The Eighteenth Century

the month before the auction, which hardly gives time for him to die and his estate to be auctioned off.55 We also have an account of one “Thomas Harrington, Esqu. of Waltham-hall, Essex,” who passed away on June 27, 1802, while walking in the Green Park near St. James’s in London. His death notice describes him as the “author of several medical tracts,” but I have had no luck in locating these sources.56 The catalogue covers both music and medicine, but we have no guarantees that this Thomas is either of these.

The Eighteenth Century

There was no battle of knowledge and wills that led to the discrediting and dismissal of ritual magic from intellectual thought in the eighteenth century. Rather, it came about from those who sought to define the Enlightenment as the rise of logic and rationality. This narrative, often based more on rhetoric and the construction of new identities than on experimentation, consigned the study of certain “occult”—mainly non-physical or unknown—aspects of reality to the dustbin of “superstition” and ridicule. Chemists refashioned their discipline into a respectable science through the exclusion of the transformative aspects of alchemy, long associated with fraudulent practices and reliance upon the works of past authorities. Likewise, astronomy and medicine put aside the predictive elements of astrology and celestial influences to reinvent themselves as sciences. Even though astrology was still widely believed and used in religious prophecy and astrological medicine, people were more willing to downplay the influence of heavenly bodies upon the body.57

In his book The Decline of Magic, historian Michael Hunter observes that, although some early scientists became interested in accounts of poltergeists, spirits, and the like—the chemist Robert Boyle in particular—the Royal Society’s records show little collective interest in the topic of ritual magic. According to Hunter, most of the opposition to magic came not from printed works, but from popular conversations about the preternatural among freethinkers and those inclined to Deism and other similar faiths.58 Little surviving evidence can be mustered to support this theory, yet none other seems to fit. Scientists and clergy of the establishment were reluctant to endorse sceptical views, as doubts toward ghosts and witches could easily translate into scepticism about Scripture itself, yet they soon tacitly endorsed the prevailing philosophy.

55. “Whereas Thomas Harrington,” Morning Post. 56. “[Untitled],” London Courier and Evening Gazette. 57. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy, loc. 1503–1602; Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 204–5;

Campion, History of Western Astrology, Volume II, 2:175–90. 58. Hunter, The Decline of Magic, 67–85, 22–25.

Some of the most notable collectors of ritual magic manuscripts were among the sceptics. A manuscript on witchcraft at the Morrab Library in Penzance has been attributed to Thomas Rawlinson (1681–1725). The work collects reports of seventeenthcentury trials, with critical comments made about the use of sleep deprivation to bring about confessions and the witch-hunters’ equation of pets with familiars.59 Sir Hans Sloane’s published silence on his large collection of magical manuscripts has led to speculation that he might have practised the art himself. Nonetheless, in a letter to a French colleague, Sloane proposes that belief in magic is a condition curable via those two staples of period medicine: bloodletting and purgatives.60

Sloane’s medical explanation seems to have been an outlier, however. Whereas ritual magic had been previously seen as a manifestation of the supernatural power of Satan, the critique in literature shifted to its potential for chicanery and fraud. This critique would prove instrumental to the reframing of “Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment, or Conjuration” in the Witchcraft Act of 1735/6. This measure repealed the acts against witchcraft and magic in England and Scotland, replacing with a statute to punish fraudulent pretences of possessing such power. The Act was only enforced occasionally, yet it signalled a change in official attitudes toward those who claimed magical power.61

Within this atmosphere, ritual magic, along with alchemy, astrology, dream interpretation, apparitions, and many other concepts judged superstitious, ignorant, or inappropriate, came to be associated together as a singular category. This led to the definition of a new category—what came to be called “the occult” or “occult sciences” —which could be used for various purposes, including critique of the Enlightenment project, casual amusement, inspiration for fiction, or actual practice. This separation could lead to a rejection of the rhetoric of rationality and science, but in other cases the same rhetoric could be used to establish its own legitimacy. Pursuing magical operations might be “experimentation” in the spirit of science, probing gaps in the knowledge of the world could buttress occult speculation, and new topics such as mesmerism and galvanism became topics with which the “occult sciences” could be associated and justified until understanding of them deepened.62

For many who lived in communities where beliefs in the efficacy of witchcraft and ritual magic were still strong, these intellectual debates took a back seat to servicing those needs and desires that had been in place for centuries. Thus, the practice of the cunning folk, ritual magicians working for local communities, continued. One

59. Dearlove, “The Pretended Trial of Witchcraft,” 25–28; Hunter, The Decline of Magic, 230. 60. Sloane, Magic and Mental Disorder, 8–9, 16–17. 61. Davies, “Decriminalising the Witch,” 229–30. 62. Hanegraaff, Esotericism and the Academy, 230–39.

such individual was Duncan Campbell (c. 1680–1730), a deaf and mute man who advertised his ability to compel witches to appear to reverse their spells, his power to find lost items, and the efficacy of his talismans.63 Another was Timothy Crowther of Skipton, a parish clerk by trade, and an astrologer and cunning person who attracted customers from miles around. His surviving recipe book includes incantations for returning stolen goods, compelling witches who hexed cattle to reverse their charms, and viewing spirits in a crystal or beryl.64 These practitioners are only two examples in a broad network who practised across the British Isles in both rural and urban settings.

The profession had its dangers, especially for those such as Richard Walton who dealt with the criminal element. According to Walton’s account, he gave astrological advice to people on various aspects of their lives, along with providing talismans to ward off witchcraft on cattle. He fell in with two horse thieves, providing advice— inadvertently, according to him—on the best time for these thefts and hearing about their plans. At one time, he even accepted money to discover a horse these men had stolen. Despite his protestations of good character, he was found guilty and executed at Warwick in 1733.65

When it came time for a would-be magician to find books for their practice, the selections were quite thin. Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe entitled one of his books A System of Magick (1728) to attract an audience seeking “a Body of the Black Art as a Science, a Book of Rules for Instruction in the Practice, or a Magical Grammar for Introduction to young Beginners.”66 The book instead served as a highly speculative history of magical practice, whereby the Devil led astray the rational philosophers and scientists of antiquity, and today magic had no power at all. Nonetheless, Defoe’s marketing strategy indicates that enough people would have bought such a book to make it a financial selling point—yet no work on actual ritual magic emerged for that market in the eighteenth century.

Eighteenth-century magicians who sought published works would rely on those from the sixteenth and seventeenth century until the very end of the century.67 The Conjurer’s Magazine (1791), which became The Astrologer’s Magazine in 1793, served to disseminate astrological and, to a lesser extent, magical material on a wider basis.68 The fourth part of Ebenezer Sibly’s A New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sci-

63. Campbel, Secret Memoirs, 17–21. 64. Dawson, “An Old Yorkshire Astrologer and Magician, 1694–1760,” 197–202. 65. Wallton, Genuine Life, 17–20. 66. Defoe, A System of Magick, A3. 67. Davies, Popular Magic, 133–38. 68. Conjurer’s Magazine; Astrologer’s Magazine.