Sigismund Bacstrom

Bacstrom's signature

Sigismund Bacstrom (born around 1750; died 1805) was a well-traveled ship's doctor , draftsman, and author and translator of alchemical and Rosicrucian writings. His drawings of places and people he met on his travels show the surgeon working with precision and the scientist with a sense of detail than the trained artist. It is important for the development of occultism in England through the so-called Bacstrom Society , a Rosicrucian group whose existence is not entirely certain, but which is considered the forerunner of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and thus other modern hermetic and Rosicrucian movements.

First trips

Little is known about Bacstrom's early years. The name is probably Swedish, but it is said to have been born in Germany. He claimed to have trained as a doctor, surgeon and chemist at the University of Strasbourg . From 1763 to 1770 he served as a ship's doctor in the Dutch Navy and then lived in England.

From 1772 to 1775 he was secretary to the naturalist Joseph Banks , whom he accompanied on a research trip to Iceland . He then worked until 1779 for the British naval officer William Kent (1751-1812), who was friends with Banks . In the following 10 years he made at least six trips as a ship's doctor, including two trips on whalers to Spitsbergen and on merchant ships to Guinea and Jamaica . Bacstrom wrote a report about his second trip to Spitsbergen in 1780, which was printed in the Philosophical Magazine in 1799 .

At the end of the 1780s, Bacstrom found a sponsor who was not known by name and who set up an elaborate laboratory in Marylebone for him to carry out experiments in natural philosophy . After the death of his patron in 1789, Bacstrom was again without income. Eventually he received an offer to take part in a trade trip around the world financed by a group of London merchants as a ship's doctor and drug addict. The aim of the trip was to obtain Cortex peruvianus ( cinchona bark ) and other valuable natural products. In addition, Bacstrom was supposed to collect natural history samples and preparations for Banks on the trip that was to lead via Cape Horn , Nootka Sound , China and Southeast Asia .

Pacific trip

Hunting camp on the Isla de los Estados with Jackal and Prince Lee Boo

Three ships were provided for the voyage, namely the Butterworth , a formerly French frigate with 392 tons, a large sloop Jackal (sometimes called Jackall or Jack Hall ) and a smaller sloop called Prince Lee Boo , all under the command of Captain William Brown. At the end of 1791 the ships sailed from England and landed on Isla de los Estados off Cape Horn in March 1792 , where seals were hunted and their bacon was boiled.

In June they sailed across the Pacific to the Marquesas and in July they reached Vancouver Island and the trading base at Nootka Sound off the west coast of North America.

On October 15, Bacstrom left the Butterworth there after he had been mistreated by the captain and officers, according to his statements. After being a guest of the Spanish garrison in Nootka for a short time, he was able to continue his journey on the Three Brothers , a brig from Newcastle. Together with the schooner Prince William Henry , they sailed on to Haida Gwaii and the southern coast of Alaska near today's Sitka . During this trip Bacstrom made numerous drawings.

Wife and child of a chief on Haida Gwaii, ca.1793.

Haida chief with otter fur and seaman's trousers

After returning to Nootka Sound, Bacstrom continued the voyage to China as ship's doctor on the American-flagged brig Amelia . Before Macau , however, the ship was seized by the British cruiser HMS Lion , and it was determined from the ship's papers that the Amelia was actually a French ship. Accordingly, it was conscripted as spoils of war and Bacstrom found himself stranded in Guangdong, southern China .

Finally he found another job as ship's doctor, this time on board the Warren Hastings , a 600 t former East Indiaman sailing under the Genoese flag with a British captain and a crew of 13 nations who were supposed to sail around the Cape of Good Hope to Ostend . But under the leadership of the French first officer , the French, Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians mutinied in the crew and took the ship under their power. Bacstrom was trapped below deck with others. Then the ship sailed to Mauritius , where it was taken along with the cargo as French war booty.

After 6 months in Mauritius, Bacstrom managed to buy a passage on an American ship destined for New York , but this was again seized by a British warship in the Virgin Islands and the ship and cargo were confiscated. With the help of the British Governor George Leonhard, Bacstrom finally reached London on July 23, 1795, 4 years and 8 months after he had left there.

Alchemy and rose cross

During his stay in Mauritius, Bacstrom is said to have been accepted into a brotherhood of Rosicrucians on September 12, 1794 by a Comte Louis de Chazal . A corresponding document is received in a copy of Frederick Hockley (1809-1885). It contains a 14-point pledge to the Brotherhood and is signed by Bacstrom and Du Chazel, FRC . This Comte de Chazal is said to have been 96 years old at the time of Bacstrom's inauguration, according to McLean, his alchemical knowledge is said to have been imparted to him in Paris in 1740 and John W. Hamilton Jones indicates in the introduction to Bacstrom's Alchemical Anthology that Chazal's teacher was not a other than the Count of Saint Germain is said to have been.

On his return to London, Bacstrom earned a living selling prints and drawings from his travels and writing esoteric texts. He translated Latin, German and French alchemical works into English and worked on the members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia such as Hockley and on the theosophy of the 19th century. So published Helena Blavatsky Bacstroms translation of the Aurea Catena Homeri ( Golden Chain of Homer ) 1891 the Theosophical magazine Lucifer . According to Adam McLean, Alexander Tilloch (1759-1825), the founder of the Philosophical Magazine , in which Bacstrom's travelogue was published in 1799, was a student of Bacstrom. McLean reproduces Tilloch's approval document in his article, which is almost verbatim with Bacstrom's corresponding document, making it more likely that the group of Rosicrucians known as the Bacstrom Society actually existed in England around 1800. Noteworthy about this document, as McLean also notes, is the 4th pledge, in which it is assured not to exclude women from the initiation,

"As there is no distinction of sexes in the spiritual world, neither amongst the blessed Angels nor among the rational immortal spirits of the human race"

"Since there is no difference between the sexes in the spiritual world, neither among the blessed angels nor among the rational spirits of the human race"

citing the example of worthy women. The names mentioned are: Semiramis , Queen of Egypt (!), The prophetess Mirjam , Perenelle , the wife of Nicholas Flamel , and also a Leona Constantia, "Abbess of Clermont", who is said to have been accepted in 1736 as Soror Rosae Crucis .

"Philosophical Seal" of the Bacstrom Society

Emblem of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum

The similarity of the "Philosophical Seal" of Bacstrom's Society of Rosicrucians (triangle and square inscribed in a circle) with the emblem used today by the Lectorium Rosicrucianum is also striking .

The doctor and astrologer Ebenezer Sibly (1751 – ca. 1799) and General Charles Rainsford (1728–1809) are said to have belonged to Bacstrom's circle in London. Via Frederick Hockley, Bacstrom's works and translations probably came into the hands of William Alexander Ayton (1816–1909), William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and thus had an influence on the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , which in turn developed the significantly influenced western occultism in the 20th century.

A collection of Bacstrom's manuscripts and other alchemical writings had been in the possession of Manly Palmer Hall since 1923 . After his death in 1990 they were sold to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu . A bibliography of the Hall collection was published in 1986. Digitized copies of the manuscripts are available in the Internet Archive .

Fonts

• Account of a voyage to Spitsbergen in the year 1780. Philadelphia 1810. First printed in: The Philosophical magazine. Series 1, Vol. 4 No. 14 (1799), pp. 139-152, doi : 10.1080 / 14786449908677046 .
• Bacstrom's Alchemical Anthology. Ed. with an introduction by John W. Hamilton Jones. John M. Watkins, London 1960.
• Compendium. 2 parts. AMORC, San Jose CA 1993.

Translations

• Anton Joseph Kirchweger : Aurea catena Homeri. The golden chain of Homerus, that is, A description of nature and natural things. Sapere Aude Metaphysical Republishers, San Francisco 1983.

literature

• Douglas Cole: Sigismund Bacstrom's Northwest Coast Drawings and an Account of his Curious Career . In: BC Studies Journal No. 46, Summer 1980, pp. 61–86, PDF .
• John Frazier Henry: Early Maritime Artists of the Pacific Northwest Coast, 1741-1841. University of Washington Press, Seattle & London 1984.
• Harald Lamprecht : New Rosicrucians. A manual. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-525-56549-6 , p. 60 f.
• Adam McLean: Bacstrom's Rosicrucian Society. In: Hermetic Journal No. 6 (1979), online .
• Thomas Vaughan: Soft Gold: The Fur Trade and Cultural Exchange on the Northwest Coast of America. Oregon Historical Society Press, Portland OR 1982.

Web links

Commons : Sigismund Bacstrom  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Copy of the Admission of Sigismund Bacstrom into the Fraternity of Rosicrucians by the Comte de Chazal, transcribed by Frederick Hockley, 1839 , Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School , Cambridge, Massachusetts

Individual evidence

1. ^ Douglas Cole: Sigismund Bacstrom's Northwest Coast Drawings and an Account of his Curious Career . In: BC Studies Journal No. 46, Summer 1980, p. 61.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Lamprecht: New Rosicrucians. Göttingen 2004, p. 60 f.
3. ^ Account of a voyage to Spitsbergen in the year 1780. In: The Philosophical magazine. Series 1, Vol. 4 No. 14 (1799), pp. 139-152, doi : 10.1080 / 14786449908677046 .
4. ^ Douglas Cole: Sigismund Bacstrom's Northwest Coast Drawings and an Account of his Curious Career . In: BC Studies Journal No. 46, summer 1980, p. 62 ff.
5. ↑ "on account of the ill and mean usage I received from Capt. W. Brown and his Officers. ”Quoted in: Douglas Cole: Sigismund Bacstrom's Northwest Coast Drawings and an Account of his Curious Career . In: BC Studies Journal No. 46, Summer 1980, p. 66.
6. ^ Douglas Cole: Sigismund Bacstrom's Northwest Coast Drawings and an Account of his Curious Career . In: BC Studies Journal No. 46, Summer 1980, p. 67
7. ↑ The spelling fluctuates.
8. ^ Copy of the Admission of Sigismund Bacstrom into the Fraternity of Rosicrucians by the Comte de Chazal, transcribed by Frederick Hockley, 1839 , Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School , Cambridge, Massachusetts
9. ^ ^{A b} Adam McLean: Bacstrom's Rosicrucian Society. In: Hermetic Journal No. 6 (1979).
10. ↑ Arthur Edward Waite: The real history of the Rosicrucians founded on their own manifestoes, and on facts and documents collected from the writings of initiated brethren. London 1887, p. 410 f., Online .
11. ↑ Arthur Edward Waite: The real history of the Rosicrucians founded on their own manifestoes, and on facts and documents collected from the writings of initiated brethren. London 1887, p. 414.
12. ↑ Joscelyn Godwin: Hall, Manly Peter. In: Wouter J. Hanegraaff (ed.): Dictionary of gnosis & Western esotericism. Brill, Leiden 2006, ISBN 978-90-04-15231-1 , p. 456.
13. ↑ Ron C. Hogart: Alchemy. A comprehensive bibliography of the Manly P. Hall Collection of books and ms. including related material on Rosicrucianism and the writings of Jacob Boehme. Philos. Research Soc., Los Angeles 1986, ISBN 0-89314-542-4 .