Showing posts with label Browne AND. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Browne AND. Show all posts

Thursday, August 28, 2025

The phantastical Quincunx in Plato


'The shaping influence of Platonism on Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) has long been recognized by those attracted to the intangible atmosphere of his mind.'[1] 


Allusion to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (circa 427 BCE- 347 BCE) occurs throughout Browne’s writings. Plato’s proposal that the world is a living creature which possesses a soul (anima mundi), his allegories of the Cave of human illusion and the ‘wild horses’ of the passions, his political allegory of the lost civilization of Atlantis, along with ‘the fantastical Quincunx of Plato' can all be found in Browne’s literary works.


Above all else the discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) reveals the full depth of the learned doctor’s immersion in Platonic thought. In a kaleidoscopic procession of art-objects, botanical specimens, optical theories and mystical symbols, Browne showcases his very own home-grown Platonic Form of the Quincunx. With virtuoso skill he improvises upon it in geometrical, numerical and mystical variations in order to highlight a foundational hermetic belief: the interconnectedness of life across the Universe. Browne also supplies his reader throughout the  discourse with proper-name symbolism of historical philosopher-Kings and ‘wise rulers’ as advocated by Plato. A timely reminder today with the world-wide rise of authoritarian and demagogue politicians. 


It was the Oxford academic Thomas Lushington (1590-1661) who introduced Thomas Browne to Plato’s philosophy. He also recommended Norwich to his former pupil as an ideal city to establish a medical career. Browne followed his advice, and after qualifying as a physician in 1637 relocated to Norwich where he practiced medicine until his death in 1682. 


Lushington most likely took pride when his former pupil’s Religio Medici (1643) became a best-seller in England and gained recognition across Europe after translation. Plato is encountered several times in Browne’s spiritual testament and psychological self-portrait. For example, the so-called Great Platonic Year, a period of approximately 24,000 years, the length of time which the Greek philosopher believed was required for the celestial bodies to return to their original positions, is defined by Browne as-


'A revolution of certain thousand years when all things should return unto their former estate and he (Plato) be teaching again in his school as when he delivered this opinion'.[2]


Browne expresses his belief in the anima mundi or World-Soul in Religio Medici, a concept originating from Plato and later embraced by hermetic philosophers.


'Now besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for ought I know) an universal and common Spirit to the whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical Philosophers; [3]


Alchemystical philosophers such as Browne related Plato’s concept of the anima mundi or World-Soul from their own spiritual intuition as much as from reading Plato. 


A central tenet of Browne’s spirituality is a belief in an angelic hierarchy, one which he held in common with many in the seventeenth century. It was a belief supported not only from Biblical Scripture, but from Plato also, as Browne informs-


‘Therefore for Spirits I am so far from denying their existence and 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’. [4] 


Religio Medici (The Religion of a doctor) concludes in decisive favour of Plato and dismissive of his pupil Aristotle,  Browne wittily declaring-


Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimæra, and there is no such thing as his Felicity’.[5]


In Plato's theological, moral and mystical philosophy allegory, symbolism and concepts such as Eternal Ideas or Forms are used to illustrate spiritual truths. As the ‘Father of Western mysticism’ he's the source of much esoteric thought. Plato’s philosophy was fundamentally supplemented with the revival and development of Platonic thought in the early centuries of the Common Era. Neoplatonism flourished through philosophers such as Plotinus (204/5 – 271 CE) Porphyry of Tyre (ca. 233-305 CE) and Iamblichus (245-325 CE) all of whom elaborated and expanded Platonic concepts, often with little connection to the ancient Greek’s original thought. Books by Neoplatonic authors are well-represented in Browne’s library. [6] 


The authoritative scholar Reid Barbour in his meticulously researched biography advances our understanding of Browne’s interest in Plato, explaining-


‘The appeal of Plato underscores Browne’s syncretic conviction that behind all transcendentally inclined philosophies – Hermetic, Zoroastrian, Pythagorean, Platonic, Neoplatonic, Chaldaic, Cabbalistic, and Christian – one finds the same supra-rational and even counter-rational truths, which neither dry logic nor blind partisanship can appreciate. [7]


Platonic and Neoplatonic thought influenced numerous artists, poets and thinkers throughout the Renaissance until the late seventeenth century, the low-ebb tide of its influence. The enduring appeal of Platonic thought is succinctly explained thus-


'In the Renaissance, no ancient revival had more impact on the history of philosophy than the recovery of Platonism.....No other renewal of an ancient school had a textual base large enough to support the growth  of a coherent, wide-reaching and independent philosophical system ..For at least three reasons, the new Platonism of Ficino and his successors must be seen as central to any discussion of European intellectual history during the Renaissance. First, the rich doctrinal content and formal elegance of Neoplatonic Platonism made it at least a plausible competitor of Peripateticism. What the Neoplatonists lacked in systematic logic and natural philosophy, they made up for with a stronger appeal to creativity .. They gave more latitude to all kinds of speculation, from aesthetics and mythology to cosmology and theology. After Ficino, anyone who disliked Aristotle could turn to Plato... The second strength of Platonism was its extra-philosophical influence. Despite his harsh words for poetry, Plato initiated a tradition that poets admired.... The same is true of his treatment of music...Finally, certain attitudes and methods of the new science were more Platonic than Aristotelian. The habit of idealizing physics, which was fundamental to the new science of the seventeenth century, came more easily to the Platonic mentality than to the Peripatetic. Even more important was Platonic praise of mathematics. For Aristotle, physics and mathematics did not really mix, while Plato gave good grounds for a mathematical analysis of nature. Platonism never vanquished Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, but it acquired great cultural strength'. [8]


In our own times it is Aristotelean reasoning and materialism which has triumphed over Platonic idealism, as the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung succinctly noted, ‘Greek natural philosophy with its interest in matter, together with Aristotelean reasoning, has achieved a belated but overwhelming victory over Plato’. [9]

Thematically, Browne’s literary diptych Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658) concern themselves with themes of great importance to Plato, namely, the destiny of the eternal soul and number as a key to unlock cosmic mysteries. Browne’s diptych discourses closely reflect these two themes, Urn-Burial speculating upon the destiny of the soul and The Garden of Cyrus advocating number as a key to unlock the mysteries of the Cosmos.



Above-  Wall fresco of an ancient Greek drinking party symposium.


Urn-Burial

Browne’s sharp intellect and fertile imagination was sparked from the initial discovery of several Anglo-Saxon funerary urns ‘in a field near Old Walsingham’. In Urn-Burial he forensically surveys the burial rites, customs and beliefs of various world religions. It’s as a pioneering scholar of comparative religion that Browne alludes to Plato’s myth or tale of Er,  informing his reader that-


‘Plato’s historian of the other world, lies twelve days incorrupted, while his soul was viewing the large stations of the dead’.


Plato’s mythic story begins when a man named Er dies in battle. When the bodies of those who died in the battle are collected, some ten days after his death, Er remains undecomposed. Two days later he miraculously revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his soul’s journey in the afterlife, including his account of hearing the music of the celestial spheres. With its account of the cosmos and the afterlife Plato’s myth of Er influenced religious, philosophical, and scientific thought for centuries, not least for its teaching that after death moral people are rewarded and immoral people are punished.


Another ‘soul-journey’ cited in Urn-Burial is by the Roman philosopher Macrobius (395-423CE) whose commentary on ‘Scipio’s Dream’  was well-known throughout the Middle Ages. In Scipio’s ‘soul-journey’ the Roman military General Scipio narrates how he voyaged through the zodiac signs of Cancer and Capricorn, believed to be the exit and entrance to heaven and hears the celestial harmony of the spheres. Browne alludes to Macrobius' Commentary, recognises the importance of music in the grieving process as well as ‘the harmonical nature of the soul’ in  relationship to ‘the primitive harmony of heaven’, poetically stating- 


'They made use of Musick to excite or quiet the affections of their friends, according to different harmonies. But the secret and symbolical hint was the harmonical nature of the soul; which delivered from the body, went again to enjoy the primitive harmony of heaven, from whence it first descended; which according to its progress traced by antiquity, came down by Cancer, and ascended by Capricornus'.


A vivid allusion to the ancient Greek philosopher’s allegory of the Cave of human unknowingness can also be found in Urn-Burial. Plato’s famous allegory describes people who have spent their entire lives chained by their neck and ankles in front of an inner wall in order to view the wall of a cave. They can only observe the shadows projected onto the outer wall of this cave by objects which are carried behind the inner wall by people who are invisible to the chained prisoners. Walking along the outer wall with a fire behind them, they create shadows on the inner wall in front of the prisoners who can only ever see the world indirectly, their reality is only ever one of fire-lit shadows projected onto a wall.


In Plato’s powerful allegory the senses are proven to be highly unreliable narrators, the soul remains dormant and empirical reality has a transcendent background to it. Browne shared with Plato this view of the human condition. Using highly original medical imagery he declares-


'A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Platoes denne, and are but Embryon Philosophers'.


Plato’s allegory of the Cave, idiosyncratically translated as ‘denne’ by Browne retains relevance today in our screen dominated lives, as one author states- 


'We can easily imagine Plato believing that we have returned to the world of the Cave, the situation in which our sensibility, values, tastes and desires are decisively shaped by what we absorb from the images presented to us…..Do the media that pervade our culture really contribute to human well-being and happiness, both of which, for Plato, depend on freedom from the control and manipulation that the use of the media can inflict on us ?.... The image of the Cave represented an imprisonment or enslavement by ignorance, illusion, ephemeral interests and harmful desires.... surely Plato’s verdict on our screen-dominated culture would have been severely critical'. [10]


The apotheosis of Browne’s speculations upon the body’s dissolution and the soul’s release includes an inventory of spiritual states of consciousness -


'And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, extasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kisse of the Spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them………..  ‘Tis all one to lye in St. Innocent’s Churchyard as the sands of Egypt’.



Above : SCIOLTA (Freed) Symbolic image of the soul released from the cage of the body.  Detail of dove flying from a cage. Suckling Monument (circa 1616) St. Andrew's church Norwich.


The eminent American psychologist James Hillman (1926-2011) stated in words resonate with the prominent moralist found in Urn-Burial -


'religion begins, as we have said, as a reflection upon death. Psychology does too, for it is in the face of death that we ponder and go deep and sense soul, and then build our fantasies for housing it, whether these be the ancient pyramids and sepulchres of religion or the rituals and systems of modern psychology'. [11]


Browne's solitary hint of his Discourses relationship occurs in his Dedicatory Epistle in The Garden of Cyrus where he states-


'That we conjoyn these parts of different Subjects, or that this should succeed the other; Your judgement will admit without impute of incongruity; Since the delightful World comes after death, and Paradise succeeds the Grave.'


Browne’s solitary hint is tantalizing. Together, his discourses have a complex, plexiform relationship to each other. The primary imagery they share is optical. Imagery involving Darkness and Light is replete throughout each Discourse. James Hillman notes - 'The linking of light and darkness sets the stage for a fundamental and recurring theme in both alchemy and Jungian psychology, namely, the coniunctio oppositorum, the unity of opposites, a bringing together of light and darkness into an illuminated vision'. [12]


James Hillman also notes that Light and Darkness are inextricably related to each other as symbolic of Consciousness and unconsciousness. The repeated imagery of Light and Darkness throughout the diptych suggests they function as a product of Browne’s proto-psychology, as such they may be viewed as an early portrait of the psyche in its totality of unconsciousness and consciousness. 


Ingeniously constructed with a myriad of polarities (Browne is credited with introducing the very word ‘polarity’ into English language) the literary diptych includes several uniting symbols. For example, in Urn-Burial the Pyramid is condemned as a vain-glorious monument, while in Cyrus the Pyramid is contemplated a geometric form. The two-faced Roman god Janus is also encountered in each Discourse, as are hand gestures signalling subtraction and multiplication. Above all however it’s the philosophical thought of Plato which decisively unites the Discourses.


The Garden of Cyrus

Like the letters in the proverbial stick of rock The Garden of Cyrus has the five letters of the word PLATO embedded at its core. Each of its five chapters names the ancient Greek philosopher. Its opening page references Plato no less than three times, firstly alluding to the Demiurge figure of Plato's Timaeus via the mythological figure of Vulcan, secondly acknowledging Plato’s theological import, describing him  as ‘the divine philosopher’ and thirdly in his footnote, 'Plato in Timaeo'. Browne was not alone in his interest in Plato's discourse. Ever since 1484 when Marsilio Ficino made a full Latin translation of Plato's  discourse available the Timaeus wielded a near Bible-like authority upon poet, scholar, artist and Hermetic philosopher alike throughout the Renaissance. 


The Garden of Cyrus opens with an account of the Creation, evoking the demiurge figure of Vulcan as the Master Workman. ‘Philosophers of Fire’ such as Browne took their cue from the radical Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) who named the Roman blacksmith of the gods as representative of their alchemical art. To Paracelsian physicians such as Browne Vulcan was synonymous with the demiurge figure who created the Universe as described by Plato in his Timaeus.


Plato's Timaeus is his most Pythagorean, influential and mystical discourse. In it he describes how the Demiurge is a divine craftsman who shapes the chaotic material world into an ordered cosmos by imitating eternal, unchanging Platonic Forms. Acting as a father and artificer, the Demiurge imposes mathematical order on pre-existing chaos, creating a universe that is a living god with its own soul, and creates lesser gods responsible for humanity. Plato’s discourse is assessed thus -


'The most important account of the Creation in the classical world was that given in Plato’s Timaeus (a substantial part of which survived into the Christian Middle Ages) and here we find that it is the Demiurge himself (and not the lesser gods) who puts the divine ‘guiding principle’ into humankind'. [13]


Just as Plato in his Timaeus engages in mystical mathematics in which number is a key to unlock the mysteries of the Cosmos, so too Browne indulges in mystical mathematics throughout The Garden of Cyrus. In what is his most Pythagorean and Platonic influenced work, Browne explores eternal patterns, symbolism, mystical numerology and geometry, showcasing the Quincunx pattern in art and nature as reflecting the eternal forms and archetypes discussed in Plato's Timaeus.


Plato's eternal Forms are perfect, timeless, and unchanging abstract archetypes of concepts, objects, and qualities that exist in a separate "Realm of Forms" beyond our physical world. The material world, known only through the senses, is merely an imperfect, shadowy imitation of these perfect Forms. True knowledge, for Plato, is the intellectual grasp of these eternal Forms, rather than flawed perceptions of the physical world. Browne’s demonstration of the Platonic form of the Quincunx in Art, Nature and mystically is modelled upon Plato's notion of Eternal Forms which pre-existed the Creation. The master workman or demiurge figure who consults the blueprints for the Creation, introduces the Eternal or Archetypal Forms to the World.

Number


The Garden of Cyrus sees Browne give full expression to his 'mystical mathematicks' and numerological inclinations. He first expressed his interest in numerological symbolism in Religio Medici frankly declaring -


'I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras and the secret magicke of number'. [14]


In his encyclopaedic endeavour Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) there's a chapter titled Of the great Climatericall year, that is, Sixty three in which he speculates upon whether the number 63 is fatal in human affairs, noting it was reputedly the age which Plato died. He also informs his reader in this chapter that -‘ The Philosophy of Plato, and most of the Platonists abounds in numerall considerations’. [15]


No writings by Pythagoras survive, however Plato, in what is his most Pythagorean influenced work, the Timaeus, integrated and developed the numerological symbolism central to Pythagorean philosophy, and in some ways its equally accurate to describe Browne’s Discourse as Neo-Pythagorean as much as Platonic in concept.




The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570 – 490 BCE) who taught, ‘All is Number’ based his teachings upon numerological symbolism. Worshipped as a god for almost 1000 years, Pythagoras expressed his mystery religion through symbols such as the celestial 'harmony of the spheres', geometry and a pyramid of dots structured upon the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 known as the tetractys. Browne’s Quincunx can be detected at the very heart of the Pythagorean tetractys.



Received wisdom, often from those unacquainted with Browne’s Garden discourse, will declare that The Garden of Cyrus is ‘all about’ the number five, but in fact the number five is only one of several inter-related symbols used by Browne. The acute angle of V as the Roman numeral for 5, along with its doubling as the letter and symbol X, which in turn is a variant upon the Quincunx pattern, all feature in the Discourse. 


In what is one of the most perceptive explanations on the function of Browne's home-grown Eternal Form of the Quincunx. John Irwin states-


'The quincunx represents God's infallible intelligence while it also embodies the main 'tools' man uses to decipher the universe: mathematics, geometry and language. The implication is that if the God-given design of man's original plantation was a quincuncial network, then this design must express the basic relationship between man and the world, known and unknown, which is to say that this formal pattern imposed on physical nature schematizes the interface of mind and world in that it contains within itself the various modes of intelligible representation of the world, i.e. mathematics, language, geometry joined together in the homogeneousness of their physical inscription as numbers, letters and geometric shapes'. [16]


Incidentally, in addition to his botanical studies, naming and describing over 100 plants in the discourse, the learned doctor also displays his zoological inclinations throughout the Garden of Cyrus mentioning insects, reptiles, crustaceans, birds, water-fowl, fish and mammals in order to illustrate the interconnection of life.


Plato’s mythic excursion to Egypt in quest of wisdom is also touched on in The Garden of Cyrus-


‘whereas it is not improbable, he (Plato) learned these and other mystical expressions in his Learned Observations of Egypt, where he might obviously behold the Mercurial characters, the handed crosses, and other mysteries not thoroughly understood in the sacred Letter X, which being derivative from the Stork, one of the ten sacred animals, might be originally Egyptian…’


Hermetic philosophers such as Browne saw great significance in the fact that the letter X, which they believed to have been invented by Hermes Trismegistus, prophetically became the first letter of the name of Christ in the Greek alphabet. To hermetic sensibilities Plato, among others, the letter X seemed to anticipate and  prophesize that Christ would one day come into the world in order to redeem humanity. The symbolism of the letter X to represent Christ survives to the present day in the short-hand of Xmas for Christmas. The soul itself is declared to be X shaped as Browne, in a near verbatim repetition from Plato’s Timaeus informs-


'Of this Figure Plato made choice to illustrate the motion of the soul, both of the world and man; while he delivereth that God divided the whole conjunction length-wise, according to the figure of a Greek X, and then turning it about reflected it into a circle'.


The Garden of Cyrus was written in great haste, as scrutiny of manuscript evidence by J.S. Finch proved. Browne’s haste is exemplified in shoe-horning into his essay the after-thought - 


To omit the phantastical Quincunx in Plato of the first Hermaphrodite or double man, united at the Loynes, which Jupiter after divided’.


In Plato’s Symposium, Eros is an erotic lover who is capable of inspiring bravery and courage along with great deeds as well as vanquishing man's fear of death. Sexuality in the form of Androgyny and homosexuality also feature in the discourse in a myth which narrates how humanity was originally three sexes: male-male people that descended from the sun, female-female people who descended from Earth, and male-female people who came from the Moon. The androgynous humans were spherical and had four legs, four hands and two heads. These androgynous humans dared to challenge the gods of Olympus, who, angered at their divided the primordial humans in two and scattered them across the Earth. The divided searched for their other halves. The women who sought another woman and the men who sought another men were homosexuals.




Above - Ancient Greek vase depicting Plato's hermaphrodite double man.

Archetype


C.G. Jung notes – ‘The term “archetype” occurs as early as Philo Judaeus (circa 20 BCE - 50 CE) and in the Corpus Hermeticum, where God is called an archetypal light'. The term also occurs several times in the writings of the early Christian Neoplatonist author Dionysus the Aeropagite, all of whom are represented in Browne’s library. [17]


Although the Elizabethan natural philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is credited as the first to use the word ‘archetype’ in early modern English, its Browne in his The Garden of Cyrus who endeavours through highly original proper-name symbolism to depict archetypal exemplars of Plato’s ‘philosopher-King’. Historical figures such as Abraham, Solomon and Moses, Alexander the Great, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius as well as the titular King Cyrus effectively underscore the Platonic ideal that just governance requires ‘wise rulers’. Women aren't overlooked in Browne’s comparative religion symbolism. The ‘Great Mother’ figures of Sarah, Isis, Cleopatra and Juno are also encountered in the Discourse. 


For Plato, as for Browne, the figure of the philosopher-King represents a universal pattern or blueprint of human potential, in which wisdom and justice are perfectly balanced. Browne's discourses were published during the Interregnum era of Cromwell's Puritan Rule. His repeated citing of the philosopher-King archetype can be seen as subtle criticism of Crowell’s Protectorate. The Garden of Cyrus retains relevance today, not only for its hermetic message of the interconnectivity of life, but also as a timely reminder of wise governance with the world-wide rise of authoritarian and demagogue political leaders today.


Late in his life Browne acquired a copy of the Athanasius Kircher’s (1602-1680) Mundus Subterraneous (1664) in which the Jesuit priest and scholar printed a map of  where he speculated the location of Atlantis. [18]. It was Plato who fabricated the existence of the lost civilization Atlantis in his political allegory the Timaeus. Browne notes in his Christian Morals (pub. post. 1716) of Plato’s account of the lost civilization that-


'Others more Ingeniously doubt whether there hath not been a vast tract of Land in the Atalantick  Ocean, which Earthquakes and violent causes have long ago devoured'. [19] 


In Kircher's 1665 map (below) North and South are reversed with Africa to the East and America to the West of the vast, fictitious continent of Atlantis.



Plato’s political allegory of Atlantis projected a philosophical ideal of  ancient Athens. To teach his point, his fictional Atlantean Empire waged war against the known world, resulting in his idealized Athens leading resistance against it, and eventually winning. Atlantis is thus revealed to be an enemy for a Platonic version of Athens to defeat. Plato's usage of political allegory, narrating the decline and fall of the great imaginary civilization of Atlantis, reminds one that - ‘For all his impatience with myth Plato allowed it an important role in the exploration of ideas that lie beyond  the scope of philosophical language’. [20]


Above all else, it was Plato’s moral teachings which appealed to Browne in his pious old age. He shared with the early Church Father St. Augustine (354 - 430 CE) the conviction that Plato was the greatest of all pagan thinkers, primarily for his exhortation of living the morally good and just life.  In Christian Morals Browne alludes to Plato's ‘wild horses’ of the irrational passions, as described in Plato's discourse Phaedrus.


In Phaedrus each individual is likened to the driver of a two-horse chariot, whose reason tries to control the force of two horses, one white named spirit which is cooperative and one black named desire which tries to rebel and drag the chariot in the wrong direction. Although spirit and desire are depicted as battling forces, they communicate in language as talking horses to each other.  Plato’s equestrian allegory is mentioned in Christian Morals in what is one of Browne's profoundest psychological observations on the human condition -


'To well manage our Affections, and wild Horses of Plato, are the highest Circenses; and the noblest Digladiation is in the Theater of our selves'. [21]


In conclusion, Plato’s influence upon Thomas Browne is multi-faceted. Integral to his hermetic philosophy, the learned doctor found inspiration in Plato’s mystical numerology, Eternal Forms and archetypes. As a moralist he valued the ancient Greek philosopher’s exhortations on how to live the good and just life. The abundance of allusion to Plato throughout Browne’s literary oeuvre confirms the observation that – ‘There is probably no English writer of the seventeenth century who more habitually avows and exhibits attachment to the Platonic tradition than Browne'. [22]

Notes 

[1] The Strategy for Truth by Leonard Nathanson pub. Chicago University Press 1967
[2] Religio Medici Part 1: 6
[3]  R.M. 1:32
[4] R.M. 1:33
[5]  R.M. 2:15
[6] Iamblicus  de Mysterriis Aegyptirorum , Chaldaorum Catalogue 16A no.25
Porpyrius Commentary on Epicteus Sales Catalogue p. 15 no. 61
[7]  Sir Thomas Browne -A Life by Reid Barbour pub. OUP 2013
[8]  Renaissance Philosophy - Brian P. Copenhaver & Charles B. Schmitt
[9]  Carl Jung Collected Works Vol. 9 i:149
[10] Plato : All that Matters  Ieuan Williams pub.  Hodder and Stoughton 2013
[11] James Hillman
[12]The Soul's Code - James Hillman pub. Bantam 1997 
[13] Meister Eckhart -Mystical theologian Oliver Davies pub. SPCK 1991 
[14] Religio Medici Part 1:12
[15]  Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 4 chapter 12
[16] The Mystery to a Solution by John T. Irwin pub. John Hopkins University Press 1993
[17] Philo Judaeus Opera  1711 Sales Catalogue p. 1 no. 12
Dionysus the Areopagite Sales Catalogue  p. 1 no. 16
[18]  Mundus Subterraneus pub. Amsterdam 1665 1711 Sales Catalogue page 8 
[19] Christian Morals Part 1:17 citing Timaeus 24e
[20] A Short History of myth Karen Armstrong pub. Cannongate 2005
[21] Christian Morals  Part 1:24 
[22]
The Strategy for Truth Leonard Nathanson pub. Chicago University Press 1967

Bibliography

*Sir Thomas Browne -A Life by Reid Barbour pub. OUP 2013

* The Strategy for Truth Leonard Nathanson pub. Chicago University Press 1967

 * Sir Thomas Browne - The Major Works ed. with an introduction by C.A. Patrides pub. Penguin 1977

* Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans - A brief History  by Charles H. Khan  pub. Hackett 2001

*Plato - A Very Short Introduction Julia Annas pub. OUP 2003

* Plato -Timaeus translated with an introduction by H.D.P. Lee pub. Penguin 1965

*The Soul's Code - James Hillman pub. Bantam 1997

*Renaissance Philosophy - Brian P. Copenhaver & Charles B. Schmitt 

*The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - C.G. Jung C.W. vol 9 Part 1 pub. RKP 1959

*Plato : Ideas that Matters  Ieuan Williams pub. Hodder and Stoughton 2013 

*Atlantis- Lost Lands, Ancient Wisdom Geoffrey Ashe  pub. 1992

*Meister Eckhart -Mystical theologian Oliver Davies pub. SPCK 1991

*The Mystery to a Solution by John T. Irwin pub. John Hopkins University Press 1993 

*A Short History of myth Karen Armstrong pub. Cannongate 2005 


See Also





Books in Browne's Library cited

* Chalcides Timaeus de Plato Trans. Notes J. Meurius 1617  Sales Catalogue p.11 no. 106

* Kircher - Mundus Subterraneus, cum. fig. 2 vol. Amsterdam 1665 S. C. p. 8 no. 92

* Philo Judaeus -De Opfico Mundi  1711 Sales Catalogue p. 1 no. 12

* Dionysus the Areopagite Opera Sales Catalogue  p. 1 no. 16

* Iamblicus - de Mysterriis Aegyptirorum , Chaldaorum Catalogue 16A no.25

* Porphyry - Commentary on Epictetus Sales Catalogue p. 15 no. 61


Browne on Aristotle

Not so long ago Jean de Launoy, a theologian of Paris, published a book on the changing popularity of Aristotle; whence he establishes that that most famous philosopher has been sometimes publicy burned, sometimes restored, now condemned by solemn decrees, then restored again, and in fact undergone eight changes in the same university.

Certainly the early Christians, Justin, Clement, Tertullian, Augustine and many others held opinions contrary to the great man's writings. And today he is bitterly cut to the quick by the moderns and almost at the point of death; so that it seems to me that the peripatetic philosophy is now brought to a standstill and can hardly be rescued, or not even hardly.

But while much is lacking in Aristotle, much wrong, much self-contradictory, yet not a little is valuable. Do not then bid farewell to his entire work; but while you hardly touch the Physics and read the Metaphysics superficially, make much of all the rest and study them unwearingly.

Petrus of Abano and Alexander of Aphrodisias have annotated the Problems of Aristotle industriously; better still Petrus Septalius, a physician of great fame.But while, in a less liberal spirit and not tainted with the new philosophy, he expounds almost everything to the philosopher's mind, often and often he hardly gets to the point and does not satisfy a spirit eager for truth.

So it will be worth the effort to weigh them again, so that the truth and reason of the questions may be better determined and where the old rules fail we may pass to new propositions....

British Museum Sloane Mss 1827

 

Thursday, August 15, 2024

A Browne Index


    


An index to essays (2010-2025) and short posts on the late Renaissance humanist, Christian mystic, Hermetic philosopher, Paracelsian physician and Janus-faced sage of Norwich also known as Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82).

* Bibliography - A Browne bookshelf

 * Introduction to Library-
 

* Individual books in Library -

* Countries -  America  - China   -  Ancient Egypt  -  Japan




* In relationship to -  John Dee  - Della Porta -Goethe  -   Jung  - Kepler - Paracelsus  -  Van Helmont 

* Nature -  Spiders -  Ostrich -  Pelican - Vulture  -  Frog - Elephant -  Peacock feathers

* Psychology  -  'the Theatre of Ourselves'  - Coincidence  - Janus -  On Dreams

* Review - 

* Urn-Burial - 

* Urn and Garden -  








Sunday, May 17, 2020

Helmont might dream himself a bubble




Its only recently that a clearer assessment of the Belgian chemist and scientist, physician and alchemystical philosopher Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579-1644) in science and medicine has been made. Likewise, its only recently that the influence of J.B.van Helmont on the English physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) has been recognised. 

Just as historians only slowly acknowledged the seminal influence which the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) exerted upon the development of medicine during the Renaissance, so too, J. B. van Helmont has long occupied an ambiguous place in intellectual history.

J.B. van Helmont's writings are couched in the language of Renaissance mysticism. His belief in alchemy and magic is in tandem to his rational, scientific enquiries. This has resulted in an unsympathetic attitude towards him by historians of science and his writings labelled as an 'un-scientific' miscellany of medicine, philosophy and alchemy. One leading historian of medicine somewhat resignedly calling him an enigmatic figure.[1]

Quite simply the enigma of J.B. van Helmont rests in the paradox to modern sensibilities of his being defined in near equal measure as much a scientist and physician as religious mystic and 'alchemystical' philosopher. These definitions did not exist in J.B. Helmont's time; himself possessing an entirely holistic and unified view of science, religion, medicine and philosophy.

Throughout his life J.B. van Helmont endured much misfortune. In his youth he gallantly picked up a glove which a lady had dropped only to be infected by scabies from it. He consulted the writings of the famous physician Galen for a remedy but found it ineffective and a sulphur ointment prescription by Paracelsus  successful. He subsequently vowed to reject Galenic medicine and follow Paracelsus instead. J.B.van Helmont toured Europe, including London and worked in Antwerp during a plague epidemic in 1605. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine of the University of Louvain in 1599 but was later denounced by his Alma Mater in 1623 as a heretic through the Spanish authorities occupying Flanders. His unorthodox views resulted in his arrest, trial and imprisonment in 1634 followed by house-arrest for the rest of his life. He almost died from Carbon monoxide poisoning in 1643 and contracted pleurisy in 1644. Van Helmont's good fortune however was to marry an heiress whose wealth enabled him to abandon his onerous medical duties and engage in scientific research for several years.

In essence J.B. van Helmont is a transitional figure in the history of science. Like many other early scientists including Browne, he regarded all science and wisdom to be a gift from God. 

J.B. Helmont was also highly influenced by the so-called 'Luther of Medicine' in his scientific thought and experiments. It was the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus who first proposed that the true purpose of alchemy was to investigate the properties of nature, advocating the 'art of fire' to distil 'quintessences' of mineral and vegetable-life in order to discover new medicines. J.B. Helmont has been defined as the foremost follower of Paracelsus, whilst highly critical of Paracelsian mysticism he nevertheless subscribed to what the Swiss physician termed his 'Spagyric' medicine, the rudimentary beginnings of  iatrochemistry or medical chemistry no less, and as such J.B. van Helmont is credited, alongside the English scientist Robert Boyle (1627-91) as a 'Father of modern chemistry'.

Upon J.B. van Helmont's death in 1644 his son Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614-98/99) randomly collated and edited his father's writings for the publication of Ortus Medicinae, or the 'Dawn of Medicine' in Amsterdam in 1648. An English translation by John Chandler entitled Oriatrike was published in London in 1662. 

In his brilliant and scholarly biographical study of Thomas Browne the American academic Reid Barbour notes Browne is especially keen to include J.B.van Helmont's research on magnetism in the forthcoming second edition of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica in 1650. [2]  Other recent publications on Browne singularly fail to even mention J.B. van Helmont yet alone elaborate on his influence on him. However, scattered throughout his writings there's several references to J.B. van Helmont which suggest that the Norwich-based scientist and physician Thomas Browne held the Belgian scientist and physician  in high regard. It shouldn't be too surprising to discover that Browne took the medical ideas of J.B. van Helmont seriously. Circa 1629 he completed his continental studies at Leiden University in Holland, an educational institute whose reputation for chemical medicine was centred upon J.B. van Helmont's Paracelsian science.

Although none of J.B. van Helmont's writings are listed in the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Browne's library (there's a lapse of almost 30 years from Browne's death until his library contents are auctioned. Not a single one of the books advertised on the Auction Catalogue title-page as 'Books of Sculpture and Painting' ever arrived at the auction-house) Thomas Browne surely had access to Van Helmont's writings. For example, when speculating on the formation of kidney-stones, a disease long prevalent in East Anglia due to its many chalky water-courses, Browne praises Van Helmont, albeit in parenthesis - '('as Helmont excellently declareth').[3] However, like J.B. van Helmont, Browne was also prone to read the 'Book of Nature' through the prism of esoteric schemata, the most elaborate being the microcosm-macrocosm correspondence, or from long-held folk-lore, as here-

'and Helmont affirmeth he could never find the spider and the fly upon the same trees, that is the signs of war and pestilence which often go together' [4]

Because early scientists such as Paracelsus, J.B. van Helmont and Thomas Browne encountered undefinable properties and phenomena in their scientific investigations they each had a propensity for coining and introducing new words, some of which remain in modern language. The word 'alcohol' is credited as originating from Paracelsus and that of 'electricity', amongst hundreds of others, to Browne. J.B.van Helmont's most famous neologism is undoubtedly the word 'gas' derived from the ancient Greek word for chaos. In fact, Van Helmont investigated and categorized a number of gases, including gas from belching, poisonous red gas (NO2) which is formed when aqua fortis (HNO3) acts on silver and sulfurous gas that “flies off” burning sulfur, amongst others. J.B. van Helmont proposed that gas is composed of invisible atoms which can come together by intense cold and condense to minute liquid drops; and that gases can be contained in bodies in fixed form, and set free again by heat, fermentation, or chemical reaction. In relation to combustion, he concluded there were two classes of gas which he named as Gas sylvestre – one that would not burn or support combustion (Carbon Monoxide) and Gas pingue – one that would burn (a combustible gas).

The most well-known of J.B. van Helmont's experiments involved his demonstration that water is the foremost element sustaining life.  He wrote of his famous experiment with a willow tree circa 1620, thus-

"That all plants immediately and substantially stem from the element water alone I have learned from the following experiment. I took an earthen vessel in which I placed two hundred pounds of earth dried in an oven, and watered with rain water. I planted in it a willow tree weighing five pounds. Five years later it had developed a tree weighing one hundred and sixty-nine pounds and about three ounces. Nothing but rain (or distilled water) had been added. The large vessel was placed in earth and covered by an iron lid with a tin-surface that was pierced with many holes. I have not weighed the leaves that came off in the four autumn seasons. Finally I dried the earth in the vessel again and found the same two hundred pounds of it diminished by about two ounces. Hence one hundred and sixty-four pounds of wood, bark and roots had come up from water alone".



Helmont's famous experiment was known to  Browne. He alludes to it when speculating on water's ability to generate growth in The Garden of Cyrus-

'How water it self is able to maintain the growth of Vegetables, and without extinction of their generative or medical vertues; Beside the experiment of Helmont's tree, we have found in some which have lived six years in glasses'.

J.B van Helmont is only one of three 'moderns' who make the cut as worthy of mention in The Garden of Cyrus, the other two 'moderns' who also held in equal measure a rational and mystical view of science named in the discourse are the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) and the Italian esoteric scholar and polymath Giambattista Della Porta (1535-1615).

It was from Paracelsus that J.B. van Helmont evolved his own idea of an 'Archeus' or 'Master Workman' responsible for giving life and form to the human body. In Ortus Medicinae he situated the “archeus” in the upper opening of the stomach. All diseases according to J.B. van Helmont have their seat in the Archeus and every disease, he believed, had a vital principle of it own (archeus) which could be treated by a specific medical-spiritual response. Disease, J.B. van Helmont believed, could be overcome by  pacifying the disturbed Archeus. Medicines, in particular, minerals, targeted the disease and helped the host overcome its archeus. According to J.B. van Helmont-

'A Disease therefore is a certain Being, bred, after that a certain hurtful strange power hath violated the vital Beginning...and by piercing hath stirred up the Archeus unto Indignation, Fury and Fear'.[5]

'Fever is the effort of the chief Archeus to get rid of some irritant, just as local inflammation is the reaction of the local Archeus to some injury'.[6]

J.B.Helmont's contemporary, the Paracelsian physician and alchemist Martin Ruland the Younger (1569-1611) attempts to define the nebulous  term 'Archeus' in his Lexicon alchemiae (1612) thus-

ARCHEUS - is a most high, exalted, and invisible spirit, which is separated from bodies, is exalted, and ascends; it is the occult virtue of Nature, universal in all things, the artificer, the healer. Also Archiatros - supreme physician of Nature, who to every substance and member dispenses in an occult manner, by means of the air, its own individual Archeus. Also the primal Archeus in Nature is a most secret virtue producing all things out of Master, doubtless certainly supported by divine virtue. Or, Archeos is an errant, invisible species, the power and virtue of Nature's healing, the artist and healer of Nature, separating itself from bodies, and ascending from them. Archeus signifies, in addition, the power which reduces the One Substance from Iliaster, and is the dispenser and composer of all things. It individualizes in all things, including human nature.[7]

The medical ideas of J.B.van Helmont are linked to those of Thomas Browne in an astounding observation by the psychologist C.G. Jung (1875-1961).  Writing on the Belgian alchemist Gerard Dorn, Jung unites the Paracelsian/ Helmontian concept of the Archeus with Thomas Browne's medical image of an 'invisible sun'  which blazes at the apotheosis of  Urn-Burial  ('Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us'.) C.G.Jung links Gerard Dorn, the foremost promoter of Paracelsian/Helmontian medicine to Thomas Browne's 'invisible sun' (an image Browne 'borrowed from his reading of Dorn) when stating-

In Dorn's view there is in man an 'invisible sun', which he identifies with the Archeus. This sun is identical with the 'sun in the earth'. The invisible sun enkindles an elemental fire which consumes man's substance and reduces his body to the prima materia.  [8]

As a child J.B. Helmont experienced apocalyptic visions in the cloisters of the Capuchins at Louvain. Devout and pious throughout his life, he was deeply  inspired by Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471) author of the Imitation of Christ which urges the penitent to self-knowledge and a denial of the self for Christ.

The psychological element is ever-present in spiritual affairs and in conjunction with his physiological studies J.B. van Helmont took the workings of the human psyche seriously. Indeed, J.B. Helmont may be credited as an Ur-psychologist, that is, any one of a number of well-educated and isolated individuals, often from the professions of physician or priest, scattered throughout Europe circa 1500-1700 who recognised a correct understanding and interpretation of one's personal dreams to be no small contributing factor towards self-awareness and individuation. To the present-day this spiritual-psychological dimension  remains of paramount importance, in particular,  not only for individual understanding of the self but equally, for the very future of humanity's existence. 'Alchemystical' physician-philosophers such as Paracelsus, J.B. van Helmont and Thomas Browne each engaged in the arduous yet rewarding task of self-realization, J.B. van Helmont declaring-

'Our soul's understanding  of itself, does after a sort, understand all other things, because all other things are in an intellectual manner in the Soul, as in the image of God. Wherefore indeed, the understanding of ourselves, is most exceedingly difficult, ultimate or remote, excellent, profitable, beyond all other things'.[9]

J.B. Helmont was aware of the numinous nature of dreams. In the Judaic Pentateuch, the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, dreams are sanctioned as conduits of revelation from God. The story in the book of Genesis of Joseph and his ability to interpret Pharaoh's dreams was seen as endorsement of divine dreams and the art of interpretation. Using theological symbolism J.B. van Helmont seems to anticipate, along with other Renaissance-era alchemystical philosophers and Ur-psychologists, the existence of the unconscious psyche and its relationship to God when stating-

'In sleep, the whole knowledge of the Apple (i.e. that which obscures the magical powers of pristine man ) doth sometimes sleep: Hence also it is, that our dreams are sometimes Prophetical, and God himself is therefore the nearer unto Man in Dreams, through that effect'. [10]

In his writings J.B.van Helmont recollects a dream which determined his choice to become a physician.  In this dream he saw himself as an empty bubble whose diameter reached from the earth to the heavens. Above the bubble hung a tomb, while below it was the dark abyss, a vision that horrified the young van Helmont. Upon waking he interpreted his dream and of being transformed into a giant bubble as representing his own boastful, vacuous self and a god-given sign that he must pursue the vocation of physician.

Thomas Browne was fascinated by dreams and was able to lucid dream, that is, able to orchestrate the events and action of a dream whilst in a state of dreaming, as he confesses in Religio Medici-

'Yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is fruitful I would chose never to study but in my dreams". [11]

Browne even wrote a short tract On Dreams in which he speculates upon 'symbolical adaptation' in dream interpretation thus-

'Many dreams are made out by sagacious exposition and from the signature of their subjects; carrying their interpretation in their fundamental sense and mystery of  similitude, whereby he that understands upon what natural fundamental every notional dependeth, may by symbolical adaption hold a ready way to read the characters of Morpheus'.

In his tract On Dreams Browne supplies his reader with examples of how dimensions can be greatly exaggerated in dreams,  humorously exclaiming-

'Helmont might dream himself a bubble extending unto the eighth sphere'.

A statement which indicates Browne was familiar with J.B. Helmont's accounts of his mystical experiences as well as his medical and scientific thoughts. Browne himself took an interest in bubbles as seen in his short writing On Bubbles in which he proposes-

'Even man is a bubble if we take his consideration in his rudiments, and consider the vesicular or bulla pulsans wherein begins the rudiment of life.

Ever the subtle thinker, perhaps the strongest evidence of Thomas Browne's interest in J.B. Helmont's science occurs in correspondence to his travel-loving eldest son Edward Browne (1644-1708). Discreetly fishing for an answer Thomas Browne enquires-

'What esteem they have of Van Helmont, in Brabant, his home country ? [12]

In the same letter Thomas Browne also remarks-

'When you were at Amsterdam, I wished you had enquired after Dr.Helvetius who writ Vitulus aureus, and saw projection made, and had pieces of gold to show of it.' [13]

J.B. van Helmont himself believed in the existence of  Philosopher's Stone and  claimed he was once given it by a stranger writing- 

'It was of a colour such as is saffron in it powder yet weighty and shining like unto powdered glass. ....He who first gave the the gold-making powder had likewise also at least as much of it as might be sufficient to change two hundred thousand pounds of gold. For he gave me perhaps half a grain of that powder, and nine ounces and three quarters of quicksilver were thereby transchanged. [14]

Late in his life Browne articulated his critical opinion and estimate of J.B. van Helmont and Paracelsus in his advisory and moralistic Christian Morals  -

'many would be content that some would write like Helmont or Paracelsus; and be willing to endure the monstrosity of some opinions, for divers singular notions requiting such aberrations'. [15]

In other words, in Browne's view, the many original ideas which authors such as Helmont and Paracelsus express exonerate them from the 'monstrous opinions'  which can be found elsewhere in their writings.

There remains one last remarkable connection between J.B. van Helmont and Thomas Browne, seldom, if ever noted before now. It exists in the form of the German translator, scholar of Hebrew and the kabbalah, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-1689). At the request of the kabbalist and wandering hermit Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614-98/99) who had, together with Henry More of the Cambridge Platonists annotated Knorr von Rosenroth's translations of kabbalistic texts, Knorr von Rosenroth, in return for Franciscus van Helmont's favour, helped him translate, edit and publish into Latin his father J.B. van Helmont's writings.

Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-89)

In his relatively short life Christian Knorr von Rosenroth somehow found time to translate Thomas Browne's vast-ranging work of scientific journalism, Pseudodoxia Epidemica totalling over 200,000 words into German, completing this task in 1680 for publication in Frankfurt and Leipzig. Its therefore quite possible that discussion of Thomas Browne's scientific writings could have occurred between Knorr von Rosenroth and J.B. Helmont's eldest son Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont. A large field is yet to be explored in this matter.

In any event Christian Knorr von Rosenroth surely recognised  J.B. van Helmont and Thomas Browne  as sharing values in Paracelsian medicine and scientific thought. Indeed, the Belgian scientist, physician and Christian mystic J.B. Helmont may even lay claim to being  along with Francis Bacon, one of the foremost scientific influences upon the physician-philosopher Thomas Browne. 

Notes

[1] Roy Porter 'The Greatest benefit to Mankind': A medical history of humanity from antiquity to the present. pub. Harper Collins 1999 describes Helmont as enigmatic.
[2] Reid Barbour - Sir Thomas Browne A Life
pub. Oxford University Press 2013
[3] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 2 chapter 4
[4] P.E. Bk. 2 chapter 7
[5] Johannes Baptista van Helmont- Alchemist, physician and philosopher by H. Stanley Redgrove  pub. William Rider and son London 1922
[6] Ibid.
[7] Martin Ruland's Dictionary of alchemy is listed in the 1711 sales auction catalogue as once in Browne's library page 22. no 119
[8] Collected Works of C.G.Jung Volume 14:49
[9] Redgrove 1922
[10] Ibid.
[11] Religio Medici Part 2 Section 11
[12] Correspondence dated September 22nd 1668 to Edward Browne
[13] Ibid.
[14] The Devil's Doctor: Paracelsus and the World of Renaissance Magic and Science pub. Heinemann 2006 by Philip Ball
[15] Christian Morals Part 2 Section 5

Not consulted

The standard, comprehensive of J.B.Helmont, prohibitively priced is-
* Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) Walter Pagel pib.Cambridge University Press 1982

But possibly the most modern interpretation of  J.B. van Helmont yet is-
* An Alchemical Quest for Universal Knowledge: The 'Christian Philosophy' of Jan Baptist Van Helmont  (Studies in Intellectual History, 1550-1700)  Routledge 2016 by Georgiana D. Hedesan
See also -

*    Paracelsus and Sir Thomas Browne
*   Paracelsus and the interpretation of dreams
*   Thomas Browne and the Kabbalah