SHAKESPEARE AND
HERMETIC MAGIC
by Atasha Fyfe
First published in Temple Magazine Issue 7, 2005 www.thetemplebooklet.co.uk
www.thetemplepublications.com
The
traditional academic approach to Shakespeare’s plays is to examine them in
isolation, as stand-alone works of literature. But their historical context
provides many keys and clues which throw fresh light on both the plays and
their author.
During that time, Hermeticism was one of the most important
mainsprings of change. It had an
enormous influence on the religious reformations and creative flowering now
called The Renaissance. Like a stone thrown into a pond, Hermetic thinking
rippled out, creating far-reaching political and social changes as well. There
is much to suggest that Shakespeare and his theatre company were more deeply
involved with these undercurrents than is usually supposed.
Hermetic
philosophy was introduced to Western Europe by
Cosimo de Medici, when in 1460 he acquired from the black market the complete
Greek text of the Corpus Hermeticum. This was a collection of about forty books
of teachings, philosophy and magical practices all apparently written by the
ancient Egyptian god Thoth. In Greek, Thoth translated into Hermes and came to
be called Hermes Trismegistus – Thrice-Great Hermes.
It’s now thought that the
Hermetica were written in or near Alexandria
sometime between 200BC and 200AD. Although several writers contributed to the
Corpus, they all asserted that Thoth was in one way or another their source or
inspiration.
When the Library of Alexandria burned down, the Hermetica somehow escaped.
During the subsequent dark
ages it underwent a curious 1500 year journey. Kept hidden most of the time, it
was constantly one step ahead of persecution, war or fire.
When
Cosimo de Medici finally held the Corpus in his hands, he realised it would be
the prize in his collection of ancient philosophies. But he was getting old,
and didn’t understand Greek. Accordingly, he instructed Ficino to translate it
as quickly as possible, so that he could read it before he died. The translated
version was later published in 1471. Already steeped in Platonic philosophy,
the Florentine acadamy embraced the Hermetica with enthusiasm, and its
influence spread rapidly from there.
An
important carrier of these new ideas to England was Anne Boleyn - mother of
the future Queen Elizabeth I. She came from Provence, where, despite Papal opposition,
courtly life was full of Gnostic philosophies of love and alchemy. These ideals
were spread by the Troubadours throughout Europe.
The rose became their symbol of courtly love, and heretical thinking was the
soil from which it grew.
When Anne came
to the English court and later married Henry VIII, she brought those influences to the highest levels of
English society. Ironically for Anne, this philosophical ambience may have
strengthened Henry’s later decision to finalise the break with Rome. By the time of her execution, however,
Anne’s legacy for the future was established. Her daughter’s reign was
distinguished by an atmosphere of optimistic freedom in which new ideas and
creative thought could flourish in unaccustomed safety.
In
earlier centuries, the Knights Templar helped to lay the foundations for these
developments. Their white mantles and red cross referred to an alchemical idea.
In alchemy, the white rose represented the Princess, or the purified emotions,
while the red rose was the Prince, or purified intellect. The symbol of the
completion of the Great Work was the unification of the red and white rose. To
honour this ideal, the Templars planted gardens of red and white roses.
The
most famous one was London’s New Temple Garden near to the present Inns of
Court. This garden was maintained long after the Templars’ suppression in 1307.
Nearly 150 years later, it was here that the houses of Lancaster and York
turned the red and white roses into emblems of war.
When
Elizabeth I
came to the throne, she was heiress of both those houses, as well as royal
inheritor of the Protestant revolution – the newly created Church of England.
She took as her emblem the alchemical sign of the combined red and white rose
to signify a new era of peace and enlightenment. The Templar thread in this
rich tapestry was acknowledged in Edmund Spenser’s poem The Faerie Queen. Although
written in honour of Elizabeth I, its main character and hero was the Red-Cross
Knight.
In
the courtly world, liberation from Rome
began to be celebrated not just in poetry and
song but with Hermetic masques. These were private amateur dramas,
performed mostly by the family and courtiers of the great houses and courts.
With fantastical sets, elaborate costumes, and Elizabethan special effects, a
story in verse would be enacted. At the end, actors and audience would mingle
in a fancy dress ball.
King Arthur of the Arthurian Tarot Deck
On important occasions these could become quite lavish
festivals with sometimes two weeks of poetry, music, plays, fireworks,
chivalric jousts, exotic costumes and dances. A favourite subject was the
connection between the Tudors and King Arthur, identifying the monarch as the source of a revived Arthurian ideal, if not the return
of Arthur himself. Despite his distrust of magic, King James enjoyed this
theme, and Hermetic masques were as popular at his court as in Elizabethan
times.
The
masques were also intended to be a kind
of magic ritual. Hermetic thinking had given rise to the belief that civilisation was on the brink of a new golden
age in which humanity would regain the innate powers and awareness that were
lost in ‘the fall’. These festivities were specifically designed to create a
microcosmic ideal that would mirror and call in the desired macrocosmic
reality. By Hermetic magic, the masques would help to create a new golden age.
As
a theatrical fashion, masques inevitably influenced the play-writing of the
time. They feature in many of Shakespeare’s plays, being directly referred to,
or presented as plays-within-plays in Love’s Labours Lost, Romeo and Juliet,
Timon of Athens,
and The Tempest.
Shakespeare would also have been exposed to the
Hermetic philosophy behind the masques through his many connections with the
courtly world. His personal patron was the Earl of Southampton. His first
theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was managed by Queen Elizabeth’s
favoured first cousin. The theatre itself was protected by Robert Dudley, Earl
of Leicester – the well-known Queen’s favourite. Dudley was also a supporter of
John Dee, Elizabeth’s
chief occult advisor and Hermeticist.
James I tightened Shakespeare’s
connection to the monarch when he brought the best acting companies directly
under royal patronage, renaming
Shakespeare’s group The King’s Men. In both reigns they performed at the
various royal courts on a regular basis, especially at Christmas, New Year and
Shrovetide. These connections alone
would have exposed William Shakespeare to the Renaissance ideas that were
circulating among the educated and court circles of his time.
Hermetic
thinking also spread to the general population. It was in the rougher crucible
of the public theatre, through plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson, that
the new ideas were mirrored, disseminated and critically examined. In The
Elixir and the Stone, writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh say: “For
more than a century after Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome, no churches
were built in England. Instead, England built theatres. Theatre became a new
species of church, a new temple. Within this magical structure, the rites and
rituals of Hermetic mysteries were performed for an insatiable public”.
The
theatres being built for these thirsty people were intentionally designed
according to Hermetic principles. Older Templar knowledge about the magical
effects of architecture surfaced again, contributing to the creation of
Elizabethan theatres as a new kind of temple.
In the Middle East, Muslim and
ancient Judaic taboos on the representation of living things – ‘graven images’
- had resulted in the development of geometry as the divine blueprint of life.
Geometry came to represent sacred immutable principles that underlie and create
reality in a god-like way.
This found a natural expression in architecture and
masonry - especially in the creation of temple-like structures. In their quests
to the Holy Land, the Templars absorbed this knowledge and later applied it in
the construction of their great Gothic Cathedrals.
The concept of magical
architecture flowered again when England began to build theatres instead of
churches in the 16 century.
The
English Hermeticist, Robert Fludd (1574 – 1637), contributed to this theatre
building, designing them to be a focus and conduit for higher energies. He also
developed special effects, working out how to create the impressions of fire,
thunder and cannons on the stage. In Renaissance Europe, Hermetic thinking had
inspired great paintings. In Elizabethan England it became inextricably
entwined with the dramatic arts.
Perhaps
the most famous theatre of that time was The Globe, where most of Shakespeare’s
plays were performed. Before its construction, the theatre builder James
Burbage consulted John Dee. The result was a building designed entirely
according to Hermetic principles. The ground plan was based on the four
elements within the circle of the zodiac.
Propitious astrological angles were
built in. A starry awning above the stage represented the cosmos. This theatre
was called ‘The Globe’ because it was meant to serve as a microcosm of the
greater reality – ‘as above, so below’. Plays performed here were to affect
society like a magical talisman, drawing
energies from the cosmos through the lens of the play into the world.
The concept of the world as a theatre and the theatre as a world (or globe) was
often referred to in Shakespeare’s plays. The best known of those speeches is
Jacques’ “All the world’s a stage” in As You Like It (2.7)
During
the twenty-odd years of Shakespeare’s writing career, his plays show a
consistent fascination with the occult.
A hallmark of Shakespearian drama is
the recurring presence of fairies, witches, dreams, visions, prophecies and
ghosts. These were more than just flitting phenomena - many of Shakespeare’s plays illustrate an
in-depth knowledge of occult matters. Midsummer Night’s Dream is not
fully understandable without knowing the complex fairy folk lore upon which the
story is based.
Macbeth reveals a knowledge, and carries an aura, of
black magic that is still felt today - especially by theatre people. In Magick
in Theory and Practice, Aleister Crowley remarked that although the
witches’ charm in Macbeth “was perhaps not meant seriously, its effect
is indubitable.”
During
the course of his career, however, magic in Shakespeare’s plays moves from the
‘Old Ways’ to an almost completely Hermetic outlook. In this, he may have
partly reflected and partly led the attitudes of his audience. By the late 16
century, the new Renaissance magic was beginning to show people a way beyond feeling like the constant
victims of circumstance through fairy tricks or evil spells.
Awareness was
growing that it might be possible to use mysterious invisible influences in an
enlightened way. Man need no longer be at the whimsical disposal of
incomprehensible forces. It might even be possible to understand and use those
hidden powers for the betterment of the world, transforming both the individual
and society. This sea-change of beliefs about magic can be traced quite clearly
in the plays of William Shakespeare.
One
of the earliest Shakespearian references to Hermetic ideas is in Henry IV
Pti, in the magician Glendower, who
like John Dee was Welsh. At that time the Welsh were seen as suspicious
dabblers in magic. In a somewhat overblown way, Glendower airs a few vaguely
Hermetic observations. Hotspur deflates them all with his sharp common sense.
When the magician finally declares “I can call spirits from the vasty deep,”
Hotspur taunts, “But will they come when you do call for them?” And the
argument is won, to the probable delight of the audience.
By the final plays,
however, nearly twenty years later, the magus figure had transformed from the
easily ridiculed Glendower into the powerful and learned Prospero. By then
Hermetic philosophy had become Shakespeare’s overarching theme and subject
matter.
A
central tenet of Hermeticism is the concept of oneness – that all things are
connected in a greater unified whole.
This concept of the inter-connectedness of all creation gave rise to a
complex system of astrological correspondences between earth and the cosmos.
Although Shakespearian characters do refer to this astrological lore, a greater
sense of Hermetic oneness is expressed throughout his plays by the unity of
tone, characters and action around a central theme. The Shakespearian scholar
and critic, G.Wilson-Knight says: “Shakespeare seems to subscribe to one of the
central principles of occult thought, namely, that man and the world are
connected, psyche and matter are connected; the hero and his universe are
interdependent.”
The Wounded King from the Arthurian Tarot
The
legend of the Fisher King illustrates this principle. The king represents the
people, and his mysterious wound is theirs, creating the wasteland in which they
live. Hamlet could be interpreted as a version of that legend, in which
the rotten state of Denmark is the
wasteland created by his own inner wound.
Another possible Hermetic thread in Hamlet may be the story of
the minor
Hermeticist Tomaso Campanella.
While in the prisons of the
Inquisition, Tomaso escaped execution by feigning madness. Hamlet adopted the
same ruse, while referring to Denmark as ‘a prison’. Tomaso was more successful
than Hamlet, though. He eventually gained his freedom, and later held secret
astrological rituals with Pope Urban VIII, to ward off predictions that were
frightening the Pope.
Throughout
Shakespeare’s plays there is also a strong theme of Hermetic unity between the
natural world and the doings of humanity. In Hamlet, the rotten state of
Denmark is signified by ‘stars with trains of fire, and dews of blood,
disasters in the sun’.
The death of
Caesar is portended in Act 1, Scene 3 of Julius Caesar by a
wide-eyed account from Casca of a long list of
strange signs he has seen. Macbeth is riddled with weird omens,
from horses eating each other to the final movement of Birnam Wood to
Dunsinane.
Storms are especially
significant in Shakespearian drama. Always a major symbol of the mysterious
power of nature, they undergo a significant change. In Midsummer Night’s
Dream and Macbeth, they are the result of fairy trickery and black magic. By the last
plays however, storms have become associated with the white magic of the
alchemist.
This
concept of a synthesised and magically connected world was lost with the Age of
Reason. It was replaced by a mechanical, dis-integrated, cause-and-effect model
of reality. Hermeticism continued, but as an underground stream. It surfaced
again in the 19 century through the Romantic poets, and later the
Spiritualist movement. In the 20th century Carl Jung re-established the
principle of synchronicity, saying that events occur in similar clusters. This
principle of the ‘acausal connecting principle’ was also upheld by the Chinese,
who have interpreted events in terms of meaningful coincidence for thousands of
years. Many of Shakespeare’s plays, especially Hamlet, contain a sense
that the events are created by a mind-set rather than cause-and effect.
Pericles was the first of
Shakespeare’s final set of plays on the
theme of learned Hermetic magicians. Throughout his career, Shakespeare’s
topical allusions were often disguised by similar sounding names. Although the
sage in this play was named Cerimon, the character and the word ‘Pericles’ are
both close enough to Paracelsus to invite comparisons. Both were medical
practitioners. Both believed more in the secret properties “that dwell in
vegetives, in metals, stones” than the traditional form of university taught
medicine.
Cerimon is presented as a good man,
not interested in “tottering honour” or “silken bags”. Another character
praises his charity and generosity, declaring that he has healed hundreds with
his knowledge. A fortuitous storm brings some sailors to his house, with a
mysterious chest that was washed up on the shore. The chest is opened to reveal
the corpse of a Queen. Cerimon brings her back to life, using ‘Egyptian magic’
for reviving the recently dead.
In
The Winter’s Tale, written soon after Pericles, Paulina brings a
statue to life with similar magic. To
make it clear she is not “assisted by wicked powers” she first obtains the
King’s sanction to revive his Queen. When it works, he declares “If this be
magic, let it be an art lawful as eating.”
A
Queen being restored to life and able to rejoin the King has alchemical echoes,
representing the restoration of the lost divine feminine principle. These
symbolic enactments may have been intended as a form of Hermetic ritual, like
the masques.
Of
the latter scene, Frances Yates comments, “It seems obvious, though I do not
think that this has ever been pointed out, that Shakespeare is alluding to the
famous god-making passage in the Asclepius.” The Asclepius was a section of the
Corpus Hermetica that described ancient Egyptian magical practices – such as
how to restore life to the dead, or turn statues into gods. For the more
conservative Hermeticists, this section was questionable because it dealt with
magic, and it tended to be played down
or excluded. The Italian Giordano Bruno, however, whole-heartedly embraced the
entire Corpus.
A
rambunctious personality, Bruno came to England in the 1580s, enthusiastically
promoting every aspect of Hermetic philosophy. His visit to Oxford in 1583
spawned a flurry of pamphlets on alchemy, Paracelsian medicine and other
Hermetic subjects. He established himself as a strong influence in this
country, and even hoped to persuade Elizabeth I to bring about universal reform
according to Hermetic principles. Although that ambition remained beyond him,
his influence can be found in Shakespeare’s plays. As well as those
illustrations of Asclepian magic, there is also the playwright’s Bruno-esque
concept of love as a conscious deity, especially in Love’s Labours Lost.
Ulysses’great speech in Troilus and Cressida (1.3) is an almost direct
expression of Bruno’s view of the sun as the physical and spiritual centre of
the cosmos.
Bruno’s
career in England ended when he was tempted back to Italy with the false
promise of a wealthy patron. Once there, the Inquisition arrested him. He was
executed as an unrepentant heretic in Rome in 1600.
Around the same time, John
Dee had fallen into deep disfavour with the Queen. His high position and
influence at court was over. In 1603 James I began his reign with more stringent
laws against witchcraft and magic. The Hermetic movement went steadily
underground from around that time, becoming more and more confined to
sequestered societies such as the Rosicrucrians.
During
that time of gathering clouds, the light of Renaissance philosophy continued to
burn in Shakespeare’s plays. Cymbeline, written in about 1610, was the
penultimate of his Hermetic plays. It too featured a magical resurrection after
a death-like sleep, this time involving a mysterious cave. An important Rosicrucian
symbol is the vault where Christian Rosenkreutz’s tomb was found, signifying
the revival of lost knowledge. Frances Yates says, “as far as we know, the
earliest date at which the Fama may have been circulating is 1610.
Nevertheless, the Rosicrucian manifestoes undoubtedly reflect a movement which
was in existence earlier.” Freemasons today still perform a ritual in which the
initiate is ‘raised from the dead’. One can only surmise why this symbology
should feature so much in Shakespeare’s last plays.
There
is also the possibility that these coded dramas may in turn have influenced the
development of organisations like the Rosicrucians. English acting companies
were producing these plays in Germany in the early years of the 17
century. In 1616 The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was
published by the German author Andreae, who was so deeply impressed by the Bard
of Avon that he also wrote plays ‘in imitation of the English dramatists’.
These turned out to be mostly copies of Shakespeare’s last plays. The connection between those plays and
Rosicrucianism is closely woven indeed.
The
Tempest
was Shakespeare’s final expression of magic. Many believe that the character of
Prospero is a portrait of John Dee, who like Prospero was a mathematician,
astrologer and alchemist. Frances Yates calls The Tempest “a Rosicrucian
manifesto infused with the spirit of Dee, using theatrical parables for
esoteric communication.”
The
theme of magical storms reaches its apotheosis in this play. The title itself
may refer to the alchemical meaning of the term ‘tempest’: a boiling process to
remove impurities from base metal to facilitate its transmutation to gold. Base metal and gold had alchemical meanings
connected with personal evolution.
Similarly, the ‘tempest’ of the play meant
much more than a heavy storm. Prospero’s
island is his own psyche, and also represents society. The drama is about how
he brings the conflicting elements on his island into a state of harmony.
The
wedding in the play is a metaphor for the symbolic alchemical marriage between
the ‘Prince’ and ‘Princess’ within human
nature – the red and white rose. The alchemist’s Great Work is on the microcosm
of himself, to affect the macrocosm of the world. The Tempest is about
that process.
The
timing of the writing, production and publication of The Tempest was dramatic in itself. By that time, attitudes
to magic had hardened. Witch hunting fever was beginning to stalk the land, and
this included Hermeticists. Rejected by both monarchs, John Dee died in great
poverty in 1608. The Tempest was written and produced a year or two
later. It was quite likely Shakespeare’s declaration of allegiance for all that
Dee represented. With James I on the throne hostile to the occult in general
and John Dee in particular, the production of The Tempest was an act of
political courage.
After
Shakespeare himself died in 1616, his theatre company, The King’s Men,
organised the first folio publication of his collected works. The plays had
been published individually, but only in unbound little quartos, of the
ephemeral and trashy end of the market. A folio publication was the large
impressive form reserved for established works of merit. The Tempest was
significantly placed at the front of this first folio collection of 1623.
In
the same year, Bacon’s De Augmentis Scientarum was also published. This
was the philosophical background and purpose of Shakespeare’s plays - the key
to unlock their esoteric meaning. A year later in 1624, the cypher book Cryptomenytices
came out, providing the cipher keys to encoded Rosicrucian references in
Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.
Although
the Bard’s works do stand alone as supreme literary achievements, a fuller
understanding of them can only be gained by appreciating the philosophy of the
esoteric codes and symbols that are embedded in the stories.
The
hopeful magic of Hermetic theatricals might seem to have been defeated by the
dark times that followed in the 17 century. And yet, nearly five
hundred years later, The Tempest is still produced for entertainment as
well as study; and the concept of wise, benign magic has returned to life in
Tolkein’s Gandalf, ObiWan Kenobi of Star
Wars, and Harry Potter’s Professor Dumbledore.
The
name ‘Prospero’ means ‘hope for the future’. Through powerful modern media, the
spirit of Prospero and all he stood for now strides the macrocosm of the globe
in ways that even Shakespeare would not have imagined.
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