Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman. Jaargang 22
(1999)– [tijdschrift] Mededelingen van de Stichting Jacob Campo Weyerman– Auteursrechtelijk beschermd
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Philipp Joseph Frick (1742-1798)
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Grand Lodge of England), which still exists today.Ga naar eind1. The Pilgrim Lodge was founded on 5 August 1779 expressly for the German-speaking community in London. All ceremonies were to be held in the German language.Ga naar eind2. The official founder was Johann Dan. Siegfried Leonhardi, a friend of the German masonic reformer Johann Wilhelm Ellenberger, known as Zinnendorf. Leonhardi wished to strenghten the latter's position with the Grand Lodge of England.Ga naar eind3. Zinnendorf, in opposition to the then current and briefly powerful masonic system of ‘Strict Observance’ in Germany,Ga naar eind4. founded a first lodge based on the Swedish System in Potsdam in 1768. Other lodges soon followed. The English Grand Lodge acknowledged Zinnendorf's Grand Lodge in 1773, and Zinnendorf's follower Leonhardi obtained without difficulty a patent from the English Grand Master, George Montagu, fourth Earl of Manchester, to institute the Germanspeaking lodge. An early historian of the Pilgrim Lodge notes with some disapproval that at that time, although the English lodges had numerically increased from 4 in 1717 to 516 in 1779, the English freemasons had abandoned their original exalted objectives. He quotes a contemporary observer, a German freemason from Frankfurt, who complained that wining and dining was now the main activity of the English freemasons; all that was left of English Freemasonry was mere ceremony.Ga naar eind5. Clearly the Pilgrim Lodge wished to follow a different model. The Swedish System introduced by Zinnendorf urged a mystical knowledge of God and an awareness of the divine essence in man. The lodge, which was originally entered as No. 516 in the Grand Lodge of England, initially met in the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, but soon after moved to Free Masons' Hall, then in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn. Apart from Johann Leonhardi, five other Germans were entered as members on 5 August 1779. The seventh member was Joseph Frick, who was admitted on 14 August. He was not, therefore, a founding member, but nevertheless a very early one. On 19 August another German was admitted, and four more on 23 August. In a list of the early members of the Pilgrim Lodge, Frick's professional occupation is described as ‘Kaufmann’ (merchant); his place of birth is not entered.Ga naar eind6. Why Frick wished to be known as ‘Kaufmann’, while he was in fact a published (at least on the Continent) and accomplished musician is not known. Frick's earliest musical publication in London other than the Freimaurerlieder dates from 1780 (see no. 3 in the appendix to Part I). He may, in the late summer of 1779, and a year after he arrived in England, have still been establishing himself as a musician, and he may have had to supplement his income as a harpsichord teacher with income derived from trade - he himself stated in his autobiography that he was forced to enter into business upon settling in London. | |
Master of CeremoniesAt any rate Frick became the Director of Ceremonies for the Pilgrim Lodge soon after its inception, as is witnessed by the title of a work published in October 1779, two months after the lodge's foundation: Freimaurer-Lieder zum Gebrauche der Pilger-Loge, in Musik gesetzt von Joseph Fricke, Cermonienmeister der Pilger-Loge. This 23-page work, published in a quarto format, contains 11 songs.Ga naar eind7. Fourteen years later, in 1793, it was reviewed in Germany in an issue of the masonic publication Freymaurer-Bibliothek, published in Berlin by Christian Gottfried Schoene.Ga naar eind8. The reviewer notes that the work is engraved throughout, which may, according to him, account for the many spelling errors. Seven of the songs were written by Leonhardi, the founder of the lodge, one by Heinrich August Corthym, co-founder, and another one by Count Christian von | |
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Stolberg. Of Frick's share in the work, the composition, the reviewer remarks that the melodies are flowing and full of charming simplicity.Ga naar eind9. The function of Director of Ceremonies involved formally supervising occasions of a festive or official nature. German masons, as has been noted earlier, were not impressed by the festivities and ceremonies of the English lodges: they were compared to the activities of common clubs.Ga naar eind10. Frick, for better or for worse, was Director of Ceremonies from 1779 to 1781. He was succeeded by J. Rinder, a physician by profession, who held that function from 1781 to 1782. This post generally appears to have been held by members of the lodge for the period of one or two years.Ga naar eind11. The early history of the Pilgrim Lodge, as a historian of the Lodge has remarked, is unfortunately not very well documented, and the above are the only facts relating to Frick's connection with the Lodge. | |
A continental masonWhen Frick was admitted as a member of the Pilgrim Lodge, he had the qualification ‘Affil.’ added to the date of admission. This means that Frick had already been inducted earlier into a masonic lodge,Ga naar eind12. and the obvious assumption is that this took place in his native Germany. There was no lodge in Baden (Frick's domicile from 1762 until at least 1771) prior to 1778, by which time he was already in London. The traditional view that masonic lodges in Germany almost exclusively drew their members from the aristocracy has been corrected, but there were two lodges, the Hamburg lodge in Hamburg (1737) and the lodge ‘Zur Einigkeit’ in Frankfurt (1742), whose members mainly belonged to the merchant class, the occupation (‘Kaufmann’) put down by Frick when he was admitted in London.Ga naar eind13. If Frick, who classes himself as a merchant in the registers of the Pilgrim Lodge, was admitted into a lodge in Germany, these two lodges might qualify as possible candidates, and it is known he was in Frankfurt during a musical tour in the autumn of 1769. Unfortunately there are no records available concerning Frick's possible admission into a German lodge; nor appears there to be evidence of involvement in masonic circles in either Moscow or St Petersburg in the years 1773 to 1777, when Frick lived in RussiaGa naar eind14. His admission into a Zinnendorfian lodge in London may mean that he was initiated earlier on the Continent in a lodge which observed the same system, although it is perhaps more likely that Frick, still a relative stranger in London, would prefer to resort to a German-language lodge, in order to establish himself in that city more easily. He probably met Haydn and Reichardt in person, two visiting German musicians who were masons. And Johann Christian Bach, Queen Charlotte's music master, was also a member of the Pilgrim Lodge, having been admitted on 12 September 1781.Ga naar eind15. Frick refers explicitly to the Masons on two occasions in The True Knowledge: ‘The said two Ribs are the two Columns before the Temple - so much spoken of by Free-Masons, but which are so little understood. Moses calls them AESCH-MAJIM, the first Essences in Man.’ And, in relation to the four degrees of man's fall (and, in reverse, ascent) distinguished by Frick, he adds: ‘If this remark is compared with the Second Plan, the real Free Masons will understand their four steps!’Ga naar eind16. It is unknown whether Frick remained with the Pilgrim Lodge. But by 1797, when he published his theosophical work, he had certainly become associated with a man of a more exotic religious stamp. | |
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Philipp Joseph Frick, keeper of The True Knowledge of God and ManFrick's The True Knowledge of God and Man can be classified as belonging to the flood of millenarian tracts and prophecies which has been described in J.F.C. Harrison's highly absorbing The Second Coming. Popular Millenarianism 1780-1850.Ga naar eind17. The tense political and social climate of the 1790s, both on the Continent and in England, naturally fostered millenarian expectations. In England, under the shadow of the French Revolution, prophecies were abundant In 1795 The remarkable predictions of Mr. Christopher Love were reprinted, the prophecies of a seventeenth-century author who in the turbulence of the Civil War period had already promised that ‘the Lord by his spirit shall cause knowledge to abound amongst his people, whereby the old prophecies shall be clearly and perfectly understood’.Ga naar eind18. In the last decades of the eighteenth century, a number of highly charged individuals took it upon themselves to act out this promise, and reveal the divine knowledge they had received to their fellow humans. Pamphlets prophesying the end of time and the establishment of the New Jerusalem on earth, as envisioned by John in Revelations XXI.2, were printed in abundance in London. | |
Frick's very involved publisherFrick's True Knowledge, published in 1797 by William Bryan, which promises to describe the great ‘Sabbath on Earth’, is likewise intended to prepare mankind for the imminent coming of Christ. That the treatise was published by William Bryan is not at all surprising. Bryan himself had been involved in millenarian circles at least since 1789. An account of Bryan's peregrinations under the influence of his unorthodox religious feelings can be found in Harrison's The Second Coming and in Clarke Garrett's earlier study Respectable Folly.Ga naar eind19. Bryan, a copper-plate printer by profession, was a confirmed millenarian. Originating from Shrewsbury, he had travelled to London at the age of twenty-one and, after sampling various dissenting sects, had joined the Quaker Society around 1785, until he was ejected from that Society in December 1789.Ga naar eind20. Earlier that year, he and a fellow-millenarian, the carpenter John Wright, had travelled to the south of France to join the Illuminés of Avignon, a sect originally founded by Dom Antoine Joseph Pernety,Ga naar eind21. which combined strands of freemasonry, occultism, mesmerism and spiritualism. Pernety was eventually joined by the Polish count Tadeusz Grabianka, who diverted the movement's interest from occultism and alchemy towards millenarianism.Ga naar eind22. Although Bryan and Wright returned to England much enlightened in spirit, Bryan found it very difficult as a result of his millenarian inclinations to find work. He moved to Bristol around 1791 and established himself there as an apothecary, but returned to London in 1794, to become a follower of Richard Brothers, a Newfoundland-born prophet who had settled in London and had attracted a devoted following. In the vexed mid-1790s Brothers apparently became such a threat to the authorities that, charges of political conspiracy having failed, he was committed to a lunatic asylum in May 1795, from which place he nevertheless continued to burst into print.Ga naar eind23. William Bryan was still in London in 1802, when he accepted the prophecies of another, female prophet, Joanna Southcott, as true revelations of the divine Spirit. Bryan was nevertheless considered an enduring devotee of Richard Brothers, and described by Harrison as belonging to the ‘nucleus of Brothers' followers’.Ga naar eind24. A few years before his Illuminé adventures, in 1786, Bryan was selling the books of another visionary. He is mentioned as a bookseller in the imprints of Swedenborg's Doctrine of the New Jerusalem concerning the Lord, The Doctrine of the New | |
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Jerusalem concerning the sacred Scripture, and The Doctrine of Life for the New Jerusalem. All three were published in 1786, and his address is given as 7, Mark Lane, London.Ga naar eind25. The extent of Bryan's printing career is not very clear,Ga naar eind26. but it began promising, under the tutelage of the eminent engraver (and fellow millenarian) William Sharp, who encouraged Bryan and apparently launched him into business, probably in or after 1786.Ga naar eind27. Frick's acquaintance with Bryan cannot have been casual or confined to a strictly business relationship. Not only did he entrust Bryan with the possible recuperation of outstanding salaries owed to him by the Russian imperial court (see Part I), he also, more realistically, referred anyone wishing to meet the author personally to William Bryan.Ga naar eind28. It is not unlikely that Frick was encouraged in his own millenarian fervour by Bryan, a follower of the prophet Brothers. The copy of The True Knowledge held by The British Library was bound by - its first? owner - as part of a tract volume, headed by a treatise written by Richard Brothers, ‘in confinement’, as the title-page claims, so after he had been committed to the asylum. It was printed in October 1795. Another millenarian treatise in the same tract volume was written by the Scottish lawyer John Finlayson, a devoted follower and protector of Brothers. Most of the other treatises were printed in 1797. The inclusion of The True Knowledge in this tract volume, with one tract by Richard Brothers, and another one by a devotee of the prophet, would seem to suggest that Frick's anonymously published pamphlet was considered allied to these circles. Like others inclined towards mystical theosophy, Frick claims to have been divinely inspired, and thus to have true and direct knowledge of God. Believing the millennium to be at hand, he declares in his treatise that he was favoured by the Lord to present to the world the true account of man's divine origin, so that men might know and prepare themselves for the coming of Christ: Christ has even revealed to the Writer the reasons why his Kingdom will be established upon Earth. This was, indeed, never before communicated to any person in the world; we may take it as a proof that it was only to be known at the latter end: otherwise something of it would certainly have been mentioned before, either by a Prophet or by an Apostle: this seems to be additional proof that the long expected time (Daniel XII.8,9Ga naar eind29.) must be at hand. (p. 111) Frick received many divine revelations, some of which were not to be made public yet: Several other real reasons of the Lord's judgements have likewise been given to the Writer, but as they are not absolutely necessary for our instruction and preparation, they are not permitted publicly to be mentioned at present (p. 72) The True Knowledge, as Frick lets us know in a footnote to page 112, was published only after divine approval: ‘The merciful permission for publishing this book was received on the 14th day of March 1797, at noon, 12 o'clock; for which Mercy the Lord be praised for ever.’ Frick is very meticulous about the time he received his revelations, most of which appear to have been communicated to him in August 1795.Ga naar eind30. 1795 was a fateful year: according to the prophet Brothers, the Second Coming was fixed to happen on 19 November 1795, at dawn.Ga naar eind31. In this tense atmosphere, Frick received further visions ten days after the announced non-event. | |
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To prove his point, Frick quotes liberally from the Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, including the book of Daniel, the apocryphal 2 Esdras, Revelations, Matthew 24, traditionally the favourite sources for apocalyptic writers.Ga naar eind32. He also quotes from Ezekiel, another Fundgrube for religious enthusiasts. When explaining the Bible Frick, who admits he is no Hebrew scholar, is nevertheless not hampered by his linguistic handicap, as his ‘instruction comes from the original Source’ (p. 57). The translators of the Bible, learned men, were wilfully wrong in their translations: ‘men, through their own will, fell in the mud, so did the translators of the Bible. Whoever denies this, let him but look into two Bibles of any two languages, and observe whether they are alike; if not, which of the two is right? ye Doctors!’ (p. 58). The ‘Reformers’, who were responsible for translating the Bible into the vernacular, he therefore calls the ‘Deformers’. The usual contempt of the inspired for book learning here reverberates, in a shrewd observation of an almost comparative-linguistical nature. Even if the Hebrew had been translated accurately by the translators of the Bible, Frick continues, they would still have produced an imperfect version, as Esdras was not permitted fully to reveal the Holy Scripture. With the aid of Frick's divinely inspired explanation of the Bible, all men, made aware of their true divine origin, can now become inwardly purified. The biblical quotations in Frick's True Knowledge, incidentally, are taken from the Authorized Version. What Frick intends to elucidate in The True Knowledge, to prepare mankind for the Second Coming, are mainly the first three chapters of Genesis, since ‘every spiritual man knows that the first three chapters of Moses contain the substance of the whole Bible’ (p. 101). However, what every spiritual man may not know is that the Mosaic writings were burnt, and that the second account of Creation, written by Esdras, is incomplete. Frick received divine permission to reveal and explain the omissions, in preparation of Christ's Coming, as he writes in the preface: The Account of the very first Creation is omitted in the Holy Scripture - and so are many parts; because, after the Original Bible was burnt, GOD commanded ESDRAS to write it anew, but said to him at the same time (II. Book XIX. 26.) And when thou hast done, some things shalt thou publish, and some things shalt thou shew secretly to the Wise.Ga naar eind33. These Omissions - together with some incorrect Translations - have been the Cause of many Errors. But at this late time of the World, The LORD has mercifully permitted these Secret things to be mentioned. They are chiefly omitted in - or belong to the three first Chapters of Genesis, which, therefore, are explained here, in order that every Man in the World might know his CREATOR - Himself and his Duty, and learn, even, from the Prodigal Son - how to come back to his FATHER. (p. i) That Frick casts himself in the role of the Prodigal Son, a regenerate, is also clear from the following: ‘It is well known that the servants of God have mostly been without a wordly elevation. This book is written by a man equally low, one who hardly knows how to write, an unworthy being, a sinner, but one that repents.’ (p. 103) | |
Our originsAlthough Frick claims to have been guided only by the spirit of God, his account of the first three chapters of Genesis more or less follows then current theosophical interpretations of the beginnings of man and the world into which he is cast. Frick writes that man ‘was created of the essence of the highest spiritual world, which | |
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essence - Aesch-MajimGa naar eind34. - is a part of the Holy Trinity itself!’ (pp. 45-6). Man, when created, was both male and female, or One, and was given a ‘spirit of the highest spiritual world’. He was not created in Eden, as biblical commentators mistakenly assert, but in ‘Jerusalem, next to the Throne of God’ (p. 46), and was a heavenly, spiritual man. Man was tempted by Satan in the spirit, for which transgression he was put in paradise, where he was furnished with a ‘spiritual body of the dust in Eden.’ Here man, now called Adam, was still male and female, but because he again listened to the insinuations of the serpent, the male and female essence was divided, and Adam received his mate. It was she who was subsequently tempted, by listening to Satan in the guise of the serpent, because the devil knew her to be weaker. Adam and his wife, driven out of Paradise, must consequently inhabit the earth, which is cursed, and ‘Lucifer's seat’ (p. 5). God did not create this earth we now inhabit - ‘it was merely inverted or changed from good to bad, or laid in curse through his mighty and righteous Judgment, occasioned by the fall of Lucifer.’ (p. 7) In discussing Eve's part in what Frick considers the final stage of man's fall, he does not differ from orthodox misogynist thought. He is opposed to an undue female presence in the public domain. In this he differs from many millenarians, who accepted the prophecies of female prophets equally with those of their male colleagues. Frick's acquaintance and publisher Bryan switched allegiance from Richard Brothers to Joanna Southcott unhesitatingly, and many others with him. But Frick is quite determined about the subordinate status of women in the (millennial) world. Basing himself largely on the Pauline precepts concerning the position of women, drawn from Corinthians and 1 Timothy, he chides the female sex: ‘it is hoped, that Women, who brought us out of the Paradise, will be quiet and submissive, and not hinder Men in bringing them back again.’ (p. 158)
His opposition to female rule echoes that of a fellow-conservative of more than two centuries earlier, incidentally emphasizing the stock-in-trade of printed misogyny: And as long as there is one single Man upon Earth, fit for some extraordinary Employment, no woman is chosen for any great action; and even then, such a choice could happen merely to our shame: as was the case at the time of Deborah, when all the Men were bad. (p. 157) The Protestant John Knox employed the same argument in his ill-timed tract written against the female rulership of the Catholic Mary Tudor with the magnificent title First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, which came out under Mary's successor Elizabeth in 1558. Frick, 250 years later, has nothing new to add on this score. Accounts of the creation of the first man, his original androgyny, and his separation into male and female can already be found in Plato's Symposium, Gnostic myths, and in kabbalistic commentaries on Genesis, especially V.2. This notion of man's first blessed state and his fall into matter was adopted in the seventeenth century by the German theosopher Jacob Böhme (1575-1624), particularly in Mysterium Magnum, his exposition of Genesis. Böhme's works, in the original German and in translation, found wide circulation on the Continent and in England. Many theosophical writers, following Böhme, discuss the issue of the divine origin of man, and his original creation, amongst whom successively the English Behmenists John Pordage and Jane | |
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Lead, the Germans Johann Georg Gichtel, Gottfried Arnold, Friedrich Christoph Oettinger, and the French philosopher and theosopher Louis Claude de Saint-MartinGa naar eind35. Although Böhme and his followers only distinguished two stages in man's fall, his fall into matter and his division into male and female, whereas Frick elaborates, and distinguishes four degrees, his version of man's fall nevertheless belongs to this theosophical tradition. Frick also suggests that by reversion, and ascending via the four degrees he distinguished, man may regain the heavenly kingdom, and reign on earth during the Sabbath: ‘we all (not only the Predestinators) have been, first, sent upon this world in order that we might have an opportunity to become soon reconciled with God’. For Frick the earth is an experimental garden, in which men, in anticipation of the Second Coming, may use their allotted time to purify themselves, and by means of the free will granted to man, that other doctrinal issue, may decide to do good on this earth, and serve mankind: ‘there can be no merit in our Service, unless we have bettered the situation of another being; and even then we have done no more than our duty.’ (pp. 121-22) | |
Doctrinal pointsFrick worries about the generations who have lived on earth prior to the millennium. In The True Knowledge, he affirms the existence of a place similar to purgatory. In the 4th chapter, ‘The state of Man after Death’,Ga naar eind36. he explains the true meaning of three Hebrew words, including the word ‘scheol’, mistranslated as he says in the Bible as ‘hell’ or ‘pit’, but actually ‘a very great place (divided into twelve parts) where souls rest’: These three Hebrew words cannot be explained from the translated Bibles; because the Reformers or Deformers (as Luther, Calvin, &c.) have put grave and sometimes hell for SCHEOL, on purpose to deny the purgatory as it is made use of or represented by the Papists. These Gentlemen might certainly have reprobated misconception, and particularly abuse; but to deny the said places wholly, is a vain attempt (p. 31) The doctrine of predestination and its proclaimers is attacked on several occasions: ‘let all these predestinators, who wish to keep others from heaven, learn first how to come into it, and how to keep free from sin’ (pp.68-9). In fact, far from allowing any souls to be damned for ever, Frick reveals that in the end, even Satan and his host of fallen angels will be restored, because God would not allow even the smallest or least part of his Creation to be lost forever: ‘Can it be imagined that he would give away for ever, a part of His own Essence, of which Satan consists?’ (p. 144). Frick's ideas regarding general redemption and thus the restoration of all things to their authentic, divine origin, reflect a theological doctrine on universal salvation (including the salvation of ‘Satan and his host of fallen angels’ as Frick affirms) which in England was revived in the heterodoxy of the Civil War period, (the English Behmenists Pordage and Lead also advocated this view in the seventeenth century), and which was still current in Frick's time. In 1797, when his True Knowledge was published, a journal expressly devoted to the Universalist doctrine, entitled The Universalist 's Miscellany, was established.Ga naar eind37. In Frick's native country, earlier in the century, the radical Pietist Johann Wilhelm Petersen (1649-1727) also held universalist views. Petersen reinterpreted Jane Lead's views in a work published in 1701-1703, entitled The Mystery of the Restoration of All | |
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Things.Ga naar eind38. Both in German and in English the work was frequently reprinted, and of great influence in disseminating Universalist doctrine. Although Frick belongs to a theosophical tradition current in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he is not a student of alchemy, which featured so prominently in the mystical-theosophical circles of the eighteenth century. He has not much use for the alchemists' pursuit of the philosopher's stone, the lapis philosophorum: since the Flood, he warns, the ‘Philosopher's stone was taken away; and those who make it since that time against His will, God will melt together with fire and smoke like Ham’ (p. 24). Among the lunatics of his day and age, Frick counts the ‘Alchymists, and other idle Writers, who believe that this world will remain, and therefore, endeavour to provide for worldly ease, though they see that the time for living here is but short; moreover, because they mix the Good with the Evil, acknowledging the Commands of our Saviour, and nevertheless meddle with gold making, which neither Christ nor his Apostles did’ (p. 153). But while Frick rejects alchemy, pursued for instance by adherents of mystical masonic systems, he was obviously familiar with much mystical-theosophical matter, such as number mysticism, or at least a popular distillation of it. The eighth chapter of his work, for instance, presents many numerological gifts to the readers, and concentrates on the ‘curious signification of the number four’,Ga naar eind39. and other explanations of numbers which point to the divine operations on earth and in man. Number mysticism derives from Pythagoreanism and the Kabbalah, adapted in the fifteenth century to suit Christian purposes, and eventually incorporated in the Western theosophical tradition. Here, too, Frick's own use of numerology to convince his readers of the divine plan shows that he certainly belonged to the mystical-theosophical camp. | |
Sources and creditsFive authors are mentioned by name in his treatise, three near-contemporary, only one of whom - Georg von Welling - can find (partial) favour in Frick's eyes. Welling (1655-1727) was the author of the Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum et Theosophicum, a theosophical-alchemical work which was highly influential in eighteenth-century Continental theosophical, masonic and pietist circles. Because of a summary published in 1768 which concentrates on paragraphs of a purely alchemical nature, the Opus came to be regarded and studied as an alchemical handbook.Ga naar eind40. As is well known Goethe, too, was among the readers of Welling's work, it is equally well known that the book, even after close study, remained dark and unintelligible to him.Ga naar eind41. Frick's account of the creation is greatly indebted to Welling's Opus, although he is also critical of his source, as will be seen below. There are a number of parallels to be found in the two works. In discussing the divine essence out of which man was created, Frick employs the originally Paracelsian concept of the ‘Tria prima’, salt, sulphur and mercury, corresponding to the body, spirit and soul which make up the divine essence, the Aesch-Majim. On earth, these three principles are converted into ‘our coarse Salt, Brimstone, and Mercury, of which this Earth wholly consists’ (p. 8). The ‘Tria prima’ is also the stuff that the Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum was made of: the three books discuss respectively salt, sulphur and mercury. In explaining the ‘Sons of God’ (Genesis VI.2) as spiritual creatures, who inhabit the four elements fire, air, water and earth, he is again indebted to a discussion | |
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Georg von Welling, Opus mago-cabbalisticum. Homburg, J.P. Helwig 1735.
Photograph courtesy of Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Amsterdam. Frick copied this diagram for his True Knowledge of Man, referring to Copernicus and Welling as his sources. | |
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of the ‘Elementalgeister’ by Welling, who in turn follows Paracelsus, and Montfaucon de Villars' Comte de Gabalis, first published in Paris in 1670, translated into English in 1680.Ga naar eind42. Apart from these instances, there are passages in The True Knowledge which, if not verbatim translations from the Opus, strongly suggest the influence of Welling. In fact, the coincidence of some of the more peculiar passages and anecdotes in Frick which can also be found in Welling, make it highly likely that the Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum was a definite source. One of the more curious passages in The True Knowledge, which also occurs in Welling's Opus, concerns Frick's discussion of human excrement as consisting of ‘hellish sulphur or brimstone, which is in no animal’ (p. 78), and which must be a sign of man's depravation.Ga naar eind43. There are three (unsigned) engravings in The True Knowledge. At least one of them is copied from the Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum (see illustration), with due acknowledgement The engraving which is taken from Welling's Opus represents the ‘mundus archetypus’, consisting of three spiritual worlds: the throne of God (the heavenly Jerusalem), the realm of the angels and the throne of Lucifer (earth and the seven planets).Ga naar eind44. The other two engravings illustrate respectively the positions of Eden, the sun and the moon with respect to the earth; and ‘The system of the Last Judgment’, showing the positions of the sun and the moon with respect to the earth, and the seven circles of hell. The last of the two is also reminiscent of Welling.Ga naar eind45. Apart from the engravings, there are incidentally also two unsophisticated typographical attempts at representing common theosophical symbols. The title-page features two double-lined triangles, the upper triangle pointing upwards, the lower triangle pointing downwards. Symbolically, these triangles represent the world (below) and God (above). The upper triangle contains the title, the lower triangle the imprint. The second typographical embellishment occurs at the end of the text, on p. 150, where the word ‘end’ in the final sentence ‘This is in few Words the real end’ is capitalized, separated from the sentence and put within a decagon, a traditional symbol for divine perfection. Although Frick draws on Welling's Opus, he is not uncritical of its author. There are various explicit references in The True Knowledge to Welling, who, although Frick grants that he has ‘(as far as it went) indeed been serviceable to the honour of God’ (p. 114), is nevertheless generally called the ‘mistaken Author George Welling’, and similarly he refers in a note to p. 3 to the ‘numerous Admirers of his Work’, who ‘should know how little it ought to be read in future - though he has been hitherto considered to be the best writer on the subject.’ As can be expected, Frick certainly found fault with Welling's alchemical preoccupations: the mistaken author Welling (although he allows that we have a spirit of the highest heaven) brings man no higher than into the garden of Eden; and wonderful it is that he imagined so high, since he was rather too much engaged in the ground with gold-making - though in words he denies the fact (p. 95) There is no evidence of a printed English translation of Welling's work in the eighteenth century, and although there do exist two manuscript copies of an English translation of the Opus,Ga naar eind46. it is questionable whether Welling was ever very influential in England. Frick's explicit dismissal of Welling and his ‘numerous admirers’ seems therefore to be a legacy of his German background. | |
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The author singled out for absolute condemnation is, not surprisingly, Voltaire. Frick repeats with distaste Voltaire's discussion of one of the Emperors of China,Ga naar eind47. who lived, according to Voltaire, forty thousand years ago, ‘nay, he insinuates as if this miserable Earth had existed without a beginning - like God himself!’ (pp. 113-14). Not much more is said about Voltaire, author of the maxim ‘Si Dieu n'existe pas, il faut l'inventer’, other than that ‘it is known that Satan has many secretaries’. Copernicus and Newton are both mentioned briefly when Frick supplies comments to two out of the three engravings. He explains that the plan in the first engraving, which is based on Welling, already partly occurs in Copernicus, but that he has ‘extended and fully explained it according to the direction which is conspicuous in this whole Book’.Ga naar eind48. Newton and his successors are discussed with disapproval in a note to the second engraving. Frick here anticipates criticism from the modern astronomers, but would have them first correct ‘their own erroneous assertion, viz. “that the Moon receives her Light from the Sun”’. Frick interprets the existence of the planets in a purely symbolical sense. The sun and the moon are opposites, types of good and evil: the Moon (so far from being supported by the Sun) canot be fully bright until the Sun is quite opposite or farthest off. In short, as long as Sin exists, there cannot exist two things in this Universe without being, in some measure, contrary to eachother. (p. 61) Frick's dualism cannot tolerate a scientific study of the universe as such: as everything is either good or evil, and knowledge of God is all that matters, all else is irrelevant: ‘it is hoped, a little more attention will be paid in future to Man than to the Planets; for it is only by possessing some higher knowledge, that inferior things can be understood also’ (p. 61). Condemnation of Newton and the modern school of astronomy was endemic amongst theosophers: the new science could not be reconciled with their theocentric world view.Ga naar eind49. The last author mentioned by Frick is Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Towards the end of The True Knowledge, on page 179, Frick devotes an extensive footnote to the ‘New Jerusalem gentleman’, as he was also known in London. Quoting 1 Timothy II.17, Frick makes clear his opinion: ‘And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymeneus and Philetus (and also SWEDENBORG).’ He attacks a number of Swedenborg's assertions as contrary to Holy Scripture.Ga naar eind50. Swedenborg claimed to have been directed by God himself to explain the spiritual contents of the Holy Scripture in April 1745.Ga naar eind51. Frick, in a sense a rival secretary to the spirit of God, claims that Swedenborg's Spirits ‘took care, however, to keep him ignorant of the Origin of Man, and other principal points’.Ga naar eind52.
Frick died a year after The True Knowledge was published, in 1798, when prophecies concerning the end of time still abounded. Brothers was not yet released from the asylum to which he had been committed and Southcott, the female prophet, was just then gathering strength. Frick may have belonged (peripherally?) to Brothers' following: his own communications with the divine spirit concerning the millennium began after Brothers had been confined in 1795, and he was closely acquainted with one of Brothers' most ardent followers, William Bryan. And yet for all its chiliastic fervour, The True Knowledge strikes not an extreme but a conciliatory and almost sober note (all are eventually saved, man's business on earth is to do good, in order to regain the | |
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heavenly Jerusalem). Frick's chiliasm, his universalism, and his insistence on divine inspiration, may point to a pietist background: the founder of Pietism, Philipp Jakob Spener, his follower Johann Wilhelm Petersen, and other radical pietists, believed divine revelations would abound prior to the millennium. And although it is likely that Frick's religious fervour was further encouraged in London, he was probably already a student of mystical theosophy before he settled in England: his frequent discussion of Welling's Opus Mago-Cabbalisticum, a work not available in a printed translation in England, but very influential in masonic, pietist and theosophical circles on the Continent, points to an earlier familiarity with theosophical literature. His quest for inner illumination finally landed him, after a (brief?) involvement with masonry, in a chiliastic environment in London in the late 1790s, and his anonymously published The True Knowledge is the culmination in print of that preoccupation. Frick enjoyed a certain reputation in his own time as a professional musician. He ended his days as a quiet millenarian, away from public life, but nevertheless concerned for the spiritual salvation of his fellow men. |
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