For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy - Brandy Williams 2016
Thomas Taylor
Stories from the Ancestors
From the Renaissance onward the imperialist powers of Western Europe spread across the globe, exploiting natural resources, subjugating and enslaving non-European peoples, imposing Christianity on subject populations, and criminalizing and suppressing non-Christian religions.
Thomas Taylor was born into the British Empire in 1758, at a time when the children of wealth and privilege regarded European culture and history as the height of civilization. As a schoolchild, Thomas found his two great loves: the ancient Greek language and Mary Morton.
CHOOSING LOVE
The families planted the young couple in separate chairs on either side of the parlor. Mary’s mother snarled, “How could you let your boy seduce my girl?”
Instead of defending him, Tom’s father paced around his chair, shouting. “You swore to me you loved learning. You couldn’t be a minister, like your father! Oh no! You couldn’t take a trade either, like your uncle. Oh no! You loved mathematics. You loved Latin. You loved Greek. So I arrange to send you to university. And what do you do? You throw it all away! You … you … marry!”
“I love her,” Thomas said quietly.
His mother snapped at him, “Be quiet!” She turned on Mary’s mother. “How could you let your girl seduce my boy?”
Mary’s father paced up and down the parlor floor. “You were set for life!” he howled. “I arranged a match with a man who could take care of you. More than you deserved. And you throw it all away on this—this—child!”
“We were going to wait until he was finished with university,” Mary said. “I wouldn’t have had to marry him now if you hadn’t promised me to someone else while he was gone.”
“You’ll be penniless!” her father warned her. “Don’t look to help from us!”
Tom’s father said, “The same from us. Don’t come home for help!”
Thomas stood, walked over to his wife and held out his hand. She took it. He led her to a loveseat under a window, where they both sat quietly together, still holding hands. “We’re married,” Thomas said. “That’s done.”
Mary lifted her chin. “We’ll manage.”
Everyone started shouting at once.
Neo-Platonists in the Seventeenth through Nineteenth Centuries
The church’s opposition ultimately took some of the steam out of the Italian Renaissance. Nonetheless, the ideas unleashed by the influx of Platonic and Hermetic thought altered Western European philosophy and science permanently. Renaissance humanism filtered throughout Europe, paving the way for the secular revolution of the nineteenth century, and the widespread Pagan religious revival in the twentieth.
In the seventeenth century a number of theologians turned to the study of Plato, seeing themselves as carrying on in the tradition of the Alexandrine Neo-Platonists. The Cambridge Platonists grappled with the philosophies that shaped Western European thought while incorporating the discoveries of emergent scientific disciplines.
Among the Cambridge Platonists was Anne Finch, who became Viscountess Conway on her marriage. In her paper “Anne Conway’s Critique of Cartesian Dualism,” Louise Derksen notes that Conway challenged Cartesian dualism in her 1692 text, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.
Like many Neo-Platonists, Anne Conway did not only study philosophy, she investigated practice. Her search for a cure for her periodic migraines led her into esoteric studies, and she found a doctor who was Hermeticist, Kabbalist, and alchemist. In his history of the Rosicrucian orders, Christopher McKintosh notes that the circle which gathered around the Viscountess included several friends familiar with newly translated Rosicrucian treatises. She may or may not have been Rosicrucian herself—Rosicrucians do not reveal themselves—but she clearly surrounded herself with people we would recognize today as esotericists.
PATRON OF KNOWLEDGE
William Meredith stood on the doorstep of 9 Manor Place in Waltham and knocked. A boy in a Greek tunic opened the door. “Good evening,” he said. “Have you come to rent the room?”
Mary hurried to the door behind him, dressed like him in ancient Greek clothing. “Master Meredith! We weren’t expecting you.”
“I apologize for interrupting your evening,” he said. “May I come in? I’d like a word with Thomas.”
Mary shepherded the boy back into the small dining room, where the dinner dishes had been pushed to one end of a simple table to make room for the children’s textbooks. A tiny blur launched herself at him and grabbed his legs. “It’s you!”
Laughing, he picked her up. “Good evening, Mistress Mary Meredith. How is my little namesake?”
“We’re learning Greek!” she announced.
“Of course you are,” he said. He sat her gently on the ground and slipped her a coin. “You must have a treat, to please me.”
The coin vanished into the folds of her tunic, and the girl dashed away.
Shaking her head, Mary said, “You spoil her. This way,” she said, pointing up the stairs. “His study is at the end of the hall.” She smiled. “Mary Wollstonecraft called it ’the abode of peace.’” Suddenly, there was a crash in the dining room.
“It must have been because there are no children up there. Excuse me.”
William tapped diffidently on the study door. After a long pause, a voice finally called out, “Come in.”
Thomas was hunched over his desk, scribbling furiously, finishing one more line. When he looked up he brightened immediately. “William!” He stood and offered his hand. “I didn’t realize it was you. Please forgive my lack of manners.” He looked around a little wildly and cleared a stack of papers from a chair. “Please, sit.”
“I’m the one who should apologize,” William said. “I know I’m interrupting your precious hours of study.”
“For you, I always have time,” Thomas said seriously. “You have been such a good friend to the family.”
“How is your health?” It wasn’t an idle question; he worried about his friend.
Rubbing his right forefinger, Thomas said, “Pain is no evil.” He looked down at his hand. “So long as I can write, I am content.”
William nodded at the papers on the desk. “How goes the work?”
All his worries seemed to drop away; his face glowed. “I mean to finish it, you know,” Thomas said. “I will bring all the works of Plato into English. So everyone can read his wisdom.”
“I believe you,” William replied. “You did the work for so many years at night when you were a bank clerk. How you supported your family on those wages I can’t imagine.”
“Mary,” Thomas said briefly. “She manages.”
William smiled. “Your Diotima. Is it true the two of you only speak Greek to each other?”
“It’s wonderful to talk over the children’s heads,” Thomas said with a smile.
William laughed. “That should motivate them to study!” Playfully he added, “you should start a new Academy.”
Thomas shook his head. “Don’t you remember the Frenchman? He paid me every cent he had, and he didn’t have many! He lived under my roof for months and finally departed for home in full military uniform saying ’I am going back to Alexander!’” The men laughed. Thomas went on, “Teaching is so much work. I can’t spare the time if I’m to focus on the translations.”
Leaning forward, William said, “Thomas, I wouldn’t intrude if it wasn’t a matter of importance. I need to speak to you in strict privacy.”
“Whatever the matter, I am your man,” Thomas said instantly.
His friend let out a little breath. “You’re one of the ancients, do you know that? You’re one of the teachers. You have that same calm, that same generosity of spirit.” He waved away Thomas’s instant objections. “No, hear me out. You require peace and security to do your work. The assistant secretary position you hold now is better than the clerk’s job, but it takes you away from your studies. Certainly your books bring in some income—”
“ … thanks to your support in their publication,” Thomas finished.
William shrugged. “But it’s not enough. Not enough for your family.” He laid a cheque on the desk. “I am providing you with a stipend of one hundred pounds per year.”
For a moment Thomas didn’t move. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I did not expect it,” he said slowly. “You have been more than generous in supporting my work.” His voice thickened. “But this … this will allow me to finish it.” Mastering himself, he stood and offered his hand. “My thanks to you. I would offer my eternal friendship, but you already had that.”
William grasped his hand strongly and brought his other hand up in a wave of affection. “As you have mine,” he said.
“Thank all the gods,” Thomas said, dropping suddenly into his chair, as if his knees had given out.
Still standing, William scanned the room. “Whenever you say that, I think I’m going to find one of those Pagan altars set up in here somewhere. A little shrine to the gods.”
“The gods are all around us,” Thomas said.
Lessons of Thomas
Mary Morton Taylor learned both ancient Greek and philosophy from her husband. Their marriage seems to have proceeded on Pythagorean lines, requiring the commitment of the entire household. When Mary died in 1809, Thomas was in his fifties. He may have needed a lover or he may have needed a helpmate with their four children, but whatever the reason, he married again. He and his second wife, Susannah, had an additional child, Thomas Proclus Taylor.
Taylor’s portrait was painted in 1812 by Sir Thomas Lawrence, commissioned by William Meredith, and it currently hangs in the National Gallery of Canada. It illustrates the description given by his friend James Jacob Welsh of a simple, modest man, frank and dignified. His right hand rests on a desk and a blank piece of paper, and one of his books sits on a table to his left.
After Susannah died in 1823 he remained unmarried until his own death in 1835 at the age of seventy-seven. He lived the whole of his life in the same modest house in Waltham. He wrote his own epitaph:
Health, strength, and ease, and manhood’s active age,
Freely I gave to Plato’s sacred cave. With Truth’s pure joys,
with Fame my days were crown’d, Tho’ Fortune adverse
on my labors frown’d.
He explained that he had learned the Greek language through the study of Greek philosophy rather than philosophy through the study of the language. He translated all of Plato’s works that had not yet been translated in English, all of Aristotle’s works, many Neo-Platonists and Pythagoreans, Orphic fragments, orations from the Emperor Julian, and hymns. His works are widely available. Some remain the only English versions of the texts. His translations were found in the library of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American Transcendentalist philosopher influenced by Neo-Platonism.
Thomas Taylor exemplifies the life of a Neo-Platonist. He gave his life to his work while also maintaining the everyday life of a husband and father. His contemporaries call him a good friend. He inspired the patronage of men who had nothing to gain from it other than the work he could produce.
Taylor’s formal education ended before university. He is the exemplar of the self-taught scholar, an inspiration to the many nonacademic Pagan and esoteric scholars who work diligently in their fields today.
In his biography of William Blake, Tobias Churton calls Taylor the “English Pagan.” The year Mary died, Taylor anonymously published “Arguments of the Emperor Julian Against the Christians.” He may or may not have kept any altars at 9 Manor Place, but he certainly kept one in his heart. He lived both the life of the spirit and the life of love.
Notes on the Story
The details of Taylor’s life are recorded in only a few places. Like many Neo-Platonists, he inspired effusive praise from his contemporaries, notably James Jacob Welsh.
The story that Thomas and Mary dressed like ancient Greeks at home is repeated by several writers who note they cannot actually document this, but it’s too wonderful to resist.
The feminist Mary Wollstonecraft rented a room from the Taylors for three months. Inspired by her work “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Taylor wrote a defense of animals, “Vindication of the Rights of Brutes.”