The Metaphysical World of Isaac Newton: Alchemy, Prophecy, and the Search for Lost Knowledge

Tonight we discuss something about Issac Newton that is known by very few people about his great interest in the metaphysical and Alchemy and The Book of Revelations.

Newton’s heretical yet equation-incisive writings on theology, spirituality, alchemy, and prophecy, written in secret alongside his Principia Mathematica

• Shows how Newton’s brilliance extended far beyond math and science into alchemy, spirituality, prophecy, and the search for lost continents such as Atlantis

• Explains how he was seeking to rediscover the one true religion that existed prior to the Flood of Noah, when science and spirituality were one

• Examines Newton’s alternate timeline of prehistory and his study of prophecy through the Book of Revelations, including his prediction of Apocalypse in the year 2060

Isaac Newton (1643-1727) is still regarded by the world as the greatest scientist who ever lived. He invented calculus, discovered the binomial theorem, explained the rainbow, built the first reflecting telescope, and explained the force of gravity. In his famous masterpiece, Principia Mathematica, he described the mechanics of the physical universe with unimagined precision, proving the cosmos was put together according to laws. The perfection of these laws implied a perfect legislator. To Newton, they were proof that God existed.

At the same time Newton was writing Principia Mathematica, he was writing a twin volume that he might have called, had it been completed, Principia Theologia--Principles of Theology. This other masterpiece of Newton, kept secret because of the heresies it contained, consists of thousands of essays providing equation-incisive answers to the spiritual questions that have plagued mankind through the ages. Examining Newton’s secret writings, John Chambers shows how his brilliance extended into alchemy, spirituality, the search for lost continents such as Atlantis, and a quest to uncover the “corrupted texts” that were rife in the Bibles of his time. Although he was a devout Christian, Newton’s work on the Bible was focused not on restoring the original Jewish and Christian texts but on rediscovering the one true religion that existed prior to the Flood of Noah, when science and spirituality were one.

In a manuscript he wrote in 1704 (never intended to be published), he mentions the date of 2060, but it is not given as a date for the end of days. It has been falsely reported as a prediction. The passage is clear when the date is read in context. He was against date setting for the end of days, concerned that this would put Christianity into disrepute.[143]

So then the time times & half a time [sic] are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a year & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calender [sic] of the primitive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of [long-]lived kingdoms the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.[144] This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Christ comes as a thief in the night, and it is not for us to know the times and seasons which God hath put into his own breast.[143]

Alchemy

In the character of Morton Opperly in "Poor Superman" (1951), speculative fiction author Fritz Leiber says of Newton, "Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find."[145]

Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations.[105] Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets.[146] Some of the content contained in Newton's papers could have been considered heretical by the church.[105]

In 1888, after spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton's papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. In 1936, a descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby's.[147] The collection was broken up and sold for a total of about £9,000.[148]John Maynard Keynes was one of about three dozen bidders who obtained part of the collection at auction. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton's collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in 1946.[105][147][149]

All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton"[150] and summarised in a book.[151][152]

Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, "chymistry."[150]

Charles Coulston Gillispie disputes that Newton ever practised alchemy, saying that "his chemistry was in the spirit of Boyle's corpuscular philosophy."[153]

In June 2020, two unpublished pages of Newton's notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont's book on plague, De Peste,[154] were being auctioned online by Bonhams. Newton's analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London's 1665–1666 infection, is the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonhams. As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that "the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison".[155]

The Metaphysical World of Isaac Newton: Alchemy, Prophecy, and the Search for Lost Knowledge

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