Still Running Off at the Keyboard

RETURNING TO YATES

THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHY IN THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

From Part III of the book, titled "The Occult Philosophy and Rosicrucianism and Puritanism - The Return of the Jews to England":

The philosophy of Christian Cabala as expressed by Giorgi and Agrippa is very close to the so-called Rosicrucian philosoophy, as expressed in the Rosicrucian manifestos and by Robert Fludd....We can now better understand the history of Rosicrucianism by linking it with the history of Christian Cabala as carried into the Elizabethan age. (p. 195)

...Giorgi's philosophy may be closely related to the philosophy of Rosicrucianism. It is certain that Robert Fludd's vast volumes on the universal harmony...are heavily influenced by Giorgi and represent, in essence, the Giorgi philosophy in a later form. Fludd, as we know, was associated with the Rosicrucian movement. (p. 197)

It is a short step indeed from Fludd to Freemasonry. The Centre for Research into Freemasonry at The University of Sheffield tells us on their website that Robert

"Fludd defended the Rosicrucians, and Thomas de Quincey described him as the father of English freemasonry, a view which some nineteenth-century masonic writers enthusiasstically endorsed."

The symbol pictured in The Centre website is mentioned along with Fludd in an article about John Dee at the website of the Grand Lodge of British Columbia. Fludd's Utriusque Cosmi Maioris is pictured at the website of the Sacramento Masonic Lodge #40 under the heading "How old is Masonry?"

The Grand Lodge A.F. & A.M. of Canada in the Province of Ontario offers the following on their website:

John Wilkins writes a book in 1648 called Mathematical Magic, in which he explicitly mentions the Rosy Cross and pays homage to occultists Robert Fludd and John Dee. ...

"Historian Frances Yates, in her book The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, in a chapter entitled 'Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry', quotes one De Quincey, who states, 'Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it in England, whence it was re-exported to the other countries of Europe'. De Quincey states that Robert Fludd was the person most responsible for bringing Rosicrucianism to England and giving it its new name.

So it would appear that Jewish Kabbalah was picked up by Catholics and reworked to include Jesus Christ in a kind of Christian Cabala which was the heart of Rosicrucianism. This Rosicrucianism then became English Freemasonry. Yates explains the route from Giorgi to the Protestant adoption of Rosicrucianism as a movement opposing Catholicism:

It was certainly not called a 'Rosicrucian' philosophy in Giorgi's time...

Many suggestions as to the origin of the name have been made, but in moving along the historical line which we are following the suggestion which seems most likely is that the Giorgi type of Christian Cabala acquired this name when it became associated with Elizabethanism, with the Tudor Rose, with Dee's scientific British imperialism,
with a messianic movement for uniting Europeans against the Catholic-Hapsburg powers.

With the Giorgi type of Christian Cabala was associated in the Dee movement the Agrippa type, more deeply magical, alchemical as well as Cabalist. The Agrippa movement may have been a secret society type of movement from the start. The Dee movement as a whole took on an English and Protestant flavour. Protestant in the sense of a movement of protest of the Renaissance occult traditions against the Catholic reaction. (p. 198)

The Jesuits opposed it. Yates tells us:

[Marin] Mersenne writes from an atmosphere of horror and dread of 'the Rosicrucians' whom Jesuit propaganda had depicted as frequenters of witches' sabbaths...Mersenne's attack on Giorgi, Fludd, and the Rosicrucians is an attack on Christian Cabala with its heretical associations, and which appeared in a very different light to Mersenne to that with which it had been invested by Spenser and the Elizabethan poets. (p. 203)

Yates claims

The Rosicrucian revolution had not materialised; the Puritan revolution, its successor in ideology, succeeded, at least for a time. (p. 207)

In the Epilogue, Yates points to gaps in the research still waiting to be filled:

What seems to be particularly lacking is any sustained attempt, from any quarter, to define Christian Cabala in relation to genuine, or Jewish, Cabala. (p. 219)

The early Christians appropriated a Christianised form of the Jewish religion. Similarly, the Christian Cabalists of the Renaissance appropriated Jewish mysticism or Cabala and used it for their own religious ends. ...

What was the effect on Christian Cabala of the fact that the Christian Cabalist was not expecting a Messiah to come, but a second coming of the Messiah who had already come, as Cabala had proved, so the Christian Cabalist believed? This certainly basically differentiated Christian from Jewish Cabala, but how did the difference work out in practice? What was the effect of the yoking together of Cabala and Hermeticism, of Hermes Trismegistus and Moses, by Pico della Mirandola through which Christian Cabala was again quite differentiated from Jewish Cabala, an entirely different movement, one would say, and yet one closely reflecting the Jewish original? (p. 220)

A significant question still to be answered is whether crypto-Jews took up Christian Cabala as a means to practice their religion in territory that was hostile to Judaism. The closest Yates comes to an answer is the following:

Since 1290 when Edward I expelled the Jews from England, there had been, officially, no Jews in the country. The reigns of Henvy VII, Henry VIII, Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I passed by without any acknowledged settlement of Jews being made. There certainly was some Jewish presence in the country during this long period, but a clandestine one and Jews were probably few in number. Only as a converted Jew, was it possible for a Jew to live openly in England, and even then possibly at some risk. In spite of the fact that Christian Cabala, actually representing an influence of Jewish mysticism on Christianity, was a strong influence in the Renaissance period, no Jew would have been officially allowed to practice his faith. (p. 213)

There is one other remote possibility:

Puritanism, with its Biblical inspiration and concentration on the Old Testament, encouraged the growth of philosemitism, but in spite of this, the settlement of Jews in Puritan England under the Protectorate was still not officially recognised, though Oliver Cromwell earnestly tried to have it authorised, and the Amsterdam rabbi Menasseh ben Israel came to England to urge it. It was not until after the Restoration that Charles II unobtrusively allowed Jews to live in England, the first recognition of their presence since the expulsion of 1290.

The extraordinary fact is that the whole movement of Christian Cabala in England - ultimately an influence of Jewish mysticism as adapted to Christianity in the Renaissance - passed without the presence of Jews being acknowledged, though there were...undoubtedly refugees from the Expulsion of 1492 from Spain in the country, New Christians or marranos, small in number but influential. Even more surprising, the whole Puritan movement, and the Puritan Revolution, with its strongly Hebraic religion and culture, took place without the presence of Jews being acknowledged in England. The return of the Jews to England, and the preparation for their return by Menasseh ben Israel during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, was thus virtually a culmination of the gradual movement of a new attitude towards the Jews and their religion. (p. 213-214)