Dr John Dee
Astrologer to the Queen
Born on July 13, 1527, in London, England, John Dee was an "English alchemist,
astrologer, and mathematician who contributed greatly to the revival of interest in
mathematics in England." - Encyclopaedia Britannica
"Dee was an exceptional student who entered Cambridge University when he was fifteen...Dee excelled at Cambridge and was named Underreader (junior faculty member) before taking his degree. After graduating he traveled to the Continent to continue his studies, achieving overnight fame in Paris at the age of twenty-three, when he delivered a series of lectures on the recently exhumed works of the Greek mathematician Euclid." - Visions and Prophesies
"After lecturing and studying on the European continent between 1547 and 1550, Dee returned to England in 1551 and was granted a pension by the government. Dee became astrologer to the queen, Mary Tudor, and shortly thereafter was imprisoned for being a magician but was released in 1555." - Encyclopaedia Britannica
"Dee met the future Queen Elizabeth while she was being held under house arrest by Queen Mary. The two developed a freindship that lasted for the rest of their lives. As queen, Elizabeth gave Dee money...More importantly, she protected him from those who accused him of withcraft." - Visions and Prophesies
"Besides practicing astrology and horoscopy in the court of Elizabeth I, whose favour he enjoyed, he also gave instruction and advice to pilots and navigators who were exploring the New World. He was asked to name a propitious day for Elizabeth's coronation, and he gave her lessons in the mystical interpretation of his writings." - Encyclopaedia Britannica
"Dee's house in Mortlake, near London, was for many years a major center of science in England. Dee salvaged many ancient scientific tomes that had been scattered when Roman Catholic churches and monasteries were ransacked during the Reformation, and his own library of more than 4,000 books may have been the largest of its kind in Europe at the time." - Visions and Prophesies
"Before we raise our eyes to heaven, kabbalistically illuminated by the contemplation of these mysteries, we could perceive very exactly the constitution of our Monad as it is shown to us not only in the LIGHT but also in life and nature, for it discloses explicitly, by its inner movement, the most secret mysteries of this physical analysis." John Dee, Theorem XVIII
"...In Dee's most Hermetic work, the Monas Hieroglyphica, (One Hieroglyph), published in Antwerp in 1564, Dee believed he had found a 'hieroglyph', a hitherto hidden 'symbol' which contained in its form the very unifying principle of reality. It is a kind of micro-chip which contains within it all the most elementary principles of the universe. It is to be contemplated upon and fixed in memory as an archetype applicable to all studies. But what is it? If one can imagine a great ocean of prima materia which we may call in this context 'spirit', a pure unformed, undirected, unmoving, unmoved homogenous world, then we see the beginning of the universe. If a hand were to, as it were, drop the Monas Hieroglyphica into that ocean of potentials, the materia prima would immediately start forming itself into the universe we imagine we know." - Tobias Churton, The Gnostics
"In 1570 the first English translation of Euclid's work appeared, and, although it is credited to Sir Henry Billingsley, who became sheriff and later lord mayor of London, Dee probably wrote part or all of it. In addition, he wrote the preface, which encouraged the growing interest in the mathematical arts." - Encyclopaedia Britannica
"...Dee stayed in his library, where, bent over his books, he explored the Talmudic mysteries, the Rosicrucian theories, and a host of other obscure and occult subjects." - Daniel Cohen, Masters of the Occult
Enochian Magick
"In the year 1581, however, John Dee's life swerved onto an entirely new path. He later wrote of how, as he knelt in prayer late one autumn, 'there suddenly glowed a dazzling light, in the midst of which, in all his glory, stood the great angel, Uriel'. The spirit reported handed Dee a crystal 'most bright, most clear and glorious, of the bigness of an egg' and informed him that by gazing at it he could communicate with otherworldly spirits." - Visions and Prophesies
"By dint of continually brooding upon the subject his imagination became so diseased, that he at last persuaded himself that an angel appeared to him, and promised to be his friend and companion as long as he lived." - Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
"John Dee was enraptured by this prospect, but in spite of the angel's promise, he
had little luck at scying with this 'shew-stone'. The scientist resorted to employing
others to do the actual scrying, conversing directly with the spirits, while he kept
scrupulous notes."
"The one with him the longest was Edward Kelley, a classic Renaissance scoundrel,
Kelley was an erstwhile lawyer who had already had his ears cropped for counterfeiting
before he met Dee. He also stood accused of necromancy - the practice of using dead bodies
for divination."
"Gazing into the glass, he [Kelly] reported to Dee that 'in the middle of the stone
seemeth to stand a little round thing like a spark of fire, and it increaseth, and it
seemeth to be as a glove of twenty inches diameter, or there about.' In this glowing
central sphere, Kelley claimed to raise a host of spiritual beings who attempted, among
other things, to teach Dee 'Enochian', the language spoken by angels and the inhabitants
of the Garden of Eden. In fact Dee's alleged Enochian records are elaborate enough to have
convinced some credulous readers that they represented a genuine pre-Hebraic language. But
as least one researcher has suggested that Enochian was a code Dee used to transmit
messages from overseas to Queen Elizabeth in his alleged capacity as a founding member of
the English secret service." - Visions and Prophesies
"Dee and Kelly "recorded hundreds of spirit conversations, including...an angelic language called Enochian, composed of non-English letters, but which computer analysis has recently shown to have a curious grammatical relationship to English." - Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival
"Many magicians assert that the Enochian language predates all human languages. Gerald J. Schueler is widely considered one of the foremost experts on Enochian magick. Mr. Schueler states that Enochian magick is 'the powerful system of Magick used by Aleister Crowley, and the Golden Dawn, and of theThe Necronomicon, to contact intelligences from other dimensions'." - Parker Ryan , "Necronomicon Info Source"
"It is now generally agreed by occult scholars that the Enochian system of Dee and Kelly was directly inspired by those sections of the Necronomicon which deal with Alhazred's techniques for evoking the Old Ones. It must be remembered that the Necronomicon was primarily intended as a history, and while it provides some practical details and formulae, it is hardly a step-by-step beginner's guide to summoning praetor-human intelligences. Dee and Kelly had to fill in many details themselves, so their system is a hybrid of ideas taken from the Necronomicon and techniques of their own invention There seems little doubt that...the Enochian language, and the Enochian Calls or Keys are authentic borrowings, and we must doubt Dee's claim that Kelly received them from the archangel Uriel." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979)
Dee and Kelly asserted that the, Giants or Watchers, under the command of Uriel, could be evoked with the Enochian "Call of the Thirty Aethyrs".
"The entry into the thirty Aethyrs begins with a divine curse because it is a means to assert control over the entities it evokes: the Nephilim. The Fallen Ones. The Great Old Ones. This establishes beyond any doubt that the Enochian system of Dee and Kelly was identical in spirit, and almost certainly in practice, to the system of Alhazred as described in the Necronomicon." - Colin Low, Necronomicon FAQ (Compiled from The Book of the Arab, by Justin Geoffry, Starry Wisdom Press, 1979)
An Inglorious End
"On a careful perusal of Dee's diary it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that he was imposed upon by Kelly, and accepted his revelations as the actual utterances of the spirits; and it seems probable that the clever, plastic, slippery Kelly not only knew something of the optical delusions then practiced by the pretended necromancers, but possessed considerable ventriloquial powers which largely assisted in his nefarious deceptions." - Lewis Spence, An Encyclopedia of Occultism
"Although he remained in favor with Queen Elizabeth I, Dee, along with Kelly and
their wives and servants, were forced out of England when the clergy began preaching
against magical activities. A mob destroyed much of Dee's valuable library of books.
"Dee...toured Poland and Bohemia (1583-89), giving exhibitions of magic at the courts
of various princes." - Encyclopaedia Britannica
In 1595 Kelly was imprisoned by Emperor Rudolf II at Prague for wizardry and sorcery.
He fell in a attempt to escape and died a few days later.
Dee "arrived in England with a huge baggage train and protected by a guard of twenty
soldiers...But Dee was certainly in need of money when he arrived. The queen received him
at Richmond and awarded him a pension of two hundred pounds a year. But the great days
were clearly over." - Daniel Cohen, Masters of the Occult
Queen Elizabeth appointed Dee warden of Christ's College in Manchester in 1595.
Dee was described by his biographer, John Aubry, as "a beaten old man with 'a long beard as white as milke, tall and slender, who wore a gowne with hanging sleves' . He earned a pittance telling fortunes and even sold his beloved books, one by one, in order to eat." - Visions and Prophesies
He died on December 1608 in Mortlake, Surrey.
"Over the centuries many scholars of the occult puzzled over John-Dee's handiwork; perhaps the most notorious of these was Adam Weishaupt, who as a young man was fascinated by the mysterious 'illuminated manuscript'. Rudolf's collection was broken up with the passage of time, with his collection of rare manuscripts making its way to the venerable Jorge's famous library in Italy. It survived the fire that destroyed Jorge's abbey and took his life, and along with the other remaining fragments of Jorge's collection was stored at a Jesuit college for many years." - Mitchell Porter, alt.necromicon FAQ.