Hermeticism in Sweden 189

Chapter 24 Hermeticism in Sweden Hermeticism in Sweden

Susanna Åkerman

The fragmentary sources for tracing Hermeticism in Sweden stem from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when these texts still formed a basis for cosmological thinking. The Corpus Hermeticum was often associated with another Hermetic text, the Tabula smaragdina or Emerald Tablet. Translated into Latin from the Arabic in the twelfth century, the text was particularly pop- ular among German alchemists, who rarely read the Corpus Hermeticum but instead based their understanding of Hermeticism on the short sentences from the Emerald Tablet. The Emerald Tablet was furthermore used to present alchemy in a simple but enigmatic form. The Tablet formulated the kernel of Hermeticism in a widely spread maxim on the parallels between the cosmo- logical macrocosm and the human microcosm: “As above, so below”. This figure of thought had a great influence on Hermeticism in Sweden. Swedenborg, for example, reformulated it to treat of correspondences between the natural, the spiritual, and the heavenly realms. Hermetic philosophy likewise influenced three other currents: mysticism, alchemy, and Rosicrucianism.

Seventeenth-Century Metaphysics

Hermeticism began to be an important current in Sweden with Johan Skytte (1577–1645), who was the Chancellor of Uppsala University. In the 1640s Skytte delivered an oration in which he praised King Gustavus II Adolphus for having opened the doors for “Theophrastus [Paracelsus] and [Hermes] Trismegistos” to the Swedish universities. This was a clear signal that the older pagan phi- losophy was compatible with Christian beliefs. In the same spirit, the Finnish natural philosopher Sigfrid Aron Forsius (1560–1624) edited several almanacs to be used for astrological purposes. Forsius’ Hermetic ideas became evident when he was brought to justice in 1619, as his ideas were no longer tolerated by the Swedish Lutheran orthodoxy. Although Forsius once mentioned Rosicrucianism in a negative manner, he nevertheless used ideas that had been spread through Rosicrucian writings, such as the special significance of the great conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn appearing every twenty years.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004325968_026 190 Åkerman

Their appearance and position in the heavens was taken to herald a new age of outpouring of the grace of nature (gratia naturae) and of new discoveries in the sciences. [See the chapter on Paracelsianism in Sweden in the present vol- ume]. Forsius also pointed to the appearance of Jan Hus in Bohemia in the fourteenth century as a precursor of Luther. Furthermore, Forsius described how the word LUX (light) springs forth from the Cross of St. Andrew [X] and its constituent parts L, V and X, an exegesis that can be found in several other Hermetic texts and was therefore well-known at the time. The same play on words is also found in the sixteenth theorem of the British hermeticist John Dee’s celebrated Hermetic-mystical text Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564).

Queen Christina’s Court

In Stockholm, Queen Christina (1626–1689) was described by her librarian as “trembling with joy” when she received a copy of Iamblichus’ De mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldeorum et Assyriorum (On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians). Neoplatonic and Hermetic sources were in this volume used to describe methods and practices of theurgy and divination, the ascent of the soul and how to come in contact with gods and demons. The Latin translation of Iamblichus’ tract on the mysteries was originally published in 1491 in a collection of Neoplatonic texts translated by Marsilio Ficino. In Rome, Christina was to acquire a bulky edition, printed at Aldus press in Venice in 1516. This edition was later cut down to a handy anthology printed in many editions, the last in Lyon 1607. The book Christina received in Stockholm, before her abdication in 1654, was probably such a condensed version. The anthology of 1607 contains Proclus’ commentary to Alcibiades’ pronouncements in Plato’s dialogue on the soul, demons, offerings, and magic. The volume also contains Porphyry’s exposition of the unique nature of gods and demons, and Michael Psellus’ similar thoughts on the nature of demons. The most important part of the volume was the reprint of two central texts attributed to Mercurius [Hermes] Trismegistus, Poemander and Asclepius – perfect discourses on the union of the higher self and the mind of light (Gr. nous). In Rome, Christina collected a large amount of Hermetic texts, among them Ficino’s edition of the Corpus Hermeticum. Christina shared the interest in hermetica with a number of Italian alchemists. In Sweden, as in the rest of northern Europe, on the other hand, direct reading of the source texts in the Corpus Hermeticum was rare. Hermeticism was influenced by Platonic thought. Christina’s teacher Isaac Vossius writes that she was led to Platonism at an early stage in her life through the works of the Florentine Renaissance Platonist and Christian