JOHN DEE

11 Facts about John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I’s Court Astrologer

By Lorna Wallace | Dec 2, 2022

https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/john-dee-elizabeth-court-astrologer-facts

John Dee lived quite the interesting life.

John Dee is a figure whose life has become the stuff of legend, with unfounded claims about him being a sorcerer and a spy. Dee, born on July 13, 1527 in London, England, was a revered polymath, with particular expertise in mathematics and astronomy. But he was interested in the occult, too: He served as Queen Elizabeth I’s court astrologer and conducted séances in an attempt to speak to angels. Read on to learn the facts about Dee—the scholar, scientist, and seeker of the esoteric.

1. John Dee was arrested for practicing witchcraft.

Dee was arrested for “conjuring or witchcrafte” in 1555 after casting a horoscope of Queen Mary I—but he was exonerated a few months later. Fortunately for him, during the Renaissance, astrology was often thought of as a science (albeit a suspicious one), rather than a supernatural dark art.

2. He asked Mary I to establish a national public library—and created his own when his request was denied.

In 1556, Dee tried to convince Mary I to set up a library for the “whole realm” to use that would preserve the “excellent works of our forefathers from rot and worms.” When his request was refused, he set up a library at his home in Mortlake, which—although not technically public—was open to other scholars. It was one of the largest personal libraries in England, housing around 4000 texts (3000 books and 1000 manuscripts). Many of the tomes were stolen when Dee left the library under the care of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Fromond, while he traveled around Europe for a number of years in the 1580s.

3. Dee became Elizabeth I’s court astrologer.

John Dee performing an experiment before Elizabeth I. / Buyenlarge/GettyImages

Dee found royal favor when Elizabeth I, who was interested in astrology, took the throne. She asked him to choose an auspicious date for her coronation, which, according to his calculations, was January 15, 1559. Dee became Elizabeth’s court astrologer, and while she relied on him to interpret the stars for her, he was also a trusted authority on matters of mathematics, chemistry (including alchemy), astronomy, geography, and navigation.

4. He may have coined the term British Empire.

In The General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1577), Dee recommended to Elizabeth that she use the force of the navy to expand Britain’s overseas territory—which he termed the “Brytish Impire.” This is the first recorded use of the phrase, but it’s possible that he was simply the first person to write it down.

5. Dee advised Elizabeth to adopt the Gregorian calendar—but with a few of his own amendments.

The Julian calendar that had been established by the Roman Empire was still in use across much of Europe, but it was far from perfect, having overestimated the length of a solar year. To remedy this, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582, which axed 10 days from the year and changed the way that leap years worked thereafter. Dee, with his vast knowledge of astronomy and history, was asked to give his opinion on whether or not England should adopt this new calendar.

Dee concluded that England would be wise to make the change, but that 11 days should be cut and that it should be done more gradually to reduce disruption. However, the new calendar was rejected by the Anglican Church, likely because it originated from the Pope and England was a Protestant country at the time. England and its colonies did not switch to the Gregorian calendar until 1752.

6. He helped introduce the mathematical signs +, -, x, and ÷ to the English public.

John Dee. / Heritage Images/GettyImages

During the Renaissance, mathematics was not a popular subject; the school curriculum focused on the learning of rhetoric and moral philosophy through Latin and Greek texts. However, Dee was a proponent of math—despite its occasional association with witchcraft. He even helped to introduce English readers to the now-common mathematical symbols +, -, x , and ÷ by writing the preface to Sir Henry Billingsley’s 1570 English translation of Euclid’s The Elements of Geometrie. He used this introduction to defend the practicality of math and attempted to break its links to dark magic.

7. Dee believed it was possible to speak to angels.

Although Dee was adamant that mathematics was not demonic, he did employ it for his own investigation into the occult. Dee practiced numerology and divination, using tools such as a crystal ball and a spirit mirror made of obsidian, in his attempts to speak to angels. The polymath thought the divine beings could share their esoteric knowledge with him, like how to make the fabled philosopher’s stone, an alchemical substance that could provide immortality and turn base metals into gold.

However, he found that he was unable to scry, which is the ability to perceive supernatural messages, and sought the aid of a medium—at one point even using his own son, Arthur Dee. Arthur also encrypted the apparently divinely received recipe for the philosopher’s stone, which, according to legend, was an “elixir of life” that could make a person immortal and also turn common metals into precious ones like gold and silver. The message Arthur recorded was cracked in 2021 by scholars Megan Piorko, Sarah Lang, and Richard Bean.

8. Dee forged a partnership with scryer Edward Kelley.

Edward Kelley. / Print Collector/GettyImages

Dee first met Edward Kelley (who these days is largely regarded as a charlatan) in 1582, and became convinced that he could communicate with angels. The pair held many séances together, with Dee keeping detailed records of the allegedly divine conversations. The angels supposedly talked to Kelley in an unknown language, which had to be deciphered by Dee. The pair referred to this language as Angelic or Adamic, but it is now commonly known as Enochian.

Dee and Kelley embarked on a tour of Europe in 1583 with their families in tow, seeking patronage for their research into alchemy and the occult. They met with mystically inclined royals, such as King Stephen of Poland and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. It’s thought Dee may have been the person who sold the still undeciphered Voynich Manuscript to Rudolf, the earliest known owner of the mysterious text.

9. Dee and Kelley engaged in wife swapping after believing they were commanded to do so by an angel.

During one séance in Bohemia in 1587, Kelley claimed the angel Madimi insisted the two men share everything they had—including their wives. According to Dee’s dairy, when his wife Jane was told of the “cross-matching” arrangement “she fell a weeping and trembling for a quarter of an hour.” However, both Jane and Kelley’s wife, Joanna, reluctantly submitted. Nine months later Jane gave birth to Theodore Dee, who may have been sired by Kelley, and whose name, which means “gift of god,” is possibly a reference to the circumstances of his conception.

10. Dee fell out of favor when James VI and I took the throne in 1603.

When Elizabeth I died in 1603 and was succeeded by James VI and I, who detested all things related to witchcraft, Dee received a cold reception. James refused to clear Dee’s name when he was accused of being a “Conjurer, or Caller, or Invocator of Divels, or damned Spirites.” Dee died in poverty in either December 1608 or March 1609.

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11. It’s speculated that Dee inspired William Shakespeare’s Prospero and Ian Fleming’s James Bond.

Some scholars believe that Prospero from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610/11) was modeled after Dee: Both were wizardly figures who believed in the supernatural, both had large libraries, and both suffered misfortune. Dee was certainly well-known by the time Shakespeare was penning his magician character, but there is no direct evidence that Prospero was based on Dee. It has also been suggested that Dee and Kelley inspired the conmen Subtle and Face in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610).

A less likely character that may have been partly based on Dee is Ian Fleming’s James Bond. In John Dee: Scientist, Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I (1968), Richard Deacon describes Dee as “a roving James Bond of Tudor times.” While Elizabeth certainly had spies, there is no proof that Dee occupied such a role. It is often reported that Fleming took Bond’s code name—007—from Dee’s secret signature. But despite extensive research, Katie Birkwood, a rare books librarian at the Royal College of Physicians, London, has never found any letters from Dee signed 007. Fleming never commented on his inspiration for the iconic moniker, allowing rumors to flourish.

Biography of John Dee

Alchemist, Occultist, and Advisor to a Queen

By Patti Wigington

https://www.thoughtco.com/john-dee-biography-4158012

Writer

• B.A., History, Ohio University

Patti Wigington is a pagan author, educator, and licensed clergy. She is the author of Daily Spellbook for the Good Witch, Wicca Practical Magic and The Daily Spell Journal.

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Updated on July 10, 2019

John Dee (July 13 ,1527–1608 or 1609) was a sixteenth-century astronomer and mathematician who served as an occasional advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and spent a good portion of his life studying alchemy, the occult, and metaphysics.

Personal Life

John Dee was the only child born in London to a Welsh mercer, or textile importer, named Roland Dee, and Jane (or Johanna) Wild Dee. Roland, sometimes spelled Rowland, was a tailor and fabric sewer in the court of King Henry VIII. He made clothing for the royal family members, and later received the responsibility of selecting and buying fabrics for Henry and his household. John claimed that Roland was a descendent of the Welsh king Rhodri Mawr, or Rhodri the Great.

Throughout his lifetime, John Dee was married three times, although his first two wives bore him no children. The third, Jane Fromond, was less than half his age when they wed in 1558; she was merely 23 years old, while Dee was 51. Prior to their marriage, Jane had been a lady in waiting to the Countess of Lincoln, and it is possible that Jane’s connections at court helped her new husband secure patronage in his later years. Together, John and Jane had eight children–four boys and four girls. Jane died in 1605, along with at least two of their daughters, when the bubonic plague swept through Manchester.

Early Years

John Dee entered Cambridge’s St. John’s College at age 15. He went on to become one of the first fellows at the newly-formed Trinity College, where his skills in stage effects earned him notoriety as a theatrical conjurer. In particular, his work on a Greek drama, a production of Aristophanes’ Peace, left audience members marveling at his abilities when they saw the giant beetle he had created. The beetle descended from an upper level down to the stage, seemingly lowering itself from the sky.

After leaving Trinity, Dee traveled around Europe, studying with renowned mathematicians and cartographers, and by the time he returned to England, he had amassed an impressive personal collection of astronomy tools, mapmaking devices, and mathematical instruments. He also began studying metaphysics, astrology, and alchemy.

In 1553, he was arrested and charged with casting the horoscope of Queen Mary Tudor, which was considered treason. According to I. Topham of Mysterious Britain,

“Dee was arrested and accused of attempting to kill [Mary] with sorcery. He was imprisoned in Hampton Court in 1553. The reason behind his imprisonment may have been a horoscope that he cast for Elizabeth, Mary’s sister and heiress to the throne. The horoscope was to ascertain when Mary would die. He was finally released in 1555 after being set free and re-arrested on charges of heresy. In 1556 Queen Mary gave him a full pardon.”

When Elizabeth ascended to the throne three years later, Dee was responsible for selecting the most auspicious time and date for her coronation, and became a trusted advisor to the new queen.

The Elizabethan Court

During the years that he advised Queen Elizabeth, John Dee served in a number of roles. He spent many years studying alchemy, the practice of turning base metals into gold. In particular, he was intrigued by the legend of the Philosopher’s Stone, the “magic bullet” of the golden age of alchemy, and a secret component that could convert lead or mercury into gold. Once discovered, it was believed, it could be used to bring about long life and perhaps even immortality. Men like Dee, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Nicolas Flamel spent years searching in vain for the Philosopher’s Stone.

Jennifer Rampling writes in John Dee and the Alchemists: Practising and Promoting English Alchemy in the Holy Roman Empire that much of what we know about Dee’s practice of alchemy can be gleaned from the types of books he read. His vast library included the works of many classical alchemists from the Medieval Latin world, including Geber and Arnald of Villanova, as well as writings of his contemporaries. In addition to books, however, Dee had a large collection of instruments and various other implements of alchemical practice.

Rampling says,

“Dee’s interest was not confined to the written word—his collections at Mortlake included chemical materials and apparatus, and appended to the house were several outbuildings where he and his assistants practised alchemy. Traces of this activity now survive only in textual form: in manuscript notes of alchemical procedures, practically-oriented marginalia, and a few contemporary recollections. ⁶ Like the issue of Dee’s alchemical influence, the question of how Dee’s books related to his practice is one that can only be partially answered, through sifting diffuse and fragmentary sources.”

Although he is well known for his work with alchemy and astrology, it was Dee’s skill as a cartographer and geographer that really helped him shine in the Elizabethan court. His writings and journals flourished during one of the greatest periods of British imperial expansion, and multiple explorers, including Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, used his maps and instructions in their quest to discover new trade routes.

Historian Ken McMillan writes in The Canadian Journal of History:

“Especially noteworthy are the maturation, complexity, and longevity of Dee’s ideas. As plans for the expansion of the British Empire became more elaborate, shifting quickly from exploratory trading voyages into the unknown in 1576 to settlement of territory by 1578, and as Dee’s ideas became increasingly sought and respected at court, his arguments became more focused and better grounded in evidence. Dee buttressed his claims by building up an impressive scholarly edifice of classical and contemporary historical, geographical, and legal evidence, at a time when each of these disciplines was increasing in use and importance.”

Later Years

By the 1580s, John Dee was disillusioned with life at court. He had never really attained the success that he’d hoped for, and a lack of interest in his proposed calendar revisions, as well as his ideas about imperial expansion, left him feeling like a failure. As a result, he turned away from politics and began to focus more heavily on the metaphysical. He delved into the realm of the supernatural, devoting much of his efforts to spirit communication. Dee hoped that the intervention of a scryer would put him in touch with the angels, who could then help him gain previously unfound knowledge to benefit mankind.

After going through a series of professional scryers, Dee encountered Edward Kelley, a well-known occultist and medium. Kelley was in England under an assumed name, because he was wanted for forgery, but that didn’t dissuade Dee, who was impressed by Kelley’s abilities. The two men worked together, holding “spiritual conferences,” which included a lot of prayer, ritual fasting, and eventual communication with the angels. The partnership ended shortly after Kelley informed Dee that the angel Uriel had instructed them to share everything, including wives. Of note, Kelley was some three decades younger than Dee, and was much closer in age to Jane Fromond than her own husband was. Nine months after the two men parted ways, Jane gave birth to a son.

Dee returned to Queen Elizabeth, petitioning her for a role in her court. While he had hoped that she would allow him to attempt to use alchemy to increase England’s coffers and decrease the national debt, instead she appointed him as the warden of Christ’s College in Manchester. Unfortunately, Dee was not terribly popular at the university; it was a Protestant institution, and Dee’s dabblings into alchemy and the occult had not endeared him to the faculty there. They viewed him as unstable at best, and hellbound at worst.

During his tenure at Christ’s College, several priests consulted Dee in the matter of demonic possession of children. Stephen Bowd of the University of Edinburgh writes in John Dee And The Seven In Lancashire: Possession, Exorcism, And Apocalypse In Elizabethan England:

“Dee certainly had direct personal experience of possession or hysteria before the Lancashire case. In 1590, Ann Frank alias Leke, a nurse in the Dee household by the Thames at Mortlake, was ‘long tempted by a wicked spirit’, and Dee privately noted that she was finally ‘possessed of him’… Dee’s interest in possession should be understood in relation to his broader occult interests and spiritual concerns. Dee spent a lifetime searching for the keys with which he might unlock the secrets of the universe in the past, the present and the future.”

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth, Dee retired to his home at Mortlake on the River Thames, where he spent his final years in poverty. He died in 1608, at the age of 82, in the care of his daughter Katherine. There is no headstone to mark his grave.

Legacy

Seventeenth-century historian Sir Robert Cotton purchased Dee’s house a decade or so after his death, and began inventorying the contents of Mortlake. Among the many things he unearthed were numerous manuscripts, notebooks, and transcripts of the “spiritual conferences” that Dee and Edward Kelley had held with angels.

Magic and metaphysics tied in neatly with science during the Elizabethan era, despite the anti-occult sentiment of the time. As a result, Dee’s work as a whole can be seen as a chronicle of not just his life and study, but also of Tudor England. Although he may not have been taken seriously as a scholar during his lifetime, Dee’s massive collection of books in the library at Mortlake indicate a man who was dedicated to learning and knowledge.

In addition to curating his metaphysical collection, Dee had spent decades collecting maps, globes, and cartographic instruments. He helped, with his extensive knowledge of geography, to expand the British Empire through exploration, and used his skill as a mathematician and astronomer to devise new navigation routes that might otherwise have remained undiscovered.

Many of John Dee’s writings are available in a digital format, and can be viewed online by modern readers. Although he never solved the riddle of alchemy, his legacy lives on for students of the occult.

Additional Resources

• John Dee Collection, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, Wren Digital Library
• Exhibition: Scholar, Courtier, Magician: The Lost Library of John Dee
• The private diary of Dr. John Dee: and the catalogue of his library of manuscripts, from the original manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and Trinity College Library, Cambridge
• John Dee’s Annotated Books At The Royal College Of Physicians, London

THE MAGICAL LIFE OF JOHN DEE

Dee is famously known as the ‘conjurer’ to Queen Elizabeth I | Portrait of John Dee aged 67 by an unknown artist

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/the-magical-life-of-dr-dee-queen-elizabeth-i-s-royal-astrologer

Mysteries

John Dee (1527 – 1608) is famously known as the ‘conjurer’ to Elizabeth I, but there is more to the 16th-century medieval philosopher than having a reputation for staring into a crystal ball and delving into the mystical worlds of whispering angels. He was also a mathematical genius and one who was uncannily accurate in what was then, during the late Tudor period, the new science of physics and the exploration of chemical compounds. Like his near-contemporaries Nostradamus and Cornelius Agrippa, also known for their interests in astrology and the world beyond the mortal, these inquisitive men trod a dangerous path at a time when predicting the future, or conversing with the dead, could mean being accused of heresy and punishment by death.

Medieval astrologers to royalty

William Parron was one of the least accurate astrologers to serve English royalty during the middle-ages when he worked for Henry VII (reign 1485 – 1509) and later for the first Tudor king’s son Henry VIII (reign 1509 – 1547). Employed by Henry VII, the Italian born author of the first almanac in the English language failed to get one important prediction right when he prophesied that the king’s wife and Queen, Elizabeth of York would live until she was 80 years-of-age. She died at 37.

DEE IS FAMOUSLY KNOWN AS THE ‘CONJURER’ TO QUEEN ELIZABETH I

Parron later served Henry VIII as his personal astrologer but appeared equally out of sorts with the stars. Although his forecast for Henry’s ‘happy marriage’ may be explained by the fact he was wed to Catherine of Aragon for twenty-four years, the famously gargantuan monarch failed to sire ‘many sons’ as Parron had predicted, or become a ‘devoted servant’ to the Catholic church. On the contrary, Henry VIII married six times, produced only one legitimate son and controversially broke England away from the Pope and the Catholic Church. Most likely Parron hoped to avoid punishment by forecasting favourable prophecies, particularly as Henry VI (reign 1422 – 1461) had two unfortunate astrologers executed on the grounds of treason when they forecast he would die a violent death. The ineffectual young king, whose turbulent reign saw him caught up in the bloodshed of the ‘War of the Roses’ died in the Tower of London, most likely due to murder. Parron escaped a similar fate and simply left the court in disgrace after an ignominious career as a royal ‘seer’ and inaccurate forecaster of events.

John Dee: The Queen’s Conjurer

The strong influence prophecy and astrology held over Henry VII did not diminish throughout the Tudor period and was as prominent an obsession with his son Henry VIII and his granddaughter Elizabeth I. Enter John Dee, astrologer, astronomer, mathematician and alchemist. Dee is famously known as the ‘conjurer’ to Queen Elizabeth I, but also as a young man at Trinity College, Cambridge he gained a reputation as a ‘magician’ and who with his knowledge of physics and chemistry even produced some impressive stage effects for a production of Aristophanes’ play Peace. The star of this spectacle was a giant mechanical beetle that shocked the audience so much they believed Dee must have conspired with the devil to create it. Dee’s genius also led him to construct a perpetual motion machine, although the project was abandoned. Such an undertaking represented an on-going flaw with Dee; that he often failed to see through ideas and projects.

Royal patronage

Dee’s patronage by aristocrats and royalty didn’t happen until after he graduated from Trinity College and travelled extensively around Europe lecturing on the subject of the Greek mathematician Euclid. His scholarly work brought him into contact with the most famous names of the day who included astronomers and map makers. Back in London, Dee investigated objects that were supposed to have magical properties and may have been his introduction to the mystical world.

Dee saw his star ascending when he made a favourable impression on King Henry’s legitimate son and boy King Edward VI. Around this time Dee’s lectures betrayed influences of Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486 – 1535), a German polymath, theologian and occult writer who also received patronage with royalty in central Europe. After the young Protestant reformer Edward VI granted Dee an annual pension, he was to later experience a mixed and strained reception with Edward’s sister and succeeding monarch, the arch Catholic Queen Mary I. Fuelling the tension between Dee and the ultra-pious Tudor queen was the fact that his then patron, the Duke of Northumberland, was instrumental in a failed plot to replace Mary with the doomed teenager Lady Jane Grey.

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What if Lady Jane Grey had kept the throne?

Brilliant astrologers or clairvoyants?

There persists a view that medieval astrologers like Dee, who had eight children and was married three times, were simply eccentric wizard-type characters, concocting lotions and potions of a dubious nature and practising clairvoyancy through the dark arts. In reality men like John Dee, forever questioning the universe were foremost professors of maths, geometry, astronomy and early explorers into the world of physics and chemicals. Some were also interested in the works of mechanical magic and trickery, such as objects that appeared to move of their own accord. Like his older 16th-century fellow astrologer Nostradamus, Dee found fame with aristocrats and monarchs and created a reputation that went beyond England’s borders.

READ MORE ABOUT: MYSTERIES

Nostradamus: Which of his predictions came true?

Nostradamus (1503 – 1566) on the other hand was a universally published astrological consultant but whose fame, even today nearly five-hundred years after his death is due to his prophesising world events. The French born astrologer, who is also alleged to be a ‘seer’ – those who have precognitions of the future – wrote his first prophecies aged 50 in ‘Les Propheties’ in 1555. Countless books listing his many predictions still sell in their millions around the world and continue to cause heated debates between ardent believers and dissenters about the true meaning of Nostradamus’ poetic ‘quatrains’, which consisted of stanzas or complete poems containing four lines.

The most famous and often criticised of the medieval author’s predictions include the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, the rise of Hitler and the Apollo moon landings, to more recent events such as the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 and the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Many of Nostradamus’ predictions were written in a series of Almanacs from 1550 to his death and have been the subject of much scrutiny with critics citing their vagueness as being open to interpretation to fit any event in history.

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The killer king: How many people did Henry VIII execute?

by Richard Bevan

The 16th century was a dangerous time for maverick type characters who appeared to broach strict religious orthodoxy set out by religious figures and the church. Some people viewed Nostradamus as a servant of evil due to his predictions and had he been accused of using ‘magic’ he may well have been prosecuted, imprisoned and executed. John Dee however wasn’t so lucky to escape suspicion of using supernatural forces in his work.

Charges of heresy

In 1555 John Dee was arrested and charged with accusations of using witchcraft after he had cast horoscopes of Queen Mary and her younger sister Princess Elizabeth. When the charges were raised to treason against Mary herself, with unfounded accusations of plots against her life, Dee found himself interrogated in the Star Chamber, an English court that sat in the Palace of Westminster. Although eventually exonerated by the common-law judges he later faced examination by the infamous heretic-hunter Bishop Bonner. Dee wisely made the religious and fanatical Bonner – known for his cruelty – a close associate and friend which possibly saved Dee from further interrogation.

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Witchcraft in the times of Henry VIII and beyond

by Richard Bevan

Despite such a dangerous period in history when religious fanaticism meant innocent people could be killed by the state, Dee managed to survive Mary’s reign of persecution and her enthusiastic burning of Protestants. His contacts through her brother, the late King Edward, put him in a good position when Mary died in 1558 and the crown passed on to her Protestant sister Elizabeth I. Soon afterwards Dee found favour with aristocrats including William Cecil, chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I and also worked for various noble families as an advisor.

In 1564 Dee was ‘appointed Royal Advisor in mystic secrets’, roughly translated as Court Astrologer. Appreciating royal support Dee applied himself to his studies with such diligence that he only allowed himself four hours sleep and two for his meals and recreation. Dee’s status as the court conjurer for Queen Elizabeth had begun. The virgin queen often depended on Dee for matters in science, medicine and exploration. He even presented reports on nearly every issue effecting England, including publishing the term ‘British Empire’. Queen Elizabeth and Dee were believed to have written to each other at times in code, possibly about the threat of the Spanish Armada or matters relating the New World which Dee believed were the rightful lands of England. He took to signing his letters ‘007’ to designate secret letters for the queen’s eyes only.

Conversations with Angels

In an age when religious leaders were obsessed with the notion of ‘witchcraft’ and ‘heretics’ who were sought out and punished – usually by death – even the pursuit of mathematics was seen as suspicious.

Although some of Dee’s experiments that were meticulously executed and logged appear to be more in line with basic physics than delving in the supernatural, the reputation of the alchemist was much derided. It was a dangerous time to be accused of using ‘magic’ or supernatural forces and at the peak of Dee’s powers disaster struck when his quest for knowledge took him into a new realm as he desired to speak with the angels.

At the time the acknowledgement of the existence of ‘angels’ wasn’t controversial, in fact it was seen as being foolish not to believe there were such things. The question was whether you should or could actually communicate with them. What brought suspicion on to Dee was that he was trying to set up a communication outside the accepted received orthodox channels. This was extremely dangerous territory, particularly through the actions of his ‘scryer’ or medium, Edward Kelly, who would dictate to Dee information from the unseen world.

Contacting other worldly beings to predict the future was seen as being at the edge of acceptability and brought Dee dangerously close to another sort of divination known as Necromancy, the practise of raising spirits back from the dead. Dee’s magical practice was underpinned by spiritual and philosophical theories drawn from ancient and Renaissance writers. Such activities by Dee didn’t necessarily mean that he was an advocator of sorcery, but simply that Dee had a thirst for knowledge, the kind which was to take him on a quest that would ultimately ruin him.

Psychic séances and wife swapping

Edward Kelly was an opportunist who had been accused of forging money and who clung to Dee for years, encouraging the conversations with the angels. The somewhat theatrical process would involve setting up a table with a philosopher’s stone on a wax tablet. At the same time, Kelly would wait for various angels in hierarchical order to communicate through him to Dee, who listening, took notes. These notes survive in Dee’s ‘Book of Mysteries’ and reveal how the angels, making up of twenty-four elders including Archangels, govern the quarters of the world. Between the two men they developed what has become known as ‘Enochian magic’, which was a system of ceremonial magic based on the commanding of spirits. Through Kelly, acting as the spirit medium, Dee claimed that the information they received revealed the Enochian language, an occult language communicated by angels but now largely believed to have been made up by Dee due to its syntactic and semantic similarity to English.

Sexual commands

Dee’s ‘Scryer’ Edward Kelly had on one occasion an intense conversation with an angel where afterwards he made a proposition to Dee. The proposition that Kelly insisted the angels implored them to do was to surrender each other’s wives to one another. This wife-swapping pact, as dictated by a celestial being, was meant to be the ‘deal’ for having received information.

In a kind of medieval swingers tryst Dee agreed, much to the horror of his wife Jane Fromond, and later after the event where Dee slept with Kelly’s wife and Jane with Kelly, Dee wrote ‘pact fulfilled’. Whether a baby boy named Theodore and born nine months after the incident was actually the offspring of Kelly is unknown. Dee’s participation in the sex pact was motivated, not by lust for another man’s wife, or through lack of care about his wife’s dignity, but simply as an illustration of Dee’s desperation and thirst for knowledge and secrets of the universe.

Downfall of a genius

Perhaps before Dee went down the dubious avenue of communicating with the dead or angels, in order to attain worldly information, he should have taken heed of his predecessor Cornelius Agrippa, who two years before his own death, denounced his earlier involvement with magic. ‘I wrote whilst I was very young three large books, which I called Of Occult Philosophy, in which what was then through the curiosity of my youth erroneous. I now being more advised, am willing to have retracted by this recantation’.

Could Agrippa’s reference to ‘being more advised’ have really meant that he had become acutely aware of the perilous danger he and other necromancers put themselves if their craft and experiments were seen as having used ‘magic’ or ‘supernatural’ forces? The punishment for such a crime could be imprisonment or death. Although not known to have been persecuted for his interest in magic or the occult arts, Agrippa, who himself argued against the persecution of witches, realised his craft was a politically dangerous one to pursue. He died in 1535 at 48 years-of-age, just two years after his very public renunciation of his life’s work.

Persecution of witches

John Dee’s final years were dogged by his illnesses, possibly brought on by conducting his experiments with toxic chemicals and substances such as silver. Despite the lack of modern equipment and technology Dee’s quest for chemical knowledge proved impressively accurate. One experiment he did as a preparation of silver chloride reveals a competent process. His accurate measurements relating to the quantities of the solutions he used showed he was a good scientist. But a series of tragedies, such as the ransacking of his library and the loss of many of his books was devastating for Dee. He spent the rest of his life trying to rebuild what was lost after this event. More tragically his wife Jane and most of their children died after an outbreak of the bubonic plague, including Theodore, in Manchester. Only two of his offspring survived.

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Elizabeth I and the Tudor succession crises: 1558 – 1603

But the main reason Dee’s once ascending star fell dramatically was due to a change of monarch after Queen Elizabeth died when she was replaced by Mary Queen of Scots’ son James VI of Scotland and James I of England in 1567. The new Stuart king was very anti-witchcraft, believing it to be a sinister theology that could cause harm and Dee was concerned that he might fall prey to the new king’s hatred of anything to do with necromancy. King James attended witch trials and implemented the Witchcraft Act in 1563 that was to see thousands of brutal executions over the forthcoming decades.

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Mary Queen of Scots: The legitimate heir to the English throne?

by Richard Bevan

Despite his reputation as a famous and dedicated alchemist from the days of serving Queen Elizabeth I, Dee was excluded from King James’ court, powerless and left trying to survive with any job he could get and often selling his possessions. He sadly lived out his last days in poverty, still desperate to contact the angels to receive those all-important messages. He died in Mortlake, outer London in 1608.

For all people’s thoughts about Dee and his association with ‘angels’, his mathematical genius, giving us today the universal symbols used in maths, as well as his understanding of astronomy, were groundbreaking, leading to the development of advanced theories like gravity. He is immortalized in literature, believed to be the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

Article written by: Richard Bevan