Aquarium of Vulcan

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Dr. Browne's alchemical mandala

When Thomas Browne's discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658) were first appraised as a unified work, literary critics declared them to be 'a paradox and a cosmic vision' and 'one of the deepest, complex, and most symbolically pregnant statements upon the great double theme of mortality and eternity'.

However, when those perceptive comments were made, almost 300 years after the first publication of Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus, Browne's relationship to Western esoteric traditions had been little, if ever, discussed. Its only relatively recently that the many misapprehensions and prejudices which once surrounded Western esoteric disciplines such as Hermetic philosophy and alchemy have evaporated, primarily through the demise of Christianity as the dominant arbiter of spiritual values.

From the ground-breaking scholarship of writers such as Frances Yeats and Adam Maclean in Britain, Joseph Campbell and James Hillman in America, and above all others the Swiss psychologist, C. G. Jung, we now possess the analytical tools necessary to understand and appreciate the vital influence which Western esoteric disciplines once wielded upon 'alchemystical' philosophers such as Thomas Browne. 'Though overlooked by all', Browne's discourses, Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus are revealed to be exemplary works of Hermetic philosophy in the canon of English literature.

A quick perusal of the many esoteric titles listed as once in Browne's library swiftly dispels the notion that the philosopher-physician's interest in Western esotericism was merely casual, nor is there any reason to believe he ever deviated from his declaration in Religio Medici (1643) that-

'The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible'. [1]

And in fact Browne makes allusion and reference to concepts associated with Western esotericism in each and every one of his writings.

Composed during the seventeenth century, the 'Golden Age' of alchemy, Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus tick each and every box required of a mandala. Their polarity and symmetry, alongside their visual imagery, as well as the multiplicity of geometric forms and numbers encountered in The Garden of Cyrus permit a confident identification of Browne's diptych as forming an alchemical mandala, ingeniously crafted and unique in Western Literature. Crucially, Browne's discourses Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus engage the reader in the mandala's highest function, as art objects of great beauty, inspiring contemplation and capable of imparting spiritual wisdom to a receptive beholder.

This essay discusses how Sir Thomas Browne's two discourses are structured upon templates associated with mandalas, namely circularity, symmetry and polarity. It concludes with a look at the historical background influencing Browne's creative motivation in writing two philosophical discourses and analysis of the symbol of the Quincunx; both of which take on new meaning when viewed through the prism of C. G. Jung's understanding of alchemy. First however, its worthwhile clarifying what exactly a mandala is.

The word 'mandala' originates from a Sanskrit word meaning 'disc' and many mandalas are circular in shape. Defined also as a geometric configuration of symbols which can be used as a spiritual guidance tool, mandalas are universal, they can be found not only in Tibetan Buddhist religious art, but also in Christian iconography, as well as the iconography of Western esoteric traditions such as alchemy, astrology and the kabbalah. Although usually associated as visual art-works, mandalas are not exclusively visual. The German composer J.S. Bach's late musical work Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue BVW 1080) with its abstract and meditative thematically related canons and fugues, is in structure, content and function, an aural representation of a mandala [2].

In nature many species of flower have radiating, wheel-like petals and circular centres making them mandala-like, their beauty inviting contemplation. In India there's a dance known as the nyithya dance which is named the mandala dance, while in the French choreographer Maurice Bejart's interpretation of Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, a mandala is formed by dancers with a sacrificial victim at their centre (below).

In his 'The Alchemical Mandala: A survey of the mandala in the western esoteric traditions' (1989) Adam Maclean (b.1948, Glasgow) the leading British authority on alchemy, discusses over thirty mandalas taken from the iconography of 17th century European alchemical literature. Each Western esoteric mandala is accompanied by the author's insightful knowledge of alchemy's rich and complex symbolism. Maclean notes that Western mandalas are an important but neglected aspect of art history which urgently require the attention of scholars and historians. From his generous reproduction of all three mandala variants in Andrea Libavius' Alchemia (1606) conclusive evidence of the seventeenth century funerary monument known as the Layer monument was cemented in 2013 [3].

Returning to the dominant themes and imagery of Urn Burial and the Garden of Cyrus. Inspired by a recent archaeological discovery in Norfolk, Urn-Burial opens with a survey of the burial rites and customs of various nations, highlighting Browne's comparative religion studies. Imagery of darkness, night, sleep and the invisible pervade its pages. Life's ending's and beliefs about death are sombrely surveyed, and Browne the doctor reminds his reader of their mortality, the inevitability of their death and the unlikeliness of their being remembered for very long. Urn-Burial has been lauded throughout the centuries for its stately, ornate Baroque flourishes of prose. The strongly Christian and stoical half of the diptych includes mention of ghosts, spirits, vampirism and even altered states of spiritual consciousness. Urn-Burial has been described as a threnody to the dead of the English Civil war, at a time when England's population was estimated to have been a little over 5 million its estimated that over 200,000 lives were lost in the seven year period of the English Civil war (1642-49) exceeding anything England has ever experienced to the present-day. English society was further traumatised psychologically when living under the experimental, Puritan Republic of Cromwell (1650 -59).

In complete polarity, The Garden of Cyrus examines life's visible beginnings, including germination and growth in botany. Its hasty in style and playful in tone, whilst also repeatedly demonstrating the ubiquity of the number five and the Quincunx pattern in art, nature and religious symbolism. Imagery involving Light, optics and growth crowd its pages. Overtly hermetic in content, its alludes to several esoteric disciplines which Browne subscribed to, including Paracelsian medicine, physiognomy and the kabbalah. The discourse also features Browne's highly original proper-name symbolism, often originating from Biblical and Ancient world sources; its central chapter is crowded with numerous sharp-eyed botanical observations, botany being an essential pursuit for physicians in Browne's time.

Just how The Garden of Cyrus hasn't been positively identified as a literary writing influenced by hermetic philosophy before now remains a great mystery; its very first page features major themes, symbols and preoccupations associated with western esoteric traditions. Opening with the patron "deity" associated with Paracelsian alchemy, namely Vulcan, featuring Browne’s study of comparative religion, employing highly original spiritual-optical imagery, speculating upon the Creation and life’s beginnings, citing Plato’s discourse Timaeus, (the supreme authority for Hermetic philosophers) and finally, conjuring the potent alchemical 'coniunctionis' symbol of Sol et Luna, Browne could not spell out the esoteric theme of his discourse harder if he tried. Little wonder that for three and a half centuries its pages have baffled most and delighted few, such as the Romantic poet, Coleridge for example. [4]

Browne reconciled the wisdom of Western esoteric traditions such as alchemy and the kabbalah to Christianity in exactly the same way as the vanguard Renaissance advocates of esotericism, Marsilio Ficino (b.19th October 1433- d.1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494); by giving credence to a Prisca Theologia, a belief in a single, true theology shared by all religions and whose wisdom is passed on in a golden chain through a series of mystics and prophets which included Moses and Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Plato. In particular, the mythic Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus or ‘thrice greatest’ (being the greatest priest, philosopher and king) was appropriated by Hermetic philosophers as a wise pagan prophet who foresaw the coming of Christ. In reality the writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum attributed to Hermes Trismegistus originated from the early Christian era, and not before, as believed. Such imaginative comparative religion sanctioned the study of pagan philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato, and justified the Bible's antiquity, wisdom and superiority to devout Christians.

Frank Huntley is credited as the first to identify the circular nature of Browne's discourses. Huntley saw evidence of Browne's creative intent of the circle uniting his two Discourses in the penultimate paragraphs of The Garden of Cyrus where imagery involving night, darkness, sleep and death returns; thus Browne's essay on life's beginnings, The Garden of Cyrus unites with Urn Burial with its thematic concern of life's endings and imagery of darkness, night and sleep. Huntley viewed this return of Urn-Burial's theme and imagery as evidence of Browne utilizing imagery of the tail-eating snake of alchemy, known as the Ouroboros, shaping his twin Discourses' overall structure [5]. Browne had reflected upon the tail-eating snake or Ouroboros in his medical essay A Letter to a Friend (c.1656) -

'that the Tail of the Snake should return into its Mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity, is indeed a remarkable Coincidence, which tho' Astrology hath taken witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary in making Predictions of it.

The conclusion of The Garden of Cyrus uses imagery distinctly allusive to the Ouroboros. Browne reassures his reader, both contemporary and future, of a return to social and political stability.

'All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of Heaven'.

An early visual realization of the Ouroboros has the motto Hen et Pan (One is All) inscribed at its centre (below). The Ouroboros was adopted by Gnostics of the early Christian era and later by Renaissance alchemists as symbolic of their art and its considered to be the basic mandala of alchemy. Note how in the Gnostic illustration below duality or polarity is highlighted through the use of black and white, not unlike what is termed the basic mandala of eastern esotericism, the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol.

One of C.G. Jung's greatest achievements was his discovery that at its deepest strata human consciousness is undifferentiated, thus symbols originating from civilizations remote to each other in time and geography nevertheless often display striking similarities. The symbols of the Greek Ouroboros (above) and the Chinese Yin Yang symbol (below) express the self-same duality or polarity, and balanced view of the total forces of good and evil, life and death.

The heraldic coat of arms of the Browne family bears resemblance to the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol in its symmetrical design.

If Urn-Burial with its grave meditations upon human mortality and death can be said to be the gritty and dark underbelly of Browne's literary serpent, then The Garden of Cyrus with its repeated demonstrations of 'how God geometrizeth and observeth order', is surely the decorative, designed upper half of Browne's Ouroboros. And indeed, accompanying the menagerie of birds, insects and animals in The Garden of Cyrus several species of snake along with their markings and motions are mentioned -

'A like correspondency in figure is found in the skins and outward teguments of animals, whereof a regardable part are beautiful by this texture. As the backs of several Snakes and Serpents, elegantly remarkable in the Aspis, and the Dart-snake, in the Chiasmus and larger decussations upon the back of the Rattlesnake, and in the close and finer texture of the Mater formicarum, or snake that delights in Ant-hills; whereby upon approach of outward injuries, they can raise a thicker Phalanx on their backs, and handsomely contrive themselves into all kindes of flexures: Whereas their bellies are commonly covered with smooth semi-circular divisions, as best accommodable unto their quick and gliding motion'.

C.G. Jung noted that -The image of the circle was regarded as the most perfect form by Hermetic philosophers since Plato's Timaeus, the prime authority for Hermetic philosophers'. And of the circular figure of the Ouroboros he stated - 'In the age-old image of the ouroboros lies the though of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite i.e. of the shadow. This feedback process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the ouroboros that he slays himself and brings to life, fertilizes himself an gives birth to himself. [6]

The Labyrinth is closely related to the mandala in several ways. Unlike a maze, a Labyrinth offers no alternative route, its unicursive path however, always leads to a centre, a feature common in many mandalas. Symbolic of pilgrimage during the Medieval era, labyrinth paths were laid out in ground plans of monasteries, cloisters and churchyards and walked as symbolic of ascending towards salvation. Walking their twisting turns, one loses track of direction, time and the outside world, calming the mind and inducing contemplation. Walking a labyrinth is therefore not unlike physically stepping into a mandala for spiritual exercise.

The earliest of all known Western mandalas originates from Ancient Greece, namely, the Cretan Labyrinth of Knossos along with Homer's descriptive account of Achille's shield in The Illiad. Both are featured in The Garden of Cyrus.

Throughout the Renaissance the study of numismatics provided easy access to the ancient world for collectors such as Browne. Coins from the Classical world of ancient Greece and Rome, supplied the antiquarian with a wealth of information. A numismatic depiction of the Labyrinth of Knossos sparks Browne's creative imagination in chapter two of The Garden of Cyrus,

'And, though none of the seven wonders, yet a noble piece of Antiquity, and made by a Copy exceeding all the rest, had its principal parts disposed after this manner, that is, the Labyrinth of Crete, built upon a long quadrate, containing five large squares, communicating by right inflections, terminating in the centre of the middle square, and lodging of the Minotaur, if we conform unto the description of the elegant medal thereof in Agostino'. [7]

One of Western civilization's earliest mandalas originates from the poetry of the ancient Greek author Homer (circa 500 BCE). Homer's epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey, not unlike Browne's discourses, are also a two-in-one literary work, the masculine theme of the Trojan war in The Iliad differs starkly to the adventures and affairs of the heart of The Odyssey, with its hero Odysseus endeavouring to return to his wife, Penelope. Both of Homer's epic poems are mentioned in Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus. Its at the apotheosis of The Garden of Cyrus that Browne alludes to the weaponry of the Greek warrior Achilles, shortly before delivering his scientific credentials -

'Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer. But Vulcan and his whole forge, sweat to work out Achilles' his armour'

Homer’s long and detailed description of the Achilles' shield of over 100 lines is utterly mandala-like in concept. Angelo Monticelli's visual realization of Achilles’ shield (circa 1820) divides the shield into five concentric rings. From its centre it depicts the whole universe, with constellations and planets, as well as human life, including a wedding, a marketplace and tribunal. Wartime is represented by a victim of a siege, peacetime by sowing, a harvest and dancing. The stream of Oceanus encircles the land mass. The twelves signs of the zodiac and Apollo riding a chariot of four horses can be seen at its centre. [8]

In alchemy the primordial symbolism of colour is represented by the colour schemata of Nigredo and Albedo (Blackness and Whiteness) . There's a strong case to be made for Urn Burial as a symbolic realization of the Nigredo stage of alchemy. As the first of four stages in the alchemical opus, the Nigredo (Blackness) represents the psychological state of melancholic gloom and despair which the adept faced beginning the alchemical opus. The historical circumstances in which Urn-Burial was written with its many grave and sombre meditations upon Death, mortification, putrefaction, embalmment, funerary urns and monuments, its repeatedly condemnation of the vain-glory of being remembered after death as a futile hope, makes it utterly exemplary of the Nigredo . Browne's poetic phrase, 'lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing' encapsulates the Nigredo stage of alchemy, which C. G. Jung describes thus-

'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 journey to the underworld as Dante experienced it'. [9]

It should come as no surprise that several 'Soul Journey's of Classical literature are named in Urn-Burial, for mandalas often symbolize the spiritual journey of the soul. Homer's Voyage of Ulysses, Plato's myth of Er, the Roman poet Macrobius' 'Dream of Scipio' and Dante's descent to the Underworld are all works of 'Soul Journey' literature which are named in Urn Burial.

In contradistinction to the Job-like suffering of the Nigredo, the albedo or 'Whitening' of the alchemical opus represents a return to innocence. Closely associated with Biblical accounts of the Creation and Paradise, we can confidently view The Garden of Cyrus as representative of the Albedo stage of alchemy. Browne opens The Garden of Cyrus with the Creation, and etymological understanding of Paradise, before speculating on the location of the Garden of Eden. According to C.G. Jung -

'By means of the opus which the adept likens to the creation of the world, the albedo or whitening is produced.' [10]

'For alchemists Paradise was a favourite symbol of the albedo, the regained state of innocence'. [11]

The Hamburg based physician and hermetic philosopher Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605) synthesized symbolism from Christianity, the Kabbalah and the mystic Rose of alchemy to form the mandala reproduced in his Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae of 1595 (Above).

The gordian knot of how and why of Browne's creative motivation in writing two 'conjoyned discourses remained uncut for centuries. In a typical self-depreciating manner, Browne states simply of the relationship between his two Discourses-

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.

This solitary clue far from explains Browne's creative motivation for the multiplicity of polarities or complexio oppositorum in his diptych Discourses.

There's a multipicity of opposites or polarities in Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus their primary thematic polarities being Time and Space, Darkness and Light, Decay and Growth, Invisible and Visible, Accident and Design, Conjecture and Discernment, Microcosm and Macrocosm among others, as well as oppositional imagery and literary style. Such distinctive polarity alerts those familiar with basic tenets of Western esotericism, for polarity features strongly in nearly all esoteric schemata. One of the basic maxims of alchemy, solve et coagula for example, which exhorts the alchemist to 'dissolve and coagulate' loosely approximating to the biology of decay and growth, is itself a polarized maxim which corresponds to the dominant themes of each Discourse respectively, Urn Burial being a meditative soliloquy on decay and life's endings, whilst The Garden Of Cyrus lyricizes upon life's beginnings and growth.

C. G. Jung's radical interpretation of the psychological importance of alchemy did much to alleviate prejudices against Western esoteric traditions. When he died in 1961 the publication of his collected writings gathered apace. The very title of Jung's late magnum opus work, Mysterium Coniunctions: An enquiry and synthesis of the psychic opposites in alchemy', first published in 1963, has relevance to the psychic opposites of melancholy in Urn-Burial and cheerfulness in The Garden of Cyrus. In its foreword Jung trenchantly states -

-'the "alchemystical" philosophers made the opposites and their union one of the chiefest objects of their work'. [12]

The growing popularity of Jung's psychology throughout the 1960's was such that he was included in the pantheon of writers, artists, poets, pop and film stars assembled in Peter Blake's photomontage artwork for the Beatles album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club. (1967). The British singer/songwriter David Bowie (1947-2016) also paid homage to Jung in his 1973 song 'Drive-in Saturday' ('Jung the foreman/prayed at work').

Amusingly, there's a slender connection between the 'fab four' landmark album Sgt. Pepper to the phantasmagoria of The Garden of Cyrus in as much as both can loosely be defined as psychedelic art-works (that is, in the original Greek meaning of the words, Psyche Mind/Soul + Delos 'Clear, manifest'). The rapid, near kaleidoscopic procession of examples from art, nature and religious mysticism related to the Quincunx symbol in The Garden of Cyrus has indeed a psychedelic dimension. Throughout its pages the active imagination of the alchemist in operation is visibly manifest. Little wonder therefore that The Garden of Cyrus has astonished and bewildered countless readers for centuries.

Concluding this digression of loose associations to psychedelia in general, its also in The Garden of Cyrus that Browne introduces the medical word 'Hallucination' into the English language.

Thomas Browne possessed the ability to lucid dream, that is, the ability to manipulate and control the fantasy world of dreams at will. He informs his reader of this ability 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'. [13]

Browne's gift of lucid dreaming is of great significance in the light of C.G. Jung's observation that,

'with the help of dreams, the unconscious produces a natural symbol technically termed a mandala which has the functional significance of a union of opposites, or a meditation'. [14]

C. G. Jung's ground-breaking study of alchemy illumines interpretation of Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus as an alchemical mandala. Structured upon the basic templates of life, namely Time (Urn-Burial) and Space (The Garden of Cyrus) there's a multiplicity of polarities, or 'oppositional conjunctions' in Browne's 'twin' discourses in their subject-matter, imagery , truth and even literary style. Any serious scholar of esotericism would immediately be alert to this fact, for polarity plays no small part in almost all esoteric schemata; the alchemical maxim solve e coagula (decay and growth) the declaration of the mythic Hermes Trismegistus of, 'As above, so Below,' the time-honoured schemata of the Renaissance of Man as Microcosm inhabiting the vastness of the Macrocosm, the alchemical colour symbolism of Nigredo and Albedo (Black and White) all utilize polarity in their symbolism and are fundamental templates to Browne's 'twin' discourses. Indeed, its from his study of magnetism that Browne, a vigorous coiner of new words, is credited with introducing the very word 'polarity' into the English language. Fundamental imagery involving Darkness in Urn-Burial and Light in The Garden of Cyrus pervade the respective pages of Browne's discourses.

According to C.G. Jung the opposites play a decisive role in the alchemical process [15] In his view, 'the real subject of Hermetic philosophy is the coniunctio oppositorum [16]. One simply cannot think of a better examplar of a Hermetic philosopher delineating polarised opposites in highly original optical-spiritual imagery than Browne in his alchemical mandala.

The Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman for one, explains why polarities such as Light and Darkness exist in alchemical literature thus-

'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'.[ 17]

Johannes Daniel Mylius (c. 1583 – 1642) was a composer for the lute and writer on alchemy. The mandala reproduced in his Opus medico-chymicum dated 1618 (above) synthesizes symbolism taken from the Kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, avian symbolism and mythology. At its centre there stands an alchemist in a grove of trees representing the planetary metals. A raven symbolizing the Nigredo and the Swan representing the Albedo in the lower hemisphere along with a celestial choir in its upper hemisphere are only visible once the page unfolded.

The 1650's decade saw the greatest volume of esoteric literature ever published in England. Many important esoteric titles were translated or made available in English for the first time under the liberalisation and relaxation of printing press licensing laws during the Protectorate of Cromwell. The antiquarian Elias Ashmole tested the waters of this new liberalisation in order to publish in 1652 his anthology of British alchemical authors, the Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum, a copy of which is listed as once in Browne's library. It was followed by Cornelius Agrippa's influential Three books on Occult Philosophy and by Thomas Vaughan's translation of the Fama and Confessio of the Rosicrucian Fraternity. Incidentally, the spiritual alchemist Thomas Vaughan (c.1621-65) who knew of, and admired Thomas Browne, may have had the diptych Discourses in mind when alluding to the dominant symbol of each Discourse he declared Mercurius, the patron 'deity' of alchemy, to be, 'not only a two-edged sword, but also our true, hidden vessel, the Philosophical Garden, wherein our sun rises and sets'. And a copy of Vaughan's evocatively titled A Hermetical Banquet drest by a Spagyrical cook (1652) is listed as once in Browne's library. [18]

It must have been nigh on impossible for an avid bibliophile such as Browne to be unaware of this publication trend throughout the 1650's decade. And the temptation to add his own influential voice to the chorus of esoteric literature which poured forth from England's printing presses, must surely have inspired him. This creative urge, along with experiencing extreme psychological distress from the uncertainty and vulnerable social status of being a defeated Royalist with a profession to protect in order to support his large family, may well have induced Browne, consciously or unconsciously, to construct his own personal mandala, for according to Jung-

'the Mandala encompasses, protects and defends the psychic totality against outside influences and seeks to unite the opposites and is an individuation symbol'. [19]

Individuation symbols such as those produced by the mandala were in Jung's view spontaneous products of the psyche which arise whenever the psyche is in crisis and in need of transforming or protection. C.G. Jung observed that alchemical symbolism frequently incorporated geometric forms stating -

Alchemical symbolism has produced a whole series of non-human forms, geometrical configurations like the sphere, circle, square, and octagon, or chemical configurations like the Philosopher's Stone, the ruby, diamond, quicksilver, gold, water, fire, and spirit (in the sense of a volatile substance). [20]

Urn-Burial focusses almost hypnotically upon the symbol of the Urn or Vessel which in alchemy was the womb-like matrix where the Philosopher's Stone incubated. ('Incubation' being yet another Of Browne's neologisms). In complete contrast The Garden of Cyrus is jam-packed with symbols, geometric forms, numbers and hieroglyphs - the triangle, square, hexagon, pyramid, Egyptian Ankh, the letter X as well as the Quincunx pattern , all of which are utilized by Browne in his demonstration of the interconnection of the worlds of art, nature and religious mysticism. For Jung such symbols were none other than variants upon the foremost symbol of the psyche, the mandala , writing - 'Empirically the self appears spontaneously in the shape of specific symbols and its totality is discernible above all in the mandala and its countless variants'. [21]

C. G. Jung was a keen scholar of comparative religion. He became familiar with the Quincunx symbol from his long study of alchemy. Originally, little more than a unit of measurement of 5/12th in the Roman era, the Quincunx gained its esoteric associations when the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) named it as an aspect of both astronomy and astrology. Kepler's books are well-represented in Browne's library. [22]

Although its unlikely that C. G. Jung knew of The Garden of Cyrus other than from hearsay, Browne's discourse being utterly untranslatable, nevertheless he did know that - 'The quinarius or Quinio (in the form of 4 + 1 i.e. Quincunx ) does occur as a symbol of wholeness (in China and occasionally in alchemy) but relatively rarely.' [23]

Jung even utilized the Quincunx pattern for his own purposes, stating in an essay, 'Their union in a quincunx signifies union of the four elements in a world-body' [24]. Astoundingly, in 'Flying Saucers: A modern myth' (1958) Jung likens the Quincunx to be, 'a symbol of the quinta essentia which is identical with the Philosopher's Stone. [25]

As the centrepiece of Browne's mandala, the Quincunx pattern is thus a symbol of totality and wholeness, representing the achievement of Unio mentalis or self-knowledge of the alchemists. As Jung succinctly observed - 'The self is a complexio oppositorum itself'. [26]

Browne's creative motivation in penning his twin discourses is to share his psychological understanding of the Self, the true Philosopher's Stone, in order to provide his reader with an unique spiritual text. His alchemical mandala is both a portrait of himself personally with his hobbies of archaeology and botany and of the Collective Self, with all the irrational fears and inspired ideas we share; it operates upon the reader primarily through the effects of synergy, which is defined as - the interaction of two or more agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects'.

Like all good empirical scientists, Browne knew that simply by juxtaposing object A with object B, a new perspective upon each object is gained, inasmuch as differences and similarities are heightened whenever objects, or indeed whenever philosophical discourses are placed within close proximity to each other. As C.G. Jung puts it - ''A judgement can be made about a thing only if its opposite is equally real and possible'. [27]

Its the resultant synergy from reading these two quite different discourses which generates Browne's alchemical mandala and which effectively operates upon the reader. The individual reader's conscious and unconscious association of Browne's highly original, home-grown symbolism, their comprehension of his many Classical and Biblical references along with receptivity towards the dominant themes of each respective discourse which contribute towards psychic realization and activation of Dr. Browne's alchemical mandala.

To repeat, Urn Burial and The Garden of Cyrus adhere to mandala symbolism in their circularity and symmetry as well as their frequent usage of symbolism. Crucially, they engage in the mandala's highest function - as art-objects of great beauty worthy of contemplation and which remind their beholder of their own 'soul- journey' and place in the cosmos, thus bestowing spiritual enlightenment.

Augmenting and summarizing in Adam Maclean's words- 'Hermetic philosophers such as Thomas Browne can be said to be pioneering proto-psychologists who were open to their inner worlds and perceptions which they 'projected' onto outer symbols, in doing so they discovered a universal language which transcended words to communicate their experience of the soul's architecture. Thomas Browne's ability to lucid dream is a vital contributing factor in this alchemical act of active imagination. If we choose to contemplate the symbolism of alchemical mandalas, whether they are visual, auditory or couched within literary works such as Thomas Browne's two philosophical discourses, they can lead us deep into the mysteries of our inner world. Thus, far from the received wisdom of Urn Burial being a gloomy antiquarian essay, with an essay on gardening appended, in order to bulk out for the printer, as was once believed, Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus can be conceptualized as an alchemical mandala, capable of unlocking the mysteries of the soul's architecture. [28]

Notes

[1] Opening quote from Heideman M.A. 'Hydriotaphia and The Garden of Cyrus' A Paradox and a Cosmic Vision' University of Toronto Quarterly, XIX 1950 .

Next - Green, P. Sir Thomas Browne Longmans, Green & Co (Writers and Their Work, No.108 1959) followed by Browne Religio Medici 1:12

[2] Recommended recording : Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) - Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Harmonia Mundi 2011

[3] See Wikipedia The Layer Monument

[4] Collected Works of C.G. Jung vol. 11: 92

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

[6] Collected Works 11. 92 and Vol 14 :759

[7] Agostino's book is listed in the 1711 Sales Catalogue of Browne's Library p. 38 no. 5. The full title of Agostino's book is - Ant. Agostini Dialoghi intorno alle Medaglie, Inscrissioni & altre Antichita Romanze tradotti di Lingua Spagnola in Italiana da D Ottav. Sada, e dal Medisimo accresciuti, con Annot. & illustrati con disegni di molte Medaglie &c. Rome 1650.

[8] Link to Book 18, lines 478-608 of Homer's Iliad .https://poets.org/poem/iliad-book-xviii-shield-achilles

[9] C. W. 14: 93

[10] C. W. vol. 9 ii : 230

[11] CW ? 373

[12] CW 14 Foreword

[13] Religio Medici Part 2 Section 11

[14] CW 11:150

[15] CW 12:557

[16] CW 11: 738

[17] The Soul's Code James Hillman Bantam 1991

[18] A list of esoteric authors in Thomas Browne's Library

[19] CW 10:621

[20] CW 11:276

[21] CW 9ii:426

[22] See 1711 Sales Catalogue page 29 no. 18 S.C. page 29 no.34 S.C. page 28. no. 13

[23] C.W. 10:737

[24] CW 11:190

[25] CW 18:1602

[26] CW 11: 92

[27] CW 11:247

[28] Adam Maclean's words adapted from 'The Alchemical Mandala'.

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Coincidence - A Window on Eternity

'The depths of our psyche we know not, but inwards goes the mysterious way. In us or nowhere is eternity with its worlds: the past and the future'. - Novalis

Many people world-wide have experienced a remarkable coincidence in their lives, and yet coincidence, in particular, meaningful or significant coincidence, remains a little understood phenomenon.

Although the word 'synchronicity' has now become a fashionable word to describe significant coincidence, very few know the word was coined by the Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung (1875-1961) to define his psychological theory on meaningful coincidence.

However, long before C.G. Jung, the seventeenth century hermetic philosopher and physician Thomas Browne (1605-82) also held an interest in coincidence, introducing the very word to English readers in his medical essay A Letter to a Friend. Browne was fascinated enough with the phenomenon of coincidence to make it the framework of his esoteric discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Throughout the essay's highly compressed and dense imagery, there's a rapid procession of coincidental evidence of the number five and Quincunx pattern, first in art, next in nature, notably botany, and finally in spiritual symbolism ending with the 'Quincunx of Heaven'.

New insights into the phenomenon of coincidence can be acquired through juxtaposing the ideas of C.G. Jung with those of Dr. Thomas Browne. The subject of coincidence is in fact one of a number of interests shared by the two physicians. Both men maintained a medical practice throughout their lives, both engaged in deep analysis of themselves and their dreams, both studied comparative religion and read alchemical literature closely, sharing an interest in the pioneering Swiss physician, Paracelsus (1493 –1541) along with his foremost advocate, Gerard Dorn (c.1530-84). And finally, both were interested in unusual psychic phenomena such as coincidence or synchronicity, as Jung termed it.

One of the most accessible books on C.G.Jung is his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) in which Jung narrates of his relationship to his one-time mentor, Sigmund Freud, the development of his psychology and 'discovery' of the archetypes, as well as his world-wide travels, visiting and hearing the dreams of various indigenous peoples. Jung also narrates on the many extraordinary coincidences which he experienced in his life-time in his autobiography.

C.G.Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections is prefaced by a verse by the English poet Coleridge. Selected by Jung's secretary Aniela Jaffe to describe the Swiss psychologist, Coleridge's notebook verse is in fact about an English literary figure he greatly admired, none other than Thomas Browne. Coleridge's verse reads -

He looked at this own Soul

With a Telescope.What seemed

all irregular, he saw and

shewed to be beautiful

Constellations: and he added

to the Consciousness hidden

worlds within worlds.

C.G.Jung's major writing on coincidence entitled 'Synchronicity:An Acausal Connecting Principle' was first published in 1952. Its useful to be clear on the meaning of the word 'acausal' in the title of Jung's essay, which like the word 'asymptomatic', meaning without showing symptoms, acausal means without any known or perceived cause. Jung states-

'We do know at least enough about the psyche not to attribute to it any magical power, and still less can we attribute any magical power to the conscious mind.....The great difficulty is that we have absolutely no scientific means of proving the existence of an objective meaning which is not a psychic product. We are, however, driven to some such assumption unless we want to regress to a magical causality and ascribe to the psyche a power that far exceeds its empirical range of action'. [1]

Jung's essay on coincidence, which he terms Synchronicity, includes a long statistical analysis of astrological data of married couples and a chapter on the forerunners of Synchronicity naming Kepler, Paracelsus and Pico della Mirandola, among others, who speculated upon the phenomenon of coincidence, each of whom were once well-represented in Thomas Browne's library.

C.G. Jung found confirmation of his ideas on synchronicity in the Chinese oracle of the I Ching, also known as the Book of Changes. Consisting of 64 Hexagrams made through casting coins or yarrow-sticks which are read as either broken or whole, Yin or Yan, each of the 64 configurations of the I Ching has a highly philosophical verse attached to it. Readings of the I Ching naturally stimulate the possibility of synchronicity. In Jung's view -

The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. ....Just as causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events. [2]

Unlike the Greek-trained Western mind, the Chinese mind does not aim at grasping at details for their own sake, but at a view which sees the detail as part of a whole...The I Ching, which we can well call the experimental basis of Classical Chinese philosophy, is one of the oldest known methods for grasping a situation as a whole and thus placing the details against a cosmic background - the interplay of Yin and Yang. [3]

Called by short-sighted Westerners a "collection of ancient magic spells" an opinion echoed by modernized Chinese themselves, the I Ching is a formidable psychological system that endeavours to organize the play of the archetypes, the "wonderous operations of nature" into a certain pattern, so that a "reading" becomes possible. it was ever a sign of stupidity to depreciate something one does not understand. [4]

Hexagram 27 of the I Ching (above) is named The Corners of the Mouth. Providing Nourishment.

Its accompanied by the verse -

Perseverance brings good fortune.

Pay heed to the providing of nourishment.

And to what a man seeks

To fill his own mouth with.

Jung concludes his essay on Synchronicity, defending his hypothesis thus-

'Synchronicity is no more baffling or mysterious than the discontinuities of physics. It is only the ingrained belief in the sovereign power of causality that creates intellectual difficulties and makes it appear unthinkable that causeless events exist or could even occur.... Meaningful coincidences are unthinkable as pure chance. But the more they multiply and the greater and more exact the correspondence is, the more their probability sinks and their unthinkability increases, until they can no longer be regarded as pure chance, but for a lack of a causal explanation, have to be though of meaningful arrangements... Their 'inexplicability' is not due to the fact that the cause is unknown, but to the fact that a cause is not even thinkable in intellectual terms [5]

* * * * *

Marie-Louise von Franz (b. January 4th 1915 - d. 17th February 1998) was one of C.G.Jung's most gifted followers (above with Jung). She first met the Swiss psychoanalyst in 1933 when aged 18 and subsequently became his lifelong collaborator, translating important alchemical manuscripts for him until his death in 1961. Von Franz was one of Analytical Psychology's most original thinkers. In 2021 on January 4th, the date of Marie-Louise von Franz's birthday, the first volume of von Franz's collected works was published, with a projected plan for the subsequent 27 volumes to be published in the following 7 years until 2028.

Like the British broadcaster, writer, politician and chef Clement Freud (1924 - 2004) grandson of Jung's one-time mentor, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Von Franz was immune from Christianity's prejudice towards gambling, and once stated in her informal and intuitive lectures-

'If you are a gambler, and I hope you are, then you know that one is always torn between two possibilities - either to have a system, or to trust to what I would call the unconscious, and what another gambler would call his god of luck, Lady Luck or whatever'. [6]

Thomas Browne in his early years, also enjoyed the thrill of game play. In his spiritual testament Religio Medici he declares-

'Tis not a ridiculous devotion, to say a Prayer before a game at Tables; for even in sortilegies and matters of greatest uncertainty, there is a settled and pre-ordered course of effects; 'tis we that are blind, not fortune: because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind'.[7]

According to von Franz-

'Gambling is one of the greatest of human passions. The fascination with it, in my view, comes from the fact that what one ultimately comes in contact with here is one's own unconscious, the secret of synchronicity, and thus with the creative activity of God or divine destiny'.. [8]

In his European best-seller Religio Medici (1643) Thomas Browne, like many devout Christians of his age then and now, attributed fortune and chance to the 'hand of God.'

Fortune, that serpentine and crooked line, whereby he draws those actions his wisdom intends in a more unknown and secret way; This cryptick and involved method of his providence have I ever admired, nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes of dangers, and hits of chance with a Bezo las Manos, to Fortune, or a bare Gramercy to my good stars:....... Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, doublings and wrenches which pass a while under the effects of chance, but at the last, well examined, prove the mere hand of God: [9]

It is however, the human mind or psyche, not God which concerns the modern-day psychologist when examining the phenomena of coincidence.

In a series of lectures collected under the title of 'Synchronicity and Divination' von Franz states-

'By introducing the concept of synchronicity, Jung opened the door to a new way of understanding the relationship between psyche and matter.... a completely unresearched area of reality.

One cannot speak of alchemical symbolism without referring to Jung’s important - if not most important - discovery of the synchronicity principle, that is, his discovery that symbols produced spontaneously by the unconscious through the actions of the archetypes tend to coincide in a meaningful way with material occurrences in the external world, constituting an exception to the causal determination of all natural processes still widely espoused by natural science. This points empirically to an unobservable cosmic background, which imparts order to psyche and matter at once.

Marie-Louise von Franz was also one of the first to elaborate in depth upon fairytales, recognizing the wealth of archetypal material they contain as well as their mapping of the trials, dangers and rewards of the individuation process, that is, the hazardous journey in becoming a whole and integrated individual. A typical, astute remark and observation of her's being -

'In European fairytales, the wizard generally represents the dark aspect of the image of God which has not been recognised in the collective unconscious.' [10]

One motif in fairy-tales is the valued item which is returned through unexpected, coincidental ways. In Hans Christian Anderson's The Tin Soldier, a one-legged toy soldier is discarded, and after many adventures is swallowed by a fish. By a remarkable coincidence after the fish is caught and sold at market and prepared by a cook, the toy soldier falls out of the fish, returning to the home of the child who owned him.

The mystery of coincidence remained of interest to Sir Thomas Browne in his old age. In his Museum Clausum (circa 1673) a bizarre list of lost, imagined and rumoured to exist, books, pictures and objects, there can be found the item of -

A Ring found in a Fishes Belly taken about Gorro; conceived to be the same wherewith the Duke of Venice had wedded the Sea. [11]

Browne's discourse The Garden of Cyrus (1658) is surely his greatest contribution to the literature of coincidence. In what is one of the most idiosyncratic of all writings in English literature, Browne utilizes the coincidence of the number five along with its various derivatives, notably the Quincunx pattern, in order to demonstrate order and the myriad of interconnections in the universe.

Number has defined as the most primitive instrument of bringing an unconscious awareness of order into consciousness, and in The Garden of Cyrus Browne's fascination with Pythagorean numerology is given full vent, supplying his reader with evidence of the coincidence of the number five in subjects as diverse as Biblical scholarship, Egyptology, Comparative religion, the Bembine Tablet of Isis, mythology, ancient world plantations and gardening, geometry, sculpture, numismatics, architecture, paving-stones, battle-formations, optics, the camera obscura, zoology, ornithology, the kabbalah, astrology, astronomy and not least in numerous botanical observations which anticipate modern-day studies in genetics, germination, generation and heredity,

In the opening of the third chapter of The Garden of Cyrus Browne adjusrs his focus from 'sundry works of art' to 'natural examples'. He seems surprised that the 'elegant ordination' of the Quincunx pattern which is 'elegantly observable' seems to have been 'overlooked by all'.

'Now although this elegant ordination of vegetables, hath found coincidence or imitation in sundry works of Art, yet is it not also destitute of natural examples, and though overlooked by all, was elegantly observable, in several works of nature'.

Unsurprising in this cheerful, light-hearted and playful half of Browne's diptych discourses, pastimes and games are alluded to including chess and backgammon, archery, skittles and knuckle-stones as well as singing and music-making.

* * *

Since earliest time the uncertainty of life has inspired humanity to devise a number of ways to predict the future. In bibliomancy a random verse from the Bible is selected as advice, in hydromancy, the ripples and reflections of water are interpreted, and in belomancy, the flight and resting place of arrows is consulted. But perhaps the strangest of all divination methods must surely be gastromancy in which the rumblings and gurglings of the digestive tract and stomach are interpreted as if the speaking voices of spirits.

Browne alludes to the little known of esoteric art of Geomancy in The Garden of Cyrus, a divination technique and schemata which like the Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching involves a schemata based upon chance, but far less developed and rudimentary, with only 16 configurations to the I Ching's total of 64 configurations.

Geomancy (from Greek of Geo earth and mancy divination) is a method of divination which interprets markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand. The most common form of geomancy involves interpreting a series of 16 figures formed by a randomized process followed by analyzing them.

According to Von Franz, 'Geomancy is a "terrestified" astrology. Instead of taking the constellations of the stars and using them for divination, one makes the constellation of the stars oneself on the earth (Ge means earth) and then proceeds as in astrology. [12]

Geomancy was one of the most popular forms of divination throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In England it was practiced by Robert Fludd (1574-1637) and John Heydon (1629 – 1667). It would appear that Browne also took an interest in Geomancy. He owned one of the very few books written exclusively on the subject, a copy of the little-known of Henry of Pisa's Geomancy is listed as once in his library. [13]

Its in a series of queries challenging his reader, slowly building to the apotheosis of The Garden of Cyrus that Browne alludes to geomantic formations thus-

'Why Geomancers do imitate the Quintuple Figure, in their Mother Characters of Acquisition and Amission, &c somewhat answering the Figures in the Lady or speckled Beetle ?'

The five points of the quincunx can be seen in the geomantic configurations of aquisitio and amissio (above) as well as albedo and rubedo, two stages of the alchemical opus. The two terms aquisitio and amissio mean gain and loss respectively. They are both equal values as a minus and plus and are associated with both the quincunx pattern and the number ten ( 5+5 = 10 -5 = 5).

Browne's Garden of Cyrus can be interpreted as representing the 'whitening' or albedo of the alchemical opus; its apotheosis the short-lived red hot Rubedo of the alchemical opus. The other half of the diptych Urn-Burial equates to the black despair and melancholy of the initial Nigredo stage of the alchemical opus in its subject-matter and imagery. [14 ]

Digressing slightly, another alchemical polarity which corresponds well to Browne's diptych discourses is the Massa confusa and the Unus Mundus of alchemy. With its procession of Time and successive civilizations, allusion to grieving, bereavement, the passions and the vain-glory of humanity, Urn-Burial can be said to portray the Massa confusa, loosely translated as Ball of Confusion, the initial, Nigredo-like stage of the alchemical opus. Likewise The Garden of Cyrus with its persistent demonstration of the archetypal patterns of Geometric design, the Platonic Forms, Number and Order, are all indicative of the interconnectiveness of the Universe, and point towards the Unus Mundus or One World of alchemy.

Its in his vastly underrated essay A Letter to a Friend (circa 1656 pub. post. 1690) which is packed full of case-histories and medical gossip concerning health, disease and illness, that Browne makes an astounding analogy, likening coincidence to the tail-eating snake known as the Uroboros. Citing 'the Egyptian Hieroglyphick of Pierus', (pictured below) Browne states-

'that the first day should make the last, that the Tail of the Snake should return into its Mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity, is indeed a remarkable Coincidence, which tho Astrology hath taken witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary in making Predictions of it'.

The symbol of the uroboros is in many ways the basic mandala of alchemy. Originating in ancient Egypt, Greek depictions of it stress its duality or polarity through contrasting colours. The words Hen to pan 'Everything is One', are inscribed in its centre.

As a symbol of Eternal Return or Recurrence, Thomas Browne surely knew of the complex symbolism of the uroboros involving Time and Space. His associating it with the phenomena of coincidence is quite remarkable. It was the Brownean scholar Frank Huntley who first noted that Browne's diptych Discourses of 1658 are uroboros-like in their circular construction

C.G. Jung noted - In the age-old image of the uroboros lies the though of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The uroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite i.e. of the shadow. This feedback process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the uroboros that he slays himself and brings to life, fertilizes himself an gives birth to himself. [16]

Conclusion

Although the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer considered coincidence to only be meaningful to those to whom it happens, here's a few personal ones, several of which seem to be connected with books, unsurprisingly. On arriving at the North Sea, commencing reading an Aldous Huxley novel, within a minute the words 'North Sea' on its page. Showing a book on flower symbolism to a lover with the same name as the author, recovering from the shock of a gas-boiler 'boom' to sit down and begin a new chapter of Charles Dicken's 'David Copperfield' entitled 'I take part in an explosion'. Listening to music on earphones in a park, the word 'Michael' is sung, a split-second later someone calls out the name 'Michael. But perhaps most intriguing of all, daily living a coincidence for 25 years. My home address is identical not only to the date of birth but also to zodiac sign, albeit by substitution of Latin astrological nomenclature to Saxon. (Aquarius/Waterman).

At its very lowest level detection of a coincidence affirms that an an individual is being attentive and aware, able to observe the world around them, possessing a good memory, and able to make connections about the world around them.

From personal experience I can confirm that coincidences often occur when an emotionally charged situation arises. An aura of the numinous is often attached to them. It is also sometimes when the archetypes are activated that coincidences can occur. Near endless in number the dominant archetypes in Jungian psychology include the lover, the old wise man, the great mother, the helpful animal, the trickster and death. Coincidences can occur when the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious meet or collide.

At present synchronous events can be seen as reminders that we are far from understanding everything about humanity's place in Time and Space, or of the human psyche. As C.G Jung states- 'Consciousness is too narrow and too one-sided to comprehend the full inventory of the psyche'. [16] Coincidence, in particular meaningful coincidence, serves to remind us that we neither fully understand ourselves, nor our relationship to Nature, on either a collective or an individual basis. As if nodal points on an invisible Network of Time and Space, (incidentally, Thomas Browne is credited as the first to use the word 'Network' in its meaning of an artificial construction) or black holes in deep Space which puzzle science, synchronicity and meaningful coincidence are windows which can open to eternity.

Books

* Thomas Browne: Selected Writings ed. Kevin Killeen pub. OUP 2014

* Synchronicity An Acausal Connecting Principle C.G.Jung pub. RKP 1972

* The I Ching or book of Changes Cary F. Baynes pub. RKP. 1951

* Alchemical active imagination -Marie Louise von Franz pub. Shambala 1997

* Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche -Marie-Louise von Franz pub. Shambala Press 1999

* On Divination and Synchronicity - Marie-Louise von Franz pub. 1980 Inner City

* The Feminine in Fairytales - Marie-Louise Von Franz pub. Spring Publications 1988

Notes

[1] C.G. Jung Foreword to Baynes edition of I Ching

[2] CW 10 968/973

[3] C. G. Jung Foreword to Baynes edition

[4] CW 14:401

[5] On Synchronicity

[6] On Divination and Synchronicity - Marie-Louise von Franz

[7] Religio Medici Part 1 : 18

[8] p.67 Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche -Marie-Louis von Franz

[9] Religio Medici Part 1 Section 17

[10] Miscellaneous Tract 12 Item 20 of 'Antiquities and Rarities of Several Sorts'

[11] The Psychological Meaning of Redemption motifs in Fairytales - Von Franz

[12] On divination and Synchronicity- Von Franz

[13] 1711 Sales Catalogue p.30 no. 11 H. de Pisis Geomantia Lugd. 1638

[14 ] See post - 'Lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing'

[15] CW 14:

[16] CW 14:759

This one for the Jungian blogger, Ms. Monika Gemini with thanks for her insights and virtual company over the years.

Postscript - Norwich's local newspaper, the EDP published an article featuring historical photographs of the statue of Sir Thomas Browne on January 27th. Link to photos of statue of Sir Thomas Browne

Saturday, November 07, 2020

William Taylor of Norwich - 'Kräftig, aber klappernd'.

Born in Norwich, William Taylor (7 November 1765 - 5 March 1836) was an essayist, scholar and translator of German Romantic literature. Along with Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey he was also a leading mediator in Anglo-German literary relations. Indeed, it was because of Taylor's early advocacy of German literature that the influential Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (Universal Literary Newspaper) could declare in 1796 -

'Incidentally, German literature has the greatest number of followers in Norwich, for understandable commercial reasons.' [1]

In his lifetime Taylor was widely read. Importantly, his translations of German poetry bridged German Romanticism to English Romanticism. Taylor's translations influenced the poets Coleridge and Wordsworth to produce Lyrical Ballads (1798), a vanguard literary work of Romanticism which, with its inclusion of Coleridge's long poem The rime of the Ancient Mariner, changed the course of English poetry.

More recently, Taylor's name and contribution to English appreciation of German literature is featured in Peter Watson's tour-de-force survey of German science and culture, The German Genius (2010) [2]

William Taylor's diverse interests included - philology, etymology, chronology, topography, history sacred and profane, ancient and modern, political economy, statistics, international law, municipal law, Talmudic legend, Muslim ethics, Biblical texts, churches and sects, parliamentary reform, slave trade and almost every category of modern European literature. Among the thousands of reviews and essays which he wrote are those with titles such as, 'The Jews in England', 'Songs of the Negroes of Madagascar', 'Historic doubts concerning Joan of Arc', 'On the Sublime and Beautiful', an 'Ode in Praise of Tea' and, 'Of the Use of Ice as a Luxury'.

As the only child of a wealthy merchant who traded and exported Norwich goods to continental Europe, Taylor was fortunate in his education. He was taught by the English poet, essayist, literary critic, editor, and author of children's literature, Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743 - 1825) at her Palgrave Academy in Suffolk.

Barbauld informed her former pupil of her reading aloud a poem translated by him at an Edinburgh literary soiree and of the reception it received -

'Are you aware that you made Walter Scott a poet ? So he told me the other day I had the gratification of meeting him. It was, he says, your ballad of Leonora, and particularly the lines-

'Tramp, tramp across the land they speed: Splash, splash, across the sea'. [3]

Later, Taylor lauded Barbauld as, 'the mother of his mind'. Barbauld's own career as a poet ended abruptly in 1812, with the publication of her Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, in which she severely criticized Britain's participation in the Napoleonic Wars. Shocked by the vicious reviews it received, she published nothing more.

Anna Barbauld can been in a group of three Muses, standing beside an easel with arm raised, in Richard Samuels' painting Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (1779).

Devoted to his mother, Taylor never married, but did have a friendship unto the death, begun during his schooldays when meeting the serious-minded theologian and antiquarian Frank Sayers (1763-1817) at Barbauld's Palgrave Academy. A portrait of Sayers painted by John Opie dated 1800, hung for many years in William Taylor's library, and in all probability both men were homosexual. [2]

For many years Taylor's daily routine consisted of rising early and studying until noon, swimming in the River Wensum from a bath house upstream from the city, followed by a long walk in the afternoon. In the evening he liked to drink (heavily) and discuss linguistics, literature and philosophy in society.

In May 1790 Taylor visited France; arriving at Paris he declared himself to have ‘kissed the earth on the land of liberty.’ He spent nine days at the National Assembly, listening to its speakers debate upon the governance of the new, revolutionary France. The fever of the times are characteristically described by him thus-

'I am at length in that point of space where the mighty sea of truth is in constant agitation and every billow dashes into fragments some deep-rooted rock of prejudice or buries in a viewless gulph some institution of gothic barbarism and superstition. I am at length in the neighbourhood of the National Assembly, that well-head of philosophical legislation whose pure streams are now overflowing the fairest country on earth, and will soon be sluiced off into the other realms of Europe, fertilising all with the living energy of its waters.' [4]

Upon his return to Norwich Taylor translated some of the decrees of the National Assembly and read them at a meeting of the Revolutionary Society (which was named after the 1688 British revolution, not the recent French revolution).

In 1802, during the Peace of Amiens, Taylor embarked on another tour of Europe, visiting France, Italy and Germany, partly on business for his father. In Paris he met the Norfolk-born political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary, Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man (1791)

In 1792, while visiting the Norfolk market-town of Alysham, the English satirical novelist and playwright Frances Burney, (1752-1840) noted of Norwich's political life -

'I am truly amazed to find this country filled with little revolution societies which transmit their notions to the larger committee at Norwich which communicates the whole to the reformists in London. I am told there is scarce a village in Norfolk free from these meetings'. [5]

It was the British Prime Minister Pitt the Younger who called Norwich the Jacobin city after the clandestine French political movement which agitated for improved worker's rights and conditions. The historian E.P. Thompson in his groundbreaking work The Making of the English Working Classes sets the scene for the radical politics of late 18th century Norwich.

Norwich, an ancient stronghold of Dissent, with an abundance of small masters and artisans with strong traditions of independence, many have even surpassed Sheffield as the leading provincial centre of Jacobinism......... In August 1792, when the Norwich Revolution Society sponsored a cheap edition of Rights Of Man, it claimed to have forty-eight associated clubs. By October it claimed that the 'associated brethren' were not fewer than 2,000.

But Norwich, was, in other respects, by far the most impressive provincial city. Nineteen divisions of the Patriotic Society were active in September, and, in addition to the weavers, cordswainers, artisans, and shopkeepers who made up the society, it still carried the cautious support of the patrician merchant families, the Gurneys and the Taylors. Moreover, Norwich owned a gifted group of professional people, who published throughout 1795 a periodical - The Cabinet - which was perhaps the most impressive of the quasi-Jacobin

intellectual publications of the period. Its articles ranged from close analysis of European affairs and the conduct of the a war, through poetic effusions, to disquisitions upon Machiavelli, Rousseau, the Rights of Women and Godwinian Socialism. Despite the many different degrees of emphasis, Norwich displayed a most remarkable consensus of anti-Ministerial feeling, from the Baptist chapels to the aspiring philosophes of The Cabinet from the 'Weavers Arms' (the headquarters of the patriotic Society) to the House of Gurney, from the Foxite Coke of Holkham to the labourers in the villages near the city. The organisation extended from Norwich to Yarmouth, Lynn, Wisbech and Lowestoft. [6]

Throughout his life William Taylor was a Unitarian, attending the newly-built Octagon chapel which was completed in 1756 in the Neo-Palladian style by architect Thomas Ivory (above). Classified as 'liberal' in the family of churches, Unitarians place emphasis on reason when interpreting scripture. Freedom of conscience and the pulpit are core values of its tradition. Unitarianism is also known for rejecting several orthodox Christian doctrines, including original sin, predestination, and the infallibility of the Bible. The Unitarian's tolerant creed catered well for the liberal beliefs of several leading Norwich citizens including William Taylor from the year of the Octagon Chapel's completion in 1756 to the present day. [7]

In Taylor's day, the late 18th and early 19th century, the Octagon congregation included most of Norwich's principal Whig families - the William Taylors and John Taylors (unrelated one to the other, the Marsh family (the carriers), several leading medical families, the Aldersons, Dalrymples and Martineaus, beside Alderman Elias Norgate, the Alderman John Green Basely, the Bolingbrokes, some of the Barnards and J.E. Smith the botanist. [8]

Taylor's great literary protégé without doubt was George Borrow (1803-1881) who lived at Willow Lane while attending Norwich Grammar School during his teenage years. In many ways Norwich's connection to the Romantic movement is embodied in George Borrow who was of a dashing, Byronic-like appearance, of athletic build, over 6 feet tall with a shock of white, not blonde, hair. A pugilist with a fiery temper, holding strong opinions including being a fervent anti-Papist, he was keen to study the culture and language of the Romany people who he first encountered on Mousehold Heath. As a young man Borrow roamed the length and breadth of Britain as a tinker, while also studying the Romany language and its culture.

Its in Borrow's Lavengro: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest (1851) a literary work which hovers somewhere between the genres of memoir and novel, and which has long been considered a classic of 19th-century English literature, that a conversation between an old man and a young man is recollected. Taylor speaks first,-

‘Suicide is not a national habit in Germany as it is in England.’

‘But that poor creature, Werther, who committed suicide, was a German.’

'Werther is a fictitious character, and by no means a felicitous one; I am no admirer either of Werther or his author. But I should say that, if there ever was a Werther in Germany, he did not smoke. Werther, as you very justly observe, was a poor creature. He is a fool who breaks his heart on any account; but it is good to be a German, the Germans are the most philosophic people in the world, and the greatest smokers: now I trace their philosophy to their smoking......[9]

In the sequel to Lavengro, the equally unclassifiable The Romany Rye, (1857) Borrow refers to his mentor as -

'a real character, the founder of the Anglo-German school in England, and the cleverest Englishman who ever talked or wrote encomiastic nonsense about Germany and the Germans'. [10]

With Taylor's encouragement, George Borrow embarked on his first translation, Klinger's version of the Faust legend, entitled Faustus, his Life, Death and Descent into Hell which was first published in St Petersburg in 1791. Borrow, in his translation however, changed the name of one city, making one passage read:

'They found the people of the place modeled after so unsightly a pattern, with such ugly figures and flat features that the devil owned he had never seen them equaled, except by the inhabitants of an English town, called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday's best'.

For his ridiculing of Norwich society, the Norwich public subscription library burned Borrow's first publication. The ultimate harsh review.

Above - The artist Alfred Munnings' depiction of George Borrow with his gypsy companion Jasper Petulengro at the summit of St. James Hill with its panoramic view of Norwich. Petulengro says - 'There's a wind on the heath brother, who would wish to die?'

Taylor made his name translating Gotthold Lessing's Nathan the Wise, the themes and subject-matter of Lessing's drama greatly appealing to his radical and progressive convictions.

Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Lessing (1729-81) is set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade. It describes how the wise Jewish merchant Nathan, the enlightened sultan Saladin, and a Templar knight resolve the misunderstandings between Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Its major themes are friendship, tolerance, relativism of God, a rejection of miracles and a need for communication. Primarily an appeal for religious tolerance, its performance was banned by the church, and was not performed until 1783, after Lessing's death.

Far more problematic is the relationship between Taylor and the German giant of literature, Johann Goethe (1749-1832). Henry Crabb Robinson, who was a classmate of Taylor's at Barbauld's Academy, informed Goethe in 1829, 'Taylor’s Iphigenia in Tauris, as it was the first, so it remains the best, version of any of your larger poems'.

Taylor sent his translation to Goethe in Weimar; but never heard whether the poet received it, and for this perceived snub he became hostile in judgement of Goethe in his last years. A statement in Goethe's Tages und Jahreshefte suggests the fault and negligence lay with Goethe himself, for he stated- 'A translation of the Iphigenia appeared in England; Unger reprinted it, but I retained neither the original nor the copy'.

But in fact, not only is the original edition and Unger’s reprint recorded as once in Goethe's library, but also Taylor’s Historic Survey of German Poetry, which includes the complete Iphigenia in its third volume.

Goethe wrote about Taylor erroneously, and of his monumental work he dismissively stated, on 20 August 1831 to Carl Friedrich Zelter -

“I received 'A Survey of German Poetry’ from England, written by W. Taylor, who studied 40 years ago in Göttingen, and who lets loose the teachings, opinions, and phrases that already vexed me 60 years ago.”

But in fact Taylor never studied at Gottingen. Worse harsh criticism was to come for Taylor in 1831 when Thomas Carlyle published a review of his Historic Survey of German Literature. Carlyle's scathing review seriously damaged Taylor’s literary reputation to the present-day and his hostility and intolerance towards Taylor is also evident in Sartor Resartus (1836) with its pun-like Latin title of 'The tailor retailored'. There may even be intentional word-play upon the proper name of Taylor and the lowly occupation of tailor in its title. Carlyle's novel also includes sharp and critical remarks upon Taylor's creed, that of Utilitarianism, as well as repeated mocking of the excesses of German philosophy and idealism.

During Norwich's 'Golden Age' in literary and artistic life (circa 1760-1832), William Taylor became acquainted with several of the Norwich School Painters and gave lectures to the Norwich Philosophical Society on art. In a lecture of 1814 he advocated architecture and Urban settings to be higher artistic subjects than those of rural life. His comment may well have been directed towards leading artist of the Norwich movement, John Crome (1768-1821) who produced a number of urban Norwich riverscapes, some of which are set almost on his doorstep, including Back of New Mills (below) dated circa 1814 -17.

There's the distinct possibility that Taylor's influence upon the aesthetics of theNorwich School of Painters may be far greater than hitherto has been acknowledged.

One genre of literature which Taylor shared an interest with Anna Barbauld and the poet Southey, was children's literature, in particular, the fairy-tale. Southey is credited as being the author of the original version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in 1837, a year after Taylor's death, while Taylor himself wrote a version of Bluebeard and Cinderella.

William Taylor's friendship with Robert Southey (above, circa 1795) began in 1798 when Southey visited Norwich as Taylor's guest; the poet revisited him at Norwich in February 1802. In correspondence to Taylor, Southey asks him-

'Can you not visit Creswick next summer ? Coleridge will talk German with you; he is desirous of knowing you; and he is a sufficient wonder of nature to repay the journey'. [11]

'I wish you could mountaineer it with us for a few weeks, and I would press the point if Coleridge also were here: but even without him we could make your time pass pleasantly; and here is Wordsworth to be seen, one of the wildest of all wild beasts, who is very desirous of seeing you'. [12]

Its testimony to their long friendship that the poet Southey (1774 -1843) who was Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death thirty years later, (Walter Scott having declined the post) could criticize Taylor's literary style yet their friendship remain intact, after writing to him, firstly-

' you too often (like your admirable old townsman Sir Thomas Browne) go to your Greek and Latin for words when plain English might serve as well'.

Perhaps influenced by his German reading, Taylor was fond of introducing newly coined words, most of which were as incomprehensible to the average reader as his ideas. The editors of the periodicals to which he contributed objected about his neologisms, his friends pleaded with him to abandon the habit. Sir James Mackintosh however, remarked of Taylor's idiosyncratic style, 'He does not speak any language but the Taylorian; but I am so fond of his vigour and originality that... I have studied and learned his language'. [13]

Southey persisted in his pleas-

'How are plain Norfolk farmers - and such will read the Iris - to understand words which they never heard before, and which are so foreign as not to be even in Johnson's farrago of a dictionary ? I have read Cowper's Odyssey and to cure my poetry of its wheyishness; let me prescribe the Vulgar Errors of Sir Thomas Browne to you for a likely remedy.' [14]

Ignoring Southey's advice, the poet now severely admonished the Norwich scholar-

'Now I will say what for a long while what I have thought. That you have ruined your style by Germanisms, Latinisms and Greekisms, that you are sick of a surfeit of knowledge, that your learning breaks out like scabs and blotches upon a beautiful face.......Wordsworth, who admires and reverences the intellectual power and the knowledge which you everywhere and always display, and who wishes to see you here [in the Lake District] as much as I do, frets over your barbarisms of language, which I labour to excuse, because there is no cure for them.' [15]

Taylor defended his literary style thus-

'Were I reviewing my own reviewals, I should say, This man's style has an ambitious singularity which like chewing ginseng, which displeases at first and attaches at last'.

'And yet my theory of good writing is, to condense everything into a nutshell: I grow and clip with rival rage, and produce a sort of yew-hedge, tangled with luxuriance and sheared with spruceness. The desire of being neat precludes ease, of being strong precludes grace, of being armed at points than being impervious at any'. [16]

Southey repeatedly invited Taylor to stay with him, along with Coleridge and Wordsworth at the Lake district, but Taylor repeatedly declined. It may in fact have been far livelier at the Creswick cottage in the Lake District than Taylor could imagine. Government spies were sent to watch the comings and goings of the poet's residence, for Wordsworth and Coleridge were both known to the authorities for their radical political views, while in 1799 Coleridge and Southey were involved with early experiments with nitrous oxide (laughing gas) supervised by the scientist Humphrey Davy.

Taylor's aesthetic preference of the urban over the rural is trenchantly expressed in correspondence with Southey thus -

'How can you delight in mountain scenery ? The eye walks on broken flints; not a hill tolerant of the plough, not a stream that will float a canoe; in the roads every ascent is the toil of Sisyphus, every descent the punishment of Vulcan: barrenness with her lichens cowers on the mountain-top, yawning among mists that irrigate in vain; the cottage of a man, like the aerie of an eagle, is the home of a savage subsisting by rapacity in stink and intemperance: the village is but a coalition of pig-sties; where there might be pasture, glares a lake; the very cataract falls in vain,- there are not customers enough for a water-mill. Give me the spot where victories have been won over the inutilities of nature by the effort of human art, - where mind has moved the massy, everlasting rock, and arrayed into convenient dwellings and stately palaces, into theatres and cathedrals, and quays and docks and warehouses, wherein the primeval troglodyte has learned to convoke the productions of the antipodes'. [17]

To which the poet Robert Southey parried -

'You undervalue lakes and mountains; they make me happier and wiser and better, and enable me to think and feel with a quicker and healthier intellect. Cities are as poisonous to genius and virtue in their best sense, as to the flower of the valley or the oak of the forest. Men of talent may and will be gregarious, men of genius will not; handicraft-men work together, but discoveries must be the work of individuals. Neither are men to be studied in cities, except indeed, as students walk into hospitals, you go to see all the modifications of the disease'. [18]

In his lifetime William Taylor (above) attracted considerable hostility for his radical religious and political views. Nicknamed 'godless Billy' by fellow Octagon Chapel member, Harriet Martineau (1802-76) who petulantly reminisced of him:

'his habits of intemperance kept him out of the sight of ladies, and he got round him a set of ignorant and conceited young men, who thought they could set the whole world right by their destructive propensities'. [19]

Taylor was not without a stochastic ability either. As early as 1804 he made the suggestion that ships could be powered with steam before the world’s first commercial steamboat, the North River Steamboat, began operating out of New York in 1807. In 1824 he introduced the idea of cutting through the isthmus of Panama when the first attempt to construct a canal through what was then a province of Colombia at Panama, did not begin until 1881. [20]

Both Taylor's life and writings offer a few cautionary lessons to writers, especially those not living at the hub and centre of either conventional society or London, the literary capital of England. Just as Taylor's contemporaries, the various painters associated with the 'Norwich School' discovered, Norwich, with its rural hinterland of Norfolk and its North Sea coast-line was inspirational for creating art, but its patronage was thin. Art sales and advancement were facilitated far easier in London than Norwich. Likewise, the damage inflicted from a single malignant review can unjustly ruin a writer's reputation, sometimes long after their death. One possible reason for unjust and critical hostility against Taylor would be prejudice against his sexual orientation. At one time Taylor considered a vacancy at the British Museum, but it was taken before he applied. One suspects that he loved the familiar charms of Norwich far too much to ever leave the 'Do different' City. There's more than a hint of humorous self deprecation in his stating-

'Contented mediocrity is always the ultimate destiny of us provincials'.

But, as his words quoted here hopefully demonstrate, William Taylor was a highly expressive writer, a Vulcan-like wordsmith who wrote thousands of literary reviews and articles on an extraordinary range of topics in his lifetime.

In the late nineteenth century the German literary critic George Herzfelde considered Taylor's translation of Iphigenie auf Tauris to be 'Kräftig, aber klappernd' ('Powerful but Clattering') [21]. Herzfelde's pithy observation seems apt of much of Taylor's idiosyncratic writings and translations.

A single sentence suffices to highlight Taylor's Classical learning, aesthetic sensibility and subtle wit -

'Those who can die of a rose in aromatic pain have not grief in reserve for Medea's last embrace of her children'.

Books

* William Taylor of Norwich: A Study of the Influence of Modern German Literature in England (1897) by Georg Herzfeld

* C.B. Jewson -The Jacobin City 1975 Highly Recommended

* The Making of the English Working Class - E.P. Thompson 1963 reprinted in 1980 Pelican

*John Warden Robberds A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich (1843).

*Review from The Quarterly (1843-44).

Notes

[1] In the original - Uebrigens hat die deutsche Literatur aus sehr begreiflichen mercantilischen Gründen die zahlreichsten Anhänger in Norwich'.

[2] Peter Watson - The German Genius (2010) pub.Simon and Shuster page 314

[3] Chandler, David "Taylor, William" in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) speculates upon Taylor's sexuality.

[4] John Warden Robberds - A Memoir of the Life and Writings of the Late William Taylor of Norwich (1843).

[5] The Making of the English Working Class - E.P. Thompson 1963 reprinted in 1980 Pelican

[6] C.B. Jewson -The Jacobin City 1975

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Appendix III Romany Rye

[11] Robberds

[12] - [18] Ibid.

[19] The Life of George Borrow by Herbert Jenkins

[20] Perhaps from his reading Sir Thomas Browne's speculation that - 'some Isthmus have been eat through by the Sea, and others cut by the spade: And if policy would permit, that of Panama in America were most worthy the attempt: it being but few miles over, and would open a shorter cut unto the East Indies and China'.

[21] William Taylor of Norwich: A Study of the Influence of Modern German Literature in England by Georg Herzfeld (1897)