Solomon's Secret Arts by Paul Kléber Monod Page B

discrete distance from her, his hands radiating magnetic energy at her face and breast. She sits passively and registers no visible signs of a “Crisis”. This was a tame representation of the controversial therapy, engraved at a point when it was no longer widely acceptable among the English elite.

    18 The morose and misguided Urizen calmly measuring out the universe with a compass at the opening of William Blake's Europe: A Prophecy . The instrument is an unmistakable reference to Freemasonry, and to the Masonic concept of God as the architect of the universe. Urizen's uncomfortable crouch also resembles the bending pose of Isaac Newton in a print issued by Blake in 1795, where the great scientist uses a compass to measure out a conical section. The compositional structure of the Urizen painting, with its combination of a circle and a triangle, can be compared to the alchemical diagram in The Philosophical Epitaph of W.C. Esq. , which was in turn derived from the illustrations to Jacob Boehme's works. In the end, however, Blake's personal vision trumps Masonry, Newton, alchemy and even Boehme.

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

    T HIS BOOK has taken longer to realize than any alchemical recipe known to me. The journey, however, has been fascinating. It has included a visiting fellowship at Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, in 2001–2, as well as research fellowships at the Getty Research Institute in 2004 and the Huntington Library in 2008. During a leave year in 2007–8, research on this project was supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The most consistent support came from Middlebury College, largely through the A. Barton Hepburn Professorship. Parts of this book have been presented in seminar talks at the University of California at Los Angeles, the Newbury Library, Warwick University, the University of Glasgow and McGill University, as well as conference talks at the Università del Salento in Lecce, the British Institute, the University of Strathclyde, the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and the Karl Franzens Universität Graz. The organizers of those seminars and conferences deserve gratitude for inviting me to speak on often half-baked ideas.
    I must also thank a host of individuals who assisted me along the way with advice, information, suggestions and comments. They include David Armando, Robin Briggs, Bob Bucholz, Louisa Burnham, R.J. Evans, Antoine Faivre, Joscelyn Godwin, Anthony Grafton, Wouter Hanegraaff, Ronald Hutton, Sarah Hutton, Colin Kidd, Jim Larrabee, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Scott Mandelbrote, Alex Marr, Mark Morrisson, Victor Nuovo, Kapil Raj, Peter Reill, Isabel Rivers, Teofilo Ruiz, Bill Sherman, Marsha Keith Schuchard, Susan Sommers, Bob Tittler, John Walsh, David Womersley and David Wykes. The staff at all the institutions listed in the bibliography deserve praise, in particular those at the Getty Research Library, the Clark Library, Dr Williams's Library, the Library of Freemasonry, Swedenborg House and Chetham's Library. I must especially thank the duke of Northumberland for permission to use the archive atAlnwick Castle, and the estate office at Alnwick for assisting me in working there.
    My greatest debt, as always, is to my wife, Jan Albers, who has lived cheerfully with this rather offbeat project for the past eleven years. Our son, Evan, wonders why I am not able to perform conjuring tricks, because he does not realize that he is the best magic his mother and I could produce. My own mother has provided constant reminders of how receptive West Country Methodists were to the supernatural, while my late father bequeathed to me a French-Swiss scepticism that occasionally surfaces in this book. In carrying out research, I have depended on the unflagging hospitality of Colin and Lucy Kidd at Glasgow, my ever-welcoming cousin Margaret Monod and her wonderful partner, Joyce Chester, in Sussex and my dear uncle Dennis Donovan, who kept me up to date with