The Occult Laboratory: Magic, Science and Second Sight in Late 17th-Century Scotland (review)

The Occult Laboratory is an edited collection of seventheenth-century treatises pertaining to the second sight, along with a fairly substantial introductory essay on the subject. The title reflects Michael Hunter's argument that during the late seventeenth century the Highlands of Scotland became a sort of "laboratory of abnormal phenomena" (p. 1) for English savants, including Robert Boyle and John Aubrey. Premier among the phenomena they studied was the form of foreknowledge referred to as the "second sight," which by the seventeenth century was viewed as being unique to Scotland.

The texts selected for inclusion are almost all available in previously published editions. Hunter, however, has brought together the main materials on this subject, with the full critical apparatus that many of the earlier editions lack. Four chapters consist of examples of correspondence on the subject between Scottish and English thinkers such as Robert Boyle, Aubrey, and Samuel Pepys. These selections illustrate nicely Hunter's emphasis on the collegial interrelationship between Scottish and English thinkers. The remaining three chapters contain lengthier treatises written by Scottish clergymen: "A Collection of Highland Rites and Customs"; Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth and his Short Treatise of the Scottish-Irish Charms and Spells; and John Fraser's Deuteroscopia.

Hunter gives copious details about the manuscripts (all three raise many questions concerning authorship, text derivation, circulation, and so forth), but his conclusions concerning the context of their composition seem superficial. For example, in the case of the Secret Commonvwealth, Hunter states (very misleadingly) that it is "predominantly about the second sight" (p. 1), entirely overlooking both the broadly folkloric nature of the text and Kirk's own theologically centered description of the manuscript as an essay "to suppress the impudent and growing Atheism of this age" (p. 77, n. b.). Similarly, Hunter makes nothing of the fact that, like Kirk, John Fraser was a clergyman, whose discussion of the second sight is tied at least as much to theology and local traditional belief as it is to an emerging climate of proto-science.

As a scholar of textual analysis, Hunter is superb, and there is no question that he rightly ties this complex of scholarship on the second sight to the emerging Scientific Revolution, which he has studied both broadly and deeply. Hunter, however, is neither a historian of Scotland nor a student of folklore. Because of his focus on scientific thought, he provides virtually no political, ecclesiastical, or social context for the seventeenth-century debate on second sight. There is nothing here to indicate the deep turbulence of late-seventeenth-century Scotland, where bitter divisions concerning Scottish identity were tied to the emerging Whig and Jacobite parties; where bloody conflicts were being fought over opposing Presbyterian and Episcopalian principles; and where witches were being tried and burned for divination and consorting with spirits. Hunter's world of detached intellectual debate is only part of the story.

Hunter also fails to address the folkloric context of these important treatises. He rarely even mentions the word "folklore," and when he does it is in a dismissive manner, as for example when he observes that one description of the Gaelic Bible project is "a little folklorish," (p. 36) with the clear indication that he means it is less than reputable. He also makes glaringly uninformed references to "Highland shamanism," a term that he uses indiscriminately to refer to both Hermetic or Rosicrucian symbolism (p. 16) and to the traditional fairy beliefs of the Highlands (p. 20). Hunter also errs badly when he comments that the "fairy theory of second sight" is "unique to Kirk" (p. 20). It is not; the idea figures prominently in more than one witch trial dating to as early as 1597. More specific instances could be quoted, but the point has been made. Hunter is a fine historian of (English) science—he is considerably less successful in the realms...