Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic Series Editors: Jonathan Barry, Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies Titles include: Edward Bever THE REALITIES OF WITCHCRAFT AND POPULAR MAGIC IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE Culture, Cognition and Everyday Life Alison Butler VICTORIAN OCCULTISM AND THE MAKING OF MODERN MAGIC Invoking Tradition Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller WITCHCRAFT AND BELIEF IN EARLY MODERN SCOTLAND Jonathan Roper (editor) CHARMS, CHARMERS AND CHARMING Alison Rowlands (editor) WITCHCRAFT AND MASCULINITIES IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE Rolf Schulte MAN AS WITCH Male Witches in Central Europe Forthcoming: Johannes Dillinger MAGICAL TREASURE HUNTING IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA A History Soili-Maria Olli TALKING TO DEVILS AND ANGELS IN SCANDINAVIA, 1500–1800 Laura Stokes THE DEMONS OF URBAN REFORM The Rise of Witchcraft Prosecution, 1430–1530 Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1403–99566–7 Hardback 978–1403–99567–4 Paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic Invoking Tradition Alison Butler Lecturer in History, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada © Alison Butler 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-22339-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-30855-2 ISBN 978-0-230-29470-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230294707 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction viii 1 A New Order 1 2 A New Magic 17 3 Resurrecting the Past: Hiram, Isis and the Rosy Cross 62 4 Preservation and Improvisation: Nineteenth-Century Magicians 99 5 Magical Libraries: What Occultists Read 125 6 Revolutionizing Magic: The Will Conquers the Spirit 138 7 Middle-Class Magic 162 Conclusion 180 Notes 183 Bibliography 204 Index 213 v Acknowledgements Most of the research for this book was conducted in England between 2000 and 2007. Further research took me to Ireland, while the actual written product took shape in Canada. I am therefore extremely grateful for the support and encouragement from individuals and institutions in all three countries. First and foremost, I would like to thank Ronald Hutton for his critical supervision of the initial stages of this project and for his continued advice and encouragement. Owen Davies and James Thompson offered invaluable help by encouraging me to clarify my arguments and flesh out key points. David N. Bell set me upon this fascinating path of research and I am indebted to him for his generous guidance and support. My work on this project was initially funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Rothermere Trust. I would also like to acknowledge St Francis Xavier University for pro- viding me with the funding that enabled me to share my research and receive critical feedback at various national and international confer- ences in 2007–10. Some sections of this book began as conference papers and selected material from the fourth and seventh chapters was first presented at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, London, Ontario, in 2005; the Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States, Boulder, Colorado, in 2007; the Northeast Victorian Studies Association, Toronto, in 2007; and the first interna- tional Societas Magica conference, Waterloo, Ontario, in 2007. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to avail myself of the scrutiny of my work and the subsequent encouragement and beneficial suggestions offered by colleagues at these meetings. Portions of the sixth chapter originally appeared in ‘Making Magic Modern: Nineteenth-Century Adaptations’ in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 6, II, 2004: 212–30. I gratefully acknowledge the permission of Equinox Publications to reprint some of this material. Some of the material in the fourth chapter also found ini- tial form in journal publications and I wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Limina Collective for ‘The Intellectual Origins of the Victorian Occult Revival’ in Limina 9, 2003, 78–95; Mandrake of Oxford for ‘The Importance of Barrett’s Magus’ in vi Acknowledgements vii Journal for the Academic Study of Magic 1, 2003, 7–32; and Anthem Press for ‘Anna Kingsford: Scientist and Sorceress’ in David Clifford et al. (eds) Repositioning Victorian Sciences: Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking 2006, 59–69. Research for this book was carried out at the Bodleian and Radcliffe Science Libraries at Oxford University, the British Library, the Warburg Institute, the Wellcome Institute, the University of London Library, the National Library of Ireland, the University of Toronto and the Bristol Central Library. I greatly appreciate the helpfulness of the staffs at these libraries, particularly the Bristol Central Library and the National Library of Ireland. I am also indebted to R.A. Gilbert for his generos- ity in sharing his research and for some enlightening conversations. I would also like to thank the people at Palgrave Macmillan who have helped bring this research to publication; they include Owen Davies, Ruth Ireland and Sally Daniell. Throughout this project, friends and family have been unstinting in their help. I am grateful to Emma Butler for her constant encourage- ment. Finally, my thanks and more go to John Cook for his selfless support and to Stella and Russell for their patience and inspiration. Introduction In 1887 the famous microbiologist and chemist, Louis Pasteur, was recovering on the French Riviera from an unknown illness. What he did not know was that he was actually recovering from an attempt on his life. The would-be assassin was hundreds of miles away in London celebrating the partial success of her occult efforts to murder the scientist. By Anna Kingsford’s reckoning, Pasteur would have been victim number three in her mission to rid the world of what she called ‘those demons of vivisection’. Her method? Magic. Kingsford, in two of her previously successful attempts, and in her attack on Pasteur, projected a magical force of destruction against her victims. Two questions emerge upon hearing of this incident. Why did Kingsford want to kill Pasteur and why did she use magic? The first is easy to answer. Kingsford was obviously violently opposed to the practice of vivisec- tion and believed that by silencing the scientists engaged in this form of experimentation she could also stop the practice itself. It would seem logical to conclude that if enough people died while experimenting on live animals, other vivisectors might hesitate to continue this practice and such ‘demons’ might hold back on using this form of experimentation. The second question, however, ‘Why use magic?’ is a far more compli- cated one that requires much examination and explanation. Why would a student of medicine, in an age of progress, scientific advancement and secularization, rely upon such seemingly supernatural means to produce a very physical effect? Kingsford represents a marginalized segment of Victorian society involved in occultism. This book is about people like her and about the literature they relied upon and created in their magical endeavors. Despite Kingsford’s position as a scientist, her scientific activities and beliefs in no way conflicted with her magical beliefs. This conflation of science and sorcery is characteristic of Victorian occultists and is a key feature in the nineteenth-century revival of magic. Kingsford, as a scientist, mystic, spiritualist, and social activist was one of the most remarkable individu- als responsible for the emergence of a new occultism in Victorian Britain. In her various roles and interests, however, she was quite typical of the thousands of men and women dabbling in esoteric interests during the period. Nineteenth-century science and magic were not exclusive of each other, much like in any other historical period.