John Dee - It's all done by mirrors. ( a little bit of magic)

John Dee was a noted Welsh mathematician, geographer, occultist, astronomer. astrologer and advisor to the Queen.He was one of the most fascinating characters of the Elizabethan period. The events of his life are filled with science, experiments, astrology and mathematics which he aligned with magic, the supernatural and alchemy.

Born in London on July 13th 1527, to a welsh father, his was an age of illusion and supernatural conviction. He was fascinated by the 'Dark Side'. His name, strangely enough, even reflects the life he would lead. The surname 'Dee' derives from the Welsh Celtic word 'du' which means black.

He went to St John's College. Cambridge at the age of 15 in 1542 where he developed a formidable reputation for his burning intelligence and as some kind of magician. He seemed possessed by a thirst for knowledge, driven by an otherworldly sense, with a taste for theatrics that were driven on by divine schemes, accompanied by alchemical secrets that coursed through his bloodstream.

Dee was a brilliant scholar. Interested in Mathematics, physics and astrology which he studied at Cambridge and in Europe. The Elizabethan era was the age of the Renaissance and new thinking and ideas. It was also the age of Nostradamus, Marsilio Ficino and Trithemius and the Renaissance fusion of Christianity, Hermetic Philosophy and its attendant sciences of magic, astrology and alchemy. His interest in science and mathematics led John Dee to a particular interest in astrology and all of its associated supernatural subjects. 

John Dee was well travelled and was obsessive in collecting books and manuscripts. He collected so many books that he created the greatest personal library in England, which he housed at his mother's residence at Mortlake, and was considered one of the finest in Europe. He also amassed a vast array of musical instruments from around the globe which he was more than capable of playing.John Dee and his extensive library attracted visits from the foremost scholars in England. 

Also a notable cartographer, Dee drew maps and routes (especially of the North Sea and across the Atlantic). It’s said that Dee possessed an impressive collection of maps, globes, and navigational devices. Dee, mystic that he was, believed that divine power could be exercised through these mathematics which he understood as a spiritual discipline During his early travels to Europe he was associated with the great cartographer Gerardus Mercator. 

It was to the  world of the occult that  he became engrossed and he came to believe himself in communication with angels and spirits, a  gentle, unsuspicious man, dressing and looking the part of a magus, wearing a long gown with a long beard as white as milk.
He became something of an expert on various occult disciplines, including alchemy and hermetic philosophy and engaged in the discipline of scrying.
Because of what people thought he knew he was courted by royalty, first by Queen Mary, which led to difficulties because he was charged with treason and swiftly thrown into jail,this could have been the end of his career, lucky for him however Mary passed away and her sister Elizabeth looked upon him more favourably, and he became her sort of errand boy, travelling on many occasions to the continent on her behalf, becoming in the end  a kind of personal consultant to her. He was also to have engaged on a number of spying activities on her behalf, an all seeing eye and all that.  It has been said that he invented British imperialism , because through his visionary experiences he found reasons for England's territorial claims on the New World and hence it's colonisation. He certainly perpetrated the Madoc myth, a story of a Welsh Prince who apparently discovered America in 1170 and together with other Welsh people settled with Native Americans, it was said that their were red indians who spoke Welsh, it is a story I would love to believe.
It must be said though that most of his magic seemed benevolent and philanthropic, and he did not seem to use his skills for personal advancement or to harm anyone with his powers, devoting himself to his dreams and prophecies, and a quest to find the secret of the Philosophers Stone and the secret of divining buried treasure, spending long hours crystal gazing. looking for future's glimpse to reveal themselves to him. In his time quite powerful,  popular too, pious but devoted. Feeding the intellectual streams of Elizabethan England. An active mind ,perhaps too busy for simple serene contemplation .

He has been painted as a deluded man who looked to the stars for guidance, dabbled in alchemy and communed with angels. But an alternative view is that he was one of the most brilliant men of the Renaissance, whose contribution has been muddied by centuries of slander. He was a polymath, engaged with the most cutting-edge science of his day, which at the time was intertwined with magic and the occult.

In 1564 he wrote the hermetic text Monas Hieroqlytica ( the Hicroglypic Moda,) an exhaustive mystical tract bringing together a myriad of strands that he was interested in, unifying numerology, mysticism and textual Qabalah using symbolist language and revelatory insight, and within it lay foundations for the spiritual ideas of alchemy. He was apparently held in high regard, and was courted by various luminaries.
John Dee's intellectual curiosity was at all times enormous, and there is little doubt that the occult interested him more than anything else, in spite of his great learning in other directions. However he was not a witch, and he bitterly resented his own all too firmly established reputation as a magician. In the Preface which he wrote to Henry Billingsley's translation of the Euchid's Elements in 1571, he complained of the injustice he suffered from those who think of him as 'a companion of Hellhounds, and a caller and a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits'. 
He married twice and had 8 children. Details of his first marriage are not readily available, but it is certain that in 1578 he married the 23 year old Jane Fromond when he was 51.

On March 10th 1582, he was visited by an irishman called Edward Kelley who seemed in awe of his power and wanted to learn more, unfortunately Kelley was a forger and coiner who had a bad reputation as a confidence trickster. Somehow Dee fell for his charms and had soon moved into Dee's house and during this period all manners of strange manifestations occurred, contacting spirits, with Kelley soon beginning to see himself as the master and claiming to have the gift of second sight. Together they developed a communication system from divine sources and established a dialogue with angels through  language called 'Enocha'.   Kelley himself was a fast learner. They summoned up a spirit who appeared and announced its name as Uriel, given directions for the invocation of other spirits. Perhaps under the influence of Kelley, Uriel urged Dee to engage Kelley as his regular scryer and telling him that him and Kelley should always work together. Any money that Dee made at this time wound up in the lining of Kelley's pockets. They travelled together to Europe and had a number of mystical adventures together. Whilst at Glastonbury Kelly was lucky enough to unearth a supply of the philosophers stone but this was of very dubious authenticity, whereas their was something of the genuine about Dee, for me I feel that Kelley was something of a charlatan.
Kelley was  a skilled manipulator, that Dee trusted ,and in April 1587 in Bohemia, Kelley saw in the crystal a naked woman who directed that in future the scryer and his master should have their wives in common. Dee at first could not accept this, but Kelley  pushed and pushed, telling Dee that they had to obey the command of the spirit, and in the end Dee succumbed to Kelley's will.
Dee himself wrote : ' On Sunday the third of May, Anno 1587, I , John Dee, Edward Kelley, and our two wives ( Jane Dee and Joan Kelley), covenated with God, and subscribed the same, for insoluble and inviable unities, charity and friendship keeping between us four; and all things between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.'
Their were probably many strange sexual encounters, but inevitably I suppose it did not work out, they quarelled constantly. In 1588 Kelley left for Prague where he ended up in prison, released after 4 years he was imprisoned again and was killed attempting to escape.  
Dee returned to England in 1589 to Mortlake and was received by the Queen at Richmond, and awarded him a pension of £200 a year that was her debt to him. Unfortunately his library had been ranshacked and lay in ruins and many of his beloved musical instruments were stolen. He spent his final days with his influence on the wain, but was given the wardenship of Manchester College.In 1604, he was evidently once again troubled by his own reputation for sorcery, or feared persecution, in view of the new Witchcraft Act then being debated in Parliament. He petitioned King James to have him 'tryed and cleared of that horrible and damnable, and to him the most grevious and damnable slander... that he is, or hath been a conjurer or caller or invocator of devels'. The King did not grant him his request, but did not bother him in any way.
He died peacefully, though sadly in poverty, though at the ripe old age of 82, four years later at Mortlake. His life had  long flown, but  he was still writing , still chasing his dreams. 
By then  the age of magic  and sorcery was passing too, but I for one am still dazzled and grateful for his story. Every passionate assertion calls forth some contradiction and every firmly-held creed knows at least some doubters and some sceptics.
Through time, he was not forgotten, Shakespeare's character Prospero was based on him, and he still flickers through the centuries in  many a fine book,and he is currently back in vogue due to Damon Albarn's English opera ' Doctor Dee.'His business as a wise man, still incredulous to this day. Tempests still hurled, and on the window sills , oceans of treachery.So follow your own dreams, your own paths, if you can!
Be careful who you mix with, sometimes destiny's forecast is everlasting.
Create your own way, with your own maps and scattered illusions. You only have one chance.

Further Reading:-

The Private Diary of John Dee - John Dee, Bastion Books.

The Queens Conjurer : the science and magic of Doctor Dee - Benjamin Woolley

The House of Doctor Dee - Peter Ackroyd. 

Oh incidentally first became aware of Dee, in the film Jubilee (1977) - Derek Jarman, where Queen Elizabeth is magically transported through time by Dee ( Richard O Brien)

and as for borrowing, it was the great Alan Moore, whose idea that Mr Gorillaz man inevitably pinched.


Richard O Brien as John Dee in Jubilee (1977)

On a Portrait of John Dee - Robert Minhinnick

( Spy, Astrologer, Mathematician.)

This black canvas n Elizabethan night.
Only the dimmed  lantern of the face,
That hand holding  a testament
Obstruct the gloom. Appropriate

The artis'ts doubt. How to decipher
code of this man's life, the lean
Courtier, bittern-necked, in corset of stiff lace,
His slightest thread of smile itself

A wordless cryptogram? Could oils preserve
A pale astrologer, whose superstitious
Scholarship transferred the evenings bestiary
Of stars to royal horoscopes, whose harmless

Chess became a skill deployed round living kings.
Such brilliant paradox must fascinate.
This squalid agent of a vicious state
Grew older, found retirement, and poses here

Respectable and rich. Profound John Dee
Your life suggests the real, essential irony
Our flatter lives conceal. You, modernist,
A riddle to our reasoning, our medieval mind.

Poetry Wales , Winter 1977, Volume 13 No.3

Olde England has vanished, but the hidden mysteries of the arcane still flow.