A Magus of the 1790s

Abstract

During the year he spent in an asylum near Bristol, Gilbert acquired enough knowledge from John Henderson, the son of the asylum’s owner, to write articles on magic and astrology in the newly launched Conjuror’s Magazine after moving to London. Gilbert’s astrological prognostications of ‘death of aristocrats’ and ‘Seditions’ were in tune with the radical millennialist expectations that the French Revolution had inspired, but he regarded theoretical astrology as of greater value than prediction, and propounded a ‘Macrocosmal Astrology’based on a belief in the correspondence between the spiritual and material realms. He also insisted on the ‘omnipotence’ of the recently discovered planet Uranus, viewing it as epochally significant re-appearance of the star that the Magi had followed at the birth of Christ.