This article is taken from the November 2024 issue of Fraternal Review titled, “Bro. William W. Westcott.”
The Emulation Ritual was created by the Lodge of Reconciliation in 1816, and was officially implemented by the Emulation Lodge of Improvement No. 256 in 1823. Less than half a century later, William Wynn Westcott, a physician from Leamington, Warwickshire, was accepted as a member of the Masonic fraternity at Parrett & Axe Lodge No. 814. There, he experienced the Emulation Ritual and, like all Fellowcrafts before him who had been through the newly-created ceremonies, Westcott was duly informed: “you are now permitted to extend your researches into the hidden mysteries of Nature…” Perhaps more than any of his Masonic Brothers at the time, Westcott was prepared to take this instruction at its word, turning not only a physician’s but an initiate’s eye toward “the hidden mysteries of Nature.” Few phenomena constitute Nature’s hidden mysteries more than the secret virtues of magical plants—that is, than pharmaka, defined by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, the Paul Shorey Professor of Greek in the Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, as “something that produces an effect without a visible cause”; namely, “a poison, a drug, a medicine, or a potion.” (Edmonds. 2021. P. 14) Generally translated as “sorcery,” pharmaka is the term from which we get the modern word, “pharmaceutical.”
Under a section appropriately titled “Pharmakeia,” Westcott wrote an unpublished paper on the subject of “Divination and Its History” in which he states: “Enchantment by drugs is reckoned among Divinations; medicated compounds were administered internally, either openly or by stealth, to create love and passion, or to cause enmity, or to produce dreams on certain subjects.”
He says also that,
“Leaves of the herb called Moly and of the Laurel, also Jasper stones were worn as amulets to ward off the effects of other charms used maliciously. The Cannabis plant or Indian Hemp was given to produce mystic visions. Enchanted girdles were also supplied by magicians to bestow foresight to the wearer and to keep dangers away from him.”
In a separate, unpublished study on the subject of “Dreams,” Westcott also says that,
“Some side lights are, however, thrown on our subject by the dreams of persons suffering from the effects of some poisons, of only transient effect; we find that characteristic qualities of dream are exhibited by persons under the influence of opium, and persons whose mental faculties are temporarily disordered by alcoholic excess. […] The old medieval magicians taught that dreams of different characteristics would be produced by sleeping in the presence of certain perfumes from incense made from particular herbs, burned on plates of different metals.”
As a physician, Westcott was naturally possessed of a wide knowledge of various pharmaka and their physiological effects. It was his experience as a ceremonial magician, however, that contributed to his pronounced understanding of the magical potential of those same medicinal plants.
Works Cited:
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Drawing Down the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ. 2021.
R.A. Gilbert, (Editor). The Magical Mason: Forgotten Hermetic Writings of William Wynn Westcott, Physician and Magus. The Antiquarian Press. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England. 1983.
BIO:
P. D. Newman has been immersed in the study and practice of alchemy, hermetism, and theurgy for more than two decades. A member of both the Masonic Fraternity and the Society of Rosicrucians, he lectures internationally and has published articles in many esoteric journals, including The Scottish Rite Journal, Knights Templar Magazine, and Ad Lucem. He is the author of Angels in Vermilion: The Philosophers’ Stone from Dee to DMT and Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry.