Solomon's Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment

The late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are known as the Age of Enlightenment, a time of science and reason. But in this illuminating book, Paul Monod reveals the surprising extent to which Newton, Boyle, Locke, and other giants of rational thought and empiricism also embraced the spiritual, the magical, and the occult.

Although public acceptance of occult and magical practices waxed and waned during this period they survived underground, experiencing a considerable revival in the mid...