CHAPTER FOUR

A Proposal of a Renaissance Psychology

I have suggested in the foregoing chapters that alchemy may be seen to

offer an impressionistic adumbration of some Renaissance theories

concerned with the transformation of both the individual and of society.

Ruth Leila Anderson argues that “With the English Renaissance there came

a revival of interest in psychology and ethics and an extended application of

the principles of these subjects not only to individual life but also to affairs

of society and of the state” (3). Although it would be presumptuous to try

and find a comprehensive psychology in any one author or philosophy, I do

believe it is possible to distil a Renaissance conception of psychology from

various occult and philosophical texts.

A Case for a Renaissance Psychology

Copenhaver points out that “cosmologia, ontologia, psychologia and their

vernacular derivatives first appeared in the early modern period”

(‘Translation, Terminology and Style’, 109), and I will attempt to

demonstrate how these concepts may be seen to converge, in the occult arts,

with the theories of knowledge, power, and human transformation.1 Park

and Kessler are even more specific and recount:: “The term psychologia itself

was coined – apparently by the German humanist Joannes Thomas Freigius

in 1575 – to refer to the traditional complex of problems originating from

Aristotle’s works, especially De Anima and Parva Naturalia” (‘The Concept of

1 Eckhard Kessler points out that, “Traditionally, Renaissance psychology was primarily concerned with the theory of knowledge for anthropological or cosmological reasons, since the essence of man – defined as anima rationalis in the Aristotelian or as nexus mundi in the Neoplatonic tradition – had to be described in terms of the physical or metaphysical assumptions necessary to save the phenomena of the highest human activity” (‘The Intellective Soul’, 533).

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Psychology’, 455). They also point out that psychology, “the philosophical

study of the soul”, was never a discrete, self-contained discipline (455).2

Rather:

Because it considered the nature and functions of the specifically

human soul and body, among others, psychology overlapped many

other areas of enquiry. Philosophers considered psychology relevant

to ethics, which required a basic understanding of the soul as the

source of man’s thoughts and actions and the seat of his ultimate

perfection (456).

Furthermore, and particularly relevant to this thesis, is the argument by Park

and Kessler that, “psychology, like ethics, never remained the monopoly of

academic specialists; some of the most interesting and original work on the

soul took place outside university walls, particularly after 1500, when

printing acted dramatically to expand the European intellectual community”

(457).

Montaigne

One of the foremost contemporary writers on the soul, and a true eclectic,3

was Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592). Although he persistently disavows

2 Anderson makes a similar point, explaining that “The system of psychology … is a complex doctrine inherited from Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. It cannot be separated at all points from astrology, medicine, ethics, philosophy, and even theology” (3). 3 In the introduction to The Essays of Montaigne, J. M. Robertson explains the nature of Montaigne’s eclecticism: “His quiet success was the outcome of three factors, his manifold matter, his unmethodical method, and his unmannered manner. His serious counsel was the febrifuge that most men needed. But it was blended with a vast variety of expatiation on a hundred topics of human interest, the talk of a widely read and widely interested man, chatting with his fellows as having no axe to grind, but merely delivering himself of most of the thoughts and comments on life that came to him in the chances of his discursive reading and his daily experience” (xli).

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any ulterior motives of fame and fortune,4 he nevertheless gained immense

popularity, at home – in France – and abroad, especially after the English

translation of his Essays by John Florio in 1603.5

While Montaigne might not be considered a ‘psychologist’ in modern

terms,6 MacFarlane and Maclean warn that “we run the risk of supposing

that because Montaigne did not have in his vocabulary certain words that we

commonly use today, he had no notion of the things that we use these

words to represent” (58). Taking my cue from these critics, I will proceed on

the understanding that Montaigne’s writings represent a particularly vivid

instance of Renaissance psychology, and will draw on some of his

observations and insights to substantiate my argument at various points

throughout the following chapters.

Nicholas H. Steneck, in his work on Science and Creation in the Middle Ages,

offers a description of conceptions of psychology which is applicable to

both the Middle Ages and the early modern period, especially given

historical continuities and synergies. The following extracts provide an apt

preface to this chapter:

The extraneous character of practical application and measurement to

explanations of nature also applies to the case of the one human

science that occupied more of the scholastic scientist’s time than any

other, psychology. There can be little doubt that the medieval

4 “I had no other but a private and family end in view. I thought neither of being serviceable to you, nor of my own fame…. I desire to be seen in my simple, natural, and everyday dress, without artifice or constraint; for it is myself I portray” (‘To the Reader’, Essays, 1). 5 The dissemination of Montaigne’s writings may be illustrated by the instance of Shakespeare’s appropriation – conceded by most critics – of parts of Montaigne’s essay, ‘Of Cannibals’ in his description of the island in The Tempest. 6 The word psychologia does not appear in his Essays.

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scientist felt compelled to discuss and account for the cognitive

process…. The investigation of the cognitive process can be carried

on in a number of ways. Since the study of how we know

(psychology) is closely related to the study of the nature of what we

know and the knowing process (epistemology), psychological

problems in the Middle Ages could (and often were) broached in very

philosophical terms, which in turn, and in line with the general

orientation of scholastic philosophy, were heavily dependent on the

tools of the logician. Or, since the primary agent of cognition is the

soul, the study of how we know could be (and again was) approached

equally as well from the standpoint of theology…. Finally, since

cognition initially begins as a physical process, psychology could be

approached from the standpoint of the mechanisms and material

components involved in the knowing process (131-132).

Paracelsus was one of the early modern philosophers to investigate the

relationship between psychology and epistemology. His conclusions,

perhaps inevitably, are to some extent informed by his interest in the occult.

In his discussion of the Paracelsian conception of knowledge, Massimo

Luigi Bianchi argues for a repositioning of Paracelsus’s work within the

alchemical canon. Although the alchemical theories provide a basis for

much of Paracelsus’s own work, these traditional doctrines are remodelled

and amplified to accommodate a far more extensive and generalised

epistemological proposition. Consequently, “its basic ideas assume a

theoretical significance and … become the schemata on which Paracelsus

models his own conception of knowledge” (‘The Visible and Invisible’, 17).

Bianchi goes on to explain that knowledge, according to the Paracelsian

model, is a gradual process of ‘revelation’, or opening up, so that one pierces

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beyond the superficial façade of things until the hidden substance is revealed

and made manifest. Therefore, “Paracelsus sees the process of knowledge as

a movement which starts from what is immediately perceived by the senses;

and, in going beyond this, succeeds in rendering visible, though not always

to the bodily eye, what was at first invisible behind the initial appearance”

(18). Paracelsus himself writes:

Behold the herbs! Their virtues are invisible and yet they can be

detected. Behold the beasts which can neither speak nor explain

anything, and yet nothing is so hidden in them that man cannot learn

of it. Thus there is no thing on earth or in the sea, in chaos or in the

firmament, that does not become manifest at the appointed time …

It is not God’s will that His secrets should be visible; it is His will that

they become manifest and knowable through the works of man who

has been created in order to make them visible (Writings, 109).

Paracelsus goes on to deliberate upon the relationship between natural and

divine knowledge:

Man possesses two kinds of reason: angelic and animal. The angelic

reason is eternal, and comes from God…. God has also given us the

animal reason, but it is not eternal…. Natural [animal] reason and

eternal wisdom belong together. Natural reason may exist without

eternal wisdom, when it follows the heathen way, and is not

concerned with the Eternal. But eternal reason cannot exist without

natural wisdom because man must find the eternal in the natural….

God has given His power to the herbs, put it in stones, concealed it

in seeds; we should take it from them, we should seek it in them. The

angels possess wisdom in themselves, but man does not. For him

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wisdom lies in nature, in nature he must seek it…. Through nature

God’s power is revealed to man (Writings, 160-164).

Knowledge and Power

Again, it is clear that the object of knowledge and the nature of wisdom are

manifest in the acquisition of power. This apprehension of the nature of

knowledge may be seen to echo alchemical theories, for the adepts of this

Art held that that which is initially perceived as base or worthless is merely

the outer shell which encompasses the untold potential of divine power.

The alchemists endeavoured, therefore, to penetrate the concealing mantle

of the natural world and apprehend the latent power permeating all of

nature.

Many alchemists also believed that this knowledge had been more easily

accessible to the sages of the past. Not only had this knowledge been

gradually obscured with the passage of time, but humanity, impaired

through the Fall, had progressively ceded its rightful inheritance of wisdom

and power. It was only through uncompromising dedication and exertion

that the wisdom of the Golden Age could be recovered. This knowledge

was available to the adept in the form of the ‘Two Books of God’ – Nature

and Scripture – and in the numerous alchemical and occult writings extant at

the time. However, although accessible to the scholars of the early modern

period in manuscript or printed form, most, if not all, were arcane and

tantalizingly enigmatic. Yet even this frustrating hindrance was seen in a

positive light when contextualised within the Renaissance conceptions of

knowledge in general and alchemy in particular. Thus Bianchi argues that:

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It is important to note how … the formula of the simultaneous

conversion of visible and invisible, corporeal and spiritual, is used not

only to describe the achievement of the [alchemical] opus, but also the

particular way in which the alchemist imparts his teaching, and the

novice’s hermeneutic effort in approaching it…. To communicate

their truths, scholars had chosen to conceal the spiritual and manifest

it indirectly (per aliud), through something corporeal. Their words are

therefore corporeal and concrete at first sight but spiritual as regards

their hidden core. The novice is required to follow the same path in

reverse: starting from what is corporeal and concrete in the texts, he

moves beyond this to discover their concealed and spiritual teaching

(‘The Visible and Invisible’, 25-26).

Marsilio Ficino harks back to Plato in his discussion of the soul, and he

further stresses the essential obligation man has to achieve knowledge, both

of self and God:

[Plato] considers man’s soul to be like a mirror in which the image of

the divine countenance is readily reflected, and in his eager hunt for

God, as he tracks down every footprint, he everywhere turns hither

and thither to the form of the soul. For he knows that this is the most

important meaning of those famous words of the oracle, “Know

thyself,” namely “If you wish to be able to recognise God, you must

first learn to know yourself” (9).7

7 Yoking together the pagan Plato and the Christian God may seem to be anachronistic, if not anathema, but we are reminded that “Something in Ficino, something in his age, responded to the forged authority of later classical culture, in which … paganism and Christianity appear simultaneously possible” (Kerrigan and Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance, 103).

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But knowing either God or one’s own soul is a tall order, because both are

abstract entities, unyielding to definition and limitation, almost impossible to

comprehend. MacFarlane and Maclean affirm that:

[T]alking about souls is not an easy thing to do. It requires a particular

vocabulary: the vocabulary of what we should now call human

psychology. When Montaigne writes about human psychology (that

is, when he is discussing how human beings perceive, react, interact,

make choices, form habits and so forth) he uses language which the

modern reader may at first find very puzzling (57).

Yet even when we do accept Montaigne’s idiom, it is difficult to find an

explicit or confident explication of the nature of the soul, or of knowing. It

might therefore be understandable if modern readers – and even early

modern readers, for that matter – baulk at the seeming pessimism implied in

the following passage from Montaigne’s Essays:

Cicero says that philosophising is nothing more than preparing for

death. That is as much as to say that study and contemplation in

some sort withdraw our soul outside of us, and keep it occupied apart

from the body, and this is a kind of apprenticeship and resemblance

to death; or perhaps, that all the wisdom and reason in the world

converge in one point, to teach us not to fear death (‘That to

Philosophize is to Learn to Die’, Bk I, Chap. 13, 75).

This rather bleak assessment – almost futility – of the nature and purpose of

philosophy is intensified in Montaigne’s more particularised reflection in his

essay ‘Of Experience’:

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So in the matter of ‘knowing oneself’, the fact that every man is so

cocksure and self-satisfied, and thinks he knows enough about

himself, shows that he does not know himself in the least…. I, who

make no other profession, find in myself such infinite variety and

depth, that the only result of my learning is that I feel how much I

still have to learn (Bk III, Chap. 13, 552).8

But Bouwsma cautions readers of Montaigne not to equate scepticism and

despair. Thus, “For [Montaigne] the insurmountable limitations of the

human condition and ‘the consciousness of our ignorance and weakness’

severely restrict what can be known. He thought scepticism the only

plausible philosophy for ‘living, thinking, reasoning man’” (39). But this

scepticism does not preclude the pursuit of knowledge, neither is it an

endorsement of resignation to ignorance:

Montaigne, himself a lawyer, although doubting everything else, had

no doubts about the workings of his own mind and concluded that

truth was relative to his own conception of it and that it might even

vary from moment to moment…. All of this, he observed,

complicated but also pointed to the importance of self-knowledge,

individual and collective, in human relations (Bouwsma, 41).

While a number of pre-eminent scholars of the period – I would include

both Jonson and Machiavelli in this category – seemed to concur with the

sceptical estimation of man’s potential for self-knowledge, there were those

who embraced a more hopeful outlook. The preface to Sir John Davies’s

poem on The Original, Nature, and Immortality of the Soul, offers a means of

8 “To know oneself, Montaigne seems to be suggesting, one has to catch oneself unawares” (MacFarlane and Maclean, Montaigne, 65).

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access into the uncharted territory of the soul and a possible means of

bringing the abstract into the material world:

But as others have labour’d to carry out our Thoughts, and to

entertain them with all manner of Delights Abroad; ’Tis the peculiar

Character of this Author, that he has taught us to meditate upon our

selves; that he has disclos’d to us greater Secrets at Home; Self-

Reflection being the only Way to Valuable and True Knowledge,

which consists in the rare Science of a Man’s Self … and by knowing

himself thoroughly, he is arriv’d to know much; which appears in his

admirable Variety of well-chosen Metaphors and Similitudes, that

cannot be found in the compass of a narrow Knowledge (A6r).9

Sign as Knowledge

The idea that meditation and self-reflection are aided by the use of

‘metaphors and similitudes’ may be expounded by reference to Agrippa’s

discussion of the ‘Seals and Characters of Natural Things’:

All stars have their peculiar natures, properties, and conditions, the

Seals and Characters whereof they produce, through their rays, even

in these inferior things, viz., in elements, in stones, in plants, in

animals, and their members; whence every natural thing receives,

from a harmonious disposition and from its star shining upon it,

some particular Seal, or character…. Every thing, therefore, hath its

character pressed upon it by its star for some particular effect…..

And these Characters contain and retain in them peculiar Natures,

9 The above title is used for the first time in 1697 (London: W. Rogers). The earlier editions have the title ‘Nosce Teipsum. This oracle expounded in two elegies 1. Of humane knowledge. 2. Of the soule of man, and the immortalitie thereof’ (London: R. Field for J. Standish, 1599).

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Virtues, and Roots of their Stars, and produce the like operations

upon other things, on which they are reflected (Occult Philosophy, 110-

111).

It is only by recognising and deciphering these ‘characters’ or signatures that

one can hope to access the hidden virtues and benefits of natural entities.

Moreover, it follows that if ‘every natural thing’ bears the imprint of a

supercelestial idea or image, then man, too, can be known by various

observable correspondences. Therefore Anderson notes that “Elizabethan

psychology is … a science which involves a knowledge of the relation of

man to the macrocosm” (4). Agrippa himself intimates as much:

Therefore, leaving those things which are to be found out in plants

and stones, and other things, as also in the members of divers

animals, we shall limit ourselves to man’s nature only, which, seeing it

is the most complete Image of the whole Universe, containing in itself the

whole heavenly harmony, will, without all doubt, abundantly afford

us the Seals and Characters of all the Stars and Celestial Influences,

and those, as the more efficacious, which are less differing from the

celestial nature (111).

There is a significant rapport between Agrippa’s theory and the Paracelsian

conception of knowledge. Central to both theses is the idea that knowledge

is negotiated through the interpretation of signs, reading into and beyond

what is immediately available to the senses, and accessing the hidden

meanings beneath the surface of things. Bianchi likens this epistemological

model to early modern notions of alchemy:

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In fact the alchemist’s work becomes the very same laborious

procedure followed by anyone, in any domain, who conceives of the

goal of knowledge as constituted by what is both masked and

revealed by the object of immediate perception, that is, by anyone

who pursues knowledge through the interpretation of signs. When

considered from this standpoint alchemy appears related to every

philosophical view that does not see the task of knowledge as ending

with the passive reception of what is offered externally, but goes on

to take this datum as the sign, symbol or cipher of something else,

which must be arrived at by a more or less difficult path (‘The Visible

and Invisible’, 27).

Alchemy, then, can be understood as an analogy for the process of knowing

and as a metaphorical pattern for a Renaissance psychology. The reading

and interpretation of signs or ‘ciphers’ necessarily implicates the imagination

in the process of learning in order to know10. Many Renaissance scholars

defended the application of the imagination in the pursuit of knowledge.

Indeed, Copenhaver argues that “In psychology and philosophical medicine

the imaginative faculty of the soul and its spiritual junction with the body

were topics of long-standing importance” (‘Translation, Terminology and

Style’, 288). MacFarlane and Maclean make a similar point: “imagination, in

traditional psychology, was the part or faculty of the soul which made

mental images, and hence was closely related to memory” (62).

Knowledge and Imagination

The theory of the efficacy of the imagination is particularised by Montaigne:

10 The particular significance of the imagination in relation to drama will be further explored in the chapter on The Tempest.

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A powerful imagination begets the thing itself, say the clerks. I am of those

who feel the strong arm of imagination; everyone is struck by it, and

some are knocked down…. I do not wonder that imagination brings

on fevers and death in those who give it free hand and encourage it

(‘Of the Power of Imagination’, Bk I, Chap. 21, 91).

Although he seems to admit to a personal susceptibility to the power of the

imagination, he goes on to suggest that it is the unlearned and low-born who

are most prone to submission to the influence of the imagination: “It is

likely that miracles, visions, enchantments, and the like extraordinary

phenomena derive their credit chiefly from the power of imagination, acting

principally on the more impressionable minds of the common people. Their

credulity is so easily imposed upon that they think they see what they do not

see” (93).11

The power of the ‘imaginative faculty’ was certainly brought to bear upon

the language, instruments, and practices of alchemy. These could be seen as

an intricate and profound system, echoing the various processes of the

human psyche. Croll expounds on the power inherent in the imagination,

and further links it to alchemical philosophy, which draws on the theories of

the sentient universe and the macrocosm-microcosm interaction:

The Imagination can produce whatever we see with our eyes in the

greater world; thus by Imagination … all hearbs, all growing things,

all mettalls may be produced…. A vehement Imagination doth not

onely cause a transmutation of one’s own body, but sometimes also

of anothers (‘The Great and Deep Mysteries’, 72-73).

11 While this judgement might seem somewhat derisive, it nonetheless resonates with Jonson’s depiction of the gulls in The Alchemist, which will be further analysed in Chapter Six of this thesis.

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Agrippa seems to have a similar opinion of the imagination with regard to

its psychological application:

So great a power is there of the soul upon the body, that whichever

way the soul imagines and dreams that it goes, thither doth it lead the

body…. Now, how much imagination can effect the soul no man is

ignorant, for it is nearer to the substance of the soul than the sense is,

and therefore acts more upon the soul than the sense doth (Occult

Philosophy, 199-200).

But imagination, although abstract and hard to define, must be based on

something concrete or experiential. Consequently, alchemists, scientists, and

natural philosophers, amongst others, insisted on the importance of

observation and personal experience. Although not an occultist, Montaigne

does offer an important contemporary perspective on the relationship

between cerebral knowledge and practical experience:

Reason and education, however much we may be inclined to put our

faith in them, can hardly be powerful enough to guide us to action,

unless we, over and above, exercise and train our mind by experience

to go the way we wish; otherwise, when it comes to actual deeds, it

will no doubt find itself at a loss. That is why those among the

philosophers who have striven to attain to some greater excellence

have not been content to await, in tranquil security, the rigours of

Fortune, lest she should take them unawares, fresh and

inexperienced, in the battle of life, but rather have gone out to meet

her and purposely come to grips with difficulties (‘Of Preparation’,

Bk II, Chap. 6, 357-358).

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Knowledge and Experience

Writing within a rather different paradigm, Paracelsus addresses his

exhortation to action to physicians in particular, although one may

extrapolate his rationale to a more general emphasis on empiricism:

The right path does not consist in speculation, but leads deep into

experience. From experience the physician receives his help, and

upon it rests all his skill. He must have rich knowledge based on

experience…. Your eyes, which take delight in experience, are your

masters; for your own fantasies and speculations cannot advance you

so far that you can boast of being a physician…. Therefore study

each day without respite, investigate and observe diligently

(Archidoxes, 55, 57).

Pinnell’s marginal note in his translation of Croll is significant in this

respect, especially if we keep in mind the theoretical and practical overlaps

between science and the occult during this period. Thus, “Experiment, as

also judgement, without knowledge is but fallacious difficult and fortuitous,

but with Science it is true and infallible.” (80).12 The semantic overlap

between ‘experiment’ and ‘experience’ was an accepted commonplace that

obtained during the middle ages up to the latter part of the eighteenth

century. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath articulates this axiom in the prologue to her

tale, where she emphasises the close relationship between personal

experience and knowledge:

Experience, though noon auctoritee

Were in this world, is right ynogh for me

To speke of wo that is in marriage

(III [D] 1-2). 12 It is important to note that ‘science’ at this time was used to refer to ‘exact knowledge’, almost undifferentiated with regard to subject matter.

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In the ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, Chaucer suggests that ‘auctoritee’, or certain

knowledge of a subject, is supported by ‘deed’ or experience:

By God, men may in olde bookes rede

Of many a man moore of auctorite

Than evere Caton was, so moot I thee,

That al the revers seyn of this sentence,

And han wel founden by experience

That dremes been significaciouns

As wel of joye as of tribulaciouns

That folk enduren in this lif present.

Ther nedeth make of this noon argument;

The verray preeve sheweth it in dede.

(VII [B²] 2974-2983).

The primary sense of the verb ‘experiment’, then, includes ‘experience’. In

light of this, ‘experiment’ presupposes the attempt to put to the test,

through personal experience and observation, various theories and

conceptions in order to find out and establish the truth of a matter, and to

come to a clear understanding of that matter.

Of course, this raised immense difficulties for those scholars who were

committed to the study of the psyche, or ‘soul’, of the human individual.

However, these difficulties were not considered insuperable. In keeping with

the Paracelsian conception of knowledge, the invisible or hidden depths of

the human psyche could be accessed by metaphorically peeling away the

material layers in which the soul is cocooned. This, of course, calls to mind

the alchemical practice of separation, in which the visible shrouds around

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natural things are gradually removed to reveal the hidden virtues and powers

contained within. Bianchi explains: “It was through a process of separation

and individuation, a scheidung analogous to the work performed by an artist

on a block of wood, that each thing acquired its precise contours and was

made visible” (20).

The following explanation by Fludd provides a useful insight into the

Renaissance conception of psychologia as the study of the human soul. The

way in which he relates this to alchemical knowledge is especially significant:

The wiser sort of Alchymists, do make the Soul a certain infinite

nature, or power in all things, which doth procreate like things of

their like: for this nature doth engender all things, yea, and

multiplieth, and nourisheth, or sustaineth them: and they also style it,

the Ligament, or bond of the elements, since by it they are fastned together

with the Symphoniacal accords of peacable harmony (Mosaicall

Philosophy, 146, original italics).

It is thus in understanding nature, as consisting of ‘the elements’ in various

combinations, that one can approach unto a clearer vision of the soul of

man. This is essential, because man was considered not only to epitomize

the universe in miniature, but also to be the ‘bridge’ or ligament between the

celestial and the terrestrial. Paying homage to the Paracelsian method of

attaining knowledge, Croll states that:

[O]thers far more excellent and more truly deserving the name of

Philosophers investigate the Arcana and more secret things of Nature,

they go into the very inner roomes and Sanctuary of Nature, and have

the true knowledge and Experience of Nature’s Light, which maketh

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a true Phisition indeed…. But first, as Paracelsus saith, let him be the

legetimate INTERPRETER of NATURE, who alone searcheth out

its œconomy, and the universall latitude thereof, prying into all the

Species and kinds of all the Creatures that may by themselves be

known, and then comes to consider and looke into man (‘The Great

and Deep Mysteries’, 128-129).

Fludd engages a very similar attitude:

As for Man, there is such a super-eminent and wonderfull treasure

hidden in him, that wise-men have esteemed, that the perfect wisdom

of this world, consisteth in the knowledge of a mans self, namely, to

find out that secret mystery, which doth lurk within him. For man is

said to be the center of every creature, and for that cause he is called

Microcosmus, or the little world: Centrum & miraculum mundi, The center or

miracle of the world, containing in himself the properties of all creatures,

as well celestiall as terrestriall (Mosaicall Philosophy, 215).

Macrocosm/Microcosm: Types and Shadows

The cosmos, it was believed, is constructed according to types and shadows,

where invisible entities are bodied forth in their analogues in the visible

world13. Close observation of outward nature and particular consideration of

how it might reveal the inner workings of human nature were therefore

advocated as ways of accessing the soul or psyche. Fludd explains that “the

character of the inward man is deciphered and pourtrayed out in the

outward man, no otherwise, that we may judge of the fashion of the sword

by the scabbard, or the kernell by the shell” (215). 13 Brian Vickers points out that analogy and correspondence were characteristic features of the “mental habits of the occult sciences” (‘The Function of Analogy’, 266).

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Indeed, Cicero invokes the authority of antiquity in his recommendation to

follow the methods of the sages and philosophers of ancient times, for

“with these began the succession of all those who devoted themselves to the

contemplation of nature and were held to be and named wise men” (432).

Bianchi provides insights into the seminal nature of both the theory and

exercise of this principle of contemplation:

[S]ince an exact isomorphism of structures connects worldly beings

and phenomena which are distant from one another, it follows that

the knowledge of what is concealed and impossible to grasp directly

may be obtained from its more perspicuous and evident cosmic

analogues, that the invisible may therefore be read in the visible, the

internal in the external, and the distant in the near. Thus the

phenomena of the external world become the model on which to

base an understanding of the more enigmatic phenomena that occur

in man…. Everything regarding the microcosm is therefore learnt

indirectly through its signs in the macrocosm (‘The Visible and

Invisible’, 29).

However, one may ask what exactly is to be contemplated in the external

world if the object of the exercise is to come to a clearer understanding of

the human soul or psyche. After all, the soul is invisible and nebulous with

regard to the five physical senses through which we normally access the

world. Agrippa attempts to address this very question in his analogous

formulation of the nature and ‘structure’ of the soul, by recasting the

doctrine of the four elements. Thus, “In the Soul itself … the understanding

resembles fire, reason the air, imagination the water, and the senses the

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earth” (54). Fludd contributes a more detailed description of the soul in his

Mosaicall Philosophy:

The soul is an intellectual Spirit alwaies living, alwaies in motion, and

in respect of its divers operations in the body, it hath divers

appellations assigned to it: For it is called Life, in regard of its

vivificative and vegetative property. It is called a Spirit, as it is

conversant about contemplation, and, is a spirituall substance: and

breatheth in the body; it is called sense, as it is imploied about the Act

of sensation; it is termed Animus, when it operateth in Knowledge

and Wisdome; and it is named Mens, in regard of its divine

understanding: and Memory, as it doth remember (150).

This outline of the soul provides a certain focus to one’s contemplation.

Cicero provides further practical guidelines to accessing and applying this

central theory of the cosmic ‘echoes’ between the great and little worlds,

“For the man who reflects upon nature, upon the diversity of life and the

weakness of humanity, is not saddened by reflecting upon these things, but

in doing so he fulfils most completely the function of wisdom” (267).

Montaigne provides an even more trenchant judgement about knowledge as

the product not only of reflecting upon one’s ignorance, but actually

embracing it:

The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not

been acquired by our own powers…. We are therein assisted by the

weakness more than by the strength of our judgement, by our

blindness more than by our clearsightedness. By means of our

ignorance, more than our knowledge, do we become wise…. It is not

to be wondered at if our natural and earthly powers are unable to

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conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge; let us bring to it

nothing of our own but obedience and submission…. Yet must I

consider, in fine, if it be in the power of man to find what he seeks,

and if this search he has been making for so many centuries has

enriched him with any new power and any solid truth. I think he will

admit, if he speak in all conscience, that all he has gained by his long

pursuit is to have learned to acknowledge his own weakness. The

ignorance which was naturally in us we have by long study confirmed

and verified (‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’, Bk II, Chap. 12, 495-

496).

Once again, Montaigne’s scepticism might be mistaken for resigned

defeatism, yet it is significant that he begins this long and influential essay

with the rather blunt observation: “Knowledge is truly a great and very

useful acquisition; they who despise it bear sufficient witness to their

stupidity” (428). By now, we have come to accept that Montaigne pulls no

punches, but not everyone subscribed to this sort of audacity. Cicero, for

example, presented a more coaxing approach, as he explained the purpose

of the pursuit of knowledge through observation and contemplation:

“Human nature, if properly examined, has in itself all means of calming the

soul, and in order that a distinct image of it may be discerned more easily,

the general conditions and law of life must be clearly explained” (399).

Knowing one’s self, then, is contingent upon observation of all that is

external to the self. Yet self-knowledge in turn provides the basis for true

wisdom and understanding of the world around one. Thus Croll argues that

“He that knoweth not himselfe cannot have any true intrinsicall and

essentiall knowledge of things, but like a bruit beast, what he knows without

him, shall remaine without him” (48). Self-knowledge, therefore, may be

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seen as an interactive process of discernment and is available to all who are

willing to contemplate seriously the powerful relationship between

macrocosm and microcosm. Croll explains:

Man, the bond or buckle of the world, the last wonderfull and

honourable living creature was … formed of the most excellent

Compound and purest Extract of the whole World, out of the Center

of all Circles…. In respect of the Body or corruptible Nature [Man]

bears the Image of the great, sensible and temporall World; In respect

of his soul or immortal Nature, he bears the Image of the Archetype

or originall copy and patterne of the world, that is, of the Immortall

Wisdome of God himselfe (‘The Great and Deep Mysteries’, 54-55).

Fludd’s association of intellectual wisdom with the soul of man coincides

with Croll’s description, and reinforces the concept of the coexistence

within man of the human and the divine. In his discussion of ‘Philosophy in

generall’, Fludd begins this ‘book’ by arguing that, unlike the erroneous and

deceptive philosophy of the Ethnics, those influenced by Aristotle and

Galen, truth is contained within and is to be searched out from:

[The] bottomlesse abysse of the essentiall Philosophy, whose main

foundation is the true Wisdom, (the which is a thing so difficil (sic) to

be put into execution, that nothing but the swift and nimble-winged

soul, or spirit of man, is able to bring it to effect) (Mosaicall Philosophy,

9).

Again, reference to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations provides further insight

into the nature of this wisdom, which is “a sound condition of the soul,

[while] unwisdom on the other hand [is] a sort of unhealthiness which is

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unsoundness and also aberration of mind” (235). This clearly associates

mind and soul, and Cicero goes on to argue that the healthy and wise soul is

evidenced in the right and discerning use of reason (243).

Adam: Heir of Knowledge and Power

In the first book of his Occult Philosophy, Agrippa extends the conception of

reason to include natural magic, which is:

[A] faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries,

containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things,

together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues

thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct

us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst

themselves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the

virtues of things through the application of them one to the other

(34-35).

According to alchemical writings of the time, the most momentous act of

uniting was performed by Adam in the Garden of Eden when he named all

the animals God brought before him. The occurrence of this story in so

many different esoteric works suggests its immense significance in the

Renaissance conceptions of both alchemy and wisdom. After a detailed

discussion on the ‘Occult Virtue of Words’ in his Occult Philosophy, Agrippa

explains the occult significance of Adam’s act of naming,14 his

14 Haydn draws attention to the synchronous relationship between language and occult power: “These three requirements – astrology; the use of language, to read the Cabalistic and other occult literature, and to understand and pronounce ‘sacred names’; and alchemy – correspond very neatly to the generally approved three realms of magic: the Celestial, Divine and Natural respectively (188).

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comprehensive knowledge of the natural world, which made this act

possible, and the possibility of reclaiming this occult power:

Adam, therefore, that gave the first names to things, knowing the

influences of the Heavens and properties of all things, gave them all

names according to their natures, as it is written in Genesis, … and as

he named any thing, so the name of it was; which names, indeed,

contain in them wonderful powers of the things signified. Every

voice, therefore, that is significative, first of all signifies by the

influence of the celestial harmony; secondly, by the imposition of

man…. But when both significations meet in any voice or name,

which are put upon them by the said harmony, or men, then that

name is with a double virtue, viz., natural and arbitrary, made most

efficacious to act as often as it shall be uttered in due place and time

(209, 210).

Philip C. Almond points out that Adam’s perfect knowledge set him apart as

the crown jewel of God’s creation. This wisdom was not merely abstract

‘intelligence’, but was the wellspring of his power and dominion over nature

itself. The true alchemists and natural philosophers had as their ultimate goal

this superlative and consummate knowledge (44). Lancelot Andrewes, in his

Apospasmatia Sacra, emphasises the efficacious interaction of language,

learning, and occult power:

Adam was the first that practiced Contemplation, and the first that

practiced Eloquution … and the first … that gave proper, fit and

significant names and words to express the natures of things, and hee

was not only the father of all the liberal Sciences, but also of

mechanical Arts … by all which we briefly see the perfection of his

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minde, and the excellency of his gifts with which he was endowed: So

that Adam then must needes be granted to bee the first and chiefest

Author of all Knowledge and Learning that ever since, in all ages of

the world hath beene among men, for from him it was derived and

spread abroad among his posterity, into all parts of the world (208).

Croll distinctly links Adam’s perfect knowledge to the alchemical processes

of separation and amalgamation, those core activities in the great quest for

the universal panacea or philosopher’s stone. He further expands on

Andrewes’s suggestion that the practical wisdom of Adam was not entirely

effaced by the Fall, but, rather, is available to those adepts who devote

themselves to the search for the truth of man’s nature and being:

Adam who was full of wisdome and the perfect knowledge of all

Naturall things, and many more of his time … did attaine to so many

ages, not by Nature and property of Time, for then all had been

Long-liv’d, but by the help of Secrets and by Wisdome which was

revealed but to a few, and by speciall knowledge which God gave

them in this particular, whereby they lengthned out their life to so

many years beyond the ordinary time that men live. Many holy men

used this universall Medicine before the flood, which Adam also had

in his Family … which strengthneth the Internall Balsam, and like

Fire congregateth Homogeneous things, and segregateth

Heterogeneous, which are of a contrary nature…. Wherefore we want

nothing but the knowledge of Secrets, and their use. And thus the

Flood did not wast the things that grow, but wash’d away our

wisdome of knowing them. These most secret of secrets have ever

been his from the common sort of them that professe Phylosophy,

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and especially since men began to abuse Wisdome, using it to an ill

end, which God bestow’d upon them for health and advantage (218).

Natural philosophy, in its broadest sense encompassing both the theoretical

and experiential aspects of alchemy, may be seen, then, as an attempt to

unearth the secrets with which Adam was au fait, but which were obscured

by the Fall, and to re-establish the divine wisdom which would ensure

‘health and advantage’ to all.