Raising Hell (21 page)

Paracelsus. Paracelsus,
Astronomica et astrologica opuscula
(Cologne, 1567). Author’s collection.
**

In the end, it was Paracelsus’s contention that, even though
“our astral bodies are in sympathy with the stars,” it was “absurd to believe that the stars can make a man. Whatever the stars can do we can do ourselves, because the wisdom which we obtain from God overpowers the heavens and rules over the stars.”

ROBERT FLUDD

Among the most prolific and successful of Paracelsus’s followers and disciples was the English physician and alchemist Robert Fludd.

The son of Sir Thomas Fludd, the treasurer of war to Queen Elizabeth in France and the Low Countries, Fludd was born in Milgate, Kent, in 1574 and later educated at Oxford. He studied medicine, ultimately becoming a Fellow of the College of Physicians, but it was while traveling in Europe for six years that he first became acquainted with the work and the theories of Paracelsus. In London, he set up his medical practice in a house on Fenchurch Street, where he practiced medicine with great success—in part because of his indisputable skills and in part because he was well known for his amiable and curious disposition. But he was never satisfied with the conventional wisdom or accepted methods. He was always pushing at the boundaries, trying to find new forms of treatment, and even more important, new ways to understand how the innermost workings of the cosmos might be reflected in the constitution of the individual human beings whom he saw in his daily practice. Fludd was convinced that the connection was there.

In an attempt to discover how it worked, he took up alchemy and studied the Cabbala; he read the ancient philosophers and became an active member of the Rosicrucians. (Indeed, when the Rosicrucians came under attack from several German authors, he wrote, in 1616, a vigorous defense.) Fludd was astonishingly eclectic in his tastes and interests, taking at
once both progressive stands, such as a firm belief in actual experimentation, and more “mystical” positions, such as his abiding faith in the as-yet-undiscovered philosophers’ stone and elixir of life.

His theory of disease was especially novel. He believed that a wind, under the control of an evil spirit, could agitate other evil spirits (which were at all times hovering in the air unseen) and cause them to enter a person’s body, either through his open pores or into his lungs while he was breathing. If there was a vulnerable point in the body, these evil spirits, Fludd felt, would be sure to find it; they would then attack the places where the four bodily humors were out of balance, which would, in turn, cause the disease to erupt. If the imbalance wasn’t attended to, it could lead to the total collapse and death of the patient.

To fight the malady, Fludd recommended the application of sympathetic compounds, which would stimulate the angelic forces (something like heavenly antibodies) and counteract the illness. Among these compounds were herbs collected under the correct astrological influences, chemical solutions, and in some cases “magnetic” preparations. In his 1631 book,
Integrum Morborum Mysterium
(The Whole Mystery of Diseases), he laid out his theory in great detail.

Magnetism, too, was one of Fludd’s most fondly held beliefs. Each and every person, he contended, shared, with the earth itself, a positive or negative, active or passive, magnetic polarity. Natural attractions and aversions between people could be traced back to something as simple as their respective emanations.

Fludd also explored, with considerable zeal, the notion commonly known as the music of the spheres. The world and the heavens above were like one huge instrument, he argued, the keys of which were attuned to the intervals between such things as the angelic hosts and the fixed stars, the planets and the elements (or material world). In this, he was following the lead of Agrippa von Nettesheim, who had written that “musical harmony
is a most powerful conceiver. It allures the celestial influences and changes affections, intentions, gestures, notions, actions and dispositions. . . . It lures beasts, serpents, birds, to hear pleasant tunes. . . . Fish in the lake of Alexandria are delighted with harmonious sounds; music has caused friendship between dolphins and men.”

For all his strange theories and convictions, Fludd was a pivotal figure in the history of science, medicine, and philosophy, one of the last to try to bridge the gap between the medieval/Renaissance perspective and the coming scientific revolution.

When he died in London on September 8, 1637, he had left careful instructions as to his burial. His undisturbed body was wrapped in fresh linen, as ordered, and transported to the inn at Bearsted in Kent. After night had fallen, the corpse was carried in a torchlight parade to the parish church and interred under the floor there. Afterward, the mourners (for many of whom Fludd had left money to pay for their funeral clothes) went back to the inn to enjoy a healthy repast (also at the good doctor’s expense).

ALEXANDER SETON

For a seventeenth-century Scotsman named Alexander Seton, it was a shipwreck that gave his alchemical career just the boost it needed.

In 1601, while residing in relative obscurity in a coastal town not far from Edinburgh, he happened to spot a Dutch merchant ship foundering offshore. Bravely, Seton went about rescuing several of the crew members from the raging sea, then put them up in his own house until they were well enough to return to their homes; as they had lost everything at sea, he even helped to cover their travel expenses. In return, the pilot, James Haussen, invited Seton to visit him in Holland.

Shortly thereafter, Seton took him up on it.

While Seton was in Holland, he mentioned to his host that the line of work he was in was alchemy; to prove it, he conducted a couple of transmutations that absolutely astonished Haussen. Haussen then told a prominent Dutch physician about it, the physican told his grandson, who mentioned it to a friend who was a famous author, who then wrote to an alchemical journal a letter about this remarkable foreigner and his discoveries. Seton’s name was suddenly being bandied about everywhere, and everyone wanted to know if his claims were true.

Seton embarked on a lecture and demonstration tour, traveling to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, then Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. In Basel, he gathered together some of the most important people in town and conducted one of his experiments in front of them. Wolfgang Dienheim, an avowed skeptic of alchemy who was also present, has left a description of Seton “as short but stout, and high-coloured, with a pointed beard, but despite his corpulence, his expression was spiritual and exalted.” Apparently, Dienheim was convinced by the demonstration and thereafter became one of Seton’s supporters.

In Munich, Seton took a little time off from work and used it to woo and win a local maiden. In fact, he was so happy with his newly married state that when he received an invitation from the youthful elector of Saxony, Christian II, to come and demonstrate his skills, he refused to part from her and sent an apprentice, William Hamilton, instead. Using the secret transmuting agent, Hamilton was able to create gold that passed every test with flying colors. Far from satisfying the elector, however, this just made him that much more anxious to see Seton himself. He sent another request—which, coming from him, was tantamount to an order—and this time Seton reluctantly kissed his young bride good-bye and left for the elector’s court in Dresden.

He would soon be sorry that he did.

As soon as he got there, it became plain to him that it wasn’t just a demonstration that the elector was after, nor was it a small
measure of the magical powder. What Christian II wanted from Seton was nothing less than his secret, the method by which he made the gold, and he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d pried it loose. When Seton refused to give it to him, citing the higher purposes of the great art, Christian had him thrown into a tower prison, where he was guarded round the clock by forty soldiers. Seton was put to the rack, he was roasted over a slow fire, he was whipped and scourged, but he still refused to talk. The elector left him in his cell, presumably to rot.

But no one who could make gold from lead could languish long. A Moravian chemist named Michael Sendivogius had a little influence with some friends at the elector’s court, and using it he was able to pay a visit to the imprisoned Seton. That’s when they struck a deal. If Sendivogius would help him escape, Seton would tell him the secrets of his art. Sendivogius sold all his property and took up residence near the prison. With the money he’d raised, he bribed several of the guards, and on the night of the planned escape he paid for a huge feast for all the other soldiers; while they were sleeping off the effects of the lavish food and drink, Sendivogius broke into Seton’s cell. To his consternation, he found that the master alchemist could barely walk anymore.

Still, Sendivogius was able to carry him out of the tower and into a waiting carriage. They took off together, stopping only long enough to pick up Seton’s wife and the remaining quantity of the secret powder, and didn’t stop again until they’d reached the safer environs of Cracow. There, they settled down, to rest and recover.

But Sendivogius, having done his part, now demanded the other half of the bargain; he insisted that Seton keep his promise and tell him the secrets of transmutation. But Seton refused, claiming that it was too terrible a burden for him, as an adept, to pass on to his pupil. Within two years, still suffering from the tortures he had undergone at the elector’s court, Seton died—leaving only the remaining powder, but no formula, to Sendivogius. Desperate and frustrated, Sendivogius turned to Seton’s
widow; he courted and later married her, in the hope that she would hand on to him her dead husband’s secret knowledge. But there again, he was in for a disappointment. She hadn’t a clue.

The most important thing Sendivogius discovered among Seton’s effects was a manuscript called “The New Light of Alchymy,” which he seems to have decided to put his own name on. Using some of the instructions in the book, he tried to produce more of the magical powder, but all he wound up doing was squandering the small amount he used in the experiments. Carefully preserving what was left, he took off on a Continental tour of his own, claiming he possessed the secrets of the great art and sparingly using the last of Seton’s powder. According to one French witness, a dose of the powder was introduced into a glass of wine; then a crown piece was dipped into the mixture. The part of the coin that had been immersed turned to gold—and showed no signs of having been soldered or fraudulently made.

Sendivogius managed to scrape along on his reputation for many years, bilking potential investors out of substantial sums, even acquiring a country estate from King Sigismund of Poland, until in 1646, aged eighty-four, he died in Parma, no closer to the actual secrets of the great art than ever.

THE SCOURGE OF MILAN

Despite their reputations as everything from sorcerers to charlatans, alchemists were seldom accused of committing acts of great and purposeful evil. But in seventeenth-century Milan, one such alchemist was—and a column was erected on the site of his razed home to remind posterity of the terrible deeds he confessed to having done there.

His name was Pietro Mora, and he lived in one of the oldest houses in a remote quarter of the city. Though no one could say exactly where his fortune came from, he was a very wealthy
and mysterious man; rumor had it that he had concocted a red powder which he used to transmute base metals into the gold that every alchemist sought.

Other rumors circulated, too. Mora was said, for instance, to be able to effect miraculous cures—and lethal curses. He could make pomanders—and poisons. Under cover of darkness, many people were thought to have knocked on the door of his forbidding house. Some were ambitious young noblemen who had tired of waiting for the present lords to pass away and bequeath to them the titles they were due; others were jealous husbands who suspected their wives had been unfaithful. Some were merchants who felt they’d been cheated; others were soldiers anxious for promotion. What all of them sought was immediate gain, and in many cases revenge, and they turned to Mora to get what they wanted. By all accounts, he provided it.

Among the many goods and services Mora offered were bouquets of artificial flowers whose scent could bring on apoplexy; bottles of Cyprus wine spiked with lethal ingredients; baskets of apricots impregnated with a slow-acting poison. He was also reputed to be a master of the spirits, someone who was capable of calling up Hell itself to do his bidding. He even went so far as to compile a book of his incantations and magical practices; commonly known as the
Zekerboni,
it was replete with Cabbalistic words and designs, conjurations in Greek and Hebrew, elaborately patterned pentagrams, and explicit instructions on how to summon up a demon so that he appears “in a pleasing form, without any horror of shape or size, without any loud or thunderous noise or alarum, without seeking to harm him who summons thee, and without hurting any who are of his company.”

The book was equally explicit in its instructions on how to get rid of the demon once your business was done with him. (Demons were notoriously hard to shake.) The
Zekerboni
advised the conjurer to take a fairly warm and conciliatory tone: “Depart then, gracious and kindly spirit, return in peace unto thy dwelling-place
and unto thine own habitation, but yet do thou hold thyself ready to attend and appear before me whensoever I call upon thee and summon thee in the name of the Great Alpha, the Lord. Amen, Amen, Amen.”

Mora might have continued to prosper in his backstreet bastion had not the Great Plague swept into Milan in 1630. As the disease spread and the bodies accumulated, the panic-stricken officials of the town began to suspect black magic and witchcraft. In a surprise attack, they burst into Mora’s house one night. Inside, they found all the paraphernalia of the alchemist’s trade—the vials and retorts, aludels and astrolabes, chemicals and charts. On the bookshelves they discovered planetary tables and manuals of the art, by such officially sanctioned authors as Porta, Cardan, and Bernard Trevisan.