booknetsaWebster-secretSocietiesAndSubversiveMovements

ment of physics by which the mystical properties of natural substances are extracted "; (2) Mathematical
Magic, which enables adepts in the art to " construct marvellous machines by means of their geometrical
knowledge "; whilst (3) Venefic Magic " is familiar with potions, philtres, and with various preparations of
poisons."(26)
It is obvious that all these have now passed into the realms of science and are no longer regarded as magical
arts; but the further categories enumerated by Fludd and comprised under the general heading of Necromantic
Magic retain the popular sense of the term. These are described as (1) Goetic, which consists in "
diabolical commerce with unclean spirits, in rites of criminal curiosity, in illicit songs and invocations, and
in the evocation of the souls of the dead "; (2) Maleficent, which is the adjuration of the devils by the virtue
of Divine Names; and (3) Theurgic, purporting " to be governed by good angels and the Divine Will, but its
wonders are most frequently performed by evil spirits, who assume the names of God and of the angels." (4)
" The last species of magic is the Thaumaturgic, begetting illusory phenomena; by this art the Magi produced
their phantoms and other marvels." To this list might be added Celestial Magic, or knowledge dealing
with the influence of the heavenly bodies, on which astrology is based.
The forms of magic dealt with in the preceding part of this chapter belong therefore to the second half of
these categories, that is to say, to Necromantic Magic. But at the same period another movement was gradually
taking shape which concerned itself with the first category enumerated above, that is to say the secret
properties of natural substances.
A man whose methods appear to have approached to the modern conception of scientific research was
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, commonly known as Paracelsus, the son of a German doctor,
born about 1493, who during his travels in the East is said to have acquired a knowledge of some secret doctrine
which he afterwards elaborated into a system for the healing of diseases. Although his ideas were thus
doubtless drawn from some of the same sources as those from which the Jewish Cabala descended,
Paracelsus does not appear to have been a Cabalist, but a scientist of no mean order, and, as an isolated
thinker, apparently connected with no secret association, does not enter further into the scope of this work.
Paracelsus must therefore not be identified with the school of so-called " Christian Cabalists," who, from
Raymond Lulli, the " doctor illuminatus" of the thirteenth century, onward, drew their inspiration from the
Cabala of the Jews. This is not to say that the influence under which they fell was wholly pernicious, for,
just as certain Jews appear to have acquired some real medical skill, so also they appear to have possessed
some real knowledge of natural science, inherited perhaps from the ancient traditions of the East or derived
from the writings of Hippocrates, Galen, and other of the great Greek physicians and as yet unknown to
Europe. Thus Eliphas Lévi relates that the Rabbi Jechiel, a Cabalistic Jew protected by St Louis, possessed
the secret of ever-burning lamps,(27) claimed later by the Rosicrucians, which suggests the possibility that
some kind of luminous gas or electric light may have been know to the Jews. In alchemy they were the acknowledged
leaders; the most noted alchemist of the fourteenth century, Nicholas Flamel, discovered the
secret of the art from the book of " Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite, Astrologer, an Philosopher,"
and this actual book is said to have passed later into the possession of Cardinal Richelieu.(28)
It was likewise from a Florentine Jew, Alemanus or Datylus that Pico della Mirandola, the fifteenth-century
mystic, received instructions in the Cabala(29) and imagined that he had discovered in it the doctrines
of Christianity. This delighted Pope Sixtus IV, who thereupon ordered Cabalistic writings to be translated
into Latin for the use of divinity students. At the same time the Cabala was introduced into Germany by Reuchlin,
who had learnt Hebrew from the Rabbi Jacob b. Jechiel Loans, court physician to Frederic III, and in
1494 published a Cabalistic treatise De Verbo Mirifico, showing that all wisdom and true philosophy are derived
from the Hebrews. Considerable alarm appears, however, to have been created by the spread of Rabbinical
literature, and in 1509 a Jew converted to Christianity, named Pfefferkorn, persuaded the Emperor
Maximilian I to burn all Jewish books except the Old Testament. Reuchlin, consulted on this matter, advised
only the destruction of the Toledot Yeshu and of the Sepher Nizzachon by the Rabbi Lipmann, because
these works " were full of blasphemies against Christ and against the Christian religion," but urged the
preservation of the rest. In this defence of Jewish literature he was supported by the Duke of Bavaria, who
appointed him professor at Ingoldstadt, but was strongly condemned by the Dominicans of Cologne. In
reply to their attacks Reuchlin launched his defence De Arte Cabalistica, glorifying the Cabala, of which the
" central doctrine for him was the Messianology around which all its other doctrines grouped
themselves."(30) His whole philosophical system, as he himself admitted, was in fact entirely Cabalistic,
and his views were shared by his contemporary Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim. As a result of these
teachings a craze for Cabalism spread amongst Christian prelates, statesmen, and warriors, and a number of
Christian thinkers took up the doctrines of the Cabala and " essayed to work them over in their own way."
Nesta H. Webster — Secret Societies and Subversive Movements — Part I
— 49 —