Francis Barrett

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Francis Barrett

Francis Barrett (born December 18, 1774 in Marylebone , London (time and place uncertain), † around or before 1830) was an English occultist . He was best known for his book The Magus , published in 1801 , which played a role in the revival of magic in England in the 19th century.

Life

The seven planetary spirits and the book of spirits. Engraving from The Magus (1801)

Little is known about Barrett's life. In his biography The flying sorcerer , Francis King comes to the assumption based on circumstantial evidence that a Francis and an Ann Barrett could have been the parents. Accordingly, he would have been born on December 18, 1774 in Marylebone (London). He had completed an apprenticeship as a pharmacist and worked on the seashore, perhaps as an assistant to a surgeon. In January 1800 he married Grace Hodges and the following year he fathered a son, also named Francis. He was first known or notorious not through his main work The Magus , published in 1801 , but through several failed balloon trips in Greenwich and Swansea in 1802. Nothing has survived beyond that except a rumor that he died in the United States and a note in a manuscript kept by the Wellcome Institute that he must have died before the 1830s.

plant

The book The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer is based on a variety of magical texts from the Renaissance and Christian Kabbalah . Barrett was the first since Agrippa von Nettesheim to compile a coherent magical system from them .

It contains a number of illustrations in the Gothic style popular at the time.

Barrett likely started a magical society which he promoted in The Magus . The occult scholar Montague Summers wrote in this connection: “I have been told that Francis Barrett did indeed start a small community of people who have studied these dark and deep mysteries, and that under his guidance some of them are right on this path Have come a long way ... At least one of them was a graduate of Cambridge University ... There is reason to believe that he shared these secrets with others, and until recently the Barrett tradition continued maintained in Cambridge, but only in secret; his teachings have been passed on to promising young people. "

A second work, The Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers , was published anonymously in 1815; Barrett's authorship is doubtful.

Fonts

  • The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; being a complete system of occult philosophy ... London 1801 Text at sacred-texts.com
  • The lives of alchemystical philosophers; with a critical catalog of books in occult chemistry ... , London 1815 Google Books

German edition:

  • The Magus. A complete system of occult philosophy. Schikowski, Berlin 1995

literature

  • Alison Butler: Beyond Attribution: The Importance of Barrett's Magus. In: Journal for the Academic Study of Magic. Volume 1, 2003, pp. 7-32
  • Timothy d'Arch Smith: The Books of the Beast: Essays on Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, Francis Barrett and Others. Wellingborough 1987
  • Francis X. King: The flying sorcerer: being the magical and aeronautical adventures of Francis Barrett, author of The Magus. Oxford 1992, ISBN 978-1869928209

Web links

Commons : Francis Barrett  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

proof

  1. ^ Alison L. Butler: The Revival of the Occult Philosophy. 2000, p. 24f.
  2. ^ Alison L. Butler: The Revival of the Occult Philosophy. 2000, p. 22f.
  3. ↑ Francis King: Magic. A picture documentation. Frankfurt am Main 1976, p. 17
  4. ↑ Francis King: Magic. 1976, p. 17
personal data
SURNAME Barrett, Francis
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British occultist
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1774
PLACE OF BIRTH Marylebone , London
DATE OF DEATH 19th century