"Gravity's" Isaac Newton: Alchemy Occult and False Science

Isaac Newton produced many works that would now be classified as occult studies. These works explored chronology, alchemy, and Biblical interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse). Newton's scientific work may have been of lesser personal importance to him, as he placed emphasis on rediscovering the occult wisdom of the ancients. In this sense, some[1] believe that any reference to a "Newtonian Worldview" as being purely mechanical in nature is somewhat inaccurate.
After purchasing and studying Newton's alchemical works in 1942, economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, opined that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians". In the Early Modern Period of Newton's lifetime, the educated embraced a world view different from that of later centuries. Distinctions between science, superstition, and pseudoscience were still being formulated, and a devoutly Christian Biblical perspective permeated Western culture.


Excerpts from Chapter 3 of the book, Isaac Newton's Freemasonry: The Alchemy of Science and Mysticism by Alain Bauer
Loup Verlet writes of the conditions of the “miraculous” discovery of Newton’s unpublished manuscripts. Put in a stack in 1696 when he was leaving the directorship of the mint in London, they escaped the burning of his personal documents arranged just after his death. They were discovered two centuries later and put up at auction in 1936. John Maynard Keynes won the manuscripts and revealed that Newton was not only the “first physicist” but also the “last magician.” The haul included several alchemical works, the bulk of them now at Cambridge, some at the University of Jerusalem, and others in private collections. According to Verlet, Newton’s known work comprises 1.4 million words relating to theology, 550,000 on alchemy, 150,000 on monetary affairs, and one million on scientific problems.
Verlet considers Newton, from a scientific point of view, to have been a coincidence. If he had not lived, the development of the sciences would surely have been delayed, and the work begun by Galileo and Descartes would have been slowed down. But by hiding his secrets away, Newton the magus also hid the alchemical, Hermetic, and esoteric dimensions which elucidated his research. From this point of view, victorious Science made its complex matrix disappear.
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Isabelle Stengers writes that Newton affirmed: “I do not feign hypotheses, I stick to phenomena.” This did not hinder his speculative theories, and placed him in contrast with the “contemplative” Galileo.
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In 1669, according to Richard Westfall, Newton immersed himself in alchemical literature. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs affirms that “Newton read virtually everything alchemical that had ever been published, and a good many things that had not.” Numerous manuscripts from Hartlib’s circle were copied by Newton himself. His friend Robert Boyle served him as a link to other circles of Rosicrucians and alchemists. Elias Ashmole did the same in writing his Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (published in 1652).
Newton even devised an anagram of his name as a pseudonym (Isaacus Neuutonus becoming Jeova sanctus unus), which allowed him to exchange manuscripts with his correspondents while remaining anonymous, despite widespread speculation. In Newton’s personal archives, a great many manuscripts have been found with lengthy annotations: Philalethes’ Secrets Reveal’d from 1669, Sendivogius’ Novum Lumen Chymicum, Espagnet’s Arcanum hermeticae philosophiae, Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae duodecim, the Opera of George Ripley (the great English alchemist), Basil Valentine’s Triumphal Chariot of Antimony. Most of these are preserved at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

very interesting. It explains a lot.