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Leibniz, Benzelius, and the Kabbalistic Roots of Swedish Illuminism

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Leibniz, Mysticism and Religion

Abstract

The continuing controversy over Leibniz’s association with Rosicrucianism points to the difficulty of scholarly investigation of societies that were determinedly secret.1 However, as each new volume of the collected works appears, the evidence of his lifelong interest in Rosicrucian-style science (especially kabbalistic mathematics and Hermetic chemistry) makes it harder to avoid the issue. Though Leibniz apparently became convinced in the 1690’s that the fraternity described in the Fama Fraternitatas (1614) was a fiction, he nevertheless believed that its goals could be implemented in an actual society.2 From his unusual access to early Freemasons, he may have been aware of the infusion of Rosicrucianism into British Masonry, where lodges of operative and speculative Masons were free to discuss in private the aims and techniques of the “secret sciences.”3 Moreover, through his friendship and correspondence with Swedish advocates of pansophic science, he was witness to the political and theosophical developments that led to Swedish Freemasonry becoming the most important vehicle of the Rosicrucian Enlightenment throughout the eighteenth century.4

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References

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  41. According to Merzdorf, a usually accurate Masonic historian, this clandestine lodge, “St. Magnus,” was established in Gothenburg by a charter from Edinburgh, and King Charles XI later extended its privileges (in the 1670s). See Merzdorf, “Ueber die Grundverfassung der Grossen Landesloge von Schweden dd. 1800,” Latomia (1873): 29, and “Geschichte der Freimaurerbrüderschaft in Schweden und Norwegen,” Latomia 1 (1846): 175. Reference to this lodge is also found in Gotthold Lessing, Lessing ‘s Masonic Dialogues, trans. A. Cohen (London: Baskerville Press, 1927), pp. 99–100, and [Johan A. Starck], Apologie des Francs-Maçons (Philadelphie, 1779), p. 68.

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  50. Kurzer Entwurff des eigentlichen Naturalaphabets der heiligen Sprache (Sulzbach, 1667); Banzelius’s handwritten library catalogue is now in the Linköping Stiftsbibliothek. I am grateful to Allan Ranius, manuscript librarian, for his assistance with the extensive Benzelius collection.

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  54. Benzelius recorded “Fragmentum Historiae Evangelicae (authore Francisco Mercurio Helmontio, Philosopho Kabbalista, qui ipse apocatastasis [in Greek] hoc mihi dedit Wolfenbytl anno 1697).” For Leibniz’s later writings on universal restitution, see Michel Fichant, “Ewige Wiederkehr oder unendlicher Forschritt: Die Apokatastasisfrage bei Leibniz,” Studia Leibnitiana 33 (1991): 133–50; and, Allison P. Coudert’s article in this volume as well as her book, Leibniz and the Kabbalah (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), pp. 109–10.

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  78. The volumes that Swedenborg read provide a virtual encyclopedia of allegedly rare occultist arcana that provide a counter-view of the so-called Newtonian age of rational science.

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  80. Minerva holds the All-Seeing Eye, with rays emanating from it, while at her feet lie a compass and examples of mathesis and secret writing. Moray had used the All-Seeing Eye as a Masonic seal in his correspondence with the Huygenses.

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  83. Leibniz to Sophie (Vienna, 31 January 1714); in G.W. Leibniz, Correspondance de Leibniz avec la princesse électrice Sophie de Brunswick-Lunebourg (Hanover, 1874), III: 26–27.

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  85. Ibid, p. 61.

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  92. Benson’s anti-Swedish propaganda was so virulent that it not only shocked Benzelius and Swedenborg but was a factor in Charles XII’s support for the Stuart Pretender. For Jacobite reaction to Wren’s removal, see Thomas Hearne, Reliquiae Hearnianae, ed. Phillip Bliss (London, 1869), II: 63.

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  1. Marcia Keith Scuchard
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  1. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA

    Allison P. Coudert  & Gordon M. Weiner  & 

  2. University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Richard H. Popkin

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Scuchard, M.K. (1998). Leibniz, Benzelius, and the Kabbalistic Roots of Swedish Illuminism. In: Coudert, A.P., Popkin, R.H., Weiner, G.M. (eds) Leibniz, Mysticism and Religion. Archives Internationales D’histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 158. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9052-5_4

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