Solomon's Secret Arts (29 page)

The Glorious Revolution was a supreme moment of victory for Partridge, who returned from exile in the Netherlands to launch explosive salvos against his Tory enemies. In a characteristically passionate pamphlet of 1689 entitled
Mene Tekel
(which might be translated as “The Writing is on the Wall”), Partridge vindicated his own prediction for “this wonderful Year” of 1688: namely, that James II would die, which had come to pass in a symbolic sense. He then went on to savage his enemy John Gadbury as a former Ranter, a toady to Oliver Cromwell, a pimp and a convert to Roman Catholicism.
⁵⁸
Gadbury responded by accusing Partridge of being a republican, of abusing Charles I and Archbishop Laud, and of having “Labour'd hard, Sir, to approve your self another Stephen Colledge [an anti-Catholic activist executed for high treason in 1681], and been guilty of as many Anti-Monarchical
Gim cracks
… and have presented the World with as many
Raree-Shows
.”
⁵⁹
The quarrel continued in their almanacs, where Partridge went so far as to accuse Gadbury of hiring assassins to murder a man whom he suspected of sleeping with his wife. For his part, Gadbury refused to answer “the
Ungrateful, Scurrilous
, (not to say horridly Scandalous)
Snarlings
of my Quondam
Pupil
J.P. against me, year after year.”
⁶⁰

The mud-slinging between Partridge and Gadbury went on fitfully until the latter's death in 1704. Without doubt, it helped to sell almanacs, and so was tolerated by the Stationers’ Company. It also produced some of the last serious
philosophical discussions of early-modern astrology. After temporarily renouncing further attacks on Partridge, Gadbury attempted in 1693 to present a more intellectual justification for his art, in a supplement that was added to his regular almanac. His theories, he explains, rest on traditional foundations: a hierarchical view of nature, the assumption of sympathetic powers and the view that bodies are vehicles for spirits. “That
Inferiours
are influenc'd by
Superiours
, none are so Sceptical to deny,” Gadbury begins. To him, “it is very obvious that the
Sympathies
and
Antipathies
of the
planets
and
Stars
above, with
persons
and
things
below, do certainly produce the true
Sorites
[heaps] of Nature, that hold together (by
Lincks
as it were) all
Mundane Beings
.” As the stars are at a great altitude, so too are they “very
Powerful, Excellent
and
Pure
; and may therefore most reasonably be supposed to
Influence, Alter, preserve, Increase
and
Destroy
all these
lesser
and
grosser
Terrene Compositions.”

The effects of the stars are felt not within matter or “Atoms” but in movements of the spirit. What could explain emotional states like love, hatred or evenness of temper other than astrology? The heavens could even give a spirit to inanimate objects. “If it [a Body] be Soul-less, then it is moved or changed by something Superiour to it, which serves as a
Soul
, or
Principle
of
Life
, to inform and govern. It is indeed the
Spirit
of
Breath
that is in it, that gives it
Motion, Augmentation, Vision, Gust
, and
Odour
.” Bodies are in themselves nothing, except “
Domicils
or Habitations for
Souls
or
Spirits
to dwell in.” Because the human body is “a Map, or Epitomy of the Coelestial Clock-work,” the changes in its soul follow those in the heavens. Put simply, “the
Stars
alter our Humours; our Humours change our Minds; our Constitutions mutate our Judgments; our Judgments create in us divers
Appetites
and
Desires
.” Of course, the influence of the stars is not irresistible—that would deny the reality of sin. All astrologers, according to Gadbury, reject the idea that the stars impose a fatal necessity on human beings.
⁶¹
This last point would prove another bone of contention with Partridge.

Gadbury's multi-part essay may be the most extensive explanation of astrology ever offered in an almanac. It owes nothing to corpuscular theory, Newtonian gravity or any recent scientific argument. Not surprisingly, it was strongly denounced by the leading scientific periodical of the day,
The Athenian Mercury
, which attacked it point by point in an effort to discredit “the
Folly
and
Impiety
of such as pretend to
Judicial Astrology
.”
⁶²
Intellectually, Gadbury's article resembles the writings of John Goad, whose Catholicism made him unacceptable to post-revolutionary astrologers, and whom Gadbury was brave enough to memorialize in 1694, five years after Goad's death. It also bears strong traces of Neoplatonism, although these may be derived from astrological sources rather than Henry More or the Cambridge Platonists. Gadbury was
still a serious practitioner of his art, but in his understanding of it nothing much had changed since the days of Josiah Childrey.

Partridge's almanac, meanwhile, continued to fire off explosive salvos at the pope, Louis XIV and Catholics in general. As a response to Gadbury, however, he issued his own astrological manifesto,
Opus Reformatum
. In this extraordinary work, Partridge denied that “I intend to destroy the Art of Astrology … my real Intent and Design is to excite the Lovers of this Contemptible Science, to refine it, and make it more coherent in its Principles, and more certain in its Use and Practice.”
⁶³
In other words, he wanted to turn it into “a Branch of Natural Philosophy.” He was not at all interested in establishing a philosophical basis for the celestial art. On the contrary, he defined astrology as “a bundle of Experience improved into Rules by continued observations of those Accidents and Effects that did always attend different Directions and Positions: Hence it then follows, That
Like Common Causes must always have Like Effects
, or else Rules of Exception laid down.”
⁶⁴
The problem with this approach, of course, is that it fails to explain the causal link between changes in the heavens and events on earth. Even if a precise parallel between them could be proven by observation, as Partridge believed it could, it would not demonstrate that one was acting on the other.

This did not bother Partridge at all. He rejected theories that proposed rays of light or ethereal forces as conduits for astral power, and he was implacably hostile to any explanation that rested on spirits, which he associated with superstition and conjuring tricks. He decried one “little ruddy-faced
Conjurer
” who always made excuses when he failed to raise spirits, and who foolishly used finger- or toenail parings in his attempts to read the future. Partridge was utterly scornful of astrologers who claimed to be able to make people fall in love or find lost persons (“by force of Magic as they call it”) or detect withcraft, calling them “a Crew of Scandalous Cheats.”
⁶⁵
While he could not lump “Catholick John” Gadbury in with them, he nonetheless heaped abuse on his rival's methods, accusing him of conspiring with Goad to turn Protestants into papists.

Partridge had his own peculiarities. A large part of
Opus Reformatum
was reserved for discussion of the Hileg, or “Giver of Life,” the point on a nativity that gives celestial indications of death. The main astrological sources for the Hileg relied on Ptolemy's earth-centred conception of the universe. This was another anomaly in Partridge's “scientific” astrology: he rejected the heliocentric Copernican universe. In this respect, the Whig astrologer had learned nothing from the most celebrated Whig scientist, Isaac Newton. Gadbury recognized his opponent's weakness on the point, and in 1695 included in his almanac “A brief Enquiry into the Copernican Astrology,” which reproduced material from
the writings of “my late Learned Friend” Joshua Childrey.
⁶⁶
Partridge was provoked into issuing a blistering reply in a 1697 pamphlet entitled
Defectio Geniturarum
. With scathing comments, he systematically picked apart nativities by Gadbury and Henry Coley, illustrating their mistakes and incorrect interpretations. In a flood of patriotic zeal, Partridge also attacked the methods of J.B. Morin, the French astrologer whose
Astrologia Gallica
had inspired Samuel Jeake the younger. Nonetheless, his assessment of contemporary English astrology in
Defectio Geniturarum
was thoroughly grim: “Astrology is now like a dead Carkass, to which every
Crow
or
Rook
resorts and takes a Mouthful, and then flies to the next Tree.” It had been ruined by “your
Magick Mongers
,
Sigil-Merchants
,
Charm-Broakers
, &c. A Crew of Knaves more fit to be punished than encouraged.”
⁶⁷
Partridge denounced Gadbury's theories as “nothing else but
Pythagorean
Whims, or
Rosicrucian Maggots
and Delusions, set on foot to undermine Truth.”
⁶⁸

To be sure, Partridge gave some ground on heliocentrism, admitting that it helped in weather predictions. He also conceded that the reason for holding to geocentric aspects in astrology was not because the sun went around the earth, but because the movements of the heavens were
perceived
from the earth. Partridge may not have realized how significant an admission this was, as it suggested that astrology rested on the way movements of the stars were seen, rather than their real movements. Partridge did not dwell on it. Instead, he quickly moved back to his principal fixation: that the Hileg could only be calculated by using the old Ptolemaic methods. John Gadbury replied to this assertion in his almanac for 1698. He labelled Partridge's approach “Placidian,” from Placidus de Titus, a sixteenth-century Italian monk and mathematician. The epithet was loaded with implications, as Placidus's writings had been used by the Catholic Church to counter the Copernican theory.
⁶⁹
Hence, Gadbury was linking his virulently anti-Catholic foe with the scientific teachings of the Church of Rome. Gadbury found Placidus's theory of the Hileg as a specific predictor of the end of life to be “
crazie
and
infirm
.” He agreed that astrology needed reform, but not in this way.
⁷⁰

Meanwhile, Partridge had widened his attacks to include other astrologers. He answered a challenge from the almanac writer George Parker with a withering reply, calling him both “a
broken Jacobite Cutler
” and a “
Mountebank Conjurer
” who relied on the methods of the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. According to Partridge, Kepler's heliocentric theories were devised “to puzzle and confound” astrologers. He further held Parker to be guilty of relying on the work of the astronomer Edmond Halley and of plagiarizing articles from the
Philosophical Transactions
.
⁷¹
Once again, Partridge's fundamental hostility to recent scientific writings is evident. For his part, Parker threw back
plenty of invective at “that silly and ill-bred Buffoon John Partridge,” although he acknowledged that some of his tables were derived from John Flamsteed.
⁷²

Partridge made a more telling personal attack in his 1698 almanac, where he accused the almanac writer Henry Coley of selling sigils or charms. He even reproduced one of them: a round charm drawn on pasteboard with a complex diagram and the names of two angels, Sachiel and Raphael, on one side, while on the other side were astrological signs, a five-pointed star and the name of Raphael repeated. It sold for two guineas. Partridge then issued a bitingly sarcastic advertisement:

Partridge recommended that the sellers of charms be prosecuted as “
Notorious Cheats
.” Coley, a quiet man who was doubtless guilty of the charge, could only feebly protest against those who tell “
A Thousand Lies
of me.”
⁷⁴

Partridge continued his criticism of the sellers of magical charms and sigils into the first decade of the eighteenth century. After the deaths of his rivals Gadbury and Coley, the magic-vendors became his main targets, along with Tories, Jacobites and the French. He took delight in the story of a conjuror near Aldgate church who had “a B—h of a Wife himself,” but did not hesitate to sell a charm to cure a gentleman's wife of her “
Violence
and
Ill Nature
.”
⁷⁵
At the same time, Partridge began to give ground on spirits. He did not deny the existence of “the Aerial Spirits and Angels, that can see the Clock-work of Nature in its original Motion, and are either sent or permitted sometimes to inform Mankind of their approaching Mischiefs.” While spirits were not able to know “the Secrets of Almighty God,” they might have “Prescience from the Order of things appointed, or else sent by a higher Power.” He admitted that “there is such a thing as a
Second Sight
, and that they do see such dreadful Appearances which prove too true afterward.”
⁷⁶
He was opposed, in short, to the commercialization of magic, not to the existence of supernatural forces. This anti-commercial scruple seems to have extended to medicines as well. Unlike most other almanac writers, Partridge did not include advertisements for proprietary medicines in his publication.

Did John Partridge damage the reputation of astrology? It seems likely that he did, simply because he entered into so many angry confrontations with his brethren, denouncing them as cheats, mountebanks, etc. Partridge was
nonetheless a popular writer, and he may have been gaining an audience for his own reformed version of astrology. The evidence of his astrological consultations suggests, surprisingly, that he was extremely well connected in elite social circles. They present an interesting contrast with a surviving casebook of John Gadbury, which covers the 1690s.