Heyd
A Norwegian sea-witch or storm-fiend in the shape of a white bear, alluded to in the saga of Grettir. With the other storm-fiend Ham, she was sent by Helgi to engulf Frithjof as he sailed for the island of Yarl Angantyr. Heydon, John : English Astrologer (fl. -1667). In his useful if not invaluable Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers, Waite speaks with great scorn of the English Astrologer, John Heydon, describing him as no better than a charlatan, and for that reason furnishing no facts whatsoever concerning his career. The astrologer appears to have been born in 1629, his father being Francis Heydon, owner of a small estate called Sidmouth, in Devonshire. It was not in that romantic shire, however, that the astrologer first saw the light of day, but at a house in London boasting the pleasant name of Green Arbour; and after some years spent here Heydon went to Worcestershire, when his education was attended to by various clergymen. Being a clever boy, his Heydon parents naturally desired to send him to the University, but this was soon rendered virtually impossible by the outbreak of the great civil war, and thereupon Heydon took arms on behalf of the king, and fought in several battles. He is said to have been successful as a soldier, and to have won to the captaincy of a troop of horse under Prince Rupert, but on the ultimate triumph of the Roundhead party, the young man found it advisable to leave England, and for some years he sojourned in various countries on the Continent, notably Spain and Turkey. Indeed, if his contemporaneous biographers are to be trusted, he penetrated so far afield as Zante, the island in the Levant whose praise has been sung so beautifully by Edgar Allan Poe; but by 1652 Heydon was back in his native England, and in 1655 we find him studying law and established in the Temple, a place almost sacred by virtue of its many literary associations. Nor was law his only study, for soon he was deep in that craft of astrology wherewith his name was destined to become associated, and on one occasion, having prophesied that Cromwell would shortly die by hanging, he was straightway imprisoned accordingly. So, at least, says Thomas Carte in his life of the great- Marquis of Ormonde, that storehouse of information concerning England in Stuart and Cromwellian days. Those who take an interest in the history of medicine will doubtless recall Nicholas Culpeper, who, after fighting for the Parliament in the Civil war, devoted a wealth of energy to compiling elaborate treatises on astrology and pharmacopœia, arts which went hand in the seventeenth century. And it was the widow of this Culpeper whom Heydon took to wife, the year of their marriage being 1656, while it would seem that a daughter was born of their union, for among the astrologers' writings is a volume entitled Advice to a Daughter (1658). Whether Heydon continued living in the Temple after his marriage is not recorded, nor do we hear that he even attended greatly to legal business, and it is likely, on the contrary that astrology occupied all his time, while it appears that that imprisonment already mentioned was not the only one he suffered. He became intimate with many of the great scientists of the Restoration, but quarrelled with a number of them too; while, though he always maintained that he was not actually affiliated with the Rosicrucians, it is a fact that he explained their theories publicly. Little is known about his later years, while the date of his death is unknown, and, before turning to the subject of his writings, it only behoves to state that his portrait was engraved by Thomas Cross.
Mr. Waite declares that Heydon's writings are sorry pastiches, and it cannot be questioned that the bulk of his work is derivative, Sir Thomas Browne being one whom he apes particularly. Nevertheless Heydon must be credited with considerable assiduity, and his Rosicrucian books alone are numerous, the best of them being probably The New Method of Rosie-Crucian Physick (1658), The Rosie-Crucian Infallible Axiomater (1660), The Wise Man's Crown, or The Glory of the Rosie-Cross (1664), and The Rosie-Cross Uncovered (1662). In addition to them he was author of Theomagia or The Temple of Wisdom (1664), and The Prophetic Trumpeter, sounding an Allarum to England (1655), the latter being dedicated to Henry Cromwell, while according to Wood's Athena Oxonicsis, Heydon was likewise the compiler of A Rosiecrucian Theological Dictionary. Yet another book from his pen was Idea of the Law, and at the end of this we find advertisements of several works of his, probably pamphlets, none of which is known to exist nowadays, but whose titles are worth recording here. One is called The Familiar Spirit, another The Way to Converse with Angels, while the others are A New Method of Astrology, Of Scandalous Nativities, and P Cabballa, or the Art by which Moses and Elijah did so many Miracles. It is quite possible, of course, that these pamphlets were advertised while yet in course of preparation, and that the author was prevented from bringing them to a finish, but their titles are significant, showing how far Heydon waded into the sea of mysticism, and suggesting that he was really more erudite therein than Mr. Waite imagines.