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[From Charlotte Fell-Smith’s book on Dee (downloadable as a PDF below):]

Since Dee’s departure from England six years ago, great events had happened. The “invincible” Armada of Philip had been beaten in a six days’ running fight up the Channel. The Queen’s hated rival, Mary Queen of Scotland, had been put to death; Leicester’s short dictatorship of the Netherlands had begun and come to an end. Leicester had been dead about a year. New favourites had arisen in the Queen’s favour. But even more significant than these public affairs had been the upward movement in literature, the birth of dramatic art, a passionate outburst of poetic fervour, the growth of a taste for well-disciplined prose.

Many splendid fruits of this movement had not yet seen the light, Sidney’s Arcadia and the first part of Spenser’s Faerie Queen were to be issued within a few months; the first play of Shakespeare was publicly performed within little more than a year of Dee’s return.

But Lyly and Marlowe had already, during his absence, given Campaspe, Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus, to be performed by actors in the first stationary home of the earlier nomadic players, the theatres of Shoreditch, immediately to be followed by those of Bankside. Bacon was perhaps even then meditating his Essays, published some half a dozen years later; Hooker issued the first books of his monumental Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity within four years; and Nash, Peele, Green, and a horde of other writers, were contributing to establish the English literary renaissance. One can scarcely help wondering how much the fabulous stories of Dee and Kelley, which must have reached Marlowe’s ears, contributed to his splendid dramatisation of the Faust legend (first printed in Frankfort in 1587). But after all, even the story of Dee’s angels and Kelley’s gold, pales before the lurid glow of the stories of the earlier alchemists, Agrippa and Paracelsus.

John Dee by Charlotte Fell-Smith (1909)

http://www.johndee.org/charlotte/pdf/charlotte.pdf

[The problem with conjuring spirits and such – as Faust did – was not so much that people thought you were nuts, but that people were afraid you would succeed. In our day we have similar anxieties about AI and aliens. You might protest that they were ignorant and we are not, but clearly nothing’s changed. As mentioned, it was the same thing with Faust: he wanted the secrets of God, but wasn’t really capable of handling them. It’s also true of Western Civilization and our science and technology – we want God’s secrets, but there’s good reason to fear we’re going to obliterate the planet with them. Here is how Western Civilization is Faustian – we’re willing to take the chance. In fact we’re already committed. Too many of our “advancements” have created lethal problems that depend on future solutions.]

No courtier would publicly admit to such interests, not because it would make him seem gullible-the existence of spirits was as clear as the existence of God-but because it would suggest that he was trying to tap into a reservoir of power that was not his to control. It is unsurprising, then, that Dee was so discreet about his own spiritual activities, and those of his powerful friends.

The Queen’s Conjurer, The Science and Magic of Dr John Dee – Benjamin Woolley.

“The accusations against Dee were many and various, but focused not on his religious leanings so much as his links with mathematics and magic. “In those dark times,” the seventeenth-century historian John Aubrey wrote of Dee’s era, “astrologer, mathematician and conjuror were accounted the same things.” This was certainly the case with Dee. He was charged with “calculating,” “conjuring,” and “witchcraft” on the grounds that he had drawn up horoscopes for Mary, her husband Philip of Spain, and Elizabeth. He was probably guilty. The remnant of his diary for this period includes an entry (inaccurately transcribed by Elias Ashmole) showing the date and time of Mary’s marriage to Philip, and noting that the rising sign at the moment of their wedding- 11 A.M., 25 July 1554-was Libra (a good omen, as Libra was the sign associated with marriage or partnership, ruled by Venus).”

The Queen’s Conjurer, The Science and Magic of Dr John Dee – Benjamin Woolley

[Dee’s Faustian pursuit of his own interests in defiance of convention requires justification. But fraud is the hallmark of the Devil, and Kelley – who claims to hate the whole operation – in a time of stress invokes the acid test that all Faustian seekers must demand of their demons and angels: tell me something I don’t know.]

‘Kelley was still murmuring under the mystical dealings of the angels. “Let them give me somewhat profitable to my body, or some wisdom to my mind’s behoof, and then I will believe in them,” he says. Then he protests he will confess all to the priest, and if the holy father does not allow their doings or counsel to be genuine, neither will he.

The remarkable answer that Dee gives again shows us how in advance he was of his times in matters spiritual as well as scientific. “The authority of good angels or messengers from God is greater,” says he, “than the authority of the Pope, or priests.”’

John Dee by Charlotte Fell-Smith (1909)

Pasted from <http://www.johndee.org/charlotte/pdf/charlotte.pdf>