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Original Articles

Cross, Constellation, and Crucible: Lutheran Astrology and Alchemy in the Age of the Reformation

Pages 65-86 | Published online: 17 Oct 2017

  • Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (London: Epworth Press, 1947), p. 34.
  • Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther's World of Thottght, trans. Martin H. Bertram (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1958), p. 177.
  • Will Durant, The Reformation (“The Story of Civilization”, VI; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957), p. 849.
  • A. Wolf, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 16th & 17th Centuries (2 vols., 2d ed.; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), I, 25.
  • Erasmus, Opus epistolarum, ed. P. S. Allen et al. (12 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–1958), VII, 366.
  • It pains me to reveal that White was the first president of my Alma Mater! Indeed, he writes in his Introduction: “This book is presented as a sort of Festschrift—a tribute to Cornell University as it enters the second quarter-century of its existence”.
  • Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, trans. W. Montgomery (Boston: Beacon Press Paperbacks, 1958), pp. 155 ff.
  • Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon (2 vols.; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), II, 606 ff.
  • T. F. Torrance, “The Influence of Reformed Theology on the Development of Scientific Method“, Dialog, II (Winter, 1963), 46.
  • Tischreden (hereafter cited as TR), IV, 4638, in the standard, critical Weimarer Ausgabe (hereafter cited as WA) of Luther's works.
  • Luther commented in 1530 on Ps. 24: 2: “To this day philosophers debate where the earth stands. Scripture says that it was established on the waters and speaks according to what the eyes see. For the earth is in the waters, so to speak, as Genesis says, ‘Let the dry land appear’, which is what we see before our eyes” (WA, XXXI, Pt. 1, 370).
  • Werner Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, I, trans. Walter A. Hansen (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1962), p. 423.
  • Corpus Reformatorum (hereafter cited as CR), XI, 839.
  • See Emil Wohlwill, “Melanchthon und Copernicus“, Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, III (1904), 260–67; and cf. Preserved Smith, The Age of the Reformation (New York: Henry Holt, 1920), pp. 621–22.
  • WA-TR, I, 1160.
  • WA, XX, 229.
  • WA, XLVIII, 201.
  • WA, XXIII, 134 ff.
  • WA, XXIII, 132.
  • Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, V (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 378–405.
  • Clyde L. Manschreck, Melanchthon, the Quiet Reformer (New York: Abingdon Press, 1958), pp. 102–112 and passim.
  • WA-TR, I, 17.
  • WA-TR, IV, 4705.
  • WA-TR, II, 2730a.
  • It is worthwhile noting that, some modern writers notwithstanding, when Rhaeticus later left Wittenberg for Leipzig, he did not do so because of persecution directed against his Copernicanism; this historical issue has been thoroughly aired by Elert (op. cit., pp. 420–22) on the basis of the primary sources.
  • Erasmus Reinhold, Prutenicae Tabulae coelestium motuum (Tübingen, 1551), Praefatio.
  • Cf. Elert, op. cit., p. 422.
  • Ibid., p. 426.
  • Thorndike, op. cit., p. 412. Elert has shown (op. cit., pp. 427–29) that although Kepler did run into theological difficulty because he could only subscribe to the Lutheran Formula of Concord “as one who confesses that here and there he is uncertain with respect to the construction and the pertinent words of a relation that is not clear”, yet his basal Lutheranism is evident from the facts that he “had lost his position in Steiermark because of his profession of allegiance to the Augsburg Confession and, wherever he was, had always stayed with his church”.
  • John Warwick Montgomery (ed.), Chytraeus on Sacrifice: A Reformation Treatise in Biblical Theology (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1962).
  • See the Dreyer edition of Brahe's works. III, 225 ff. It is true that Brahe was not a Copernican, but, as Sarton has correctly noted, he had good reason, on the basis of his own highly accurate planetary observations, to question Copernicus: “Copernicus had been right to replace the sun in the center of our little universe, but he had continued to accept the old prejudice that every celestial trajectory is either circular, or a combination of circular motions. That fallacy was destroyed by the German Kepler in 1609; in the meanwhile, Brahe had been right to reject the Copernican system” (George Sarton, The Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science during the Renaissance [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1955], p. 162).
  • Sir James Jeans, The Growth of Physical Science (2d ed.; New York: Fawcett Premier Books, 1958), p. 128. The intimate connection between astronomy and astrology in Brahe's work is well illustrated by the fact that his study of the great comet of 1577 led him to predict that in the north, in Finland, a prince would be born who should lay waste Germany and vanish in 1632; Gustavus Adolphus was born in Finland, ravaged Germany during the Thirty Years' War, and was killed at Lüzen in 1632! (Cf. Manly Hall, The Story of Astrology [Los Angeles: Phoenix Press, 1933], p. 29.)
  • Elert, op. cit., p. 431.
  • Theodore Otto Wedel, The Mediaeval Attitude toward Astrology, particularly in England (“Yale Studies in English”, LX; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1920), pp. 67 ff. Contrast the mythological picture of Aquinas as a magician, as described by Gabriel Naudé in his Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont été faussement soupfonnés de Magie (Paris, 1635), chaps, xvii-xviii.
  • On Pico, cf. my article, “Eros and Agape in the Thought of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola“, Concordia Theological Monthly, XXXII (December, 1961), 733–46. Pico's Adversus astrologos, written after his conversion, contains some excellent theological arguments against astrology, but strong emphasis is still placed upon an anthropocentric doctrine of the freedom of the will.
  • Wedel, op. cit., p. 86.
  • Cf. Sarton's assertion (op. cit., pp. 162–63): “In spite of Copernicus' bold departure, the new astronomy is not his nor does it belong to the Renaissance; it was created by Kepler and Galileo in the seventeenth century. As far as astronomy is concerned, the Renaissance was an age of disorder and futile compromises”.
  • See Emanuel Hirsch, Die Theologie des A ndreas Oslander und ihre geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1919), pp. 118–22. Osiander's preface to the De revolutionibus is reprinted on p. 290 of Hirsch's work.
  • CR, V, 819 ff.
  • CR, XIII, 329. Cf. the remarks on this subject by the great Lutheran dogmatician of the early Reformation period, Johann Gerhard, in his Loci theologici, loc. 6, chaps, xii-XV (Preuss edition, II, 45–47).
  • Tycho Brahe, De nova stella, ed. Regia Societas Scientiarum Danica (Hauniae [Copenhagen], 1901), fol. [E4]v. Elert (op. cit., p. 442) is unfair to Tycho when he claims that Luther's “energizing factor is missing” in him; in actuality, it is this very evangelical energizing factor that motivates Tycho's astronomical labours!
  • Ludwig Guenther, Kepler und die Theologie (Glessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1905). Kepler's astrological concerns are set out in Norbert Herz's Keplers Astrologie (Wien, 1895).
  • See especially Kepler's introduction to his Astronomia nova of 1609 (in the Frisch edition of Kepler's Opera omnia, III, 153 ff.).
  • In Vol. V of the Frisch edition of Kepler's Opera omnia.
  • Joseph Agassi, Towards an Historiography of Science (“History and Theory Beihefte”, 2; The Hague: Mouton, 1963), pp. 13–14, 88–89, and passim. Cf. Herbert Butterfield's observation that the Copernican system was treated with more open-mindedness by astrologers than by others in the sixteenth century (The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800 [London: G. Bell, 1957], P. 58).
  • Weigel's mysticism (which, admittedly, sometimes went to extremes) was severely condemned by some of his contemporary dogmaticians; this negativistic evaluation of Weigel is reflected in the brief article on him in the Lutheran Cyclopedia, ed. E. L. Lueker (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1954), p. 1123. However, he has been properly rehabilitated by Alexandre Koyré in his Mystiques, spirituels, alchimistes du X VI stiele allemand (Paris: Armand Colin, 1955), pp. 81–116. It is noteworthy that Koyré parallels certain aspects of Weigel's thought with the Pauline mysticism that so profoundly affected Luther (cf. p. 115). The very fact that Weigel signed the Lutheran Formula of Concord says something as to his orthodoxy.
  • Valentin Weigel, “Astrology Theologized”: The Spiritual Hertneneutics of Astrology and Holy Writ, ed. Anna B. Kingsford (London: George Redway, 1886), p. 52. A. Israel has argued that this work was not written by Weigel, but Koyré (op. cit., p. 82) rightly questions the general validity of Israel's critical judgments on Weigel. Thorndike totally misunderstands the purpose of the Astrology Theologized when he states that “observance of the Sabbath day seems the chief concern of the author” (A History of Magic and Experimental Science, VII [New York: Columbia University Press, 1958], 94).
  • Cf. C. G. Jung, Paracelsica: Zwei Vorlesungen ueber den Arzt und Philosophen Theophrastus (Zürich: Rascher Verlag, 1942); and Henry M. Pachter, Magic into Science: The Story of Paracelsus (New York: Henry Schuman, 1951), especially chap. vii.
  • Jakob Heerbrand, Compendium theologiae (Tubingae: G. Gruppenbach, 1579), pp. 3738.
  • Cf. John Read, The Alchemist in Life, Literature and Art (London: Thomas Nelson, 1947). PP. 27 ff.
  • Butterfield, op. cit., p. 129.
  • A. R. Hall, The Scientific Revolution, 1500–1800 (2d ed.; London: Longmans, 1962), pp. 69–70, 224, 308–309.
  • Read, op. cit., p. 24.
  • M F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists, Founders of Modern Chemistry (London: William Heinemann, 1951).
  • John Read, Through Alchemy to Chemistry (London: G. Bell, 1957).
  • L. W. H. Hull, History and Philosophy of Science (London: Longmans, 1959), p. 119. Hull notes on p. 267 that the alchemists' use of astrological symbols for the metals served as a backdrop for modern chemical symbolism. See also the chapter titled, “Découvertes faites en chimie par les philosophes hermétiques”, in the old but still important work by Louis Figuier, L'Alchimie et les alchimistes (3d ed.; Paris: Hachette, 1860), pp. 92–102.
  • M. Caron and S. Hutin, The Alchemists, trans. Helen R. Lane (“Evergreen Profile Book”, 27; New York: Grove Press, 1961), pp. 108–112. See also Taylor, op. cit., pp. 68–75.
  • Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, trans. Stephen Corrin (New York: Harper, 1962), especially pp. 199–204 (on Jung). See also Eliade's “Note sur Jung et l'alchimie” in Le Disque Vert: C. G. Jung (Bruxelles, 1955), pp. 97–109.
  • M. Berthelot, Les origines de l'alchimie (Paris: Steinheil, 1885); Arthur John Hopkins, Alchemy, Child of Greek Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934). Hopkins' work is unfortunately marred by a naive eighteenth-century “Enlightenment” philosophy of history.
  • On Arnold, see Albert Poisson (ed.), Cinq traités d'alchimie (Paris: Chacornac, 1890), pp. 5–21; and José Ramón de Luanco y Riego, La alquimia en España (2 vols.; Barcelona, 1889–1897), II, 103–141, 244–88.
  • Jung writes: “Alchemy reached its greatest efflorescence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then to all appearances it began to die out. In reality it found its continuation in natural science” (Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, trans. R. F. C. Hull [“Collected Works”, IX/2; New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1959], p. 176). In spite of oft-repeated statements to the contrary, alchemy “played only a very subordinate part at the best period of the Renaissance” (Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans. S. G. C. Middlemore [3d ed.; London: Phaidon Press, 1950], p. 334). Leonardo da Vinci makes scornful references to alchemy (and astrology) in his Notebooks.
  • Hall, op. cit., p. 224. Cf. also Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions (reprint ed.; [New York?]: L. C. Page, 1932), pp. 152 ff.
  • See Waite's classic, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (reprint ed.; New Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1961).
  • E.g., Jacques Gaulthier (Gualterius), S.J. (1560–1636), suggests in his Table chronographique de l'estat du Christianisme (Lyon, 1633), pp. 889 ff., that “ceste prétendue Fraternité n'est ni si ancienne qu'elle se fait, ains que c'est un rejetton du Luthérianisme, meslangé par Satan d'empirisme et de magie, pour mieux decevoir les esprits volages et curieux”. Mackay (op. cit., pp. 194–95) is in actuality referring to this passage when he writes: “The Abbé Gaultier, a Jesuit, wrote a book [sic] to prove that, by their enmity to the pope, they [the Rosicrucians] could be no other than disciples of Luther sent to promulgate his heresy”.
  • WA-TR, V, 5671.
  • WA-TR, I, 1149.
  • Printed by Melchior Adam in his Vitae Germanorum medicorum (Haidelbergae: J. Rosa, 1620), pp. 338–42 (the “medicamenta à Luthero in officinis” are listed on p. 340). With the iatrochemists' medicinal use of gold, cf. present-day chrysotherapy (see, e.g. Eugene F. Traut, Rheumatic Diseases, Diagnosis and Treatment [St. Louis, Mo.: Mosby, 1952], chap, xlvii [“Gold and Other Heavy Metals in Arthritis”], pp. 850–55).
  • Read, Through Alchemy to Chemistry, pp. 92–93. Excellent drawings of chemical apparatus are also provided in the first part of Libavius' Praxis alchymiae (Frankfurt: Kopff, 1604).
  • Libavius, Tractatus duo physici (Frankfurt, 1594); see Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, VI (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), 239.
  • Ibid., p. 238.
  • Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), especially pp. 108–15, 125–28, 221–31. An examination of my personal copy of one of the greatest Lutheran methodological treatises of the Reformation period (Nicolaus Hemming[sen]'s De methodis libri duo [Lipsiae: J. Steinman, 1578]), which Gilbert did not consult but cites on the basis of secondary sources (pp. 112, 197), revealed the true breadth of the Melanchthonian approach (Hemming[sen] had studied under Melanchthon) and the degree to which Gilbert caricatures it. It is of interest that Tycho Brahe convinced Hemming[sen] that Calvin's arguments against astrology lacked theological validity (Thorndike, op. cit., VI, 523).
  • Indeed, Libavius would have less time spent on the abstract discussion of Peripatetic vs. Ramist method; he prefers actual scientific investigation to methodological dissentions and hatreds, which handicap scientific progress (see Libavius' Quaest. physicarum contro-versarum inter Peripatéticos et Ratneos of 1591).
  • A. E. Waite, The Secret Tradition in Alchemy (London: Kegan Paul, 1926), p. 254.
  • Khunrath writes: “Since God the Lord for our edification permits Jesus Christ to be represented in the great Book of Nature by the Stone of the Philosophers, I may fitly quote the words of Isaiah the Prophet concerning Christ, in order thereby to show to some extent the wonderful harmony and correspondence of these two stones” (Vom hylealischen... Chaos [reprint ed.; Frankfurt, 1707], p. 17). There is, of course, explicit use of the imagery of Christ as a Rock or Stone in the Bible (e.g. Eph. 2: 20; I Pet. 2: 4–8). A. E. Waite (The Secret Tradition in Alchemy, p. 346 and passim) maintains that Khunrath was the first alchemist specifically to identify the Stone with Christ; although Jung has shown that such identification had previously occurred in the mediaeval period (Psychology and Alchemy, trans. R. F. C. Hull [“Collected Works”, XII; New York: Bollingen Foundation. 1953], PP. 343, 360, 379). Khunrath's emphatic Biblical Christocentricity is exceedingly striking and would be inexplicable apart from the theological concerns of the Reformation.
  • Thorndike is excessively critical of this work (op. cit., VII, 273–75). A sympathetic treatment of Khunrath is given by Waite in his Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, pp. 61 ff.
  • Grillot de Givry, Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy, trans. J. Courtenay Locke ([New York?]: Frederick Publications, 1954), p. 383. The two illustrations from the Amphitheatrum are reproduced on pp. 348, 384.
  • Arndt's tract is titled, Judicium Hüter die vier Figuren des grossen Amphitheatri Henrici Khunraihs, and was printed in: (1) Khunrath's De igne magorum philosophorumque secreto externo et visibili (Strassburg, 1608); (2) Khunrath's Trinum chymicum secundum (Strassburg, 1700) [another edition of the De igne]; and (3) the Chymisches Lust-Gärtlein (Ludwigsburg: C. H. Pfotenhauer, 1747), pp. 87–96. The citations of (1) and (2) are given in the Catalogue of the Ferguson Collection... in the Library of the University of Glasgow (2 vols.; Glasgow: Robert Maclehose, 1943), I, 367; item (3) is listed in John Ferguson's Bibliotheca Chemica (2 vols.; Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1906), I, 48, 159, 463.
  • An excellent chapter devoted to Maier appears in Waite's Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, pp. 310–39. Maier is frequently cited by Jung in his Psychology and Alchemy, but, in line with Jung's syncretic presuppositions, he is discussed indiscriminately with nonChristian alchemists. Unfortunately it must be said that Jung (like Eliade from the standpoint of general history-of-religions) misses the unique character of Christian alchemy by insisting that “Christ” is in the final analysis but an ideogram of the self (Jung, Aion, pp. 36–71, 173–83; Answer to Job, trans. R. F. C. Hull [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954]. passim).
  • J. B. Craven, Count Michael Maier, Life and Writings (Kirkwall [Eng.]: William Peace, 1910), pp. 82–83. Maier's Subtle Allegory concerning the Secrets of Alchemy is available in English translation in The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged, ed. A. E. Waite (2 vols.; London: James Elliott, 1893), II, 199–223.
  • Michael Maier, De circulo physico, quadrato: hoc est, Auro, eiusque virtute medicinali (Oppenheimii, 1616), chap, vii, pp. 43–49.
  • The words are Troeltsch's (The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches [op. cit., in note 8], II, 570). Troeltsch calls Andreae “one of the finest and most original Lutheran thinkers”.
  • See Felix Emil Held (ed.), Johann Valentin Andreae's Christianopolis: An Ideal State of the Seventeenth Century ([Urbana, Ill.]: University of Illinois, 1914), p. 12.
  • Published pseudonymously in English translation (London, 1652) by “Eugenius Philalethes” (Thomas Vaughan). See A. E. Waite (ed.). The Works of Thomas Vaughan (London: Theosophical Publishing House, 1919), pp. 339–82 and 490.
  • See Paul Arnold's detailed and provocative study, Histoire des Rose-Croix (Paris: Mercure de France, 1955), passim.
  • Cf. Waite, The Brotherlwod of the Rosy Cross, pp. 160 ff. For Jung's views on Andreae, sec his Practice of Psychotherapy, trans. R.F. C. Hull (“Collected Works”, XVI; New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1954), pp. 209, 216, 286, 289 (and cf. my note 78 above).
  • Johann Valentin Andreac, The Hermetick Romance or the Chymical Wedding, trans. E. Foxcroft (London, 1690), p. 17. I am presently engaged in preparing a modern, critical edition of this work.
  • Ibid., pp. 15–51. On the important alchemical concept of the “conjunction of opposites”, sec Jung's Mysterium Coniunctionis, trans. R F. C. Hull (“Collected Works”, XIV; New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1963). With the “conjunction”, cf. Luthcr's concept of the “hidden” and “revealed” God (Deus absconditus et revelatus).
  • Ronald D. Gray, Goethe the Alchemist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), p. 207..
  • Gray (Ibid.) shows how Goethe pantheized the Lutheran alchemy of Andreae and of the historian-pietist Gottfrid Arnold
  • C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientiftc Revolution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959); Recent Thoughts on the Two Cultures (London, 1961).
  • In English translation in: Rollo May (ed.), Symbolism in Religion and Literature (New York: George Braziller, 1960), pp. 215–32.
  • Boston: Beacon Press, 1956. Cf. also Eliade's The Forge and the Crucible (op. cit., in note 58 above).
  • This organic view of the alcheinists is very effectively explained in a manner understandable to the modem Inind in Stephen Toulinin's Foresight and Understanding: An Enquiry into the Aims of Science ([Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University Press, 1961), pp. 69–81. Luther's thought was profoundly “organic” in character, as Joseph Sittler has shown in his Structure of Christian Ethics (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1958).
  • The desperate personal desire of some in our time to induce the blending of Macrocosm with Microcosm by artificial means is evidenced by Zen-Buddhist Alan Watts' experiments with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); see his chapter titled (significantly) “The New Alchemy”, in his This is IT and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), pp. 125–53.
  • Torrance, Dialog, II (Winter, 1963), 41 (cited above in note 9).
  • John Baillie, Natural Science and the Spiritual Life (London: Oxford University Press, 1951). PP. 35–36.

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