Tag: Divination

John Dee’s crystal, Europe, 1582

Pasted from <http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display.aspx?id=10708&keywords=dee>

Credit: Science Museum, London

Pasted from <http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/objects/display?id=10708&keywords=dee>


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 the early medieval Christian Church as heretical.

Dr. John Dee was a noted British mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy, of which the use of crystal balls was often included.”

Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_ball>

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 crystal ball for divination (telling the future or fortunes) or scrying (seeing visions).]