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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions

C >> Charles Mackay >> Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions




Dee, thus left to himself, was in sore trouble and distress of
mind. He knew not on whom to fix as the successor to Kelly for
consulting the spirits; but at last chose his son Arthur, a boy of
eight years of age. He consecrated him to this service with great
ceremony, and impressed upon the child's mind the dignified and awful
nature of the duties he was called upon to perform; but the poor boy
had neither the imagination, the faith, nor the artifice of Kelly. He
looked intently upon the crystal, as he was told; but could see
nothing and hear nothing. At last, when his eyes ached, he said he
could see a vague indistinct shadow; but nothing more. Dee was in
despair. The deception had been carried on so long, that he was never
so happy as when he fancied he was holding converse with superior
beings; and he cursed the day that had put estrangement between him
and his dear friend Kelly. This was exactly what Kelly had foreseen;
and, when he thought the Doctor had grieved sufficiently for his
absence, he returned unexpectedly, and entered the room where the
little Arthur was in vain endeavouring to distinguish something in the
crystal. Dee, in entering this circumstance in his journal, ascribes
this sudden return to a "miraculous fortune," and a "divine fate;"
and goes on to record that Kelly immediately saw the spirits, which
had remained invisible to little Arthur. One of these spirits
reiterated the previous command, that they should have their wives in
common. Kelly bowed his head, and submitted; and Dee, in all humility,
consented to the arrangement.

This was the extreme depth of the wretched man's degradation. In
this manner they continued to live for three or four months, when, new
quarrels breaking out, they separated once more. This time their
separation was final. Kelly, taking the elixir which he had found in
Glastonbury Abbey, proceeded to Prague, forgetful of the abrupt mode
in which he had previously been expelled from that city. Almost
immediately after his arrival, he was seized by order of the Emperor
Rudolph, and thrown into prison. He was released after some months'
confinement, and continued for five years to lead a vagabond life in
Germany, telling fortunes at one place, and pretending to make gold at
another. He was a second time thrown into prison, on a charge of
heresy and sorcery; and he then resolved, if ever he obtained his
liberty, to return to England. He soon discovered that there was no
prospect of this, and that his imprisonment was likely to be for life.
He twisted his bed-clothes into a rope, one stormy night in February
1595, and let himself down from the window of his dungeon, situated at
the top of a very high tower. Being a corpulent man, the rope gave
way, and he was precipitated to the ground. He broke two of his ribs,
and both his legs; and was otherwise so much injured, that he expired
a few days afterwards.

Dee, for a while, had more prosperous fortune. The warming-pan he
had sent to Queen Elizabeth was not without effect. He was rewarded,
soon after Kelly had left him, with an invitation to return to
England. His pride, which had been sorely humbled, sprang up again to
its pristine dimensions; and he set out for Bohemia with a train of
attendants becoming an ambassador. How he procured the money does not
appear, unless from the liberality of the rich Bohemian Rosenberg, or
perhaps from his plunder. He travelled with three coaches for himself
and family, and three waggons to carry his baggage. Each coach had
four horses, and the whole train was protected by a guard of four and
twenty soldiers. This statement may be doubted; but it is on the
authority of Dee himself, who made it on oath before the commissioners
appointed by Elizabeth to inquire into his circumstances. On his
arrival in England he had an audience of the Queen, who received him
kindly as far as words went, and gave orders that he should not be
molested in his pursuits of chemistry and philosophy. A man who
boasted of the power to turn baser metals into gold, could not,
thought Elizabeth, be in want of money; and she, therefore, gave him
no more substantial marks of her approbation than her countenance and
protection.

Thrown thus unexpectedly upon his own resources, Dee began in
earnest the search for the philosopher's stone. He worked incessantly
among his furnaces, retorts, and crucibles, and almost poisoned
himself with deleterious fumes. He also consulted his miraculous
crystal; but the spirits appeared not to him. He tried one Bartholomew
to supply the place of the invaluable Kelly; but he being a man of
some little probity, and of no imagination at all, the spirits would
not hold any communication with him. Dee then tried another pretender
to philosophy, of the name of Hickman; but had no better fortune. The
crystal had lost its power since the departure of its great
high-priest. From this quarter then Dee could get no information on
the stone or elixir of the alchymists, and all his efforts to discover
them by other means were not only fruitless but expensive. He was soon
reduced to great distress, and wrote piteous letters to the Queen,
praying relief. He represented that, after he left England with Count
Laski, the mob had pillaged his house at Mortlake, accusing him of
being a necromancer and a wizard; and had broken all his furniture,
burned his library, consisting of four thousand rare volumes, and
destroyed all the philosophical instruments and curiosities in his
museum. For this damage he claimed compensation; and furthermore
stated, that, as he had come to England by the Queen's command, she
ought to pay the expenses of his journey. Elizabeth sent him small
sums of money at various times; but, Dee still continuing his
complaints, a commission was appointed to inquire into his
circumstances. He finally obtained a small appointment as Chancellor
of St. Paul's cathedral, which he exchanged, in 1595, for the
wardenship of the college at Manchester. He remained in this capacity
till 1602 or 1603, when, his strength and intellect beginning to fail
him, he was compelled to resign. He retired to his old dwelling at
Mortlake, in a state not far removed from actual want, supporting
himself as a common fortune-teller, and being often obliged to sell or
pawn his books to procure a dinner. James I. was often applied to on
his behalf, but he refused to do anything for him. It may be said to
the discredit of this King, that the only reward he would grant the
indefatigable Stowe, in his days of old age and want, was the royal
permission to beg; but no one will blame him for neglecting such a
quack as John Dee. He died in 1608, in the eighty-first year of his
age, and was buried at Mortlake.

THE COSMOPOLITE.

Many disputes have arisen as to the real name of the alchymist who
wrote several works under the above designation. The general opinion
is that he was a Scotsman, named Seton; and that by a fate very common
to alchymists, who boasted too loudly of their powers of
transmutation, he ended his days miserably in a dungeon, into which he
was thrown by a German potentate until he made a million of gold to
pay his ransom. By some he has been confounded with Michael Sendivog,
or Sendivogius, a Pole, a professor of the same art, who made a great
noise in Europe at the commencement of the seventeenth century.
Lenglet du Fresnoy, who is in general well-informed with respect to
the alchymists, inclines to the belief that these personages were
distinct; and gives the following particulars of the Cosmopolite,
extracted from George Morhoff, in his "Epistola ad Langelottum," and
other writers.

About the year 1600, one Jacob Haussen, a Dutch pilot, was
shipwrecked on the coast of Scotland. A gentleman, named Alexander
Seton, put off in a boat, and saved him from drowning, and afterwards
entertained him hospitably for many weeks at his house on the shore.
Haussen saw that he was addicted to the pursuits of chemistry, but no
conversation on the subject passed between them at the time. About a
year and a half afterwards, Haussen being then at home at Enkhuysen,
in Holland, received a visit from his former host. He endeavoured to
repay the kindness that had been shown him; and so great a friendship
arose between them, that Seton, on his departure, offered to make
him acquainted with the great secret of the philosopher's stone. In
his presence the Scotsman transmuted a great quantity of base metal
into pure gold, and gave it him as a mark of his esteem. Seton then
took leave of his friend, and travelled into Germany. At Dresden he
made no secret of his wonderful powers; having, it is said, performed
transmutation successfully before a great assemblage of the learned
men of that city. The circumstance coming to the ears of the Duke or
Elector of Saxony, he gave orders for the arrest of the alchymist. He
caused him to be imprisoned in a high tower, and set a guard of forty
men to watch that he did not escape, and that no strangers were
admitted to his presence. The unfortunate Seton received several
visits from the Elector, who used every art of persuasion to make him
divulge his secret. Seton obstinately refused either to communicate
his secret, or to make any gold for the tyrant; on which he was
stretched upon the rack, to see if the argument of torture would
render him more tractable. The result was still the same, - neither
hope of reward nor fear of anguish could shake him. For several months
he remained in prison, subjected alternately to a sedative and a
violent regimen, till his health broke, and he wasted away almost to a
skeleton.

There happened at that time to be in Dresden a learned Pole, named
Michael Sendivogius, who had wasted a good deal of his time and
substance in the unprofitable pursuits of alchymy. He was touched with
pity for the hard fate, and admiration for the intrepidity of Seton;
and determined, if possible, to aid him in escaping from the clutch of
his oppressor. He requested the Elector's permission to see the
alchymist, and obtained it with some difficulty. He found him in a
state of great wretchedness, -- shut up from the light of day in a
noisome dungeon, and with no better couch or fare than those allotted
to the worst of criminals. Seton listened eagerly to the proposal of
escape, and promised the generous Pole that he would make him richer
than an Eastern monarch if by his means he were liberated. Sendivogius
immediately commenced operations. He sold some property which he
possessed near Cracow, and with the proceeds led a merry life at
Dresden. He gave the most elegant suppers, to which he regularly
invited the officers of the guard, and especially those who did duty
at the prison of the alchymist. He insinuated himself at last into
their confidence, and obtained free ingress to his friend as often as
he pleased; pretending that he was using his utmost endeavours to
conquer his obstinacy and worm his secret out of him. When their
project was ripe, a day was fixed upon for the grand attempt; and
Sendivogius was ready with a postchariot to convey him with all speed
into Poland. By drugging some wine which he presented to the guards of
the prison, he rendered them so drowsy that he easily found means to
scale a wall unobserved, with Seton, and effect his escape. Seton's
wife was in the chariot awaiting him, having safely in her possession
a small packet of a black powder, which was, in fact, the
philosopher's stone, or ingredient for the transmutation of iron and
copper into gold. They all arrived in safety at Cracow; but the frame
of Seton was so wasted by torture of body and starvation, to say
nothing of the anguish of mind he had endured, that he did not long
survive. He died in Cracow in 1603 or 1604, and was buried under the
cathedral church of that city. Such is the story related of the author
of the various works which bear the name of the Cosmopolite. A list of
them may be found in the third volume of the "History of the Hermetic
Philosophy."

SENDIVOGIUS.

On the death of Seton, Sendivogius married his widow, hoping to
learn from her some of the secrets of her deceased lord in the art of
transmutation. The ounce of black powder stood him, however, in better
service; for the alchymists say that, by its means, he converted great
quantities of quicksilver into the purest gold. It is also said that
he performed this experiment successfully before the Emperor Rudolph
II, at Prague; and that the Emperor, to commemorate the circumstance,
caused a marble tablet to be affixed to the wall of the room in which
it was performed, bearing this inscription, "Faciat hoc quispiam
alius, quod fecit Sendivogius Polonus." M. Desnoyers, secretary to the
Princess Mary of Gonzaga, Queen of Poland, writing from Warsaw in
1651, says that he saw this tablet, which existed at that time, and
was often visited by the curious.

The after-life of Sendivogius is related in a Latin memoir of him
by one Brodowski, his steward; and is inserted by Pierre Borel in his
"Treasure of Gaulish Antiquities." The Emperor Rudolph, according to
this authority, was so well pleased with his success, that he made him
one of his counsellors of state, and invited him to fill a station in
the royal household and inhabit the palace. But Sendivogius loved his
liberty, and refused to become a courtier. He preferred to reside on
his own patrimonial estate of Gravarna, where, for many years, he
exercised a princely hospitality. His philosophic powder, which, his
steward says, was red, and not black, he kept in a little box of gold;
and with one grain of it he could make five hundred ducats, or a
thousand rix-dollars. He generally made his projection upon
quicksilver. When he travelled, he gave this box to his steward, who
hung it round his neck by a gold chain next his skin. But the greatest
part of the powder he used to hide in a secret place cut into the step
of his chariot. He thought that, if attacked at any time by robbers,
they would not search such a place as that. When he anticipated any
danger, he would dress himself in his valet's clothes, and, mounting
the coach-box, put the valet inside. He was induced to take these
precautions, because it was no secret that he possessed the
philosopher's stone; and many unprincipled adventurers were on the
watch for an opportunity to plunder him. A German Prince, whose name
Brodowski has not thought fit to chronicle, served him a scurvy trick,
which ever afterwards put him on his guard. This prince went on his
knees to Sendivogius, and entreated him in the most pressing terms to
satisfy his curiosity by converting some quicksilver into gold before
him. Sendivogius, wearied by his importunity, consented, upon a
promise of inviolable secrecy. After his departure, the Prince called
a German alchymist, named Muhlenfels, who resided in his house, and
told him all that had been done. Muhlenfels entreated that he might
have a dozen mounted horsemen at his command, that he might instantly
ride after the philosopher, and either rob him of all his powder or
force from him the secret of making it. The Prince desired nothing
better; and Muhlenfels, being provided with twelve men well mounted
and armed, pursued Sendivogius in hot haste. He came up with him at a
lonely inn by the road-side, just as he was sitting down to dinner. He
at first endeavoured to persuade him to divulge the secret; but,
finding this of no avail, he caused his accomplices to strip the
unfortunate Sendivogius and tie him naked to one of the pillars of the
house. He then took from him his golden box, containing a small
quantity of the powder; a manuscript book on the philosopher's stone;
a golden medal with its chain, presented to him by the Emperor
Rudolph; and a rich cap ornamented with diamonds, of the value of one
hundred thousand rix-dollars. With this booty he decamped, leaving
Sendivogius still naked and firmly bound to the pillar. His servants
had been treated in a similar manner; but the people of the inn
released them all as soon as the robbers were out of sight.

Sendivogius proceeded to Prague, and made his complaint to the
Emperor. An express was instantly sent off to the Prince, with orders
that he should deliver up Muhlenfels and all his plunder. The Prince,
fearful of the Emperor's wrath, caused three large gallows to be
erected in his court-yard; on the highest of which he hanged
Muhlenfels, with another thief on each side of him. He thus
propitiated the Emperor, and got rid of an ugly witness against
himself. He sent back, at the same time, the bejewelled hat, the medal
and chain, and the treatise upon the philosopher's stone, which had
been stolen from Sendivogius. As regarded the powder, he said he had
not seen it, and knew nothing about it.

This adventure made Sendivogius more prudent; he would no longer
perform the process of transmutation before any strangers, however
highly recommended. He pretended, also, to be very poor; and sometimes
lay in bed for weeks together, that people might believe he was
suffering from some dangerous malady, and could not therefore by any
possibility be the owner of the philosopher's stone. He would
occasionally coin false money, and pass it off as gold; preferring to
be esteemed a cheat rather than a successful alchymist.

Many other extraordinary tales are told of this personage by his
steward Brodowski, but they are not worth repeating. He died in 1636,
aged upwards of eighty, and was buried in his own chapel at Gravarna.
Several works upon alchymy have been published under his name.

THE ROSICRUCIANS.

It was during the time of the last-mentioned author that the sect
of the Rosicrucians first began to create a sensation in Europe. The
influence which they exercised upon opinion during their brief career,
and the permanent impression which they have left upon European
literature, claim for them especial notice. Before their time, alchymy
was but a grovelling delusion; and theirs is the merit of having
spiritualised and refined it. They also enlarged its sphere, and
supposed the possession of the philosopher's stone to be, not only the
means of wealth, but of health and happiness; and the instrument by
which man could command the services of superior beings, control the
elements to his will, defy the obstructions of time and space, and
acquire the most intimate knowledge of all the secrets of the
universe. Wild and visionary as they were, they were not without their
uses; if it were only for having purged the superstitions of Europe of
the dark and disgusting forms with which the monks had peopled it, and
substituted, in their stead, a race of mild, graceful, and beneficent
beings.

They are said to have derived their name from Christian
Rosencreutz, or "Rose-cross," a German philosopher, who travelled in
the Holy Land towards the close of the fourteenth century. While
dangerously ill at a place called Damcar, he was visited by some
learned Arabs, who claimed him as their brother in science, and
unfolded to him, by inspiration, all the secrets of his past life,
both of thought and of action. They restored him to health by means of
the philosopher's stone, and afterwards instructed him in all their
mysteries. He returned to Europe in 1401, being then only twenty-three
years of age; and drew a chosen number of his friends around him, whom
he initiated into the new science, and bound by solemn oaths to keep
it secret for a century. He is said to have lived eighty-three years
after this period, and to have died in 1484.

Many have denied the existence of such a personage as Rosencreutz,
and have fixed the origin of this sect at a much later epoch. The
first dawning of it, they say, is to be found in the theories of
Paracelsus, and the dreams of Dr. Dee, who, without intending it,
became the actual, though never the recognised founders of the
Rosicrucian philosophy. It is now difficult, and indeed impossible, to
determine whether Dee and Paracelsus obtained their ideas from the
then obscure and unknown Rosicrucians, or whether the Rosicrucians did
but follow and improve upon them. Certain it is, that their existence
was never suspected till the year 1605, when they began to excite
attention in Germany. No sooner were their doctrines promulgated, than
all the visionaries, Paracelsists, and alchymists, flocked around
their standard, and vaunted Rosencreutz as the new regenerator of the
human race. Michael Mayer, a celebrated physician of that day, and who
had impaired his health and wasted his fortune in searching for the
philosopher's stone, drew up a report of the tenets and ordinances of
the new fraternity, which was published at Cologne, in the year 1615.
They asserted, in the first place, "that the meditations of their
founders surpassed everything that had ever been imagined since the
creation of the world, without even excepting the revelations of the
Deity; that they were destined to accomplish the general peace and
regeneration of man before the end of the world arrived; that they
possessed all wisdom and piety in a supreme degree; that they
possessed all the graces of nature, and could distribute them among
the rest of mankind according to their pleasure; that they were
subject to neither hunger, nor thirst, nor disease, nor old age, nor
to any other inconvenience of nature; that they knew by inspiration,
and at the first glance, every one who was worthy to be admitted into
their society; that they had the same knowledge then which they would
have possessed if they had lived from the beginning of the world, and
had been always acquiring it; that they had a volume in which they
could read all that ever was or ever would be written in other books
till the end of time; that they could force to, and retain in their
service the most powerful spirits and demons; that, by the virtue of
their songs, they could attract pearls and precious stones from the
depths of the sea or the bowels of the earth; that God had covered
them with a thick cloud, by means of which they could shelter
themselves from the malignity of their enemies, and that they could
thus render themselves invisible from all eyes; that the eight first
brethren of the "Rose-cross" had power to cure all maladies; that, by
means of the fraternity, the triple diadem of the Pope would be
reduced into dust; that they only admitted two sacraments, with the
ceremonies of the primitive Church, renewed by them; that they
recognised the Fourth Monarchy and the Emperor of the Romans as their
chief and the chief of all Christians; that they would provide him
with more gold, their treasures being inexhaustible, than the King of
Spain had ever drawn from the golden regions of Eastern and Western
Ind." This was their confession of faith. Their rules of conduct were
six in number, and as follow:--

First. That, in their travels, they should gratuitously cure all
diseases.

Secondly. That they should always dress in conformity to the
fashion of the country in which they resided.

Thirdly. That they should, once every year, meet together in the
place appointed by the fraternity, or send in writing an available
excuse.

Fourthly. That every brother, whenever he felt inclined to die,
should choose a person worthy to succeed him.

Fifthly. That the words "Rose-cross" should be the marks by which
they should recognise each other.

Sixthly. That their fraternity should be kept secret for six
times twenty years.

They asserted that these laws had been found inscribed in a golden
book in the tomb of Rosencreutz, and that the six times twenty years
from his death expired in 1604. They were consequently called upon,
from that time forth, to promulgate their doctrine for the welfare of
mankind. [The following legend of the tomb of Rosencreutz, written by
Eustace Budgell, appears in No. 379 of the Spectator:-- "A certain
person, having occasion to dig somewhat deep in the ground where this
philosopher lay interred, met with a small door, having a wall on each
side of it. His curiosity, and the hope of finding some hidden
treasure, soon prompted him to force open the door. He was immediately
surprised by a sudden blaze of light, and discovered a very fair
vault. At the upper end of it was a statue of a man in armour, sitting
by a table, and leaning on his left arm. He held a truncheon in his
right hand, and had a lamp burning before him. The man had no sooner
set one foot within the vault, than the statue, erecting itself from
its leaning posture, stood bolt upright; and, upon the fellow's
advancing another step, lifted up the truncheon in his right hand. The
man still ventured a third step; when the statue, with a furious blow,
broke the lamp into a thousand pieces, and left his guest in sudden
darkness. Upon the report of this adventure, the country people came
with lights to the sepulchre, and discovered that the statue, which
was made of brass, was nothing more than a piece of clock-work; that
the floor of the vault was all loose, and underlaid with several
springs, which, upon any man's entering, naturally produced that which
had happened. Rosicreucius, say his disciples, made use of this method
to show the world that he had re-invented the ever-burning lamps of
the ancients, though he was resolved no one should reap any advantage
from the discovery."]

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