosm, could imagine, which included forms. Therefore, the soul, or man’s will, could touch and express divinity because it was part of this emanation. These theories run counter to the modern distinction between the material world, as we perceive it physically with our five senses, and the imaginary world, which appears only in our thoughts. The premodern boundary between the world we construct through our senses and the world constructed by sheer thinking was permeable or even nonexistent.134 Imagination and fantasy could access the transcendent form and manifest it in the material world. I have emphasised this point because of the modern conception of imagination as a strictly psychological phenomenon, whereby the image of something not present or even non-existent is constructed in the mind. It might seem like we are a long way from conjuring up spirits and capturing astrological emanations. But the imagination played a major role in the possibility of conjuring. Individual magicians may not have discussed magic in these terms because the power of the imagination was somewhat taken for granted. The magus did not ‘make things up’ but rather manifested ‘ideas’ and ‘forms’ that were accessible in the macrocosm. In the following chapters, we will see how this imaginative aspect of magic was gendered. *** In post-Reformation England, ideas concerning magic and imagination were further influenced by the Protestant doctrine of divine providence. An individual could gain direct access to God, thereby eliminating the need for an intermediary, be it a priest or a saint.135 God’s direct involvement in human affairs strengthened the idea that the divine could be accessed by petitioning the angels. Theurgy was an ancient ritual technique aimed at making contact

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with the divine for the purpose of attaining pure knowledge or for divination.136 By the seventeenth century, the term theurgy was applied more generally to “white magick; a pretended conference with good spirits or Angels.”137 In this way, magic was legitimised (for some people, at least) as a type of spiritual rite.138 In an English version of the Clavicula Salomonis, the magician calls upon the “benevolent Angels” to: be so truly willing and friendly unto us, that whensoever and wheresoever we shall invocate, move, or call you forth unto visible appearance and our Assistance, you then would readily and immediately forthwith at our Invocations move, descend, appear, and show your selves.139 Seventeenth-century magicians were urged to invoke “with gentle & convenient speech & words or calls, especially Angels, or good spirits, neither praying them, nor by Conjuring them for man cannot command or enforce by no means but by faith & prayer to god.”140 Direct supplication to the spirit world continued to conflate magic with religion. Nevertheless, magical practices were not legal. Statutes prohibiting the invocation and conjuration of spirits were instituted in 1542 during the reign of Henry VIII. Witchcraft and magic were felonies punishable by death.141 The main concern of the law was to halt social problems such as conning, treason and the destruction of public and private property. One concern that had been disturbing authorities during Henry’s reign was the digging up and pulling down of crosses in the pursuit of buried treasure. Although the statutes were revised during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, the law remained ambiguous. The statutes were employed primarily to prosecute alleged witches, ninety per cent of whom were female in England. Wise men and wise women, or ‘cunning persons’ as they were called, were widely known and seldom caught in the witchcraft net.142 Occasionally, astrologers were prosecuted if they drew the ire of a client; but the open practice of astrology indicates a great deal of public acceptance.143 As we shall see, elite gentlemen looking for

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hidden treasure were virtually ignored, even though treasure hunting was specifically addressed in the statutes. This highlights the fact that magic was inextricably caught up with issues of social status as well as gender. The men who copied and collected magical manuscripts may have been more interested in the theoretical aspects of magic than the practical aspects. The historian can never be certain if the rituals they recorded were actually attempted. We seldom know how, or by whom, such instructions were put into practice, if they were at all. The grimoires rarely document the author, the date of compilation or the origins of the material. Therefore, a study of the magical texts on their own does not tell the whole story. Whenever possible, we need to examine the actual practices of magicians, particularly with regard to gender. As we shall see, the practice of magic reinforced ideologies concerning women, reflected the shifting construction of masculinity and contributed to emerging ideals of manhood by challenging the concept of what it meant to ‘be a man’ in this period. The following chapters will reveal how some magical practitioners determined their individual realities – realities that were as gendered as their magical practices.

CHAPTER 2 MAGICAL MASCULINITIES

In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, practising magic was punishable by the state, forbidden by the church and socially denounced in many public forums. So how could a practice that was illegal and immoral contribute to a construction of manhood that depended on honour and reputation? The following snapshots of male magicians illustrate how the practice of magic could be both a supplement to and a substitute for other paths to manhood. The practice of magic allowed some men to rise above their natal social position and thereby enhance their masculinity. In addition to augmenting income, magic offered men power and control over others, honour and prestige in the community, and the opportunity to act on inner desires. In the medieval period, magical manuscripts were the domain of scholars, monks and clerics, although the laity was not above dabbling in ritual magic.1 After the Renaissance, magical texts spilled out of the monasteries and universities and flowed down two distinct paths. Educated professionals took up certain aspects of ritual magic and incorporated them into legitimate aspects of the culture, such as medical practice and religious expression. On the other hand, less educated people, both male and female, blended ritual magic with ubiquitous folk practices and reasserted magic’s place within nature and the realm of the feminine. Not surprisingly, the patriarchal world of early modern England was replicated in the

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magical realm since magical practices operated within contemporary gender ideologies.

Manhood versus Masculinity As the anthropologist David Gilmore so succinctly put it, manhood is “the approved way of being an adult male” in a particular society.2 The requirements of manhood are socially determined and vary from one historical period to another. Definitions of manhood also differ based on such factors as age, social status, race and ethnicity. In England, early modern manhood was largely, although not exclusively, established by men’s patriarchal control over women.3 Boys were removed from the realm of women as soon as possible in the hope they would become more adventurous and vigorous. In a male-dominated world, there were many opportunities for manhood to be constructed in relation to other men. Many men sought validation from each other in male-dominated settings such as the workplace, the university and the alehouse where drinking, fighting and whoring were measures of a man. But the ideal configuration of full male adulthood was associated with being a householder, which meant mastery over a wife, children, servants and apprentices. Less tangible qualities that affected manhood were honour, credit and reputation. A man who displayed the traditional female qualities of physical or emotional weakness, softness or delicacy was considered effeminate.4 Genitals alone did not make the man. Of course, not all performances of manhood in the early modern period conformed to the dominant norm. Some men, such as gypsies and highwaymen, purposely did not conform but instead actively pursued alternate forms of manhood, which were not in keeping with the cultural stereotypes.5 Also, the expression of manhood could change according to particular situations and in relation to other men. For example, a man might display all the qualities of the patriarchal man in his own home but be subservient and submissive in service to the monarch or his master. A man could display the ideals of manhood most of the time but still have recourse to alternate performances.6 In all of these cases, manhood was a performance that

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was socially determined and monitored. Throughout the period in question, self-control gained ascendancy in some social groups as a prerequisite to manhood. The true gentleman was expected to exercise self-mastery over lust, gluttony, violence and emotional expression.7 The terms ‘manhood’ and ‘masculinity’ are frequently used interchangeably, but they are not synonymous. Historians of the premodern period favour the term manhood when discussing a man’s performance of gender, as the term masculinity was not employed until the mid-eighteenth century. Manhood refers to the exterior measure of a man in relation to both women and other men. Masculinity refers to the interior self-perception of a man, regardless of whether the man possesses the attributes of full manhood. Some historians are calling for a move away from the discourse of manliness to a study of masculinity as a more subjective experience, which is “the product both of lived experience and fantasy.”8 This combination of exterior, social performance and interior selfperception is useful for the definition of magic I am employing, which combines the mechanical practice of magic with the power of imagination and fantasy. This definition of masculinity allows for subjective fantasy to be incorporated into the objective performance of manhood. By practising magic, a magician’s personal fears and desires could be combined with the realities of daily life.

Magic as Patriarchy One important aspect of early modern manhood was the control and subordination of others. Masculine desire for power and control could be acted out via the practice of magic. The grimoires of the period illustrate how this control could be extended to the spirit world. Pseudo-Agrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy promises control not only over good and evil spirits but also over “animals, tempests, burnings, floods of water, and the force and power of Arms.”9 The manual instructs the magician how to bind the spirits after they are raised to ensure their obedience to his every wish: “I conjure thee, I exorcise thee; I compel, command, constrain and bind thee [. . .]

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neither shalt thou lye, cavil or deceive me, nor depart from my presence, or commandment.”10 If the spirits were not compliant, the magician was exhorted to exercise his “authority and power, and striketh terror into the Spirits, and humbleth them to obey.” Even fairies should “be compelled with Threatenings, Comminations, Cursings, Delusions, Contumelies, and especially threatening them to expel them from those places where they are conversant.”11 Indeed, the noncompliant spirit should be excommunicated and deprived “from all [thy] dignities to the deepest pit in hell; and there shall [thou] remain in everlasting chains, in fire and brimstone, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth for ever.”12 Instructions entitled the “Ad Artem notoriam inspiratum” direct the practitioner on how to accomplish this: If they [the spirits] do not appear, or otherwise fulfil your commandment in every thing, after you have read their deprivation 2 times, then write either one or all their names, according as you have to do with them, and put brimstone next to the letters of their names, And fold it up together, and put stinking clay about the paper, and so burn it, and in the burning say thus. Even as this burneth so desire the[e] O god, that these kings so may burn in hell fire, as this doeth here, for their disobeying.13 The grimoires make it very clear that the magician is supposed to be firmly in control of the situation. Control of the spirit world was an extension of the patriarchal and hierarchical obedience required of inferiors, which was paramount to the successful performance of early modern manhood. Control over the spirit world was sometimes overtly gendered in the form of sexual subordination. Sibilia, a virgin of the fairies, is commanded to appear “in the form and shape of a beautiful woman. In a bright and vesture white adorned and garnished most fair [. . .] For I will choose thee to be my blessed virgin And will have common copulation with thee.”14 Reginald Scot recorded this invocation in The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which means that it reached a fairly wide

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audience.15 In this instance, the fantasy of sexual mastery over a woman could be enacted outside of the patriarchal institution of marriage. Who needs a wife to rule over with this sort of power at one’s fingertips? This is just one example of how gender ideologies toward women infiltrated magical instructions. One is tempted to compare this attitude toward spirits to the attitudes of men toward their wives. For instance, the fairy queen could be wooed “with odoriferous perfumes, and with sweet sounds and instruments of Music”16 but if she proved recalcitrant, she should be threatened with hell fire or thrown out of the house. Elias Ashmole recorded an invocation to summon the fairy Elabigathan: I adjure and command thee [. . .] that thou appear presently meekly and mildly in this glass without doing hurt or danger unto me [. . .] I bind thee to give and do thy true humble and obedient service unto me E. A. & never to depart without my consent and Lawful Authority [. . .] without fraud dissimilation or deceit [. . .] and resolve and satisfy me in and of all manner of such questions and commands and demands as I shall either Ask, Require, desire or demand of thee and that thou Elaby Gathen be true and obedient unto me both now and ever hereafter at all time and times hours days nights minutes and in and at all places wheresoever either in field house or in any other place whatsoever & wheresoever I shall call upon thee [. . .] [or] be Judged into everlasting damnation even into the deep pit of hell there to receive out portion amongst the devil and his Angels to be ever burning in pitch fire and brimstone and never consumed [italics added].17 The language in the invocation is comparable to segments of the ceremony of matrimony in the seventeenth-century Book of Common Prayer: obey him, serve him [. . .] so long as ye both shall live [. . .] that this woman may be loving and amiable, faithful and obedient to her husband [. . .] Wives, submit your selves unto your own

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husbands [. . .] let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing [. . .] Let the wife see that she reverence her husband [. . .] be in subjection to your own husbands [. . .] even to the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit [. . .] even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord [italics added].18 The magic manuals reflect the same style of subordination for the spirit world as the contemporary treatises advise in the human realm, including obedience, subservience and humility. Both spirits and women should be subordinate to men, and if “not obedient and helpful to him” the man should “endeavoureth to beat the fear of God into her head.”19 The hierarchy of the patriarchal world must be reinforced at all costs. Power and control are central themes in both of the above rituals. This is not surprising when one considers that the theories of natural philosophy and the ideologies of gender were both drawn from the same classical sources. Nature was personified as female and science (control of nature) as male.20 The educated male magician was viewed as an experimental scientist and, therefore, had an obligation to tame, cultivate and subdue nature. This attitude toward nature was heightened during the early modern period following the exploration of the Americas. Imposing order on the undisciplined and uncultivated colonial territories was a gendered enterprise as well as a civilising and Christianising one.21 Control and subjugation over the spirit world offered the magician the possibility of controlling legions of spirits in the ultimate performance of martial manhood. Grimoires discuss how the spirit world, like the earthly one, was organised hierarchically. By controlling key spirits, a man could raise armies of demons to his command. Agrippa discusses the seven planets as spirits who govern all things as well as the “four princes of the angels, which are set over the four winds.”22 The Clavicula Salomonis explains how the four angels that oversee the four directions each have five presidential angels to attend them. The presidential angels each have six senior angels, who in turn preside over four more presidential good angels, under which are “many and numberless of Aerial ministering

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Subservient Spirits of several offices both good and bad.”23 The seven governors of Olympic spirits administered the world for God, in a very bureaucratic model.24 In a world where status was determined by one’s place in the male hierarchy of society, orchestrating a host of spirits would have augmented a man’s subjective masculinity. The subordination of inferior male spirits, the sexual subjugation of female spirits, and the potential to command legions of spirits are all elements of the fantastical realm.25 A man could play out his desires or face his inner fears as he challenged and subjugated the demon hordes. The fantasy of the magical realm could employ both the early modern concept of imagination as well as the modern psychological connotations of fantasy. Early modern grimoires romanticised the encounter with the spirit world.26 In one grimoire, an individual spirit was described as a soldier on horseback, with a crown studded with “golden diamonds,” answering the winding horn of the hunt.27 Such descriptions are reminiscent of poetic and chivalrous dramas such as Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene. Another manuscript describes the appearance of the spirit as “a knight on a horse with a Goshawk on his hand” ready to engage in hawking.28 The magician could summon up spirits that were replicas of his equals against whom he could measure his manhood.

Magic as Work An important aspect of the objective performance of manhood was working to provide for a household. In this regard, magic could serve as a practical tool that augmented family revenue. In addition to providing a supplementary income, the practice of magic could grant a man honour and prestige within his community, which was not available to ordinary weavers or tailors. However, there was always some degree of risk involved, both from a legal standpoint and in terms of gender. The practice of magic was considered illicit and immoral, and could place a man in a compromised position. The conflicts surrounding magic mirror the conflicts surrounding the attainment of manhood in the early modern period.

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Most of the men who used magical techniques as a form of income were cunning men or wise men.29 In England, the majority of cunning folk were males with a certain amount of local substance. They were usually self-employed, with a work identity outside of their magical practice. As craftsmen, shopkeepers or farmers, they had the flexibility to pursue their cunning craft. They were at least semi-literate. Cunning men were frequently consulted for finding lost and stolen goods, assisting with treasure hunting, performing love magic and identifying witches. They combined ritual techniques, such as scrying and spirit invocation, with popular culture techniques, such as the ‘sieve and shears’ and the ‘key and psalter.’30 Some also employed palmistry, astrological techniques and the making of talismans in their practice. The general population clearly distinguished them from witches accused of maleficium, who were usually female and were often not practising any magical techniques at all. Although they were quite prevalent, they seldom came under judicial scrutiny. Cunning folk were generally respected within their communities, but they had lower social status than the gentlemen and professionals who were experimenting with ritual magic out of curiosity or as part of their medical practice. The magical practices employed by cunning men were perceived by more educated men as a corruption of the learned aspects of ceremonial magic. Therefore, the appellation of cunning man was an insult to the serious magician. During the polemics of the civil war, the astrologer William Lilly was accused of being a “cunning Taylor” no better than a gypsy, in one of several publications against him. In another pamphlet, the writer makes reference to servants consulting Lilly for the loss of silver spoons, which is another derogatory reference to his status as merely a cunning person who finds lost goods.31 These accusations would not be insulting if the differentiation between a common cunning man and an educated magus did not exist in society. This underlines the fact that there were several variations of manhood. The prestige associated with being a cunning person was relative to a man’s social status. Accusations of witchcraft against cunning folk were rare in England. But these practitioners, who were of lower social status than

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the landholding gentry and the urban gentleman, were more likely to get caught up in accusations of sorcery. Some historians have suggested that accusations of witchcraft feminised these men because witchcraft was implicitly and explicitly gendered, regardless of the sex of the witch. For the same reasons that women were more likely to be witches (they were considered intellectually weaker, more emotional and lacking discipline), male witches were more likely to be effeminate.32 Other historians find the feminisation of the male witch problematic. They argue that men accused of witchcraft may have been exercising alternate modes of masculinity, but they were still acting as patriarchs, not as women. This view is more reflective of contemporary attitudes to cunning men.33 In any case, cunning men could gain status through the practice of magic. According to the autobiography of Edward Underhill, Robert Allen (c.1551) was “called the god of Norfolk [original italics]” in his community. Allen boasted that he knew more astrology and astronomy than a university-educated man. Knowledge of magical techniques enhanced Allen’s reputation and prestige. William Hills (c.1651), a miller from Berden, Essex, was “commonly reputed a wiseman.” His reputation as a cunning man was so good that the county constable Thomas Law visited Hills “with an Intent to hear what he might say that so he might make his search accordingly.” Law subsequently conducted a search of several houses according to Hills’s advice. Hills was not intimidated by the presence of the authorities, even though such practices were illicit under the letter of the law. Strictly speaking, Hills was not performing ritual magic; he was practising the art of astrology, which he claimed to have learned from William Lilly. To determine the identity of thieves “he took pen, ink, & paper & made figures thereon which he called casting of a figure.” He considered that he was doing his clients “the best help he could.”34 Whether or not this was sorcery or scamming was a matter of interpretation for both his clients and the authorities. Nevertheless, this quasi-magical technique generally enhanced Hills’s standing in the community, although, in this instance, he was suspected of having actually stolen the goods that he was attempting to locate for his client.35 In the legal records, Hills was

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identified as a miller. His work identity was not primarily as a cunning man, but his standing in the community was prestigious enough for him to be consulted by the local constable for advice. In a similar case, William Wycherley’s (c.1549) reputation as a cunning man was so good that the parish clerk of St Sepulchre recommended his services for finding stolen goods. In addition to the ‘key and psalter’ method, Wycherley confessed that sometimes he “used a circle called Circulus Salamonis” to call up the spirit Baro; he had also invoked a spirit called Scariot into a crystal to find stolen goods. Wycherley used a sword, sceptre, holy water and a ring with the name Tetragrammaton written on it in his attempts to raise spirits and find hidden treasure.36 Unfortunately, the tailor-cumcunning man was eventually arrested for his activities, which is why we know about him. Another cunning man who had a run-in with the law was Matthew Evans, who was involved in a legal dispute in 1625.37 The complainants in the case all had personal interests in the estate of the courtier and soldier Robert Radcliffe, fifth Earl of Sussex (1573– 1629). They alleged that Matthew Evans used sorcery to help Frances Shute (d. 1627) obtain goods, chattels and lands from the Earl of Sussex. At the time, Frances was married to Edward Shute but was having an affair with the earl. She had a daughter, Jane, as a result of that relationship.38 One of the complainants was John Ramsay, first Earl of Holdernesse (1580– 1626). His interest was in his late wife’s inheritance; he had been married to Frances’s legitimate daughter, Elizabeth Radcliffe (d. 1618).39 The other complainant was Bridget Radcliffe, Countess of Sussex (1575–1623), the earl’s estranged wife. She alleged that Frances Shute had used the countess’s wedding ring (which the countess had pawned) “to practise some spell, enchantment or charm upon the said Earl.” The defendant Shute tried to shift all of the blame unto Matthew Evans by claiming that he had bewitched her to deprive her of her health and life.40 In his defence, Evans protested that he had only been contracted by Shute to calculate a nativity for her daughter Jane and to prescribe a “diet drink” for back pain. The point of this anecdote is that, in his defence, Evans protested that he was “a painful and Industrious

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Scholar and having with great travel studies and pains found out and discovered diverse experiments in natural things.”41 In other words, Evans constructed himself as a learned man educated in natural philosophy and physic, rather than a common conjurer or a cunning man. Evan’s self-image is supported in a letter dated April 10, 1621, in which he requested that the theologian and physician Richard Napier keep several books for him until he could retrieve them. Among them were Trithemius’s Steganographia, Collectanea Chymica and a book entitled Contemplatio Divinitatis, supposedly written (meaning copied?) by Evans in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The books in question had fallen into the hands of a justice of the peace when Evans had been accused of being a conjurer on a previous occasion. Somehow the books had made their way into Napier’s possession. Evans was concerned lest the manuscripts be viewed by anyone other than scholars.42 This statement was made in a private letter rather than a public document like a deposition and, therefore, rings truer than his protestations to the court. Evans considered himself an equal to the respected Dr Napier, to whom he was writing. Napier and Evans’s relationship was based on their shared interest in the occult; Evans refers to an astrology book in his possession that belonged to the doctor.43

Magic as Medicine The addressee in question was Richard Napier (1559– 1634), an Oxford-educated theologian and licensed physician, who integrated magical techniques into his practice of physic.44 Aligning magic with the professional practice of medicine made certain practices more acceptable and academic. In addition to cunning folk, there were three types of medical practitioners in early modern England. Physicians were usually university-trained in medical theories and diagnosed illness by analysing urine and the pulse. Barber-surgeons engaged in more manual procedures such as blood-letting, pulling teeth, setting fractures and removing gall bladders. They were more likely to serve an apprenticeship or learn their skills while travelling

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with the army. Apothecaries prepared and recommended herbal remedies and chemical drugs. Diagnoses and cures were based on one of two medical theories circulating in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Traditional medicine drew on the classical theories established by Hippocrates (c.460 – c.370 BCE ) and Galen (129– c.200 CE ), which were based on the system of the four humours, outlined in Chapter 1. An alternative to Galenic medicine was offered in the sixteenth century by astrologer-physician Paracelsus (1493– 1541). He built on the hermetic and neoplatonic ideas of Ficino and Pico. Although he did not completely reject the notion of the four elements and associated humours, he promoted the alchemical trinity of salt, sulphur and mercury as three spiritual substances that constituted the world. He rejected the Galenic theory of disease based on humoural imbalance in favour of a theory that disease entered the body through air or food and got lodged in the organs, thereby causing organic dysfunction. His medical approach was chemically oriented, based on balancing the minerals in the body.45 He is considered the father of modern homeopathy, which relies on the concept that ‘like cures like.’ Paracelsian medicine also had a religious aspect. Robert Fludd discussed the poisons that entered the body through the pores or from breathing as evil spirits hovering in the air. These spirits could be counteracted by remedies or medicines aligned with angelic forces through sympathy.46 In short, Paracelsian medicine continued to support the ideas of macrocosm and microcosm that were the basis of magic.

Richard Napier Napier’s practice demonstrates how magical practices were taken up by the medical profession as diagnostic tools similar to urine analysis. Napier was the rector of Great Linford, Buckinghamshire, but he was uncomfortable in the role of preacher and employed a curate to fulfil those duties. Instead, he dedicated his life to the practice of physic and the discourse of theology. A substantial portion of his clients were members of the upper gentry and aristocracy. He used both astrology and the invocation of angelic spirits in his medical practice

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as diagnostic aids. He owned a beryl glass for scrying and recorded invocations for the angel Raphael as well as for ‘sylphs’ (an elemental spirit of the air).47 Napier was advised to cherish his ‘philosopher’s glass’ and keep it as a rare secret.48 With prayers of absolution, forgiveness, praise and thanksgiving, Napier invoked the angel Raphael to appear in the glass so that he could be seen and heard, and so that Napier could be “perfectly informed & instructed.”49 Napier’s trademark as a physician was the individual casting of a horoscope for each patient. Astrology determined the unique relationship between the patient and the universe by situating the individual precisely in the macrocosm. As a diagnostic tool, judicial astrology was not particularly magical; the heavens were simply read to understand what influences were at work. The use of astrology slipped into magic in the making of talismans and sigils. Astrology was used to determine the correct time to construct the item and to decide what symbols and materials to use to harness the occult powers of the heavens. Astrological diagnostic techniques recognised that physical symptoms could not be treated in isolation from the mental and spiritual condition of the patient (which, in retrospect, is quite a modern medical attitude). According to contemporary medical theories, mental afflictions could be caused by several means: humoural imbalances in the physical body; supernatural causes involving spirits, demons or witches; or spiritual afflictions arising from sin or God’s punishment. Imagination and fancy could also be responsible for insanity if they were not adequately controlled by the power of the will.50 Keep in mind that religion, magic and medicine were inextricably connected during this period. Napier’s magical practice was an extension of his religious practice; he called on God’s help to communicate with the archangel Raphael after long rituals of fasting and praying.51 There was a very fine line between petitionary prayer and the magical invocation of angels. Seventeenth-century Protestants debated the difference between the manipulation of supernatural powers, such as the angels, and the belief in God’s divine will, which was enacted solely through providence.52 Men who practised angel magic were always at risk of being denounced as

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conjurors of evil spirits. Even Napier was occasionally accused of being a witch. However, the magical aspects of his practice were offset by his reputation as an Anglican theologian.53 Although Napier cast horoscopes for his clients and prescribed amulets and charms, he did not engage in the more common practices of a cunning person such as finding lost goods, searching for treasure or preparing love charms. The antiquarian and biographer John Aubrey reported that on one occasion Napier was angry at a patient who refused his cure by a spell; Napier thought that the patient was slighting the power and goodness of “the blessed spirits (or Angels).”54 Napier believed that his advice was divinely inspired through his prayers and petitions to God and the angels. In Napier’s petitions to God he stressed that he desired “that gift divine supernatural of virtue celestial [. . .] to heal in [God’s] powerful name.”55 For Napier, magic was not a necessary vehicle for gaining prestige; he was a well-educated man of some means in a prestigious position in his community. Indeed, using magic risked damaging his reputation by attracting accusations of witchcraft. Nevertheless, it can be argued that magic enhanced Napier’s success (or at least his reputation) as a physician and afforded him more renown. We have no evidence that Napier cherished such fame; his reputation was that of a devout theologian and a dedicated healer, who frequently offered his services to the poor at no charge.56 For the purposes of my argument, Napier contributed to the alignment of magic with intellectual debates by combining magical practices with medical procedures and religious beliefs.

Simon Forman Richard Napier learned astrology from another physician who used magic in his medical practice: Simon Forman (1552– 1611).57 In Forman’s case, magic was a tool that allowed him to obtain the outward accoutrements that were the markers of full manhood. Although he was a man of lower social status than Napier, he nevertheless rose to become a self-styled gentleman and a licensed physician. Magic afforded Forman both an income and prestige,

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which allowed him to rise above the status of a common cunning person. Forman maintained that his parents were “well descended and of good reputation,” but when his father died in Forman’s eleventh year, his mother and seven siblings were left in poverty. He resented his widowed mother for interrupting his education and putting him out to work, a practice that was, however, not uncommon at the time. His autobiography stresses how he struggled during the following years to complete his studies. At the age of fifteen, he apprenticed himself to a hosier and grocer, a type of apothecary who prepared herbal and chemical remedies prescribed by physicians. Denied the education his master had promised, Forman convinced the boy sharing his bed to repeat the lessons each night that he had acquired during the day from a neighbouring free school. He also gained a great deal of knowledge about herbs and drugs during this time. After a short stint as a schoolmaster, he became a servant to two Bachelor of Arts students at Magdalen College in Oxford. In return for service, they were supposed to help him with his education, but the young men were more interested in hunting and chasing women than in their studies.58 Nevertheless, Forman’s lack of formal training did not deter him from practising physic, which was his own unique combination of astrology, magic, surgery and conventional medicine of the day. His thirst for knowledge drove him to collect, copy and annotate many magical manuscripts, including Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, the Picatrix, Steganographia and the Ars Notoria.59 Like many magicians of the era, Forman believed that certain types of knowledge were divinely imparted.60 Invoking spirits, whether into a circle or into a crystal, was a means of achieving occult knowledge. Prayers to angelic spirits while in the presence of the patient would be answered in the mind of the petitioner.61 A fragment of the Ars Notoria reflects the religious aspect of this art: O god of Angels; god of Archangels; god of Patriarchs, god of Prophets, god of Sinners, O Lord be my help, that this my work may proceed in good time, to thy glory O god; and to learning,

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and not Art else, that I would this day have. O my god be my tongue, that I may glorify thee in all works. Amen [original italics].62 Forman attributed his attainment of wisdom to the angels, pointing to a long tradition dating from Adam, who was taught the “arts and Science and the understanding of things” from the archangel Gabriel. According to the angels, it was beneficial for Forman: to have a Tutor and so study in the book of wisemen and of the Ancients continually reading them, and to be quiet and without trouble, and to keep thy self clean from sin, fast and pray and clothe thy self in white and clean apparel. And wash thy body often and make fumigation and praise to god, and then shall the Angels come and teach thee.63 Forman took pride in the fact that he was not a university-educated physician but a self-taught man. He prized experience over formal education and maintained that he “never learned any thing of any man neither could I say that ever I was beholding to any man for Art but to one simple fellow, but to god and nature.”64 According to his diary, Forman began his exploration of magic in 1587 by employing the scryer John Goodridge, a gelded man.65 In 1590 he transcribed a book on necromancy. The same year, on All Hallowtide, he entered a ceremonial circle for the purpose of doing “necromantical spells.” During participation in a ritual circle on March 22, 1591, he reported hearing music.66 There is evidence that Forman also used communication with good spirits as a diagnostic aid. In a manuscript entry dated October 10, 1599, Forman reports the results of consulting with good spirits on questions of health and happiness: Astaroth 10 Oct. 1599 docuit [Astaroth instructed] For to help those that are bewitched The water is not thirsty

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The bread is not hungry In the name of Father, the Son, & Holy Ghost Come forth fair Angel & help thy brother.67 Although the meaning is arcane, the intent is clear; Forman is consulting the angel Astaroth concerning a suspected case of bewitchment. Unfortunately, we do not know if he commonly used this practice or if this was merely an experiment he recorded. However, according to William Lilly, Forman gave predictions “performed by Conference with Spirits” and wrote in a notebook that he “made the Devil write with his own Hand.”68 By 1595 Forman’s occult activities extended to alchemy and the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone.69 Alchemy was practised for several purposes: transmuting base materials into gold, maintaining and re-establishing health, and spiritual enlightenment. In terms of changing metals, alchemy was not magical: it was an early form of chemistry. The magical aspect was the belief that the three prime substances – salt, sulphur and mercury – had vital properties that connected the macrocosm and microcosm. The hierarchy of spirits that permeated the early modern world corresponded to these elements.70 Like Napier, Forman’s public involvement in the occult was mostly in the area of astrology. In addition to making magical talismans to enhance his own success, he prepared potions for his patients in which talismans or magical rings were immersed.71 The astrological aspect of his practice continued until his death (which, according to William Lilly, he predicted as well).72 Forman’s astrological diagnostic practice was part of the reason for his ongoing disputes with the London College of Physicians, the regulatory body that granted licences to physicians following a formal examination. Forman did not accept the traditional diagnostic techniques of analysing urine and taking the pulse. On several occasions the College fined and incarcerated the “pretended Astrologer and great Imposter” and caused him to relocate to Lambeth to avoid their jurisdiction, which did not extend to the south side of the Thames.73 In 1599 he “condemned them in law,” which silenced them for over a year. In 1600, he stated that “many slanderous speeches were by the

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Doctors and others used secretly against me; yet I thrived reasonable well.”74 Ironically, his quest for respectability as a physician gained him a bad reputation as a defiant, headstrong rebel from the very group of people with whom he was attempting to compete. Forman’s attitude to the academically-trained physicians was often derogatory and dismissive, which seems to indicate a lack of respect for their formal training. Nevertheless, in 1600 he proudly wrote in his diary that he “made my purple gown, my velvet cap, my velvet coat, my velvet breeches, my taffeta cloak, my hat, and many other things. And did let my hair and beard grow.”75 Purple robes were the requisite dress code for the London College of Physicians.76 As much as Forman protested his disdain for licensed physicians, he obviously wanted to emulate them. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, outward apparel was still the marker of a man’s status in society. There was a direct correlation between social and economic rank and inner worth.77 In 1603, Forman finally received a licence in physic from Jesus College, Cambridge University.78 Just prior to becoming a licensed physician, Forman married for the first time at the age of forty-seven.79 His sixteen-year-old bride, Anne Baker, was the niece of Sir Edward Monnings; the marriage did not bring great wealth but connected Forman to a respectable family. At this point in his life, Forman had established a successful medical practice with many clients from the gentry class. Even the queen’s physician, Mr Roche, consulted him on one occasion.80 But for Forman, manhood consisted of more than establishing a household and profession. He strove to become a respected member of the gentry. He traced his lineage to the Scottish and English nobility, and he proudly recorded in his journal the day that he bought his fencing sword, the true marker of a gentleman.81 He was fully performing the ideal of manhood. After he became established as a licensed physician and a respected gentleman, there is no evidence that he continued the more illicit magical practice of calling spirits.82 For much of Forman’s career, he was vulnerable to harassment from authorities on account of his alternative medical techniques. Unlike Richard Napier, he was not protected by his social status and formal education. As noted in the case of cunning men, social status

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complicated matters of gender when it came to magic, which was socially, legally and religiously denounced. Nonetheless, Forman was able to employ astrological and magical knowledge to build a successful and, ultimately, reputable business in physic. Magic was an integral part of his attainment of objective manhood. Given Forman’s egotistical personality, magic no doubt boosted his subjective masculinity as well by demarcating him as one of a chosen few. Forman is another example of a physician who incorporated the use of astrological physic and talismans into the practice of medicine, thereby aligning them with intellectual pursuits.

William Lilly A talisman made by Simon Forman sparked William Lilly’s (1602– 1681) interest in magic. Lilly did not consciously construct himself as a magus but rather as a judicial astrologer, which he promoted as a legitimate profession on its own. He used magic as an intellectual tool to further his political and medical interests. His contribution to the legitimisation of magic was his argument that astrology was a lawful practice in both universities and did not contradict biblical notions. Like Forman, Lilly had humble roots.83 He started grammar school at the age of eleven, and by age eighteen he had acquired some expertise in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. However, instead of entering Cambridge University with his peers, he was forced to stop his studies and return home because of his “Father’s Backslidings in the World.” With his father in debtor’s prison, Lilly apprenticed himself to Gilbert Wright, a salt merchant. Lilly became quite close to his master’s wife and nursed her during her fatal bout with breast cancer. Upon her death, he discovered “a small scarlet Bag full of many Things” under her arm, in which there were “several Sigils, some of Jupiter in Trine, others of the Nature of Venus, some of Iron, and one of Gold.”84 Lilly continued his apprenticeship with Wright until 1627, when his master died. A few months after Mr Wright’s death, Lilly secretly married the second Mrs Wright, nee´ Ellen Whitehaire, and continued Wright’s business. If full manhood was defined by

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marriage, a household and work identity, then Lilly had achieved it. But apparently this was not enough to satisfy Lilly’s desire for knowledge. In 1632, he met the astrologer John Evans, from whom he took astrology lessons for a couple of months. Evans boasted to Lilly that he was knowledgeable in the “Black Art” and “well versed in the Nature of Spirits, and had many times used the circular way of invocating.”85 Perhaps influenced by Evans, Lilly obtained a copy of the Ars Notoria, “a large Volume wrote in Parchment, with the Names of those Angels, and their Pictures.” Lilly admits that he used the prayers and invocations from the book for several weeks; however, he is silent about his success or failure. Instead, he dismisses the subject with the curt comment, “but of this no more.”86 Either his experiments were unsuccessful and he was dismissing the efficacy of the art, or, more likely, he realised the importance of complete secrecy regarding such occult practices. But before he turned away from ceremonial magic, Lilly joined a party of men in Westminster Abbey to search for buried treasure (as described at the beginning of Chapter 1). By banishing the demons who were guarding the treasure, Lilly was able to display his talent as a magus in front of the group of men. In his narrative of the incident, he constructs himself as the hero.87 A semi-public display of courage could bolster a man’s status as both a magus and a man. Upon the death of the former Mrs Wright in October 1633, Lilly inherited £1,000: no small sum for a young tradesman. Lilly’s fortunes continued to rise. By investing in several houses in the Strand, he was able to make a successful marriage to Jane Rowley, who had a £500 portion.88 At this time, he taught the use of hazel divining wands to John Hegenius. However, he burned his magical books that “instructed these Curiosities.”89 Instead, he focused his attention on judicial astrology and astrological physic. From 1644 to 1666 Lilly developed a thriving astrological practice, earning up to £500 per annum and counting many members of the gentry and aristocracy among his clientele, including the parliamentarian politician Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke.90 He even won acclaim from the king of Sweden for an interpretation of his nativity chart.91

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In general, Lilly displayed a different attitude to the occult than Simon Forman. He dropped or downplayed any involvement with spirit magic, and he publicly promoted the use of judicial astrology as legitimate. He did not feel the need to withhold secrets from the public domain. Like Forman, Lilly was outside the elite circle of university-educated doctors and divines, and his politics tended toward egalitarianism rather than elitism.92 He played an important role in the democratisation of magic and astrology by publishing many guides aimed at a non-learned audience. He wrote his instruction manual, Christian Astrology, in the vernacular, and he made information readily available to the masses through his annual almanac, Merlinus Anglicus, which sold as many as 30,000 copies a year.93 Following the deterioration of controls on printing during the civil wars and Interregnum, astrology and related forms of magic experienced a boom in popular culture. The repercussion of this increased availability was that they became tainted by their association with radical sects and their involvement in political and religious disputes.94 Lilly’s personal reputation was also negatively affected by his public involvement in politics. Coinciding with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there was a rash of pamphlets and broadsheets denouncing Lilly as a fraud and a cozener, a mere cunning man, a sorcerer and devil-worshipper, and a wizard.95 Just as magic could bolster one’s manhood, it could also contribute to feminisation. A Letter from the King of Denmark compared Lilly to a dog with its “tail clapt between [its] legs,” an image that implies submission, subordination and metaphorical castration. The same pamphlet compares astrological computations to “Scrawls” like “a Girl makes when she first learns to frame her Letters,” which further feminised the practice of astrology.96 This public debate over Lilly’s politics and magical practices, and by extension his manhood, illustrates the constant struggle men faced to establish and maintain their status as men. Although magic contributed to Lilly’s successful career and honour among his peers, it also placed him in a compromised position. Lilly was fortunate enough to find supportive patrons early in his astrological career. Therefore, Lilly did not have the same need, either financially or

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psychologically, to continue the more esoteric aspects of the occult in order to attain knowledge, wealth or prestige. Ironically, his critics compared him to well-known magicians such as Faustus, Merlin, Roger Bacon and the notorious ‘Dr’ Lamb.97 Although these appellations were intended to smear his good name, they could be inadvertently complimentary to a magician, who, as we have seen, prized his lineage as a conjurer. *** The examples of Forman and Lilly illustrate that, although patriarchy was securely entrenched in the early modern culture, not all men benefited from the ‘patriarchal dividend’ from birth.98 The practice of magic offered one of many ways to overcome such limitations. For most male practitioners of magic in the early modern period, the practice of magic was not a full-time occupation; nevertheless, it was one of several practices by which a man performed his manhood or expressed his subjective sense of masculinity. Certain aspects of early modern manhood, such as work identity, honour, wealth and status, could be acquired through the practice of magic. In the process, some aspects of magic were incorporated into legitimate social practices, such as medicine and intellectual pursuits.

CHAPTER 3 FRATERNITY AND FREEMASONS

Fraternity There were many opportunities for early modern men of all social statuses to achieve a sense of fraternity. Guilds, religious fraternities, universities, alehouses and coffee houses all provided almost exclusively male interactions. The practice of magic was also mostly homosocial. In the previous chapter, we saw how educated magicians formed a network of their own by interchanging ideas, writing letters and treatises, exchanging books and manuscripts, and sometimes practising magic in the company of other men. The male-only aspect of ceremonial magic, both in discourse and in practice, could create a sense of fraternity, thereby reinforcing aspects of masculinity. As Frank Klaassen revealed in his study of medieval magical texts, the clerics who copied and modified manuals “constructed a distinctive masculinity founded upon positive features of their own community such as learning, fraternity, self-control, and the possession of clerical ritual power.”1 Group rituals reinforced male bonding and a sense of superiority. Historian Alexandra Shepard made extensive use of Cambridge University court archives to argue that young male students, outside the parameters of mainstream manhood, often flaunted the

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patriarchal precepts of orderliness so as to establish their masculinity. Shepard argues that activities that challenged society reinforced a sense of superiority in members of a group who had not yet attained full manhood.2 If drinking rituals and bar-room brawls created a sense of fraternity, how much more would the sharing of such a dramatic and secretive incident as conjuring spirits? One example of this is Abraham de la Pryme (1671– 1704), who experimented with magic with his fellow students at St John’s College, Cambridge.3 Pryme purchased a book of magic from a local bookseller, with which he conducted experiments with his peers. One of his colleagues was deeply troubled by the proceedings and subsequently committed suicide. Nevertheless, the group continued their “studies and searchings into the truth and knowledge of things.” Prior to his death, the young man wrote a letter in which “he had given a sufficient reason to his father for the said act.” The father, in turn, wrote Pryme a letter begging him “to desist from all magical studies” and charged Pryme with “a company of most black sins.” Even in the face of a friend’s suicide, the group of students were unwilling to desist from their illicit activities. There is no evidence that Pryme continued to dabble in conjuring after university, although he later corresponded with the antiquarian Hans Sloane, who collected magical manuscripts.4 Interest in the occult may have been just a phase in the life of this young student. For a young man, the practice of magic provided a forum to display courage and self-assertiveness.5 Pryme was not the only Cambridge man to experiment with the occult. Perhaps dabbling in magic was even linked to university initiation practices. Many men attending the universities were more interested in the extracurricular activities, such as hunting, drinking and gambling, than they were in graduating. The study of cosmography, which included astronomy and astrology, was encouraged as part of the extra-statutory curriculum at Cambridge by tutors such as Thomas Allen (1540– 1632), who was an intimate friend of John Dee and was reputed to be another Roger Bacon.6 According to John Aubrey, students saw spirits swarming up Allen’s staircase like bees.7 The most famous Cambridge magus was John

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Dee, who also attended St John’s College. Several other well-known Cambridge men were involved in magic. The founder of Gonville and Caius College, Dr John Caius (1510– 73), had magical manuscripts in his library, which included instructions on how to obtain the spirit of a dying man as a familiar spirit.8 St John’s also produced John Vaux (c.1604 – 5), who was accused of dabbling in magical practices and selling strange books from his church altar.9 John Lowes (c.1590), the vicar of Brandeston in East Suffolk, was also educated at St John’s. He was accused of harbouring witches and practising black magic, and eventually got caught in the net of witchcraft prosecutions conducted by Matthew Hopkins in 1645.10 Robert Turner’s translation of pseudo-Agrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy included seven testaments from members of Cambridge University, three of whom were from St John’s College.11 Several more Cambridge and Oxford university members displayed interest in the occult.12 Part of the appeal of these activities was their exclusivity: both women and lower ranking men were excluded. Outside of the exclusively male universities, men sought the company of other men in the many clubs and societies that arose in the seventeenth century, particularly following the Restoration. Increasing affluence, an accompanying emphasis on leisure activities, religious and political pluralism, and the end of censorship were all contributing factors to the popularity of these mostly homosocial institutions. Traditional centres of public sociability had been the church, the marketplace and the street, where both men and women intermixed during the course of doing business. At the highest end of society, the court, parliament and hunting provided social outlets for the gentry and the aristocracy. In the second half of the seventeenth century, there was a gradual shift to meeting places such as coffee houses and drinking establishments, which were dedicated to social interaction. At these public venues, men could discuss everything from politics and news to poetry and music. Here men were introduced to the many new clubs and associations that were strictly homosocial. As these forums of sociability became more fashionable, they encouraged social and gender differentiation.13

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One such organisation was the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. A group of men who had previously met at the universities officially founded the Royal Society in 1660 to improve science through observation and experimentation. The ongoing interest in the supernatural within the group was demonstrated by the clergyman Joseph Glanvill’s treatise on witchcraft and apparitions.14 Likewise, the practices of astrology and alchemy were not in opposition to the aims of the new institution. In fact, many of the so-called ‘virtuosi’ were more interested in the exotic and novel experiments conducted by members than the scientifically significant ones. Members of the Society actively recruited support and membership from the titled aristocracy, including King Charles II, the Duke of York, Prince Rupert and several prominent bishops. In such elite company, membership accorded social prestige, and the occult activities of the early members were either overlooked or legitimised.15 The Royal Society allowed magical experimentation to be aligned with scientific enquiry. For the many elite men who engaged in magical practice, the occult needed to be a respectable and legitimate subject for erudite discussion; in other words, an intellectual activity. Magic could reinforce manhood for men of higher status if it was maintained as natural philosophy or the new science that was emerging in the seventeenth century. The esoteric nature of magic spoke to the scholarly pride of magicians. However, by the midseventeenth century, magic had become ever more democratised and popular. By incorporating aspects of magic into elite organisations and spaces, such as the Royal Society, elite men could distinguish their magical practices from that of cunning folk and the general population.16 Women, in particular, were associated with lower forms of magic that often employed evil spirits. In an attempt to discredit such forms of magic, the magus Agrippa suggested that “women are most desirous of secrets, and less cautious, and prone to superstition.”17 Women did not possess the qualities necessary for respectable magical practice and were, therefore, dangerous to themselves and to society. Keeping women and men of lower status out of the world of magic was not a new concept. Transmission

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guidelines in medieval magical texts explicitly stated that women should not be allowed to own such materials.18

Freemasonry The Royal Society brought together men who had an interest in both the fraternal aspects of a male-only club and an interest in the occult sciences. Another contemporary fraternity was freemasonry. Author Robert Lomas traced the connections between the group of men who were involved in both the Society and the freemasons. In the process, he recognised symbols in the early Society documents that are similar to freemasonry symbols. He argues that the Society was actually a mutation of the early freemasonry organisation.19 However, I suggest that freemasonry had already combined aspects of ritual magic, alchemy, kabbalah and Rosicrucianism prior to any influence it had on the Society. The symbols that would subsequently surface in the Society, which Lomas identifies as being adopted from freemasonry, were originally magical. The influence of the occult, alchemy and kabbalah in freemasonry has been noted before, although masonic authors tend to shy away from the idea that ritual magic was part of freemasonry.20 My purpose in reviewing the occult aspects of freemasonry is to demonstrate how the process of embedding aspects of magic in the fraternity arose from issues of manhood. *** Speculative freemasonry was born out of the medieval operative stonemasons’ guild. This process began in 1583 in Scotland. James VI appointed William Schaw (1550– 1602), a diplomat and courtier, as Master of Works, the person who oversaw the financial and administrative aspects of building and repairing all royal structures. Part of his responsibilities included organising the actual physical work of building, which provided employment for the operative stonemasons. In 1598, Schaw introduced a new system of organisation to the craft based on lodges, as outlined in a new set of statutes and ordinances (the First Schaw Statutes).21 In the Second

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Schaw Statutes, Schaw introduced the art of memory to the stonemasons. As part of the art of rhetoric, the Greeks had developed a technique for memorising long orations, which was passed down via the Romans to western Europe. The technique had a natural association with masonry and architecture. The practitioner pictured the floor plan of a real or imagined building: the orator then placed images and symbols in the various loci to remind him of the order of his speech. In the early middle ages, the Christian platonist Augustine of Hippo included memory as one of the three powers of the soul (memory, understanding and will), thereby privileging the memory as a way to access knowledge of the divine. The art was revived in the Renaissance by neoplatonists, who transformed the utilitarian technique of rhetoric into a hermetic art. The images placed in the ‘memory theatre’ were chiefly borrowed from Agrippa’s De Occulta. In the new configuration, memory images were regarded as talismans that could connect the inner world of the imagination to the celestial universe. This occult version of the art was especially promoted by Giordano Bruno, who attributed the art to Hermes Trismegistus. While Bruno was in England, he met with an avid admirer of his work, the Scotsman Alexander Dickson, who created a widespread interest in the art among members of the Scottish court, including the Master of Works, William Schaw.22 The addition of the art of memory to the stonemasons’ statutes contributed to the secretive nature of the guild. There was a longstanding tradition of guilds in general protecting their professional secrets. Part of the stonemasons’ practice was the ‘Mason’s Word,’ a password of sorts for apprentices of the trade to distinguish them from non-guild masons. Gentlemen who did not participate in the stonemasons’ trade started to join the operative lodges as honorary members and benefactors, perhaps hoping to discover hermetic knowledge. Eventually, new lodges became more concerned with rituals and secrets than the practices of working masons.23 Any perceived occult elements would have increased the curiosity of outsiders who had a desire to obtain divine knowledge.24 The practice of non-operatives joining the guild either crossed the border to England or a similar evolution took place there

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independently. In any case, the first mention of a lodge in England or Scotland that did not have practising stonemasons as members was in 1646 in Warrington, Lancashire. The lack of references to freemasonry lodges in England in the first half of the seventeenth century could be either a function of their complete secrecy or their sporadic occurrence. These initial meetings could have been simply social gatherings held for the purpose of initiating new members, rather than formal meetings of operative masons’ lodges, which would require more rigorous record keeping.25 By 1716, there were enough London lodges for representatives to meet at the Apple Tree Tavern in Covent Garden and set St John the Baptist’s day as their annual assembly and feast day (St John was the traditional patron saint of the stonemasons’ guild). The next year, representatives of four London freemasonry lodges met at the Little Goose and Gridiron Alehouse to constitute the first Grand Lodge. By 1740 there were over 100 lodges in the city of London alone.26 The period of interest for my purposes is the mid to late seventeenth century, when speculative freemasonry slowly grew apart from the operative guild. The procedures and rituals of the gentlemen masons began to take their own definitive form.27 If the freemasonry lodges in England had been separate institutions from the operative guilds from the beginning, they would have had more opportunity to introduce rituals and symbols from outside the stonemasons’ tradition. One of several influential men in the magical network, who was in a perfect position to do so, was Elias Ashmole (1617– 92). Ashmole first became a freemason in Warrington in October 1646, in the company of a handful of local landowners. He later attended a meeting at Masons’ Hall in London in 1682. In addition to his interests in magic, alchemy and astrology, he was involved in the Royal Society and was interested in Rosicrucianism. His fascination with ritual is evident in the treatise he wrote on the laws and ceremonies of the ancient Order of the Garter, England’s first order of knighthood.28 Elias Ashmole was the son of a saddler from Staffordshire.29 In 1645, while studying at Oxford, he met the leading astrologer of

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the time, George Wharton, who sparked his interest in astrology, alchemy and magical sigils. Ashmole’s second marriage to a rich widow, the former Lady Mary Mainwaring, provided him a sufficient income to pursue his esoteric studies full-time as well as patronise others with similar interests. He formed a lifelong friendship with the popular astrologer William Lilly, despite the fact that they were on opposite sides of English civil war politics.30 After the Restoration, Ashmole held several bureaucratic posts in London. Before he died, he bequeathed his extensive collection of ancient relics and antiquities to Oxford University. The subsequent Ashmolean Museum was the first public museum in England.31 Ashmole’s interest in magic was probably limited to astrology and technical hermetica such as talismans. He was also an avid collector of alchemical literature. In his collection of alchemical poems, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, Ashmole complained about the “multitude of Pretenders” and “diverse Illiterate Professors (and Woman are of the Number)” who were involved in the occult arts.32 He felt that the prestige of magic was being diluted because of its association with women and the lower orders, including cunning folk.33 This attests to his concern for guarding certain information for the exclusive use of a male elite. In Theatrum, Ashmole professed to “know enough to hold my Tongue, but not enough to Speak [. . .] [the] Miraculous Fruits I have found in my diligent enquiry into these Arcana, lead me on to such degrees of Admiration, they command Silence.”34 Ashmole valued the middle ground, whereby he admitted his knowledge of the occult but did not reveal what that knowledge was. In addition to freemasonry, Ashmole was interested in the very secretive Rosicrucian Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, two manifestos had surfaced in Germany, Fama Fraternitatis (1614) and Confessio Fraternitatis (1615), which described a secret society of alchemists, allegedly formed in the middle ages, whose aim was to reform the world. The documents generated a lot of interest throughout Europe, especially to men who had an interest in a brotherhood that had access to secret knowledge.35 Ashmole translated the texts and

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praised the skills of the Rosicrucians in Theatrum.36 Whether or not such a society actually existed at the time the documents were published has been debated ever since. Nevertheless, rumours quickly spread about men who were allegedly members of the secret society. One such man was William Backhouse of Swallowfield (1593– 1662), a renowned alchemist who professed to have “the great secret” of the Philosopher’s Stone. In 1651 Backhouse ‘adopted’ Ashmole as a son “because he had communicated so many secrets” to him. Ashmole described the adoption as a link to the “Hermetic Tribe,” which transmitted its secrets only by oral tradition.37 The adoption can also be read as a type of initiation into the mysteries, an element that was integral to freemasonry as well. In 1650, Ashmole published his translation of two alchemical treatises (one by John Dee’s son, Dr Arthur Dee) under the pseudonym

4. Frontispiece of Arthur Dee, Fasciculus Chemicus or Chymical collections.

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James Hasolle. The frontispiece of Fasciculus Chemicus or Chymical Collections includes several of the symbols that would become part of freemasonry. Note the sun and moon at the top, the three columns, and the ladder, square and compass on the left-hand side.38 These symbols are clearly replicated in the masonic first degree tracing board. A tracing board or floor cloth was used to depict the emblems of initiation, which were explained to the new member. Originally, the symbols were drawn with chalk or ash on the floor and then removed following the ceremony; therefore, we do not have many illustrations of the contents until the eighteenth century. The earliest floor cloth still extant is dated 1764 from Lurgan Lodge 394, now the Grand Lodge of Ireland.39 In addition to these common symbols, discussed in more detail below, ritual magic and freemasonry shared an association

5. Floor Cloth of Masonic Lodge 394.

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with Hermes. The speculative organisation took its mythical roots, as well as its structural framework, from the medieval stonemasons’ guild. According to the Old Charges of the stonemasons, Hermes, a grandson of Noah, discovered the stone column in which Lamech’s offspring (mentioned in Genesis) had hidden the secrets of science before Noah’s flood.40 Hermes Trismegistus, of course, was considered by magicians to be the author of the philosophical aspects of hermeticism. The building secrets were eventually passed down to King David and his son Solomon, who gave the secrets of geometry to the masons who worked on Solomon’s temple. When the freemasons adapted this aspect of the stonemasons’ history, Solomon became the Grand Master of the Jerusalem lodge.41 As discussed in Chapter 1, magicians also included Solomon in their history. The archangel Michael gave Solomon a magic ring, inscribed with the pentalpha, to control the demons who assisted in building the temple.42 Another point of similarity between freemasonry and ritual magic is the creation of sacred space. A ritual from eighteenth-century masonry includes the maxim, “Brethren, you are now about to quit this sacred retreat of friendship and virtue, to mix again with the world.”43 Sacred space, fraternity and virtue reminded the member of his elite position as a member of the lodge. Although the lodge eventually became a specific building in which members met, it was originally conceived of as a symbolic structure drawing on the myth of Solomon’s temple. This is reminiscent of the architecturallycontrived art of memory that Schaw borrowed from magicians such as Bruno. In the early days of freemasonry, participants drew the outline of the lodge on the floor with chalk or charcoal, which echoes the casting of a circle by ritual magicians.44 At some unknown point, circumambulation entered masonic rites; the officers moved sunwise around the room, again echoing the ritual circle.45 In ritual magic, the magician’s knife or sword delineated the boundaries of the protective magic circle. In freemasonry, each lodge had a swordbearer, who was a symbolic guardsman called a tyler. He ensured that non-members did not enter the lodge, thereby protecting the parameters of the homosocial territory.46 In both cases, the sword, long associated with elite manhood, inscribed a separate space.

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Entering into this liminal space to learn its secrets was one of the key elements of freemasonry. The master was advised to “conjure [the initiate] to secrecy, by threatening that if [he] shall break his oath the sun in the firmament will be a witness against him, and all the company then present, which will be an occasion of his damnation.”47 This is reminiscent of the admonition in some medieval magical texts that the magus should suffer death rather than reveal the secrets of the brotherhood of magicians.48 Conjuring demons and controlling initiates both required obedience and threats. Early eighteenth-century initiation rituals describe how the initiate made a gesture by drawing his hand under his chin along his throat, which “denote[d] that [his tongue] be cut out in case he break his word.”49 Dramatic rituals such as this provided an opportunity for the candidate to display his pseudo-courage in a secretive, fraternal setting. “[A] great many ceremonies to frighten him” were used to heighten the fear and humiliation of the postulant during the initiation ritual and create a more intense emotional state.50 They contain echoes of the real fear described in ceremonial magic rituals. For example, in 1617, William Lawse and Andrew Loader, a husbandman of Bethersden, approached William Chiles of Tenterden to determine who had harmed Loader’s cattle and stolen his corn. Chiles, presumably a cunning man, drew a nine and a half foot circle on the floor with chalk but needed Lawse, who owned a book of conjuration, to write certain Latin words “in four sundry places.” Lawse left the room while Chiles and Loader stood back to back in the circle and read from the book of conjurations, as well as reading psalms from a Psalter. Loader said he heard strange noises and “was ready to fall down for fear, but saw no manner of thing to appear in the room.”51 Part of the mystique of the freemasons included their possible possession of occult knowledge. For example, William Stukeley was a physician, a Newtonian natural philosopher and member of the Royal Society. He joined the masons because he believed the organisation held “the remains of the mysteries of the ancients.”52 In his Natural History of Staffordshire (1686), Robert Plot, one-time secretary of the Royal Society, attested to the fact that many eminent men of the day had joined the freemasons. According to him, the

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admission ceremony consisted chiefly “in the communication of certain Secret Signs.”53 The secret ‘Mason’s Word’ eventually became a series of questions, answers and gestures to identify and initiate members. The ‘Mason’s Word’ was symbolic of a quest for knowledge and enlightenment, and was similar to the use of magical and divine words in ceremonial magic.54 The secrecy and rituals contributed to the satisfaction of being ‘on the inside.’ The deistic tendencies of the institution may have been a welcome respite for men who had survived the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century but still had strong moral inclinations. The lodge provided esoteric ritual without the doctrine.55 Part of the secret ritual of identification for freemasons was the five point embrace, in which feet, knees, chest, hands and cheeks of the two men touch. The significance of the number five should probably not be over-exaggerated but, according to Agrippa, the ancients learned to count based on their five fingers and subsequently built their temples, houses and ships according to this measure of the body. The resonance with masons and architecture is obvious. In De Occulta, Agrippa explains the body’s proportions to geometry and architecture. One of the illustrations depicts the figure of a man standing on a cubic stone with arms outstretched within a circle. He holds a pentacle in each hand and on his abdomen is a builder’s tool for finding plumb, clearly a masonic symbol.56 The pentacle appears frequently in masonic regalia. Not only is it a symbolic representation of the masonic five points of fellowship, but it evokes the pentalpha that was on the magical ring of King Solomon. Of course, the five-pointed star was not restricted to European ritual magic; many archeological sites witness its use as well. Indeed, medieval stonemasons sometimes left it as their mark on cathedrals. The association of the pentacle with freemasonry may have been strengthened by Robert Moray’s adoption of the five-pointed star as his mason’s mark. The Moray family shield contained three fivepointed stars, but this alone does not explain why Robert Moray would choose that particular aspect of the crest for his personal symbol. Not only did he use the star in his mason’s mark, but he attached it to the end of his signature. Sir Robert Moray (1609– 73)

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6. “Of the proportion, measure and hormony of man’s body” from Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

was one of the twelve founding members of the Royal Society and was deeply involved in alchemy, Rosicrucianism and speculative freemasonry. He had been a member of the Edinburgh freemason’s lodge since 1641. He was also a patron of Thomas Vaughn, who published the English version of the original Rosicrucian tracts.57 The Scottish lodge member considered the pentacle an ancient symbol of health because it could be manipulated to form the Greek letters for the word health.58 Probably not coincidentally, this is discussed by Agrippa in De Occulta.59 If the mason’s compass is set at seventy-two degrees and replicated, it forms the five-pointed star. The masonic symbol of the compass was also related to alchemy. An alchemical treatise printed at Frankfurt in 1613 entitled Materia Prima depicts a two-headed human figure holding a compass and a square, indicating one possible influence of alchemy on freemasonry.61 At the top of the same drawing is the sun and moon, which we saw on the masonic floor cloth discussed above. In alchemical symbolism, the sun represents

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7. Robert Moray’s “Mason’s Mark,” from a letter from Sir Robert Moray to Alexander Bruce.60

the metal gold and the moon represents silver. The marriage of Sol and Luna allegedly generated the philosopher’s stone. By the seventeenth century, the objective of the spiritual transformation of man became more of a passion than the goal of alchemical transmutation of metal. Since generation requires the putrefaction of the old, alchemical illustrations symbolised the marriage of the sun and moon as a dead body in a coffin.62 The idea of raising the dead echoes necromancy – a magical practice. Necromancy was also a part of masonic mythology. In one version of the story, the sons of Noah raise him from the grave after the flood to question him about lost building secrets. In the second version, Hiram, Solomon’s master of works, is murdered because he would not divulge masonic secrets. Other masons attempt to raise Hiram from the dead in hopes of discovering the secret information, but instead they had to settle on a word, which was the origin of the mason’s secret password.63 By the nineteenth century, third degree masonic tracing boards used the coffin to represent the symbolic death and rebirth of the initiation rite. Of course, death and rebirth are ancient aspects of initiation rituals and also an

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8. Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Siue Avreliæ Occvltae Philosophorvm [. . .].

important element of Christian theology. But the symbol of a coffin to represent this spiritual process appears to be limited to alchemy and freemasonry. A nineteenth-century author, freemason and coroner, William W. Westcott, noticed that certain kabbalistic elements were also incorporated into freemasonry. He argues that the three masonic pillars of Wisdom, Strength and Beauty were taken from the three kabbalistic sephiroth of chokhmah, gevurah and tiferet.64 The sephiroth represented the ten qualities or emanations of God. The neoplatonic thinkers who adapted the Jewish system to Christianity understood the sephiroth as intermediary stages in the path to the divine.65 As

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mentioned above, Ashmole included the three pillars on the frontispiece of his translation of Arthur Dee’s alchemical treatise. *** In summary, there are several intersections and overlaps between freemasonry, alchemy, kabbalah and ritual magic, not to mention Rosicrucianism and the Royal Society. The cross-pollination of ideas and symbols from one to another is impossible to trace. But there is no doubt that ritual magic influenced all of these practices and institutions. Men like Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole were in the perfect position to introduce kabbalistic and magical elements into freemasonry rituals.66 The framework of freemasonry offered a space for men to deposit their interest in ritual, secrecy and the occult into an elite organisation, which could enhance their social status and contribute to their masculinity. Other curious links between the various organisations have yet to be fully explored. For example, Philip James Wharton, Duke of Wharton and nephew of the magician Goodwin Wharton (whom I will discuss in Chapter 8), was a grand master of the freemasons in 1722. He also formed a secret organisation called the Hellfire Club, which operated between 1719 and 1723. Apparently this heterosocial club had a reputation for satanic rituals.67 Speculative freemasons may have been disappointed in the occult content after joining operative lodges. But as freemasonry evolved into its own organisation, the public continued to believe that magic was involved. A satirical broadsheet published in 1676 linked magic with freemasonry and possibly Rosicrucianism: “the Modern Greenribbon’d Caball, together with the Hermetick Adepti, and the Company of accepted Masons” were said to be planning a meeting. The audience was advised to bring along “Spectacles of Malleable Glass; for otherwise ‘tis thought the said Societies will (as hitherto) make their Appearance Invisible.”68 The Green Ribbon Club was a semiclandestine society of republican Whigs established in the 1670s that advocated the exclusion of James II. Although the broadsheet was an attack on the political club, it also indicates that magic was linked with these other societies in the minds of the general population.69

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The institution of freemasonry was the collision point between the homosocial aspect of fraternities and the secret and sacred aspects of the occult.70 Freemasonry became the guardian of the esoteric legacy of the Renaissance magus. Elite gentleman could enjoy the secrecy and ritualised formality of ceremonial magic without the risk of satanic involvement or social disgrace. The elements of magic that most aptly expressed the elite gentleman were preserved. Secrecy and sacred words, the delineation of sacred space with the use of the sword or the knife, alchemical and ritual symbols such as the pentacle, and the mythological Solomonic origins were transposed from the threatened locus of ceremonial magic to the homosocial space of fraternities. Tools once used within the magic circle for actual, physical manipulation of the universe were transposed into props for the symbolic, psychological rituals of fraternal organisations. The integration of ritual into freemasonry marked it as more prestigious than the more egalitarian societies of the time, such as the Society of Antiquaries or the many bell-ringing societies. As an intellectual pursuit, freemasonry was distanced from the popular practice of magic by women and cunning men of lower status. In contrast to Rosicrucianism, freemasonry was a society with secrets rather than a secret society; there was no point in belonging to an exclusive group if no one was aware of the fact.71 The formation of homosocial spaces, such as speculative freemasonry lodges, provided a forum for elite men to achieve honour and status both in relation to each other and in relation to their inferiors. The establishment of these spaces erected boundaries within which some aspects of the occult could be protected. The placement of boundaries affects who has power within the established parameters: whoever holds the power also controls the meaning of the practices. By excluding women and lower-status men from these new institutions, elite men could continue to uphold the dominant patriarchal and hierarchical culture.72 This shift from the actual practice of magic to symbolic enactments can be seen as part of the trend in the long eighteenth century from a public performance and socially monitored model of manhood to a private understanding of masculinity.

CHAPTER 4 SCRYING AND SUBVERSION: JOHN DEE AND EDWARD KELLEY

A crystal globe and a polished obsidian stone sit in a display case in the Enlightenment Gallery of the British Museum. For seven years, from 1582 to 1589, the magus John Dee used these objects to converse with the spirit world. Dee recorded the conversations in a detailed diary. Fifty years after his death, in 1609, portions of Dee’s diaries were discovered buried in a field. This part of the ‘angel conversations’ was published by the Anglican rector and scholar Meric Casaubon in an effort to defend the existence of witches, wizards and the spirit world in the face of what he saw as declining belief and atheism.1 Casaubon did not doubt Dee’s experiences but believed that Dee “mistook false and lying Spirits as Angels of Light.”2 Casaubon’s publication contributed to Dee’s posthumous reputation as a conjuror, which already existed during his lifetime. A few years later, Elias Ashmole recovered more of Dee’s diary. The manuscript was discovered in a secret drawer of a chest; the owners of the chest had allowed their maid to use half the sheets under pies and such before Ashmole became aware of it.3 Despite Dee’s prominent position during his lifetime, we only know about his angel conversations through these serendipitous finds. Although Dee heard strange noises and had dreams and apparitions that confirmed his belief in the spirit world, he was generally not able to see images in the crystal globe himself.

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He employed others to scry for him, in this case, Edward Kelley. Dee was the dominant member of this partnership, as magus and head of the household; Kelley played a more passive and submissive role as scryer and employee. But, as we shall see, Kelley employed angel magic to subvert and simultaneously attain the approved ideals of early modern manhood. As Kelley repositioned himself in the partnership, he drew on a body of shared cultural artefacts that were clearly gendered.4 In any society, there are multiple versions of masculinity, depending on social status, age and occupation, among other factors. The hegemonic or ideal model of manhood is constantly contested, and this was no different in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.5 One occupation in which gender was constantly contested was the clergy, which had repercussions for non-clerical manhood. As the medieval church enforced celibacy on the secular priesthood, medieval clerics were gradually prohibited from proving their manhood through demonstrations of sexual prowess. However, the newly celibate clergy found other ways to prove their masculine nature, including monastic knighthood, as per the Templars, and dominance over female religious. As medieval clerics dominated the universities and the new professional class arising from there, the incapacity and inferiority of women was reinforced as a foil for the celibate professional man.6 But the Reformation of the Church of England affected the gender construction of the clergy. The Anglican Church accepted clerical marriage, thereby removing any sexual ambivalence that was previously attached to the Catholic priesthood. Marriage also brought the role of head of household into play, which boosted the masculine authority of the priesthood. Following the Reformation, the university-educated clergy were also experiencing increased honour and social standing within their parishes. However, these positive aspects of manhood were compromised by limitations imposed on the clergy, such as being prohibited from the masculine activities of hunting and holding office. The secular clergy, both before and after the Reformation, were also responsible for ‘the cure of souls’ with the implications of nurturing and service that were traditionally female roles. In discussing seventeenth-century clergy, Tom Webster argues: “In short, clerical masculinity was ambivalent.”7

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The priest’s role as the main spiritual leader of the community was also undercut as more emphasis was put on the male head of the household as being responsible for his family’s spiritual welfare. This was part of the new ideal of the godly patriarch. For the urban ‘middling sort’ at least, traditional aspects of manhood and masculinity were moderated by qualities formerly limited to the clergy, such as piety, charity and moderation. As these attributes became more spiritually valuable, they became more mainstream within the godly community. Gradually, the model of the ideal man shifted away from the medieval model of the warrior-knight, who possessed qualities of physical strength, courage and dominance over others. The new ideal man ruled his household with patience and magnanimity rather than harsh discipline. This transition is also linked to the reformation of manners that occurred later in the period and the birth of the polite gentleman.8 Nonetheless, the new godly man was still constructed in martial terms as a soldier of God whose faith was expected to be active and stoic in the face of adversity rather than effeminately passive.9 By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sir Richard Steele, soldier, scholar and editor of the Tatler, advocated in The Christian Hero (1701) that his fellow soldiers would be better prepared for their trials in battle with “the firm motives of Duty, Valour and Constancy of Soul” than “the changeable heat of mere courage and Blood.”10 Even in the face of battle, he disdained gallantry and the heat of passion in favour of religious principles such as patience, humility, loyalty and obedience. The early modern practice of ritual magic reflects this shifting performance of gender. Both medieval and early modern magicians had the choice to either control and subordinate demons by conjuration (necromancy), or to adjure and supplicate angels to assist in the attainment of knowledge and other ends (as indicated in the Ars Notoria). However, following the Renaissance and the contributions of Ficino and Pico to ceremonial magic, it appears that early modern magicians more often favoured angel magic. Since we do not have a record of every man who practised magic, it is impossible to know who was doing what. Perhaps magicians who continued to summon demons were less likely to leave records of

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their practices, knowing they were illicit. Also, a magician could have been summoning angels but be condemned in the records as invoking demons, since theologians considered both types of practices dangerous and demonic.11 In any case, magicians who practised the invocation of angels were subjected to the heavenly spirits, as opposed to the necromancer who subordinated the demonic spirits. The magician necessarily nurtured the same qualities of humility, subordination and self-examination that had been traditionally associated with the clergy but were becoming part of the new ideal of manhood. As we shall see below in the case of John Dee, and in Chapter 8 with Goodwin Wharton, the early modern magus could even be configured as a priest and prophet. *** John Dee (1527– 1609) was not a marginal figure in Elizabethan England.12 He was well-known in courtly circles throughout Europe and was celebrated during his lifetime for his contributions to mathematics, navigation and astrology. He has received a great deal of attention from scholars, who have studied his life and various aspects of his work. In addition to magic, he was interested in the practice of alchemy, the concept of a British empire and in ancient relics. Dee’s father, Rowland Dee, was a textile merchant in London and ‘chief sewer’ to Henry VIII. From his mother Joanna Wild, Dee inherited the land in Mortlake, Surrey, which would become his home. Like many other sons of successful merchant families, Dee attended St John’s College at the University of Cambridge. He received his BA in 1545– 6 and an MA in 1548. Typical subjects of the day included Aristotelian logic, natural philosophy, Greek, mathematics, geometry and astronomy. Dee’s stint at Cambridge not only provided an excellent education but also many important connections to the court of King Edward VI. Dee temporarily fell from royal grace during Queen Mary’s reign, when he was accused of practising witchcraft and enchantments against her highness, for which he was briefly imprisoned.13 Dee regained royal favour when Elizabeth I ascended to the throne.

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Robert Dudley, future earl of Leicester, requested Dee to calculate the most propitious day for the queen’s coronation. During the early days of her reign, Queen Elizabeth patronised Dee with gifts of money and protected him regarding his astrological endeavours. In 1575, Elizabeth visited Dee at his home in Mortlake and requested to see the glass he used for divination.14 Dee actively supported the queen’s claim to the Americas and coined the phrase the “British Impire.”15 He was frequently consulted for his navigational expertise, including advice on a possible north-west passage by the explorers John Davis and Adrian Gilbert. In 1584 or 1585 he studied at the University of Louvain and received a Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Prague. He lectured abroad on mathematics and was offered a position as professor of mathematics at the University of Paris, which he refused. In his fifties, Dee settled at Mortlake and married Jane Fromond, a twenty-two-year-old lady-in-waiting to Lady Howard of Effingham, wife of the Lord Admiral. Jane produced eight children for him. Dee had attained full manhood according to the standards of sixteenth-century England (and his sense of masculinity must not have been threatened by a decreasing sexual vitality). As early as 1569, Dee had been exploring ways to assist in his “philosophical studies through the Company and information of the blessed Angels of God.”16 This was part of his desire to uncover the secrets of the natural world, which would not only fulfil his own personal goals but also benefit mankind. Dee’s preferred method of ritual magic was conversation with angelic spirits, which he accomplished via the art of scrying, which is the act of seeing images in pieces of glass, crystal or other reflective surfaces.17 In March of 1582, Dee employed Barnabas Saul as a scryer. We know very little about Saul, aside from the fact that he was a member of Dee’s household, was prone to seeing visions and faced unknown criminal charges.18 Then on 9 March, Edward Kelley (1555– 98) presented himself at John Dee’s home in Mortlake. He denounced Saul as a fraud and offered to further Dee’s knowledge in magic by contacting fairies, a fact which he later crossed out of Dee’s diary.19 The mention of fairies aligned Kelley with cunning men rather than magicians and, apparently, he was later embarrassed by this faux pas. Kelley

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hailed from Worcester but very little is known about his earlier life. He may have studied at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, and Elias Ashmole reported that he was previously an apothecary.20 In any case, for the next seven years, from March 1582 to February 1589, Dee employed Kelley as a scryer, promising him a stipend of £50 per annum.21 The role of scryer placed Kelley in a compromising position concerning both sexuality and gender. Traditionally, the innocence of the person was an integral aspect of scrying: a child, old enough to take direction but young enough to be innocent, was the ultimate candidate.22 In Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex (1608), Martino Delrio stated that the Emperor Julianus had used young boys whose eyes were bandaged for scrying.23 Instruction manuals such as the Clavicula Salomonis recommended the employment of a little boy or girl during any invocations of spirits.24 Other grimoires instructed the magus on how to obtain “angel sight” for a child acting as a scryer.25 In Miscellanies, John Aubrey reported that a little boy or maid was the best candidate for a scryer “for they say it must be a pure virgin.” However, he admitted that sometimes the “querent” inspected the crystal himself.26 At one point, John Dee attempted to use his own seven-year-old son, Arthur, for scrying.27 Simon Forman employed John Goodridge, a ‘gelded’ fellow, as his assistant. The emasculation of the man was no doubt viewed as conducive to scrying.28 The role of the scryer is comparable to the role of the female prophet, who acts as a conduit or vessel for the voice of God. The female qualities of irrationality and vulnerability to outside influences, which were usually considered negative, were considered positive attributes for ecstatic experiences.29 These prerequisite qualities feminised the role of the scryer, even when the scryer was an adult male. All of Dee’s scryers exhibited the “unstable melancholy” conducive to scrying, which was usually associated with women.30 As the scryer rather than the magus, Kelley was clearly the subordinate member in the relationship. When he started to scry for Dee, he was an unmarried twenty-six-year-old in imminent danger of being arrested for counterfeiting money. One of his ears was apparently cropped due to a past indiscretion, and the papal nuncio, Filippo Sega, described Kelley as a cripple, so his physical integrity

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must have been somehow compromised.31 But even though Dee was the apparent master and social superior in this association, Kelley used his subordinate position to grant himself power in the relationship. Kelley wanted to establish some kind of partnership with Dee from the beginning, but he did not push for a financial partnership or even one of spiritual equality. Very early in the sessions, Uriel, the angel who first appeared to Kelley in the stone, advised Kelley and Dee that “there must be Conjunction of minds in prayer” between them if they were to be successful in receiving the angelic knowledge.32 They later swore their faith to each other, “taking each other by the hands upon these points of brotherly and friendly fidelity.”33 However, the relationship was more hierarchical than fraternal. As discussed below, Kelley reinforced the implicit spiritual hierarchy, as well as the explicit social hierarchy, that existed in his relationship with Dee. Although Dee had fulfilled the requirements of full male adulthood: education, social status, marriage and a household, he had not met his personal aspirations. He had studied for years in his personal library, which was the largest library in England, consisting of over 2,000 printed books and 198 manuscripts.34 But he had still not satisfied his intellectual desire to master nature.35 He wanted more than just good standing at court; he aspired to obtain direct financial support to pursue his studies, as well as the prestige of being the court philosopher.36 Although he referred to himself as a “Modest Christian Philosopher” in his preface to Euclid’s geometry,37 distinction from the crowd rather than modesty was more crucial to Dee’s subjective identity. The magician and astrologer William Lilly believed that Dee was “the most ambitious Person living, and most desirous of Fame and Renown, and was never so well pleased as when he heard himself styled, Most Excellent.”38 A person’s self-image is not a stable entity but is rather an ongoing autobiography that the person constantly rewrites.39 Fictitious elements are frequently added to a person’s life story to make the story comprehensible to both the person telling the narrative and the audience. The experiences a person relates are drawn from an eclectic mix of remembered lived experiences and unconscious memories,

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which are embedded in a broader cultural narrative. I argue that Kelley’s presentation of the visions in the scrying stone both mirrored and contributed to Dee’s self-identity. Ultimately, the scryer controls the transmission of information to the magician; the scryer reports what images appear in the medium.40 Dee undoubtedly had a great deal of input into the interpretation of the images after they were described, but Kelley’s presentation of the images was probably influenced by his knowledge of Dee’s personal inclinations. We have no way of knowing how much, if any, Kelley’s conscious or unconscious memories contributed to the images he reported, or how much he may have been consciously manipulating Dee’s beliefs. But without passing judgement on whether or not Kelley saw anything in the scrying stone, we can analyse how his reported images resonated with common cultural beliefs. In the twenty-first century, cultural representations of what it means to ‘be a man’ are personified by public figures such as musicians, movie stars, sports heroes and, occasionally, politicians. These figures display ideals and forms that are adopted and adapted by individuals in their lived experience, sometimes consciously and sometimes not. One could say that modern masculinity is lived in the flesh but fashioned in the imagination.41 This was also true in the sixteenth century. In this instance, Dee imagined himself as the new Merlin to Queen Elizabeth’s Arthur.42 The images presented by Kelley in the stone reflect Dee’s self-construction. Dee had a particular penchant for the King Arthur legend; in fact, he named his firstborn son Arthur. In keeping with the origins of the legendary Arthur, he maintained that his genealogy could be traced back to sixth-century Welsh kings.43 Dee also employed the legend of King Arthur in his comments on British history as well as in arguments to defend the rights of Elizabeth to parts of the New World.44 Dee’s predilection toward the persona of Merlin included constructing himself as a magus or prophet in the biblical tradition.45 The images in the stone reinforced Dee’s position of priest and prophet. The angel Uriel declared that: “The Lord hath chosen you to be Witnesses [. . .] in the offices and dignities of the Prophets.”46 Uriel also personally anointed Dee,47 and the archangel

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Michael ‘knighted’ Dee with his sword and wrote on his back “Angelus Tuae Professionis [An angel of your profession].”48 The angels also instructed Dee to make a special ring, which Solomon had used to build the temple;49 a lamine or breastplate, consisting of a triangular seal engraved in gold with particular symbols, to be worn as an amulet;50 and a magic rod similar to the one used by Moses.51 The angels even gave Dee a scrying stone.52 Not only did these symbols mark his superior position as magus in the angel conversations, but they drew a privileged boundary between him and the rest of the world. Dee’s intercourse with the spirit world granted him honours not available from monarchs or through monetary gain. Nevertheless, Dee still desired a position of respect and honour in the courtly realm. Shortly after starting to scry for Dee, Kelley encouraged Dee to travel to Europe with the Polish Prince Albrecht Laski, palatine of Sieradz˙. Laski may have travelled to England for the purpose of accessing Dee’s alchemical knowledge or for diplomatic reasons. Meetings between Dee and Laski were encouraged and subsidised by Queen Elizabeth and her advisors. Whatever the case, Laski offered Dee an opportunity to achieve the status of ‘Renaissance magus,’ which he was not being granted at the English court.53 Not only did Laski have political clout, but he believed in the angel conversations, and he offered Dee an annuity if he came to Europe with him.54 Dee hoped eventually to impress the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II and become the resident Imperial Philosopher and Mathematician.55 While Dee was attaining honours in the spiritual and earthly realms, Kelley remained passive and subordinate. Dee painted a picture of Kelley in his journal as an irrational and emotional creature, qualities that were considered effeminate during this period. At one point, Kelley was attacked by earth spirits who appeared “like labouring men, having spades in their hands and their hair hanging about their ears.” The spirits nipped and assaulted him until Dee banished them with a stick.56 This episode underlines two aspects of the sessions. First of all, Kelley is the one in danger, as he is in the liminal space that intersects directly with the spirit world. His

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ritual position is one of passivity and subordination, even to the spirits. He is not controlling and commanding the spirits as a necromancer should. Second, this helpless and dependent role as scryer put Dee in the position of coming to Kelley’s rescue. Dee played the hero to Kelley’s ‘maiden in distress’ role. Note that the spirits were ragged labourers from a lower social status. Kelley was in more than just physical or spiritual danger; he needed to be rescued from falling back into the hands of the lower orders, whence he came. Could Kelley have been consciously aware of this analogy? Kelley also needed protection outside the angel sessions. While in Poland, Kelley got excessively drunk one evening and threatened to cut off the head of one of Prince Laski’s servants. Self-mastery over the earthly appetites was a quality of manhood, one that was apparently lacking in Kelley on this occasion. Upon sobering up, Kelley was offended that the servant had reacted to his threats by counterthreatening to cut Kelley to pieces. Kelley flew into a rage and pursued the other man with a rapier. Defending one’s honour and fighting duels were points of honour for a sixteenth-century man, but Kelley was acting out of uncontrolled rage after insulting a man. He failed to display the self-control necessary for the honourable man. Dee interpreted the incident as a temptation from Satan, to which women were more susceptible. Dee was concerned about the possible discredit and shame that the episode might bring on him.57 Dee was the patriarch of the household and viewed Kelley as his responsibility, like a servant or family member. Kelley’s lack of selfdiscipline and self-control, both in drink and in emotions, reflected on Dee’s ability to control his household and was a point of public honour.58 Within the Dee household, Kelley had his own sub-patriarchy as a husband. Shortly after meeting Dee, Kelley married the widow Joan Weston, ne´e Cooper, who had children from her first marriage. But apparently he did not relate to his new role as a husband. The archangel Michael had insisted that Kelley marry, which was against his “vow and profession.”59 He later lamented that he did not love his wife but rather abhorred her and was disliked in the household on that account.60 Kelley also had a difficult relationship with Jane Dee;

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in fact, Dee’s wife was openly hostile towards him from the start.61 On one occasion, Jane requested that she be allowed to present a petition to the angels requesting advice concerning the pawning of clothes and furnishings. While the household was travelling in Europe at great expense, funds were scarce.62 The men were focused on the angel conversations, and it was up to Jane to manage the finances. The spirit who answered her petition chastised her for her actions since “is it not written that women come not into the synagogue? Much less ought they to come before the testimony of the will of God to be fulfilled mightily, and to come against the world and against the pomp of ceremony and iniquity.”63 The spirit’s response mirrored Kelley’s disapproval of Jane’s involvement with the angel sessions. As subservient as Kelley’s position was in relation to Dee, it was still above Jane’s position as a mere woman and wife concerned with domestic affairs. Kelley might also have felt threatened by the fact that Jane was forced to find ways to support the household due to the failure of the two men to provide for their families. By subordinating the women closest to him, Kelley could grant himself a certain amount of power in the hierarchical order. The ritual of consulting the angels constructed a power relationship between Kelley and Jane Dee, which might not have been possible in other circumstances given Kelley’s subordinate position to John Dee. On the same occasion, Jane was forewarned of “one storm [. . .] to come.” She was advised to take it patiently.64 Two years later, Dee and Kelley were shocked to learn that they were being encouraged – even commanded – to commit adultery with each other’s wives. The female angel Madimi explained that the union of the couples’ four souls would lead them to becoming “full of understanding, and in knowledge above common men.”65 Both of the men resisted the commandment as unlawful and immoral, but in the end they reluctantly agreed to it and managed to convince their wives to cooperate as well. The exchange of wives took place on 21 May, 1587.66 There is no evidence of a second occurrence. There are several explanations that can be offered for this incident. Kelley may have suggested the exchange of wives as a way to get out of his scrying duties. Several times during the sessions, Kelley

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expressed a desire to stop scrying. He claimed that he felt like a prisoner, or that he wanted more money, or that he thought the spirits were evil.67 However, on all of these occasions, Dee encouraged him to continue. Perhaps Kelley thought that wifeswapping was evidence that the spirits were evil and Dee would abort the sessions. An alternative theory is that Kelley may have wanted his wife, Joan, to become impregnated by Dee. In five years of marriage, there had been no children forthcoming, although Joan was a widow with children from her previous marriage. The suggestion of wives in common came shortly after the spirits told Kelley that his wife was barren to him, and Kelley had told Dee that once again he wanted to cease scrying, so both of these theories are plausible.68 Indeed, Kelley may have attained fatherhood: forty weeks after the exchange of wives, Jane Dee gave birth to Theodore Dee.69 Alternatively, Kelley may have felt the need to express his active, masculine relationship with the women because of his subordinate, feminised relationship with Dee (as well as in relation to the spirits). Dee recorded in his diary how Jane “fell a-weeping and trembling for a quarter of an hour” after he told her she must agree to the arrangement. She prayed that her obedience would not cause her to receive any shame.70 She did not agree with the arrangement, but she complied out of wifely obedience and submission.71 Both Dee and Kelley used their superior positions as patriarchs to coerce their wives to participate in this dubious spiritual enterprise. Although Kelley was subordinate in his relationship to Dee, he was still able to take advantage of the patriarchal dividend accorded to men in general due to their social dominance. It was not lust that drove him to make this suggestion but the drive to humiliate and demean Jane Dee as well as his own wife. Kelley performed the traditional role of ruler over his wife, while simultaneously undermining the authority of his superior. He used the angel sessions to construct an altered version of the approved social order, which granted him a relative sense of dominance. This is an example of how magic was able to operate within existing gender ideologies of power but still subvert patriarchal ideologies.

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But perhaps rather than attaining sexual favours from Jane Dee or shaming the two women, Kelley’s objective was to cuckold and shame John Dee. Cuckoldry is about power relations between men. During a male contest over a female, the woman is merely an object of exchange; the woman defines the relationship between the two men.72 Indeed, it appears that the act of cuckolding did shift the balance of power between Dee and Kelley. After this episode, Kelley turned his attention away from Dee and concentrated on his own alchemical experiments. Although this case is certainly not a typical case of an erotic love triangle, it does appear that the women were merely the pawns in Kelley’s struggle for supremacy. The foregoing scenarios attempt to explain why the incident took place, but I would like to take a closer look at how the images in the crystal were presented, which led to the event unfolding. There are more gender issues at stake here than the subjection of the women or the cuckoldry of Dee. Kelley’s presentation and/or interpretation of the images in the crystal were underwritten by cultural narratives that were laden with broader gender issues. The Simon Magus legend and the sexual metaphor of the ‘bride of Christ’ were two narratives that were available to the men to understand the images in the crystal. Firstly, let’s take a look at the actual representations. The spirit Madimi, who suggested the exchange of wives, was a young female: “a pretty girl of seven or nine years of age, attired on her head with her hair rolled up before and hanging down very long behind, with a gown of changeable green and red, and with a train.”73 The appearance of a female spirit in Dee and Kelley’s angel sessions was unusual. Only two angels appeared in the crystal as women: Madimi and Galvah. Angels were officially sexless, although the popular representation of them, which developed during the first millennium of Christianity, was strongly masculine.74 Dee was immediately suspicious about the nature of the female spirits because, according to the German scholar Trithemius, a Benedictine abbot who wrote several treatises on the occult, good angels never appeared in female form.75 However, Reginald Scot claimed that some spirits, such as Bealphares, could “appear unto thee in the likeness of a faire man, or faire woman.”76

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Even though Madimi appeared as a mere child, she told Kelley that she had “little baby-children at home.”77 In other words, she was a sexually active being. At one point, this woman-child “openeth all her apparel, and showeth herself all naked; and showeth her shame also” to Kelley in the crystal.78 She was not only sexual but seductive, and her seductiveness was linked to acting outside of the accepted norms of society. The day before Madimi displayed her nakedness, the image of a book had been revealed in the showstone, which stated that “All sins committed in me are forgiven. He who goes mad on my account, let him be wise. He who commits adultery because of me, let him be blessed for eternity and receive the heavenly prize.”79 The next day Madimi reinforced this antinomian view that true Christian believers need not obey moral laws such as chastity. She presented a law on a moon-shaped tablet that stated “[N]othing is unlawful which is lawful unto God.”80 The angel Madimi was encouraging Dee and Kelley to act on their own consciences. The antinomian belief that the elect were above the moral law was one of the consequences of the Protestant Reformation. In the minds of some, the concept of grace overrode the need to follow the restraints of morality. Even Luther had preached that “if an adultery could be committed in the faith, it would no longer be a sin.”81 And the second generation reformer John Calvin believed that the conscience was a more trustworthy gauge than the law. In the case of Dee and Kelley, the purpose of the adulterous unions was for the acquisition of wisdom. The combination of wisdom, a promiscuous woman and antinomian doctrine are all evident in the legend of Simon the Magus.82 There is no direct reference in the angel conversations to this cultural artefact. However, Dee had even more in common with Simon than with the magician Merlin, whom he emulated. Simon Magus is briefly mentioned in the Bible as a false magician who attempted to buy the power of channelling the Holy Spirit from Peter the apostle (Acts of the Apostle 8: 9 – 24). By the fourth century, the legend of Simon Magus was fully developed in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the Recognitions, and the Apostolic Constitutions.83 The thirteenth-century story of saints’ lives, by

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Jacobus de Voragine, known as the Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend, included the Simon Magus story in the life of Peter the Apostle. The Legenda was very popular and was translated into several European languages. The legend continued to grow during the middle ages and was widely known by the sixteenth century.84 The early church fathers considered Simon to be the spiritual founder of a gnostic sect known as Simonians, which flourished in the third century. The group was accused of using magic and sexual promiscuity as part of their religious practice, accusations which were commonly accorded to heretical sects. In order to censure magic and heresy, patristic literature constructed Simon as a foil for the power of the apostles. In the Acts of Peter, one of the acts of the apostles that did not become part of the canon of the New Testament, the limitations of Simon’s power are clearly illustrated. He levitates himself into the air to demonstrate his divine powers, but Peter causes the magician to fall to the ground by praying to God. The theme that runs through the various accounts of Simon deals with who has the ultimate authority to speak on behalf of God.85 This was an issue in the angel conversations as well as in antinomian discourse. Besides simony (which took its name from Simon Magus), Christian critics accused Simon of trying to dissolve Judaic law. The Apostolic Constitutions, on the other hand, argue that Christ was not destroying the law but fulfilling it: “For He nowhere has dissolved the law, as Simon pretends, but fulfilled it.”86 Simon was, therefore, not only a supreme magus but also the original antinomian. Among Simon’s many skills was the power to make and unmake kings and exhibit an abundance of gold. Likewise, Dee coveted the position of ‘court philosopher’ and practised alchemy, which transformed base metals into gold. Irenaeus, the second century Bishop of Lyons, had stressed the magical activities of Simon, including his power to summon angels in his ongoing struggle with the apostle Peter. But Irenaeus also portrayed Simon as an intellectual, trained in dialectics, syllogisms and Greek literature as well as the magic arts.87 These qualities resonate with Dee’s accomplishments. Simon was also known for animating statues, which was also a feature of Dee’s past. During his stint at Cambridge, Dee had constructed a

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mechanical scarab for a dramatic production, which launched a fellow student into the air.88 This was the beginning of his reputation as a conjurer. Another point of comparison was a secret language that Simon and his followers used known only to them. This is very suggestive of the secret Enochian angel language that Dee and Kelley were constructing during the angel sessions.89 But the main link to the Simon Magus legend is Madimi and the moon-shaped tablet on which she presented the antinomian law to Kelley and Dee. In the alchemical language with which Dee and Kelley were familiar, the moon represented the feminine aspect of the sexual union with the masculine sun.90 In parallel to the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Simon rescued a prostitute referred to as either Helena or Luna.91 Helena was considered the mother of all things; she conceived the angels and archangels. Remember that Madimi had little angel children at home. Most importantly, for our purposes, Helena represented the goddess Wisdom. In the Bible (both the canonical and the apocryphal), Wisdom is part of the godhead. Wisdom was with God from the beginning (Proverbs 8:22– 31, The Book of Wisdom 6:12 – 9:18). The Greek translation of the Hebrew word for wisdom, chokhmah, is Sophia.92 In gnostic doctrine, Sophia/Wisdom is anthropomorphised as the divine female aspect of the godhead.93 Wisdom as a female entity was significant to Dee and Kelley because the path to union with God was attained through a nuptial union with the goddess Wisdom. “Wisdom have I loved; I sought her when I was young, and longed for her to be my bride, and I fell in love with her beauty” (The Book of Wisdom 8:2).94 In order to attain Wisdom, a man needed a strong desire for her, similar to the physical and emotional desire between a man and a woman. The antinomian price that these two men had to pay for divine wisdom was the physical enactment of sexual union with the other man’s wife. The complete subjugation to God’s will, against Christian doctrine and human reason, would free them from earthly concerns and allow them to be “the chosen of his last days.”95 The attainment of wisdom was represented by another female figure that appeared to Kelley in the crystal two days after the

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exchange of wives. Dee recorded the appearance of a Golden Woman whose “attire is like beaten gold” and under her bare breasts she wore “a girdle of beaten gold slackly buckled unto her with a pendant of gold down to the ground.” She was also golden because she was “shadowed with the circle of the sun.”96 Curiously, she possessed the qualities of both prostitute and virgin, thereby aligning her with Simon Magus’s Helena, who was transformed into the goddess Wisdom. [. . .] ravished every hour from my youth [. . .] I am deflowered, and yet a virgin [. . .] I am a harlot for such as ravish me, and a virgin with such as know me not [. . .] I will open my garments and stand naked before you, that your love may be more inflamed toward me [. . .] I am sent unto you to play the harlot with you.97 The Golden Woman reassured the men that the wife-swapping incident was not a sin in the eyes of the Lord. She told Kelley that “understanding, and science dwelleth in me.”98 Her representation as Wisdom was reinforced by Galvah, the other angel who appeared as female during the angel sessions. Galvah reminded Dee that “true wisdom is always painted with a woman’s garment.”99 The idea that wisdom was part of the godhead was reinforced by yet another female figure that appeared in the crystal to Kelley. The figure referred to as the Green Woman described wisdom as “a piercing beam, which is the centre of the spiritual being of the Holy Spirit [. . .] and is proper to the soul, or unto substances that have beginning but no ending.” She promised that “wisdom shall be divided between you, sufficient to each man.”100 Sexual union with the divine encompassed another well-known metaphor. The people of Israel were considered Yahweh’s bride, and the early Christian church continued the idea that the church was Christ’s bride. Medieval mystics cultivated this metaphor on a personal level, depicting Christ as the groom and a person’s soul as the bride of Christ.101 The religious metaphor made its way into magical manuscripts as well. A seventeenth-century version of the

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Secretum Secretorum explains that the physical cleansing of the body (by washing and fasting) and the spiritual cleansing (through confession, absolution and repentance) were necessary prior to the practice of magic so that “the whole body is cloaked with wedding garments, and very fine to present itself to the bridegroom with the king his father.”102 The bride of Christ metaphor was based on the premise that the Christian soul is encoded as feminine. This allowed men to employ female symbols to express intimacy with God in nontraditional ways.103 The transgressive homoerotic aspects of the metaphor are particularly obvious in the metaphysical poetry of John Donne.104 The man risked being feminised via this union, as he privileged the feminine aspect of his spirituality. But in the case of Dee and Kelley, it was the divine that was feminised. Madimi was an angel, a divine, sexless being who could assume masculine or feminine form; she was an androgynous representation of the divine. She opened her garments to expose her nakedness, which was metaphorically an invitation to sexual union. The Golden Woman also stated that she would open her garments in order to inflame the two men’s lust for divine Wisdom. The imagery of a female angel acknowledged the feminine aspect of the divine, which was supported by the Wisdom figure. If the gateway to knowledge was accessed via the female form, a man’s masculinity was not threatened. Unfortunately, the female aspect of the divine was merely a tool to be used to access the superior masculine aspect. The goddess Sophia/ Wisdom, represented metaphorically by Madimi and physically by Jane Dee and Joan Kelley, was merely the object of exchange. She facilitated the attainment of wisdom for Dee and Kelley, and facilitated the shift in power between Kelley and Dee. So what at first appears as protofeminist theology according equal value to masculine and feminine aspects of the divine is actually dismissive of the feminine. This debasement of the feminine and reinforcement of contemporary gender ideologies is supported by the comments of the Golden Woman. She admonishes Dee and Kelley to “[Di]sclose not my secrets unto women, neither let them understand how sweet I

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am, for all things belongeth not to everyone.” The Green Woman subsequently reinforced this: “suffer no creature female to enter within [the ritual space]: neither shall the things that shall be opened unto you be revealed unto your wives.”105 The wives were merely pawns in the power struggle between the two men; the women played an integral role in the attainment of wisdom but were then shut out of the potential benefits of the pact.106 The female aspect of the divine was similarly used and discarded; there is no further contact with the angel Madimi. Gender ideologies ultimately proved stronger than antinomian theology. The female image was useful as a metaphor for attaining divine wisdom, but it did not permanently alter the patriarchal ideologies of sixteenth-century society.107 The image of the female angel Madimi holding a moon-shaped tablet was an apt symbol for seducing Dee since she reflected aspects of the well-known Simon Magus legend to which he could relate. In the legend, the goddess Luna/Helena took the form of a prostitute, but also represented Sophia/Wisdom, the female aspect of the divine. The outside form did not necessarily reflect the inner spirit. The subversive female symbol of prostitute was combined with the sexually ambiguous figure of an angel. The transformation of prostitute to angel is possible because of the symbolic ambiguity of women: woman is either the fallen Eve or the elevated Virgin Mary: If we think of the “margins” of culture as a continuous periphery, rather than as upper and lower boundaries, we can understand the notion that extremes, as we say, meet – that they are easily transformed into one another in symbolic thought, and hence seem unstable and ambiguous.108 The images in the crystal drew on a shared cultural body of knowledge that directly related to Dee’s self-image as a magus. The well-known archetype of Simon Magus would have resonated with Dee’s desires for power and fame.109 The world of magic and the supernatural provided a canvas on which participants could fashion their own version of reality, which reflected their own desire for omnipotence.110 Both Dee and Kelley played out their desires within

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the angel rituals. Scrying gave Kelley agency to perform aspects of manhood not generally condoned by society. He could be subordinate and passive in the Dee household and still be appreciated for his contribution. Nevertheless, Kelley used his subordinate position, perhaps consciously, to undermine the apparent authority held by Dee and shift the balance of power. The wife-sharing incident illustrates how Kelley could perform a subordinate role in relationship to Dee’s socially and magically dominant position by employing gender ideologies and cultural narratives. At all times, Kelley was the person who held the power in the angel sessions. But Kelley also held other gendered subject positions. One of these positions was as a dominant, patriarchal male in relation to the women in the household. The angel conversations allowed Kelley to use these opposing performances of masculinity to subvert social and religious norms. But the breaking of these boundaries does not appear to have been his end goal. Sexual promiscuity and antinomian doctrines were apparently not his primary desires. Rather, Kelley used these metaphors to break away from the Dee household and establish himself fully in the world of men. After the men and their families arrived in Cracow, Poland, Kelley started to shift the focus of the angel conversations to alchemy and away from Dee’s personal interests. Eventually, the spirits encouraged Dee to tell King Stephen Batory of Poland that he could make the philosopher’s stone.111 Although Dee was participating in the alchemical experiments, Kelley started to dominate. He eventually won favour with William of Rosenberg, a powerful Bohemian burgrave and patron of alchemy. Kelley’s fame as an alchemist spread throughout Europe; he won a permanent position at Emperor Rudolph’s court in Prague as resident alchemist. Rudolph knighted him in 1589 and Kelley became a citizen of Bohemia and was granted or purchased lands and houses.112 His fame prompted Queen Elizabeth to send Sir Edward Dyer to Europe to persuade Kelley to return to England, presumably for his alchemical knowledge. In a few short years, Kelley rose from a subordinate employee and possible criminal to a married, knighted gentleman associated with a royal court. Magic was crucial to Kelley’s performance of manhood, which included honour, wealth

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and status. However, Kelley died mysteriously in 1597 or ’98 in the city of Most, possibly while imprisoned for either wounding a fellow alchemist or for debt.113 Dee, on the other hand, retreated to England in 1589. He struggled to re-establish his former position of respect, but his previous patrons were all dead. After his wife Jane died of plague, he returned to his house at Mortlake and resumed the angel conversations with a new scryer. He gave up his hopes of being a Renaissance magus in Europe and resigned himself to the fact that Queen Elizabeth was never going to recognise him as the court philosopher. He reluctantly bid “adieu to the Court and courting.”114 Ironically, Dee, who desired the reputation and power of a magus, ended his life in poverty with a tarnished reputation. John Aubrey reported that the neighbourhood children dreaded him as a conjurer, with his long white beard and black gown.115 Dee died in relative obscurity on March 26, 1609.116 The angel conversations of Dee and Kelley contribute to our understanding of the complexities of manhood and masculinity in sixteenth-century England. Angel magic provided a liminal space for Kelley to perform an alternate masculinity without ultimately jeopardising his attainment of conventional manhood. During the angel conversations, Kelley performed as a subordinate male, but he was actually the one in control. Despite Dee’s apparent position of power and control, he was totally dependent on Kelley’s sight and presentation of the images. Kelley was simultaneously able to maintain his image as a submissive servant and still subvert normative social values. He did not sacrifice his portion of the patriarchal dividend during his passive performance of manhood.

CHAPTER 5 JOHN PORDAGE AND PASSIVITY

In 1650, the clergyman John Pordage fell into a trance while preaching and ran from the church “bellowing like a Bull, saying that he was called, and must be gone.” When he arrived at his house, he found his wife “Clothed all in White Lawn, from the crown of the Head, to the sole of the Foot, with a White Rod in her hand [. . .] dancing the Hays, about three flower-pots.” A witness found Pordage “sitting in a Chair all in black velvet.”1 This is just one episode that contributed to the impression that the Pordage family was in league with the devil. As far as Pordage was concerned, the only involvement of the devil was that Satan took the form of a dragon. He admitted that he fought a fire-breathing dragon with the help of “his own Angel” and that some of the women in the house also had their own personal guardian angels.2 His answer to charges of having “frequent and familiar converse with Angels” was that “every true Christian hath frequent communion or converse with Angels.” He compared his family’s experiences to those of Job and other biblical characters, denying any practice of “Black Magick.”3 While Pordage admitted that his household was plagued with apparitions and demons, he denied that “those evil apparitions were subdued and overcome by any other means than by God’s blessing upon our fasting and prayers.”4 Pordage believed that the soul must be vigilant at all times because it is in great danger “from an uncountable horde of evil spirits from the dark world.”5

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Was Pordage a magus or a mystic? Are these two identities necessarily in opposition? As we have seen with John Dee, many magicians considered themselves priestly agents in search of divine wisdom. Medieval magic had grown up in a clerical environment, which drew heavily on liturgical elements. And pure theurgy was not concerned with the mechanical aspects of astral magic but stressed the importance of faith in God.6 Seventeenth-century magical manuals often stress the petitioning and appeasement of good spirits, such as angels, rather than the control and subordination of spirits. For example, The Secret of Secrets, written by Moses Long of Gloucestershire in 1683, advises that the “holy planetary Angels are not to be constrained in such manner as other spirits far inferior, as threatenings such manner of Constraints & Adjurations, but only by devout prayer to god.”7 The interchanges between religion and magic went both ways. Religion may have been born out of magic but, over time, magic borrowed back religious practices. Pordage defended his behaviour as being within the realm of orthodox religious practice. However, it goes beyond the normal puritan tradition of fasting and praying in that Pordage gave himself up “wholly, to Prayer, Watchfulness, Mortification, and constant selfdenial, in dying to all earthly pleasures.”8 And although he did not confess to engaging in ritual magic, he did confess to conversing with angels.9 In fact, the description of his religious exercises is very reminiscent of the type of ritual that the physician Richard Napier recorded to conjure up the angel Raphael. After fasting on bread and water, Napier began with prayers of absolution and forgiveness of sins. This was followed by the reading of certain psalms and the “Lamentation of a Sinner” from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. After more prayers of praise and thanksgiving, the angel Raphael was summoned to appear “when and what time soever we shall call for him.”10 This raises the question of what constitutes angelic invocation. Fasting and praying and conversing with angels appears to be religion; fasting and praying and scrying for angels bound to a crystal appears to fall in the realm of the occult. There is no evidence that Pordage purposely invoked his personal guardian angel a` la Napier; however, the result was the same. The angel was available to

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fight off both a dragon and a giant with a great sword. In any case, Pordage’s enemies certainly viewed his mystical activities as belonging to the occult realm. John Pordage (1607– 81) was the son of a London grocer.11 He attended Pembroke College, Oxford, where he received his BA in 1626, but family circumstances caused him to leave before obtaining his MA. He went on to study medicine at Leiden University in the United Provinces and was subsequently awarded a medical degree from Cambridge. Like Simon Forman, the London College of Physicians refused to grant him a licence to practise physic; apparently, the statutes of the College excluded clerical professionals.12 At the age of twenty-six, he married the widow Mary Freeman, ne´e Lane, and in 1644 he was made vicar of the parish church of St Lawrence, Reading. During the rule of the puritan protector Oliver Cromwell, he was appointed to the rectory of Bradfield, Berkshire. Pordage must have been sufficiently puritan to satisfy the ideological requirements of the Committee for Plundered Ministers, which had ejected the previous cleric. The Committee was concerned about clergymen who might still be loyal to Charles I and the Anglican cause. They monitored anyone preaching without a licence, spreading heretical doctrines or using the Anglican Church Prayer Book instead of the newly-instituted Directory.13 But as we can see from the anecdote above, the Bradfield parishioners got more than they bargained for. The content of Pordage’s sermons caused him to fall foul of the church authorities on several occasions. His chief adversary was Christopher Fowler (1614– 77), a Presbyterian vicar in neighbouring Reading. Fowler accused Pordage of anti-clericalism, anti-Sabbatarianism and Arminianism, among other things. He alleged that Pordage’s visions were magical and originated from the devil.14 Fowler argued that the appearance of angels was a rarity in the present age and that Pordage’s visions were pretentious and heretical.15 In addition to unorthodox religious doctrines, Pordage was accused of sexual impropriety and affiliation with Satan. Accusations of this sort were part and parcel of the religious and political disputes of this period. The metaphor of the ‘whore of Babylon’ had been in use since the Reformation to

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malign the Church of Rome. This trope was transferred to the fight against the Laudian Anglicans during the civil wars and Interregnum. The charges of sexual impropriety were reinforced by the fact that Pordage was the father of a bastard child born to Widow Flavel, who lived in the Pordage household.16 He also entertained members of the many radical sects that flourished during the Interregnum: Richard Coppin, author of Divine Teachings (1649), which was generally considered blasphemous; the prophet Elizabeth Poole; the Baptist preacher Abiezer Coppe, known for his heterodox opinions; William Everard, a leader of the ‘True Levellers’ and reputed to be a conjurer; and Thomas Tany, who professed to be the high priest of the Jews and went by the name of Theaureaujohn.17 In 1654 the authorities were finally successful in ejecting Pordage from his ministry. Pordage also had alchemical interests, which he shared with Elias Ashmole, who had control of the Bradfield rectory. Ashmole presented Pordage with a copy of Arthur Dee’s treatise Fascilus Chemicus in 1650 in recognition of their common interest.18 But it appears that Pordage was more interested in spiritual alchemy than practical chemistry. Alchemy had a spiritual aspect in the middle ages, if not earlier. The spiritual transformation of the practitioner was the ultimate goal for many alchemists. During the Interregnum, many of the sects used the language of alchemy to describe spiritual regeneration.19 The symbolic language of alchemy was also a gendered language, full of metaphors dealing with sexuality and marriage. For example, the combination of elements was symbolised as the marriage of the sun and the moon. In relation to this spiritual alchemy, Pordage was a disciple of Jacob Boehme (1575– 1624). Boehme was part of a German spiritual movement that became known as theosophy, a mystical tradition coloured by hermeticism, alchemy and kabbalah. The most radical element of his theosophy was the inclusion of a fourth element in the trinitarian godhead, the virgin ‘Wisdom,’ or Sophia, which I discussed in relation to John Dee. Boehme combined maternal imagery, nuptial mysticism and the cult of the Virgin Sophia in his writing.20 Ironically, Boehme’s work had been published in England

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by the parliamentarian lawyer, John Sparrow, as an antidote to the many radical sects that were emerging at the time. Sparrow hoped that the ecumenical approach of Boehme would counteract the sectarian division of civil war England. However, Boehme’s synthesis of mystical theology and Paracelsian natural philosophy was widely condemned as unorthodox. Pordage’s version of the theosophy of Sophia, derived from Behmenist theology, contributed to Pordage’s profile as a heretic and devil worshipper. Nevertheless, the inclusion of Sophia in the godhead allowed for a reversal of the usual gender roles in the bride of Christ metaphor. In this conceit, it was Sophia, rather than Christ, who was wed to the masculine soul. Both Boehme and Pordage identified as a bridegroom united with Sophia.21 In this way, mystical union with the divine was possible without compromising masculinity. The alchemical concept of spiritual rebirthing was expressed by the Pordage household through the adoption of ‘Scripture names.’ Pordage’s chosen name was Abraham, a very strong patriarchal stereotype. The name Abraham might also encompass the idea of having two wives, in relation to Pordage’s relationship with Mrs Flavel.22 Pordage was not unaware that the theosophy inherited from Boehme had magical elements. In the allegorical poem entitled Mundorum Explicatio (1661), Pordage acknowledged the power of magic.23 Magick is threefold: this world’s natural, Sacred the light, dark, diabolical: Great is the magic of this world, but yet Greater the dark, the light more great than it (lines 1327– 30). He goes on to condone magic as a means of spiritual enlightenment: One skil’d in the dark Magic can do more Then he who’s skilled in this World’s, but before Them both is he who in the Light World’s skil’d: By him the plottings of the Devil’s spil’d,

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He can’t deceived be, to his doth bow This World’s deep magic, and the Devil’s too (lines 1369–74).24 In other words, the true magic of Christ is more powerful than either the magic of the devil or natural magic. But it is still a form of magic. There is no evidence that Pordage or his followers used a crystal or a mirror to formally scry or that they employed invocations to call angelic spirits. However, in his treatise Sophia, subtitled Wonderful Spiritual Discoveries and Revelations That the Precious Wisdom Has Given to a Holy Soul, he states I “turned my eye inwards [. . .] Sophia quickly passed before me, and revealed herself to me.”25 Both Pordage and Boehme employed the symbolism of an inner eye of the soul. Through his inner eye, visions appeared in a similar way to the visions that appeared via the outer eye to scryers such as Edward Kelley. The inner eye accessed an inward glass, which could reveal the angelic world.26 I read this inward glass as a substitute for the scryer’s crystal. This could be simply a variation on the mystical metaphor of a mirror or speculum that was widely used in Christian discourse since the early middle ages. 1 Corinthians 13:12 (King James’s edition) states that “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” This passage refers to the imperfect understanding of the divine that Christians have during life compared to what they will have in the afterlife. The term ‘glass’ in this version is alternately translated as a mirror or looking glass. The metaphor of the mirror was continued by Christian platonists. Augustine drew on Plato’s idea of a mirror as the soul of the individual, which could access ‘ideas’ as they entered the person’s consciousness. Augustine termed the rational mind as a mirror that was connected to the Scriptures, which could be used to seek wisdom. Medieval Christian writers continued to employ the metaphor of a mirror of the soul to see divine beauty. Perhaps more relevant to my argument is the description by Dionysius the Areopagite, who referred to the order of angels as pure mirrors.27 Accessing the divine through these metaphorical mirrors resonates with the purpose of the scrying mirror. The analogy of scrying is particularly strong in the writings of Pordage’s close disciple, the mystic Jane Leade. Leade (1624– 1704)

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came from an affluent gentry family and was well-educated at home. She first met Pordage in 1663, after he had left the ministry. In 1674, four years after the death of her husband, the merchant William Leade, she moved into the Pordage household as John’s spiritual partner and mate. She continued as the leader of the Pordage circle after his death and eventually became the leader of the Philadelphian Society, an ecumenical and millenarian movement. She not only facilitated the publishing of Pordage’s work, but she also published fifteen of her own theosophical works between 1694 and 1704.28 Leade also employed the metaphor of an internal gateway to the spiritual world rather than an external, physical portal such as a scrying crystal. There are many references in her spiritual diary to what she termed a “Spiritual Glass.” This is clearly not the metaphorical speculum as discussed in the Christian spiritual texts. On January 1, 1678, a figure appeared to her “opened by an Image of transparent Glass” (not reflective like a mirror) and a couple of days later “the Vision of the transparent Glassy-Body further opened to me.” She also spoke of seeing “a round Ball, mixed with all manner of Colours very oriental, and it darted down from an invisible Region, to the Earth.” As she put it, “We must look to know God and Christ in our selves, through the Spirit of Faith, which is the clear Glass.” This introverted and introspective mysticism was natural to man because “Adam when he was turned out of Paradise, into the Chaos of this World, was as a Glass to himself, in, by, and through which, he might see his own inward World [original italics].”29 In her interpretation of the mirror of the soul, each person acts as his or her own scrying medium to access the inward spiritual realm. Not only was Leade’s concept of a glass not the same as a mirror, but it was also very gendered. Her language emphasises how women related occult matters to their own physical bodies more than men. “[. . .] I did see a round Glass like a Globe [again clearly not a mirror], and at first sight it was all full of Matter, that was like putrefied Blood, black and ink coloured. Then saw I the Globe turned with the Vent downward and it was all discharged of that corrupt matter.” This metaphorical menstrual cleansing prepared the glass womb “in which the New Heart will be conceived.”30 The Virgin Wisdom,

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Sophia, informed Leade that “out of my Womb thou shalt be brought forth after the manner of a Spirit, Conceived and Born again.”31 Leade transposed the alchemical idea of the ‘pregnant pot’ as a womb to the scrying crystal or globe. Leade explicitly acknowledged the similarity between her spiritual practices and magic, even employing the term magia. “For there is a Starry Magia, that some may have a Natural Property to open themselves.” She considered herself to have this gift, as she referred to her spiritual life work as “Magia Calling.”32 The term magia had been used by the German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455– 1522) to refer to the religious or spiritual aspect of the ars miraculorum, which dealt with angelic entities. The concern of this aspect of magic was attaining union with the divine, as was Leade’s spiritual practice.33 The other contemporary metaphor that Pordage employed was the bride of Christ trope. According to his opponent Fowler, Pordage purported that “the male representing the Deity, and the female the pure humanity, which by union become one, the spirit of the soul [is] brought up by Christ into a mystical union, is made partaker of the divine nature [original italics].”34 In other words, during sexual union the man represents the spiritual godhead and the woman represents the earthly embodiment of humankind. The souls of the two participants are united and married to the bridegroom Christ. Pordage may or may not have meant this literally as a physical enactment of the bride of Christ metaphor.35 But Fowler considered Pordage’s interpretation of this metaphor as blasphemous and compared his theology to other heretical groups, including the Behmenists, the Familists and the Quakers, all of whom he considered equal to the original gnostics.36 Pordage also broke with tradition in more secular matters. Four women witnessed his will including his daughter and the mystic Jane Leade. And he bequeathed his estate to his youngest unmarried daughter, Abigail, rather than to his firstborn son, Samuel, or one of his other sons.37 Pordage was surrounded by women and was apparently very supportive of female authority. Permanent residents of the Bradfield rectory included John’s mother Elizabeth, his wife Mary, his alleged mistress Mrs Flavell, and Mrs Flavell’s daughter

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Hannah, as well as John and Mary’s seven children.38 A man who spent an inordinate amount of time around women and children was considered effeminate rather than a womaniser. This can partly be attributed to the fact that women’s space is domestic space and, therefore, effeminising.39 By the eighteenth century, female space was considered a place where one should practise politeness, which was becoming more important for the refined gentleman. Politeness was defined as conversing with and pleasing women; men, therefore, ran the risk of becoming like women by exercising physical and verbal selfcontrol when in their company. In a culture that measured manliness by subordination over women, children and servants, appeasing women posed a danger of regression to that state.40 By early modern standards, effeminacy was any non-normative heterosexual behaviour, as opposed to the performance of homosexuality. This included asexual behaviour, radically hypersexual behaviour or any form of subordination by a woman.41 A man’s world was independent, and emotionally and physically separate from the world of women. Society reinforced this separation through the practice of ‘breeching’ young boys to mark their symbolic entry into the world of men.42 Besides his relationship with women, Pordage’s manhood was already somewhat compromised as a member of the clergy, as discussed in Chapter 4. The ministerial role involved an inherent tension between masculinity and Christianity. Service to humankind and nurturing of the flock were antithetical to the traditional role of a man.43 In order to pursue an intimate relationship with Christ, a godly man needed to sublimate his masculine identity in favour of a subordinate and humble role more readily associated with females. This social role was reinforced by the analogy of the church as the bride of Christ. If the church is portrayed as the bride of Christ, then by extension the clergy are its bridesmaids (or procurers). These qualities were reinforced in Behmenism.44 As detailed in Mundorum Explicatio, the soul had to be “wholly passive” in order to attain mystical union.45 Angel magic reinforced this passivity. Men were expected to exercise humility and submissiveness with respect to heavenly spirits. But their passivity was in relation to God and the angels – male figures – not to other men or to women. In terms of

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the Great Chain of Being, this placed such men hierarchically above the common man. These qualities could be adopted by males and attributed to the new emerging ideal of manhood. Ironically, the admiration of these feminine qualities did not raise the status of women. The adoption of traditionally female traits should have effaced the social construction of the male/female dichotomy, but the strength of patriarchy apparently overrode its potentially equalising power.46 Theoretically, the effete, introverted man threatens patriarchal rule. If all men followed that ideal, they would risk being dominated by women or marginal men. However, when a large enough number of men display passive and submissive qualities, those qualities are added to the list of acceptable masculine traits. If the traits remained unacceptable, then a large number of men would be marginalised by society, and patriarchal power would be at risk of being eroded.47 Nevertheless, a man did not have to sacrifice his portion of the patriarchal dividend during his submissive and passive performance of manhood. Before the age of forty, Pordage had achieved the traditional standards of manhood: education, marriage, a household and work identity. He was the strong male head of his household, as represented by his chosen name of Abraham. And Pordage’s interactions with angels had allowed him to fight off the devil himself. But Pordage did not construct himself in relation to other men or via the subordination of women. According to Jane Leade, Pordage “cared not to be known in the World.”48 Instead, he constructed himself in relation to God. His interaction with the spirit realm reflects the emerging ideal of the new gentleman. A new notion of civility, which included manners and emphasis on outward demeanour, was gaining popularity. This new civility depended on inner self-discipline,49 which had been an element of magic since the middle ages. Strength of soul and a godly disposition were being added to the ‘manly’ attributes of physical strength and courage.

CHAPTER 6 SWORDS, SATAN AND SEX

In Robert Greene’s c.1589 play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Miles, the poor scholar, addresses Rafe, the king’s fool, whose sword has been conjured into his scabbard by the magus Roger Bacon. “In faith, my lord, your manhood and your sword all alike; they are so fast conjured that we shall never see them.”1 Rafe’s manhood and sexual prowess is clearly linked to his ability to draw his sword. Unfortunately, Rafe was on the wrong end of magic, but for the magician wielding the ceremonial sword, magic offered an opportunity to prove his manhood. The sword was a gendered object intertwined with issues of male honour and sexuality; Satan was a masculine figure that was not only highly sexualised but also represented the antithesis of honourable manhood. This chapter examines how magicians used the sword, both physically and metaphorically, to contain and subdue Satan and his minions. During the process, the magus could bolster his masculinity by appropriating the demons’ masculine traits of sexuality, courage and aggression. In this regard, ceremonial magic, whether within the perimeter of the magic circle or not, was a site for the performance of manhood comparable to cockfighting. Like the rooster, the legions of devils were sexual icons, representing both the evils and the pleasures of venery.

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9. Frontispiece of Robert Green, The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon.

The Sword The sword played the same role in the magic circle as it did in the profane world. It carved out the boundaries of masculinity. The sword was an ancient symbol of manly prowess, caught up in the rhetoric of knightly honour and justice. In the middle ages, honour was associated with the knightly duties expected of the noble class, which reinforced the martial values of strength and courage. By the sixteenth century, the aristocracy was no longer the military elite, and the development of a permanent court culture stressed self-control and proper comportment. The importance of the broad sword used in battle was transferred to the rapier and the art of fencing. Fencing was a common pastime for the noblemen and gentlemen of the court. By the seventeenth century, wearing a fencing rapier was part of the acceptable civilian dress code that distinguished a

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gentleman from the lower echelons of society. The sword retained its significance as a weapon of military honour as well as the private honour of the duel.2 The 1729 version of the masonic constitutions includes an addendum, ‘The Fairy Elves Song.’ In the world of freemasonry, the sword also drew boundaries of manhood. Where Masons Guarded stand With naked sword in hand, Under the door we Creep And there we slyly Peep.3 The naked or unsheathed sword connotes sexuality, especially in conjunction with ‘peeping.’ Nakedness signifies vulnerability as well as sexual readiness. Exactly what were the masons guarding with their naked swords? In a post-Freudian world, the sword is such an obvious phallic symbol that it hardly needs an explanation. In Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, Part I, Falstaff and Prince Hal exchange verbal repartee concerning their body types and manly courage. When Falstaff calls Hal “you sheath” and “you vile standing-tuck” (II.IV.270– 4), he is attacking Hal’s virility using the imagery of the sword. The empty sheath is suggestive of female anatomy rather than the male member. In fact, the word vagina is borrowed directly from the Latin word for sheath or scabbard, although it was not used for a woman’s anatomy until 1682.4 The sword was linked to the penis by its power to penetrate and its ability to access that which is hidden or occult. The ‘standing tuck’ was another reference to impotency; it is a technical term in fencing that refers to the rapier when it is standing point down.5 The metaphor of sexual penetration with the sword also appears in mystical literature. The mystic Jane Leade describes “yielding [her] self up to Love’s flaming sword” as part of her mystical marriage with Sophia.6 Even when the sexual metaphor is related to two females, the imagery is of masculine penetration with a phallic object. In addition to a sexual connotation, the sword also has a spiritual aspect in Judeo-Christian traditions. After Adam and Eve were

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expelled from the Garden of Eden, a cherubim guarded the eastern entrance with “a flaming sword which turned every way” (Genesis 3:24). In the Second Book of Maccabees 15:13– 6, the prophet Jeremiah presents a gold sword to Judas, saying “Accept this holy sword as a gift from God; with it you shall crush your adversaries.”7 The sword was a symbol of God’s sanction against evil. John Bunyan, in The Pilgrim’s Progress, also supports the divine sanction of the sword. Mr Valiant-for-Truth shows his ‘Jerusalem Blade’ to the character Great-Heart. “Let a man have one of these Blades, with a Hand to wield it, and skill to use it, and he may venture upon an Angel with it.”8 In Ephesians 6:12 –7, the sword that is sanctioned by God is described as the armour of truth, righteousness, peace and salvation. A sword sanctioned or consecrated by God was a formidable weapon. Magicians also acknowledged the sanctity of the sword. The magician did not use the same sword for magic as he did for duelling. A consecrated sword was necessary in ceremonial magic to cast the circle, inscribe the magical symbols and control the spirits. It was then held at the ready after the spirits were summoned.9 The instructions concerning the consecration of ritual tools in pseudoAgrippa’s Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy underline the importance of the religious attitude of the magus. [. . .] and the virtue of this Consecration most chiefly consists in two things: to wit, in the power of the person consecrating, and by the virtue of the prayer by which the consecration is made [. . .] Which things being so made pure, are more apt to receive the influences of the Divine virtue.10 The act of consecration demanded that the magician act as a priest in order to attract divine virtues, thereby setting the profane object apart as sacred. The importance of consecration was evident to the cunning man and tailor William Wycherley. In 1549 he testified that when he attempted to use an unconsecrated sword for treasure hunting, it was ineffective: while the men were digging, a blind, black horse came and scared them off. Apparently, an unconsecrated

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sword did not have the power to keep the spirits at bay. Wycherley also told the authorities that he gave two men a sword and sceptre that had previously been consecrated, but that was now polluted.11 When the consecrated sword was used in ritual magic, it was also a symbol of manhood and divine justice. Metaphorically, the magician might “conjure, constrain, command, and bind the spirit of N. by the two edged sword, which John saw proceed out of the mouth of God almighty: except thou be obedient as is aforesaid, the sword cut thee in pieces [. . .].”12 In this instance, the sword was a symbol of divine retribution. The magical sword could also be used physically if the magician suspected a spirit was lying. According to pseudo-Agrippa, the magus should compel the spirit to swear an oath “by laying his hand upon the Sword.”13 Aspects of both the warrior-knight and the honourable gentleman were thereby available to the magician through the use of the ritual sword. Apparently, the code of honour among men extended to the spirit world as well.

Satan By controlling and subduing demons, the magician demonstrated male honour, manly courage and mastery over the spirit world. These spirits were overtly sexual. According to Christian theology, Satan and his demons are fallen angels. Angels were officially sexless based on a biblical passage that states that angels do not marry, which was interpreted to mean that angels do not have any need for sexuality because they do not reproduce (Matthew 22:30). There are no examples in the Bible of angels being described as female. The three archangels mentioned in the Bible – Michael, Gabriel and Raphael – all have distinctly male names. Michael is often depicted in armour, holding the sword of justice. In Joshua 5:13 – 4 the “captain of the host of the Lord” appears as a man holding a drawn sword aloft. But during the middle ages, angels lost some of their warrior qualities and became increasingly feminised.14 In the Romanesque period (c.900 – 1200), angels were often portrayed with very feminine facial features. The cherubim,

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the highest rank of heavenly angels, were often represented as naked, playful children. The feminisation of angels happened at the same time as the devil grew more prominent in popular culture and theology. As the upper half of the binary angel/devil, the feminine qualities of the angels reinforced the masculine qualities of aggression and sexuality of the devil. The association of fallen angels with illicit sexuality was engendered by the Judaic Book of Enoch, which tells the story of how certain angels led by Azaˆzeˆl lusted after human women and took them as wives; the children of these unions became evil spirits on earth (Enoch 6:1– 3, 7:1 – 2, 15:9– 12).15 This concept was still prevalent in the seventeenth century, as expressed by the poet John Milton in Paradise Lost: “Belial came last, that whom a spirit more lewd / Fell not from Heaven or more gross to love / Vice for itself” (Book I: lines 490– 2).16 Whatever form demons took, they were gendered. Since angels and demons had no proper shape of their own, they could adopt the shape best suited for the occasion.17 As Milton expressed it, “[. . .] as they please / They limn themselves and colour, shape or size / Assume as likes them best, condense or rare” (Book 6: lines 351– 3).18 Demons, even more than angels, were widely believed to be shapeshifters since they were more interested in deceiving humans. However, the most common composition of the devil in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was as a male figure of some sort. Even as a beast, the demon was referred to as male. Pseudo-Agrippa describes the spirits that are associated with Mars as having “a filthy countenance, of colour brown, swarthy or red, having horns like Harts horns, and Griffins claws, bellowing like wild Bulls.”19 The demon Asmoday was described as a king that appears with three heads: one like a bull, one like a man, and the third like a ram, with “a serpents tail, he belcheth flames out of his mouth, he hath feet like a goose, he sitteth on an infernal dragon, he carrieth a lance and a flag in his hand.”20 Demons appeared as fierce, deformed entities to strike fear into the hearts of brave men. Alongside the idea of demons as monsters, another depiction of the devil developed during the middle ages. Satan was commonly portrayed

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as part human and part animal, naked, with feet like a goat or a fowl, and a dragon-like tail.21 These are traits of pagan deities that were assimilated into the Christian construction of the devil. Pan, the GrecoRoman fertility god whose emblem is the phallus, also contributed qualities of sexuality and wildness. And there are also numerous GallicRoman depictions of a horned god, such as Cernunnos.22 Visual depictions of the devil in early modern England are often distinctly masculine, as in the woodcut from the pamphlet Robin Good-Fellow (shown on the cover of this volume).23 Robin Good-Fellow’s goat-like legs, hairy buttocks and pointed ears are particularly reminiscent of the classical pastoral god Pan. His phallic nature is reinforced by the horns on his head, his wand held erect, and the horn across his chest. His masculinity is not only indicated by his strong, masculine physique and full beard,24 but is also overtly displayed by his erect (goat-like) penis and prominent testicles. Other popular publications depicted similar themes. In Newes from Avernus, the devil and his attendant demons have erect phalli.25 A woodcut on the broadsheet The Ragman shows the devil as a dragon-like creature with a penis.26 The Gelding of the Devil is an illustrated broadsheet that discusses the devil as a male being castrated. After the baker castrates Satan, the baker is at risk of being castrated by the devil in turn. In this way, the devil is a sexual threat to the baker.27 The many visual interpretations of the devil as a sexually potent male are supported in written texts. For example, in the pamphlet The Kingdom of Darkness, spirits dancing in a ring are described as “Spirits in the shape of lusty Satyrs.”28 In England, the devil was not always configured as a grotesque monster but was still sexual. In the pamphlet literature concerning witchcraft accusations, the devil is sometimes a seductive male figure. For example, the devil visited the accused witch Elizabeth Clarke three or four times a week and stayed “with her half a night together.” He appeared “in the shape of a proper Gentleman, with a laced band.” In the same witchcraft episode, the devil promised Rebecca West that he would marry her and “kissed her [. . .] and promised to be her loving husband till death.”29 Other masculine versions of spirits were knights or soldiers. The Secretum Secretorum describes how the summoned spirit will appear as

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“a knight on a horse with a Goshawk on his hand.”30 A copy of The Secret of Secrets made by Moses Long of Gloucestershire in 1683 instructs the magician on how to cast a circle with the sword. After the magician enters the circle, “then will Appear unto thee A comely soldier sitting upon A horse, with a two Edged sword in his hand, saying unto thee what wilt thou have, & what desirest you, & wherefore hast you called me.” In the north and the west, soldiers will appear even more “comely” than the first, one of them wearing a crown with a golden diamond.31 It is not stated whether the spirits are angels or demons. In the Lord Somers manuscript collection, there are instructions on how to invoke King Solomon into the scrying stone, who will appear “riding upon a horse like a young man clothed in scarlet.”32 These encounters with a spirit as a gentleman warrior are more in the spirit of a duel. The magician challenges a single armed spirit rather than controlling legions of demons with threats and imprecations. These configurations of the spirit world reflect trends in society. Physical violence by men had declined by the end of the seventeenth century and was replaced by recourse to law and verbal negotiations. Even criminals were treated less violently; transportation and incarceration in workhouses became popular forms of punishment, rather than public whippings or hangings.33 By configuring the spirits as fellow warrior-knights, the magician was constructing them as male entities that possessed human qualities of honour and masculinity. Challenging them in this form had the potential to reinforce a magician’s manhood. Nevertheless, the grimoires make it very clear that the demons being invoked are powerful and frightening.34 In addition to potential physical and spiritual harm, the sexuality of these spirits was a threat on several levels. Men could be tempted to imitate the devil through the earthly pleasures of the flesh; women (the property of men) could be seduced by the devil’s sensuality in the case of witchcraft; or men could be emasculated or effeminised by the overpowering hypermasculinity represented by the arch-enemy.

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Sex In contestation with demons, the magus could not only display his courage and fortitude, but he could also control the more shameful aspects of overt male sexuality, including his own. An example of this is embedded in the story of St George and the dragon. Ballads, chap books and pamphlets concerning the legend of the saint continued to be popular until the early eighteenth-century in England.35 Fantasy and romance literature of this type allowed men to identify with the chivalric hero who rescued the maiden in distress while overcoming evil.36 The cover illustration of one of these chap books clearly links male courage with the defence of female honour.37 The dragon represents the devil, as expressed in Revelations 20:1: “He seized the dragon, that serpent of old, the Devil or Satan, and chained him up for a thousand years.” St George attacks the dragon as the woman stands by passively waiting to be rescued (or in this particular version, she had been voluntarily tied to a tree as a sacrificial victim). The knight’s lance is an exaggerated sword, which extends from his body in a phallic manner. The dragon is lying on its back, demonstrating submission, in a position common to the female sexual partner. The text informs the reader of St George’s “strength and courage.” In the face of “terror and amazement” he is “of an undaunted Spirit.”38 He is willing to sacrifice his life to prove his manhood. St George uses his phallic lance to penetrate the dragon-devil, thereby gaining sexual access to the female (under the premise of saving the sexual honour of the virgin). Through this ritual sacrifice, St George provides a space for acceptable sexual encounters. The hypersexuality of the dragon is exchanged for socially acceptable sexuality between a man and a woman. In other words, the sexual qualities of the dragon are appropriated via their subjugation. St George neutralises the demon’s hypermasculinity by destroying him and assimilating his qualities. In the real life case of Goodwin Wharton and his partner, the cunning woman Mary Parish (whom I will discuss in detail in Chapter 8), the conquering of demons transferred the qualities of the spirits to the magus. At one of the couple’s many treasure-hunting sites, Mary was instructed to go into a corner of the cellar and retrieve

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the philosopher’s stone. Although the place was crawling with serpents, Mary put her hand into the snake pit, at which time “they swelled & rise up against her, & one of them fastened upon her hand & twisted up all about her arm.”39 The angel Ahab, who regularly gave the couple advice, later told them that the snake that wound itself around Mary’s arm was the spirit of a deceased fairy by the name of Thomas Shashbesh. Shashbesh had previously asked for Mary’s hand in marriage in return for making her the richest woman in the world. Ahab advised Goodwin to banish the evil spirit so that Mary would no longer “be troubled with serpents,” which he subsequently did. Immediately after expelling the spirit, Goodwin and Mary “came home, & this very night she conceiv’d again.” Like St George, Goodwin had slain the serpent (the symbol of the devil), rescued the damsel in distress and created an acceptable (and fertile) site for sexual activity. Goodwin thereby both neutralised and appropriated the sexual properties of the snake-demon. This analysis is based on the theory that the desire to destroy the enemy is accompanied with the need to assimilate its qualities. In this case, the devil is the enemy. The devil possesses several qualities that are desirable for men: sexuality; courage and determination; and physical prowess and strength. The devil, or any other individual spirit, is the embodiment of the broader concept of the ‘Other.’ The concept of the Other as the repository of desire was developed by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.40 Lacan was primarily concerned with what he termed the big O Other in relation to both the psychological instincts and desires of an individual and to concepts such as death and the unconscious. The Other represents all the traditions, ideologies and obligations that constitute a particular society at any given moment. Therefore, the Other is both the structure that is collectively determined by the members of society and the alien system into which an individual is born and must negotiate. That is, the Other is the “rules that govern the game.”41 An individual subject, such as our magician, may be attracted to a representation of the Other, such as the devil, because of a lack of the desired quality within himself. Sexuality, courage and violence in the name of honour

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were celebrated masculine qualities in early modern society. But the Other also included forbidden desires that caused anxiety in a Christian community. Uncontrolled sexuality and excessive violence were morally and socially unacceptable. The hypersexuality, heretical rebellion (as in the case of fallen angels) and extreme violence of Satan were taboo. Ironically, control over an individual demon as representative of the Other became constructed in a way that celebrated the very traits that it was supposedly censoring. Ceremonial magic reinforced the social norms of male dominance, hierarchical power over subordinates and violence by the sword.42 In this regard, magic was not a subversion of society but a celebration of societal norms that reinforced traditional ideals of manhood. The case of Goodwin Wharton illustrates how the magician could appropriate the phallic strength and desirable qualities of masculinity. This is comparable to what occurred during the early modern pastime of cockfighting. The birds were embodiments of the hegemonic Other, encompassing qualities of violence, aggression, determination and courage, which society deemed particularly appropriate for men. They were also representative of their owners in the ring. A description of an English cockfight in 1539 stressed the “extraordinary virtues and courage of these cocks,” their “mettle and valour,” and their “warrior-like” behaviour. The cocks were compared to men through the analogy of “martial captains” whose boldness was inspiring to the spectators.43 The noblemen who owned the creatures bet jewels and other valuables on the outcome of the struggle, thereby staking another measure of their manhood on the cocks’ performance of virility. The courage and fortitude of the cocks was clearly transferred to the male spectators: for there is not a single prince or a captain one might find among the spectators who, contemplating how fervently these little animals seek for victory at the expense of their own lives and with no profit in view, even if he were of a cowardly nature, would not recover a positive strength of spirit to vanquish his foe or to die bravely.44

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According to this spectator, there was a transfer of qualities from the animals to the men watching. The cock owners and spectators recognised qualities of the self in the sacrificial roosters, thereby granting a transformative function to the fight. The cock represented the male virtues of courage and assertiveness as well as the quality of control over others.45 But the embodiment of the Other, in this instance the cock, could also represent the latent anxieties of the culture. In his analysis of the Balinese cockfight, the anthropologist Clifford Geertz interpreted the rooster as a representation of the inverse status of man. The bird was linked to what the Balinese man feared the most, that is animality. During the blood sacrifice of the cock, the violent, destructive aspect of the bird was neutralised, while the men paid homage to its phallic, reproductive power.46 In a similar fashion, the magician acknowledged the sexuality and courage of the demonic spirits while controlling and banishing them for the safety of humankind and the glory of God. The belief that qualities could be transferred from one place to the other was based on the early modern world view of macrocosm and microcosm. The cockfighting ring and the magic circle served as sites where sympathetic connections could be made with the broader universe. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, men challenged both other men and male spirits with the sword. The sword was symbolic of the honour and justice relevant to manhood, as well as representative of the phallic power of masculinity. The spirit world, which was predominantly gendered male, embodied the fears and desires of men surrounding their own sexuality and violent nature. During magical confrontations, the magus could both conquer and appropriate the traits of the spirits, which were both desirable and forbidden. The spirits were either banished to hellfire or bound to a crystal. This control and subordination can be metaphorically understood as the immolation of the spirits, by which their traits were assimilated by the magician. For better or for worse, the employment of the phallic sword was not just a one-time effort. Early modern men had to constantly “keep

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their swords erect” to maintain their hierarchical and patriarchal place in society and the world. And for the last effect Still keep thy sword erect: Besides the force it has to fright The spirits of the shady Night The same arts that did gain A pow’r must it maintain.47

CHAPTER 7 FAIRIES AND FEMALE MAGICIANS

10. Anne Bodenham and her imps from R.B., The Kingdom of Darkness.

Anne Bodenham (c.1573– 1653) was a cunning woman from Fisherton Anger in Wiltshire. She made charms and spells for curing, discovered stolen goods, detected thieves and practised physic and astrology. Unfortunately, she got caught up in a witchcraft accusation. Bodenham was accused of conjuring spirits into a

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magic circle with the aid of books and a green scrying glass.1 The description of Bodenham’s conjuration ritual follows a pattern similar to male invocations: she used her staff to draw the circle; she carried her book and glass into the circle; she made fumigations in a pan of coals; and she called on Beelzebub, Tormentor, Satan and Lucifer to appear. However, her ritual diverged from the maleconducted format in several ways. Apparently, Anne was not satisfied with the first circle she inscribed. In order to start over, she took her besom and “swept over the Circle, and made another”2 – an interesting blend of housewifery and magic! The broom, of course, is associated with female witches rather than male magicians. In addition, the spirits invoked were in the likeness of ragged boys rather than full-grown men, who ran around her house and picked up pieces of bread that she had thrown down for them. They also danced in the circle with Bodenham’s dog and cat, which infers that the domestic pets may have been familiar spirits, which were believed to be animal embodiments of demons. On one occasion, the ragged boys took Bodenham’s client to a meadow to search for herbs. Dancing spirits, who were appeased with food and who trafficked in herbs, are reminiscent of fairy lore rather than ceremonial magic. Bodenham does not exactly fit the mould of the Faustian scholar, but she surpasses the stereotype of the cunning woman, who usually operated from a base of female oral tradition. She was caught in a transitory position, a relative no-woman’s-land where her knowledge and literacy were simultaneously valuable to her and socially dangerous. Her access to learned occult knowledge did not elevate her to the position of a respected magus, as it would have for a man, but acted to reinforce her criminal status as a witch. Treading in male territory contributed to her construction as a dangerous woman.3 Bodenham maintained that she learned her arts from the notorious ‘Dr’ John Lambe of London while in his domestic service many years before. However, after Lambe was convicted of invoking evil spirits, he was not executed but only imprisoned for fifteen years, during which time he was patronised by the Duke of Buckingham.4 Bodenham, although in her eighties, was hanged as a witch. In Anne’s case, the elements of ritual magic were integrated with cunning craft and

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the discourse of demonology. But eighty-year-old Bodenham maintained her verve to the bitter end. On her journey to the gallows, she called for beer at every house she went by and when the executioner asked for her forgiveness, she replied “Forgive thee? A pox on thee, turn me off.”5 Anne Bodenham’s case is one of only a handful of documented cases of female magicians that provide enough information to identify specific magical activities. The few snapshots of female magicians we have confirm what we have learned from male practitioners: gender ideologies were reinforced in the practice of magic. Gender was also reflected in social status. Male magicians tended to be university-educated or autodidacts, whereas women, even if they were literate, were for the most part unlearned. Female magicians blended elements of ritual magic with folk practices, reaffirming the connection between magic and nature. Women also tended to reinforce gender ideologies by assuming a maternal, nurturing relationship with the spirit realm. For the most part, women were subservient and submissive in their dealings with the spirit world. Magic, as practised by women, became a foil for the intellectual, scientific and religious associations that male magicians tended to foster. One reason for this differentiation was the type of spirits with which women interacted. The belief in fairies was a folk belief that had made its way into ceremonial magic.6 Men as well as women interacted with them. One grimoire instructs the male magician on how to contact the fairies: To have Conference with the fairies. In the house where those use when you intend to work be the last up. The night before the new or the full of the Moon. Then sweep the Hearth very clean. And set a bucket of fair water on the Hearth. So go to bed. And be you the first that shall come down the next morning. And you shall see as it were a fat or Jelly upon the water. Take it forth with a Silver Spoon and put it into a silver or Tin vessel and so keep it. And when you will work the night before the new or full of the Moon. If there be a Table in the

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Room – Set a Bowl full of new Ale upon the board. And iii new white loaves with iii new knives with white hafts. This done make a faire fire of sweet clover wood. Then sit in a Chair with your face towards the fire. Then take your aforesaid salve forth and anoint your eyes therewith. And sit silent. And see all the House be quiet and at rest. And when you have sat so awhile you shall see iii women come in. But say nothing but nod your head at them as you shall see them do to you. And they will go to the Table and eat and drink. When they have done let the first pass. And the second. But the third you may take and ask what you will of her.7 Another manuscript instructs the practitioner how to conjure the fairy ‘Oberion’ as a beautiful man dressed as a soldier.8 The astrologer-physician Simon Forman recorded an anecdote concerning the fairy king, Oberon, who guards metals and precious stones in the mountains of Silesia. “This Oberus or Oberon will not suffer any man willingly to come into that mountain for any of the minerals but will detain them if he can by any means & drive them from thense.”9 In this case, the fairy is not being invoked but is portrayed as the guardian of natural treasures. It is difficult to ascertain whether Oberon was a demon spirit who became the king of the fairies or vice versa. In the romance Huon of Bordeaux, Oberon is portrayed as a small elf king who proves to be friendly and virtuous.10 This French version of a Germanic tale was translated into English in 1534, but the name Oberon was included with other demons conjured up in treasure hunting expeditions earlier in the sixteenth century.11 Several portrayals of Oberon as the king of the fairies in popular culture bear witness to his prominence, including Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer’s Night Dream and Ben Jonson’s masque Oberon, the Fairy Prince. But female magicians were more likely to be associated with the fairy realm than men as reinforced by the testimony of William Wycherley, a tailor and cunning man. During an examination concerning his magical activities in 1549, he claimed that Croxtons’ wife of Golding Lane in St Giles parish also “speaketh with the

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fairies” in addition to using the sieve and shears. He made a point of singling her out from the other half a dozen male practitioners as the only one who communicated with the fairies.12 Although there was no hard and fast rule, men more often invoked or petitioned demons and angels, whereas women invited or were accosted by the fairies. Agrippa maintained that fairy spirits were attracted to weak persons, including women, children and inferior men. Success in calling the fairies depended on “the singleness of the wit, innocency of the mind, a firm credulity, and constant silence; wherefore they do often meet children, women, and poor and mean men. They are afraid of and fly from men of a constant, bold, and undaunted mind [. . .].”13 Agrippa differentiated this group from educated men like himself. A strong man would command and control the spirit world, which is why the fairies avoided them. The realm of fairies was more suitable to women and children and could be detrimental to the performance of manhood. The fairy realm was concerned with domestic issues such as sex, birth and death. Brownies in particular were associated with housework. They rewarded good housekeeping and punished lazy ‘sluts.’ In the complex supernatural world of early modern England, fairies, like magic, were not easily defined. According to learned culture, fairies could be “divided into good and bad, when as it is but one and the same malignant fiend, that meddles in both.”14 They were variously described as elemental spirits, ghosts, demonic spirits and supernatural creatures that had their own society similar to that of humans. A pamphlet dated 1635 described fairies as tiny creatures who lived in courtly style with a king and queen. They ate bizarre fare such as moles’ eyes and adders’ ears. One of the woodcuts in the pamphlet depicted the fairy as a demon-like creature, complete with horns, a tail, claws and dragon-like wings.15 The pamphlet clearly states that its intention is to entertain the reader rather than instruct, but it illustrates the diverse opinions in circulation concerning the fairy kingdom. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Scottish clergyman Robert Kirk presented a more serious treatise on what he termed “subterranean creatures.” He reported that the fairies mimicked human practices concerning organisation. They lived in

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houses, dressed like humans and had human-like disputes. Kirk asserted that sometimes human women were abducted to deliver or nurse fairy children and that sometimes human children were stolen to be raised by the fairies.16 In spite of the apparent physicality of fairies, generally speaking, the fairy realm was considered supernatural. The fairies’ relationship to humans was complicated during the height of the witchcraft prosecutions (roughly 1550– 1660), when the figure of the fairy got intermingled with the witch’s familiar. The familiar, often in the form of a small animal like a toad, was configured as a demonic spirit that facilitated occult services for the witch. The witch’s relationship with the familiar often included sucking on a special witch’s teat. For authorities eager to prove heresy, the presence of a familiar represented a pact with the devil.17 But in popular culture there was a certain amount of ambivalence toward fairies: they could be benign or malicious depending on their mood and the type of human interaction. In his demonological treatise, James VI of Scotland acknowledged that the common folk believed that a type of fairy known as brownies “haunted divers houses, without doing any evil, but doing as it were necessary turns up and down the house.” Nevertheless, according to James, even housekeeping fairies were agents of the devil.18 The ambiguous nature of the fairy world is demonstrated in the case of Susan Swapper of Rye, Sussex.19 In 1607, Swapper was visited by four fairies who offered her medical advice. The fairies advised her to go to a neighbour’s garden and plant some sage plants, and then she would be well. On a subsequent visit, a fairy described as a tall man in black took her to meet the queen of the fairies, who was dressed in green. The meeting took place in nature, in a green field known as ‘Weekes green.’ Susan was asked to kneel to the fairy queen in return for wealth. At all times, the spirits were firmly in control of the situation. The trouble started when the fairies suggested the possibility of finding buried treasure. Local authorities viewed the fairies as demonic beings rather than helpful spirits. Swapper was subsequently charged with trafficking with wicked spirits in order to obtain treasure, and she was sentenced to be hanged. After a lengthy

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investigation, she was eventually pardoned in 1611. Note that Swapper did not invoke the fairies; rather than commanding the spirits to appear at her convenience, she submissively waited for them to contact her. Rather than making elaborate invocations and supplications to the spirit world, women were often approached by the spirits, particularly by fairies. Similarly, Joan Tirrye of Taunton, Somerset, did not invoke or control the spirits. In 1555, she was interrogated by the church court concerning her healing practices.20 She had administered medicine to a neighbour’s wife and cattle, which Tirrye claimed had been bewitched. When asked how she knew that the cow was bewitched, Tirrye answered that she had: the help of god and the fair Fairies with whom she hath been acquainted by the space of thirty years and more. And hath been in the company of them many and often times and hath been merry in their company dancing in green meadows. She claimed that they had “taught her such knowledge that she getteth her living by it.” She was acquainted with them as a friend, not as their master. What she learned from them was given freely as a gift. Although Tirrye insisted that her story was true, she was not accused of witchcraft. During Queen Mary’s reign, the witchcraft statute was repealed; the ecclesiastical courts dealt with cases of the occult. The religious authorities often stressed rehabilitation rather than punishment. In this case, the Bishop’s Consistory Court instructed Tirrye to cease her healing practices, to discontinue her belief in the “illusions of the Fairies” and to confess to her local curate. There were no elements of ritual magic in Tirrye’s practice, but the association of women with fairies and nature was reinforced. Tirrye talked with the fairies in her garden while gathering herbs and danced with them in the meadow. Another female healer who danced with the fairies was Ann Jefferies (c.1626– 96) of St Teath, Cornwall.21 In 1645, Jefferies was nursemaid to Moses Pitt, who retold Jefferies’ story fifty years later in a pamphlet. Pitt reported that he saw nineteen-year-old

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Jefferies dancing in the orchard among the trees. When asked about it, Ann admitted that she was visited in the garden by “six Persons of a small Stature, all clothed in green, which she call’d Fairies.” Not only did the fairies give her the power to heal by touch, but they also fed her. Ann stopped eating from the family table and later, when she was incarcerated in Bodmin gaol, no one saw her eat for three months. After being interrogated by magistrates and ministers concerning her healing activities, Ann was eventually released. The authorities could not prove that the spirits were evil or that Ann was under “the Delusion of the Devil.” In Jefferies’ case, she was fed by the fairies. But it was more common that female magicians provided food for the fairies. As we saw in the case of Anne Bodenham, women often appeased the spirit world with food and gifts. Susan Swapper also gave the fairies bread and water and even asked her neighbour for some meat to give them. One of the spirits appeared to Swapper as a pregnant woman and requested apples. In order to create an atmosphere conducive to their appearance, Swapper laid nosegays of flowers in the windows and strewed the floor with fresh herbs. On the rare occasion that a female magician called upon the spirits to appear, the subsequent relationship was still maternal. In 1589, the eighty-year-old widow Joan Cunny of Stisted, Essex, confessed that “mother Humfrye of Maplested” had instructed her to “kneel down upon her knees, and make a Circle on the ground, and pray unto Sathan the chief of the Devils” and then “the Spirits would come unto her.”22 Having done so, two spirits in the shape of black frogs appeared and “demanded of her what she would have” in return for her soul. She named the spirits Jack and Jill, carried them home and kept them in a box, in which she fed them white bread (which was a special treat at that time) and milk. Joan said she had forgotten the prayers to Satan that she made at the time, which had been taught to her by one Mother Humfrey. The demon frogs were subsequently employed for the purposes of maleficium. In this case, the form of the ritual circle was used and the spirits were invoked through specific prayers. But after the spirits appeared, Joan

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treated her familiars like pets rather than commanding and controlling them. Appeasing the fairy realm physically with food and rich objects was a culturally accepted practice. As we saw in the directions above, even men were advised to leave “new Ale” and “new white loaves” in a room with “a faire fire of sweet clover wood.”23 Both men and women could take advantage of this premise. In 1613, Alice West of Fulham and her husband John were arraigned at Newgate Prison for conning Thomas Moore of Hammersmith out of a large sum of money.24 Alice told Moore’s maidservant that the king and queen of the fairies had appeared to Alice in a vision and had directed her to hidden treasure intended for Moore and his wife. Under the premise that the king and queen of the fairies had to be appeased, the couple laid out a great banquet in a chamber hung with rich linen and other goods. Needless to say, Alice and her husband absconded with the goods and were subsequently convicted of fraud. The con was potentially successful because of the belief that the fairy realm must be appeased. The Wests were sentenced to be whipped through the streets of London and spend time in the pillory. Appeasing the spirits was also part of the con perpetrated by the fortune-teller Judith Phillips, alias Doll Pope, in 1594.25 She was also suspected of fraud rather than conjuring and was sentenced to whipping through the streets. Judith posed as a cunning woman and conned a farmer and his wife into giving her fourteen pounds in gold and silver to appease the spirits who guarded hidden treasure. In addition to the money, the couple had to “have the largest chamber in [their] house be hung with the finest linen” and to lay a gold coin under each of several candlesticks provided. After bridling and saddling the husband and riding him around the backyard (for what purpose is unclear), Judith left the couple grovelling on their bellies in the cold so that she could “go into the Chamber to meet the Queen of Fairies and welcome her.” Like the Wests, she ran off with the goods. In a subsequent scam, she instructed the wealthy widow Mrs Mascall to provide a turkey and a couple of capons in order to gain the ear of the queen of the fairies.

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She also persuaded the widow to give her gold in order to attract a larger sum of hidden treasure. Judith Phillips appeared to the couple she was robbing as the queen of the fairies, in “a faire white smock, somewhat disguised, with a thing on her head all white, and a stick in her hand.”26 And although we do not know exactly what was going on in Mrs John Pordage’s mind when she was found “dancing of Hays, about the flower-pots,” she was also “clothed all in White Lawn, from the crown of the Head, to the sole of the Foot, with a White Rod in her hand.”27 As illustrated in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights’ Dream, the fairy queen was often a powerful female role model, which could be imitated in order to wield power. When men did deal with the fairy realm, their approach was more controlling. In a seventeenth-century manuscript, the magician is advised to soak a crystal in the blood of a white hen, bury specially prepared hazel sticks in a place that fairies haunt, and then call the fairy at an astrologically propitious time. The spirit should then be bound to a crystal.28 Special invocations could also be used to call fairies, like the one recorded by Elias Ashmole. The magician conjures the spirit “by those holy names of God. Saday. Eloy. Iskyros. Adonay. Sabaoth [. . .] to appear presently meekly and mildly in this glass without doing hurt or danger [. . .] and to this I bind thee by the whole power and virtue of our Lord Jesus Christ.” After the fairy appears it is commanded to satisfy “all manner of such questions and commands and demands as [the operator] shall either ask require desire or demand [. . .] without fraud dissimulation or deceit.” If not, the magician will send the fairy “into everlasting damnation even into the deep pit of hell there to receive out portion amongst the devil and his Angels to be ever burning in pitch fire and brimstone and never consumed.”29 In this instance, the fairies are invoked in the same manner as demons, which implies that they are potentially dangerous and powerful spirits. Therefore, control and command are central to the operation for the male magician. It appears that even cunning men were more likely to adopt a ritual approach to fairies. The cunning man John Walsh (c.1566) invoked fairies in a ritual circle with two wax candles and a cross of virgin

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wax. He also burned frankincense and Saint John’s wort to force the fairies to undertake his requests and return at the appointed hour. Walsh claimed that after the local constable confiscated his grimoire, the fairies would no longer come to him.30 For Walsh, the appearance of fairies required the performance of magical ritual; they did not take physical shape but were contained within a male-controlled object. Also, the magus did not nurture the fairies with food, nor was he nurtured by them. These examples illustrate some fundamental differences between male and female magicians in relation to the fairy realm. In general, men attempted to conjure and control the fairies, whereas women were more receptive to interacting with them as equals or even subordinates. The following case study of the cunning woman Mary Parish illustrates how the magical realm of fairies and spirits had a physical presence for women that differed from the magical world constructed by men.

CHAPTER 8 MAGICAL METAPHORS:MARY PARISH AND GOODWIN WHARTON

Who knows, but in the Brain may dwell Little small Fairies, who can tell? And by their several actions they may make Those forms and figures, we for fancy take [original italics].1 Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle (1623 – 73), constructed this fascinating allegory to explain the existence of the fairy world. She then goes on to describe how the fairies’ actions in our brains affect our moods. When the fairies are holding a wedding, we feel happy; when they are conducting a funeral, we feel sad. “For why, imagination runs about / In every place, yet none can trace it out.” She believed that fancy belonged more properly to women than men because women’s brains operated in a “Fantastical motion.”2 Cavendish also acknowledged the connection between visions and dreams: “And when we sleep, those Visions, dreams we call.”3 The dream world was a particularly conducive space in which to contact the spirit world. In A Continuance of Albions England (1606), William Warner depicts a shepherd meeting with fairies who are dancing in a round while he is “twixt sleep and waking.”4 Contact with the spirit world was sometimes described as happening in a liminal dream

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space. The fairies appeared to Susan Swapper while she was sick and possibly in a delirious state of fever. Alice West stated that she saw the fairies in a vision. The cunning woman Mary Parish first encountered the fairies during the night “after her first sleep, being only dosing toward morning.”5 The world of fantasy and imagination could be accessed in a space other than the physical world, but it still remained a physical experience. Mary Tomson Boucher Lawrence Parish (c.1630–1703) was a magician who used the physical themes of lust, rape, menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth to redefine the boundaries of her world, as well as the world of her partner, Goodwin Wharton. Through the use of her body and the bodies of the spirits, she constructed a power relationship between Wharton and the spirit world, of which she was the sole mediator. She gained agency through this intermediary world in a manner that otherwise would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for a woman in her social position.6 As discussed in Chapter 1, the early modern imagination was understood as a force that could affect the physical body. Although imagination could not be seen, this did not negate the fact that it existed and had the power to act in the earthly dimension. I argue that Mary used her very active imagination to manifest a secondary universe that engulfed Goodwin’s world. This is a rather unconventional interpretation of Renaissance magic as it is linked to imagination and fantasy. My interpretation of Parish’s actions is more in line with a literary analysis, such as Guido Giglioni’s examination of the fictional literature of Thomas More, William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. Giglioni questioned how the work of the early modern imagination could become an object of belief. He concluded that the storyteller encouraged the listener to temporarily or partially suspend disbelief.7 This theory can be extended to the case of magic, in that the spell cast by the enchanter requires an empathetic audience willing to surrender to the imaginings of the magician. In other words, the victim or object of the magic had to buy into the belief that magic was effective. As we shall see, Parish created a secondary universe, or “an imaginary geography” as Giglioni expresses it, to provoke Wharton’s imagination. The tragedies, and sometimes comedic

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episodes, that took place in Mary’s spirit realm reflected real personal and political events and blurred the boundaries of reality for both her and Goodwin. For the modern reader, Parish’s exertion of her will on the unfolding of the universe could be interpreted as a form of manipulation. Parish could be considered a con artist or a deluded, psychotic person. What is important to keep in mind is that imagination and magic were tools that were available to people at this historical moment because of the ubiquitous belief in them. This allowed Mary to create a world that crossed the boundaries between the real world and the magical realm. For Parish, these boundaries were not only permeable but perhaps non-existent. The role of the imaginary (as opposed to the imagination) is acknowledged by both historians and modern psychoanalysts in a person’s construction of self-identity.8 An individual’s life takes on meaning through the narratives that one constructs about one’s life experiences. These narratives draw on personal memories and collective cultural material, as well as the shadowy, unconscious area of the mind. In some cases, a person’s construction of her or his life can border on the fictional. In Mary’s case, she used fantasy and imagination to create an ongoing theatrical performance (wherein she got to play all the good parts). Her magic circle extended to all aspects of her life as well as Goodwin’s, including his parliamentary and royal court activities. In an intentional fiction, the author or artist recognises a separation between the literary or theatrical creation and the self. Mary Parish went a step further by living out the metaphors that other authors were content to limit to print. Mary immersed herself in the magical realm without concern for boundaries. Mary’s secondary universe encompassed not only the streets of London and environs but also her own body. We should keep in mind that the early modern body was not experienced in the same way as the modern body. The physicality of the body may (or may not) remain the same over time, but the experience of the body is understood in the context of whatever discourses are available from a person’s culture. In the sixteenth century, emotions and mental states were explained by reference to the body and its four humours. The

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body itself was fluid, regulated by evacuations such as bleeding and purges. The humoural body was porous and volatile, and therefore more vulnerable to its environment, including the ubiquitous spiritual world.9 Not only was a person’s subjectivity strongly linked to the physical body, but the body served as a narrative space where desires and anxieties could be expressed. Mary not only used her own physical body as a narrative tool, but she extended this physicality to the bodies of the spirit world as well. A detailed account of Mary’s magical practices is uniquely documented in a 500-page autobiography-cum-diary by Goodwin Wharton.10 Unfortunately, besides the register of her death in the parish of St Giles-in-the-Fields and a record of her third marriage, there is very little archival evidence about Mary Parish outside of Goodwin’s account.11 Consequently, Mary is only known to the historian through Goodwin’s reconstruction of her representation of herself to him. Mary appears as a character viewed solely through the lens of Goodwin in his self-centred narrative. This is further complicated by the fact that Mary presented herself to Goodwin as several personas: as a loyal and devoted wife; as a fertile woman who produced twenty-one children; as an astute businesswoman who managed her first husband’s business and ran her own; as a cunning woman who practised physic and assisted people in finding lost goods and hidden treasure; as an alchemist who could make a kind of imitation silver; and as a generous and trusting person who was temporarily down on her luck. The prosaic aspects of Mary’s life were the ground cloth onto which she embroidered her magical life. So let’s start there. At the age of thirteen, Mary Tomson of the village of Turville, Buckinghamshire, married Mr Boucher, a tailor from London, who was a widower substantially older than her. The young Mrs Boucher learned to keep accounts and manage her husband’s trade. But Mr Boucher was a drunkard and neglected his business as well as his wife and their seven daughters. When he died, he left his young family in a great deal of debt. But, as testimony to Mary’s business acumen, she had established good credit and continued the tailoring workshop, employing as many as ten men at a time. She also had her own textile

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business, pawning clothes and buying and selling goods. During this first widowhood, Mary took up the practice of physic, at which, by her own account, she had great success. Five or six years after her first husband’s death, Mr Boucher’s creditors had Mary thrown into debtor’s prison. While she was incarcerated, Mr Lawrence, a soldier and seaman from Berkshire and a distant relation, came to the prison with the purpose of courting her. She married him while she was still in Ludgate Prison, but he turned out to be “a whoring debauched man.”12 Nevertheless, before he died of his alcoholic and promiscuous behaviour, Mary gave birth to thirteen more daughters, a testament to her fertility. During her marriage to Lawrence, she continued her practice of physic and also engaged in cunning craft. Although she despised the title of fortuneteller, she did give people “her counsel and advice in matters” under the guise of astrology.13 Less than a year after the death of Mr Lawrence, Mary married for the third and last time to Thomas Parish, “a Suffolk gentleman of a good estate.”14 Mr Parish also proved to be a disappointment as a husband. Mary left his country home and moved back to London within the first year of their nuptials. Although they were not cohabiting, Mary bore him a son. During this period of independence, Mary performed alchemical experiments and continued to practise as a cunning woman. Her fame and fortune brought her to the attention of Dr Thomas Williams, chemical physician to King Charles II. She spent two years living at Whitehall as Williams’ housekeeper and assistant. Evidence of her skills lies in her account of making several medicinal recipes for Charles II. After two years of sexual harassment by Williams and non-reimbursement of expenses, she left Whitehall and settled in a little house in the Covent Garden area. Her fortunes continued to fade. Her alchemical work was spoiled, and she was betrayed by both friends and business acquaintances. When Goodwin approached her to make him a talisman for good luck at gambling, she was living a drunken, desolate life in a “little lodging in a poor beggarly alley, a very ill house.”15 By that point in her life, Mary had lost most of her children

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to the plague that had swept London in 1665; the others were either grown or living with relatives. Goodwin Wharton (1653– 1704), on the other hand, came from a very privileged background.16 He was the second son of the fourth Baron Philip Wharton, the head of a very prominent Whig family. Unfortunately, by his thirtieth birthday Goodwin had managed to alienate not only his own family but also Charles II. Goodwin had delivered a speech to the Exclusion Parliament of 1680, which was “so misreported and aggravated that it was a long time a great grief.”17 In addition to this public faux pas, he was “generally hated and slighted” by his own family, particularly his older brother Tom and his father.18 The main bone of contention between the elder Wharton and his son was the estate of Goodwin’s deceased mother, Lady Jane Goodwin Wharton. A property settlement had been drawn up between Goodwin’s mother and her husband designating the manor of Wooburn in Buckinghamshire to Goodwin.19 However, Philip Wharton reneged on his agreement after her death and awarded the manor to his eldest boy Tom. Goodwin resisted signing off on his legal interests for a long time, which painted him as a disobedient and difficult son. In addition to these grievances, Goodwin had also aroused suspicion concerning his relationship with Tom’s wife, Anne Lee Wharton. Although their romantic relationship was never consummated, Goodwin’s behaviour alienated the family and added to the rivalry between him and his brother. Since he was estranged from his family, Goodwin attempted to establish himself independently in the world. Before he met Mary, he had engaged in several entrepreneurial enterprises: he employed people in the “rare secrets in chemistry [alchemy]” until the partners quarrelled and the operation failed; he was a partner in “an ingenious design . . . for the squenching of public fires” but had problems with the patent; and he employed several people in expeditions to retrieve sunken treasure.20 All of these projects left him further in debt than when he started. In times of despair, he had even considered marrying for money, but God’s providence always intervened. Wharton described his situation just prior to meeting Mary: “After all this my condition [had] grown miserably low amongst my relations at home;

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and my credit as bad amongst my friends abroad in respect of borrowing of money to supply my wants, and my father having mostly withdrawn his wonted supplies from me.”21 In this desperate position, he made contact with the cunning woman Mary Parish in March 1683 in order “to be master of some secret power” that would grant him good luck at gambling.22 Shortly after their first meeting, Goodwin took it upon himself to resurrect Mary to her former glory. At first he relieved her with a little money; soon after he moved her to better lodgings. Not long after that, they started to live in the same rooms and became sexually intimate (Mary’s last husband had died by this time). In addition to a large discrepancy in their social status, there was also a spread in their ages: Goodwin was only thirty years old compared to Mary’s age of fifty-three. However, they pooled their limited resources to engage in several forms of magic, which could be classified as both ritual and popular. For example, Mary cast a ceremonial magic circle to gather fern seed on Midsummer’s Day;23 Goodwin manufactured a magical pea that would make the owner invisible,24 and made a love charm from a frog’s bone. But searching for hidden treasure was their main occupation for the next twenty years. A site at “4 great mighty trees set by themselves, all alone, with a mound of earth cast up between them” on Hounslow Heath kept them occupied for most of their relationship.25 Other locations of potential riches included a haunted house in the village of Hounslow; the cellar of a pub occupied by the ghost of the previous owner, Cardinal Wolsey; a house in Ratcliff, a hamlet outside the walls of London; another haunted house in Red Lion Fields, formerly an old monastery; and open, public sites in Leicester Fields and St James’s Park. To the modern reader, Mary and Goodwin’s adventures read like a child’s fairy tale. In addition to that impediment, one is never sure how much of their combined narrative is pure fabrication, either by Mary or by Goodwin. Goodwin was writing his journal for the edification of their illegitimate son, which would have influenced his presentation of the material. And Mary was presenting a particular picture of herself to Goodwin for her own purposes, which varied according to her needs. Nevertheless, Mary and Goodwin are

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symptoms of their culture. The stories that they told about the magical world are a reflection of the culture in which they were embedded. We can assess the narrative in terms of its cultural content, as one would read Spenser’s The Faerie Queene or a Shakespearean play. Goodwin was not unaware that a drama was unfolding around him. One day as he was writing in his diary, Mary told him that he should pray to the Lord and he “would make it a scene.”26 On another occasion, the Lord reminded him how similar his life was to a play: “thirty two years thou hast seen / but twelve of them have been a scene* (*that is (said Ahab) they might be made a tragedy or chronicle of).”27 Mary wove a world for Goodwin that combined mythology, contemporary history and the world of fairy into a complex tapestry. Goodwin acknowledged the fantastic nature of this alternate universe: These things look almost romantic & perhaps are almost the only romantic stories that are true in the world, but they were too true for me (at least I thought so then) and if they were not literally all true, you would not have them here set down, for I am upon too serious a point and too sensible of what I am doing, to be jesting with you, or fooling with my self.28 Goodwin did not believe that he was being deluded; he firmly believed in this secondary universe. Although the couple agreed to share in the spoils of treasurehunting equally, in other respects the partnership was not balanced. Like John Dee’s scryer Edward Kelley, Mary was the only one who could converse directly with the spirit world. But, also like Kelley, she granted Goodwin spiritual superiority within the partnership. Mary may have been the only one able to see and hear the spirits, but Goodwin was destined for much greater glory. Early in the relationship, Mary told Goodwin that she had seen “a great light round about [his] head, and a sort of a white fire as it were on the bed and then heard these words spoke loud and intelligibly ‘Be patient Wharton and a crown thou shalt wear with great renown.’”29

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Mary later witnessed the archangel Gabriel place a crown on Goodwin’s head, which “seem’d to be all gold and precious stones, and as it were fire amongst it, and the splendour of it was so great that it dazzled her eyes.”30 Gabriel also anointed Goodwin with oil while he slept and made him a prophet and “a member of this eternal kingdom of heaven.”31 The archangel Michael told him that one day he would be “solar king of the world,” and the Lord himself adopted him as his well-beloved son.32 The angel Ahab anointed him a priest of God who could “cure all distempers; heal the blind & lame; cure the lepers, and cast out devils.”33 He was also proclaimed king of the fairies, even though an official marriage to the queen of the fairies was constantly delayed. Besides many small religious gifts from the spirits, such as crucifixes, ornaments, a bleeding heart, relics, pictures of saints and the balm of Gilead, he also received a wand “of a delicate white bone like ivory, & on the little end, it being made taper, was a curious little cross cut. Gabriel of himself said it was a true unicorns horn, And there was not such another Rod in the world: it was also made in heaven.”34 Goodwin, like John Dee, also received a special breastplate from the angels, which was to enable him “to see the Lord and spirits and to converse with them.”35 Goodwin was very special. Like most magicians, Mary and Goodwin’s many magical projects were assisted by the spirit world. As a child, Mary had caught a glimpse of the fairies and attempted to entice them to come out by dancing in the fairy rings near her home in Turville, but they had not appeared. Then in the decade before she met Goodwin, a poor, old woman from Longford had shown her a place on Hounslow Heath where the fairies lived. Mary had stamped two or three times on the heath and attempted to call them out again, but to no avail. A few days later in her chamber, she heard a soft voice and felt something lying at her back in the night. Shortly after that “a little delicate creature appeared, she was not above a yard in height, but well dressed and delicately handsome.”36 Mary reached out and caught the woman’s hand, which was “a perfect hand of flesh.”37 The fairy had come to warn Mary that there was a design against her life. The next morning Mary rode to the heath outside London. Upon her arrival she heard “a ring of delicate bells” and then the “most delicate

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music.”38 Suddenly, “a gold plate, spoon & fork with sweetmeats upon the plate, and a bottle of wine, and a glass” appeared on the ground in front of her.39 On her next visit the following day, she was taken to a door in the ground that led downhill to a stately palace paved with marble, where she was invited to eat and drink with the king and queen of the fairies. This was the beginning of a very intimate relationship with the fairy realm for the next five or six years. Not only did the spirit world consist of flesh and bone, but interaction with them was also based on physical, everyday activities. The many plans to meet with the fairies involved the fairies travelling by coach or on horseback. This account demonstrates two things: like other female magicians, Mary was submissive to the spirit world – she invited the fairies rather than commanding them to appear; and the world of fantasy and imagination was a very physical experience. Mary was eventually banished from the fairy realm owing to her indiscreet behaviour concerning the wealth she received from them. She did not renew her association with the fairies until Goodwin entered her life. But the fairies were not the only other-worldly characters in Mary’s universe. Before she met Goodwin, she had acquired a familiar spirit while in Ludgate Prison. George Whitmore, a convicted felon, agreed to return to her from the grave because of his physical attraction to her. He said “there is nothing can please my thoughts but the liberty of coming to you again when I am dead, and telling you how much I loved you whilst alive.”40 After he returned as a spirit, George continued to have a physicality, including the fact that the rain was “very injurious” to him, and after travelling underground he would sometimes appear to be covered in mud.41 George helped the couple renew contact with the fairy realm. The physicality of the spirit realm included sex. At one point, Goodwin experienced “great pain & weakness” in his back.42 He discovered from George that the queen of the fairies was very often coming to him during the night as a succubus. According to demonologists, the succubi were demons who took female form to have sex with men. The queen’s sister engaged in the same practice; the daughter of a priest had been with him at least a hundred times

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without his knowledge; and the woman who was in charge of the Ratcliff treasure also raped him on at least three occasions. The concept of the lustful fairy queen who desires sexual liaisons with human men was well-developed in popular culture. Both Shakespeare’s character Bottom and Ben Jonson’s character Dapper were coveted by the fairy queen. Sisson suggests that the real life chancery case of Rogers vs. Rogers (1609–10) was reflected in Ben Jonson’s play, The Alchemist. Thomas Rogers of Hinton was promised to be married to the fairy queen in return for five or six pounds of gold. This case illustrates how some men desired sexual intimacy with the queen of the fairies.43 By the end of the seventeenth century, the demonological theories about succubi had been combined with popular culture. Robert Kirk, who wrote a treatise on fairies, identified the succubi as female fairies who “tryst with men.”44 Men often had the opportunity to trade the fairy queen’s lust for power, either directly in the form of wealth or indirectly by becoming her consort. Men like Goodwin could insert themselves into the fairy story as the hero. Indeed, it was this aspect of masculinity that made men vulnerable and granted agency to women like Mary, who had access to the realm of the supernatural. Goodwin’s self-image as a fertile and desirable partner made this seduction scenario possible. He states in his journal that “if I forbear 3 or 4 days being concern’d with a woman, there comes from me an unimaginable quantity of seed, which may be the natural cause I get so many children, it being impossible almost a woman should avoid it.”45 Not only was he extremely fertile, but he had incredible staying power as well. The priest’s daughter had taken advantage of him “4 times in one night.”46 He also discovered that “one of the last times, [the fairy queen] had continued lying with me, 3 times without ever quitting me, & that the 3rd time in excess of lust she had in that moment sucked up her breath, which had drawn the very sustenance of marrow out of my bones.”47 As flattering as the women’s lust (and his repeated ability to respond) may have been to Goodwin’s sense of masculinity, he found this practice “barbarous” and “the worst sort of ravishing” and that “no man sure having ever been so often & so much abused.”48 He was determined to put an end to it. A man’s

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honour was severely compromised when subjected to sexual control by a woman. Rape by a woman reversed the usual vulnerability of the female body; it was now the male body that was weak and susceptible to attack. To make matters worse, in this case, the female partner had to defend male virtue. Mary scolded George for not telling them sooner of the queen’s actions and discussed the situation with the queen herself in order to put an end to the nighttime trysts. In the foregoing situation, Goodwin’s body was the focus of attention for lust and rape. Mary also used her own body to play out the theme of rape in order to wield power. Mary accomplished this by establishing yet another persona: the martyr. Similar to John Pordage and his household, Mary and Goodwin acquired new spiritual names as part of their special relationship with God: Mary’s new name was Lucretia. The classical Lucretia was the extremely chaste wife of a principal member of the army of an Etruscan king. The son of the king became enamoured with Lucretia’s beauty and raped her. After Lucretia told her husband and obtained his vow to avenge her honour, she stabbed herself, as her own honour had been irreparably compromised. The theme of rape was built on events from the portion of Mary’s life before she met Goodwin. Her third husband’s nephew endeavoured to rape her to besmirch her reputation and cast doubt on the paternity of her unborn son. She had to throw bottles and pottery at the window to rouse the innkeeper to rescue her. While she was living at Whitehall, the chemical physician Thomas Williams entered her chamber in the night in an effort to seduce her. On that occasion, she made such a ruckus by yelling and stamping her feet that a maid soon appeared to intervene. An indirect rape was attempted by an unnamed man, who gave her an overdose of a love potion in the hope of having sexual relations. These anecdotes foreshadowed the attacks from the spirit realm. The fairy king proposed that if Mary had a child with him, he would make her “the greatest woman in England.”49 Other spirits also desired to have sex with Mary, including the ghost of Cardinal Wolsey, who lived in the cellar of the pub bearing his name, and the spirit of the fairy Thomas Shashbesh, who promised Mary great riches if she would marry him. A fairy priest visited Mary one night when Goodwin was away and

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climbed into her bed. When she struggled against his advances and threatened to cry out, he gave “her two or three bawdy sentences & hearty curses [. . .] having first vented his lust, before her in the room.”50 When Goodwin found out about the incident, he had to defend Mary’s sexual honour. He sent the man word that “if ever he came within her room again [he] would cut his throat.”51 Goodwin’s subordinate attitude to the spirit world did not prevent him from displaying manly courage in the face of danger, or at least being prepared to do so. As we have seen, Mary also employed the bodies of the fairy realm. Although the fairies practised a form of Catholicism, they followed strict Mosaic Laws concerning the enclosure of women during their menses, including eight days of purification afterwards. The menstruation of the fairy queen and the princess caused ongoing delays in Goodwin’s attempts to meet with them. The queen not only experienced her regular menstrual periods, but she also frequently “fretted her self” so that it made her again “ill before her time.”52 Fortunately, Mary remembered a certain prayer that enabled Goodwin to stop bleeding of any sort even at a distance. However, the angel Ahab advised that he should let the queen’s bleeding run its course for the first four or five days, because “the sudden stopping of her blood might strike to her heart.”53 After the queen miscarried Goodwin’s sons (produced as a result of the aforementioned rapes), her postpartum seclusion was a further delay. The physicality of Mary’s world is evident in the fact that the imperfect embryo of the second child was sent in warm water for Goodwin to see. The fairy realm was as physical as the earthly realm. Ironically, menstruation, childbirth and lactation were the main functions that contributed to the image of the female body as ‘leaky’ and, therefore, both out of control and ultimately uncontrollable.54 Reproductive functions linked the female body with nature and the animal world. Nonetheless, the female body was at the centre of patriarchy, both as the property of men and as the agent for reproductive purposes. As Mary discovered, anything that men used to reinforce patriarchal power could be used against them to undermine that power. Judaic menstrual taboos can be viewed as a

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way to degrade women and restrict their participation in religious, social and political society. However, Mary inverted the maleenforced taboo of contact with menstruating women into a tactic of control and power, to deny male contact with the fairy realm. Mary did not stop at merely using the queen’s menstruation as an excuse to prohibit Goodwin’s access to the fairy realm; she gave Goodwin the means by which to shorten the queen’s time of enclosure. Mary became the site of power from which Goodwin had access to magic. In Mary’s magical universe, patriarchal policies were turned to her own benefit. An interesting way that Mary used her body for magic was in relation to scrying. Goodwin recalled a conversation he had had with a gentleman who “had the benefit of the conversation of a good Angel.” Wharton understood that “there must of necessity be the inherent virtue of virginity, to capacitate any one to see” an angel. Then one day it came into his head “that there might be such a thing in nature (in this case) as an imputative virginity.” Since “the influence children have upon their mothers is undeniable,” he reasoned that a pregnant woman would receive the virtue of virginity via her unborn children. Virginity by proxy, so to speak. Using a glass of clean water, he immediately tested his theory with Mary, who was supposedly pregnant with two boys. Wharton invoked the angel Uriel, “in the manner [he] had learned,” and Mary immediately saw the angel “in all the beauty and proportions of a youth.” Uriel confirmed that Mary “was from her children possessed with the purity and virginity which they had,” which enabled her to see and hear him, something which Goodwin was never able to achieve.55 The spirit of a deceased Jewish man named Ahab was also contacted by scrying. Mary communicated directly with other angelic spirits, including the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Eventually, God spoke directly to Goodwin in rhyme from behind the chamber door. Goodwin could not achieve virginity by proxy, whereas Mary’s female body allowed her that option. Her pregnancies also affected her contact with the angel Ahab. His Jewish origins prohibited him from conversing with Mary when she was experiencing post-partum bleeding. Mary used her maternal body

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to maintain contact with the angels by being in a state of almost continual pregnancy for the next twenty years! As a fertile woman, Mary also cemented the personal bond between her and Goodwin, who thrived on the continual hope of an heir (which he eventually got). Mary allegedly continued to conceive until her death at the age of 73. In total, she reported 106 conceptions to Goodwin, most of which ended in miscarriage or the death of the infant. *** Like a performance artist, Mary created a space where she could purchase her own identity and constitute meaning for Goodwin’s life. Just as her life became a performance, so too did her performance become a way of life.56 Mary and Goodwin’s lives became a ‘living metaphor.’ Mary’s secondary universe had permeable boundaries similar to the early modern body. Her physical female body may have defined her performance of gender, but her imagination manifested the spirit realm into her daily, earthly life. This case study is an example of how female magicians cast their magic circles more broadly to interact with the world around them. This is in contrast to male magicians, who tended to create boundaries to contain and control the spirit world.

CHAPTER 9 MAGIC AND HONOUR

In anthropological terms, magical activity has a social function and can be analysed on that basis. The nature of ritual sometimes allows participants to manipulate the social elements involved in a conflict to arrive at a solution, without ever really defining the problem.1 The following case study examines how the narrative of ritual magic was used to resolve gendered social issues of honour and masculinity.2 Our story begins in 1643 in the small village of Stisted, Essex. On several occasions, a group of twenty or more men and women allegedly visited various gentry households, where they conjured the residents to sleep. Sometimes the group stole malt to be brewed especially for these meetings. They feasted on stolen geese, capons and venison. Music was provided by local fiddlers or one of the group playing on the virginals. Amongst the group was a “Conjurer, that went in black Apparel, of a brown hair, & a blackish beard, a man of a middle size.”3 On one occasion, a “man did conjure by making a circle in her master’s hall, and setting up three candles which burned blue and when they put them out they did it with milk and soot.” At one such gathering, one of the members of the group was concerned about secrecy and made the participants swear “an oath to keep things secret” on an unspecified book. Sexual misconduct was often an element of the proceedings. On another occasion, the group allegedly accosted an elderly gentry woman, “pulled off the bed

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clothes & put up her smock to her middle.” Another time, a knighted gentleman was sexually abused. The incident we are interested in took place at the home of John Alston. The group dragged the man’s married daughter out of her bed and two men “had the use of her body.” Her husband was also the victim of sexual misconduct. Two of the maids “kissed him & pulled up his shirt, & took up their Coats & lay down on the top of him & they said that he did them some good, for he lay with them as man with a woman.” They also dragged the woman’s brother out of his bed and laid him beside his sister. Some of the women in the party dressed up in Mrs Alston’s petticoats while others of the group broke into John Alston’s study and stole money. Mysteriously, the victims slept through the entire proceedings. This particular incident became a legal matter two years later. On 28 and 29 March, 1645, two serving maids from the Alston household gave details of the event to the local justice of the peace in relation to a Quarter Sessions investigation. At the next Quarter Sessions, Midsummer 1645, four of the people named in the depositions submitted a counter-petition to the justice to drop the related allegations. No record of an indictment survives to indicate whether formal charges were ever made following the investigation. This legal situation included men from several prominent families of the parish as well as male and female servants. In brief, John Alston, a notable man in the community, accused Robert Aylett and his compatriots of invading his home. The Aylett gang allegedly dragged Alston’s son, daughter and daughter’s husband out of their beds and assaulted them. Then they broke into his study and took money. All of this was accomplished by the use of magic. The accusations against the Aylett group grew out of the fact that John Alston had lost some money out of his study. In order to identify the thief, he and his wife consulted a cunning man, whom they paid forty pence. The cunning man confirmed that it was Robert Aylett and his confederates who broke into the study and stole the money while Aylett charmed the household asleep. In one deposition, one of the maids confirmed that another of the maids opened the

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study door with a ‘picklock,’ allowing Robert Aylett and three other men to enter. However, Alston was not content with a simple charge of theft against the group. In addition to allegations of rape and physical assault, he also accused Aylett of using ceremonial magic. During the alleged events, the Alston men did not attempt to defend themselves or their womenfolk; they were also passive victims. However, further investigation reveals that the Alston men were not strangers to violence and confrontation. How could they explain their passivity and still maintain their male honour and their household authority? In this instance, the narrative of ceremonial magic constructed a separate space in which the victims were not responsible for their actions or lack thereof. This offered the Alston family members, both male and female, an opportunity to salvage their honour. In the seventeenth century, the boundaries of a ceremonial magic circle usually created a space that protected the participants from demonic spirits. The symbolic circle was a safe container, temporarily removed from the profane world. But the boundaries of the magic circle imagined by the Alstons did not protect its members; instead, it acted as a mechanism to repair the social boundaries that had been transgressed. The boundaries of John Alston’s household were trespassed: his home was overtaken and his study was broken into and robbed. Boundaries of social status were transgressed: the Alstons’ servants engaged in subversive and disrespectful behaviour. Sexual boundaries were broken: Elizabeth Drury was raped or, at the very least, shamed and dishonoured. Gender boundaries were disrupted: Edmund Drury was sexually inverted by being mounted by the women and raped – a truly feminised victim. The normal world of Stisted was turned upside down. Elizabeth Gallant and Martha Hurrell, the two maids who worked for John Alston, gave two depositions each. On 29 March, they retracted the first deposition of 28 March and offered another version of the events. The substance of the two depositions varied greatly. Integral to my argument is the fact that the element of conjuring was only a part of the narrative in the first version: the version endorsed by the Alstons themselves. According to the maids, the Alston family had insisted that they recount the first version of

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the events. They alleged that they had been coerced by John Alston and his wife, Anne, as well as by their married daughter Elizabeth and her husband Edmund Drury, into accusing the Aylett party. The maid Elizabeth Gallant said that Mrs Alston followed Martha Hurrell around threatening her with a beating and if “she did not acknowledge what they charged her with (which was that before) she should answer it in a worse place.” Gallant even said that the Alstons would not let her go out of the house for fear she would tell the truth. But the day following their initial deposition, the girls were free from the intimidation of their masters and were determined to set the record straight. Given the maids’ social position and the Alston family’s reputation for violent behaviour (discussed below), it is not surprising that they were reluctant to disobey their employers. Although the maids retracted much of their testimony on the second day, they reiterated some of the details. In the first set of statements, the serving girls alleged that the group included Robert and Thomas Aylett, other leading men of the community, male and female servants, and a conjurer. The incident in question supposedly happened at one of half a dozen meetings held at the Alstons’ home. In the second deposition, the names of the participants changed drastically. The Aylett brothers were specifically vindicated, and two of the men who remained accused were described as being “base borne,” a designation commonly applied to bastards. In other words, the social composition of the group was altered from the Alston’s gentry rivals to a handful of rabble and servants. The servant Martha Hurrell also denied ever being at the homes of the gentry families named in the first account. At first this appears to be insignificant. But the inclusion of other high ranking families as fellow victims had, no doubt, alleviated some of the shame from the Alston family. If similar events had happened to other respected families, then that meant that the Alstons were not singled out for derision. The elements that were retained in the second version of the narrative are of even more interest. Martha Hurrell reaffirmed that Elizabeth, John Alston’s daughter and the wife of Edmund Drury, was indeed taken out of her bed and “laid in the hall chamber, & then John Bayliffe would have abused her, (& that he took up her smock as

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high as her waist) but was prevented by the rest of the Company.” In both of the depositions, Elizabeth Drury’s brother, Lestrange Alston, was laid beside her; however, there is no elaboration of sexual activity by the maids in the revised version. Also, it is never stated whether Elizabeth Drury was awake or asleep during the attempted rape. So in both versions of the event, John Alston’s married daughter was dragged from her bed and in some way sexually assaulted. And in both versions, the Alston men did nothing to protect her; in fact, they were passive victims as well. Also in both accounts, John Alston was “pulled about [. . .] as he lay in his bed,” but, in the second version, one of the maids prevented the group from carrying him downstairs. But the most important element that was omitted was any mention of conjuring or magic. In order to understand the role of magic in this story, we need to examine the relationships between the accusers and the accused. The parish of Stisted is situated in the county of Essex, in the area known as East Anglia, approximately forty-two miles north-east of London. Two of the men accused by the Alstons in 1645 were directly descended from an old, well-established gentry family in Essex dating back to King Henry II (1154– 89). In 1433, Richard Aylett was considered the chief gentleman of the county. The accused, Robert Aylett (b. 1615), was descended from this prestigious lineage. He was heir to one of the main manors in Stisted, the manor of Rainhatch. Thomas Aylett (d. 1659), the other accused, was his younger brother. Eventually, Robert married at the relatively late age of fifty and produced one male heir, but in the 1640s he was unencumbered by dependants and was not yet the patriarchal head of the Aylett family.4 In early modern terms, he had not yet achieved full manhood, which was partially determined by being married and the head of a household. John Alston (d. 1653), the main protagonist in this drama, was a gentleman and a major landowner in the area. His firstborn son, Lestrange, was born in 1600, which suggests that John was in his seventies by 1645.5 In a 1636 tax assessment, his allotment was valued at four times the value of the Robert Aylett estate.6 At the time he wrote his will in 1653, he held land in Stisted, Bocking,

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Boxford, Toppesfield, Weathersfield and Sible Hedingham, as well as in Ladley in Suffolk.7 Evidence reveals that there was an ongoing feud between the Alston clan and the Aylett family, or possibly between the Alstons and everyone else in Stisted. There had been several altercations throughout the years between the Alston men and the rest of the community. Twenty-six years before this incident, in 1617, John and his eldest son, Lestrange (only seventeen years old at the time), were ordered to keep the peace against certain men of the parish.8 Shortly after the conjuring accusation, in 1652, the Alstons stirred up the community against paying rates for the troops during the civil war. During the investigation, it was revealed that the Alstons “have ever been refractory in the payment of any sum or sums they have been rated at” and had refused to pay the last rate as well.9 Later that year they were in conflict with the law again, complaining that they were being over-rated for poor rates as well.10 The first petition, concerning rates for the troops, was initiated by the constables of Stisted, one of whom was Robert Wood.11 In January 1654, Henry Alston, the youngest son of John, apparently got his revenge against Wood. Henry was found guilty of beating Wood so severely with “swords staves & knives” that “of his life it was greatly despaired.”12 But a few months later the tables were turned once again, as Wood, along with Robert Aylett and other Stisted farmers, “riotously assembled” and broke John Alston’s wooden gate. Alston must have been enraged that the jury returned the indictment as ‘not a true bill.’13 At the same time, Henry Alston and Robert Aylett were involved in a dispute concerning payment of a fine by John Alston. In 1653 Henry Alston had been one of the overseers for the poor. Although the parishioners of Stisted had nominated Robert Aylett, along with two other men, to replace him in 1654, Henry continued to consider himself the official overseer. Meanwhile, Henry’s father John was convicted for swearing several oaths and was ordered to pay a fine of twenty shillings. When Aylett and the other overseers endeavoured to collect the fine, John Alston maintained that he had already paid it to his son, Henry. This case was also settled in favour of the Aylett

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faction.14 The feud was still active ten years after the alleged conjuring incident; Robert Aylett complained to authorities that Alston had failed to either scour the ditches or trim the branches back from his portion of the highway.15 These incidents paint a picture of the Alston men as irascible, uncooperative and aggressive. As the community took the law into its own hands, the rivalry was played out by passive civil disobedience, recourse to legal authority and outright violence. One of the most outrageous elements of the narrative that was endorsed by the Alstons was the mounting and symbolic rape of Edmund Drury. The ‘riding’ of Drury was an explicit display of shaming. The ‘woman on top’ scenario was the ultimate symbol of sexual inversion.16 As both Drury and his wife were pulled out of their beds and sexually assaulted, it would seem that both were being targeted for some sort of sexual or social transgression. Another interesting element is that, in both versions of the narrative, Elizabeth’s brother Lestrange was also pulled out of his bed and laid beside his sister. What role did he play in the family’s disgrace? If this particular episode had started out as a shaming ritual such as a charivari or ‘rough music,’ John Alston and his household would have even more reason to attempt to rectify the inversion.17 In the face of the entire community, the victims had little other choice but to submissively accept their punishment. But perhaps John Alston did not humbly accept either his guilt or his punishment. By including the element of ritual magic in the narrative, a different kind of boundary was established that counteracted this temporary spontaneous inversion. A circle was cast that physically enveloped the Alston household but created a psychic space outside of normative time and space. By constructing such a magical space through the narrative, the Alstons could make accusations against their aggressors that otherwise would have been shaming or derogatory to themselves. The Alston family not only constructed a narrative that gave meaning to this particular social drama, but the narrative also allowed them to extract meanings that were disturbing to the participants. Instead of being considered a passive bystander who allowed his home to be robbed and his

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daughter to be raped, John Alston could configure himself as a victim of supernatural power, beyond human contestation. This construction may not have been a conscious effort, but the fear of dishonour and sexual assault led the Alston family to unconsciously modify its narrative using material from shared cultural artefacts. According to the maids, Elizabeth Drury followed them about “putting these things [the allegations in the first deposition] to them.” Elizabeth had more invested in an alternate scenario than the men. Early modern rape victims were overwhelmingly concerned with their reputations. Rape was defined as a sexual act rather than an act of violence. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the normal discourse concerning women and sex was one of acquiescence.18 Despite the fact that women were considered the lustier sex, they were constructed as being submissive during the act of intercourse. Their lustiness was the reason that they acquiesced. Therefore, in order for stories of rape to stand up to male scrutiny, the element of female submission had to be absent. Any language of acquiescence implicitly fostered the idea of consent. One way to prove the absence of submission was by the demonstration of resistance. But too much resistance could undermine the woman’s reputation and construct her as a disorderly woman. However, neither consent nor resistance could be offered if a woman was ‘charmed’ asleep and oblivious to the proceedings. Her honour could hardly be impugned if she had no agency whatsoever. Through the construction of the ceremonial magic narrative, Elizabeth Drury was able to transfer her agency, or lack thereof, to her assailants and her male relatives. Her hounding of the maids reveals her concern about the reconstruction of the event. Perhaps relevant to this story were the exploits of John Lambe, the cunning man who was stoned and cudgelled to death by a crowd in London because of the alleged rape of a young girl, in addition to his magical practices and his association with the first duke of Buckingham. According to the pamphlet published in 1628, Lambe caused a woman walking in the street to take up her coats above her waist. When asked by other women why she was engaging in such shameless behaviour, the woman replied that she thought she was wading through a pool of water. In other words, she was under the

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spell of a magician and no longer had control of her actions. Therefore, she was not responsible for her actions and could salvage her honour. Whether true of not, the anecdote demonstrates the perceived use of magic for deviant, sexual purposes.19 The shift of attention from rape to magic protected more than Elizabeth Drury’s honour. While it effectively removed any notion of complicity in the sexual scenario from Elizabeth, it also protected the honour of her male kinsmen. Control over the household, and, in particular, control over the sexual activities of wives and daughters was an important element of male honour in this period. Men who did not defend their wives and families risked their status in the social order.20 As one of the leading men in the community, John Alston had to maintain his position as patriarchal defender. As an elderly man, Alston’s right to patriarchal privilege was dependent on maintaining his physical strength and his past reputation. Manhood had to be constantly reinforced, even in the face of advancing age.21 Edmund Drury’s reputation as a husband was also at risk. Not only had the men not defended Elizabeth Drury against attack, they had also been passive victims. In the first version of the events – the one endorsed by the Alston faction – John Alston was taken out of his bed and laid “upon a Coffer at his bed feet.” The group would have carried him downstairs along with the others, except the maid, Gallant, persuaded them otherwise. Even in the second version of the story, Martha Hurrell averred that one of the men “was very desirous to take her Master out of his bed & to carry him down.” In both versions, John Alston was defended by one of his serving maids, yet another inversion of both gender and social hierarchy. If Alston and the other men were not conjured asleep, how could they explain their submission to such behaviour? If John Alston chose to frame the accusations of theft in terms of the supernatural, why did he choose ceremonial magic rather than witchcraft? The Aylett name had already been associated with witchcraft accusations.22 In 1589, Alice Aylett, wife of another Thomas Aylett of neighbouring Braintree, had been charged with being a witch and enchantress. But witchcraft in England was usually concerned with maleficium; theft and rape were outside its

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jurisdiction. Also, Robert Aylett did not meet the English stereotype of a poor, elderly woman as a witch. The profile of John Alston that has been sketched out here was of a man who was proud and competitive. If his household was going to be conjured asleep, it was not going to be by just any common (female) witch. The construction of Robert Aylett as a powerful conjurer both strengthened the Alston household’s position as victims and bolstered John Alston’s honour. It is one thing to overcome the weak will of a woman, but to overcome a strong man’s took a powerful magus. Robert Aylett’s family was the chief rival of the Alston family in the parish. By accusing Aylett of conjuring the Alston household to sleep, Alston was inadvertently acknowledging the status of his opponent. Although the image of the magus had generally disintegrated by the last half of the seventeenth century, the power of magic was still held in awe. As this case illustrates, the Alstons had no scruples about consulting a cunning man for advice concerning the theft. Although Alston had been temporarily humiliated by Aylett’s magic, he could turn the tables on his opponent by exposing his sorcery to the world. This would have not only salvaged Alston’s honour in relation to his passivity but had the potential of dishonouring his rival. Magic provided a further discourse in their ongoing competition for status in the community. This case study demonstrates how the discourse of magic could be used to reinforce and protect gender ideologies. The social conflicts in this situation, which were animated by gender ideals of honour, hierarchy and sexual reputation, were mediated through the narrative of magic constructed by the Alston family. The Alstons figuratively and symbolically cast a circle in an attempt to salvage their honour and reputation. Paradoxically, by constructing a ceremonial circle, their household was vulnerable inside its boundaries; but, at the same time, the casting of this space constructed a narrative that attempted to restore the family’s honour, if not its safety. The Alstons’ gendered preoccupation with honour interfaced with the anthropological function of ritual as a locus for resolving social conflicts.

CONCLUSION:BOUNDARIES AND INTERSECTIONS

The preceding chapters have not recounted a linear narrative, but rather have unravelled various threads that are connected to a larger web. One thread that runs throughout is the theme of boundaries. The premodern magical worldview provided for an elision of boundaries between the physical and the spiritual, and between the imaginary and the real. This permeability was treated differently by male and female magicians. First of all, male magicians tried to erect and define boundaries between the worlds, which was part of a larger project of controlling nature. Learned male rituals provided safeguards against evil spirits running amok. Male magicians tended to invoke angels and other spirits into a circle or a crystal so that they could discourse with them in a controlled environment. The spirits were bound and under strict domination by the magus. They usually remained ethereal or contained in a crystal as images, as opposed to being physically manifest. This approach to magic reflected the male predisposition for control over nature, as well as control over personal fears and desires. Within the boundaries of the magic circle or the scrying crystal, male magicians could attain hegemonic manhood or perform alternate versions of masculinity. Even when they used magic to challenge traditional ideals, the end result was the attainment of universal norms of manhood or the reinforcement of new

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constructions of masculinity, as in the case of the emergence of the ‘godly’ man. Men were accustomed to having power embodied in many institutionalised spaces, such as churches, universities, guilds, coffee houses and clubs. Therefore, the incorporation of aspects of ritual magic into religion, medical practice or homosocial sites such as freemasonry is not surprising. The body itself was not necessary as a site of power since manhood was defined by the institutions men had established. But women, for the most part, were excluded from the formal institutions of power. Therefore, the body was one of the few sites where they had ultimate control (at least some of the time). For female magicians, their bodies and the bodies of the spirit world could serve as sites of power. Female magicians tended to blur the boundaries associated with magic, just as they blurred the boundaries of their own bodies. Their approach to the spirit realm was more cooperative than controlling; they engaged with the fairy world in a more interactive way rather than employing techniques of command and coercion. They fed and appeased the spirits in hopes of gaining their favour, just as they were subservient and submissive in their relationships with their fathers, brothers and husbands. Rather than establishing boundaries between themselves and nature, they reinforced the extension of their bodies into the natural world. The absence of boundaries made magic more physical for female magicians. They did not have the same need to establish a separate sacred space because the sacred was internalized, or more literally, embodied. But since they followed the parameters set out by existing gender ideologies, magic was not respected when practised by women. This is evident in the case of Ann Watts, who was arraigned in June 1687 at a petty session in Stratford, Essex, “for making fire in [Sir William Hicks] wood at unseasonable hours, & other misdemeanours.” At the time of her arrest, Watts was in possession of several occult books, including Henry Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy, Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft, an astrological reference manual by John Gadbury, and another unspecified astrology manual. Her books were seized and burned, but Watts and her companions were merely discharged. The authorities alleged that Watts was “pretending to be a fortune

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teller.”1 Although she possessed the type of books used by male ceremonial magicians throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, she was not suspected of practising magic or even engaging in witchcraft. Instead, she was dismissed as a fraud. By the end of the seventeenth century, female magic was aligned with cozening rather than conjuring. In short, magical practices, like all other cultural practices, were inextricably caught up with existing gender ideologies.

NOTES

Introduction 1. For example, see James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion (1922, abridged edn London: Papermac, 1987); C.S.J. Thompson, The Quacks of Old London (London: Brentano’s, 1928); Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches (London: Oxford University Press, 1931); Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: University Books, 1956). 2. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. 7 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958); D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic: From Ficino to Campanella (1958, repr. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). 3. Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (1949, repr. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998); Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). 4. For example, Brian Vickers, “Introduction,” in B. Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1 – 56; Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988). 5. Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1970); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971). 6. For a discussion on the role of ritual in society, see Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. M.B. Vizedom and G.L. Caffie (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, trans. C. Jacobson and

158

7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

NOTES TO PAGES 2 –7 B.G. Schoepf (New York: Anchor Books, 1967); Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969); Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Frank Klaassen examined the gendered features of medieval magical manuals. Frank F. Klaassen, “Learning and Masculinity in Manuscripts of Ritual Magic of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 38, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 49– 76. The Way of Hermes: The Corpus Hermeticum, trans. C. Salaman, et al. (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 2000), Book 5:1, 34. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 2. Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987). Psychotherapists are moving away from defining the self as a core identity towards defining the self as a storyteller. The ‘self’ is not a stable entity but an ongoing autobiography that the person constantly rewrites. Harold A. Goolishian and Harlene Anderson, “Narrative and Self. Postmodern Dilemmas for Psychotherapy,” in D. F. Schnitman (ed.), New Paradigms, Culture and Subjectivity (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002), 218– 21. Stephen Wilson, The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe (London: Hambledon and London, 2000), 441– 3. Part of the Second Book of Clavicula Salomonie, B.L. Add. 36674, f 16v– 17.

Chapter 1 For the ‘Uninitiated’ 1. William Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers: Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times from the Year 1602 – 1681 (London: Folklore Society, 1974), 32. 2. For an introduction to the subject of early modern witchcraft in England see: Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1970); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971); Deborah Willis, Malevolent Nurture: WitchHunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); James Sharpe, Witchcraft in Early Modern England (Harlow: Longman, 2001). 3. For a fairly comprehensive listing of English witchcraft pamphlet literature, see Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: University Books, 1956), 328– 38. 4. Claire Fanger and Frank Klaassen, “Magic III: Middle Ages,” in W. J. Hanegraaff (ed.), Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism (Leiden: Brill, 2005),

NOTES TO PAGES 7 –12

5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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730–1; Frank Klaassen, “Medieval Ritual Magic in the Renaissance,” Aries 3, no. 2 (2003): 171. Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 6. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, ed. S. Barnet (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 27 – 8 (I.i, lines 99 –111). For a discussion on alchemy in relation to science, see A.G. Debus, ed., Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry: Papers from Ambix (London: Jeremy Mills Publishing for the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, 2004); Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). Grimoire is derived from the French word for ‘grammar.’ OED. Frank F. Klaassen, “Religion, Science, and the Transformations of Magic: Manuscripts of Magic, 1300– 1600” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1999), 52, 106, 203. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 289. For a discussion of the Ars Notoria, see Claire Fanger, “Plundering the Egyptian Treasure: John the Monk’s Book of Visions and Its Relation to the Ars Notoria of Solomon,” in C. Fanger (ed.), Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 216; Klaassen, “English Manuscripts of Magic: A Preliminary Survey,” in Conjuring Spirits, 14 – 19; Jan R. Veenstra, Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France: Text and Context of Laurens Pignon’s Contre les devineurs (1411) (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 18, 70, 293; Julien Ve´rone`se, “Magic, Theurgy, and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars notoria,” in C. Fanger (ed.), Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 37 –78. B.L. Sloane 3850, f 115. A full translation of the text is provided in F. C. Conybeare, “The Testament of Solomon,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 11, no. 1 (October 1898): 1 – 45. B.L. Add. 36674, ff 4 – 22. Bod. Rawlinson D253, p. 50. B.L. Add. 36674, f 16. B.L. Add. 36674, f 122v. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 111v. Bod. Rawlinson D253, 12. B.L. Add. 36674, ff 4 – 22. Juris Lidaka, “The Book of Angels, Rings, Characters and Images of the Planets: Attributed to Osbern Bokenham,” in Conjuring Spirits, 47. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 63v. Bod. Rawlinson D253, 21. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 61.

160

NOTES TO PAGES 12 –15

25. The well-known magus Agrippa devoted three chapters to these topics. Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. Freake, ed. D. Tyson (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995), Book 3, Chap. LIV, LV, LVI, 641– 8. 26. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 161. 27. Bod. Rawlinson D253, 60. 28. B.L. Add. 20006, p. 135. 29. B.L. Sloane 1727, f 18 – 19. 30. Examples of six-rayed stars are in B.L. Harley 3981, f 77v. and B.L. Lansdowne 1202. 31. Bod. Rawlinson D253, 12. 32. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 33. 33. John Tillotson, A Discourse against Transubstantiation (London, 1684), 34. 34. Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, A Necromancer’s Manual of the Fifteenth Century (Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing, 1997), 133– 40. 35. Matthew W. Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Greco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 2001), 22; Daniel Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 163– 4. 36. Charles Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages: Text and Techniques in the Islamic and Christian Worlds (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1996), 2 – 4. 37. Sarah Iles Johnston, “The Testament of Solomon from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance,” in J.N. Bremmer and J.R. Veenstra (eds), The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 35 – 8. 38. There is a long history of dealing with demons of sickness. Manuscripts dating back to 1800 BCE were found in the royal library of the Assyrian city of Nineveh, in present day Iraq, which described medical magic in the form of exorcisms against demons of sickness. Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (1949, repr. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 5. 39. The fallen angels are described in detail in Enoch 6:1– 3, 7:1– 2, 15:9 – 12. Valerie Flint, “The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions,” in B. Ankarloo and S. Clark (eds), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 293. 40. Fanger and Klaassen, “Magic III: Middle Ages,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 728. 41. Nicky Hallett, Witchcraft, Exorcism and the Politics of Possession in a SeventeenthCentury Convent (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 18 – 19. 42. Rituale Romanum, Edition Princeps (1614) (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004). 43. Bod. Ashmole 182, f 169.

NOTES TO PAGES 15 –18

161

44. The Greek magical papyri are a collection of spells, formulae, hymns and rituals from Greco-Roman Egypt dating from the second century BCE to the fifth century CE . They were discovered in the nineteenth century in Thebes. “Introduction,” in H.D. Betz (ed.), The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), xli– xlii. 45. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 38. 46. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 191– 201. 47. The antiquary Sir Robert Cotton (1571 –1631) collected Dee’s manuscripts and occult paraphernalia, some of which are housed in the British Museum. Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988), 206. 48. Bod. Ashmole 421, f 165. 49. John Aubrey, Miscellanies upon the following subjects collected by J. Aubrey, Esq. (London, 1696), Chap. XV, 128. 50. ERO Q/SR 67/45. 51. B.L. Add. 20006, pp. 118– 19. 52. B.L. Sloane 3188, f 9. 53. Bod. Ashmole 421, f 165. 54. ERO Q/SR 67/45. 55. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. I, comprising Corporations of Berwick-upon-Tweed, Burford and Lostwithiel; Counties of Wilts and Worcester; Bishop of Chichester; Deans and Chapters of Chichester, Canterbury and Salisbury (London, 1894), 128. 56. In the middle ages, the construction of talismans was viewed as simply a branch of astrology by scholars such as the German Dominican Albertus Magnus. Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages, 13. 57. Nicolas Weill-Parot, “Astrology, Astral Influences, and Occult Properties in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Traditio 65, no. 1 (2010): 203. 58. Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages, 1– 15; Sophie Page, Magic in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 29 –35. 59. B.L. Sloane 3822, f 11. 60. Weill-Parot, “Astrology, Astral Influences, and Occult Properties in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” 218– 29. 61. For a discussion of astrology in early modern England, see Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500– 1800 (London: Faber and Faber, 1979); Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). 62. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 9. 63. Bod. Ashmole 1406, f 98. 64. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Magic I: Introduction,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 717.

162

NOTES TO PAGES 18 –20

65. Frank L. Borchardt, “The Magus as Renaissance Man,” The Sixteenth-Century Journal 21, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 73 – 4. 66. John North, “Macrocosm, Microcosm, and Analogy,” in L. Nauta and D. Pa¨tzold (eds), Imagination in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 138. 67. The Emerald Tablet, which first appeared in the West in editions of the pseudoAristotelian Secretum Secretorum c.1140, was supposedly written by Hermes. See B.J.T. Dobbs, “Newton’s Commentary on the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus: Its Scientific and Theological Significance,” in I. Merkel and A.G. Debus (eds), Hermeticism and the Renaissance (Washington, DC: Folger Books, 1988), 182– 4. 68. Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia: in duo volumina secundum cosmi differentiam diuisa (Oppenheimii, 1617). 69. Frances A. Yates, Theatre of the World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 43. 70. Joscelyn Godwin, Robert Fludd: Hermetic Philosopher and Surveyor of Two Worlds (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), 68. 71. Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times, trans. D. Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 3 – 6. 72. The term ‘hermetic’ was first used by classical scholars to refer to texts attributed to Hermes. By the seventeenth century, it was mostly used in reference to alchemical works. In the twentieth century, it became almost interchangeable with ‘magic’ or ‘occult.’ Historians of science prefer to limit the use of the term to the philosophical hermetica of the Corpus and the technical hermetica such as the Picatrix or the Kyranides. Brian Copenhaver, “Natural Magic, Hermetism, and Occultism in Early Modern Science,” in D.C. Lindberg and R.S. Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 280–9. 73. For a discussion of the translating activity in medieval Spain, see Burnett, Magic and Divination in the Middle Ages, IV, 1036– 58. 74. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 118; Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), xiii; B.P. Copenhaver, “Introduction,” in B.P. Copenhaver (ed.), Hermetica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), xxiv, xlv; Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 25–7. 75. “The Secrete of Secretes, from Bodleian Library MSS. Ashmole 396 and Lyell 36,” M.A. Manzalaoui (ed.), in Secretum Secretorum, Nine English Versions (Oxford: published for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1977), 18 – 113. 76. Steven J. Williams, “Roger Bacon and His Edition of the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum,” Speculum 69, no. 1 (January 1994): 57 – 73.

NOTES TO PAGES 20 –21

163

77. Robert Greene, The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay as It Was Plaid by Her Maiesties Seruants (London, 1594). 78. George Molland, “Bacon [Bakun], Roger (c.1214– 1292?),” DNB. 79. In 1614, Meric Casaubon, a Genevan Calvinist, would rain on the hermetists’ parade by arguing that the text was not from the pre-Mosaic era but was actually written in Alexandria between the first and third centuries CE . This meant that the corpus was influenced by Platonic and Biblical sources rather than vice versa. Nonetheless, Casaubon’s discovery in the seventeenth century came too late to affect the acceptance of hermeticism in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gilles Quispel, Professor Emeritus of Utrecht and Harvard universities, argues that even though the Corpus was post-Christian, there is evidence in writings discovered in Egypt in 1945 to suggest that the hermetic beliefs were very ancient and had Egyptian origins. The philosophy of the work is rooted in Egyptian religious beliefs associated with the sun god, Ammon-Re. Nonetheless, Quispel concedes that the Greek translation discovered in the fifteenth century reflects the spiritual and philosophical vocabularies of the syncretic culture of Alexandria. See G. Quispel, “Preface,” in The Way of Hermes: The Corpus Hermeticum, trans. C. Salaman, et al. (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 2000), 9, 82, 85 – 6. 80. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Better than Magic: Cornelius Agrippa and Lazzarellian Hermetism,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 4, no.1 (Summer 2009): 4. 81. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 37. By the sixteenth century there were two dozen editions. 82. Hermes Trismegistus, The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus in XVII Books. Translated Formerly out of the Arabick into Greek, and Thence into Latine, and Dutch, and Now out of the Original into English; by That Learned Divine Doctor Everard, trans. J. Everard (London, 1649). 83. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964); Yates, “The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science,” in C.S. Singleton (ed.), Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1967); Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979). 84. Sixteenth-century ritual magic collections continued to include material from medieval grimoires. For a discussion of the continuity of medieval magic in the Renaissance, see Frank F. Klaassen, “Medieval Ritual Magic in the Renaissance,” 166– 99. 85. For a sampling of the so-called ‘Yates debate’ see Brian Copenhaver, “Natural Magic, Hermetism, and Occultism in Early Modern Science,” 261– 301; Hanegraaff, “Better than Magic,” 1 – 25; Richard Kieckhefer, “Did Magic Have a Renaissance? An Historiographic Question Revisited,” in C. Burnett and W.F. Ryan (eds), Magic and the Classical Tradition (London: The Warburg Institute – Nino Aragno Editore, 2006), 201– 3; J.E. McGuire, “Neoplatonism and Active Principles: Newton and the Corpus Hermeticum,” in Robert

164

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.

95.

96. 97. 98. 99.

100.

101.

NOTES TO PAGES 21 – 24 S. Westman (ed.), Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1977), 95 – 142; Brian Vickers, “Introduction,” in B. Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Robert S. Westman, “Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsidered,” in Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution. Hanegraaff, “Better than Magic,” 2, 9, 14. Klaassen, “Medieval Ritual Magic in the Renaissance,” 189– 91. J.P. Mahe, “Introduction to ‘The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius,’” in The Way of Hermes, 102. Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, 147. As an interesting aside, in the 1930s Karl Jansky discovered transmissions of radio waves coming from the Milky Way. Vickers “Introduction,” 117. From Marsilio Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, XV, as quoted in Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, trans. M. Cook (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 117. William H. Huffman, Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1988), 2 – 3. For a discussion on the works of Pico see M.V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: new essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Fabrizio Lelli, “Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 949– 54. For a discussion of the practice of kabbalah see Isaiah Tishby, “General Introduction,” in The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 24, 91 –4. Also David B. Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Jean-Pierre Brach, “Magic IV: Renaissance – 17th Century,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 733. Ibid., 732–3. Klaassen, “Religion, Science, and the Transformations of Magic: Manuscripts of Magic, 1300– 1600,” 233. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Written by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, Counseller to Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany: And Judge of the Prerogative Court. Translated out of the Latin into the English Tongue, by J. F. (London, 1650). Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Henry Cornelius Agrippa, his fourth book of occult philosophy of geomancy, magical elements of Peter de Abano, astronomical geomancy, the nature of spirits, arbatel of magick / translated into English by Robert Turner (London, 1655). Hereinafter referred to as Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. Brian P. Copenhaver, “Iamblichus, Synesius and the Chaldaean Oracles in Marsilio Ficino’s De Vita Libritres: Hermetic Magic or Neoplatonic Magic?,” in

NOTES TO PAGES 24 –26

102. 103.

104. 105.

106. 107.

108. 109.

110.

111. 112.

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J. Hankins, J. Monfasani and F. Purnell, Jr. (eds), Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987), 441–2; Copenhaver, “Natural Magic, Hermetism, and Occultism in Early Modern Science,” 261– 301; Hanegraaff, “Better than Magic,” 2. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, 110– 11. Quotation from Ficino cited in Charles Trinkaus, “Marsilio Ficino and the Ideal of Human Autonomy,” in K. Eisenbichler and O.Z. Pugliese (eds), Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism (Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1986), 142– 8. Owsei Temkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), 17 – 18. Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Volume 3, Books IX– XI, trans. M.J.B. Allen with J. Warden, Latin Text ed. J. Hankins with W. Bowen (Cambridge, MA: The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2003), Book IX, Chap. IV, p. 43; Trinkaus, “Marsilio Ficino and the Ideal of Human Autonomy,” 142– 8. The Way of Hermes: The Corpus Hermeticum, Book 16:15, p. 77. R.A. Markus, “Augustine. Sense and imagination,” in A.H. Armstrong (ed.) The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 374–9; Anne Sheppard, “Plato and the Neoplatonists,” in A. Baldwin and S. Hutton (eds), Platonism and the English Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 15 – 16. Simon Kemp and Garth J.O. Fletcher, “The Medieval Theory of the Inner Senses,” The American Journal of Psychology 106, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 559– 76. Murray W. Bundy, “Plato’s View of the Imagination,” Studies in Philology 19, no. 4 (October 1922): 368, 386; Louis Harap, “The Imagination in Plato and Mr. M. W. Bundy,” The American Journal of Philology 58, no. 2 (1937): 222– 5; Ray L. Hart, “The Imagination in Plato,” International Philosophical Quarterly 5, no. 3 (September 1965): 436–61. Aristotle, De Anima, trans. M. Shiffman (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2011), Book III, Part 3, 82 and Book III, Part 4, 84; Malcolm Schofield, “Aristotle on the Imagination,” in M.C. Nussbaum and A.O. Rorty (eds), Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 249–77. Jan R. Veenstra, “The Subtle Knot: Robert Kilwardby and Gianfrancesco Pico on the Imagination,” in Lodi Nauta and Detlev Pa¨tzold (eds), Imagination in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 2. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book I, Chap. LXI, 194– 7; Christopher I. Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels: Cornelius Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 68 – 9. Also see Olaf Pluta, “On the Matter of the Mind: Late-Medieval Views on Mind, Body, and Imagination,” in Imagination in the Later Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, 21 – 3.

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NOTES TO PAGES 27 –30

113. Robert Burton, The anatomy of melancholy what it is. With all the kindes, causes, symptomes, prognostickes, and seuerall cures of it. In three maine partitions with their seuerall sections, members, and subsections. Philosophically, medicinally, historically, opened and cut vp. By Democritus Iunior. With a satyricall preface, conducing to the following discourse (London, 1621), 29. 114. Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi [. . .] historia, Tomas secundus de supernaturali, naturali, praeternaturali et contranaturali microcosmi historia (Oppenheim, 1619). 115. Schofield, “Aristotle on the Imagination,” 252, 276. 116. Burton, The anatomy of melancholy what it is, 122. 117. Stephen Pender, “Rhetoric, Grief, and the Imagination in Early Modern England,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 43, no. 1 (2010): 55 – 6. 118. Marieke J.E. van den Doel and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Imagination,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 607. 119. Ulinka Rublack, “Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 150 (1996): 96. These ideas concerning procreation can be dated to at least the fifth century BCE . See April D. DeConick, “Conceiving Spirits: The Mystery of Valentinian Sex,” in W.J. Hanegraaff and J.J. Kripal (eds), Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 37 – 9. 120. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book I, Chap LXIV, p. 201. 121. Arthur E. Waite, The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast, of Hohenheim, called Paracelsus the Great, now for the first time faithfully translated into English, Vol. 1 (1894. Repro. New Hyde Park, NY: University Books Inc., 1967), 121– 2. 122. Paul Fieldhouse, Food and Nutrition: Customs and Culture (London: Taylor and Francis, 1986), 220. 123. Burton, The anatomy of melancholy what it is, 127. 124. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book I, Chap. LXIV, 202. 125. Copenhaver, “Natural Magic, Hermetism, and Occultism in Early Modern Science,” 272– 3. 126. al-Kindi, De Radiis Stellicis, On The Stellar Rays, C9th AD, trans. R. Zoller from the Latin De Radiis Stellicis, in M.T. D’Alverny and F. Hudry (eds), Archives d’histoire doctrinale du Moyen Age, Vol. 41 (1974, published in 1975), 52. www.new-library.com. 127. Ibid., 47. 128. Van den Doel and Hanegraaff, “Imagination,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 608; Hanegraaff, “How magic survived the disenchantment of the world,” Religion 33, no. 4 (October 2003): 363– 5; Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 155. 129. Giordano Bruno, Theses de Magia, XLIV, as reproduced in Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance, 92. 130. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book I, Chap. LXIII, 199. 131. Ibid., Chap. LXVI, 206.

NOTES TO PAGES 30 –34

167

132. Paracelsus, Of the supreme mysteries of nature. Of the spirits of the planets. Occult philosophy. The magical, sympathetical, and antipathetical cure of wounds and diseases. The mysteries of the twelve signs of the zodiack. / Englished by R. Turner, philomathes (London, 1655), 88. See also van den Doel and Hanegraaff, “Imagination,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 612. 133. The Way of Hermes: The Corpus Hermeticum, Book 5:1, 34. 134. R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 11 –12, 49 – 72; Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 54; Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (London: Duke University Press, 2004), 10– 11. 135. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 113; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), passim. 136. The classical neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus defined theurgy as rituals and practices that allowed man to tap into divine power. A. Louth, “Pagan Theurgy and Christian Sacramentalism in Denys the Areopagite,” Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 432– 3. 137. As defined by Thomas Blount, Glossographia, or, A dictionary interpreting all such hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue with etymologies, definitions and historical observations on the same: also the terms of divinity, law, physick, mathematicks and other arts and sciences explicated (London, 1661), s.v. See also Fritz Graf, “Magic II: Antiquity,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, 721. 138. Klaassen, “Religion, Science, and the Transformations of Magic: Manuscripts of Magic, 1300– 1600,” 225– 6, 45; Jan R. Veenstra, “Venerating and Conjuring Angels: Eiximenis’s Book of the Holy Angels and the Holy Almandal. Two Case Studies,” in Magic and the Classical Tradition, 122. 139. B.L. Sloane 307, f 77. 140. Bod. Rawlinson D253, 55. 141. The various statutes are outlined in C.L. Ewen, Witch Hunting and Witch Trials (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1929), 13 –21. Also see Statutes of the Realm (London: Great Britain Record Commission, 1819) Vol. 3, 837. 142. Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2003), 7 – 11. 143. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 347–8.

Chapter 2 Magical Masculinities 1. Frank F. Klaassen, “Learning and Masculinity in Manuscripts of Ritual Magic of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 38, no. 1 (Spring 2007), 54.

168

NOTES TO PAGES 35 –39

2. David D. Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 1. 3. The following discussion is drawn from Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500– 1800 (1977, New York: Penguin Books, abridged ed. 1979), 136– 42; Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England 1500– 1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London: Longman, 1999); Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 4. The term ‘effeminate’ does not refer to sexual behaviour. For a discussion see Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, “Introduction,” in T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen (eds), English Masculinities 1660– 1800 (New York: Longman, 1999), 5 –6. 5. Andrea McKenzie, “Martyrs in Low Life? Dying ‘Game’ in Augustan England,” Journal of British Studies 42, no. 2 (April 2003): 167– 205. 6. For a discussion of the various types of masculinities, see R.W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 76 – 81. 7. Norbert Elias, “Introduction to the 1968 Edition,” in The Civilizing Process, trans. by E. Jephcott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 255; Karen Harvey, “The History of Masculinity, Circa 1650– 1800,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 296– 312; Alexandra Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, Circa 1500– 1700,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 281– 96. 8. Michael Roper and John Tosh, “Introduction,” in M. Roper and J. Tosh (eds), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1991), 1 –5. 9. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Of Occult Philosophy, or of Magical Ceremonies: The Fourth Book, trans. Robert Turner (London, 1655), 51 –2. 10. B.L. Sloane 1727, f 7. 11. Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 69. 12. B.L. Sloane 1727, f 8. 13. B.L. Add. 36674, f 52v. 14. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 106v. 15. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, ed. M. Summers (1584, New York: Dover Publications, 1972), Book XV, Chap. VIII, 235. 16. Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 69. 17. Bod. Ashmole 1406, f 51v– 53. 18. Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer (London, 1662), unpaginated. 19. This appeared as a gloss to 1 Peter 3 in Matthew’s Bible of 1537, as quoted by Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500– 1800, 138. 20. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), 9 – 15. 21. Louis Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Representations 33 (Winter 1991): 1 –41; John M. MacKenzie, “Empire and the

NOTES TO PAGES 39 – 43

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

169

Ecological Apocalypse: The Historiography of the Imperial Environment,” in T. Griffiths and L. Robin (eds), Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies, (Edinburgh: Keele University Press, 1997), 216–17. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. trans. James Freake, Donald Tyson (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995), Book 2, Chap. LIX, p. 426 and Book 3, Chap. XXIV, 533. B.L. Sloane 307, f 3 – 4. Also see Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, Practical Angel Magic of John Dee’s Enochian Tables (London: Golden Hoard Press, 2004), 65. In Pseudo-Agrippa’s “Magical Elements of Peter de Abano,” he refers to “the names of the presidential Angels” and “the name of the King and his three Ministers.” Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 75. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 10. Roper and Tosh, “Introduction,” 1 – 5. Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (1949, University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 251. Bod. Rawlinson D253, f 58. B.L. Sloane 1727, f 19. For a general discussion of cunning men see Owen Davies, Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History (London: Hambledon and London, 2003); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 212– 52. Reginald Scot documented these popular practices: “Stick a pair of shears in the rind of a sieve, and let two persons set the top of each of their forefingers upon the upper part of the shears, holding it with the sieve up from the ground steadily, and ask Peter and Paul whether A. B. or C. hath stolen the thing lost, and at the nomination of the guilty person, the sieve will turn round.” “Popish priests [. . .] do practice with a psalter and a key fastened upon the 49. psalm, to discover a thief. And when the names of the suspected persons are orderly put into the pipe of the key, at the reading of these words of the psalm [. . .] the book will wag, and fall out of the fingers of them that hold it, and he whose name remaineth in the key must be the thief.” Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book XVI, Chap. V, 149, 277. Lilly Lash’t with His Own Rod (London, 1660); A Letter from the King of Denmark to Mr. William Lilly: Occasioned by the Death of His Patron the King of Sweden (London, 1660). Lara Apps and Andrew Gow, Male Witches in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 127– 37. See E.J. Kent, “Masculinity and Male Witches in Old and New England, 1593– 1680,” History Workshop Journal 60, no. 1 (Autumn 2005): 69 – 92. B.L. Harley 424, Art. 7; J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, Chiefly from the Manuscripts of John Foxe the Martyrologist (London: Camden Society, 1859), 326– 30. E.R.O. Q/SR 349/92, 349/125, 349/128, 349/172; E.R.O. Q/Sba 2/76. B.L. Lansdowne 2, f 62– 4; Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, 331– 3.

170

NOTES TO PAGES 43 – 48

37. “John Ramsay, first earl of Holdernesse, Bridget Radcliffe, Countess of Sussex, and Sir Edward Radcliffe versus Frances Shute and Matthew Evans,” TNA: PRO STAC 8/245/5, 8/245/23, 8/245/32. 38. Robert Radcliffe married Frances Shute within hours of the death of his wife, Bridget. Victor Stater, “Robert Radcliffe (1573 – 1629),” DNB. 39. Alan R. MacDonald, “John Ramsay (1580 – 1626),” DNB; “Radcliffe,” DNB. 40. TNA: PRO STAC 8/245/5. 41. TNA: PRO STAC 8/245/23. 42. Bod. Ashmole 421, f 170. 43. Ibid. 44. Biographical information is drawn from Jonathan Andrews, “Richard Napier (1559– 1634),” DNB; Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 45. A.G. Debus, “Chemists, Physicians, and Changing Perspectives on the Scientific Revolution,” Isis 89, no. 1 (March 1998): 71 – 3. 46. William H. Huffman, Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1988), 21. 47. Bod. Ashmole 244, f 130– 2; ‘Experimentum de Sylphis’ is similar to instructions for contacting fairies recorded in various other sources. Bod. Ashmole 1488, f 240. 48. Bod. Ashmole 421, f 165. 49. Ibid., 244, f 130–2. 50. MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 174– 81. 51. Ibid., 18. 52. Stanley J. Tambiah, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 31. 53. “Napier,” DNB. 54. John Aubrey, Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects, 4th edn (London: John Russell Smith, 1857), 135– 6. 55. Bod. Ashmole 182, f 167v. 56. Michael MacDonald, “The Career of Astrological Medicine in England,” in O.P. Grell and A. Cunningham (eds), Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1996), 68. 57. Autobiographical details are drawn from Forman’s diary as reproduced in A.L. Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age (1974, London: Pan Books Ltd., 1976 edn); Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); Barbara Howard Traister, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). 58. J.O. Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Personal Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, the Celebrated Astrologer, from A.D. 1552 to A.D. 1602 (London, 1849), 4– 12.

NOTES TO PAGES 48 –53

171

59. Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Personal Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, 30; Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, 51 – 2, 218. 60. Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, 4, 218– 20. 61. Ibid., 220–1. 62. B.L. Add. 36674, f 47r. 63. From a manuscript collected by Elias Ashmole, in the hand of Simon Forman, entitled ‘Ars.’ Bod. Ashmole 1494, f 174. 64. Bod. Ashmole 1491, f 1248. 65. Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Personal Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, 19; “Forman’s Diary,” in Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 290. 66. Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, 51– 2; “Forman’s Diary,” in Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 292. 67. Add. 36674, f 122. 68. William Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers: Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times from the Year 1602 –1681 (London: Folklore Society, 1974), 14 – 5. 69. “Forman’s Diary,” in Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 295. 70. Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, 213. 71. Ibid., 222. 72. Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers, 15. 73. Charles Goodall, The Royal College of Physicians of London Founded and Established by Law (London, 1684), 337. 74. “Forman’s Diary,” in Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 301– 2. 75. Ibid., 302. 76. Traister, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London, 82. 77. David Kuchta, The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity: England, 1550–1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 19–21. 78. Forman was sponsored by two Cambridge physicians, William Ward and Thomas Grimston. Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 250. 79. “Forman’s Diary,” in Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 301. 80. Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Personal Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, 26. 81. “Forman’s Diary,” in Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman, 302. 82. Traister, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London, 23. 83. Biographical details are drawn from Lilly, Mr. Lilly’s History of His Life and Times; Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Patrick Curry, “William Lilly (1602–681),” DNB. 84. “Lilly,” DNB; Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers, 1 – 2. 85. Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers, 21. 86. Ibid., 31. 87. Ibid., 32. 88. “Lilly,” DNB. 89. Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers, 33. 90. Whitelocke was a lawyer and politician who attempted to negotiate peace between the crown and parliament during the civil wars. Ruth Spalding, “Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605– 75),” DNB.

172

NOTES TO PAGES 53 –58

91. “Lilly,” DNB. 92. Ann Geneva, Astrology and the Seventeenth Century Mind: William Lilly and the Language of the Stars (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 63; Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers, 70. 93. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 284, 294. 94. Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500– 800 (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), 20, 39; Curry, Prophecy and Power, 19 – 20, 46. 95. For example, A Declaration of the Several Treasons, Blasphemies and Misdemeanors Acted, Spoken and Published against God, the Late King, His Present Majesty, the Nobility, Clergy, City, Commonalty, Etc. By the Grand Wizard and Imposter William Lilly of St Clements Danes; Otherwise Called Merlinus Anglicus (London, 1660); A Letter from the King of Denmark to Mr. William Lilly: Occasioned by the Death of His Patron the King of Sweden; Lilly Lash’t with His Own Rod; Lillyes Lamentations, or, Englands Feigned Prophet Discovered (London, N.d.); The Scurrilous Scribler Dissected (N.p., N.d.). 96. A Letter from the King of Denmark to Mr. William Lilly, 5. 97. Lilly Lash’t with His Own Rod; Lillyes Lamentations, 4. 98. Shepard, “From Anxious Patriarchs to Refined Gentlemen? Manhood in Britain, Circa 1500– 1700,” 281– 96.

Chapter 3

Fraternity and Freemasons

1. Frank F. Klaassen, “Learning and Masculinity in Manuscripts of Ritual Magic of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 38, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 53. 2. Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 94 –100. 3. Abraham de la Pryme, The Diary of Abraham De La Pryme, ed. C. Jackson, Vol. 54 (London: Surtees Society, 1870), 22 – 7. 4. C.E.A. Cheesman, “Abraham Pryme (1671– 1704),” DNB. 5. Magic may have been a form of rebellion for young men as well. See Frank Klaassen, “The Middleness of Ritual Magic,” in S. Page (ed.), The Unorthodox Imagination in Late Medieval Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 146– 8. 6. Mark Curtis, Oxford and Cambridge in Transition, 1558– 1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 236, 264. 7. A. J. Turner, “Thomas Allen (1540– 632),” DNB. 8. B.L. Add. 36674, f 38. 9. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 321. 10. A True Relation of the Araignment of Eighteene Witches (London, 1645); C. L. Ewen, Witchcraft in the Star Chamber (London, Printed for the Author, 1938), 44 – 54.

NOTES TO PAGES 58 – 62

173

11. See the preface to Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Of Occult Philosophy, or of Magical Ceremonies: The Fourth Book, trans. Robert Turner (London, 1655). 12. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 226 (footnote 4). For a general discussion of the practice of the occult in universities see Mordechai Feingold, “The Occult Tradition in the English Universities of the Renaissance: A Reassessment,” in B. Vickers (ed.), Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 73 – 94. 13. Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 1580– 1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 6, 26, 41– 4, 309. 14. Joseph Glanvill, A Philosophical Endeavour Towards the Defence of the Being of Witches and Apparitions. In a Letter to the Much Honoured, Robert Hunt, Esq; by a Member of the Royal Society (London, 1666). 15. Michael Hunter, Establishing the New Science (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1989), 47, 55, 206; Michael Hunter, The Royal Society and Its Fellows, 1660– 1700 (Oxford: British Society for the History of Science, 1982), 12 –13. 16. Frank L. Borchardt, “The Magus as Renaissance Man,” The Sixteenth-Century Journal 21, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 75. 17. In “Of goetia and necromancy,” in Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. Freake, ed. D. Tyson (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995), 696. 18. Klaassen, “Learning and Masculinity in Manuscripts of Ritual Magic of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance,” 71. 19. Robert Lomas, The Invisible College: The Royal Society, Freemasonry and the Birth of Modern Science (London: Headline, 2002). 20. Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, (1871, republished by Forgotten Books, 2008), passim. www. forgottenbooks.org; Arthur E. Waite, A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (Ars Magna Latomorum) and of Cognate Instituted Mysteries: Their Rites Literature and History, Combined Edition (New York: Weathervane Books, 1970), 351– 64. 21. For a detailed explanation of the origins of freemasons in Scotland, see David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 26 – 49. 22. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 87 – 96. For a discussion of the art of memory, see Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 23. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 7 – 9. 24. David Stevenson, “Masonry, symbolism and ethics in the life of Sir Robert Moray, FRS,” Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 114 (1984): 405– 31. 25. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 216– 33. 26. Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 1580–1800, 6, 26, 41–4, 309; J. M. Roberts, The Mythology of the Secret Societies (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972), 20–1. 27. Douglas Knoop, G.P. Jones, and Douglas Hamer (eds), The Early Masonic Catechisms, 2nd edn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), 22, 29.

174

NOTES TO PAGES 62 –66

28. Elias Ashmole, The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (London, 1672). 29. Biographical details are drawn from Patrick Curry, Prophecy and Power: Astrology in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989); Michael Hunter, “Elias Ashmole (1617 – 692),” DNB. 30. Curry, Prophecy and Power, 53. 31. “Ashmole,” DNB. 32. Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London, 1652), 453. 33. Curry, Prophecy and Power, 37. 34. “Prolegomena,” in Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum. 35. William H. Huffman, Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1988), 136– 47. 36. Hugh J. Ormsby-Lennon, “Nature’s Mystick Book: Renaissance Arcanum into Restoration Cant,” in M. M. Roberts and H. Ormsby-Lennon (eds), Secret Texts: The Literature of Secret Societies (New York: AMS Press, 1995), 30. 37. Jennifer Speake, “William Backhouse (1593 – 1662),” DNB; Alex Horne, “Elias Ashmole,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 78 (1965), 85; C.H. Josten, “William Backhouse of Swallowfield,” Ambix IV:1 & 2 (1949– 51), 4, 17 – 8; Elias Ashmole, The Lives of Those Eminent Antiquaries Elias Ashmole, Esq. And Mr. William Lilly (London, 1774), 16 – 17, 313. 38. Frontispiece of Arthur Dee, Fasciculus Chemicus or Chymical Collections. Expressing the Ingress, Progress, and Egress, of the Secret Hermetick Science, out of the Choisest and Most Famous Authors. Collected and Digested in Such an Order, That It May Prove to the Advantage, Not Onely of Beginners, but Proficients of This High Art, by None Hitherto Disposed in This Method. Whereunto Is Added, the Arcanum or Grand Secret of Hermetick Philosophy. Both Made English by James Hasolle, Esquire, Qui Est Mercuriophilus Anglicus, trans. E. Ashmole (London, 1650). 39. Floor Cloth of Lurgan Lodge 394, now the Grand Lodge of Ireland. Original in possession of F.C. Crossle, 1887. Image reproduced by permission of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland. 40. York MS No. 1 (c.1600) in William James Hughun, Old Charges of British Freemasons (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1872), 37; Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 20. Agrippa identified Hermes as the grandson of Abraham, also known as Enoch. Michael H. Keefer, “Agrippa’s Dilemma: Hermetic ‘Rebirth’ and the Ambivalences of De vanitate and De occulta philosophia,” Renaissance Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 621. 41. James Anderson, The Constitutions of the Free-Masons (1734) (Lincoln, NE: An Online Electronic Edition. Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska, 2006), 17; Wallace McLeod, The Old Gothic Constitutions (Bloomington, IL: The Masonic Book Club, 1985), 56 – 7. 42. F.C. Conybeare, “The Testament of Solomon,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 11, no. 1 (October 1898): 1– 45. 43. McLeod, The Old Gothic Constitutions, 4.

NOTES TO PAGES 66 –71

175

44. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 140; E.H. Dring, “The Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076) 29 (1916), 243. 45. Waite, A New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry, 111. 46. Angel Millar, Freemasonry, a History (San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press, 2005), 97; S. Brent Morris, “The Post Boy Sham Exposure of 1723,” in A. de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris (eds), Freemasonry in Context (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 131. 47. As quoted in Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 153. 48. Klaassen, “Learning and Masculinity in Manuscripts of Ritual Magic of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance,” 70. 49. From the catechism for initiation as quoted in Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 153. 50. From the Edinburgh Register House MS. 1696 as reproduced in Knoop, Jones, and Hamer (eds), The Early Masonic Catechisms, 33. 51. Records of Maidstone, ed. K. S. Martin (Maidstone: Wm. Hobbs and Sons, 1926), 266– 7. 52. As quoted by McLeod, The Old Gothic Constitutions, 3. 53. As quoted in Horne, “Elias Ashmole,” 83. 54. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 136, 145. 55. Ibid., 228, 232. 56. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book II, Chap XXVII, 345. 57. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 175; David Allen, “Robert Moray (1608/9– 1673),” DNB. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, many members of the Society were also prominent freemasons. See Michael Hunter, “Founder members of the Royal Society (act. 1660– 1663),” DNB. According to Jacob, a fourth of the masonic membership also belonged to the Royal Society. Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 112. 58. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 169– 73. 59. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book III, Chap. XXXI, 564. 60. Copyright the Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland. 61. Basilius Valentinus, Azoth, Siue Avreliae Occvltae Philosophorvm, Materiam Primam, Et Decatatvm illum Lapidem Philosophorvm filliis Hermetis solide, perspicue & dilucide explicantes [. . .] F. Basilii Vicentini. M. Georgio Beato Fr. Interprete. (Frankfurt, 1613). This illustration is also included at the beginning of Chap. XXXII of Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, 708. 62. Mircea Eliade, “Occultism and Freemasonry in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” History of Religions 13, no. 1 (August 1973): 90; F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists, Founders of Modern Chemistry (Melbourne: William Heinemann Ltd., 1951), 148– 9. 63. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 144– 5, 160– 1. 64. W. Wynn Westcott, “The Religion of Freemasonry Illuminated by the Kabbalah,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 1 (1886): 73 – 7.

NOTES TO PAGES 71 –74

176

65. Karen Silvia De Leon-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 29 – 30. 66. Horne, “Elias Ashmole,” 84. 67. Lawrence B. Smith, “Wharton, Philip James, duke of Wharton and Jacobite duke of Northumberland (1698–1731),” DNB; R. F. Gould, “Masonic Celebrities No. VI: The Duke of Wharton, G. M., 1722–23; with Which Is Combined the True History of the Gormogons,” Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 8 (1895): 114–55. 68. Taken from Douglas Knoop, Pamphlets on masons and masonry, (1934), 30 – 1, as quoted by Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 221. 69. The Green Ribbon Club acquired its name from the green ribbons that members wore on their hats as an identifying token. They met regularly at the King’s Head tavern and kept records of their meetings. Goodwin Wharton was a member of the club; however, he got expelled on January 26, 1679, because he did not follow club policy by leaving the club room when a non-member came to speak with him. Unlike the Green Ribbon Club, the early freemasons did not keep records of their meetings or their membership, therefore it is not possible to cross-reference members of the freemasons with members of the Green Ribbon Club. See David Allen, “Political Clubs in Restoration London,” The Historical Journal 19, no. 3 (1976): 561– 80; James Rees Jones, “The Green Ribbon Club,” The Durham University Journal 49 (1956): 17 – 8; Melinda S. Zook, Radical Whigs and Conspiratorial Politics in Late Stuart England (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 7. 70. “Or ces deux principes e´taient, tels que les concevait la Freemasonry, d’origine ou de tendance mystique, le premier proce´dant d’un postulat religieux, le second conduisant directement dans le domaine myste´rieux des sciences occultes.” Rene´ Le Forestier, La Franc-Maconnerie Templie`re Et Occultiste Aux XVIII Et XIXE Sie`cles (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1970), 28 – 31. 71. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment, 117; Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry, 79. 72. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 22. Also see Clawson for a discussion of how the principle of exclusion exercised by fraternities such as the freemasons reinforced the pre-existing gender and race categories in a hierarchical and patriarchal society. Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

Chapter 4

Scrying and Subversion: John Dee and Edward Kelley

1. The manuscripts were published as John Dee, A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years between Dr. John Dee [. . .] And Some Spirits, ed. M. Casaubon (London, 1659). For details on Casaubon see R. W. Serjeantson, “Casaubon, (Florence Estienne) Meric (1599– 1671),” DNB.

NOTES TO PAGES 74 –77

177

2. Meric Casaubon, “The Preface,” in Dee, A True and Faithful Relation. 3. Deborah E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 2. 4. Deborah Harkness previously analysed the angelic conversations as cultural artefacts and came to the conclusion that they were coherent within the dialogue of natural philosophy and alchemy. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels, passim. 5. Unless noted otherwise, shifting ideals of masculinity are drawn from Jacqueline Eales, “Gender Construction in Early Modern England,” in R.N. Swanson (ed.), Gender and Christian Religion (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1998), 172; Stephen Gregg, “Godly Manliness: Defoe’s Good Men in Bad Times,” in A.P. Williams (ed.), The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 142– 6; Jeremy Gregory, “Homo Religiosus: Masculinity and Religion in the Long Eighteenth Century,” in T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen (eds), English Masculinities 1660– 1800 (New York: Longman, 1999); Jeremy Gregory, “Gender and the Clerical Profession in England, 1660– 1850,” in Gender and Christian Religion, 243– 54; Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: The Caroline Puritan Movement c.1620– 1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; Paperback Edition 2002), 101– 5, 126– 8; Tom Webster, “‘Kiss Me with the Kisses of His Mouth’: Gender Inversion and Canticles in Godly Spirituality,” in T. Betteridge (ed.), Sodomy in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 14, 155– 9. 6. Jo Ann McNamara, “The Herrenfrage, the Restructuring of the Gender System, 1050– 1150,” in C. A. Lees (ed.), Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 3 –22. 7. Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England, 101– 5. 8. For a discussion on the emergence of the polite gentleman, see Michele Cohen, “‘Manners’ Make the Man: Politeness, Chivalry, and the Construction of Masculinity, 1750– 1830,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005); Jennine Hurl-Eamon, “Policing Male Heterosexuality: The Reformation of Manners Societies’ Campaign against the Brothels in Westminster, 1690– 1720,” Journal of Social History 37, no. 4 (Summer 2004); Robert B. Shoemaker, “Reforming Male Manners: Public Insult and the Decline of Violence in London, 1660– 1740,” in English Masculinities. 9. The term ‘effeminate’ does not refer to sexual behaviour. For a discussion see Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, “Introduction,” in English Masculinities, 5 – 6. On the combative nature of the godly man, see J. Sears McGee, The Godly Man in Stuart England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 43; Gregg, “Godly Manliness: Defoe’s Good Men in Bad Times,” 141– 59. 10. “Preface,” in Richard Steele, The Christian Hero: An Argument Proving That No Principles but Those of Religion Are Sufficient to Make a Great Man (London, 1701). 11. Julien Ve´rone`se, “Magic, Theurgy, and Spirituality in the Medieval Ritual of the Ars notoria,” in Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to

178

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

NOTES TO PAGES 77 – 79 Sixteenth Centuries, ed. C. Fanger (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 56. Biographical information on Dee is drawn from Robert W. Barone, A Reputation History of John Dee, 1527– 1609: The Life of an Elizabethan Intellectual (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009); Nicholas H. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988); Peter J. French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1972); Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels; R. Julian Roberts, “John Dee (1527 – 1609),” DNB; Gyorgy E. Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004); Benjamin Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr. Dee (London: Harper Collins, 2001). R. Lemon and Mrs Everett Green (eds), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, 1547– 1580, Vol. 5 (London: Longman, 1856– 1872), 67. Edward Fenton (ed.), The Diaries of John Dee (Oxfordshire: Day Books, 1998), (March 10, 1575), 19. Ken MacMillan, “Discourse on History, Geography, and Law: John Dee and the Limits of the British Empire, 1576– 80,” Canadian Journal of History 36, no. 1 (April 2001): 2. The Diaries of John Dee (10 March, 1582), 27. For a more in-depth discussion of scrying, see Chapter 1. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels, 19. The Diaries of John Dee (9 March, 1582), 24 – 5. For biographical details, see Louise Schleiner, “Sir Edward Kelley (1555 – 1597/8),” DNB; Michael Wilding, “A Biography of Edward Kelly,” in S. J. Linden (ed.), Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture, (New York: AMS Press, 2007), 35 – 114; Michael Wilding, Raising Spirits, Making Gold and Swapping Wives: The True Adventures of Dr John Dee and Sir Edward Kelly (Nottingham: Shoestring Press, 1999). Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 192. Claire Fanger argues that the scryer’s inner purity may have been just as important as physical virginity. Claire Fanger, “Virgin Territory: Purity and Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Catoptromantic Texts,” Aries 5, no. 2 (2005): 200– 24; Frank F. Klaassen, “English Manuscripts of Magic, 1300– 1500: A Preliminary Survey,” in C. Fanger (ed.), Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Medieval Ritual Magic (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 23; John Dee, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, ed. C. Whitby, Vol. 2 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1988), 89, 92. As discussed by Christopher Whitby, “John Dee and Renaissance Scrying,” Bulletin of the Society of Renaissance Studies 3, no. 2 (1985): 28. Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (1949, repr. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 51.

NOTES TO PAGES 79 –81 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

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B.L. Additional MS. 36674, f 85v. John Aubrey, Miscellanies (London, 1696), 128– 31. The Diaries of John Dee (15 April, 1587), 211. Halliwell (ed.), The Autobiography and Personal Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, the Celebrated Astrologer, from A.D. 1552 to A.D. 1602, 19; A. L. Rowse, The Case Books of Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare’s Age, 1976 edn (London: Pan Books Ltd., 1974), 290. Phyllis Mack, “Women as Prophets During the English Civil War,” Feminist Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 23; Judith Hock-Smith and Anita Spring, “Introduction,” in J. Hock-Smith and A. Spring (eds), Women in Ritual and Symbolic Roles (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1978), 1. Whitby, John Dee’s Action with Spirits, Vol. I, 53. See earlier discussion of Galenic humours in Chapter 1. Melancholic temperament was cold and dry; women were considered cold and wet. The Diaries of John Dee, 85, 228; Wilding, “A Biography of Edward Kelly,” 37. B.L. Sloane MS 3188, f 9v. The Diaries of John Dee (29 June, 1583), 95 – 6. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 181. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations, 99. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 189. “Mathematical Praeface,” in John Dee, The Elements of Geometrie of the Most Auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara (London, 1570), A.ij. William Lilly, The Last of the Astrologers: Mr. William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times from the Year 1602–1681 (London: Folklore Society, 1974), 94. For a discussion on the construction of self, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 4, 29, 43; Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. J. Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1953), 603– 5; Harold A. Goolishian and Harlene Anderson, “Narrative and Self. Postmodern Dilemmas for Psychotherapy,” in New Paradigms, Culture and Subjectivity, ed. D.F. Schnitman (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002), 218– 21; Meira Likierman, Melanie Klein: Her Work in Context (London: Continuum, 2001), 67; Kelly Oliver (ed.), The Portable Kristeva (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 104– 5. For a discussion on the role of the scryer and magician, see Frank Klaassen, “The Middleness of Ritual Magic,” in S. Page (ed.), The Unorthodox Imagination in Late Medieval Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 153. Graham Dawson, “The Blond Bedouin,” in M. Roper and J. Tosh (eds), Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800 (London: Routledge, 1991), 118. Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 99 – 100. For a discussion on how the figure of Merlin was constructed as “a symbol of newly sophisticated knowledge” during the Renaissance, see Stephen Knight, Merlin: Knowledge

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43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

NOTES TO PAGES 81 –85 and Power through the Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 103– 8. Knight argues that the English Renaissance Merlin was especially skilled in the mathematical sciences, which resonates with Dee’s propensities. Barone, A Reputation History of John Dee, 3 – 4. “Dee,” DNB; Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 185. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations, 144– 46. Dee, A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years between Dr. John Dee [. . .] And Some Spirits (13 September, 1584), 233. Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror, 182. The Diaries of John Dee (14 March, 1582), 32. Dee, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, Vol. 2 (14 March, 1582), 31. The Diaries of John Dee (10 March, 1582), 29. “Liber Mysteriorum,” in Dee, A True and Faithful Relation (28 May, 1583), 2. The Diaries of John Dee (21 November, 1582), 51. Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, 196. Fenton (ed.), The Diaries of John Dee, 85, 100. Dee, A True and Faithful Relation, 246; French, John Dee, 110. The Diaries of John Dee (15 April, 1583), 67. Ibid., (3 September, 1584), 140– 1. Susan Dwyer Amussen, “‘The Part of a Christian Man’: The Cultural Politics of Manhood in Early Modern England,” in S. D. Amussen and M. Kishlansky (eds), Political Culture and Cultural Politic in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Anthony Fletcher, “Manhood, the Male Body, Courtship and the Household in Early Modern England,” History Today 84 (1999): 419– 36. The Diaries of John Dee (29 April, 1582), 42. Ibid., (4 July, 1583), 98. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations, 21. In the early modern period, pawning was not limited to the poorest members of society. Even the aristocracy pawned items such as jewellery. Moveable goods were as valid as rents on land and stocks as security for cash loans. The Diaries of John Dee (21 March, 1585), 174. Ibid., (21 March, 1585), 175. Ibid., (18 April, 1587), 216. Ibid., (21 May, 1587), 223. Ibid., (20 April, 1583), 70; (29 June, 1583) 95; (19 April, 1584) 119. Ibid., (4 April, 1587), 209– 10. Ibid., (28 February, 1588), 223– 8. Ibid., (18 April, 1587), 218. Deborah Harkness presents the episode as an example of Jane Dee’s service to natural philosophy. Deborah E. Harkness, “Managing an Experimental Household: The Dees of Mortlake and the Practice of Natural Philosophy,” Isis 88, no. 2 (June 1997): 257– 8.

NOTES TO PAGES 86 –89

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72. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 21 – 7, 49 – 66. 73. The Diaries of John Dee (28 May, 1583), 86. 74. Theodora Ward, Men and Angels (New York: Viking Press, 1969), 84, 92, 139. 75. Dee refers to Johannes Trithemius’s (1462 – 1516) Liber Octo Questionum ad Maximilianum. 76. Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, ed. M. Summers (1584, New York: Dover Publications, 1972), 240. 77. The Diaries of John Dee (28 May, 1583), 87. 78. Ibid., (18 April, 1587), 215. 79. Ibid., (17 April, 1587), 214. 80. Ibid., (18 April, 1587), 215. 81. From Luther’s Thirty-four Sermons, as quoted in Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 215. 82. For information on the legend of Simon Magus see the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v.; Alberto Ferreiro, Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval and Early Modern Traditions (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Philip Mason Palmer and Robert Pattison More, The Sources of the Faust Tradition: From Simon Magus to Lessing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936). 83. The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies were twenty books of homilies, written in Greek, supposedly narrated by St Clement of Rome. The Recognitions were the Latin version of the Clementines. Both versions include the story of the disputations between Peter the apostle and Simon Magus. The authorship of the Apostolic Constitutions was also attributed to St Clement. These eight books were compiled in the fourth century as a manual for the clergy, supposedly from writings by the apostles. 84. See the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v.; Palmer and More, The Sources of The Faust Tradition, 39. 85. Stephen Haar, Simon Magus: The First Gnostic? (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), 226. 86. Apostolic Constitution, Book VI, Section 4, 19. See the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. 87. Ferreiro, Simon Magus, 46. Keefer argues that Agrippa conflated Simon with Hermes: “The priest-magician takes on the face of the sorcerer and archheretic; Hermes Trismegistus and Simon Magus become different names for the same thing.” Michael H. Keefer, “Agrippa’s Dilemma: Hermetic ‘Rebirth’ and the Ambivalences of De vanitate and De occulta philosophia,” Renaissance Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Winter 1988): 650. 88. “Dee,” DNB. 89. Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism, 210. 90. Hock-Smith and Spring, “Introduction,” 9; Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), 19. 91. The name Luna is used in the Clementine Recognitions. See Keefer, “Agrippa’s Dilemma,” 646; Palmer and More, Sources of the Faust Tradition, 13 – 5.

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NOTES TO PAGES 89 –92

92. Chokhmah is one of the ten sephiroth of the Kabbalah. Chokhmah channels divine energy and is associated with the power of intuitive insight, which would have resonated with Kelley’s ability to scry. 93. In the Gnostic Gospels discovered in the twentieth century, Mary Magdalene was described as Christ’s most intimate companion and the symbol of divine Wisdom, “a woman who knew the All.” See the gnostic text Dialogue of the Savior in Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979), 64. 94. In Dee’s time, The Book of Wisdom would have still been included in the Vulgate. Luther had translated it, thereby retaining it as part of the German Protestant tradition. However, the King James version published in England excluded it, rendering it apocryphal to modern English-speaking Protestants. Arthur Versluis (ed.), Wisdom’s Book: The Sophia Anthology (St Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000), 27 – 8. 95. The Diaries of John Dee (23 May, 1587), 226. 96. Ibid., (23 May, 1587), 225. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid., (14 June, 1583), 91. 100. Ibid., (23 May, 1587), 226. 101. Julie Hirst, Jane Leade, Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2005), 71 – 2. 102. B.L. Sloane MS 1727, f 3. 103. Susan Hardman Moore, “Sexing the Soul: Gender and the Rhetoric of Puritan Piety,” in R. N. Swanson (ed.), Gender and Christian Religion: Papers Read at the 1996 Summer Meeting and the 1997 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Rochester, NY: Published for the Ecclesiastical History Society by the Boydell Press, 1998), 175– 86; Webster, “‘Kiss Me with the Kisses of His Mouth,’” 151. 104. Matthew Biberman, Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2004), 72. 105. The Diaries of John Dee (23 May, 1587), 225. 106. For a discussion on the role of Jane Dee within the Dee household, see Harkness, “Managing an Experimental Household,” 247–62. 107. Modern psychoanalysis would assess this as a return to the mother through sexual intercourse, which must be contradicted by repudiating the feminine in order to re-establish masculinity. Eugene Monick, Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1987), 46 – 8. 108. Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?,” Feminist Studies 1, no. 2 (1972): 26 – 7. 109. Szonyi argues that Simon Magus embodied the dangerous boundaries “between holy exaltatio and arrogant conceit.” For a discussion of the role of Simon Magus in the construction of the Renaissance magician see Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism, 128– 31.

NOTES TO PAGES 92 –97

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110. For a discussion of the angel sessions as a type of private theatre, see Deborah E. Harkness, “Shows in the Showstone: A Theater of Alchemy and Apocalypse in the Angel Conversations of John Dee (1527 – 1608/9),” Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 707– 37. 111. The Diaries of John Dee (28 May, 1584), 182. 112. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations, 22; “Kelley,” DNB; The Diaries of John Dee, 229; Wilding, “A Biography of Edward Kelly,” 53 –77. 113. “Kelley,” DNB. 114. The Diaries of John Dee (29 June, 1594), 266. 115. John Aubrey, Brief Lives and Other Selected Writings, ed. A. Powell (London: The Cresset Press, 1949), 222. 116. “Dee,” DNB.

Chapter 5 John Pordage and Passivity 1. A Most Faithful Relation of Two Wonderful Passages Which Happened Very Lately in the Parish of Bradfield in Berkshire (London, 1650), 2 – 3. The hay or hays was a country dance which involved winding or sinuous movements around or among numerous objects. OED. 2. John Pordage, Innocencie Appearing, through the Dark Mists of Pretended Guilt (London, 1655), 14 – 5; Manfred Brod, “Dissent and Dissenters in Early Modern Berkshire” (Ph.D. diss., Oxford University, 2002), 186. 3. Pordage, Innocencie Appearing, 25 – 6. 4. Ibid., 26, 34. 5. From Pordage’s Sophia: The Graceful Eternal Virgin of Holy Wisdom, or Wonderful Spiritual Discoveries and Revelations That the Precious Wisdom Has Given to a Holy Soul (London, 1675) as reproduced in Arthur Versluis (ed.), Wisdom’s Book: The Sophia Anthology (St Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000), 78. 6. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Better than Magic: Cornelius Agrippa and Lazzarellian Hermetism,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 4, no. 1 (Summer 2009): 7 – 8, 23 – 24. 7. Bod. Rawlinson D253, p. 7. 8. Pordage, Innocencie Appearing, 34. 9. Ibid., 67. 10. Bod. Ashmole 244, f 130–32. 11. Biographical information on Pordage is drawn from Brod, “Dissent and Dissenters in Early Modern Berkshire”; B. J. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought: Behmenism and Its Development in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 106; Sarah Griffin, Encounters with Angels, the Life of John Pordage, a Radical Divine (Bristol: Stuart Press, 1996); Ariel Hessayon, “John Pordage (1607– 1681),” DNB. 12. “Pordage,” DNB.

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NOTES TO PAGES 97 –102

13. William Shaw, A History of the English Church During the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1640– 1660, Vol. 2 (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1900) 97 – 9, 178. 14. Christopher Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, Satan at Noon (London, 1655), passim. 15. Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, 98 – 100. 16. Pordage, Innocencie Appearing, 4 – 6, 18, 26. 17. Harriet Spanierman Blumenthal (ed.), Pordage’s Mundorum Explicatio (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), 3; Ariel Hessayon, “William Everard,” DNB; Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 85, 226. 18. J. Andrew Mendelsohn, “Alchemy and Politics in England 1649– 1665,” Past and Present 135 (May 1992); Dudley Wright, Elias Ashmole (London: The Freemason, 1924), 14. 19. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 269– 71. 20. Antoine Faivre, “Sensuous Relation with Sophia in Christian Theosophy,” in W. J. Hanegraaff and J. J. Kripal (eds), Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 281– 3; Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, 90 – 5. 21. Julie Hirst, Jane Leade, Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2005), 72. 22. Pordage, Innocencie Appearing, 18, 34. 23. Officially, John’s eldest son, Samuel Pordage, was the author of the poem, but Nils Thune argues that there are no other traces of Behmenism in Samuel’s other writing. It is widely believed that John collaborated with Samuel in the composition, as it reflects his father’s ideas. Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, 117. 24. Blumenthal (ed.), Pordage’s Mundorum Explicatio, 138–9. 25. As quoted by Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, 113. 26. Hirst, Jane Leade, 36. 27. Ritamary Bradley, “Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Mediaeval Literature,” Speculum 29, no. 1 (January 1954): 100– 15. 28. Sylvia Bowerback, “Jane Lead (1624 – 1704),” DNB; Gibbons, Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought, 107, 144; Versluis (ed.), Wisdom’s Book, 141– 2. 29. Jane Leade, A Fountain of Gardens, Vol. 3 (London, 1700), 1 January, 1678 –27 July, 1678 (unpaginated). 30. Jane Leade, A Message to the Philadelphian Society (London, 1696), 46 – 7. 31. Jane Leade, A fountain of gardens watered by the rivers of divine pleasure, and springing up in all the variety of spiritual plants; blown up the pure breath into a paradise, sending forth their sweet savours, and strong odours, for soul-refreshing (London, 1696), 18. 32. Ibid., 11, 401. 33. Hanegraaff, “Better than Magic,” 7 –8, 23– 4.

NOTES TO PAGES 102 –104

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34. Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, 34. 35. For a discussion of the homoerotic mysticism of Renaissance neoplatonists, see Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “Under the Mantle of Love: The Mystical Eroticisms of Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno,” in W.J. Hanegraaff and J.J. Kripal (eds), Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 174 – 207. A Benedictine monk from the early fourteenth century, John of Morigny, combined the Ars Notoria and Solomon’s Song of Songs. He outlines the process of lifting the soul from the earthly realm of the senses to the divine using the bride of Christ metaphor. Claire Fanger argues that “love is a form of knowledge” for John of Morigny as well as knowledge being a form of love. Claire Fanger, “Complications of Eros: The Song of Songs in John of Morigny’s Liber Florum Celestis Doctrine,” in Hidden Intercourse, 153 – 74. 36. Fowler, Daemonium Meridianum, 34. 37. Will of John Pordage, TNA: PRO PROB 11/369. 38. Bod. Ashmole 851, f 200; Brod, “Dissent and Dissenters in Early Modern Berkshire,” 186, 200. 39. Dympna Callaghan, Woman and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989), 161. 40. Michele Cohen, “‘Manners’ Make the Man: Politeness, Chivalry, and the Construction of Masculinity, 1750– 1830,” Journal of British Studies 44, no. 2 (April 2005): 314, 320– 2. 41. Andrew P. Williams, “Soft Women and Softer Men: The Libertine Maintenance of Masculine Identity,” in A.P. Williams (ed.), The Image of Manhood in Early Modern Literature (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 106. 42. Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England 1500– 1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 87. 43. Matthew Biberman, Masculinity, Anti-Semitism and Early Modern English Literature: From the Satanic to the Effeminate Jew (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2004), 4; Tom Webster, “‘Kiss Me with the Kisses of His Mouth’: Gender Inversion and Canticles in Godly Spirituality,” in T. Betteridge (ed.), Sodomy in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 149. 44. Faivre, “Sensuous Relation with Sophia in Christian Theosophy,” 281– 2. 45. Blumenthal (ed.), Pordage’s Mundorum Explicatio, p. 502, line 477. 46. Callaghan argues that when men adopt qualities that were formerly feminine, it does not raise the position of the women who originally displayed these qualities, but rather the new ideology effaces the social/cultural constructions from which they were borrowed. Callaghan, Woman and Gender in Renaissance Tragedy, 161. 47. R.W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 80. 48. Jane Leade, from the preface to John Pordage, Theologia Mystica (London, 1683), 4. 49. Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination, 323, 332– 4.

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NOTES TO PAGES 105 –110

Chapter 6

Swords, Satan and Sex

1. Robert Greene, The Honorable Historie of Frier Bacon, and Frier Bongay as It Was Plaid by Her Maiesties Seruants (London, 1594), unpaginated. 2. Jennifer Low, Manhood and the Duel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 3 –20; Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16 –26. 3. Printed as “Cole’s Constitutions Facsimile,” in Wallace McLeod, The Old Gothic Constitutions (Bloomington, IL: The Masonic Book Club, 1985), unpaginated. 4. OED. 5. OED; David Bevington (ed.), Henry IV, Part I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 190– 1; Eric Partridge, Shakespeare’s Bawdy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1947), 26. 6. As quoted by Julie Hirst, Jane Leade, Biography of a Seventeenth-Century Mystic (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 205), 73. 7. The two books of Maccabees were part of the Latin Vulgate translated by St Jerome but did make the cut in King James’s version of the Bible. 8. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, ed. J.B. Wharey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), 305. 9. There are many references to making, using and consecrating the ceremonial sword in the grimoires. For example: B.L. Add. 36674, f 16v– 7, pp. 72, 149– 66; B.L. Sloane 1727, f 18; B.L. Sloane 3850, f 76 – 13; B.L. Sloane 3851, f 63v; Bod. Rawlinson D253, 57. Also see Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Of Occult Philosophy, or of Magical Ceremonies: The Fourth Book, trans. Robert Turner (London, 1655), 53. Scot does not refer to the use of the sword, but he gives instructions on how to engrave the conjuring knife. See Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, ed. Montague Summers (New York: Dover Publications, 1972), 243. 10. Pseudo-Agrippa, Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 63 –4. 11. J.G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, Chiefly from the Manuscripts of John Foxe the Martyrologist (Camden Society, 1859), 333. 12. Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 248. 13. Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 84. 14. Gary Taylor claims that Christian angels were modelled on Roman and Byzantine eunuchs, resulting in beautiful, beardless beings who are asexual. Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York: Routledge, 2000), 44. 15. The Book of Enoch was written between the second century BCE and the first century CE . Valerie Flint, “The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions,” in B. Ankarloo and S. Clark (eds), Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 293; Katelyn Mesler, “The Liber iuratus Honorii and the Christian Reception of Angel Magic,” in

NOTES TO PAGES 110 –113

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

187

C. Fanger (ed.), Invoking Angels: Theurgic Ideas and Practices, Thirteenth to Sixteenth Centuries (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 126. John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. G. Tesky (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 17. William Poole, Milton and the Idea of the Fall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 152–3. Milton, Paradise Lost, 141– 2. Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 52. Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, 221– 2. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 161, 275. The name Cernunnos comes from an inscription on the Pillar of the Boatman found in France, dated from the first century CE . Robin Good-Fellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Iests (London, 1628). In some circles at least, the beard was considered “the naturall Ensigne of Manhood.” It was considered an “ill-favoured piece of husbandry” to shave the face. See J.B., Anthropometamorphosis (London, 1653), 193– 5. Mark Parinter, Newes from Avernus (London, 1642). John Lookes, The Ragman (London, 1652). The Gelding of the Devil (London, 1668). R.B., The Kingdom of Darkness (London, 1688). A True and Exact Relation of the Severall Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the Late Witches, Arraigned and Executed in the County of Essex (London, 1645), 2, 14 – 5. B.L. Sloane 1727, f 19. Bod. Rawlinson D253, pp. 57 – 8. B.L. Add. 36674, f 83. Robert B. Shoemaker, “Reforming Male Manners: Public Insult and the Decline of Violence in London, 1660– 1740,” in T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen (eds), English Masculinities, 1660– 1800 (London: Longman, 1999), 134– 7. Printed sources in the early modern period emphasised the frightening aspects of evil spirits. See Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book XV, Chap. 2, 218; Pseudo-Agrippa, The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, 41 – 5. These contain descriptions that are similar to what Butler reports from a manuscript she possessed entitled Lemegeton. Elizabeth M. Butler, Ritual Magic (1949, repr. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 65 – 7. St George had become the patron saint of soldiers and chivalric orders during the Crusades. During the One Hundred Years’ War, English soldiers carried the cross of St George into battle. By the late medieval period, he was the patron of religious guilds and was celebrated with processions. St George’s Day had become an official feast day by 1415, and it remained an official holy day in the calendar of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer. In the sixteenth century, the festivities were secularised, and civic celebrations and the presence of St George

188

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

NOTES TO PAGES 113 –119 were downplayed. Muriel McClendon, “A moveable feast: Saint George’s Day Celebrations and Religious Change in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 38, no. 1 (1999): 1 – 27. Joan P. Linton, The Romance of the New World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 8), 5. The Life and Death of The Famous Champion of England, St George (London, c.1688 – 9), unpaginated. Ibid. All quotations in this section are from B.L. Add. 20006, pp. 293– 4. The following discussion of Lacan is taken from Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2006), 8 – 12. Derek Hook, “Absolute Other: Lacan’s ‘Big Other’ as Adjunct to Critical Social Psychological Analysis?,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 1 (January 2008): 55. Sherry B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?,” Feminist Studies 1, no. 2 (1972): 26 – 7; Louis Montrose, “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” Representations 33 (Winter 1991): 6. Rene Graziani, “Sir Thomas Wyatt at a Cockfight, 1539,” Review of English Studies 27, no. 106 (May 1976): 301– 3. Ibid., 303. For a similar analysis, see Garry Marvin, “The Cockfight in Andalusia, Spain: Images of the Truly Male,” Anthropological Quarterly 57, no. 2 (April 1984): 64. Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 417– 20. From Marvell’s “An Horation Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland,” in Andrew Marvell, The Poems of Andrew Marvell, ed. N. Smith (London: Pearson, 2003), 279 (lines 115– 20).

Chapter 7 Fairies and Female Magicians 1. Details of this case are recorded in Edmond Bower, Doctor Lamb Revived, or, Witchcraft Condemn’d in Anne Bodenham (London, 1653); James Bower, Doctor Lamb’s Darling: Or, Strange and Terrible News from Salisbury (London, 1653); R.B., The Kingdom of Darkness (London, 1688), 11. 2. Bower, Doctor Lamb Revived, 6. 3. Frances E. Dolan, “Reading, writing, and other crimes,” in V. Traub (ed.), Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 142– 67. 4. Anita McConnell, “John Lambe (1545/46– 1628),” DNB; A Briefe Description of the Notorious Life of Iohn Lambe, otherwise called Doctor Lambe (Amsterdam, 1628); Leba M. Goldstein, “The Life and Death of John Lambe,” in Guildhall Studies in London History VI, no. 1 (October 1979): 19 – 32.

NOTES TO PAGES 120 –123

189

5. Bower, Doctor Lamb Revived, 35 –6. 6. For a general discussion on fairies see, Katherine M. Briggs, The Anatomy of Puck (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1959); Regina Buccola, Fairies, Fractious Women, and the Old Faith: Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2006); Johannes Dillinger, Magical Treasure Hunting in Europe and North America: A History (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Minor White Latham, The Elizabethan Fairies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930); Diane Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Emma Wilby, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005). 7. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 129. 8. Ibid., f 115v. 9. Bod. Ashmole 1491, f 1362v. 10. Sidney Lee (ed), The Boke of Duke Huon of Burdeux, Done into English by Sir John Bourchier, Lord Berners, and Printed by Wynkyn De Worde About 1534 A.D. (London: published for the Early English Text Society by N. Tru¨bner and Co., 1884). 11. Briggs, The Anatomy of Puck, 16 – 7, 114– 15; Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 61; G. L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 208– 10; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), 609. 12. B.L. Lansdowne 2, f 62 – 64; J. G. Nichols (ed.), Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, chiefly from the Manuscripts of John Foxe the Martyrologist (London: Camden Society, 1859), 331– 4. 13. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. Freake, ed. D. Tyson (St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995), Book III, Chap. XXXII, p. 567. 14. Thomas Jackson, A Treatise Containing the Originall of Vnbeliefe, Misbeliefe, or Misperswasions Concerning the Veritie, Vnitie, and Attributes of the Deitie (London, 1625), 178. 15. R.S., A Description of the King and Queene of Fayries, their habit, fare, their abode, pompe, and state (London, 1635). 16. Robert Kirk, The Secret Common-Wealth (1692) as reproduced in Michael Hunter, The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late SeventeenthCentury Scotland (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001), 77 – 106. Rumours were spread that Kirk did not die, but was kidnapped by the fairies for betraying their secrets. Louis Stott, “Robert Kirk (1644– 92),” DNB. 17. Emma Wilby, “The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland,” Folklore 111, no. 2 (October 2000): 283– 306; Purkiss, At the Bottom of the Garden, 152– 6. 18. James VI, “Daemonologie,” in James I: The Workes (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1971), 127.

NOTES TO PAGES 123 –129

190

19. Susan’s case is richly documented in the form of depositions taken from Swapper and the other main characters. East Sussex Record Office, RYE 13/1 – pp. 8, 12, 13, 18, 19, and 21. The case is also documented in G. Slade Butler, “Appearance of Spirits in Sussex,” in Sussex Archeological Collections, Vol. 14 (Lewes, 1862), 26 – 31. The village politics of this case have been analysed in detail by Annabel Gregory in “Witchcraft, Politics and ‘Good Neighbourhood’ in Early Seventeenth-Century Rye,” Past and Present 133 (1991): 31 – 66. 20. Bishop’s Visitation Act Books, Somerset Record Office, D/D/CA 21 and 22. Also see Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 186. 21. Bod. Clarendon 29, f 102; Moses Pitt, An Account of One Ann Jefferies (London, 1696). 22. The Apprehension and confession of three notorious Witches. Arreigned and by Iustice condemned and executed at Chelmes-forde, in the Countye of Essex, this 5 day of Iuly, last past (London, 1589), unpaginated. 23. B.L. Sloane 3851, f 129. 24. The Severall Notorious and lewd Cousnages of Iohn West, and Alice West, falsely called the King and Queene of Fayries (London, 1613). 25. The Brideling, Sadling and Ryding, of a rich Churle in Hampshire, by the subtill practise of one Iudeth Philips, a professed cunningwoman, or Fortune teller (London, 1595); Henry Chettle, Kind-harts dreame Conteining fiue apparitions, with their inuectiues against abuses raigning. Deliuered by seuerall ghosts vnto him to be publisht, after Piers Penilesse post had refused the carrriage (London, 1594); letter from Thomas Fleming to Sir Robert Cecil, dated January 10, 1594/5 in the “Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable Marquis of Salisbury preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire,” Vol. 5 in Historical Manuscripts Commission: Reports and Calendars (London, 1894), 81 – 3. Judith Phillips may be the model for Ben Jonson’s character Doll Common in The Alchemist (1610), who poses as the fairy queen in order to dupe the character Dapper. See Pamela Allen Brown, “Judith Phillips,” DNB. 26. The Brideling, Sadling and Ryding, of a rich Churle in Hampshire, unpaginated. 27. A most faithful Relation of two Wonderful Passages Which happened very lately in the Parish of Bradfield in Berkshire (London, 1650), 3. 28. Bod. Ashmole 1406, f 50v. 29. Ibid., f 51v – 53. 30. The Examination of John Walsh (London, 1566), unpaginated.

Chapter 8

Magical Metaphors: Mary Parish and Goodwin Wharton

1. Margaret Cavendish, Poems and Fancies (1653), facsimile ed. (London: Scolar Press, 1972), 162.

NOTES TO PAGES 129 –134 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

191

Cavendish, Poems and Fancies, A3, 141, 164, 214. Ibid., 162. W. Warner, A Continuance of Albions England (London, 1606), 367. B.L. Add. 20006, 51. A volume that deals exclusively with the life of Mary Parish, entitled The Magical Adventures of Mary Parish, is forthcoming by the same author. Guido Giglioni, “Fantasy Islands: Utopia, The Tempest, and New Atlantis as Places of Controlled Credulousness,” in A. B. Kavey (ed.), World-Building and the Early Modern Imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 94, 103–8. Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987), 4, 29, 43; Kelly Oliver (ed.), The Portable Kristeva (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), xxv, xxvii; Hanna Segal, “Delusions and Artistic Creativity: Some Reflections on Reading ‘the Spire’ by William Golding,” International Review of Psycho-Analysis 1 (1974): 135– 9. As discussed in Ulinka Rublack, “Fluxes: The Early Modern Body and the Emotions,” History Workshop Journal 53, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 1 – 6; Rublack, “Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Female Body in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 150 (1996): 84 – 110; Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 4– 6. B.L. Add. 20006. The following narrative is drawn from Wharton’s account. Mary’s burial is recorded in the St Giles-in-the-Fields parish records, dated April 20, 1703. The parish register for Bromley St Leonard records the marriage of Thomas Parish of St Paul Covent Garden to Mary Lawrence of St Sepulchre on June 17, 1669. LMA Records for St Mary, Bromley St Leonard [Microfilm X040/006B]. B.L. Add. 20006, 32. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 64. Biographical information on Goodwin is drawn from B.L. Add. 20006; J. Kent Clark, Goodwin Wharton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984); J. Kent Clark, Whig’s Progress: Tom Wharton between Revolutions (London: Associated University Press, 2004). B.L. Add. 20006, 14. Ibid., 2. Wooburn Manor had been owned by Jane’s paternal grandfather, Sir Francis Goodwin. Part of the estate was allotted to Sir Francis’s son, Arthur, as part of his marriage settlement. Colonel Arthur Goodwin was Lady Jane’s father. Following his marriage to Jane Goodwin in 1637, Philip Wharton moved the Wharton family to Wooburn Manor. The Victoria History of the County of Buckingham, Vol. 3, ed. W. Page (London: St. Catherine Press, 1925), 108– 10. B.L. Add. 20006, 9.

192

NOTES TO PAGES 135 –139

21. B.L. Add. 20006, 18. 22. Ibid., 65. 23. Apparently, fern seed had magical properties associated with the fairy king. According to legend, an angel foretold that John the Baptist would be born “at that very instant, in which the Fernseed, at other times invisible, did fall.” Thomas Jackson, A Treatise Containing the Originall of Vnbeliefe, Misbeliefe, or Misperswasions Concerning the Veritie, Vnitie, and Attributes of the Deitie (London, 1625), 178– 9. 24. A set of instructions in the Lord Somers collection says “Take a black cat and kill her in March, and take out the heart of her and cut it and set a bean in the midst of it and set it in the ground in March the Moon increasing and the said bean will grow and become five pods and in time they will be ripe, then gather them and shell them and put them in the mouth one by one, and when thou hast the [?] bean thou shalt not see thy face in the glass and then thou art invisible and go wherefore [thou] wilt.” B.L. Add. 36674, f 108. 25. B.L. Add. 20006, 84. 26. Ibid., 264. 27. Ibid., 240. 28. Ibid., 138. 29. Ibid., 85. 30. Ibid., 183. 31. Ibid., 159. 32. Ibid., 165, 245. 33. Ibid., 154. 34. Ibid., 185. 35. Ibid., 221. The breastplate was about three inches square. It was a paper written on with Christ’s blood and folded three or four times then sealed within a small, silver oval-shaped box. On one side of the container was a crucifix and on the other was the image of the angel Michael. 36. Ibid., 51. 37. Ibid., 51. 38. Ibid., 51– 2. 39. Ibid., 52. 40. Ibid., 31. 41. Ibid., 69. 42. Ibid., 96. 43. C.J. Sisson, “A Topical Reference in ‘the Alchemist,’” in J. G. McManaway (ed.), Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1948), 740– 1. 44. As quoted in Michael Hunter, The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2001), 85, 106. 45. B.L. Add. 20006, p. 306. 46. Ibid., 323.

NOTES TO PAGES 139 –148

193

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

B.L. Add. 20006, 96. Ibid., 97, 323. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 75, 94. Ibid., 129. Paster, The Body Embarrassed, 23 – 5. The concept of the leaky body has been somewhat modified. Lisa Smith points out that both female and male bodies were fluid based on humoural theory, but not all male bodies leaked. In cases of male leakage, self-mastery over the body was expected as an important aspect of masculinity; women, of course, never had this option of control. See Lisa Wynne Smith, “The Body Embarrassed? Rethinking the Leaky Male Body in Eighteenth-Century England and France,” Gender and History 23, no. 1 (April 2011): 26 – 46. 55. B.L. Add. 20006, p. 118– 19. There is a long tradition of associating magical power with the unborn or newly born. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that the foetus could either control demons or act as a powerful demon in ritual magic. See Jean-Jacques Aubert, “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient Uterine Magic,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30, no. 3 (Autumn 1989): 437. At the end of the seventeenth century, John Aubrey was still supporting the idea of the necessity of virginity for scrying. He recounts the story of a clothier who goes “out about Midnight with his Crystal and Call, and a little Boy, or little Maid with him [for they say it must be a pure Virgin] to look in the Crystal.” Aubrey, Miscellanies (London, 1696), 131. 56. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L.S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 5, 7, 8, 42, 51; Oliver (ed.), The Portable Kristeva, xxiv.

Chapter 9

Magic and Honour

1. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 16, 106. 2. This chapter is based on a previously published article: Frances Timbers, “Liminal Language: Boundaries of Magic and Honor in Early Modern Essex,” Magic, Religion, and Witchcraft 2, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 174– 92. 3. Unless otherwise indicated, all details and quotations concerning this case are drawn from depositions in the Essex Record Office, Quarter Session Rolls, ERO Q/SR 324/118– 19. 4. Walter Metcalfe (ed.), The Visitations of Essex, 1634 (London: The Harleian Society, 1878); Philip Morant, The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, Compiled from the Best and Most Ancient Historians, from Domesday-Book, Inquisitiones Post Mortem, and Other Valuable Records, Vol. 2 (London, 1768), 393.

194

NOTES TO PAGES 148 –156

5. This estimate is based on an approximate age of 25 at the time of marriage. ERO D/DGd/T61, Will of John Alston of Stisted; Metcalfe (ed.), The Visitations of Essex, 1634. 6. ERO T/A 42/1, Ship Money Assessment. 7. ERO D/DGd/T61, Will of John Alston of Stisted. 8. ERO Q/SR 219/112, 113, Recognizances. 9. ERO Q/Sra 2/78, Petition of constables of Stisted. 10. ERO Q/SO 1/13 ff 3v, 4r, Order book. 11. Wood was also a churchwarden on several occasions. ERO D/P 49/1/1,2, Stisted Parish Registers. 12. ERO Q/SR 360/18. 13. ERO T/A 418/144/23, Assize Records. 14. ERO Q/SO 1/221, f. 78r, 78v, Order Book. 15. ERO Q/SR 366/ 30, 31, Indictments. 16. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women on Top: Symbolic Sexual Inversion and Political Disorder in Early Modern Europe,” in B.A. Babcock (ed.), The Reversible World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 152–4. 17. For a discussion of this social shaming ritual see Martin Ingram, “Ridings, Rough Music and Mocking Rhymes in Early Modern England,” in B. Reay (ed.), Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1988), 167– 91; Joan R. Kent, “‘Folk Justice’ and Royal Justice in Early SeventeenthCentury England: A ‘Charivari’ in the Midlands,” Midland History 8 (1983): 70 – 85; E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (New York: The New Press, 1991), 469– 515. 18. Garthine Walker, “Rereading Rape and Sexual Violence in Early Modern England,” Gender and History 10, no. 1 (April 1998): 1 – 25. 19. A Briefe Description of the Notorious Life of Iohn Lambe, Otherwise Called Doctor Lambe (Amsterdam, 1628). 20. Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London: Longman, 1999), 65 – 7, 91 – 2. 21. Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 36, 45. 22. ERO Q/SR 110/75-79.

Conclusion 1. James Sharpe (ed.), “William Holcroft His Booke” Local office-holding in late Stuart Essex, Essex Historical Documents: 2 (Chelmsford: Essex Record Office, 1986), 86, 111.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Manuscripts Bodleian Library Ashmole Ashmole Ashmole Ashmole Ashmole Ashmole Ashmole Ashmole Clarendon Rawlinson

182 (Napier papers) 244 (Napier papers) 421 (Napier papers) 851 (re: John Pordage) 1406 (Various Magical Manuscripts) 1488 (Napier papers) 1491 (Forman papers) 1494 (Forman papers) 29 (letter concerning Ann Jefferies) D253 (The Secret of Secrets by Moses Long)

British Library Additional Additional Harley Harley Lansdowne Lansdowne Sloane Sloane Sloane Sloane Sloane Sloane

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196

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East Sussex Record Office, Lewes RYE 13/1 – 8, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21 (Examinations re: Susan Swapper) Essex Record Office, Chelmsford D/DGd/T61 (Will of John Alston) D/P 49/1/1, 2 (Stisted Parish Registers) Q/SO 1/13 (Order Book) Q/SO 1/221 (Order Book) Q/SR 67/45 (Examination) Q/SR 110/75 – 79 (Indictment of Alice Aylett) Q/SR 219/112, 113 (Recognizances) Q/SR 324/118 – 119 (Examinations) Q/SR 349/92, 125, 128, 172 (Recognizances) Q/SR 360/18 (Indictment) Q/SR 366/30, 31 (Indictments) Q/Sra 2/78 (Petition of constables of Stisted) Q/Sba 2/76 (Examination) T/A 42/1 (Ship Money Assessment) T/A 418/144/23 (Indictment) Guildhall, London St Giles-in-the-Fields Parish Register London Metropolitan Archive St Mary, Bromley St Leonard Parish Register Somerset Record Office, Taunton D/D/CA 21, 22 (Bishop’s Visitation Act Books) Somerset Parish Registers The National Archives, Public Record Office PROB 11/369 (Will of John Pordage) STAC 8/245/5, 23, 32 (Ramsey, Ratcliffe, Ratcliffe v. Shute and Evans)

2. Printed Primary Sources Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henry Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Edited by Donald Tyson. Translated by James Freake. St Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1995. ———. Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Written by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, Counseller to Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany: And Judge of the Prerogative Court. Translated out of the Latin into the English Tongue, by J. F. London, 1650. ———. Heinrich Cornelius. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, his fourth book of occult philosophy of geomancy, magical elements of Peter de Abano, astronomical geomancy,

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INDEX

Agrippa von Nettesheim, Henry Cornelius, 23 – 4, 27 – 8, 30, 39, 59, 61, 68 – 9, 122 alchemy, 8, 22, 50, 60, 71, 77, 88, 93, 98, 134 al-Kindi, 29 Allen, Robert, 42 Allen, Thomas, 57 Alston, Anne, 147 Alston, John, 145–52 Alston, Lestrange, 148– 50 amulet, also see talisman, 14, 17, 82 angels, 9, 13 – 16, 23, 31 – 2, 39, 48, 76 – 7, 89, 91 – 2, 96 – 8, 102– 3, 109– 10, 115, 122 Ahab, 114, 136– 7, 141– 2 Astaroth, 49 – 50 Gabriel, 49, 109, 137, 142 Galvah, 86, 90 Madimi, 84, 86 – 7, 89, 91 – 2 Michael, 10, 66, 82 – 3, 109, 137, 142, 192 Raphael, 46, 96, 109 Uriel, 80 – 1, 142 Aquinas, Thomas, 9 Aristotle, 9, 20, 24 –5, 28 – 9 Ars Notoria or Notary Arts, 9, 37, 48, 53, 76 Arthur, legendary King, 81

Ashmole, Elias, 38, 62 – 4, 72, 74, 79, 98, 127 astrology, 17, 25, 32, 42, 45 – 8, 50, 52, 54, 57 Aubrey, John, 16, 47, 57, 79, 94, 193 Augustine of Hippo, 9, 15, 27, 61, 100 Aylett, Alice, 152 Aylett, Robert, 145– 50, 153 Aylett, Thomas, 147– 8 Backhouse, William, 64 Bacon, Roger, 20 –1, 57, 105 Bayliffe, John, 147 Blumfield, Mr, 16 Bodenham, Anne, 118– 20, 125 Boehme, Jacob; Behmenist, behmenism, 98 – 100, 103 Boucher, Mr, 132– 3 Bruno, Giordano, 22, 30, 61, 66 Bunyan, John, 108 Burton, Robert, 27 – 8 Caius, John, 58 Casaubon, Meric, 74 Charles II, 6, 59, 133– 4 Clavicula Salomonis or Key of Solomon, 9– 11, 13, 32, 39, 79 Chiles, William, 67

INDEX circles, 5, 10 – 15, 43, 48, 66 – 7, 73, 108, 112, 116, 119, 125, 127, 131, 135, 144, 146 Clarke, Elizabeth, 111 Corpus Hermeticum, 21 – 4, 30 Cotton, Robert, 161 cunning persons, 32, 41 – 4, 47 –8, 59, 63, 67, 78, 108, 118–19, 121, 126– 7, 132, 145, 151, 153 Cunny, Joan, 125 De Occulta Philosophia or Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 23 – 4, 27, 61, 68 – 9 Dee, Arthur, 64, 79, 81 Dee, Jane ne´e Fromond, 78, 83 – 6, 91, 94 Dee, John, 15 – 16, 21, 58, 74 – 94 Dee, Theodore, 85 demons, 6, 9 –10, 12– 5, 39, 53, 66 –7, 76 – 7, 95, 109– 12, 115, 119, 121– 7, 146 Dickson, Alexander, 61 Drury, Edmund, 146– 7, 150– 2 Drury, Elizabeth, 146– 8, 150– 2 effeminacy, 35, 42, 76, 82, 103, 112 Emerald Tablets, 19 Elizabeth I, 32, 78, 81 – 2, 93 –4 Evans, John, 53 Evans, Matthew, 43 – 4 exorcism, 14 – 5 fairies, 37 – 8, 78, 107, 119– 30, 137– 42 King of, 121– 2, 126, 138, 140 Oberon, 121 Queen of, 38, 122–3, 126–7, 137– 42 Shashbesh, Thomas, 126, 140 familiars, 58, 119, 123, 126, 138

215

fantasy or phantasy, see also imagination, 25, 27, 30 – 31, 36, 38, 40, 113, 130–1, 138 Faustus, 8 Ficino, Marsilio, 21 – 5, 31, 45, 76 Fludd, Robert, 19, 23, 26 –7, 45 folk magic, 7, 9, 17, 34, 120, 123 Forman, Simon, 17, 47 – 52, 79, 121 Fourth Book of Agrippa, The, 24, 36, 58, 108 Fowler, Christopher, 97, 102 fraternity, 56 – 7, 66, 73 freemasonry, 60 – 73, 107 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 21, 105–6 Galen, Galenic medicine, 24 – 5, 27, 45– 6, 131– 2 Gallant, Elizabeth, 146– 7, 152 Glanvill, Joseph, 59 gnostic, gnosticism, 88 – 9, 102 Goodridge, John, 49, 79 Greene, Robert, 21, 105 grimoires or magic manuals, 8– 15, 17 – 8, 21, 33, 36, 39– 40, 56, 79, 96, 120, 128 Hermes Trismegistus, 20 –1, 61, 66 hermeticism, hermetica, 20 – 4, 30, 45, 61, 63 –4, 66, 72, 98 Hills, William, 42 – 3 Homer, 14 Hounslow Heath, 135, 137 Hurrell, Martha, 146– 7, 152 imaginary, 31, 131 imagination, see also fantasy, 3, 25 – 31, 36, 38, 40, 61, 81, 113, 129– 31, 138, 143 Jefferies, Ann, 124– 5 kabbalah, 23, 60, 98 Kelley, Edward, 75, 78 – 87, 89 –94

216

MAGIC AND MASCULINITY

Kelley, Joan, 83, 85, 91 Key of Solomon, see Clavicula Salomonis Kirk, Robert, 122– 3, 139 Lambe, John, 119, 151 Laski, Prince Albrecht, 82 – 3 Lawse, William, 67 Leade, Jane, 100– 4, 107 Lilly, William, 6, 41 – 2, 50, 52 – 4, 63, 80 Loader, Andrew, 67 London College of Physicians, 50 – 1, 97 Long, Moses, 96, 112 Lowes, John, 58 Ludgate Prison, 133, 138 manhood, see also masculinity, 33 –41, 51, 54, 56 – 7, 59, 66, 73, 75 – 8, 83, 93 – 4, 103– 5, 107, 109, 112– 16, 122, 148, 152, 155 masculinity, see also manhood, 34 –6, 40, 42, 52, 56 – 7, 72 – 3, 75 – 6, 78, 81, 91, 93 – 4, 99, 103– 6, 111– 13, 115, 139, 144 memory, art of, 66, 73 Merlin, 81, 87 Moses de Le´on, 23 Napier, Richard 15 – 16, 44 – 7, 96 macrocosm, microcosm, 18 – 20, 24, 28, 30 – 1, 45 – 6, 50, 116 maleficium, 6 – 7, 41, 125, 152 Marlowe, Christopher, 8 menstruation, 141– 2 Moray, Robert, 80 – 2 natural philosophy, 18 – 19, 39, 59 necromancy, 14 – 15, 49, 70, 77 neoplatonism, 19, 22 – 6, 28 – 9, 71 Notary Arts, see Ars Notoria other/Other, 114– 16 Paracelsus, 28, 30, 45

Parish, Mary, 12, 16, 113, 130– 43 Parish, Thomas, 133 pentacle, pentalpha, 5, 10, 13, 66, 68– 9, 73 Phillips, Judith, 126– 7 Philosopher’s Stone, 8, 70 physic, physician, 24, 45 – 8, 50 – 2, 118 Picatrix, 20 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 23, 45, 76 Pilgrim’s Progress, 108 Pimander, 21 Pitt, Moses, 124 Plato, 9, 18, 21 – 2, 25, 29, 100 Plot, Robert, 67 Pordage, John, 95 – 104 Pordage, Mary, 95, 97, 103, 127 providence, 31, 46 Pryme, Abraham de la, 57 Radcliffe, Bridget, Countess of Sussex, 43 Radcliffe, Elizabeth, 43 Radcliffe, Robert, fifth Earl of Sussex, 43 Ramsay, John, first Earl of Holdernesse, 43 Reuchlin, Johannes, 102 Rogers, Thomas, 139 Rose, Simon, 16 Rosicrucianism, 62 – 4, 69, 72 Royal Society, 59 – 60, 62, 67, 69 Schaw, William, 60 – 1, 66 Scot, Reginald, 12, 37, 86 scrying, 15 – 6, 46, 49, 74 – 9, 81 – 2, 96, 100–2, 112, 119, 142 Secretum Secretorum, 20 – 1, 91, 111 sephiroth, 23, 83 Shute, Edward, 43 Shute, Frances, 43 Simon the Magus, 86 – 92 Solomon, biblical King, 9 – 10, 66, 68, 70, 73, 82, 112

INDEX Sophia, 89, 91 – 2, 98 –100, 102, 107 spiritus mundi, 22 – 3, 31 Steele, Richard, 76 Stukeley, William, 67 succubus, 138– 9 Swapper, Susan, 123– 5, 130 sword, 5, 13, 43, 66, 73, 105– 9, 112– 13, 115– 17 talisman, see also amulet, 17, 22, 41, 46, 50, 52, 61, 63, 133 Testament of Solomon, 10, 14 Tetragrammaton, 13, 15, 43 theosophy, 98 – 9 theurgy, 31 – 2, 96 Three Books of Occult Philosophy, see De Occulta Philosophia Tirrye, Joan, 124 treasure-hunting, 6–7, 9, 11, 32–3, 41, 43, 53, 108, 121, 123, 126–7, 135 Turner, Robert, 58 Turville, 132, 137 Utriusque Cosmi ... Historia, 19, 27 Vaughn, Thomas, 69 Vaux, John, 58 Walsh, John, 127– 8 wand, 6, 10 – 11, 53, 111, 137

217

Watts, Ann, 155– 6 West, Alice, 126, 130 Wharton, Anne Lee, 134 Wharton, Baron Philip, 134 Wharton, Goodwin, 72, 113– 15, 130–43 Wharton, Lady Jane Goodwin, 134 Wharton, Philip James, 72 Wharton, Thomas, 134 Whitmore, George, 138, 140 Williams, Dr Thomas, 133, 140 Wisdom, see Sophia witchcraft, witches, 1– 2, 6 – 8, 13, 17, 28, 32, 41 – 3, 46 –7, 58, 74, 77, 111–12, 118 –19, 123 –4, 152–3 Wolsey, Cardinal, 135, 140 women, 3, 35, 38 – 9, 41 – 2, 58 –60, 75, 79, 83 – 6, 89 –93, 101–4, 112, 119– 29, 138, 140– 3, 151, 155 Wood, Robert, 149 Wycherley, William, 43, 108– 9, 121–2 Yates, Dame Frances, 21 Zohar, 23