A Golden Storm: Attempting to Recreate the Context of John Dee and Edward Kelley’s Angelic Material.
by Teresa Burns, Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition.
[An essay questioning how Dee and Kelley’s Angelic or Enochian writings evolved into or inspired later occult societies like Mather’s and Crowley’s Golden Dawn. Context with “bad history.” Also, Rudolf II and Golem – the original one, not the milky newt. A fresh look at Edward Kelley’s reputation. 007 and Dee, John Dee. Emphasis ours: The mystery of Christopher Marlowe.]
by Teresa Burns, Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition.
Jan Backlund’s ‘In the Footsteps of Edward Kelley’ on Danish manuscripts “…describes and transcribes two folios of fragmented material, clearly related to Dee and Kelley and physical alchemy, folios which include names also used in Dee’s diary like Digges (Thomas Digges?), Garland (Francis Garland? aka Gulielmus Shakespeare?), and Carpe (John Carpio/Johannis Carpionis de Kaprstein), and a poem of Kelley’s that Ashmole republishes in Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum with an added dedication to “G.S., Gent.” Some of the names in the manuscripts are likely those of couriers, as evidenced by the writing out of their name in code, and that their names appear in manuscripts that seem to have originated in Prague, passed through England, and wound up in Denmark. One even wonders if the “Poole” who appears in these manuscripts is the notorious Cheshire gentleman and brutal “intelligencer” John Poole, who allegedly had “great skill in mixture of metals,” and may be peripherally related to the espionage circle around playwright Christopher Marlowe. Such primary evidence again begs the questions: how does Dee and Kelley’s work in physical alchemy and their status as “intelligencers” inform the angelic workings? Is there enough evidence left anywhere to ever know?”
A Golden Storm: Attempting to Recreate the Context of John Dee and Edward Kelley’s Angelic Material. By Teresa Burns. Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition.\\No. 19, Vol. 2. Autumnal Equinox 2010.
From Wikipedia:
Footnotes“Thomas Digges, born about 1546, was the son of Leonard Digges (c. 1515 – c. 1559), the mathematician and surveyor, and Bridget Wilford, the daughter of Thomas Wilford, esquire, of Hartridge in Cranbrook, Kent, by his first wife, Elizabeth Culpeper, the daughter of Walter Culpeper, esquire. Digges had two brothers, James and Daniel, and three sisters, Mary, who married a man with the surname of Barber; Anne, who married William Digges; and Sarah, whose first husband was surnamed Martin, and whose second husband was John Weston.” 1
“After the death of his father, Digges grew up under the guardianship of John Dee, a typical Renaissancenatural philosopher. In 1583, Lord Burghley appointed Digges, with John Chamber and Henry Savile, to sit on a commission to consider whether England should adopt the Gregorian calendar, as proposed by Dee.”
Thomas Digges at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Digges.
- This John Weston died circa 1564.[↩]