Notes

John Dee

John Dee was one of many who observed and recorded the supernova of 1572

[John Dee was one of many who observed and recorded the strange appearance of a new star in the cosmos. Since the stars stars had been hanging there unchanged ever since God put them there, a change was always disturbing. That something would change in the heavens was unexpected and ominous. John Dee and his …

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Dee’s Angelic revelations included 48 tables out of 49…

[Dee’s Angelic revelations included 48 tables out of 49, the 49th being reserved. Separately, the Volnich manuscript has a possible key on the 49th-numbered sheet. ] A quire of paper is a measure of paper quantity. The usual meaning is 25 sheets of the same size and quality: 1⁄20 of a ream of 500 sheets. …

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Dee’s Angelic language….

[Dee’s Angelic language. He wasn’t crazy and he was the right man for the job. It just hasn’t panned out. Unless you consider mathematics as the Angelic language. Then it has.] “According to Tobias Churton in his text The Golden Builders, the concept of an Angelic or antediluvian language was common during Dee’s time. If …

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Mathematics has been a vocation… John Dee

[Mathematics has been a vocation and a devotion for millenia, but not a full time job. Even in John Dee’s time, there wasn’t enough need for it and the Queen didn’t (wouldn’t) pay for it. He lent his services to navigation, surveying, astronomy/astrology and probably encryption, but he couldn’t get a full-time job as a …

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Selections from an essay on the role of mathematics in English universities

[Selections from an essay on the role of mathematics in university education. As a mathematician – among other things – John Dee was well regarded, but remained unemployed because (in part) of limited opportunity. At the same time, as a mathematician and an intellectual, he was treated with suspicion by the general populace. Poor students …

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A new form of mathematics was established in later 16th

A new form of mathematics was established in later 16th century England: the culture of mathematical practice. This new mathematical culture was articulated as a vernacular tradition and promoted through the medium of the printed book. It heavily emphasised the importance of instruments for observation, measurement and calculation, and the value of the maps, charts …

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Charlotte Fell-Smith’s book on Dee

[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 …

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No courtier would publicly admit to such interests…

[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 …

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The accusations against Dee were many and various…

“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 …

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Backlund describes and transcribes two folios of fragmented material….

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 …

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Dee’s Faustian pursuit of his own interests in defiance of

[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 …

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John Dee’s crystal…

John Dee’s crystal, Europe, 1582Pasted from Credit: Science Museum, LondonPasted from From Wikipedia: “In the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder describes use of crystal balls by soothsayers (“crystallum orbis”, later written in Medieval Latin by scribes as orbuculum). By the 5th century AD, scrying was widespread within the Roman Empire and was condemned by …

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John Dee’s Claude Glass

John Dee’s Claude Glass [Thought to have once belonged to John Dee (1527-1609), this object is a “Claude glass:” a convex piece of glass with a black blacking. They were popular among artists and tourists to look at landscapes (with their backs to the subject). Dee is said to have used this object like a …

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While John Dee’s interest in spirit communications has been considered

[While John Dee’s interest in spirit communications has been considered discreditable, that is because Christian authorities assumed that any spirit that talked through, well, anybody but them, was probably a demon. Dee was considerate of this, and didn’t necessarily trust anything or anyone. The Faustian path is one taken by a lot of people in …

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Some people think that John Dee was an inspiration for Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus

[Some people think that John Dee was an inspiration for – at least – Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. Here, Charlotte Fell Smith copies from Dee’s journal a conversation with the (supposed) Archangel Michael that echoes Faustus’s conversation with Mephisto. From Charlotte Fell Smith’s biography of John Dee:] “The sole object of his ambition was the attainment …

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Dee turns to magic….

[Like Faust, Dee has exhausted other means, and still desiring yet more knowledge, in fact, to communicate with the spirits, Dee turns to magic. He meets Edward Kelly (who appears first, not as a dog (Goethe’s Mephistopheles), but as “Edward Talbot”):] “One Mr. Edward Talbot cam to my howse, and he being willing and desyrous …

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Faust, Dee and Cagliostro joined many others in the search for buried treasure

[Faust, Dee and Cagliostro joined many others in the search for buried treasure using various means including magical ones. Today we use metal detectors, aerial imagery and lidar. Buried treasure was more than a vain hope – in a time before banks, burying one’s wealth was a way to protect it while one was away …

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Charlotte Fell Smith: John Dee’s legacy and the history of his house at Mortlake

Charlotte Fell Smith: John Dee:[John Dee’s legacy and the history of his house at Mortlake.] ‘There is perhaps no learned author in history who has been so persistently misjudged, nay, even slandered, by his posterity, and not a voice in all the three centuries uplifted even to claim for him a fair hearing. Surely it …

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Wikipedia article on Kelley summarizes Dee’s interest in his angelic readings

[Wikipedia article on Kelley summarizes Dee’s interest in his angelic readings:] ‘Dee considered the dictation of angelic material highly important for three reasons. First, Dee believed the angelic represented a documentable case of true glossolalia, thereby “proving” that Kelley was actually speaking with angels and not from his imagination. Second, the angels claimed that their …

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The rising class of technological adepts – these “mecanicians”

[The rising class of technological adepts – these “mecanicians” – wanted to increase and improve their skills. They sought out learning, not unlike those a hundred (?) years earlier who flocked to classes on literacy when the printing press spread the printed word – in the local languages (not Latin) – throughout Europe. Not long …

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