Lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing.

Although long recognized as a work of World literature, for many Urn-Burial (1658) is neither easy or comfortable to read. With its melancholic meditations on the uncertainty of life, the unknowingness of the human condition, the fragility of  our mortality and  the certainty of death, all couched in splendid flourishes of Baroque oratory, Thomas Browne's philosophical discourse will never be everyone's favourite bedtime reading. 

In addition to its ornate literary style and to modern sensibilities near taboo subject-matter, another stumbling block hindering appreciation of Urn-Burial is that it frequently shifts focus, giving expression to quite different facets of its author. This results in surprising changes of perspective, alternating from the viewpoint of pioneering scholar of comparative religion to that of local historian, to scientist and archaeologist, to antiquarian and Christian moralist, often without any warning to the reader, other than beginning a new paragraph.

In modern times Urn-Burial  has been recognized as closely corresponding to the Nigredo of alchemy. The black despair and melancholy experienced by the adept beginning their quest is encapsulated in  Browne's succinct phrase lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing an expression apt for the suffering of millions world-wide today, anxious about income and future, grieving, ill or depressed in the wake of the current pandemic.

Thomas Browne began his medical career in Norwich in 1637, just a few years before English society was sufficiently polarized to engage in Civil war (1642-49) resulting in an estimated 100,000 deaths. Never one for political controversy, Browne occupied himself with establishing his medical practice in Norwich and in 'snatches of time, medical vacations' with compiling and revising his encyclopedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646),  first published during the English Civil war. 

The very title of Browne's colossal endeavour depicts superstition and erroneous beliefs as if a disease.(Lt. Pseudo false, Doxia Truth, Epidemica widespread occurrence of an infectious disease). The prescription for curing such epidemics of 'vulgar errors' for Browne is the combined medicine of -consultation of the Classical authors of antiquity, empirical experiment, inductive reasoning and collaborative debate with contemporaries. Often engaging in all of these methods in order to ascertain truth, Browne is credited as one of the first to introduce up-to-date scientific journalism to the English reading public as well as examples of scientific hypothesis in the pages of Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

It's in a chapter of Pseudodoxia Epidemica which discusses whether the mythic creature known as  the Basilisk is capable of emitting deadly rays from its eyes that Browne engages in a medical speculation of great importance to our times-

'if Plagues or pestilential Atoms have been conveyed in the Air from distant Regions, if men at a distance have infected each other,........there may proceed from subtler seeds, more agile emanations, which contemn those Laws, and invade at distance unexpected'. [2] 

As a doctor Thomas Browne (1605-82) naturally took an interest in disease. Along with his interest in ancient Greek medicine, primarily the writings of Hippocrates. He also took an interest in ancient Greek mythology. In his medical essay A Letter to a Friend (circa 1656) Browne alludes to the Greek myth of the origin of disease, Pandora and her Box. The Greek myth recounts how Pandora was given the gift of a sealed jar which held within it all the misfortunes for humanity. Her great curiosity overcame her fear of what the jar contained and breaking its seal she released disease, sorrow, conflict and war with only hope remaining inside the jar. The name Pandora means 'All Gifts' both good and bad gifts being bestowed upon Humanity. 

Its whilst alluding to the Greek myth of Pandora and theorizing upon the origin of disease in his A Letter to a Friend that Browne introduces the word 'Pathology' into the English language.

'New Discoveries of the Earth discover new Diseases: for besides the common swarm, there are endemial and local Infirmities proper unto certain Regions, which in the whole Earth make no small number: and if Asia, Africa, and America should bring in their List, Pandora's Box would swell, and there must be a strange Pathology'.

Whether Browne, during his travels in Continental Europe from 1629-32 attending the Universities of Padua in Italy, Montpelier in France and Leiden in Holland, upon hearing of an outbreak of the plague in Milan, steered well clear of visiting the Italian city, or, alternatively, viewed the column erected in Milan informing of the crime and punishment of those believed to have started the outbreak, is not known. However, the Milan plague was still in Browne's memory in his old age, its mentioned in his bizarre inventory of lost, rumoured and imaginary books, paintings and objects known as Museum Clausum (c. 1675) in the sinister fantasy item of -

* Pyxis Pandoræ, or a Box which held the Unguentum Pestiferum, which by anointing the Garments of several persons begat the great and horrible Plague of Milan. [3]

As a Royalist Browne must have been under intense psychological distress during the years of the Protectorate of Cromwell (1650-59) and his Urn-Burial has been described as a threnody to the waste of human life during the English civil war. Prompted by the accidental unearthing of several burial urns in a Norfolk field just as its secondary title A Discourse upon the supulchrall urnes lately found in Norfolk, informs, Urn-Burial opens with dazzling literary showmanship  naming the main themes of the discourse, notably Time and Memory, Death and the after-life. 

In his scientific, spiritual and mystical analysis of death and the after-life, Browne first surveys the burial rites and customs of various nations throughout history. His early comparative religion skills references the Chinese, Persian, Roman, Greek and Egyptian civilizations, the Moslem, Hindi and Judaic religions, as well as making one of the very earliest references to the Zoroastrian religion in Western literature. 

Like his near contemporary, Athanasius Kircher (1602-80), Browne recognized the syncretic nature of religious symbols, but just like Kircher, he was often misguided in his comparative religion studies.

The unknowingness of the human condition is illustrated in striking medical imagery thus- 

'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 Plato's den, and are but Embryon Philosophers'.

Closely related to Browne's medical imagery, there is also what might be termed opiate imagery in Urn-Burial. Widely in use since the sixteenth century, the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) was among the earliest advocates of opium. Such was its widespread usage in the seventeenth century that the so-called 'Father of English medicine' Dr. Thomas Sydenham (1624-89) whose books are well-represented in Browne’s library,  once declared- 

'Among the remedies which has pleased the Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.'

Observations upon dosage and effects of opium can be found in Browne's commonplace notebooks whilst  knowledge of its recreational usage with sex can be found in Pseudodoxia Epidemica 

'since Opium it self is conceived to extimulate unto venery, and the intent and effect of eating Opium, is not so much to invigorate themselves in coition, as to prolong the Act, and spin out the motions of carnality'. [4]

In Urn-Burial the poppy flower, Opium and Oblivion are invariably interconnected. 'But the iniquity of Oblivion blindly shaketh her poppy' for example. In a heady fusion of philosophical stoicism, medical imagery and empirical observation, Browne declares of the human condition and also perhaps of the psychological effects of opium -

'There is no antidote against the Opium of Time, which temporally considereth all things.'

Its  been proposed that one reason why the prose of Urn-Burial  and its twin The Garden of Cyrus, in particular the transcendent prose of the fifth and last chapter of each Discourse is unlike any other seventeenth century English literature, may have been from Browne writing under the influence of opium. As a physician Browne was licenced to obtain Opium, the only available painkiller available in his day. During the decade of the Protectorate of Cromwell (1650-59) and the highly uncertain days which it engendered, it may have been very tempting for Royalist supporters, particularly those of an empirical nature such as Browne, to reach into the medicine cabinet.

Urn-Burial also features a short, but detailed description of Browne's single, credited scientific discovery, the formation of the waxy substance which coagulates upon the body fat of a corpse, named as adipocere. 

'In a Hydropicall body ten years buried in a Church-yard, we met with a fat concretion, where the nitre of the Earth, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulated large lumps of fat, into the consistence of the hardest castile-soap: whereof part remaineth with us'.

Burial, putrefaction and interment are all synonymous with the Nigredo stage of alchemy defined by C.G. Jung thus - 

'the original half animal state of unconsciousness was known to the adept as the Nigredo, chaos, confused mass, as inextricable interweaving of the soul with the body'. [5] 

 According to Jung-

'the nigredo not only brought decay, suffering, death, and the torments of hell visibly before the eyes of the alchemist, it also cast the shadow of melancholy over his solitary soul. In the blackness of his despair he experienced.. grotesque images which reflect the conflict of opposites into which the researcher's curiosity had led him. His work began with a katabasis, a journey to the underworld as Dante also experienced it'. [6] 

Urn-Burial alludes to several Soul journeys of classical literature including Homer's Odyssey in which the wily hero Ulysses descends into the Underworld, Macrobius's commentary on the planetary Soul journey Scipio's Dream and the Greek philosopher Plato's myth of Er, as well as Dante's Inferno. The religious mystic in Browne knew that each one of us from birth, conscious or not of the fact, embarks upon a soul-journey with Death as a final port of call.

The Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung (1875-1961) freed modern-day scholarship from many of the prejudices and misunderstandings which have hindered study of western esoteric traditions. Today, the thematic concerns of Urn-Burial can confidently be identified as matching the nigredo of alchemy and may even be the template upon which Browne modeled his discourse upon. Urn-Burial's counterpart, The Garden of Cyrus reinforces this interpretation for its opening pages muse upon paradise, a frequent symbol of the albedo or whitening in the alchemical opus succeeding the Nigredo.

C.G. Jung  states- 'As we all know, science began with the stars, and mankind discovered in them the dominants of the unconscious, the "gods," as well as the curious psychological qualities of the zodiac: a complete projected theory of human character'.  [7]   

As the most remote planet known to the ancients, Saturn was believed to be a cold, heavy planet, qualities which were confirmed millennia later by modern science. In the western esoteric traditions of alchemy and astrology, Saturn is associated with restriction, contraction, limitation and melancholy. As the ruler of isolation and quarantine, Saturn is the god of lock-down par excellence.  'Old Father Time' depicted with his scythe as the Grim Reaper is a variant upon symbolism associated with Saturn.

Originally an Italian agricultural god, other implements associated with Saturn include the pruning-hook,  spade and the hour-glass, as well as the oar for its slow, regular strokes which, like the ticking of a clock,  propel a boat through time.

Positive aspects of Saturn's symbolic attributes include the highest insight of the scholar, spiritual revelation and the crystallization of ideas. 

 

Interest and knowledge of astrology and alchemy along with planetary symbolism advanced considerably during the Renaissance. Browne's era, the seventeenth century is considered to be the Golden Age of alchemy, its long decline beginning at the century's close. 

In his spiritual testament Religio Medici (1643) Thomas Browne candidly confesses-

‘If there be any truth in Astrology, I may outlive a Jubilee, as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn, nor hath my pulse beat thirty years’. [8]

Like many thinkers and artists during the Renaissance, Thomas Browne was able to identify with the psychological aspects of planetary symbolism, stating in Religio Medici - 

'I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me'. [9] 

Although often associated with melancholy, Saturn like Mercury, was also associated with transformation, and the two alchemical 'gods' are frequently linked together in western esoteric tradition literature and iconography. Because of its powers of transformation Saturn was also considered by alchemist and hermetic philosopher alike, to be a touchstone of the alchemical art as much as Mercury or Hermes, the more commonly associated 'deity' of alchemy. Hermetic themes preoccupy much of Urn-Burial's counterpart, The Garden of Cyrus, a literary work which is replete with planetary symbolism. 

Its interesting to note in passing that Browne's Saturnine characteristics seem to have appealed to the German author, translator and UEA academic, W. G Sebald (1944-2001). Meditations about Browne and his prose weave throughout W.G. Sebald's much admired hybrid work The Rings of Saturn (1995 English translation 1998).

The woodcut reproduced in the Theatrum Chemicum (above) is a symbolic illustration of the Nigredo of alchemy. The adept, seen encased within a bubble has the two great luminaries, the Sun and Moon, along with the five planets above him. He is depicted as under the influence of the black star, Saturn. A raven, of the Corvid family of birds, alights upon his stomach while two angels keep watch over him. 

Consisting of five folio volumes the Theatrum Chemicum (1613) was the most comprehensive anthology of alchemical writings in the seventeenth century and the handbook of many a would-be hermetic philosopher. Both C.G. Jung and Thomas Browne owned an edition of the Theatrum Chemicum. Isaac Newton filled the margins of his copy with annotations. [10]

The woodcut illustration of the Nigredo was copied and reproduced in countless editions of alchemy until the 18th century. It must have fascinated C.G.Jung for he reproduced it in his collected works twice. Highly apt as lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, it wouldn't have been totally out of place as a frontispiece for Urn-Burial.  

The first volume of the Theatrum Chemicum  (Theatre of Chemistry) features over 400 pages of writings by the Belgian physician Gerhard Dorn (c. 1530 - c. 1584). The foremost promoter of Paracelsian alchemy, Dorn devised his own planetary symbolism in order to express his psychological insights, including that of an  'invisible sun'. We can be confident that Browne read the Theatrum Chemicum closely, he appropriated Dorn's planetary symbolism of an 'invisible Sun' for his own purposes, featuring it at the apotheosis of Urn-Burial as the mysterious life-force we each possess. In a high flourish of Baroque oratory Browne declaims- 

'But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us'....

A major theme of Urn-Burial is the futility of the endeavour to be remembered after death, especially through funerary monuments, including the earliest and most spectacular, the pyramids of ancient Egypt. Thomas Browne did not need to look far from his doorstep for ostentatious displays of vain-glory or 'pompous in the grave' monuments. 

Though little known, the city of Norwich is home to one of the world's largest and finest collections of funerary monuments. Erected by various civic dignitaries, Norwich's surviving monuments are evidence of the great wealth which it once generated as an important European trading City. Browne would have had opportunity to see these extravagant and costly monuments, mostly sculpted from marble stone, some of which are adorned to saturation point with obscure and learned religious symbols which the City's merchant mayors loaded onto them, seemingly in competition with each other. But it is just as Browne repeatedly stresses in Urn-Burial, the dignitaries who wanted their names to be remembered and their monuments admired, are now long forgotten and their monuments are housed behind locked or restricted access doors of  mainly disused or redundant churches. It was only as recently as 2012 that the source of the Layer monument's (below) iconography was identified. A wealth of religious symbolism, some of which is esoteric, remains to be studied on the funerary monuments of the medieval churches of Norwich. Photographs and details of Norwich funerary monuments are featured throughout this essay.

 

As great a religious mystic as Julian of Norwich or Meister Eckhart, Thomas Browne was well-aware of altered states of spiritual consciousness, naming several at the conclusion of  Urn-Burial thus-

'And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, extasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss 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'.

Much of Browne's mysticism rests in his highly original proper name symbolism along with the plexiformed construction and relationship of his two 1658 discourses. Although appearing identical, each being prefaced with a dedicatory epistle and consisting of five chapters, Browne's twin Discourses, not unlike two side-by-side white, crystalline substances, once tasted are found to differ sharply; Urn-Burial is discovered to be the bitter salt of  Stoicism, a sprinkling of which is essential for spiritual well-being in the face of illness or disease, death and the grave.  In complete contrast, the sweetness of The Garden of Cyrus with its playful delight in nature, is written in a literary style not unlike a hyperactive sugar rush.  

A large part of esoteric schemata involves correspondences and polarities or opposites. Together the diptych discourses display polarity in theme, imagery and style. (Browne is credited as introducing the very word 'Polarity' into the English language). It was Frank Huntley who first advanced the interpretation that Browne's Discourses simultaneously progress in sequence from the Grave to the Garden, mirror each other in imagery, such as darkness and light, and are circular with Cyrus concluding Oroboros-like returning to night, sleep and darkness. [11]

A plethora of opposites exist between the two Discourses including and this list is far from exhaustive - Earth and Heaven, Grave and Garden, Accident and Design, Darkness and Light, Doubt and Certainty, Death and Life, Ephemeral and Eternal, Time and Space, Microcosm and Macrocosm.  

Contemplation of the body and soul in Urn-Burial gives way to a preoccupation with ideas associated with the mind and Spirit in The Garden of Cyrus. In terms of planetary symbolism Urn-Burial is strongly Saturnine with its theme of Time while The Garden of Cyrus has Space as its template and is utterly Mercurial in its communication of esoteric revelations. Even stylistically the two Discourse differ, the slow-paced, Baroque oratory of Urn-Burial's primary appeal is to ear its sonorous prose is best appreciated read aloud. In complete contrast the sensory organ of the eye and the visual in design, pattern and shape is prominent throughout the hasty, excited prose of Cyrus. 

Given Browne's deep interest in the esoteric we cannot overlook C.G.Jung's observation that the opposites and their union was the chief preoccupation of alchemists. Jung's study of alchemy led him to believe that the opposites are one of the most fruitful sources of psychic energy and for him their union played a decisive role in the alchemical process stating -'the "alchemystical" philosophers made the opposites and their union one of the chiefest objects of their work'. [12] The resultant synergy and unconscious associations for the reader between the two Discourses may well be Browne's literary concept of the Philosopher's Stone.

The psychological element in Browne's writings was admired by the poet Coleridge who declared of him that he, 'added to the consciousness hidden worlds within worlds' The Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung when introduced to Browne's declaration in his Religio Medici that- There is all Africa and her prodigies in us was deeply moved and immediately wrote it down. Understanding of the relationship between the two doctors Browne and Jung, is a rich, yet little explored field. Both naturally held a deep understanding of the human condition acquired from their profession, and both knew that with suffering comes spiritual growth.  Browne's Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus as well as his A Letter to a Friend were all written as condolences for bereaved patrons. 

Browne describes the blessings of not knowing the future and the relationship between memory, suffering and self-preservation  in Urn-Burial thus -

'Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions'.

Writing currently at a time of great sorrow and potentially in the near future of great anger, strife and conflict if the consequences of the Pandemic and the socio-economic inequalities it has highlighted throughout the world are not resolved, C.G. Jung reminds us that -

'Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness'. [13] 

The dark, sombre and gloomy half of Browne's literary diptych speaks for our times and for all times. The worthy doctor gently draws to our attention to the fact that - 'the certainty of death is attended with uncertainties, in time, manner, places', and of how little we know of ourselves, and how unlikely it is we will be remembered beyond a generation or two at most. Our days are finite and numbered and the inescapable port of call on our soul-journey is death he reminds us, in ornate, baroque prose. 

Browne's Urn-Burial is a high watermark in English prose. Acknowledged as a work of World Literature, its pages, as countless readers throughout generations have discovered, are a valuable source of wisdom.  Reading Urn-Burial today is a timely reminder of how vulnerable we are to the invisible and unseen, and of how temporal our lives are; something which the devout Norwich physician seldom, if ever, needed reminding of.

Notes

[1 ] The great plague of Milan in 1630 was alleged to have been started by a Milanese barber and the Commissioner of Public Health. They were executed and a column was erected in Milan in August 1630 informing of their crime.  

[2] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 3 chapter 7 of  'On the Basilisk'.

[3] Miscellaneous tract 13  item 24 of Antiquities and Rarities of several sorts in Museum Clausum (circa 1675)

[4] Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 8 chapter 7

[5] Collected Works  Vol. 14:696

[6] C. W.  Vol.14: 93

[7] C.W. Vol. 12:346. 

[8] Religio Medici Part 2 :11

[9] Religio Medici Part 2 :6 

[10] The Theatrum Chemicum is listed in the 1711 Sales Catalogue of Browne Library on page 25 no. 124  as 5 vols. Strasbourg 1613

[11] Frank Huntley Sir Thomas Browne: A Biographical and Critical Study, pub. Ann Arbour 1962 

[12] CW 8:414 and CW 12: 557 and CW.  vol. 14 Foreword 

[13] C.W 14: 330

Books consulted 

* Reid Barbour - Sir Thomas Browne A Life pub. Oxford University Press 2013

* Thomas Browne: Selected Writings edited and with an introduction by Kevin Killeen pub.Oxford          University Press 2014

Images

*Top - Woodcut, the Nigredo Vol. 4 Theatrum Chemicum (1613) 

* Death wearing a Crown (Corona) Joseph Paine Monument (1673), St. Gregory's, Norwich 

* Detail of allegorical figure of Time from the Sotherton Monument (1611), Saint Andrew's, Norwich.

*  Woodcut, the Nigredo Vol. 4 Theatrum Chemicum (1613)

* The Layer Monument (1608) St.John the Baptist, Maddermarket, Norwich

* SCIOLTA  (Freed) Allegorical image of the soul released from the cage of the body.  Suckling Monument  (1616) St. Andrew's Norwich 

* 4th edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica with first publication of Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus appended.

Recommended Listening

Icelandic composer Johann Johannson (1968-2018) is still missed in the music world. 

His song 'The Sky's gone dim and the Sun is Black' could not be more nigredo in mood.

The English composer William Alwyn (1905-85) was a prolific film-score composer who had a life-long love of the writings of Sir Thomas Browne. His 5th Symphony entitled Hydriotaphia is based upon his reading of Browne  and was first performed in Norwich in 1973.

Stevie Wonder's  Saturn (1976) with lyrics  -  

We can't trust you when you take a stand/

With a gun and bible in your hand/ 

Saying, Give us all we want or we'll destroy.

Links to Wikipedia entries on  Nigredo -  Theatrum Chemicum - Gerhard Dorn

This essay with thanks to Dr. E. Player.

 In Memoriam  Richard Paul Faulkner (1958-2020)

Stargazing with Dr. Browne

The physician-philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) occupies a unique place in Western intellectual history. The age in which he lived, the greater part of the seventeenth century, has been described as a century of transition and one of fundamental change. Predominantly religious in outlook in its opening, it was scientific in perspective by its end. Sir Thomas Browne's response to this seismic shift in Western consciousness is one of balanced equilibrium; neither unreservedly advocating advancement of the new science, nor renouncing of his life-long interest in esoteric and Hermetic ways of thinking. As one critic noted - 

'to the student of the history of ideas in its modern sense of the inter-relation of philosophy, science, religion and art, Browne is of great importance'. [1] 

Browne himself seems to have been aware of his Janus-like place in intellectual history when confessing in Religio Medici (1643) - 

'In Philosophy where truth seems double-faced there is no man more paradoxical than myself’.[2] 

Browne’s ‘paradoxical philosophy’ is exemplified in his appreciation of the new science of astronomy alongside a more than casual interest in the esoteric art of astrology ; subjects which for centuries co-existed but which began to go their quite separate ways in his life-time. Remarks and observations upon astronomy as well as astrology can be found in each and every book by the Norwich physician-philosopher.

Browne proclaims his knowledge of astronomy in his Religio Medici, revealing himself as someone who doesn’t always suffer fools gladly, declaring-

'I know the names, and somewhat more, of all the constellations in my Horizon, yet I have seen a prating Mariner that could only name the Pointers and the North Star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole Sphere above me'. [3]

The newly-qualified physician also informs his reader in Religio Medici that -

'I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me'. [4] 

and - ‘If there be any truth in Astrology, I may outlive a Jubilee, as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn, nor hath my pulse beat thirty years’. [5]

In these characteristic fusions of medical and scientific imagery, Browne seems concerned with a highly-significant approaching astrological event in his life, the so-called 'Saturn Return' of astrology, a strong, though little commented upon incentive for his putting pen to paper in order to write his spiritual testament and psychological self-portrait. 

In  astrology Saturn is a malefic planet of restriction, contraction, limitation and melancholy. The astrological term of the Saturn return occurs when the planet Saturn returns to the same place it occupied at a person's birth.  The influence of the Saturn return is considered to start in the person's late twenties, notably from the age of 27 until around 30. Astrologers believe that when Saturn "returns" to the same degree in its orbit it occupied at the time of birth, a person crosses over a major threshold and enters the next stage of life. Psychologically, the first Saturn return is seen as the time of reaching full adulthood, and being faced with adult challenges and responsibilities. With the second Saturn return, full maturity occurs. And with the third and usually final return, a person enters wise old age. These periods are estimated to occur at the ages of 27-31, 56-60 and 84-90. 

Browne’s subsequent publication, the encyclopaedic endeavour Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72) was a vanguard work of scientific journalism which went through 6 editions in his life-time.  Translated into several languages it earned its author European fame. The bulk of Browne’s science can be found in its pages, including experiments with magnetism and static electricity as well as numerous examples of ‘occular observation’ along with introducing hypothesis and deductive reasoning to the general reading public. Browne's major contribution to the English Scientific Revolution has often been under-estimated. Pseudodoxia Epidemica was respected and inspirational to a whole generation of younger English scientists who increasingly did not work empirically 'in the field’ as much as engage in abstract reasoning, as Newton’s discoveries demonstrated. 

A somewhat simplistic analogy of Browne’s place in the English Scientific Revolution can be made in the form of a circuit of a  relay race. Browne receives and firmly  grasps the baton from the early English scientist Francis Bacon (1561-1626) heeding Bacon’s exhortation of 'ocular observation’ along with rational deduction, as illustrated throughout the pages of his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Indeed, the opening lines of its address ‘To the Reader’ echoes the very same words as those found in an essay by Bacon.[6] 

Browne is fast off the blocks while all around him are engaged in the horrors of the English Civil war (1642-49) and is responsible in passing on the baton of scientific enquiry from Bacon to a number of  men of science and learning who engaged in correspondence with him, these include Robert Boyle, Christopher Merret, Henry Power, Henry Oldenburg, John Evelyn, Walter Charleton and William Dugdale amongst many others. Several of these correspondents became participating members of the Royal Society. The Royal Society’s endorsement of scientific enquiry and  public debate passes the baton on for one final leg to its most illustrious member, Isaac Newton, who mathematically deduced the laws of gravity. In Newton’s discoveries the team-work of several generations of English scientists collectively achieve the victory of first past the post in the seventeenth century scientific revolution. 

In essence however, Browne, like his mentor Francis Bacon, held fast to a double theory that, while sense and experience are the sources of our knowledge of the natural world, faith and inspiration are the sources of our knowledge of the supernatural, of God, and of the rational soul. 

A fruitful comparison can also be made between Browne and the astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). Kepler’s life like Browne’s, spanned a watershed in scientific thought. The German astronomer augmented his rational inductive science and the astronomical discoveries of Galileo with Neoplatonic and Pythagorean ideas. Kepler’s astronomical discoveries were as much structured upon precise mathematical calculation as deeply held theological beliefs and God-given revelation; his scientific perspective, not unlike Browne’s, were a complex fusion of Christian awe of the Creation, along with precise analysis as well as concepts originating from the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Pythagoras. Whilst Kepler extolled the virtues of the number six in his study of snowflakes, the number five is celebrated in Browne’s discourse The Garden of Cyrus. 

Like his near exact contemporary Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Kepler believed in two, quite contrasting sources of knowledge, only one of which is credited nowadays. In addition to natural forms of knowledge obtained through reason, hypothesis, deduction and experiment, he also believed in supernatural sources of knowledge such as astrology. Even the scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1726) it is now known, believed in these two kinds of knowledge, namely natural and supernatural. 

Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion were fundamental contributions to Newton's development of a theory of gravity, whilst his strong astrological inclinations were responsible for introducing the aspect of the Quincunx to denote planets 150 degrees apart. Unsurprisingly, Kepler’s books are well-represented in Browne’s library. [7]

As with Kepler, the seventeenth century Norwich physician-philosopher just won’t fit neatly into tight, restrictive 21st definitions, no matter how much certain science journalists attempt to do so. [8]

Browne's beliefs, paradoxical to modern sensibilities are evident in the fact that in Pseudodoxia Epidemica he not  demonstrates an understanding of astronomy in conjunction to ideas on astrological correspondences. Thus its possible for him to make the astronomical observation-

'For if we consult the Doctrine of the sphere, and observe the ascension of the Pleiades, which maketh the beginning of Summer, we shall discover that in the latitude of 40, these stars arise in the 16 degree of Taurus; but in the latitude of 50, they ascend in the eleventh degree of the same sign, that is, 5 days sooner'. [9] 

as well as the astrological speculation -  

'since the natures of the fixed Stars, are astrologically differenced by the Planets, and are esteemed Martial or Jovial, according to the colours whereby they answer these Planets; why although the red Comets do carry the portensions of Mars, the brightly-white should not be of the Influence of Jupiter or Venus, answerably unto Cor Scorpii and Arcturus; is not absurd to doubt'. [10]

Its also in Pseudodoxia Epidemica that the first recorded usage of the word ‘Selenography’ occurs, amongst numerous words introduced by Browne into the English language. Although  its not listed in the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward’s libraries, Browne must surely have perused a copy of the Polish astronomer Hevelius’ Atlas of the moon, Selenographia (1647) in order for him to state-  

'And therefore the learned Hevelius in his accurate Selenography, or description of the Moon, hath well translated the known appellations of Regions, Seas and Mountains, unto the parts of that Luminary: and rather then use invented names or humane denominations, with witty congruity hath placed Mount Sinai, Taurus, Mæotis Palus, the Mediterranean Sea, Mauritania, Sicily, and Asia Minor in the Moon'. [11]

The Copernican heliocentric universe seems to be somewhat reluctantly accepted by Browne in Religio Medici when stating - 'I conclude therefore and say, there is no happiness under (or as Copernicus will have it, above) the Sun'. [11b]

Galileo's great work of astronomy Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo (1635) advocating the Copernican heliocentric universe, along with its English translation known as The Two World Systems (1661) is in Browne's library, but the Polish astronomer's great work is not to be found listed as once upon his library-shelves.  However, an edition of the Dutch astronomer Christiaan van Huygens (1629-95) study of the planet Saturn, the first to accurately detect and describe the planet's ring-system, Systema Saturniun (pub.1659) is listed as once upon his library shelves, suggesting that the Norwich doctor kept up to date with astronomical discoveries. 

Urn-Burial

Nowhere in his collected writings is there greater evidence of Browne's subscribing to the tenets of Hermetic philosophy than in his diptych discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Never intended by their author to be separated, a common modern-day publishing error, together they are structured upon a fundamental tenet of Hermeticism, namely the myriad of correspondences between Microcosm and Macrocosm. The subject of Urn-Burial being the small, little world of mortal man, the Microcosm, whilst The Garden of Cyrus concerns itself with the universal and eternal, the Macrocosm. 

A number of polarities involving truth, imagery and symbolism can be detected in Browne's diptych discourses, among them (and this list is far from exhaustive) - unknowingness and revelation, Darkness and Light, along with symbolism of the tomb/womb, and the Grave and Garden. Their plexiformed relationship  often works through unconscious association upon the reader. Together their respectives themes of Time and Space form a mandala-like unity. Even stylistically they are antithetical to each other. The baroque flourishes and slow, stately prose of  Urn-Burial is stylistically far removed from the breathless and experimental, Mannerist in concept, numerological preoccupations of The Garden of Cyrus.

Several of Browne's amateur hobbies are featured in the Discourses, notably antiquarianism and archaeology in Urn-Burial, whilst optics and botany are prominent in The Garden of  Cyrus. Each  discourse also includes remarks and observations upon astronomy and astrology. (Incidentally, the word ‘polarity’ is yet another word introduced into the English language by Browne).

The theme of the unknowingness of the human condition is amplified in Urn-Burial in a passage on the astronomical phenomena of newly discovered stars and sunspots, detected by ‘Perspectives’, as telescopes were once known as. The new discoveries of astronomy revealed to those living in the seventeenth century that the Universe may be neither as fixed nor as stable as once believed by the ancient world of Ptolemaic astronomy. 

'whereof beside Comets and new Stars, perspectives begin to tell tales. And the spots that wander about the Sun, with Phaetons favour, would make clear conviction'.

Browne’s knowledge of astronomy was sufficiently advanced to know that one face of the moon,  the so-called  dark side of the moon, is permanently invisible to human eyes -

.’.....while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moon have but a polary life, and must pass half their days in the shadow of that Luminary'.

The apotheosis of Urn-Burial includes an example of Browne's unique astral symbolism,  the learned Norwich physician-philosopher declaiming -

'Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us'.

Besides being a fine example of Browne’s frequent usage of the literary device of parallelism, that is, stating the same thing twice contrastingly, this superb fusion of Browne’s scientific, spiritual and psychological learning deserves elaboration. The idea of an ‘invisible sun’ can be found in the writings of the Belgian physician Gerard Dorn (1530-84) the foremost promoter of the ideas of the alchemist Paracelsus and whose principal works can be found in the vast compendium Theatrum Chemicum  [12] The notion of an 'invisible sun’ can be traced even further back in time to the source of much Christian mysticism, that of Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, a Christian theologian and philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century CE. 

Perhaps one of the most accessible books in recent years on the beginnings of Western science is Philip Ball’s, ‘Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything’ (2013). Those wishing to understand the beginnings of modern-day Scientific enquiry and the vital influence which Hermeticism wielded in its development are recommended to consult its pages. For example, Philip Ball notes of the Elizabethan mathematician and magus John Dee (1527-1608) whose eldest son Arthur Dee (b. Manchester 1572 d. Norwich 1651) was a close friend of Browne’s -

 ‘Like Kepler, Galileo and later Newton, Dee held that the secrets of the world were at root mathematical and geometrical’ and crucially, ‘we have been encouraged to divorce mathematical and geometrical reasoning from its strong Renaissance associations with magic’. [13] Philip Ball’s remarks on Dee are equally applicable to Browne’s own scientific perspective, not least in the transcendent geometry and ‘mystical mathematics’ in the discourse The Garden of Cyrus.   

The Garden of Cyrus

No literary work of Browne’s demonstrates his esoteric approach to science better than The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Its primary objective is advocation, via the Quincunx pattern, of God as a skillful geometrician and the intelligent Designer of the universe. Browne’s quinary quest cites examples of the Quincunx, amongst other inter-related symbols including the lattice pattern, the figure of decussation X and the number five, in subjects as diverse as - Biblical scholarship, Egyptology, comparative religion, especially the Bembine Tablet of Isis, mythology, ancient world plantations and gardening, geometry, including the Archimedean solids, sculpture, numismatics, architecture, paving-stones, battle-formations, optics, including the camera obscura, zoology, ornithology, the kabbalah, astrology, astronomy and not least numerous botanical  observations which anticipate modern-day studies in genetics, germination, generation and heredity.

The Discourse opens dramatically with a dazzling fusion of comparative religion, optical imagery and cosmology  -

'That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day When the diffused light and shooting rays of those Luminaries contracted into orbs’.

There's a generous amount of highly original astral symbolism sprinkled throughout the pages of The Garden of Cyrus, while mention of astronomical constellations, in conjunction with Browne’s subtle humour can be found in the opening of the Discourse’s central, third chapter-

'Could we satisfy ourselves in the position of the lights above, or discover the wisdom of that order so invariably maintained in the fixed Stars of heaven; Could we have any light, why the stellar part of the first mass, separated into this order, that the Girdle of Orion should ever maintain its line, and the two Stars in Charles's Wain never leave pointing at the Pole-Star, we might abate the Pythagorical Music of the Spheres, the sevenfold Pipe of Pan; and the strange Cryptography of Gaffarel in his Starry Book of Heaven....'

But not to look so high as Heaven or the single Quincunx of the Hyades upon the head of Taurus....

In a literary work jam-packed with esoteric references, Browne's numerological quest can be seen to endorse the teachings of the seminal scholar Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) who was responsible for re-introducing Pythagorean 'mystical mathematics' to Renaissance Europe, advocating-  

'By number, a way is had, to the searching out and understanding of everything able to be known'. 

In many ways The Garden of Cyrus is a highly-condensed compendium of esoteric topics which fascinated Browne. It includes the astrological speculation-  

'Under what abstruse foundation Astrologers do Figure the good or bad Fate from our Children, in a good Fortune, or the fifth house of their Celestial Schemes. Whether the Egyptians described a Star by a Figure of five points, with reference unto the five Capital aspects, whereby they transmit their Influences, or abstruser Considerations ?'

The same curious mixture of  a critical belief in  astrology and  an awareness of the discoveries of astronomy occurs in Browne's posthumous collection of short essays unimaginatively entitled by  its literary executor as Christian Morals (1716). 

In Christian Morals (circa 1670 pub. post. 1716) Browne introduces into English language the astronomical description of stars as seen in the Milky Way as 'nebulous’ and 'lacteous’, declaring -

'numerous numbers must be content to stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in their generations'. [14]  

Browne's cosmological speculations led him to the profound observation that - 'The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity'. [15]

Its also in Christian Morals that Browne’s ambiguous relationship to astrology can be detected. He’s highly critical of natal astrology when declaiming -

'Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults, nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy Follies'.  [16]

And effectively demolishes the claims of the astrological birth-chart in his sharp observation - ‘for some are Astrologically well-disposed who are morally highly viscous’. [17]

However, far from entirely dismissing the esoteric art, Browne also speculates -

'If we rightly understood the Names whereby God calleth the Stars, if we knew his Name for the Dog-Star, or by what appellation Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn obey his Will, it might be a welcome accession unto Astrology, which speaks of great things, and is fain to use  Greek and Barbaric systems'.[18]

A quite emphatic statement by Browne demonstrating his critical belief in astrology can be seen in his stating in Christian Morals -

'And therefore the Wisdom of Astrologers, who speak of future things, hath wisely softened the severity of their Doctrines; and even in their sad predictions, while they tell us of inclination not coaction from the Stars, they Kill us not with Stygian Oaths and merciless necessity, but leave us hopes of evasion'.  

(Part 3: 16)

Nor can one omit mention of  a couplet found in Browne's Commonplace notebooks-

'Who will not commend the wit of astrology ?

Venus born out the sea hath her exaltation in Pisces.'

Browne kept abreast and well-informed of the latest scientific discoveries throughout his life. Astronomy seems to have been of great interest to him in his later years. Writing to his eldest son Edward Browne (1644-1708) resident in Rome on his travels, he confirms of their joint eye-witnessing -

'I see the little comet or blazing star every clear evening, the last time I observed it about 42 degrees of height, about 7 o’ clock, in the constellation of Cetus, or the whale, in the head thereof; it moveth west and northly, so that it moveth towards Pisces or Linum Septentrionale pisces. Ten degrees is the utmost extent of the tail...That which I saw in 1618 began in Libra, and moved northward, ending about the tail of Ursa Major; it was far brighter than this, and the tail extended 40 degrees, lasted little above a month. This now seen hath lasted above a month already, so that I believe from the motion that it began in Eridanus or Fluvius'.  [19]

He even considers acquiring astronomical instruments, writing to Edward Browne-

'..some that have had them tell me there is account made of some kind of spectacles without glasses, and made by a little trunk or case to admit the species with advantage. ....I hear such instruments are made and sold in London; and some tell me they have had them here. Enquire after them, and where they are made, and send a pair, as I remember there is no great art in the making thereof'.  [20]

However, although his eye-sight seems as sharp as ever, his advanced years are now of little help for stargazing, writing to Edward -

'The stream or tail of the comet was very long, when I saw it, in a clear  night, and I believe it was the same night when you saw it,  at St. Albans ; but the weather was so piercing cold, that I  could not endure to stand in it, otherwise I might have taken the altitude of the star or head of the comet, and then  reckoned the length of the tail to our vertical point, and then, allowing for the altitude, I might have seen how much  of ninety degrees the tail took up ; as, if the altitude were 30 degrees, the tail, coming to the vertex, must be sixty degrees extended'. [21]

Comets remain  of interest to Browne, when writing to Edward Browne, less than two years before his death -

'The news letters mentioned it, but to little or no purpose, or any information. We have had somewhat cloudy or foggy evenings, so that we hear no more of it, and this day was clear and frosty, and the sun set very bright and red, but we could not see a star, it was so misty this night, while I am writing, which is between seven and eight o'clock. I never saw a large and very long tail of a comet, since 1618, when I was at school. I believe it will be much observed and discoursed, and accounts given of it by the R. S. (i.e. Royal Society) and observers beyond sea'. [22] 

Browne also demonstrates his understanding of parallaxis, explaining the astronomical term to his eldest son thus -

'By this parallaxis astronomers find out the comet's distance from the earth ; and, in that of 1618, they found it to be as far above the moon as  the moon is above the earth, and so find out its place, or sphere it is in, which I believe will be performed, or is already, by some astronomers'. [23]

He advises his son - 'You might do well to have a figure of parallaxis, and to understand it, for it may be very useful, and is in many books. Now, if this comet be very high, and at a great distance above the moon, or in the sphere of Mercury or Venus, it will have but little parallaxis, and so we may conclude that it is above the moon'. [24] 

Perhaps Browne's late interest in astronomy was the result of his having a mystical apprehension of stars as the source of all life on Earth. Our own star, the sun supports and sustains all life on earth, including humanity.

In essence, Browne's scientific outlook was forever inclined towards the tenets of Hermeticism with its correspondences, analogies and polarities, concepts not always conducive to modern quantitative science. Browne was also a believer in unquantifiable aesthetic principles such as symmetry, harmony, order and proportion, and for this reason he never fully embraced the discoveries of a science which challenged or refuted concepts such as his beloved 'music of the Spheres' or the eternal patterns and archetypes of an Intelligent or Grand Designer.

Its thus as a paradoxical figure in intellectual history, with one foot planted firmly in esoteric lore and the other, in modern scientific enquiry that Browne reveals himself to us today. His holistic approach to medicine and critical following of Paracelsus marks him as a progressive-thinking medical man in seventeenth century England. Indeed, it's in the fields of psychiatry and psychology, not astronomy that Browne's greatest achievements lay. Its not without significance that the double-faced figure of Janus, one of Browne's favourite symbols, which the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung considered to be a 'perfect symbol of the Psyche',  or that one of the very earliest usages of the word  'Archetype'  occurs in Browne's literary works.

To summarize, Browne's place in intellectual history, as one of the very last Renaissance men who held an equal interest in both astrology and the newly developing science of astronomy is paradoxical to modern sensibilities, forever insistent upon Either/Or.

Yet its precisely because of Sir Thomas Browne's consultation of both natural and supernatural knowledge that he may be defined as much an early chemist as an alchemist, as much an Hermetic philosopher as advocate of rational, deductive science and as much an astrologer as vigorous promoter of the new science of astronomy. And this is precisely why Norwich's very own 'Starman' remains a controversial and little-understood, yet also highly significant figure in Western intellectual history. 

  

Science and Astronomy books in Browne’s library includes -

Robert Boyle - Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy, London 1671 

Galileo, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Trent 1635

Sidereus Nuncius, London 1653

Two World Systems Englished by T. Sainsbury, 1661

William Gilbert. De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure 1600

Robert Hooke - Lectures, London 1678

Christian Huygens - Systema Saturnium, The Hague 1659

Johannes Kepler -  Mysterium Cosmographicum, Tübingen 1596

Kepler - de Stella nova in pede Serpentis, Prague 1606

Highly Recommended

* Philip Ball - Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything pub. Vintage 2013

* Wonders of the Solar System presented by Professor Brian Cox BBC DVD 2010

Also consulted


Star Names : Their Lore and Meaning Richard Hinckley 1899 Allen Dove pub. 1963

Ingenious Pursuits : Building the Scientific Revolution Lisa Jardine pub. Little, Brown and co. 1999

Notes

Images Top -Dying double helix Nebula in the constellation Aquarius

Next - Hevelius Selenographia

Next - Hyades star cluster in the constellation Taurus

Next - Galaxy in which our own solar system is located

Next - Comet ISON

Last -  A Page from a Star Atas dated 1674

Link to the latest astronomical discovery. Astronomers witness neutron stars colliding. This extraordinary event has been ‘seen’ for the first time, in both gravitational waves and light – ending decades-old debate about where gold comes from

[1] Leonard Nathanson -The Strategy for Truth pub. Chicago Uni. Press 1967

[2] Religio Medici Part 1: 6

[3] R.M. Part 2. 6

[4]  R.M Part 2:11

[5]  R.M Part 1: 41

[6] Bacon's Essay 'Of Vicissitude of Things' opens with the words - 'Salomon saith, There is no new thing upon the earth. So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Salomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion'. 

Browne's to the Reader opens with the words - 'Would Truth dispense, we could be content, with Plato, that knowledge were but remembrance; that intellectual acquisition were but reminiscential evocation, and new Impressions but the colouring of old stamps which stood pale in the soul before. For what is worse, knowledge is made by oblivion',

[7] Kepler's books in Browne's Library includes -Mysterium Cosmographicum (Prague 1596) 1711 Sales Catalogue Page 28 Quarto no. 2

De stella nova in pede Serpentarii (Prague 1606) Sales Catalogue  page 29 no. 18  and Ad Vitellionem Paraipolomena (Frankfurt 1606) S.C.  page 29 no.34

[8] Hugh Aldersey Williams 'The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st century' Granta 2015. There's a number of caveats to be sounded about this book. Whilst its to be applauded for generating interest in Browne, its also very much Aldersey-William's own Religio Medici Link to Review here. Hugh Aldersey-William's proposal that Browne was a closet atheist in particular is highly unlikely, but also a good example how Browne's strongly archetypical 'Old wise man' persona is a magnet for psychological projection, invariably of an unconscious nature.

[9] Pseudodoxia Epidemica bk 7 chapter 3

[10] P.E. bk 6 chapter 14

[11] Ibid.

[11b] R.M Part 2 : Section 15

[12] 1711 Sales Catalogue Page 25 no. 124

[13] Philip Ball - Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything pub. Vintage 2013 

[14] Christian Morals Part 3 Section 24

[15] C.M. Part 3 Section 29

[16]  C.M. Part 3 section 7

[17]  Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Letter dated Nch. Jan 1st 1664-65 to Edward Browne

[20] Letter dated Nov 23rd 1677 to Edward Browne

[21] Letter dated 7th Jan 1681 to Edward Browne

[22] Letter dated 17th Dec 1680 to Edward Browne

[23] Letter dated 7th Jan 1681 to Edward Browne

[24] Letter dated 12 Jan 1681 to Edward Browne

This essay dedicated to Tchenka Sunderland - Astrologer, one-time mentor and decades long encourager of my Brunonian studies.

Sir Thomas Browne and the Kabbalah

Today on the birth and death anniversary of the English seventeenth century literary figure, Sir Thomas Browne, its rewarding to look at aspects of the hermetic philosopher's little explored relationship to the kabbalah.

Its only recently that the many prejudices and misapprehensions which once surrounded the vital role and influence which esoteric ideas such as astrology, alchemy and the kabbalah wielded in intellectual history have finally eroded. It’s only now possible to acknowledge Sir Thomas Browne’s interest in the kabbalah as an integral component of his status as one of 17th century Europe's most learned scholars of comparative religion; his Discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) reveals him to be none other than one of England’s leading literary exponents of the kind of hermetic philosophy which John Dee (1527-1608) and his eldest son Arthur Dee (1579-1651)  both vigorously pursued.

One of the most valued of all hermetic traditions amongst adepts such as the Dee's, was the mystical Jewish teachings known as the kabbalah, in which number and letter assume magical significance. It was believed necessary to acquire knowledge of the Hebrew language by devout scholars such as Browne, primarily in order to read the word of God as revealed to his prophets in the original written form, namely Hebrew.

A familiarity with the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue (an indispensable document in the study of Browne) swiftly reveals  the names of leading Hebrew scholars, along with Latin and Greek, Hebrew and even Ethiopian dictionaries as once shelved in his library.  Rather unsurprisingly there are also some jolly thumping big books on the kabbalah listed as once in Browne's library [1]. The two humanist scholars who first promoted esoteric topics as worthy of enquiry in the Renaissance, Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and his successor, Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) are both represented, as is, 'the supreme representative of Hermeticism in Post-Reformation Europe', Athanasius Kircher (1602-80).

While Ficino attempted to reconcile the wisdom of Hermeticism and Plato with the teachings of the Church, his successor, Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) focussed on promoting study of the Kabbalah. Pico della Mirandola was the first to seek in the Kabbalah proof of the Christian mysteries. Besides Greek and Latin he knew Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic;  his Hebrew teachers introduced him to the kabbalah. One of the most startling of Mirandola’s  proposals was that no science gives surer conviction of the divinity of Christ than "magia" (i.e. the knowledge of the secrets of the heavenly bodies) than esoteric Jewish teaching.  Mirandola was an influential figure in the history of Western esotericism and would be taken seriously a century later in England when declaring, 'Angels only understand Hebrew' by would-be Angel conjurers. John and Arthur Dee.

However, the pre-eminent book which influenced the development of Christian kabbalah and which is listed in Browne's library, was by Francesco Giorgi (1467-1540). His book De Harmonia Mundi (1525) is a complex synthesis of Christianity, the kabbalah and the angelic hierarchies.

The seminal British scholar of esoteric philosophy, Francis Yates (1899-1981) wrote of  Giorgi -

'Giorgi's Cabalism, though primarily inspired by Pico della Mirandola, was enriched by the new waves of Hebrew studies which Venice with its renowned Jewish community was an important centre. Cabalistic writings flooded into Venice following the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Giorgi grafts Cabalist influence onto the traditions of his order. He develops that correlation between Hebrew and Christian angelic systems, already present in Pico, to a high degree of intensity. For Giorgi, with his Franciscan optimism, the angels are close indeed, and Cabala has brought them closer. He accepts the connections between angelic hierarchies and planetary spheres, and rises up happily through the stars to the angels, hearing all the way those harmonies on each level of the creation imparted by the Creator to his universe, founded on number and numerical laws of proportion The secret of Giorgi's universe was number, for it was built, so he believed, by its Architect as a perfectly proportioned Temple, in accordance with unalterable laws of cosmic geometry'.....In Giorgi's Christian Cabala, the angelic hierarchies of Pseudo-Dionysius are connected with the Sephiroth of the Cabala... The planets are linked to the angelic hierarchies and the Sephiroth'.[2]

It was while in London, engaged in a diplomatic errand that the Franciscan monk Giorgi met the Elizabethan magus John Dee. There is thus a quite distinct traceable link between the Renaissance founders of the Neoplatonic, Neopythagorean and Cabalist traditions, namely Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola via the Franciscan monk Giorgio and his advocacy of the Cabala to John Dee via his son Arthur Dee to Sir Thomas Browne. This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that that both John Dee and Browne each possessed a copy of Giorgio’s highly-influential work De Harmonia Mundi. Unless that is Arthur Dee bequeathed his father's copy of De Harmonia Mundi  to Browne [2] but that would be no less of a strong link!

Browne’s respect for the Kabbalah can be discerned in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica where one encounters the somewhat indignant exclamation - 

Astrologers, which pretend to be of Cabala with the Stars (such I mean as abuse that worthy Enquiry) have not been wanting in their deceptions; [4] 

Browne’s understanding of the kabbalah included an awareness that in the Hebrew alphabet each letter also denotes a number, of either fortunate or unlucky disposition thus-  

Cabalistical heads, who from that expression in Esay (Isaiah 34:4) do make a book of heaven, and read therein the great concernments of earth, do literally play on this, and from its semicircular figure, resembling the Hebrew letter כ Caph, whereby is signified the uncomfortable number of twenty, at which years Joseph was sold, which Jacob lived under Laban, and at which men were to go to war: do note a propriety in its signification; as thereby declaring the dismal Time of the Deluge. [5]  

There’s also evidence in Pseudodoxia Epidemica that Browne was familiar with one of the earliest and most influential of all kabbalistic texts, the legendary Book of Splendour. Also known as the Zohar (Hebrew: זֹהַר, lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance")  the foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought it consists of commentary on aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) mythical cosmogony and mystical psychology. The Zohar also contains a discussion of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and "true self" to "The Light of God", and the relationship between the "universal energy" and man. [6]

Browne tantalizingly alludes to Moses de León (c. 1250 – 1305) known in Hebrew as Moshe ben Shem-Tov (משה בן שם-טוב די-ליאון),  the Spanish rabbi and Kabbalist considered to be the author of the Zohar in this remark-

'.....as M. Leo the Jew has excellently discoursed in his Genealogy of Love: defining beauty a formal grace, which delights and moves them to love which comprehend it. This grace say they, discoverable outwardly, is the resplendent and Ray of some interior and invisible beauty, and proceeds from the forms of compositions amiable.' [7] 

Although its recorded that as early as 1934 Joseph Blau wrote upon Browne’s interest in the Kabbalah, amazingly,  only in 1989 was it recognised that the leading scholar of Hebrew and the Kabbalah in 17th century Germany, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1636-89) has an interesting relationship to Browne.[8] The German scholar Von Rosenroth devoted many hours of his somewhat short life, completing what must have been a true labour of love, translating in total over 200,000 words of Browne’s colossal encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica into German, completing his task in 1680 for publication in Frankfurt and Leipzig. Whether Browne was informed of this translation, late in his life isn't known, but it seems unlikely he wouldn't hear of it.

Browne’s esoteric inclinations are given full vent in his phantasmagorical discourse and supreme work of hermetic philosophy in English literature, The Garden of Cyrus (1658) in which the Kabbalah is alluded to several times.

The opening paragraph of chapter 3 of The Garden of Cyrus sees Browne move swiftly on from examples of the Quincunx pattern in gardening and art, to those in nature. In a paragraph of humorous and cosmic prose, he alludes to a French contemporary, the Hebrew scholar, astrologer and librarian to Cardinal Richelieu, Jaques Gafferel (1601-81). Browne was particularly interested in Gaffarel’s best-selling book, which had been translated into English as Unheard of Curiosities in 1650 in which the French kabbalist proposes an alternative to the Babylonian-Greek circle of animals or Zodiac.

Using the stars quite differently from the Babylonian-Greek circle of animals or Zodiac, Gaffarel describes how the letters of the Hebrew alphabet can be traced in the stars of the night-sky. Browne includes Gaffarel along with esoteric concepts of the 'music of the spheres' and the cosmic harmony of Pan's pipes as worthy of credulity thus-

Could we satisfy ourselves in the position of the lights above, or discover the wisdom of that order so invariably maintained in the fixed Stars of heaven; Could we have any light, why the stellary part of the first mass, separated into this order, that the Girdle of Orion should ever maintain its line, and the two Stars in Charles's Wain never leave pointing at the Pole-Star, we might abate the Pythagorical Music of the Spheres, the sevenfold Pipe of Pan; and the strange Cryptography of Gaffarell in his Starry Book of Heaven.

In his wide-ranging discourse of analogies and correspondences connecting the number five and quincunx pattern in art, nature and 'mystically considered’ Browne lets rip in rapid, near breathless enquiry, making note upon gardening, generation, germination, grafting, heredity, birth-marks, physiognomy, astrology, chess and skittles, archery and knuckle-stones, Egyptian hieroglyphs, architecture, optics, the camera obscura, acoustics and the healing power of music, among other topics of interest to the worthy 17th century Norwich physician.  

Given its free-ranging imaginative associations its almost predictable that the alphabet mysticism of the Kabbalah is included in this unique and idiosyncratic literary work. Browne speculates upon the properties of the letter He, the 5th letter in the Hebrew alphabet. His kabbalist enquiry includes one of the earliest recorded usages of the word ‘archetype’ in English.

The same number in the Hebrew mysteries and Cabalistical accounts was the character of Generation; declared by the letter He, the fifth in their Alphabet; According to that Cabalisticall Dogma: If Abram had not had this Letter added unto his Name he had remained fruitlesse, and without the power of generation: Not only because hereby the number of his Name attained two hundred forty eight, the number of the affirmative precepts, but because as increated natures there is a male and female, so in divine and intelligent productions, the mother of Life and Fountain of souls in Cabalistically Technology is called Binah; whose Seal and Character was He. So that being sterile before, he received the power of generation from that measure and mansion in the Archetype; and was made conformable unto Binah. [9] -

Its also in the 'mystically considered' chapter 5 of The Garden of Cyrus that Browne speculates upon the healing power of music upon the mind, using kabbalistic analogy thus-

Why the Cabalistical Doctors, who conceive the whole Sephiroth, or divine emanations to have guided the ten-stringed Harp of David, whereby he pacified the evil spirit of Saul, in strict numeration do begin with the Perihypate Meson, or si fa ut, and so place the Tiphereth answering C sol fa ut, upon the fifth string: [10]

Curiously the Sephirotic Tree of the kabbalah and the Quincunx pattern as illustrated in the frontispiece of The Garden of Cyrus have both been viewed as examples of 'stepped-down versions' of Indra's Net. In Hindu mythology the god Indra has a net which has a multifaceted jewel fixed at each knot, each jewel in turn reflects all the other jewels suspended in the net. The image of Indra's net is sometimes used to describe the interconnected relationship of the entire universe, not unlike either the Sephiroth tree of the kabbalah or Browne's intention in citing numerous examples of the Quincunx pattern in art, nature and mystically.

Browne however was not a solitary figure in his interest in the kabbalah in 17th century England. The Cambridge Platonists, in particular its leading members, Henry More (1614-87) the author of Conjectura Cabbalistica (1653), and Ralph Cudworth (1617-88) also had a keen interest in the mystical Jewish tradition of the kabbalah.

Well I hope today, on the anniversary of Sir Thomas Browne's birth and death (how Ouroboros-like is that) that this little essay convinces my reader of Browne's very real interest and understanding of the kabbalah. It is, however , because of his having interests in early modern science in tandem with topics such as the kabbalah, that Browne's place in European intellectual history remains ambiguous and paradoxical today ! 

Notes

[1] The 1711 Action Sales Catalogue was finally published in 1986 thanks to scholarship of the Yale University, American academic and Dean Emeritus of Yale University,  J.S. Finch (to whom I enjoyed a correspondence with until his death).

[2] The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age Frances Yates pub. RKP 1979

[3] De Harmonia Mundi  Venice 1525 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue page 2 no.33

[4] P.E. Bk 1 chapter 3

[5] P.E. Bk 1 chapter 4

[6] Wikipedia

[7] P.E. Book 6 chapter 11

[8] Alchemy of the Word: Cabala of the Renaissance Philip Beitchman pub. State University of New York Press, Albany 1989

[9] Genesis 27 verse 15 discusses the adding of H to Abram's name.
 Text here in chapter 5 includes a reference by Browne to - Archang. Dog. Cabal. Archangelus Burgonovus  (The apology of brother Archangulus of Burgonovo in defense of cabalistic doctrines against Rev. Peter Garzia’s attack on Mirandula from Hebrew wisdom, source of the Christian religion). Basel 1560, Bologna 1564. Also mentioned in Pistorius’s Artis cabalisticae scriptores Basel 1587

[10] 1 Samuel 17 verse 40

With thanks to Karmel Lee for her encouragement.