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If you do a google search on "ben jonson alchemist" (without quotes) the very first hit is at Adam McLean's Alchemy website. Here is what McLean has to say about Jonson and his play:
Mclean also provides the entire text of the play at his website. The whole site is a goldmine of information and beautiful alchemical artwork, such as the image to the right of the quote above.Ben Jonson (1573-1637) was one of the foremost of the Jacobean dramatists. He wrote a number of plays (both comedies and tragedies) and a series of stylised masques for the Court. He had a keen eye for the follies of his contemporaries, and in this play he particularly satirises human gullibility. He displays considerable understanding of alchemy and makes many jokes based on its symbolism (and in two places even refers to Dee and Kelly). He obviously expected the audience for this play to have some knowledge of alchemical ideas. Jonson's The Alchemist written in 1610, thus presents us with a satirical window through which we can see one way in which alchemy was perceived in the opening decade of the 17th century.
Alchemy was no passing fad among early 17th century Londoners, nor was Jonson by any means the first English writer to make use of that subject. Alchemy finds mention already in the 14th century Middle English classics Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales, for examples. And the cultural acceptance of Alchemy is dramatically demonstrated a bit later in the 17th century, when England produced her two most famous Alchemists: Isaac Newton, and Robert Boyle. That two of the greatest lights of the so-called Scientific Revolution should turn out to be Alchemists is in fact completely unremarkable, since what is today classified as Esotericism (and/or "Occultism") was in Newton and Boyle's day still a well established part of elite intellectual culture - as it had been throughout the entire history of European Christendom, and before that of classical (including late-antique) Paganism.
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In other words, while it is true that Newton contributed to overthrowing the stilted worldview that had hobbled the minds of European Christians for centuries, it is not true that Europeans had thereby discovered an utterly new "scientific" worldview that had never existed before.
25 years prior to Newton's Principia, Robert Boyle ("the father of chemistry and brother of the earl of Cork") formulated the Law governing gases that bears his name:
Boyle's greatest contribution to science, however, was his masterpiece of scientific writing, The Sceptical Chymist, in which he often sounds as if he might be advocating a thoroughly modern and thoroughly scientific world view:Boyle's Law: for a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, the product of pressure and volume is a constant:
PV = k
I perceive that diverse of my friends have thought it very strange to hear me speak so irresolvedly, as I have been wont to do, concerning those things which some take to be the elements, and others to be the principles of all mixt bodies. But I blush not to acknowledge that I much less scruple to confess that I doubt when I do so, than to profess that I know what I do not: and I should have much stronger expectations than I dare yet entertain, to see philosophy solidly established, if men would more carefully distinguish those things that they know from those that they ignore or do but think, and then explicate clearly the things they conceive they understand, acknowledge ingenuously what it is they ignore, and profess so candidly their doubts, that the industry of intelligent persons might be set to work to make further enquiries, and the easiness of less discerning men might not be imposed on.
[This is the opening sentence of the section titled, oddly, "Part of the First Dialogue"]
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Believe me when I declare that I distinguish betwixt those Chymists that are either Cheats, or but Laborants, and the true Adepti.In other words Boyle divided Chymists into three groups: (1) dishonest charlatans, (2) honest and technically skilled Chymists who nevertheless lack any systematic understanding of what they are doing, and (3) "Adepti" who possess virtue, skill, and understanding. In fact Boyle strongly suggests a fourth category, that of the "aspiring adept", a group in which he implicitly enrolls himself (this being the origin of the title of Principe's book referenced above).
The examples of Boyle and Newton leave no doubt, regardless of any other considerations, that Esoteric subjects were treated seriously by some of the greatest intellects of the early modern period. Among those other considerations are two that must be kept clearly in mind in order to avoid confusion. First of all there is the traditional secrecy, well established since ancient times, that attends to closely guarded knowledge reserved for "adepts" and "initiates". Second of all there is the serious matter of the theological and legal status of Alchemy and Esoteric subjects in general -- which significantly adds to the need for secrecy and dissembling. The line separating Alchemy from such things as witchcraft and/or sorcery was far from clear, and people were still being put to death for such things, although that practice was fortunately becoming less frequent. Newton died in March of 1727, and in June of that year Janet Horne became the last person in Scotland to be executed for the crime of witchcraft. Horne's daughter was also found guilty and sentenced to die, but escaped.
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The association of leading European intellectuals with Esotericism long predates the Florentine Renaissance. Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti are two well known and well-studied examples from 13th and early 14th century Italy. Meanwhile in Byzantium the Platonic school of philosophy founded in the 11th century by Michael Psellos flourished right up to the fall Constantinople. A major focus of that school was the Theurgic Platonism of Iamblichus and Proclus, as well as the Chaldean Oracles and associated philosophical texts.
In classical Pagan antiquity (at which point we are no longer talking about just, or even primarily, Europeans, it should be pointed out) that which is today considered "Esoteric" was in the vast majority of cases an unproblematic and unremarkable part of mainstream intellectual and religious culture. Divination, in particular, was a central pillar of traditional religion in classical (pre-Alexander) Hellenic culture, and also in the earliest forms of Roman culture. Herodotus' Histories and Xenophon's Anabasis are important and accessible primary sources for classical Greece, while Livy's Ab Urbe condita and Cicero's On Divination provide similar information about early Roman religion.
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