Magic and Masculinity

Ritual Magic and Gender in the Early Modern Era

Frances Timbers

• Editorial: I.B. Tauris
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857735881
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Sexuality & Gender in Religion

In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender. The majority of male magicians acted from a position of control and command commensurate with their social position in a patriarchal society; other men, however, used the notion of magic to subvert gender ideals while still aiming to attain hegemony. Whilst women who claimed to perform magic were usually more submissive in their attempted dealings with the spirit world, some female practitioners employed magic to undermine the patriarchal culture and further their own agenda. Frances Timbers studies the practice of ritual magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries focusing especially on gender and sexual perspectives. Using the examples of well-known individuals who set themselves up as magicians (including John Dee, Simon Forman and William Lilly), as well as unpublished diaries and journals, literature and legal records, this book provides a unique analysis of early modern ceremonial magic from a gender perspective.

CHAPTER 1

FOR THE ‘UNINITIATED’

One evening in 1632, an entourage of more than thirty men descended on Westminster Abbey. David Ramsay, King Charles I’s Groom of the Bedchamber, had learned that there was treasure buried in the cloister of the Abbey. He had obtained permission from Dean Williams, the Bishop of Lincoln, to retrieve it. Accompanied by an unnamed magician from Pudding Lane in the Eastcheap area of London and armed with hazel divining rods, Ramsay and his companions set out to find the hidden hoard. Luckily, there was another magician, William Lilly, in the party. When “so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a Wind” arose, Lilly was able to banish the demons who were guarding the treasure.¹

So why wasn’t Lilly arrested and accused of witchcraft for dealing with devils? And what were elite men, in service to the king, doing looking for buried treasure with the help of a magician and magic wands? Hollywood movies and popular novels, like the Harry Potter series, have led the general public to believe that magic wands were used by witches for casting spells. But the women suspected of witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were seldom accused of using technical aids or mechanical skills to cause maleficium, which was defined as harm caused by supernatural means. The witch’s vengeful nature, with the assistance of the devil, could kill children or harm cattle with simply a touch or a glance.² The generous body of contemporary pamphlet literature pertaining to witchcraft cases in England supports this understanding of witchcraft as largely a social/psychological phenomenon.³

Ceremonial or ritual magic, on the other hand, involved complex operations. Some scholars break the category of ceremonial magic down into divisions of (1) image magic, which dealt with the mechanical aspects of astrological and astral magic, and (2) ritual magic, which depended on rituals (often derived from Christian liturgy) to draw down otherworldly powers. The second category can be further subdivided into astral, angelic, demonic and theurgic magic; however, these elements were frequently combined in practice.⁴ For the purposes of the following discussion, the terms ceremonial or ritual magic will refer to any operations of a learned sort, which were often combinations or adaptations of several of the types listed above and were sometimes mixed with popular or folk magic. In the case of John Pordage, discussed in Chapter 5, I cast my circle more widely to include interactions with angels that might be classified as mystical rather than magical. The main point here is that the magic explored in the following pages is not witchcraft. Witchcraft, for the most part, was a social construction whereby a person was accused of being in league with the Devil to cause harm. Magic was an actual practice that sought to manipulate the natural world or engage with the spirit world. The objectives of ceremonial magic could be for lofty purposes such as mastery of the arts, attainment of knowledge, or union with the divine. But magic could also be used for more selfish aims, such as finding hidden treasure, discovering lost and stolen goods, achieving victory in battle or gaining favour at court. In the case of causing impotence or inciting love or hate, the end goal might border on maleficium⁵

Ceremonial magic was a complex synthesis of science, religion and philosophy. This chapter will explore the mechanical aspects of ritual magic and then examine the theories that underwrote early modern magic, which were drawn from classical and medieval sources. By the sixteenth century, Renaissance hermeticism and neoplatonism had been added to the mix, which facilitated the employment of fantasy and the imagination.

***

In contrast to the poor, illiterate village women who were generally the targets of witchcraft accusations, ritual magic was usually performed by educated men. Among the many prominent sixteenth-and seventeenth-century men who took an interest in magic were university-educated physicians, lawyers and theologians. For the most part, they were well-respected in their communities and were sometimes influential in state politics. Christopher Marlowe’s (1564–93) depiction of Doctor Faustus represents the stereotypical magus.

Know that your words have won me at the last

To practice magic and concealèd arts.

Philosophy is odious and obscure,

Both law and physic are for petty wits,

Divinity is basest of the three –

Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile.

‘Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me!

Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt

And I [...]

Will be as cunning as Agrippa was.⁶

The same group of men who dabbled in magic and astrology also practised alchemy. Alchemy involved the search for the occult ingredient, the Philosopher’s Stone. The ‘occult’ simply referred to what was hidden or unknown, not something demonic or necessarily supernatural. Alchemy was widely practised as chemistry, not as magic per se. However, alchemy crossed over into the magic realm when magicians employed the spirit world in their alchemical pursuits.⁷

We know what magicians did because Agrippa and other real-life magicians left records of their thoughts and practices. One type of record is a sort of recipe book that evolved throughout the middle ages. For ease of reference, I will use the word ‘grimoire’ to describe these magic manuals, although the term was not employed in England until 1849.⁸ The fact that instructions were written down at all reflects the high educational level and social status of the practitioners of magic and separates ritual magic from the the oral tradition of folk magic. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century grimoires were often an eclectic blend of information garnered from unpublished magical manuscripts, as well as excerpts from printed works. As manuscripts were compiled and circulated, owners edited and modified the texts according to their own personal experiences and revelations. Astrological material was liberally intermixed with pseudo-medical recipes, charms and spells. During the middle ages, the transmission of magical manuscripts had been carried out by monks and clerics. The clergy were among the few literate members of society who could read Latin, which was the intellectual language of medieval Europe. Grimoires were often attributed to a saint or pope to give them more weight and authority. By the seventeenth century, grimoires were often written in the vernacular rather than in Latin. This may have been a function of the Protestant Reformation, as the vernacular inherited the numinous qualities previously assigned only to Latin liturgy.⁹ Alternatively, works published in the vernacular may have been intended for a non-learned audience.¹⁰ But manuscripts were in circulation among educated men, for whom Latin would not have posed a problem.

For the clerics who copied and modified the classical manuscripts during the middle ages, the theoretical and theological foundations of magical operations were important. They needed to Christianise the rituals in the same way that Augustine and Aquinas had Christianised Plato and Aristotle, respectively. Fortunately for them, placing pagan precepts within a Christian cosmological worldview was not difficult or irrational. Medieval church doctrine promoted the belief in divine intervention in all aspects of the physical world. Justifying the control of demons as a Christian practice was partially accomplished by attributing magical texts to the biblical King Solomon, the son of David who famously fought Goliath. This Old Testament figure was allegedly the author of the Clavicula Salomonis, or the Key of Solomon, which prescribed preparations and rituals for various undertakings such as finding treasure, seeking love and acquiring invisibility. Another text attributed to Solomon was the Ars Notoria, or the Notary Arts, which consisted of rituals, meditations and long prayers to angels for the purpose of attaining improved memory, heavenly knowledge and enlightenment.¹¹ Assigning authorship to a biblical character granted both religious sanction and elite lineage. For the learned men who practised magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this contributed to the authenticity and, therefore, to the effectiveness of the ceremonies. Magicians were proud of the ancient roots of magic. One manuscript in the British Library traces the sources of the contents from Zoroaster and Solomon through Cyprian, Origen, Virgil, Bacon, Agrippa and Bungay, among others.¹²

The attribution of magical texts to Solomon was based on a myth surrounding the construction of the famous temple in Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The Testament of Solomon, recorded in Greek between the first and third centuries CE, tells the story of how the archangel Michael gave Solomon a magic ring inscribed with the pentalpha, or Seal of Solomon.¹³ With this ring, he controlled demons and employed them in building the temple.

The style of ritual magic that was inherited from the middle ages often used painstaking preparations, the casting of circles, suffumigation, animal sacrifice and long, complex invocations. A list of contents from an English translation of the Clavicula Salomonis demonstrates the type of information that might be included in a grimoire.¹⁴

1. In what hour experiments ought to be wrought.

2. How the conjurer must behave himself.

3. How the follower must behave himself.

4. Of fasting and watching.

5. Of how the bath must be made.

6. The blessing of the Salt [for the bath water].

7. Of apparel and shoes.

8. Making of the knife.

9. Making of the circle and entering it.

10. How to exorcise the water.

11. Concerning herbs and the hazel wand.

12. Of fire and light.

13. Of pen and ink.

14. How to remove bat’s blood [from the bat, not the laundry],

15. How to make virgin parchment.

16. How to work with virgin wax.

17. About needles.

18. How to make perfumes.

19. Preparation of cloth to keep tools in.

20. Aut totum: aut nihil [All or nothing],

21. What hours to work in.

22. The colours of the planets.

23. A diagram of how to mark the Pentacle.

As the list indicates, there was a great deal of preparation involved before the magician could invoke the spirits. Special tools were required, including “a new sharp knife, never used on which knife let be written on the blade + Alpha + on the one side, and + Omega + on the other side.”¹⁵ Knives were used for preparing the materials used in the ritual, as well as for casting the circle. In another manuscript, the magician was admonished to “cut nothing with this knife, but only all things belonging to this Art.”¹⁶ One of the uses for the magical knife was to cut wands, which were used for divining or opening the ground during treasure hunting. They were to be “cut of Hazel rods of one year’s growth in the day, & hour of

[Mercury],”¹⁷ and then consecrated with certain words.¹⁸ Other ritual items included virgin parchment for inscriptions, preferably made from the hide of a kid prepared on the day and hour of mercury when the moon was increasing,¹⁹ and special ink concocted from the blood of a bat.²⁰ Tools were fumigated with various perfumes, including frankincense and myrrh mixed with rose water, a little sweet smelling wine and gum arabic. Sacrifice might be in the form of a blood sacrifice from a cock or a bat, or simply a food offering.²¹ The magus also had to prepare himself via fasting, ritual bathing, chastity and sobriety.²² In one manuscript, the magician is advised to practise “abstinence & chastity for 9 days & with all quietness of mind, being in perfect Love & charity with all, & free from all Lewd Comp...