I have been reading recently a lot about colonial America for the next book project I'm working on, and I came across the curious figure of Pierre Eugène du Simitière (1737-1784), a Swiss naturalist/artist from the Revolutionary time period.
Simitière got the clever idea to write a natural history of the New World which prompted his sailing to the Americas at the age of twenty. Where he spent the rest of his life traveling all over the colonies and the Caribbean collecting samples and drawing pictures. Living that American Dream.
He finally settled down in Philadelphia in 1774 right when the shit was hitting the fan between the colonies and the British.
If Simitière was anything he was a collector. Just a smidge above being a hoarder. Collecting everything that caught his fancy. Bits and pieces from different native cultures. Fossils. Animal and insect specimens. Drawings. Pamphlets.* And books.
*He pulled together the most comprehensive collection of pamphlets and other publications from the revolutionary period, that has been monumental in preserving the political discourse which was going on in the colonies.
All of these odds and ends he brought together in his rented room in Philadelphia in something that was larger than a curio cabinet but not quite a full-fledged museum. A first of its kind in the colonies, and a place where delegates to the Continental Congress would visit and marvel at Simitière's collection.
Over the course of the Revolutionary War, he successfully avoided serving in the Continental Army and was called on to design the Great Seal of the new nation and as well as a commemorative coin for George Washington.
For as forward thinking and connected as he was monetary success was not something that he stumbled upon dying broke at the age of 47 in 1784.
Now this is where we come across Simitière's impressive collection of books that were put up for sale after his death. At the time (and who knows maybe even today) Philadelphia had a thriving book auction scene that revolutionized how books were sold and discovered in Colonial America, which is a whole other topic for a whole other day.
Simitière's books were listed by genre with a smattering of topics from history to scientific and religious texts, but one particular section stuck out: occult philosophy.
All things occult have had a bad rap for centuries, and none moreso than in Colonial America what with the famous witch trials and it wasn’t uncommon for political rivals to smear one another by claiming they practiced the occult arts.
Which leads me to wonder what exactly what did they mean when they used the term occult. Simitière's collection helps to answer that, and here they are:
Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy - Contains a little bit of everything when it comes to the occult: scrying, numerology, angels, alchemy, Kabbalah. Agrippa was one of the first to put it all together in this collection.
Parker’s Astrology - Most likely referring to 17th & 18th century astrologer/weirdo George Parker who edited William Eland’s Tutor to Astrology though it could also refer to Parker’s Ephemeris, a yearly almanac that he published, which would have included some astrological texts in each edition.
Demonologie - More of an anti-occult book that was written by King James I that goes into the details of how demons work, the different types of them and, most importantly to King James. how to eradicate them.
History of Witches and Apparitions - Has the fun distinction of being called by modern histories as “cheap and sensational”.
Satan's Invisible World discovered - Written by George Sinclair as a way of refuting atheism by highlighting actual cases of devils appearing and fucking with people.
Hocus Pocus - So before coming across this list, I realized that I had no idea what hocus pocus actually meant outside of Bette Midler movies but now I know! It's all just slight of hand magic tricks. Thanks P.E.d.S.!
Portae Magia Naturalis - Giuseppe Baptisa Porta’s Natural Magick contains all kinds of wonderful olde tyme insights into the natural sciences and provides a little bit of everything like a dash of alchemy along with tips on “beautifying women” that includes a surprising amount of hair care tips.
Bodini Daemonomania - Can you call someone a Renaissance man if they were from the Renaissance? Either way Jean Bobin dabbled in a lot of things but mostly political philosophy where he was a leading thinker in that field in the 16th century. He also wrote about demons and sorcerers.
Authores Varii super Alchemiam - Couldn't track this one down but it looks to be a collection of alchemical texts by an assortment of alchemists.
Hermes Trismegistus - The Hermetica texts from the original occult superstar Hermes Trismegistus.
Paracelsus’s Aurora - Just love this dude’s look. I don't care what the book is about I kinda just want to chill in his basement with him and play some video games.
There is a good mixture of witch-y vibes, astrology, demonology, magick, and alchemy. Now just how prevalent were these beliefs or practices that's the task for some intrepid dissertation. But this shows that there were such books around in the colonial/Early Republic period of American history. And sensational books like History of Witches and Apparitions and true crime books were hot sellers and some of the most popular books in the Philadelphia libraries.
Like the arts in the colonial period, America relied heavily on Europe to set the tone and this also applied to the occult arts, where there were no important theorists applying their trade in America. They were taking their cues from their European brethren. Simitière's books point to this where you will find no American texts, but only those originating from Europe.
What the colonies provided, particularly one like Pennsylvania that established at its founding strict religious freedoms, were homes to untraditional religious sects.
This land of the free mentality made it an attractive locale to European cult and cult-like groups to escape the persecution they were suffering in the Old World.
As a result some occult inspired organizations like Johannes Kelpius’s “Society of the Woman in the Wilderness” located themselves just outside of colonial Philadelphia. Fraternal and secret societies like the Free Masons blossomed in the colonies, and attracted some of the leading members of the merchant and landed classes. They counted a number of Founding Fathers as active members.
Going a step further many have claimed that Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and other leading revolutionaries were initiates of Rosicrucianism and practiced it here in America. Setting the nation up under to ideals of Rosicrucian thought. Though there is little to no evidence to back up those claims, however, a secret sect does lend itself to you know being secret and not leaving any evidence behind.
Simitière's occult collection demonstrates that there was active interest in colonial America in occult arts either to practice magick or to combat evil. Or maybe on an even more basic level the collection shows a curiosity into the unknown, which we still share to this day.
Book Review Time
From Darkness into Light: The War Heroes Who Helped Save Cricket from Oblivion (2023, Pitch Publishing) - Anthony Condon & John Broom
I stumbled across this book through its publisher Pitch Publishing, which does an amazing job of publishing mostly soccer related releases. But the U.K. based press manages to publish on a wide range of British-y sports such as cricket.
Being about WWI (or the impact that the war had on the cricketing world) a topic I find endlessly fascinating and can read any book on it. And as an American with Anglophile tendencies, cricket has intrigued me for some time. Something I can pop on ESPN+ and watch with little to no comprehension about what is going on. So finding a book that marries the two that's a groovy, intriguing possiblity.
From Darkness into Light delivers too. The book follows a tour of Australian Army cricketers around England in 1919 following the armistice. Broom and Condon do an admirable job setting the stage for pre-war cricket and taking you into the world of Aussie and English cricketers.
For me though the real treat are the stories about the soldierly lives of the cricketers playing in the tour and the lives of those lost or maimed in the Great War. The experiences from these cricketers helps personalize the struggle to survive the war and return to some sort of normalcy afterwards.
Verdict: Good Story, Well Told