260 book reviews

Paul Kléber Monod Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment, New Haven and London: Yale University Press 2013. x + 430 pp. isbn 978-0-300-12358-6.

This is an ambitious book. Monod’s subject is the occult, by which he means ‘a type of thinking expressed either in writing or in action, that allowed the boundary between the natural and the supernatural to be crossed by the ac- tions of human beings’ (p. 5). Although he cites the work of Antoine Faivre, Wouter Hanegraaff and others, readers of Aries will doubtless be interested to learn Monod’s reasoning for using the term occult in preference to West- ern esotericism. In short, while acknowledging the important contribution of the ‘esoteric approach’ he also highlights its perceived ‘shortcomings’, namely a tendency to regard relevant texts as ‘comprising a discrete and largely self- referential intellectual tradition, hermetically sealed so as to ward off the taint of other forms of thought, not to mention social trends and popular practices’. Moreover, ‘scholars of esoteric religion’ apparently ‘have a tendency to inter- pret whatever they are studying with the greatest seriousness, so that hucksters and charlatans turn into philosophers, and minor references in obscure eso- teric works take on labyrinthine significances’ (p. 10). In practice, what Monod understands here as the occult is largely restricted to alchemy, astrology and rit- ual magic; a maelstrom which, among other things, pulled in readers of Hermes Trismegistus, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme and the Kabbalah, outwardly respectable scientists and anti-Trinitarians (sometimes one and the same); Philadelphians; French Prophets; Freemasons; students of Ancient Britain and the Druids; cunning folk; authors of popular Gothic novels; certain followers of Emmanuel Swedenborg; Neoplatonists; advocates of Ani- mal magnetism; and Judaized millenarians. Witchcraft, however, is peripheral to the discussion and considered “tangential” to rather than a “defining feature” of occult beliefs (pp. 13, 84). As we shall see, this astonishing move is necessary to support one of Monod’s central arguments. Chronologically Solomon’s Secret Arts covers the period from about 1650 to 1815, i.e. a very long eighteenth-century. Its geographic scope is predominantly Anglo-centric but with a welcome if occasional Scottish dimension. Indeed, while much of the printed source material examined here was published and disseminated either in London or else at one of the university towns, there are several examples of how this material was read and refashioned not just in other urban centres (particularly Bath and Rye), but also some rural locations. Another positive is the number of women included in this study, who mainly feature as astrologers’ clients, suspected witches, philosophers, prophetesses and mystics (notably Jane Lead and Mary Pratt). Monod’s method is gener-

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/15700593-01402008 book reviews 261 ally to provide a synthesis of the major secondary literature on each subject under discussion, much of it relatively recent, and then illustrate his chosen themes through selected case studies of figures such as Elias Ashmole, Thomas Vaughan, William Cooper, William Lilly, John Heydon, Samuel Jeake, John Webster, Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, William Yworth, William Salmon, John Gadbury, John Partridge, William Stukeley, William Whiston, William Warbur- ton, John Cannon, George Cheyne, Richard Roach, John Byrom, William Law, John Wood, James Lackington, Horace Walpole, Philippe Jacques de Louther- bourg, Andrew Ramsay, John Clowes, Thomas Taylor, Ebenezer Sibly, Sigis- mund Bacstrom, Charles Rainsford, Count Cagliostro, John Bonniot de Main- auduc, Richard Brothers and William Blake. Some of these individuals are well known, others less so to the non-specialist. And while their inclusion may be justified on the grounds that their beliefs are representative of the significant changes and continuities that Monod wishes to highlight, I suspect it is also because each produced—whether as author, publisher or artist—sufficient source material in manuscript and/or print to repay detailed investigation. What then of unavoidable omissions in a book of this breadth? That prob- lem is sidestepped with the admission that ‘many minor writers are not dis- cussed’ and others ‘dealt with only in passing’ (p. 13). The result then is not a monumental work in the mould of Keith Thomas’s magisterial Religion and the Decline of Magic, but rather a wide-ranging and usually solidly researched study—although unfortunately there are quite a few minor factual errors and misattributions. Structured in three parts, that is to say ‘Aurora, 1650–1688’, ‘Eclipse, 1688– 1760’ and ‘Glad Day, 1760–1815’, Solomon’s Secret Arts sets out to outline—and more importantly—account for an occult heyday, its subsequent marginali- sation and dramatic revival. Context is of course crucial and these develop- ments are rightly set against an evolving backdrop covering the English Revo- lution, Restoration, Glorious Revolution, Whig-Tory party political conflict, the Hanoverian succession, Jacobite Risings, American War of Independence and French Revolution; as well as the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, Evangel- ical Revival, rise of Methodism, and the English and Scottish Enlightenments. To begin with what Monod calls the “golden age of alchemy” (p. 82) and “silver age of the astrologers”, these are partly attributed to the breakdown of pre-publication censorship shortly before the outbreak of the English Civil War; the abolition of episcopacy and emasculation of the Church of England; contin- uing divisions within Anglicanism at the Restoration; an emergent alchemical community, including a “Society of Chymical Physicians”; increased commer- cial opportunities through the sale of specialist works, almanacs and patented medicines that were capitalised upon by enterprising businessmen; the inter-

Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 14 (2014) 247–274