Invisible College

Emblematic image of a Rosicrucian College; illustration from *Speculum sophicum Rhodo-stauroticum*, a 1618 work by Theophilus Schweighardt. Frances Yates identifies this as the "Invisible College of the Rosy Cross".^[1]

Invisible College is an Enlightenment-era term used to describe a network of researchers and educators operating in an informal way, forming a clandestine cooperative for purposes of social influence and personal profit, usually through multiple memberships in public groups.^[2]^[3] While the original term referred especially to groups of Freemasons who had joined multiple religious and academic groups, the term has historically expanded to include non-masons who participate in member groups to advance their own agendas; the term has been of considerable interest to scholars since the 1960s with the research of Derek Price and Donald Beaver.^[4] Many private university faculties now have their own groups they deem an "invisible college," with research focused on law schools and the sciences.^[5]^[6]

The influence of the original Invisible College has produced many popular theories since the 1600s, especially in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and occult mysticism.^[7] Examples include the Royal Society of London, which consisted of a number of natural philosophers such as Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren.^[8] It has been suggested that other members included prominent figures later closely concerned with the Royal Society.^[9] But several groups preceded the formation of the Royal Society, and the full membership this form of the Invisible College is still debated by scholars.

Contemporary forms

The 'invisible' nature of the college is one of its strengths, making it impossible to gather precise data about membership, culture, and history, as there is no centralized authority and no set curriculum, with most participating members striving to keep the full scope of their commitments hidden from the general public (thus remaining invisible). During the Enlightenment, this form of social engineering was essential to the formation of the original Invisible College, as part of the Protestant Enlightenment, when scientific knowledge was seen as a challenge to the radical intellectual hegemony of the Catholic Church.

Contemporary membership is unofficial. Many famous personalities associated with the Invisible College are known rather through their other membership groups. Members may recognize each other through various types of discrete signaling, including virtue signaling as a vehicle for alchemical practice (see The Spiral Way, Deep Times, The Work that Reconnects).^[10]^[11]^[12]

The use of sacred geometry--especially the use of particular geometrical arrangements of circles, triangles, and squares—is a primary means of group identification in the public sphere, remaining ambiguous or innocuous to those who are not acquainted with the peculiar signage. References to the ubiquitous iconography of the Invisible College can be found everywhere in popular culture, from books to logos to artwork to song lyrics, often but not always in forms meant to bypass or confuse outsiders while signaling insiders.^[13]

Authority

Kepler's multidimensional solar system (symbolizing Plato's doctrine of geometrical universality).

Because the Invisible College is a traditional expression of Freemasonic alchemical practices that are centuries old,^[14] any private individual or member school may develop their own understanding, theories, and publications about alchemy, spirituality, and psychology without the explicit approval of some wider body of participants, and without joining a Lodge or Temple.^[15]^[16] Individual artists often include alchemical themes in their productions, either to boost their popularity or authority through an appeal to the "in-group" culture,^[17]^[18] or in good faith, without fully understanding the deeper signification of alchemical associations.^[19]

There is no copyright or trademark on Invisible College signification, and no authority on what sign symbolizes what quality (because any institutional authority must also be visible to be recognized). People may use the common signs and symbols without understanding their historical context, or to distort their common sociospiritual meaning. Nevertheless, authorities associated with explicitly transpersonal schools may act as gatekeeping institutions for newer members (See California Institute of Integral Studies, Sofia University, the Esalen Institute).

Members and groups may also propose new configurations of "The Invisible College" that are opaque to outsiders, associating their own alchemical efforts with historically archaic or prestigious participants, while diverting attention away from an essential culture of obscurantism (see Modern Use). Frequently, unofficial approval or validation is given in the form of enhanced public consumption, special funding, or praise for new theories or productions that advance the collective influence of the entire college. It is very common for members of the Invisible College to cite each other across disciplines (ex: Ilia Delio citing Ken Wilber citing Richard Rohr citing Ilia Delio).^[20]^[21]^[22]

Today—due to the pervasive use of Eurocentric alchemical psychology in the Americas since the colonial era—the term Invisible College may refer to any explicitly masonic group which participates in social alchemy or soul alchemy (the intentional transmutation of souls through collective pressures); it may also refer to tangential, non-masonic groups devoted to alchemical psychologies or social influence, such as (but not limited to):

semi-professional Jungian schools or degree mills;
many but not all interfaith associations (historically, theosophical and transcendental communities);
transpersonal theorists concerned with collectively awakening individuals into mystical psychosis;
the Swedenborgian tradition, promoting societies of secret satans and hidden angels in a competition for new souls;
any group relying especially on homeopathic or integral psychologies (see Integral Life, Integral Christianity);
volunteer-based 12 Step groups with an open membership, little to no oversight, and a mandate of secrecy, where any alchemical group or cluster may freely mingle with newcomers in an atmosphere of legally unprotected moral confession;
irregular religious orders inside much older institutions, which have thrived through interreligious cooperation (esp. Opus Dei);
esoteric pop-up cults where specialists may come and go and build their own profiles (see esp. Twin Flames);
mystical collectives of theatrical specialists self-promoting themselves and each other in semi-circular publicity networks (see Sounds True, Shambhala Publications).

Shared cultures

Often—but not always—groups committed to the alchemical cultures of the Invisible College use esoteric or even occult language and practices, representing their focus as spirituality rather than psychology.^[23] Other times, they may appear deeply devout and traditionally monotheistic, but are frequently recognized as brainwashing or occult-like in their abusive pressures. In many instances, collaborations between different membership groups produce a scripted or planned experience of spiritual emergency (or "spiritual emergence") in victims of alchemical psychology—people are plunged into experiences of confusion, collective gaslighting, and peer pressure meant to produce a fracture in identity, followed by a period of personality reconstitution.^[24] These experiences of scripted, forced awakening may be subsequently valorized in artistic and narrative productions as "ego death," "spiritual awakening," or a "phoenix rising."^[25] These experiences are frequently devastating to individual psychological stability, and have been alternatively described as psychotic episodes leading to schizoaffective and schizophrenic reconditioning,^[26] creating long-lasting states of paranoia, PTSD, and rage-fueled acting-out against all perceived sources of harm or distress as a substitute for the Invisible College and its "alchemists."

Due to its cooperative, interfaith ethos, it is not uncommon to find popular forms of Satanism or Wicca promoted within the invisible college alongside traditional forms of Catholic or Protestant Christianity, or mixed with forms of shamanism and Buddhism or any other number of religious traditions, all united through a generic Jungian archetypalism (cf John Dee; the Enneagram).^[27] This may be understood as the consequence of a particular interreligious culture, originating specifically within Freemasonry. This reflects the fundamental nature of membership in the Invisible College, where any tradition or institution may be reconfigured to express new, private meanings, by individuals acting as part of a larger interfaith grouping.

Other times, members of the Invisible College may promote specialized theories of "all knowledge," "theories of everything," a "living universe," or various patchwork theories of illumination that attract members and keep them engaged while a broader alchemical culture works to produce individual transmutation. The pursuit of all knowledge and similar properties (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) reflects a universalizing tendency in human psychology, and in the broad culture of the Invisible College this may translate into monotheistic ontologies, rooted in religious faith, often masked as scientific inquiry or scientific systems. Thus all spiritual phenomena of any quality or orientation (astrological, mythological, religious, celestial, occult, doctrinal, metaphysical, geometrical, trinitarian, dualistic, agnostic, gnostic, demonic, angelic) may be appropriated for an alchemical rearrangement by a subgroup or individual within the collective (See: Hermeticism).

Ambiguous and mixed memberships

Because some membership groups have existed for centuries, and others for a few decades, and others for a few years, the depth and competencies of individuals and collective bodies inside the Invisible College vary widely, as does their foci. For example, some membership groups use popular UFO culture to promote traditional, space-based Jungian archetypes and Jungian soul work; other groups may utilize Aristotelian theories of plant-based soul alchemy (treating people as plants to be grown, nurtured, pruned, transplanted, etc.). Others may represent themselves as uniquely focused on non-religious or non-mystical subjects like ordinary law or similar special interests. Finally, some subgroups associated with the Invisible College exist primarily to obscure the reality of the larger groups' historical and contemporary influence, promoting exaggerated or satirical 'conspiracy theories' that mask genuine collaborative efforts between influencers (See QAnon, the Discordians).

When navigating genuine claims of cultural and actual conspiracy, it is useful to note many active Invisible College groups began as a parody expression of faith through masonic alchemy, but subsequently developed into full-fledged organizations in their own right, and now retain memberships and leaderships comprised partially or even entirely of individuals who are unaware of any parodic origins or subterfuge (see especially Rosicrucianism, Alcoholics Anonymous). This is to say, many who participate in the culture of the Invisible College do not know that their primary practice began as a parody routine of something real or older, or as an environment manufactured for alchemical psychological practices.^[28]

Cultural background

The concept of an "invisible college" is mentioned in German Rosicrucian pamphlets in the early 17th century, as a way to talk indirectly about the different Freemasonic groups that had successfully merged themselves with other, traditional religious groups—in particular, the Catholic and Anglican or Protestant churches, along with the burgeoning schools of the Enlightenment. The theoretical dynamics of masonic "alchemy" (changing a bad person into an enlightened soul) overlapped with the pseudo-scientific practices of alchemical transmutation (the idea of changing lead into gold). Ben Jonson in England referenced the idea of an invisible college, related in meaning to Francis Bacon's House of Solomon, in a masque The Fortunate Isles and Their Union from 1624/5.^[29] The term accrued currency for the exchanges of correspondence within the Republic of Letters.^[30]

However, alchemy as a pseudo-scientific practice (symbolizing the psychological transmutation of souls) predates the Masonic tradition (See Alchemy). It is present in the concurrent work of Paracelsus and other "doctors of the devil," dating back to medieval and archaic times. Many elements of alchemical psychology are present in traditional shamanic practices across independent and historically unrelated cultures. Humans by nature are analogical and metaphorical thinkers, and systems of symbolic, ritualistic, homeopathic, or magical "soul medicine" are prehistoric, and are part of all or nearly all religious systems, including traditional Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.^[31]

Connection with Robert Boyle and the Royal Society

Revisionist history has undermined earlier narratives about the origins of the Invisible College in the 1610s, where it referred to the unspoken or unacknowledged network of Freemasons who had—in accordance with a core masonic expectation for members—joined themselves to multiple organizations outside of the masonic circle: scientific, social, and especially religious.^[32]

Much has been made of an "invisible college" in London of the later 1640s, drawing public attention to the semi-scientific nature of the organization, while turning attention away from the earlier origins of the group as a mystical, occult, and alchemical brotherhood (See The Alchymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkruetz). This was the era of the Renaissance, which began to produce technical disambiguations between psychology, spirituality, science, and religion, as separate areas of intellectual inquiry. Former alchemical theory had treated these spheres of learning as part of one large sociospiritual process and subject.^[33]

Detailed evidence

In letters in 1646 and 1647, Boyle refers to "our invisible college" or "our philosophical college." The society's common theme was to acquire knowledge through experimental investigation.^[34] Three dated letters are the basic documentary evidence: Boyle sent them to Isaac Marcombes (Boyle's former tutor and a Huguenot, who was then in Geneva), Francis Tallents who at that point was a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge,^[35] and London-based Samuel Hartlib.^[36]

The Hartlib Circle were a far-reaching group of correspondents linked to Hartlib, an intelligencer. They included Sir Cheney Culpeper and Benjamin Worsley who were interested, among other matters, in alchemy.^[37] Worsley in 1646 was experimenting on saltpetre manufacture, and Charles Webster in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography argues that he was the "prime mover" of the Invisible College at this point: a network with aims and views close to those of the Hartlib Circle with which it overlapped.^[38] Margery Purver concludes that the 1647 reference of "invisible college" was to the group around Hartlib concerned to lobby Parliament in favour of an "Office of Address" or centralised communication centre for the exchange of information.^[36] Maddison suggests that the "Invisible College" might have comprised Worsley, John Dury and others with Boyle, who were interested in profiting from science. He suggests also that George Starkey may have been involved.^[39]

Richard S. Westfall distinguishes Hartlib's "Comenian circle" from other groups; and gives a list of "invisible college" members based on this identification. They comprise: William Petty, Boyle, Arnold Boate and Gerard Boate, Cressy Dymock, and Gabriel Platte.^[40] Miles Symner may have belonged to this circle.^[41]

Historiography of the Royal Society

Lauren Kassell, writing for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,^[42] notes that the group of natural philosophers meeting in London from 1645 was identified as the "invisible college" by Thomas Birch, writing in the 18th century; this identification then became orthodox, for example in the first edition Dictionary of National Biography.^[43] This other group, later centered on Wadham College, Oxford and John Wilkins, was centrally concerned in the founding of the Royal Society; and Boyle became part of it in the 1650s. It is more properly called "the men of Gresham," from its connection with Gresham College in London.^[44]

Scholars now generally regard the identification of the Gresham group with the "invisible college" as partial, suspect, or incomplete. Christopher Hill writes that the Gresham group was convened in 1645 by Theodore Haak in Samuel Foster's rooms in Gresham College; and notes Haak's membership of the Hartlib Circle and Comenian connections, while also distinguishing the two groups.^[45] Haak is mentioned as convener in an account by John Wallis, who talks about a previous group containing many physicians who then came to Foster's rooms; but Wallis's account is generally seen to be somewhat at variance with the history provided by Thomas Sprat of the Royal Society.^[46]

Modern use

The concept of invisible college was developed in the sociology of science by Diana Crane (1972) building on Derek J. de Solla Price's work on citation networks. It is related to, but significantly different from, other concepts of expert communities, such as epistemic communities (Haas, 1992) or communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). Recently, the concept was applied to the global network of communications among scientists by Caroline S. Wagner in The New Invisible College: Science for Development (Brookings 2008). It was also referred to in Clay Shirky's book Cognitive Surplus.

In the 1960s, a group of academics (including astronomer J. Allen Hynek and computer scientist Jacques Vallée) held regular discussion meetings about UFOs. Hynek referred to this group as The Invisible College.^[47]

In fiction, it is mentioned in the novel The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It was the inspiration for the Unseen University in the works of Terry Pratchett, and was one of the main reference points for Grant Morrison's The Invisibles comic book series. A similar concept is alluded to--in the use of an invisible train station to arrive at Hogwarts--in the series Harry Potter.^[48]

Notes

^ Detailed discussion in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, pp. 94–95.
^ Díaz-Andreu, M. (2008). Revisiting the'Invisible College'. Archives, Ancestors, Practices: Archaeology in the Light of its History, 121.
^ Zuccala, Alesia. "Modeling the invisible college." Journal of the American Society for information Science and Technology 57.2 (2006): 152-168.
^ De Solla Price, D. J., & Beaver, D. (1966). Collaboration in an invisible college. American Psychologist, 21(11), 1011–1018. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0024051
^ Schachter, O. (1977). Invisible college of international lawyers. Nw. UL Rev., 72, 217.
^ Wagner, C. S. (2009). The new invisible college: Science for development. Rowman & Littlefield.
^ Jung, C. G.; Hull, R. F. C. (2014). Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Florence: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-53376-4.
^ Higgitt, Rebekah (20 October 2014). "Google Doodle forgets to celebrate Christopher Wren the man of science". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 February 2023.
^ Such as John Wilkins, John Wallis, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, Francis Glisson, Christopher Wren and William Petty.
^ Underhill, Evelyn (1922). The spiral way, being meditations upon the fifteen mysteries of the soul's ascent. University of California Libraries. London : John M. Watkins.
^ "Deep Times Journal | A Work That Reconnects Network Publication". Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ "Work That Reconnects Network". Work That Reconnects Network -. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ Placido, Dani Di. "The Bizarre Beyoncé Conspiracy Theory, Explained". Forbes. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ "Alchemy and the Transmutation of a Freemason". California Freemason Magazine. 18 November 2019. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ Cortright, Brant (2007). Integral Psychology: Yoga, Growth, and Opening the Heart. State University of New York Press. doi:10.1353/book5193. ISBN 978-0-7914-8013-7.
^ "David Richo | Books, Video, CDs on Personal and Spiritual Unfolding". Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ "MODERN ALCHEMY (Deluxe)". ZAYDE WØLF. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ Coelho, Paulo (2014). The Alchemist. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-241621-6.
^ To Hell With The Devil, 1 January 1986, retrieved 8 December 2024
^ Delio, Ilia (2019). "The Dancing Star". Madhuri DIXIT. doi:10.5040/9781911239079.ch-004. ISBN 978-1-911239-07-9.
^ Rohr, Richard (11 May 2017). "Deep Waters: Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps; Breathing Under Water Companion Journal: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps". The Expository Times. 128 (9): 464. doi:10.1177/0014524617700332. ISSN 0014-5246.
^ Wilber, Ken; Wilber, Ken (2000). Integral psychology: consciousness, spirit, psychology, therapy (1st pbk. ed.). Boston: Shambhala. ISBN 978-1-57062-554-1.
^ "Home". Ninegates. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
^ Friedman, Harris L.; Hartelius, Glenn, eds. (9 August 2013). The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology. Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118591277. ISBN 978-1-119-96755-2.
^ Grof, Christina; Grof, Stanislav (1 September 2017). "Spiritual Emergency: The Understanding and Treatment of Transpersonal Crises". International Journal of Transpersonal Studies. 36 (2): 30–43. doi:10.24972/ijts.2017.36.2.30. ISSN 1321-0122.
^ Parnas, Josef; Henriksen, Mads Gram (July 2016). "Mysticism and schizophrenia: A phenomenological exploration of the structure of consciousness in the schizophrenia spectrum disorders". Consciousness and Cognition. 43: 75–88. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2016.05.010. ISSN 1053-8100. PMID 27258928.
^ Cuss, Steve. "Enneagram, Anxiety, and What We Live For". Christianity Today. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ Smith, April Wilson (2 May 2019). "Deprogramming From AA—When the Fellowship Resembles a Cult". Filter. Retrieved 8 December 2024.
^ Frances Yates, Collected Essays Vol. III (1984), p. 253.
^ David A. Kronick, The Commerce of Letters: Networks and "Invisible Colleges" in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe, The Library Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 28–43; JSTOR 4309484
^ Smith, Huston (2010). The world's religions (50th anniversary ed.). New York, NY: HarperOne. ISBN 978-0-06-166018-4.
^ James Anderson (1723). The Constitutions of the Free Masons 1723. pp. 1–2.
^ Griffin, Carrie (15 November 2010), "Historiography of Medieval Medicine", Handbook of Medieval Studies, De Gruyter, pp. 651–666, doi:10.1515/9783110215588.651, ISBN 978-3-11-018409-9, retrieved 29 December 2024
^ http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Societies/RS.html JOC/EFR: The Royal Society, August 2004 retrieved online: 2009-05-14
^ "Tallents, Francis (TLNS636F)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
^ ^a ^b Margery Purver, The Royal Society: Concept and Creation (1967), Part II Chapter 3, The Invisible College.
^ John T. Young, Faith, Medical Alchemy and Natural Philosophy (1998), pp. 234–236.
^ Webster, Charles. "Worsley, Benjamin". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38153. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ R. E. W. Maddison, The Life of the Honourable Robert Boyle F.R.S, Taylor & Francis (1969), p. 69.
^ Galileo Project page
^ Dorothy Moore; Lynette Hunter (2004). The Letters of Dorothy Moore, 1612–64: The Friendship, Marriage and Intellectual Life of a Seventeenth-century Woman. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 20. ISBN 978-0-7546-3727-1. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, theme Invisible College.
^ "Wilkins, John" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
^ "The Invisible College (1645–1658). | technical education matters.org". Archived from the original on 19 October 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
^ Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (1991), p. 105.
^ Johnson, Francis R. (October 1940). "Gresham College: Precursor of the Royal Society". Journal of the History of Ideas. 1 (4): 413–438. doi:10.2307/2707123. JSTOR 2707123. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
^ Eghigian, Greg (4 August 2021). "UFOs and the Boundaries of Science". Boston Review. Retrieved 25 November 2024.
^ Partin, Clyde (2012), "Magic, Medicine, and Harry Potter", J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter, London: Macmillan Education UK, pp. 135–148, doi:10.1007/978-1-137-28492-1_11, ISBN 978-0-230-00850-2, retrieved 29 December 2024

References

Shirky, Clay: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. 2011. ISBN 978-1594202537
Gingrich, Owen: The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. Penguin Books, 2004. ISBN 0802714153 Chap. 11: The Invisible College
Bordwell, David: Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. Harvard University Press, 1989, Chap. 2: Routines and Practices.
Bordwell, David and Noël Carroll, eds. Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Chap. 1: Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory.
Crane, Diana (1972) Invisible colleges. Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. ISBN 0226118576
Wagner, Caroline S. (2008) The New Invisible College: Science for Development. Brooking Press: Washington DC. ^{[ISBN missing]}