The History of Witchcraft in Europe. Брэм Стокер
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with it much of the allegorical jargon of Paracelsus, and something of the theology of Luther and the German Reformers. The antiquity claimed for the brotherhood in the ‘Fama Fraternitatis’ is purely a myth. For my own part, I must regard as its virtual founder—though he may not have been its actual initiator—the celebrated Johann Valentine Andreas, who with wide and profound learning united a lively imagination, and was, moreover, a man of pure and lofty purpose. The regeneration of humanity, the extirpation of the vices and follies which had sprung up in the dark shadow of the mediæval Church, was the dream of his life; and it is beyond doubt that he hoped to realize it by secret societies bound together for the purpose of reforming the morals of the age and inspiring men with a love of wisdom. This is proved by three of his acknowledged works, namely, ‘Reipublicæ Christianapolitanæ Descriptio,’ ‘Turris Babel, sive Judiciorum de Fraternitate Rosaceæ Crucis Chaos,’ and ‘Christianæ Societatis Idea’; and I venture to think, though Mr. Waite will not have it so, that the author of these works was also the author of the ‘Fama,’ as well as of the ‘Confessio Fraternitatis’ and the ‘Nuptæ Chymicæ,’ in which he gathered up all the floating dreams and traditions bearing on his subject, and gave to them a certain form and order, infusing into them a fascinating poetical colouring, and inspiring them with his own idealistic speculations.
‘Akin to the school of the ancient Fire-Believers,’ says Ennemoser, ‘and of the magnetists of a later period, of the same cast as those speculators and searchers into the mysteries of Nature, drawing from the same well, are the theosophists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These practised chemistry, by which they asserted they could explore the profoundest secrets of Nature. As they strove, above all earthly knowledge, after the Divine, and sought the Divine light and fire, through which all men can acquire the true wisdom, they were called the Fire-Philosophers (philosophi per ignem).’ They were identical with the Rosicrucians, and in the books of the later Rosicrucians we meet with the same mysticism and transcendental philosophy as in theirs.
Whether we agree in accepting Andreas as the founder of the order, or as simply its hierophant, we must admit that the rise of Rosicrucianism dates from the publication of the ‘Fama’ and the ‘Confessio Fraternitatis.’ They produced an immense sensation, passed through several editions, and were devoured by multitudes of eager readers. ‘In the library at Gottingen,’ says De Quincey (adapting from Professor Buhle), ‘there is a body of letters addressed to the imaginary order of Father Rosy Cross, from 1614 to 1617, by persons offering themselves as members.... As certificates of their qualifications, most of the candidates have enclosed specimens of their skill in alchemy and cabalism.... Many other literary persons there were at that day who forbore to write letters to the society, but threw out small pamphlets containing their opinions of the order, and of its place of residence.’
It is not my business, however, to write a history of Rosicrucianism. I have desired simply to say so much about its origin as will serve as a preface to my account of the principal English members of the brotherhood. The reader who would know more about its origin and extension, its pretensions and professors, may consult Heckethorn’s ‘Secret Societies of all Ages and Countries,’ Ennemoser’s ‘History of Magic,’ Thomas de Quincey’s essay on ‘Rosicrucians and Freemasons,’ and Arthur Edward Waite’s ‘Real History of the Rosicrucians.’36
The greatest English Rosicrucian, and most distinguished of the disciples of Paracelsus, was Robert Fludd (or Flood, or De Fluctibus), a man of singular erudition, of great though misdirected capacity, and of a vivid and fertile imagination.
The second son of Sir Thomas Flood, Treasurer of War to Queen Elizabeth, he was born at Milgate House, in the parish of Bersted, Kent, in the year 1574. At the age of seventeen he was entered of St. John’s College, Oxford. His father had originally intended him for a military life, but finding that his inclinations led him into the peaceful paths of scholarship, he forbore to oppose them, and the youth entered upon a particular study of medicine, which drew him, no doubt, into a pursuit of alchemy and chemistry. Having graduated both in the arts and sciences, he went abroad, and for six years travelled over France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, making the acquaintance of the principal Continental scholars, as well as of the enthusiasts who belonged to the theosophic school of the divine Paracelsus, and the adepts who dabbled in the secrets of the Cabala. Returning to England in 1605, he became a member of the College of Physicians, and settled down to practise in Coleman Street, London, where, about 1616, he was visited by the celebrated German alchemist, Michael Maier.
His active imagination stimulated by his knowledge of the Rosicrucian doctrines, he resolved on revealing to his countrymen the true light of science and wisdom. He had already, as a believer in the theory of magnetism, introduced into England the celebrated ‘weapon salve’ of Paracelsus, which healed the severest wound by sympathy—not being applied to the wound itself, but to the weapon or instrument that had caused it. The recipe, as formulated by Paracelsus, would hardly be approved by modern practitioners: ‘Take of moss growing on the head of a thief who has been hanged and left in the air, of real mummy, of human blood still warm, one ounce each; of human suet, two ounces; of linseed-oil, turpentine, and Armenian bole, of each two drachms. Mix together thoroughly in a mortar, and keep the salve in a narrow oblong urn.’ This, or, I presume, some similar compound, Fludd tried with success in several cases, and no wonder; for while the sword was anointed and put away, the wound was well washed and carefully bandaged—a process which has been known to succeed in our own day without the intervention of any salve whatever! Fludd contended that every disease might be cured by the magnet if it were properly applied; but that as every man had, like the earth, a north pole and a south, magnetism could be produced only when his body occupied a boreal position. The salve, at all events, grew into instant favour. Among other believers in its virtues was Sir Kenelm Digby, who, however, converted the salve into a powder, which he named ‘the powder of sympathy.’ But it had its incredulous opponents, of whom the most strenuous was a certain Pastor Foster, who published an invective entitled ‘Hyplocrisma Spongus; or, A Sponge to Wipe Away the Weapon Salve,’ and affirmed that it was as bad as witchcraft to use or recommend such an unguent, that its inventor, the devil, would at the Last Day claim every person who had meddled with it. ‘The devil,’ he said, ‘gave it to Paracelsus, Paracelsus to the Emperor, the Emperor to a courtier, the courtier to Baptista Porta, and Baptista Porta to Doctor Fludd, a doctor of physic, yet living and practising in the famous city of London, who now stands tooth and nail for it.’ Tooth and nail Dr. Fludd met his adversary, and the public were infinitely amused by the vehemence of his style in his pamphlet, ‘The Spunging of Parson Foster’s Spunge; wherein the Spunge-carrier’s immodest Carriage and Behaviour towards his Brethren is detected; the bitter Flames of his Slanderous Reports are, by the sharp Vinegar of Truth, corrected and quite extinguished; and, lastly, the Virtuous Validity of his Spunge in wiping away the Weapon Salve, is crushed out and clean abolished.’
In all the dreams of the mediæval philosophy—in the philosopher’s stone and the stone philosophic, in the universal alkahest, in the magical ‘elixir vitæ’—Dr. Fludd was a serious believer. It was a favourite hypothesis of his that all things depended on two principles—condensation, or the boreal principle, and rarefaction, the southern or austral. The human body, he averred, was governed by a number of demons, whom he distributed over a rhomboidal figure. Further, he taught that every disease had its own particular demon, the evil influence of which could be neutralized only by the assistance of the demon placed opposite to it in the rhomboid. The doctrines of the Rosicrucian brotherhood he defended with a charming enthusiasm, and when they had been attacked by Libavius and others, he set them forth in what he conceived to be their true light in his ‘Apologia Compendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea-Cruce suspicionis et infamiæ Maculis Aspersam,’ etc. (published at Leyden in 1616)—a work which entitles him to be regarded as the high-priest of their mysteries. It was severely criticised, however, by contemporary men of science, as by Kepler, Gassendus (in his ‘Epistolica Exercitatio’), and Mersenne, whose searching analysis of the pretensions of the fraternity provoked from Fludd an elaborate reply, entitled ‘Summum Bonum, quod est Magiæ, Cabalæ, Alchemiæ, Fratrum Roseæ-Crucis verorum, et adversus Mersenium Calumniatorem.’37