Occult Philosophy Research Articles

PERSPEKTIF PANDANGAN IMAN KRISTIANI TERHADAP FILSAFAT OKULTISME: HERMITISISME DAN KABBALAH

Kabbalah and Hermitism are often unwittingly adopted into the practice of Christian theology due to the clergy's ignorance of this occult philosophical knowledge. The practice of occult philosophy sometimes unconsciously enters into the social practice of Christian society, especially those that are thick with local culture. The concept of cultural inculturation is a legitimization that is often used as an excuse to announce the practice. The purpose of this writing is to provide theological thinking insights into the philosophical practices of the Kabbalah occult and Hermitism so that the church returns to the true teachings and is based on the principles of the Christian faith. This research method uses a qualitative method based on literature research, observation of social conditions, community culture, and history. The results of the study show that the practices of Philosophy, Kabbalah Occultism and Hermitism inadvertently inculturate the socio-pastoral conditions of the Christian faith, which also has an impact on legalized religious ritual actions.

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of Theosophy: Spiritual Underpinnings of the Science of Deduction

Sherlock Holmes is often oversimplified as a secular modern professional, with a remorselessly scientific outlook. This hypothesis overlooks late-nineteenth-century English society’s pursuit of new social possibilities for spiritualism, following challenges from Darwinist biological determinism to orthodox biblical mythology and morality. If we see Holmes in a default empirical scientism affiliated to imperial ideologies, we will remain blind to the effects of multiple countercultural and spiritual tones that also underpin the “science of deduction.” Holmes’ methods were subliminally informed by theosophy, as Doyle gleaned much of his spiritual knowledge from first- or second-hand readings on Blavatsky. Thus, Vedantic and Buddhist philosophy find inadvertent—but not coincidental—traces in Holmes through theosophy. An intellectual offspring of the trinity of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, Holmes was also a child of Blavatsky’s occult philosophy. Adopting a decolonial praxis, this paper argues that comparisons between the materialistic principles of Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall, on the one hand, and Holmes on the other, are as useful as comparing the detective’s work to Blavatsky’s theosophy.

“Imagination Is Now the World”: W.B. Yeats and the Staging of Visionary Experience

Throughout his literary career, the poet and dramatist W.B. Yeats displayed a keen interest in the phenomenology of the mental image as well as a deep curiosity about the possible mystical functions of the imagination. This article examines the impact of Yeats’s evolving set of beliefs about the power of imaginative vision, including those derived from readings in occult philosophy and personal experiences at séances, upon his dramaturgical decisions as a playwright, particularly in his Noh-inspired “plays for dancers.” Yeats’s convictions about the most effective kinds of acting, staging, and scenography for these dramatic works served an overarching aesthetic and spiritual project: to transform the theatre into a visionary medium that, through the power of the poetic word, could restore a sense of connection to the “world-soul” or anima mundi for audiences of his industrialized, scientific, objectifying age.

AN ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVE: SHAKESPEARE AND THE WORLD OF FAIRIES IN A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

Purpose: This research aims to explore the world of fairies in a comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605) written by William Shakespeare. This study proposes that the concept of fairies described by William Shakespeare is mere supernatural rather than being philosophical as the Elizabethan age itself is defined for its prudence and emerging philosophies. Further, This study intends to present an alternative perspective on Elizabethan Fairies.
 Methodology: This research is hermeneutic in approach and descriptive in nature. The sources are collected in the form of both print and web. The primary text used for this research is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605).
 Findings: Shakespeare not only changes the physiognomy of Elizabethan fairies but also alters the functions that are associated with them.Elizabethan Fairies were known for their awe and evil-doing but the world of fairies that Shakespeare describes in the play is to some extent altered.
 Aplication of the study: This study is relevant to the field of literature, Elizabethan Literature ,and Occult philosophy. Students and researchers of Elizabethan drama will find it useful.
 Novelity or Originality of the study: The study is hitherto a novel approach to Elizabethan supernatural powers. By considering this alternative viewpoint, this qualitative study intends to study the world of fairies of this play in depth by focusing on multiple standpoints of the Elizabethan age contradicting with Shakespearian fairies characterized in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Exorcism in Camera: An Experiment in Ontology (1999): from The Karen Smith Archive

Karen Smith (1966–2017) had long been interested in altered states of consciousness. In seeking help with her own psychiatric illness, she came across Agrippa’s works on occult philosophy and the use of spoken-word formulas for entering and exiting differential states of being. These steps over the psychic threshold are known as adorcism and exorcism – the summoning and banishing of demons or spirits. Over the course of a week in 1999, she decided to try out some of Agrippa’s techniques. She chose to be possessed and then dispossessed by the seven spirits associated with the planets of classical antiquity. She documented one ritual per day. For each action, she used the same devices – a bathtub filled with water, a lamp and an audio cassette player with a tape featuring incantations pre-recorded by a ceremonial magician. Published here are the results of these ontological experiments.

A Pulmonary Machinery: Béroalde de Verville,Les Soupirs amoureux(1583)

Tom Conley’s essay studies verbal and visual signs in the poetry of François Béroalde de Verville (1556–1626). Exhumed and printed in her Poésie amoureuse de l’âge baroque: Vingt poètes maniéristes et baroques (1990), a “collage of poems focusing on the tortures of love,” Gisèle Mathieu-Castellani offers a selection of verse from Béroalde’s Les Soupirs amoureux (1583), the third volume of his Les Apprehensions spirituelles, “a collection of poetry, political theory and occult philosophy.” Examining in detail the first (and only) edition of Les Soupirs amoureux, Conley stresses how the volume as a whole appears not only as verse but also as a visual and physical object. He contends that the amorous sigh or “ soupir” is a signifier – a plot point – integral to a serial pattern of iterations that order what otherwise would be a patchwork of sonnets, elegies, odes, and complaintes. Given that, like his mentor, Henri IV, who was known for his visual acuity, Béroalde invests his verse with an ocular or even lenticular character of the kind that perhaps he had gained from his commentaries of the copperplate illustrations in Jacques Besson’s Theatrum instrumentorum (1576) and, later, his revised edition of the French translation (1546) of Francesco Colonna’s richly pictured Hypnerotomachia poliphilii (1600).

VOCABULARY AND STRUCTURE OF THE INVOCATION OF ISIS IN THE NOVEL “THE SEA PRIESTESS” BY DION FORTUNE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the structure and vocabulary of the invocation of Isis in the famous occult novel “The Sea Priestess” by Dion Fortune. The author is a mystic, a Kabbalist, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the founder of the Order of the Brotherhood of the Inner Light. Her works are included in the golden treasury of the New Age movement. The novel “The Sea Priestess” had a significant influence on the formation of modern religious movements honoring the Great Goddess, in particular, on Wicca. The object of the study in the article is the invocation - the religious text calling on the Egyptian Goddess Isis, as a personification of the Great Mother. Isis is represented in the novel as the Goddess of the Moon, who is the «Sea» - the Original Ocean from which life spawned. Here the reader becomes acquainted with the occult philosophy: all goddesses are one Goddess. As a consequence, in the invocation we find the names of goddesses of different pantheons - Egyptian (Isis), Greek (Aphrodite, Hera, Persephone, Hecate, Ea / Rhea, Ge / Gaia), Semitic (Astarte, Ashtoreth), as well as the sacral names Binah, Levanah. The priestess of the sea calls Isis in two images – Isis Veiled and Isis Unveiled. Invocation consists of three parts: the beginning, the main part and the end. In the beginning, the priestess calls upon the goddess to come. She does not ask, her appeal sounds more like a demand. The place and time of the ritual are indicated here and the Goddess is enchanted with sacred names. The main part of invocation is narrated on behalf of Isis, as evidenced by the use of the first person singular pronoun. Here we find epithets and metaphors denoting female symbols, characterizing the Goddess. In addition, the names of goddesses from different pantheons are used in this context,. The final stanza of the invocation comprises the indication that Isis responded to the call and has come unto a particular person.

Letters to the Sage: Collected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson: Volume One: The Esotericists ed. by Patrick D. Bowen and K. Paul Johnson

Reviewed by: Letters to the Sage: Collected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson: Volume One: The Esotericistsed. by Patrick D. Bowen and K. Paul Johnson Jay Bregman KEYWORDS Patrick D. Bowen, K. Paul Johnson, Thomas Moore Johnson, Johnson correspondence, Theosophy, Theosophical Society, Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Occult Platonism, Occult Philosophy patrick d. bowen and k. paul johnson, eds. Letters to the Sage: Collected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson: Volume One: The Esotericists. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2016. Pp. 516. Letters to the Sagecomprises the first volume of correspondence to the nineteenth-century American Platonist Thomas M. Johnson (TMJ), who was also active in the contemporary occult revival. The volume consists of letters from occultists, American and foreign, some of them famous. It also provides some clues to the status and nature of his Platonic activities, and recounts conversions from orthodox Christian denominations to religious syncretism, occult thought, and Neoplatonism (e.g. "I finally exchanged my faith in Jesus Christ for … spiritualist freethinking," S. H. Randall, Oct. 29, 1883, 371). Bowen's introduction and notes provide a useful overview of the occult revival and the individuals corresponding with TMJ (including useful comparative schematic diagrams of courses of study and texts). The Introduction attempts to make sense of the maze of relationships, and helps out by highlighting some important passages in the letters, with some analysis. It presents "the sage of the Osage" not only as the translator and missionary of Neoplatonism who edited the Platonistand an American Thomas Taylor (the great English Neoplatonist, who most influenced him), but also as a person of "many hats" (9): attorney, mayor, school board president of Osceola, Missouri, and a leader in the American esoteric community. There are two hundred eighty-six letters from forty-eight correspondents (most of them to [End Page 250]Johnson). 1Collectively they offer "a clear glimpse into the previously little understood rebirth of organized American esotericism in the 1880's" (10). The letters are organized by correspondent to better highlight insight into specific developments. Some letters provide an intimate look into the dynamics of the 1880s US rebirth of Theosophy; others from obscure figures help fill in the in gaps of the spread of esoteric movements and their offshoots nationwide. Thus they advance our knowledge of "American Metaphysical Religion." The correspondence with the first American Muslim convert, A. R. Webb, involved with Johnson's Theosophical Society Lodge, speaks to the history of Islam in America. In one letter from an Indian Muslim Sufi, "Ruswa" correctly states that Ishraq ("Illuminationism") is the Persian form of Neoplatonism. TMJ also published Sufi material in the Platonist. The letters of General Abner Doubleday, the alleged (contested) inventor of baseball, record the influence of Tarot on the occult community. Doubleday translated influential French occultist Eliphas Levi's works on high magic into English, and sections of Levi's La science des éspritswere published in the Platonistas "Kabbalistic Doctrine of the Spirits." The correspondence is replete with the mundane difficulties, conflicts, and scandals of occult organizations. Some light is shed on the careers of leading Theosophists, including Madame Blavatsky, William Q. Judge, and Colonel H. S. Olcott; letters from the latter two are included herein. It was the spiritualist journalist H. S. Olcott who, with H. P. Blavatsky, co-founded the first Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875. Blavatsky had travelled to America just the year before. In 1877 Blavatsky published Isis Unveiledwhich presented a comprehensive theory of esoteric religious history. Despite the fact that the book was successful, however, her practical occultism was not. When the chapter of the Theosophical Society founded by her became inactive, she went to India and studied with gurus, after which she eventually gained a large following and published the influential periodical the Theosophist. A section on pre-1880s US esotericism in the Introduction to the present book notes the influence on theosophy of Swedenborg and Mesmerism, which "posited that humans had the ability to receive information through an unseen universal ether" (14). Influential also was Spiritualism, with its attempts at channeled communication with the [End Page 251]deceased. Spiritualists developed a basic Hermetic/Neoplatonic "chain of being" hierarchy, a "pop" form...

Manicheizmai ir Czesławas Miłoszas: moralinės vaizduotės tyrimas

[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba] Straipsnio tikslas – apmąstyti Czesławo Miłoszo Ulro žemę manicheizmo istorijos kontekste remiantis moralinės vaizduotės teorija ir moralinės pusiausvyros koncepcija. Straipsnyje analizuojami viduramžių, Renesanso, romantizmo ir XX amžiaus manicheizmai, diskutuojama su Vytauto Kavolio ir Leonido Donskio samprotavimais šiomis temomis. Straipsnio naujumas: atsižvelgiant į Williamo Blake’o ir Cz. Miłoszo samprotavimus, kalbama apie moralinės pusiausvyros koncepciją ir daromos prielaidos dėl personalizuoto ir depersonalizuoto triksterio vaidmens skatinant moralinių pusiausvyrų kaitą. Straipsnyje siekiama apibrėžti moralinių galių funkcionalumą ir disfunkcionalumą moralinės vaizduotės teorijos ribose.

Resisting the Rosicrucians

In The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Frances Yates theorized that the occult philosophy described in the Rosicrucian Manifestos of 1614 were attached to a political alliance uniting Protestant England with the Palatinate. Though modern scholars have largely rejected Yates’s argument, at least two writers in the early seventeenth century argued along similar lines, linking the Rosicrucians to the revolt that placed the Palatine Elector on the Bohemian throne, initiating the Thirty Years’ War. Friedrich Förner, Suffragan-Bishop of Bamberg, and Jean Boucher, a noted French controversialist, both saw the Rosicrucians as an occult conspiracy working to undermine Catholic states from within. The two author’s attack on the Rosicrucians contained a veiled critique of Renaissance monarchy. In the end both authors proposed a form of constitutional government intended to remedy the worst defects of Renaissance absolutism and ensure the survival of Catholicism in an age of religious war.

Structurally Cosmic Apostasy: The Atheist Occult World of H.P. Lovecraft

The conflict between materialism and spiritualism has a long and sordid philosophical history. Both schools of thought attempted to address the problems of the unknown through varying methods. There are two figures, who i their own ways, one subtle ad the other not so subtle rejected both means. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky sought to counter Spiritualist claims by venturing into her own occult philosophy—Theosophy—seeking to uncover spiritual truths, debunking religious traditions as well as seeking to undermine scientific materialism that had begun to sweep the intellectual life of the 19th century. To do so, she claimed to have translated an ancient book which revealed the absolute root of mankind through occult means, though she never produced the full text. Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the science fiction author who proudly declared himself as an atheist and a materialist, a staunch supporter of Thomas Henry Huxley's materialism and a fervent foe of any sort of religious claim, nonetheless also produced a book of which the text was never revealed. Lovecraft, by using many of the same precepts of the Theosophists, that the current state of man is but one stage in a cosmic cycle, produced a work known as the Necronomicon. The difference, it shall be made clear is that Lovecraft openly admitted his book was a fiction, of which an actual manuscript did not exist and were merely scattered parts found within his stories that he used to distill through myth the reality of the human condition as inconsequential in the totality of time and space, while all the while referring to concepts that Blavatsky outlined. Lovecraft controverts the Theosophist by using her same method, employing it more honestly, and creates his own mythology in order to show that it is invented and supposed supernatural forces are merely, as Richard Dawkins now puts it, “ the natural yet unexplained.”

The Quaker Cunning Folk: The Astrology, Magic, and Divination of Philip Roman and Sons in Colonial Chester County, Pennsylvania

Although popular culture has awarded Massachusetts the distinction of being recognized as America's "witchcraft capital," it was Pennsylvania's earliest practitioners of the mystical arts who quietly fostered the archetype of the American "cunning man." Much like their European brethren, these hybrid practitioners of the occult arts often paired the esoteric worldview of the Renaissance magus with the practicality of the traditional sorcerer.

The Witches in Macbeth and Renaissance Occult Philosophy

The witches in Macbeth play a critical role so they have been interpreted in many ways; for instance, they have been viewed as reflecting Macbeths unconsciousness or inner state. In this paper, I regard them as witches who really did exist in that era and focus on the magic that the witches practiced. I explore the magic in terms of Renaissance occult philosophy. The most important idea of Renaissance occult philosophy is the affirmation of the power of human beings to control both their own personalities and the world around them. In Ficino’s philosophical system, humanity is important because of our central position in the universe. He founded a magical tradition through his own works and his translations of Hermetic and Neoplatonic texts. Pico introduced cabala into the sources of occult lore that Ficino had used. The aim of Pico’s cabalist magic is the redemption of both humankind and the natural world. However, these occult philosophers were engaged in a conflict with religious authorities because they sought truth outside the bounds of established views. Some critics, such as Mebane and Yates, argue that the witch hunt was the result of the conflict between occult philosophers and Christianity leaders and monarchs. Among the occult philosophers, Agrippa plays the most significant role in causing the witch hunt because in Agrippa’s book, Occult Philosophy, the heterodox aspects of Renaissance magical theory frequently appeared. The magic appearing in Macbeth is closely related to occult philosophy. The witches in Macbeth practice weather magic and can transfigure their own bodies and, according to occult philosophy’s magical theory, such acts are possible, since the magicians receive supernatural powers when the soul of the magicians unite with God. Occult philosophers also believe numbers and words have virtues. In Macbeth, the witches use numbers and words to curse people and society. Using dead body parts is one way of performing witchcraft. The witches use dead bodies which are not buried in consecrated ground, which, Agrippa says, have affinity with evil spirits, so they can be used for wicked purposes. By using the dead bodies, the witches practice necromancy; they conjure up spirits and make predictions upon Macbeth’s request. In this play, Macbeth destroys the world around him and ruins his own life. It appears that the main reason of his destruction is the prophecy made by the witches. Occult philosophers believe that human beings control their fate and reform the corrupted world by using magic. In contrast, in this play, it is noticed that magic contributes neither to controlling ones own destiny nor to making the better world.

Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., alchemy, and the creation of New England culture, 1606–1676 (review)

Reviewed by: Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., alchemy, and the creation of New England culture, 1606–1676 Jole Shackelford Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., alchemy, and the creation of New England culture, 1606–1676 Walter W. Woodward. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Prospero’s America takes its title from Shakespeare’s alchemical magus in The Tempest, who Walter Woodward uses as a period icon for John Winthrop, Jr., to set the stage for his argument for the cultural importance of Paracelsian alchemy and late Renaissance natural philosophy in the history of colonial New England. The former governor of Connecticut and well-known collector of books on alchemy and other aspects of occult philosophy has been subject to study before, but Woodward’s novelty is to place Winthrop’s training in alchemy and alchemical medicine squarely in the context of the colonial Englishman’s vision for the development of New England, a vision shared by the founding members of England’s Royal Society and their Rosicrucian and radical Calvinist forebears.1 Winthrop began study of alchemy in London during the 1620s and traveled to Turkey (1627–29) “seeking out alchemical contacts” (33) at their source, much as the mythical founder of the Rosicrucians had done. His commitment to Renaissance magic is evident from his choice of John Dee’s monas hieroglyphica as his personal emblem. By 1631, when he set out with his family for North America (where his father would become governor of Massachusetts), Winthrop was a practicing alchemist, intent on bringing Rosicrucian reformers’ alchemical vision of social and economic development to New England. For Woodward, alchemy was a worldview that glued Puritan hopes for renovation of the world to an irenic religious perspective and the alchemical medicine of the Paracelsians, understood as Protestant Christian ideology much along the same lines as in John Young’s Faith, Medical Alchemy and Natural Philosophy.2 Indeed, Woodward makes the further, interesting comment that “Politically, the Protestant alchemical quest for universal world improvement provided a useful counter to the Catholic universalism of the Hapsburg Empire.”(24) The irenic nature of alchemy helps to explain Winthrop’s mission and his success: it permitted friendships and the exchange of ideas to flourish across denominational and linguistic boundaries, equipping Winthrop to navigate the delicate political situation that was to confront him as a colonial leader. At the core of Woodward’s analysis is Winthrop’s commitment to the Rosicrucian reform and his practice of alchemical medicine. The Rosicrucian vision, which merged nicely with the Hartlib Circle’s endorsement of Comenian pansophism—Winthrop visited England (1641–43) and met Comenius—provided the colonial alchemist with a plan for developing a utopian plantation at the mouth of the Pequot River in eastern Connecticut. This plantation was to utilize the latest agricultural and technological developments and service a silver mine further up river. The mine, in turn, would provide the raw material for metallurgical arts. Winthrop exchanged seeds and plants with collectors abroad and sought to naturalize new grasses and other crops to develop the plantation’s productivity. Likewise, he established saltworks, ironworks, saltpeter production, and distilleries for processing tars and turpentines for local use and export. But Woodward makes an even stronger case for the importance of Winthrop’s practice of chemical medicine, both in establishing his reputation as a healer among fellow colonists and in positioning himself as a leader in relations between Europeans and Native peoples. Winthrop’s diplomatic skills were especially evident in 3 specific contexts: negotiations to stabilize his plantation, which was caught up in the politics of intertribal conflicts and the hegemonic maneuvers of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to control the Pequot River basin; amelioration of witchcraft prosecutions, and; defense of colonial autonomy against the efforts of the English crown to control its overseas possessions. Woodward implicates Winthrop’s alchemical adeptness in all 3. His irenic willingness to see Native peoples as potential members of plantation society enabled his diplomatic mission, especially to the Pequot who resided in the area. His familiarity with the theory behind magic raised his skepticism about the ability of accused witches to accomplish the feats they were charged with, leading him...

Savitri Devi and the National Socialist Religion of Nature

This paper argues however, that nature religiosity can have its dark side, for National Socialism too was a religion of nature which was built upon the rock of selected streams of nineteenth century German romantic and occult philosophy.

Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (review)

Reviewed by: Science and Empire in the Atlantic World Heather R. Peterson James Delbourgo and Nicholas Dew, Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (New York: Routledge, 2008). $32.95. Over the last decade, scholars of the history of science have completely reimagined knowledge production in the Americas and the relationship between [End Page 323] center and periphery. Science and Empire in the Atlantic World encapsulates many of these new insights and discoveries, with contributions from most of the prominent scholars working in this field. While Dew and Delbourgo admit that one can hardly isolate the Atlantic World from European pursuits in Asia and Africa, they argue that the Atlantic constitutes a “logical unit of analysis” because of its specific history and the interaction between Amerindians, Africans, and Europeans. As they point out, the Atlantic was distinct from other colonial areas for three reasons: the mortality of the Amerindian population; European settlement; and, finally, slavery and the economies created by the slave trade. It was also an arena where dynastic tensions played out in geographical conquests, both literal and figurative. The chapters revolve around three central questions—center/periphery, networks of knowledge, and conflicting epistemologies—offering diverse points of view. Nicholas Dew, Daniela Bleichmar, and Júnia Ferreira Furtado complicate the classic center/periphery model, emphasizing a lack of central control and Creole (by which they mean European offspring born in the New World) participation and interests. As Bleichmar points out, “If Madrid was, for all involved, clearly the center, the viceroyalties were not the periphery: they were the empire” (241; orig. emphasis). Likewise, James Delbourgo contends that even as late as 1772 Franklin would have embraced identification with the “grand esprit, proper de la Nation Angloise,” and Antonio Barrera’s actors saw themselves as extensions of their patria. In a fascinating chapter on Sir Walter Scott, occult philosophy, and local knowledge, Ralph Bauer reminds us that “discovery” in the early modern imagination meant quite literally to dis-cover or unveil secrets. Taking on one of Joyce Chaplin’s arguments, Bauer argues that during the sixteenth century Europeans tended to accept native knowledge and arts, not because they were in a relatively weak position vis-à-vis the Indians (as Chaplin contends) but because European knowledge was itself full of magic and secret sympathies. Barrera, on the other hand, argues that sixteenth-century Spanish investigators were motivated primarily by “practical and utilitarian principles that pushed aside concerns about causes and principles (Aristotle) and hidden relations (Hermeticism and magic)” (179). However, one suspects that these two tendencies would have overlapped considerably. The collection resulted from several conferences and a two-day workshop sponsored by UCLA, and this discursive flow is reflected in many of the pieces. For instance, Allison Sandman’s work demonstrates the divide taking place in Spanish mapmaking as the theoretical knowledge of cosmographers was made public, while the experiential knowledge of pilots remained secret. This circle is later closed in Joyce Chaplin’s chapter on Franklin and the Gulf Stream. Franklin, Chaplin argues, played a crucial role in bringing into scientific circles the craft knowledge of seamen about the currents that regulated navigation along the coast of North America, with the publication of a chart showing the current in 1768. Yet, here again, while seaman’s knowledge was made public, the seamen themselves fell into obscurity. The work highlights the hazards and difficulties involved in overseas exploration. In Nicholas Dew’s chapter regarding the experiments conducted in Cayanne as part of the Paris Academy’s attempts at fixing a universal pendulum, he notes that rather than take Jean Richer Guiana’s measurements at face value, as Newton would later do, and conclude that the earth was nonspherical, the society questioned the accuracy of the data. Dew suggests that these networks—“like the state’s imperial networks on which they relied—were fragile and apt to escape from metropolitan control” (66). Neil Safier’s contribution demonstrates [End Page 324] the perils of knowledge production in situ. Tracing the three-and-a-half-decade travels of Joseph Jussieu, Safier details the obstacles impeding the production and dissemination of knowledge in the periphery, as Jussieu is beset by economic hardship (loss of...

<i>Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England Alison Searle Ryan J. Stark. Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England. Washington: Catholic University of America, 2009. Pp. vii + 234. $69.95. Mr. Stark’s primary thesis postulates that learning and science “used the idea of plainness in order to distinguish between their non-magical understandings of language and esoteric beliefs held by wizards, witches, theurgists, and other practitioners of mysterious arts. . . . ‘Plainness’ was a philosophical idea, not a syntactical one.” The goal of Bacon, Casaubon, Dryden, and their ilk was “the most significant linguistic happening in seventeenth-century England.” More controversial, Mr. Stark’s second thesis concerns “Enlightenment rhetorical castoffs” that “fell by the wayside.” Against “modernity’s materialization of language . . . trapping the human voice in the bric-a-bric of the material world,” he argues for “the return of enchanted rhetoric.” It is a spiritually weighted agenda that connects language “to the Word at the beginning of the world” and refuses the separation of “Spirit . . . from daily life and language.” Conversely, “nefarious eloquence” is an evil that “infects individuals—and congregations of individuals.” “Nonchalant about the world of the preternatural and the supernatural,” scholars lack the sophistication and sensitivity of their early modern counterparts. These two theses are conflated in his methodology, which is a type of worldview analysis: “we are challenged to perceive in every aspect of style a broader Weltanschauung. . . . By setting aside typical concerns over tropes and syntactical configurations, we can apprehend the real target of the plain language advocates, and this is the enchanted Renaissance cosmos in all of its rhetorical mystery and charm.” The first thesis has much merit. Proceeding through an analysis of Bacon, [End Page 102] Daniel Sennert, and Joseph Glanvill, Mr. Stark demonstrates that these “new philosophers” opposed “charmed tropes” in order to advance “a non-magical philosophy of rhetoric commensurable with the ethos of modern experimentalism.” This trajectory, in Mr. Stark’s argument, culminates in the plain language reforms of the Royal Society—a politically motivated opposition to “bewitching idioms, which most intellectuals of the period saw as the primary linguistic cause of England’s religious and social strife.” In his narrative of transformation from “numinous sensibilities” to a “proto-Enlightenment style,” Sprat and Locke are central. However, this conflation of the political, linguistic, and religious, by way of weltanschauung analysis and a chronological division circa 1665 is also reductive. Any judgment of the “aura” of a person’s writings that can lead to an easy correlation between Donne and Cromwell is highly problematic; more nuanced distinctions need to be made when assessing the interrelationships between politics, religion, and style, especially in the first sixty years of the seventeenth century. The argument is stronger in his chapter on natural magic, where Mr. Stark differentiates between Rosicrucians and experimentalists based on their philosophy of rhetoric: “Rhetoric is a cosmological architectonic in occult philosophy. For new scientists and writers influenced by them, however, tropes had only figurative significance, not ontological.” This is a theological and philosophical claim, not a political one. By demonstrating the shift from ontological significance to figurative correspondence in the theories of language that separated members of the Royal Society from magicians (though even this differentiation is slippery), Mr. Stark rightly “calls into serious question the recurrent thesis that Renaissance magic somehow evolved into the new experimentalism.” A philosophy of style that treats language as a neutral “tool” is incommensurable with a philosophy that sees it as “an occult device capable of transmogrifying reality.” However, his composite chapter on demonic eloquence again overplays the usefulness of weltanschauung analysis by arguing that in order to perceive the significance of demonic rhetoric, “spiritual sensitivity” is essential in “addition to a tropological sensitivity” if the “aura” of a discourse is to be discerned accurately. Here Mr. Stark’s important recognition of the link between a particular author’s style and philosophy becomes a kind of ontological determinism that irons out important shades of nuance, conflict, and the juxtaposition of voices within early modern texts. In his argument against the reduction of philosophies of rhetoric to syntactical styles, Mr. Stark is in danger of reducing style or tropes to signifiers...

Occult philosophy and politics: Why John Dee wrote his Compendious rehearsal in November 1592

John Dee’s autobiographical Compendious rehearsal, written in November 1592, not only reveals the close connection between occult philosophy and high Elizabethan politics through its contents, but also through the circumstances that brought it into existence. Dee’s Court career shows a clear pattern, in which events sometimes aligned to make his occult philosophy useful to senior politicians, boosting his status at Court. One such series of events occurred in 1591–2, when Lord Burghley used Dee’s prediction of a Spanish conquest of England in 1592 to panic Queen Elizabeth into permitting a large scale, organized persecution of Catholic recusants, based on a Proclamation against Jesuits and missionary priests. This enabled Burghley to deflect Archbishop Whitgift’s campaign against the Presbyterians and re-establish his own influence over religious policy. However, the eventual failure of Dee’s prediction enabled Burghley to abandon Dee to Whitgift’s revenge, part of Whitgift’s cultural counter-revolution against all forms of occult philosophy, which be believed inspired political subversion. With the fall of Sir Walter Raleigh in the summer of 1592 it also left Dee vulnerable to criticism from Catholic exiles, and enables us to definitely identify Dee as the ‘conjuror’ associated with the fictional, atheistical ‘School of Night’ associated with Raleigh.

Tessier's travels in Scotland and England

This article explores the implications of a newly discovered autograph letter from the French song composer Guillaume Tessier to William Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, leader of the ultra-Protestant faction at the Scottish court and, for a short period after August 1582, de facto head of government in Scotland. The letter, written from London in February 1583, shows Tessier's efforts to navigate patronage networks in France, England and Scotland at a dangerously volatile political moment, and indicates an interest in occult philosophy that links him to one of the most significant intellectual controversies of the period. At the same time, the new source helps to explain some unusual features of Tessier's only extant publication, the Premier livre d'airs tant Francois, Italien, qu'Espaignol (1582), which, although published in Paris, bore a dedication to Elizabeth I of England. It also sheds light on the cultivation of French music abroad, both among those closest to the young James VI of Scotland, and in English milieux frequented by major lute-song composers, confirming links that allowed one of Tessier's melodies to serve as model for a song in Philip Sidney's great sequence Astrophil and Stella.

Renesansowa koncepcja duszy w ujęciu H. C. Agrippy von Nettesheim na podstawie "De occulta philosophia"

In my article I present the conception of soul of Cornelius Agrippa based on his greatest work "De occulta philosophia" which is a kid of summa of natural and occult philosophy, hermeticism, cabbala, astrology, humanistic theology, medicine, and alchemy. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) was a famous renaissance philosopher, cabalist, astrologer and theologian whose contribution in renaissance philosophical deliberations is significant but still unknown in Poland. Agrippa's notion of soul is very important for his own project of new pure magic which is described in his opus magnum. Therefore agrippian magic contains and perfects three kinds of knowledge: phisics, mathematics and theology. In the similary way Agrippa divided whole Cosmos in to three worlds. First and the most inferior world of the threefold Cosmos is the world of four elements of substance in Aristotle's meaning. The second one is the world of celestial bodies which comprises planets, stars and laws that rule them, and which is above the first world. The third one is the divine world of angels, soul of the world with platonic ideas and other intelligibilities. The three kinds of knowledge which Agrippa also called "regulative philosophy" are very useful for human in studying of each of three agrippian worlds. From this point of view also notion of humanity is very important for Agrippa. By the similarity between the macro- and microcosmos which appear in Agrippa's thought also human soul is threefold. Thus human soul contains in hierarchical order three parts viz.: idolum (which is the most inferior), ratio (being the middle part) and mens (which is on highest position in human soul). Each part has its own function which can be fully activated by God's light received by mens. In describing of functions of threefold soul Agrippa receives inspirations from prior philosophers like Aristotle, Awicenna or Awerroes. Another cause which emphases a great role of the agrippian conception of the soul is its connection with oryginal concepts of phantasy and threefold melancholy which is similar to the treepartite soul. Those two concepts are the examples of the influences of celestial powers which source is in stars and planets.