Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici: Witches, Sorcerers, and Magicians in Early Scientific Discourse. (01/21/2002)
Sir Thomas Browne, in Religio Medici (1643), identifies himself as a member of "that Reformed new-cast Religion" (Section I), which evolved out of the protests Martin Luther addressed to the abuses in the Catholic church in 1517; that is, Browne was an early adherent of the Protestant church in England. That might seem inevitable, given the fact that Henry VIII had outlawed the Catholic faith some years before (around 1530) but, the Church of England was not a "Reformed new-cast Religion" at all, since Henry only withdrew England's obedience from the Pope and did not embrace the reform movement of Luther in any significant way. This distinction probably matters because Browne was less fearful of committing heresy as a Protestant, since in the eyes of the Catholic church he already was one, than he would have been had he remained loyal to Rome. Religio Medici, then, provides a unique opportunity to examine articles of faith in a climate of profound change brought about by the combined forces of reformation on the continent and by the emergence of science as a newfangled method of thought that provided its own elements of challenge to traditional Christianity. Browne proves to be both orthodox and heterodox in his religious views and both scientific and superstitious in his perceptions of the nature of reality. In other words, his point-of-view is a curious mix of traditional and non-traditional ideology that never fully becomes one thing or the other in his articulation of it.
Browne, for instance, concludes a lengthy discussion of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft, subjects that seem now to reside well beyond the realm of scientific inquiry, with the assertion that, as far as "spirits" are concerned,
"I am so far from denying their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian angels. It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato: there is no heresy in it: and if not manifestly defined in Scripture, yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's life; and would serve as an hypothesis to salve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution."
Browne links the existence of spirits to the practice of witchcraft out of long-standing European traditions that connect the "black" arts to the intervention of infernal forces under the control of Satan. More demon that spirit, and not exactly anyone's guardian angel either, the sorcerer's familiar, usually in some animal form, brought power to an ordinary man, willing to sacrifice his immortal soul for knowledge of life not available otherwise, that enabled him to perform feats of magic to his own benefit (the creation of gold from base metals, for instance) which could not be accomplished without satanic connections or assistance. Browne was an Alchemist himself, engaged in the attempt to perform such pre-scientific chemical transformations, and here claims that a belief in the existence of spirits is an opinion derived, not from the "Church of Rome," but rather from the older traditions of "Pythagoras and Plato." This is a curious piece of rhetorical fashioning, one probably made possible by the emergence of reformation ideology in the face of more traditional views held by the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Roman church. To say there is no "heresy" in his claim because it is derived from pagan philosophers, and that the absence of support for it in the Scriptures is overridden by its "good and wholesome use" in a person's life, clearly demonstrates the effects of reformation concepts that people ought to be allowed to make their own decisions, with or without the Bible as a primary guide, and without the intervention of priests, as long as their actions can be justified as essentially "wholesome." Taking Browne's position here as a scientific, as opposed to a theological, view of the issues he addresses, however, is probably stretching the point past all credulity, since science in its most recent incarnations gives little, if any, space to the investigation of spirits, magic, and witchcraft.
A second idea Browne appropriates from more traditional views of reality, also ones held by the church, in the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, for instance, concerns the notion that the existence of "spirits" can be proven on the ground that everything exists in a hierarchical structure, a "great chain of being" as it is often called, which accounts for every kind of creaturely being, from highest (God) to lowest (worm), that anyone has ever seen or imagined. Browne, in speaking of "spirits" in particular, says that
"if you demand my opinion and metaphysicks of their natures, I confess [mine to be] very shallow; most of them in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures: for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale, of creatures, rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion."
Browne's point here seems to be that if there is one thing lower than another, with the least significant thing (the worm) at bottom and the most significant one (God) at the top, there must of necessity be a thing somewhere between highest and lowest on the "scale" that corresponds to spirit. In a prior statement on this topic and in a place where Browne is wondering about the cessation, or absence, of oracles in his own time, he says that
"It is a riddle to me, how this story of Oracles hath not worm'd out of the World that doubtful conceit of Spirits and Witches; how so many learned heads should so far forget their Metaphysicks, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of Spirits. For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are Witches: they that doubt of these, do not onely deny them, but Spirits; and are obliquely and upon consequence a sort not of Infidels, but Atheists. Those that to confute their incredulity desire to see apparitions, shall questionless never behold any, nor have the power to be so much as Witches; the Devil hath them already in a heresie as capital as Witchcraft; and to appear to them, were but to convert them."
While this statement is somewhat convoluted, a salient point seems to be that, by denying the existence of any supposed level of being in the chain, one also and necessarily acts to "destroy the ladder and scale of creatures" itself, and falls "obliquely," and as a "consequence" thereof, into a state, not like that of mere "Infidels," but into Atheism instead. Hence, to deny the existence of spirits in the middle of the scale is the same as denying the existence of God at the top and anyone so disposed has been caught by the Devil in a heresy "as capital as Witchcraft," and can expect as punishment church-ordained execution. Breaking the chain or scale at any point along its rise from bottom to top, then, by denying existence to any of the things perceived as having a place on it, breaks the chain itself and prevents one from reaching God's existence at the top. That Browne equates or connects spirit with witches is also clear from this statement.
Browne goes on to argue that not everyone who makes use of the "sorceries, incantations, and spells," commonly associated with witchcraft are necessarily witches themselves. He seems here to be looking for a way to justify the use of magical formulas, as every early pre-scientific alchemist did, without drawing the condemnation of the church down on the heads of those who chose to pursue the practice as a legitimate study. He accomplishes the transition from activities associated with the Devil to ones associated with God by claiming that it is possible for people to learn "a traditional Magick," not from the hands or mind of the Devil, but "at second hand from his Scholars," and that these people work without benefit of the Devil's "advice," and hence proceed only "upon the principles of Nature." Browne puts it this way:
"I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells, are not Witches, or, as we term them, Magicians. I conceive there is a traditional Magick, not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second hand from his Scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able, and do emperically practise without his advice, they both proceeding upon the principles of Nature; where actives, aptly conjoyned to disposed passives, will under any Master produce their effects."
This formula for evading complicity in the "black" arts of Satanism and witchcraft obviously satisfied whatever doubts Browne himself might have harbored about pursuing a traditional "Magick" that proceeded "upon the principles of Nature," had no immediate or obvious connection to the Devil, and could be accomplished "under any Master" a person wished to follow, including Jesus Christ Himself. The church might well balk at accepting this conceptualization of pre-scientific alchemy but a number of clerics in England during the 17th Century (John Donne and George Herbert) did actively pursue alchemy and science, if only as conceits in their poetic production.
In a final statement on the subject of spirits, Browne anticipates later developments in European philosophy when he notes that "besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for ought I know), an universal and common Spirit to the whole World." Hegel took a similar view, even if he might have meant or envisioned a circumstance wholly at odds with whatever Browne may have meant by this statement.
What anyone can take away from this discussion is the fact that science has no pure origin in a mathematical analysis of natural reality as most of us tend to believe. When Kepler used Tycho Brahe's observations of planetary motion to formulate a mathematical description of the elliptical orbits of the planets, he first made mention of the fact that the world was divided into three regions, as Copernicus suggested before him; that is, "there are three regions, symbols of the three persons of the Holy Trinity-the center, a symbol of the Father; the surface, of the Son; and the intermediate space, of the Holy Ghost . . . . [with] the sun in the center, the sphere of the fixed stars on the surface, and lastly the planetary system in the region intermediate between the sun and the fixed stars" (Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, Book IV, 1618-1621). Kepler's vision of the universe, especially the notion of the elliptical orbits, since both Newton and Einstein found that model to be true, stands at a kind of cross-road, even at a borderland, between theology and science, since both he and Copernicus based their essential models of the world on the ideology of the Holy Trinity. Sir Thomas Browne, also a scientist in his own right, found it appropriate to discuss the existence of spirits (angels perhaps in his view) as occupying a real place in the universe. Browne, the alchemist, and Kepler, the astronomer, blend science and religion in a single discourse, where one crosses the other in a borderland of mixed and matched metaphors, so to speak, that calls into question the pure validity of both points-of-view simultaneously. To say that science paints a false picture of reality, simply because it has its origin in the tangled webs of religious ideology, is probably an exaggeration. The fact remains, however, that language, like water, tends to find its own most suitable level and, as often as not, comes back to its own point of origin. In today's cosmological vision of dark energy and the consequent death of the universe it is expected to cause, can anyone be certain that contemporary physicists are finding anything other than just a different way to say eschatology, to point to another version of apocalypse? Whether God created it or not, the universe ends suspiciously in the same way and at the same place.