What’s good, ParaPower Mappers? It’s another installment of “The Secret History of MasSUSchusetts” & the return to our “Historical Materia Ultima” miniseries, as we draw the story of John Winthrop the Younger’s Rosicrucian alchemical plantation project to a close.
Many thanks to @MKstorie (Twitter) for the very chill, glyph-y episode artwork! Give 'em a follow, y'all. Can you spy the Monas Hieroglyphica?
Songs:
| Franz Liszt - "Hungarian Rhapsody #2" |
| X - "Nausea" |
| The Cowboy Junkies - "Sir Francis Bacon at the Net" |
This episode includes:
- A comprehensive list of the various alchemists & occultists who were part of the collegium that orbited Winthrop Jr.; more colonial prospecting for precious minerals (this time the Brewsters & Endecotts); alchemical economic development schemes, like Winthrop’s saltpeter manufacturing plant; the alchemist Johann Glauber’s sodium nitrate propagandizing & claim that it is the “universal menstruum”; copies of Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy making the rounds in NE; the fact that French’s translation was dedicated to Robert Child; the Paracelsian prophecy of the alchemical messiah Elias Arista; Winthrop’s involvement in the founding of Yale; Brewster’s alchemical secrets; Winthrop the Younger’s alchemedical cures, including Rubila, which his descendants marketed the shit out of; an Oliver Wendell Holmes sighting; the miserableness of frontier medical practices, which primarily involved purging (puke & shit); humoral theory and its correspondences w/ the Aristotelian elements; the hype for pansophia highlighting the Enlightenment view of the world as interlocking systems; pansophia & alchemy’s impact on the emergence of capitalism; alchemical secrecy = profit motive; other metallurgical cures; a personal favorite—the “weapon salve”, Sir Kenelm Digby’s sympathetic magickal remedy which was supposed to heal wounds over distance thru the application of salves to the weapon that caused the wound (plus the obligatory masturbation jokes LOL); the connection between healing ability, status, & power…
- …a lot of lists in this one, one being a rundown of known alchemists in colonial New England—Mathers, Bulkeley, Stoughton, Danforth, Ezra Stiles, Hoar, Stiles, Child, Winthrops, etc.—powerful men who were ministers, college presidents, doctors, governors, & magistrates (a couple even sitting on the Court of Oyer & Terminer during the Salem trials); the story of alchemist Samuel Danforth Sr.’s “execution sermon” (supposedly the first ever), which was delivered at the execution of the teenager Benjamin Goad who had been found guilty of bestiality & which Danforth later published as a tract (slimey)...
- …Winthrop the Younger’s status as first colonial member of the Royal Society; the ascent of Charles II; Winthrop’s trip to London around the time of his coronation; the coincident charters for the Royal Society, Board of Trade, Council for Plantations, & Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; the Royal Society’s empire-building & intelligence-gathering purpose; Winthrop’s relationship w/ Benjamin Worsley (former surveyor general of Ireland & alchemist), Lord Brereton, Robert Boyle, Sir Robert Moray, Elias Ashmole, the Hartlib Circle, etc., further explicating the closeness of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, & the R.S.; the intersection of espionage, magic, & science in the Society; Boyle’s emphasis on the dual exploitation of information for divine knowledge & profit; a new charter for Connecticut; the Royal Society’s investment in the Royal African Company (John Locke, F.R.S. a managing member) & the East India Co., showing the Society’s role in the triangular trade; the Royal Society’s conceptual origins in the Fama Fraternitatis & Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (specifically the symbol of Solomon’s House); a note about Society members’ interest in technology (evoking John Dee); & lastly, a wonderment about science-fiction-as-magickal-rewriting-of-reality & its connection to R.S.
