Francis Barrett (occultist)

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

Life

Relatively little is known about the life of Barretts. In his biography The flying sorcerer Francis King comes on the basis of circumstantial evidence to suggest that a Francis and Ann Barrett, the parents might have been. Thus, he would be born on December 18, 1774 in Marylebone ( London). He did an apprenticeship as a pharmacist and an activity on the sea coast, perhaps as an assistant to a surgeon exercised. In January 1800, he married Grace Hodges and the following year he had a son, who also bore the name Francis. Known or notorious, he was not at first by his 1801 published major work The Magus, but through several failed Ballooning in Greenwich and Swansea in 1802., After that date nothing has survived except a rumor that he died in the United States had come, and a note in a retained by the Wellcome Institute manuscript, after which he would have died before the 1830s.

Work

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

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

Barrett probably founded a magical society, for which he was able to advertise in The Magus. The occult researcher Montague Summers wrote in this regard: " I was told that Francis Barrett has actually established a small community of people who have studied these dark and deep mysteries, and that some of them right under his guidance in this way have come a long way ... At least one of them was a graduate of Cambridge University ... There is reason to believe that he has other initiated into these mysteries, and was until very recently in the Barrett's tradition maintained in Cambridge, but only in secret; His teachings were passed on to promising young people. "

A second factory The lives of alchemystical philosophers in 1815 published anonymously, the authorship of Barrett 's doubtful.

Writings

• 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