:''For the American college basketball coach, see
John Dee (basketball coach). For the DC Comics villain and ''Sandman'' character, see
Dr. Destiny.''
'John Dee' (
July 13,
1527–
1609) was a noted
English mathematician,
astronomer,
astrologer,
geographer,
occultist, and consultant to Queen
Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to
alchemy,
divination, and
Hermetic philosophy.
Dee straddled the worlds of
science and
magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his time, he had lectured to crowded halls at the
University of Paris when still in his early twenties. John was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in
navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct
England's
voyages of discovery (he coined the term "
British Empire").
At the same time, he immersed himself deeply in magic and
Hermetic philosophy, devoting the last third of his life almost exclusively to these pursuits. For Dee, as with many of his contemporaries, these activities were not contradictory, but particular aspects of a consistent world-view.
Biography
Early life
Dee was born in Tower Ward,
London, to a
Welsh family, whose surname derived from the
Welsh ''du'' ("black"). His father Roland was a
mercer and minor
courtier. Dee attended the
Chelmsford Catholic School (now
King Edward VI Grammar School (Chelmsford)), then – from 1543 to 1546 –
St. John's College,
Cambridge. His great abilities were recognized, and he was made a founding fellow of
Trinity College. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled in
Europe, studying at
Leuven and
Brussels and lecturing in
Paris on
Euclid. He studied with
Gemma Frisius and became a close friend of the
cartographer Gerardus Mercator, returning to England with an important collection of mathematical and astronomical instruments. In 1552, he met
Gerolamo Cardano in
London: during their acquaintance they investigated a
perpetual motion machine as well as a gem purported to have magical properties.
[1]
Dee was offered a readership in mathematics at
Oxford in 1554, which he declined; he was occupied with writing and perhaps hoping for a better position at court.
[2] In 1555, Dee became a member of the
Worshipful Company of Mercers, as his father had, through the company's system of
patrimony.
[3]
That same year, 1555, he was arrested and charged with "calculating" for having cast
horoscopes of
Queen Mary and
Princess Elizabeth; the charges were expanded to
treason against Mary.
2[4] Dee appeared in the
Star Chamber and exonerated himself, but was turned over to the reactionary
Catholic Bishop Bonner for religious examination. His strong and lifelong penchant for secrecy perhaps worsening matters, this entire episode was only the most dramatic in a series of attacks and slanders that would dog Dee through his life. Clearing his name yet again, he soon became a close associate of Bonner.
2
Dee presented Queen Mary with a visionary plan for the preservation of old books, manuscripts and records and the founding of a national
library, in 1556, but his proposal was not taken up.
2 Instead, he expanded his personal library at his house in
Mortlake, tirelessly acquiring books and manuscripts in England and on the European Continent. Dee's library, a center of learning outside the universities, became the greatest in England and attracted many scholars.
[5]
When Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, Dee became her trusted advisor on astrological and scientific matters, choosing Elizabeth's coronation date himself.
[6][7] From the 1550s through the 1570s, he served as an advisor to England's voyages of discovery, providing technical assistance in navigation and ideological backing in the creation of a "British Empire", and was the first to use that term.
[8] In 1577, Dee published ''General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation'', a work that set out his vision of a maritime empire and asserted English territorial claims on the
New World. Dee was acquainted with
Humphrey Gilbert and was close to Sir
Philip Sidney and his circle.
8
In 1564, Dee wrote the
Hermetic work ''Monas Hieroglyphica'' ("The Hieroglyphic
Monad"), an exhaustive
Cabalistic interpretation of a
glyph of his own design, meant to express the mystical unity of all creation. This work was highly valued by many of Dee's contemporaries, but the loss of the secret oral tradition of Dee's milieu makes the work difficult to interpret today.
[9]
He published a "Mathematical Preface" to
Henry Billingsley's English translation of Euclid's ''
Elements'' in 1570, arguing the central importance of mathematics and outlining mathematics' influence on the other arts and sciences.
[10] Intended for an audience outside the universities, it proved to be Dee's most widely influential and frequently reprinted work.
[11]
Later life
By the early 1580s, Dee was growing dissatisfied with his progress in learning the secrets of nature and with his own lack of influence and recognition. He began to turn towards the
supernatural as a means to acquire knowledge. Specifically, he sought to contact
angels through the use of a "scryer" or
crystal-gazer, who would act as an intermediary between Dee and the angels.
[12]
Dee's first attempts were not satisfactory, but, in 1582, he met
Edward Kelley (then going under the name of Edward Talbot), who impressed him greatly with his abilities.
[13] Dee took Kelley into his service and began to devote all his energies to his supernatural pursuits.
13 These "spiritual conferences" or "actions" were conducted with an air of intense Christian piety, always after periods of purification,
prayer and
fasting.
13 Dee was convinced of the benefits they could bring to mankind. (The character of Kelley is harder to assess: some have concluded that he acted with complete cynicism, but delusion or self-deception are not out of the question.
[14] Kelley's "output" is remarkable for its sheer mass, its intricacy and its vividness.) Dee maintained that the angels laboriously dictated several books to him this way, some in a special angelic or
Enochian language.
[15][16]
In 1583, Dee met the visiting
Polish nobleman
Albert Åaski, who invited Dee to accompany him on his return to Poland.
4 With some prompting by the angels, Dee was persuaded to go. Dee, Kelley, and their families left for the Continent in September 1583, but Åaski proved to be
bankrupt and out of favour in his own country.
[17] Dee and Kelley began a
nomadic life in
Central Europe, but they continued their spiritual conferences, which Dee recorded meticulously.
1516 He had audiences with
Emperor Rudolf II and
King Stephen of Poland in which he chided them for their ungodliness and attempted to convince them of the importance of his angelic communications. He was not taken up by either monarch.
17
During a spiritual conference in
Bohemia, in 1587, Kelley told Dee that the angel
Uriel had ordered that the two men should
share their wives. Kelley, who by that time was becoming a prominent alchemist and was much more sought-after than Dee, may have wished to use this as a way to end the spiritual conferences.
17 The order caused Dee great anguish, but he did not doubt its genuineness and apparently allowed it to go forward, but broke off the conferences immediately afterwards and did not see Kelley again. Dee returned to England in 1589.
17[18]
Final years
Dee returned to Mortlake after six years to find his library ruined and many of his prized books and instruments stolen.
517 He sought support from Elizabeth, who finally made him Warden of
Christ's College, Manchester, in 1592. This former College of Priests had been re-established as a Protestant institution by a Royal Charter of 1578.
[19]
However, he could not exert much control over the Fellows, who despised or cheated him.
2 Early in his tenure, he was consulted on the demonic possession of seven children, but took little interest in the matter, although he did allow those involved to consult his still extensive library.
2
He left Manchester in 1605 to return to London.
[20] By that time, Elizabeth was dead, and
James I, unsympathetic to anything related to the supernatural, provided no help. Dee spent his final years in poverty at
Mortlake, forced to sell off various of his possessions to support himself and his daughter, Katherine, who cared for him until the end.
20 He died in Mortlake late in 1608 or early 1609 aged 82 (there are no extant records of the exact date as both the parish registers and Dee's gravestone are missing).
2[21]
Personal life
Dee was married twice and had eight children. Details of his first marriage are sketchy, but is likely to have been from 1565 to his wife's death in around 1576. From 1577 to 1601 Dee kept a meticulous diary.
3 In 1578 he married the twenty-three year old Jane Fromond (Dee was fifty-one at the time). She was to be the wife that Kelley claimed Uriel had demanded that he and Dee share, and although Dee complied for a while this eventually caused the two men to part company.
3 Jane died during the plague in Manchester in 1605, along with a number of his children: Theodore is known to have died in Manchester, but although no records exist for his daughters Madinia, Frances and Margaret after this time, Dee had by this time ceased keeping his diary.
2 His eldest son was
Arthur Dee, about whom Dee wrote a letter to his headmaster at
Westminster School which echos the worries of boarding school parents in every century; Arthur was also an alchemist and hermetic author.
2 John Aubrey gives the following description of Dee: "He was tall and slender. He wore a gown like an artist's gown, with hanging sleeves, and a slit.... A very fair, clear sanguine complexion... a long beard as white as milk. A very handsome man."
21
Achievements
Thought
Dee was an intensely pious
Christian, but his Christianity was deeply influenced by the Hermetic and
Platonic-
Pythagorean doctrines that were pervasive in the
Renaissance.
[22] He believed that
number was the basis of all things and the key to knowledge, that
God's creation was an act of numbering.
6 From
Hermeticism, he drew the belief that man had the potential for divine power, and he believed this divine power could be exercised through mathematics. His cabalistic angel magic (which was heavily numerological) and his work on practical mathematics (navigation, for example) were simply the exalted and mundane ends of the same spectrum, not the antithetical activities many would see them as today.
11 His ultimate goal was to help bring forth a unified world
religion through the healing of the breach of the
Catholic and
Protestant churches and the recapture of the pure
theology of the ancients.
6
Reputation and significance
About ten years after Dee's death, the
antiquarian Robert Cotton purchased land around Dee's house and began digging in search of papers and artefacts. He discovered several manuscripts, mainly records of Dee's angelic communications. Cotton's son gave these manuscripts to the scholar
Méric Casaubon, who published them in 1659, together with a long introduction critical of their author, as ''A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and some spirits.''
15 As the first public revelation of Dee's spiritual conferences, the book was extremely popular and sold quickly. Casaubon, who believed in the reality of spirits, argued in his introduction that Dee was acting as the unwitting tool of evil spirits when he believed he was communicating with angels. This book is largely responsible for the image, prevalent for the following two and a half centuries, of Dee as a dupe and deluded fanatic.
22
Around the same time the ''True and Faithful Relation'' was published, members of the
Rosicrucian movement claimed Dee as one of their number.
[23] There is doubt, however, that an organized Rosicrucian movement existed during Dee's lifetime, and no evidence that he ever belonged to any secret fraternity.
13 Dee's reputation as a magician and the vivid story of his association with Edward Kelley have made him a seemingly irresistible figure to
fabulists, writers of
horror stories and latter-day
magicians. The accretion of false and often fanciful information about Dee often obscures the facts of his life, remarkable as they are in themselves.
[24]
A re-evaluation of Dee's character and significance came in the 20th century, largely as a result of the work of the historian
Frances Yates, who brought a new focus on the role of magic in the
Renaissance and the development of modern science. As a result of this re-evaluation, Dee is now viewed as a serious scholar and appreciated as one of the most learned men of his day.
22[25]
His personal library at Mortlake was the largest in the country, and was considered one of the finest in Europe, perhaps second only to that of
de Thou. As well as being an astrological, scientific and geographical advisor to Elizabeth and her court, he was an early advocate of the colonization of
North America and a visionary of a British Empire stretching across the
North Atlantic.
8
Dee promoted the sciences of navigation and
cartography. He studied closely with
Gerardus Mercator, and he owned an important collection of
maps,
globes and astronomical instruments. He developed new instruments as well as special navigational techniques for use in
polar regions. Dee served as an advisor to the English voyages of discovery, and personally selected pilots and trained them in navigation.
28
He believed that mathematics (which he understood mystically) was central to the progress of human learning. The centrality of mathematics to Dee's vision makes him to that extent more modern than
Francis Bacon, though some scholars believe Bacon purposely downplayed mathematics in the anti-occult atmosphere of the reign of James I.
[26] It should be noted, though, that Dee's understanding of the role of mathematics is radically different from our contemporary view.
1124[27]
Dee's promotion of mathematics outside the universities was an enduring practical achievement. His "Mathematical Preface" to Euclid was meant to promote the study and application of mathematics by those without a university education, and was very popular and influential among the "mecanicians": the new and growing class of technical craftsmen and artisans. Dee's preface included demonstrations of mathematical principles that readers could perform themselves.
11
Dee was a friend of
Tycho Brahe and was familiar with the work of
Copernicus.
Many of his astronomical calculations were based on Copernican assumptions, but he never openly espoused the
heliocentric theory. Dee applied Copernican theory to the problem of
calendar reform. His sound recommendations were not accepted, however, for political reasons.
6
He has often been associated with the
Voynich Manuscript.
13[28] Wilfrid M. Voynich, who bought the manuscript in 1912, suggested that Dee may have owned the manuscript and sold it to
Rudolph II. Dee's contacts with Rudolph were far less extensive than had previously been thought, however, and Dee's diaries show no evidence of the sale. Dee was, however, known to have possessed a copy of the ''
Book of Soyga'', another enciphered book.
[29]
Artefacts
The
British Museum holds several items once owned by Dee and associated with the spiritual conferences:
★ Dee's Speculum or Mirror (an
obsidian Aztec cult object in the shape of a hand-mirror, brought to Europe in the late 1520s), which was once owned by
Horace Walpole.
★ The small
wax seals used to support the legs of Dee's "table of practice" (the table at which the
scrying was performed).
★ The large, elaborately-decorated wax "Seal of God", used to support the "shew-stone", the
crystal ball used for scrying.
★ A gold
amulet engraved with a representation of one of Kelley's visions.
★ A crystal globe, six centimetres in diameter. This item remained unnoticed for many years in the
mineral collection; possibly the one owned by Dee, but the provenance of this object is less certain than that of the others.
[30]
In December 2004, both a
shew stone (a stone used for scrying) formerly belonging to Dee and a mid-1600s explanation of its use written by
Nicholas Culpeper were stolen from the
Science Museum in London; they were recovered shortly afterwards.
[31]
Dee in fiction
Dee has become a popular figure in literary works, particularly fiction or fantasy set during his lifetime or which deals with magic or the occult.
William Shakespeare may have modelled the character of
Prospero in ''
The Tempest'' on Dee;
13 Woolley (see below), suggests that
Edmund Spenser refers to Dee in ''
The Faerie Queen'' (1596).
Ben Jonson includes a scrying session, during which the spirits render up the name of Dee, in his play ''
The Alchemist'' (1610). The Irish Gothic novelist
Charles Maturin refers to Dee and Kelley in his novel ''
Melmoth the Wanderer'' (1820). Dee and Kelley appear together in Manchester in
Harrison Ainsworth's novel ''
Guy Fawkes'', in which they exhume the body of Elizabeth Ortyn, and show Fawkes a vision of his coming tribulations.
H. P. Lovecraft's short story "
The Dunwich Horror" (
1929) credits Dee with translating the ''
Necronomicon'' into English; and
John Crowley's sequence of novels ''
Ægypt'' includes Dee,
Edward Kelley, and
Giordano Bruno as characters. In
Umberto Eco's book ''
Foucault's Pendulum'', Dee is presented as a central character in the "Plan" (the overall conspiracy that the book is concerned with) and in one of the main character (Belbo)'s fictions concerning it. A series of books by
Armin Shimerman fictionalizes Dee's life by providing a basis in
science fiction for his supposed magic, and he is a major character in Diana Redmond's time-travel children's book ''Joshua Cross & the Queen's Conjuror'' (2004). Dee also appears as a character in ''The Ringed Castle'' (1971), part of
Dorothy Dunnett's
Lymond Chronicles. He is presented as an associate of Robert Dudley in "
The Queen's Fool" (2004) by Philippa Gregory. He is also mentioned and referred to in the novel "Fire Rose" by
Mercedes Lackey. John Dee is a prominent (though
unseen) character in Elizabeth Redfern's novel Auriel Rising.
Dee is a major character in various fantasy novels set in Elizabethan England, such as
Robin Jarvis's novel ''Deathscent''. Lisa Goldstein's novel ''The Alchemist's Door'' features Dee as the main character, who works with Rabbi
Judah Loew, a mystic who creates a
golem to defend
Prague's
Jewish Quarter by preventing the door to the spirit world from opening and unleashing
demons. Dee's assistant Edward Kelley appears in the novel as a villain. In ''Maxie's Demon'' a novel in
Michael Scott Rohan's ''Spiral'' series, Dee is portrayed as idealistic and unworldly, with Kelley as an unscrupulous con man playing on his beliefs. Dee also appears in '', by
Ian Stewart,
Jack Cohen and
Terry Pratchett. The House of Doctor Dee, a novel by
Peter Ackroyd, tells of the haunting of an old house in Clerkenwell by the spirit of Dee, its one-time owner. Dee appears in
Alan Moore's comic book
Promethea, as does the 19th-century occultist
Aleister Crowley. Dee and Kelley are the main characters in
Gustav Meyrink's 1927 ''
The Angel of the West Window''. The book, "", portrays Dr. Dee as a human enemy of
Nicolas Flamel. The book is penned by
Michael Scott. Roger Highfield, ''The Science of Harry Potter'' (New York: Penguin, 2002), 218-221, claims that Dee's physical appearance is the inspiration for Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series.
He appears as a character in various film, television and radio productions, such as
Derek Jarman's ''
Jubilee''; in
The Golden Age alongside
Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth; as the father of the character Ella in the
Sky One TV series, ''
Hex''; and in the ''
Doctor Who''
audio drama ''
A Storm of Angels''.
John Dee is the given name of the
DC Comics supervillain Doctor Destiny, who, in the spirit of his namesake, uses both magic and science together to alter, control, and manifest dreams. The
role-playing game supplement
GURPS Cabal features a version of Dr. Dee as one of the titular conspiracy's Grand Masters.
Notes
1. De Vita Propria (The Book of My Life), Gerolamo Cardano (trans. by Jean Stoner), , , New York Review of Books, ,
2. John Dee: 1527–1608, Fell Smith, Charlotte, , , Constable and Company, ,
3. A John Dee Chronology, 1509–1609
4. Mortlake, , , , The Environs of London: County of Surrey,
5. Books owned by John Dee
6. John Dee and the English Calendar: Science, Religion and Empire Dr. Robert Poole
7. John Dee and Early Modern Occult Philosophy, Szönyi, György E., , , Literature Compass,
8. Discourse on history, geography, and law: John Dee and the limits of the British empire, 1576–80, Ken MacMillan, , , Canadian Journal of History,
9. The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica, Forshaw, Peter J., , , Ambix,
10. John Dee (1527–1608): Alchemy - the Beginings of Chemistry
11. The identity of the mathematical practitioner in 16th-century England Stephen Johnston
12. John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, Frank Klaassen, , , Canadian Journal of History,
13. John Dee Studied as an English Neo-Platonist Calder, I.R.F.
14. Dee, John Encyclopædia Britannica
15. A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and some spirits, Meric Casaubon, , , , , ISBN 0-939708-01-9
16. Quinti Libri Mysteriorum, Dee, John, , , , ,
17. Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Mackay, Charles, , , Office of the National Illustrated Library, ,
18. History of the Alchemy Guild
19.
20. John Dee: 1527–1608: Appendix 1, Fell Smith, Charlotte, , , Constable and Company, ,
21. Brief Lives chiefly of Contemporaries set down John Aubrey between the Years 1669 and 1696, John Aubrey, , , Clarendon Press, ,
22. God and Expansion in Elizabethan England: John Dee, 1527–1583, Walter I. Trattner, , , Journal of the History of Ideas,
23. John Dee and the Secret Societies, Ron Heisler, , , The Hermetic Journal,
24. The Rhetoric of Utility: Avoiding Occult Associations For Mathematics Through Profitability and Pleasure Katherine Neal
25. Theatre of the World, Frances A. Yates, , , Routledge, ,
26. Francis Bacon and the Progress of Knowledge, Brian Vickers, , , Journal of the History of Ideas,
27. Like father, like son? John Dee, Thomas Digges and the identity of the mathematician Stephen Johnston
28. The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript Gordon Rugg
29. John Dee and the Magic Tables in the Book of Soyga Jim Reeds
30. BSHM Gazetteer -- LONDON: British Museum, British Library and Science Museum
31. Museum thief spirits away old crystal ball Adam Fresco
References
★
Ackroyd, Peter ''The House of Doctor Dee'' Penguin (1993)
★ Calder, I.R.F. ''John Dee Studied as an English Neo-Platonist'' University of London Dissertation (1952)
Available online
★
Casaubon, M. ''A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee...'' (1659) repr. "Magickal Childe" ISBN 0-939708-01-9 New York 1992)
★ Dee, John ''
Quinti Libri Mysteriorum''.
British Library, MS Sloane Collection 3188. Also available in a fair copy by
Elias Ashmole, MS Sloane 3677.
★ Dee, John ''John Dee's five books of mystery: original sourcebook of Enochian magic'': from the collected works known as ''Mysteriorum libri quinque'' edited by Joseph H. Peterson, Boston: Weiser Books ISBN 1-57863-178-5.
★ Fell Smith, Charlotte ''John Dee: 1527–1608.'' London: Constable and Company (1909)
Available online.
★ French, Peter J. ''John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus.'' London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1972)
★ Woolley, Benjamin ''The Queen's Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I.'' New York: Henry Holt and Company (2001)
External links
★
[1] It is a section of the e-journal ''Azogue'' with original reproductions of Dee texts.
★
John Dee reports of Dee and Kelley's conversations with Angels edited in
PDF by
Clay Holden:
★
★ Mysteriorum Liber Primus (with Latin translations)
★
★ Notes to Liber Primus by Clay Holden
★
★ Mysteriorum Liber Secundus
★
★ Mysteriorum Liber Tertius
★
The J.W. Hamilton-Jones translation of ''Monas Hieroglyphica'' from ''Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western Esoterica''
★
The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts at
Project Gutenberg
★
★ http://www.maney.co.uk/contents/ambix/52-3 John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica, Ambix Volume 52, Part 3 2005]
★
Alchemical Manchester - The Dee Connection -(contemporary article on Dee)
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