G. J. R. Parry

Great book about John Dee, (1527 -1608}, the most famous occultist in Elizabethan England . Dee was ordained as a Catholic priest at the age of twenty-six. This was before Protestant anti- idolatry took hold, and Catholics reformed as well . In Dee's formative years, the Catholic religion still had an immanentist flavour:

“Only priests could touch the sacred vessels with bare hands, such was the power that emanated from Christ's body and blood, the 'angel meat' as one contemporary described it. " (p. 3)

Dee grew up in the church of St. Dunstan, which housed" the Great Cross with Beryl', which had at its centre a huge crystal.

Dee's first big occult job in April 1555 was to divine the future for Elizabeth, Mary I's otherwise potential successor, after Mary had convinced herself that she was pregnant . This was a politically dangerous operation on Dee's part, which in fact got him arrested:

"Back in London Dee tried to conjure the future in rented lodgings, where the Privy Council's pursuivants abruptly arrested him on 28 May, seizing his books and papers and sealing up his door 'for suspicion of magic'." (p. 32)

As Parry says, since Dee's digs were sealed up, it's likely that the Privy Council thought he was doing involved more than just casting horoscopes. What had he been doing up until then?

" Dee believed that Christ's body could move through solid objects and hence that spirits could manifest themselves in this world. In the summer of 1555 he explored techniques for summoning spirits into crystals." (p. 35)

Dee blamed two informers for his arrest. One of them had two children and, within days of Dee's arrest, one of them died and the other one went blind:

"This apparent exercise of magical revenge against Dee's accuser struck directly at Mary's fears for her unborn child and strung the Privy Council's nerves even tighter." (p. 33)

Dee was imprisoned in the Tower of London, possibly tortured on the rack (the historical record doesn't say) and confessed to 'lewd and vain practices of calculating and conjuring' (p. 33) He was put on probation with an old buddy, Bishop Bonner, and only got off the hook when Mary's pregnancy turned out to be false, and so it became clear Elizabeth I's succession was in the bag anyway, without the need for occult operations.

Dee was obsessed with the search for the Philosopher's Stone, a kind of ultimate stone of power.
His search combined alchemy and Pythagorean number mysticism with a method borrowed from Jewish Kabbalah:

"At length, having shown how the Monad also concealed the shapes of alchemical laboratory vessels, Dee produced from 'X' the number 252 which he associated with the philosopher's stone. Like the shining crystal in the great cross at St. Dunstans's that Dee had seen daily as a child, the stone lay where the arms of the cross intersected in the Monad. " (p. 59)
Dee tried to pitch this to the Hapsburg King, Maximilian II, that he might become 'very great by this interpretation of mysteries', but Maximilian wasn't responsive.

However celestial phenomena, combined with information in books in Dee's possession, soon convinced him to make a pitch to Elizabeth I for patronage instead . Dee was heavily into a book called On the Seven Planetary Intelligences,written by Johannes Trithemius. Trithemius was notorious for invoking demonic spirits, drawing from the medieval conjuring tradition attributed to Solomon, Peter of Abano and Honorius of Thebes. Dee owned Honorius'book, Sworn Book. Trithemius believed angelic spirits governing the seven planets (the planets known at that time) controlled history. Dee recalculated the ruled time periods and came to this conclusion:

"... Anael, the angel of Venus, governed the remarkable concentration of female rulers in mid-sixteenth century Europe. The November 1572 supernova, which his calculations placed within the sphere of Venus, increased that angel's influence" (p. 107)

So as Dee told his court connection, Edward Dyer, it served to "signify the finding of some great Treasure or the philosophers stone", and a decaying world would be restored by angelic magic.

(Dee later felt vindicated by Martin Frobisher's discovery of gold in 1576, searching for the North-West Passage to Cathay. )

But unfortunately for Dee, as had long been the case, "offered the dazzling prospect of reforming the world through the philosopher's stone... the Court showed more interest in solving its chronic financial problems by transmuting base metals into gold and silver." (p. 71) Notoriously stingy, most of what money Elizabeth I came through with funded more practical alchemists.

Dee proved useful, however, to Lord Burghley, the Queen's most influential advisor, in a battle with John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury . These men disagreed as to where a threat to the English monarchy came from.

Whitgift worried about a threat from below, in the form of radical Presbyterianism. For example, William Hacket, an illiterate malt-maker executed in 1591, had been hailed as God's 'Prophet of Judgement' and 'King of Europe'. Hacket was said to have received 'an Angelical spirit' advising on the removal of Whitgift, the overthrow of the established order, and the ushering in of the millennium. Unfortunately for Dee, Hacket's methods somewhat resembled his own practices regarding angels.

Dee laid low. But then "Burghley in effect created a Tudor police state", subjecting Catholics to imprisonment, torture and execution. Burghley exploited fears about Philip II's ambitions to dominate Christendom, in particular by an Armada against England, suggesting Catholics were Fifth Columnists.

Burghley's 1591 Proclamation against Catholic seminary priests and Jesuits, owed much, as a later published letter stated, to "Doctor Dee their conjuror or Astrologer [who] is said to have put them in more doubt, for that he hath told the Council by his calculation, that the Realm indeed shall be conquered this Summer believe him who will." (p. 226)

As soon as he'd outlived his usefulness to Burghley, however, Dee got sidelined again. Burghley had an lingering grudge with Dee about slanders Dee had once made about his less than generous patronage. So Dee now appealed directly to Elizabeth for a reward, over Burghley's head. He was angling to get the position of Master of St. Cross College at Winchester, and turn it into an esoteric research centre:

"At St. Cross he could collaborate in alchemy with many foreign scholars and their 'Mechanical servants'. “(p. 235)

Turned out to be a pipe dream. Sir John Wooley, Elizabeth's Latin Secretary, and Sir Thomas Gorge, a household official, waited until Burghley was otherwise engaged before riding to see Dee about it his place in Mortlake.

Dee's last occult gasp was an exorcism job in Lancashire in the late 1590s. This type of operation was on its way out. Whitgift had been suspicious of " devil-conjurors... reputed to carry about with them their familiars in rings and glasses" (p. 213)But Richard Bancroft, one of Whitgift's protégés, now started intervening in witchcraft case to promote medical explanations of hysteria, over those of demonic possession. But Dee did possibly advise King James I, whose accession in March 1603 coincidenced with a severe outbreak of plague, provoking speculation about its astrological causes. Dee claimed to have mathematician to the King on 9 August 1603, although it's undocumented.
Dee died at 3 a. m. on 26 March 1609,leaving among other things a chest with a secret compartment containing his olive-wood rosary, cross, and angelic manuscripts, and 'a certain round flat stone like Crystal. " (p. 271)… (mehr)

John Dee may not have been away with the fairies, but he was certainly away with the angels. This is a history book/biography of John Dee (1527 - 1608) which follows his long career both as a man of science and as a maker of magic; deep into occult philosophy. Biographies of Tudor personalities who were not major figures in the government or leading figures at Court sometimes suffer through lack of information, unless the subject person has left behind their own writings or written testimony, which have come down to us. This is not the case with John Dee many of whose publications have survived along with some diary notes, unfortunately much of what he wrote would appear to be as unintelligible to us today as it was to his contemporaries, but they were more likely to be convinced as to the sagacity of his writings than we are today.

Mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, alchemist, arch-conjuror, leading expert in navigation and Hermetic philosopher: John Dee was all these, but he was no mere dabbler, he was a leading expert in many of these fields at a time when it was difficult to separate the magic from the science. One hundred and fifty years before the age of enlightenment and scientists and magicians rubbed shoulders together in a world that is difficult for us to imagine. Glyn Parry guides his readers through the early life and education of Dee and his catholic education, but then assumptions have to be made about how Dee came to have such a high reputation and how he managed to acquire such high level patrons. There is plenty of evidence that he became a relatively rich man with a large house at Mortlake (some ten miles from the city of London) a house full of servants and one of the largest collection of books and manuscripts in England. Parry struggles at times to lead us through the maze of Tudor Politics, but what is clear is that courtiers and those on the fringe had to be flexible to survive. Henry VIII’s court inclined towards a protestant religion which was followed by the Protestant reformist government lead by the young king Edward, his early death heralded in Queen Mary whose counter reformist government turned things back to catholicism and then Elizabeth I who embraced a more protestant view and who had to tread a wary path between the Puritans on one side and the Jesuit catholics on the other. John Dee had to negotiate this ebb and swell of religious belief as well as being careful not to be branded a dark mage in league with the devil. He was not always entirely successful and survived by a mixture of good and bad fortune, never having much control of events and always subject to being impoverished.

John Dee’s reputation as an astrologer and alchemist got him close to Queen Elizabeth I, who from time to time visited his house in Mortlake, however the queens interests did not stop with Dee and he found himself in competition with other astrologers on the periphery of the Court. Tensions created by the threat from Catholic Spain and factions inside the Queen’s court meant that Dee found himself used as the ball in a sort a sort of political football match. He seems to have become more desperate in his claims as a magician; prophesying that the Queen would effectively come to rule most of Europe and would pave the way for some sort of second coming. Increasingly Dee seemed to be relying on his conversations with the angels through his scryer Edward Kelly. The two men through prayer and fasting would make themselves mentally ready for Kelly to receive words from the angels through Dee’s crystal ball. It fell to Dee to make sense of the universal language that was spoken through the crystal. Receiving messages from angels was something that was readily believed to a greater or lesser extent by the courtiers close to the Queen, but Dee had to tread a careful line between science, magic and the black arts. Albrecht Laski a Polish catholic prince arrived in England to pay court to Elizabeth I and an interest in alchemy lead him to befriend Dee. This time Dee had really backed the wrong horse and Laski left England owing money, Dee realised that he was no longer welcome at court and followed Laski to Europe with Edward Kelly in tow.

Dee spent over seven years in Europe at first relying on his reputation as a mathematician and scholar and later as an alchemist and fortune teller, He travelled from princedom to princedom with his train of six wagons, two carriages for his and Edward Kelly’s family and four wagons full of his books. At times desperate for money and patronage and increasingly reliant on Edward Kelly who became the senior partner and who claimed to have discovered the philosophers stone and the ability to make gold from cheaper metals. Dee retuned to England when the game was up in Europe and he was no longer needed by Kelly and when he established that he would again be welcome at the Queen’s court. He eventually secured a position as warden of Manchester, but the posting gave him plenty of legal and administrative headaches and he seems to have made money through his astrology and navigational aids businesses. He searched for but never found a scryer as effective as Edward Kelly and so his conversations with the angels became increasingly difficult.

Glyn Parry paints a picture of the Queen and influential politicians at her court, who were steeped in learning, but also ready to believe in astrology, alchemy and angel magic. Occult philosophy and angel magic could be used by those factions that believed in its efficacy and those who recognised its power over others. Dee was on safe ground when the political faction that supported him were in the ascendent, but was exposed when his supporters floundered. Tensions at court caused ripples and waves that Dee was not always able to ride and he found patronage sometimes difficult to attain. Parry’s attempts to piece all this together does not always convince but he does give a feel for the hurly burly of Tudor Politics. The issue of whether Dee was for the most part a charlatan, a conjuror, or a learned man can probably never be realised and his character never really comes through, but this is not the fault of Parry’s meticulous research. 3.5 stars.… (mehr)