John Dee

This article is a biography that charts the history and significance of an important magical artifact that has hitherto gone unnoticed because its existence was unknown to all but a few. The artifact in question is the oldest extant Sigillum Dei in the world so far, produced at the end of the medieval period and antedating John Dee's famous wax sigils of the Sigillum Emeth by about a century. It may seem a mistake to call a study of an object a biography, but there is no denying that the Sigillum Doornenburgensis has an uncanny ability to maneuver itself into positions that guarantee its survival. Firmly connected with the eventful history of Doornenburg Castle, the continued existence of the Sigillum Dei is due to an extraordinary series of coincidences, not least of which is the recent chain of events that enabled us to make its acquaintance. This article describes how the brick and sigil ended up at Doornenburg Castle, sheds light on the history, use, and materiality of the artifact, and analyzes the place of the sigil in the transmission of the Sigillum Dei.

This dissertation seeks to define the importance of John Dee’s interpretation of mediaeval and Renaissance esoterica regarding the contacting of daemons and its evolution into a body of astrological and terrestrial correspondences and intelligences that included a Biblical primordial language, or a lingua adamica. The intention and transmission of John Dee’s angel magic is linked to the philosophy outlined in his earlier works, most notably the Monas Hieroglyphica, and so this dissertation also provides a philosophical background to Dee’s angel magic. The aim of this dissertation is to establish Dee’s conversations with angels as a magic system that is a direct descendant of Solomonic and Ficinian magic with unique Kabbalistic elements. It is primarily by the Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and alchemical philosophy presented in the Monas Hieroglyphica that interest in Dee’s angel magic was transmitted through the Rosicrucian movement. Through Johann Valentin Andreae’s Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459, the emphasis on a spiritual, inner alchemy became attached to Dee’s philosophy. Figures such as Elias Ashmole, Ebenezer Sibley, Francis Barret, and Frederick Hockley were crucial in the transmission of interest in Dee’s practical angel magic and Hermetic philosophy to the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The rituals of the Golden Dawn utilized Dee’s angel magic, in addition to creative Kabbalistic elements, to form a singular practice that has influenced Western esoterica of the modern age. This study utilizes a careful analysis of primary sources including the original manuscripts of the Sloane archives, the most recent scholarly editions of Dee’s works, authoritative editions of original documents linked to Rosicrucianism, and Israel Regardie’s texts on Golden Dawn practices.

Amen exposes the foundation of all religious myths and conspiracy theories that are based on the existence of a global and Divine Plan for mankind. Amen reveals the truth about the Knights Templar, the Baphomet, Jesus, the Great Mother, the Dragons and the Grail Bloodline.

The 16th century is regarded by historians as the century in which the rise of the West occurred. During the 16th century, Spain and Portugal explored the world's seas and opened worldwide oceanic trade routes. Large parts of the New World became Spanish and Portuguese colonies, and while the Portuguese became the masters of Asia's and Africa's Indian Ocean trade, the Spanish opened trade across the Pacific Ocean, linking the Americas with Asia.
This era of colonialism established mercantilism as the leading school of economic thought, where the economic system was viewed as a zero-sum game in which any gain by one party required a loss by another. The mercantilist doctrine encouraged the many intra-European wars of the period and arguably fueled European expansion and imperialism throughout the world until the 19th century or early 20th century.
In Europe, the Protestant Reformation gave a major blow to the authority of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. European politics became dominated by religious conflicts, with the groundwork for the epochal Thirty Years' War being laid towards the end of the century. In Italy, Luca Pacioli published the first work ever on accounting and Galileo Galilei made the first thermometer. In England, the Italian Alberico Gentili wrote the first book on public international law and divided secularism from canon law and Roman Catholic theology.
In the Middle East, the Ottoman Empire continued to expand, with the Sultan taking the title of Caliph, while dealing with a resurgent Persia. Iran and Iraq were caught by major popularity of the Shiite sect of Islam under the rule of the Safavid dynasty of warrior-mystics, providing grounds for a Persia independent of the majority-Sunni Muslim world.
Copernicus proposed the heliocentric universe, which was met with strong resistance, and Tycho Brahe refuted the theory of celestial spheres through observational measurement of the 1572 appearance of a Milky Way supernova. These events directly challenged the long-held notion of an immutable universe supported by Ptolemy and Aristotle, and led to major revolutions in astronomy and science.

Книга посвящена исследованимю отношений английской живописи второй половины XVI – начала XVII в. и английской культуры как  сложного целого. Восприятие культуры времен королевы Елизаветы I и короля Иакова IV требует внимания к самому духу времени, к идеям, что в ту пору «носились в воздухе» и составляли фон драм Шекспира и стихов Джона Донна, полотен Николаса Хилльярда и Джона Гувера.  Чтобы понять искусство той эпохи, необходимо погрузиться в ее теологические искания, политические диспуты, придворные интриги, литературные предпочтения, алхимические эксперименты и астрологические практики.
Автор использует большой массив теологической, социальной информации, создающий контекст, в котором только и можно «увидеть эпоху», обнаружить глубинные смыслы в портретах, мозаиках, гравюрах и эмблемах..

A significant number of works have set forth, over the past decades, the emphasis laid by seventeenth-century mathematicians and philosophers on motion and kinematic notions in geometry. These works demonstrated the crucial role attributed in this context to genetic definitions, which state the mode of generation of geometrical objects instead of their essential properties. While the growing importance of genetic definitions in sixteenth-century commentaries on Euclid’s Elements has been underlined, the place, uses and status of motion in this geometrical tradition has however never been thoroughly and comprehensively studied. This book therefore undertakes to fill a gap in the history of early modern geometry and philosophy of mathematics by investigating the different treatments of motion and genetic definitions by seven major sixteenth-century commentators on Euclid’s Elements, from Oronce Fine (1494–1555) to Christoph Clavius (1538–1612), including Jacques Peletier (1517–1582), John Dee (1527–1608/1609) and Henry Billingsley (d. 1606), among others. By investigating the ontological and epistemological conceptions underlying the introduction and uses of kinematic notions in their interpretation of Euclidean geometry, this study displays the richness of the conceptual framework, philosophical and mathematical, inherent to the sixteenth-century Euclidean tradition and shows how it contributed to a more generalised acceptance and promotion of kinematic approaches to geometry in the early modern period.

Language: Polish. With an English summary. The book is a much needed update on recent developments in research on western esotericism. It presents history of academic research in this field, proposes new and more accurate Polish terminology, tracks the occult sciences and esoteric beliefs from middleages to present, and helps understand 19th and 20th century occultism as part and parcel of Western culture.

In questo paper viene tracciata una breve storia del Manoscritto Voynich, dalla sua comparsa nel XVI secolo, fino ai numerosi tentativi di decifrazione del testo.
Dall'insieme dei dati storici ed analitici circa il Manoscritto Voynich, emerge con chiarezza la sua natura di falso d'epoca.

ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется.

Доктор Джон Ди (сборник) / Т. Ф. Дибдин, У. Флетчер Младший, Г. М. Хорт / Пер. с англ. и лат., коммент. Ю. Ф. Родиченкова; предисл. Б. К. Двинянинова; послесл. В. В. Винокурова; науч. ред. В. В. Винокурова, под общ. ред. Б. К. Двинянинова. — СПб. : Издательство «Академия исследований культуры», 2021. — 208 с.: ил. — (Серия Librarium Aureum. Opus Minus). ISBN 978-5-94396-225-7 Уменьшенный формат. Тираж 300 экз.

Джон Ди (13 июля 1527 — 26 марта 1609, Лондон, Англия) — известный британский натурфилософ, математик, астроном, географ, посол, теолог, мистик, алхимик и астролог королевского двора, которому посвящена книга. Для этого сборника к. ф. н. Юрием Фёдоровичем Родиченковым были переведены и собраны, впервые издающиеся в академическом формате, редкие биографии доктора Джона Ди — Гертруды М. Хорт, Уильяма Флетчера Младшего и Т. Ф. Дибдина. Их дополняют переводы важного для издания эпистолярного наследия Джона Ди: письма к королеве Марии и королеве Елизавете, переписка с лордом Берли, письмо Чарльзу Джекману и Артуру Петту. В послесловии приведена статья редактора сборника к. ф. н. Владимира Васильевича Винокурова. Основной темой настоящего издания является обширное наследие доктора Ди, которое в наше время становится все более доступным для подробного изучения. Сборник прекрасно дополняет ранее изданные «Личный дневник доктора Джона Ди» и Джон Ди «Афористические начала». Книга будет интересна широкому кругу читателей, а также культурологам, историкам философии, историкам естественных наук, эзотериологам и всем интересующимся фигурой доктора Ди и елизаветинской эпохой.

Содержание

Заметка издателя (Б. К. Двинянинов) ........................................ 5
Гертруда М. Хорт. Доктор Джон Ди. Мистика и астрология елизаветинской эпохи ....................................... 7
Глава I ................................................................................... 9
Глава II.................................................................................. 25
Глава III................................................................................. 41
Глава IV ................................................................................ 59
Глава V.................................................................................. 69

Уильям Флетчер Младший. Доктор Ди, 1527–1608 ............ 83

Т. Ф. Дибдин. [Доктор Джон Ди].............................................. 91

Приложения
Джон Ди. Прошение Джона Ди к королеве Марии о спасении
и сохранении письменных памятников и [книг] древних
авторов . . .107
Уильям Сесил, 1-й барон Берли. Памятная записка лорда Берли,
касающаяся мнения доктора Джона Ди о реформировании
календаря. . . 114
Джон Ди.  Доктор Ди лорду Берли . . . 117
Джон Ди. Доктор Джон Ди Чарльзу Джекману и Артуру Петту...131
[Доктор Ди перед путешествием Джекмана и Петта в Катай].135
Джон Ди. Доктор Ди — королеве Елизавете из богемского
Трибау, c поздравлением Ее Величеству после поражения
испанской армады и покорностью воле Ее Величества, по
поводу его, мистера Келли и их семей возвращения домой.
10 ноября 1588-го. . . 137

Послесловие. Он — Доктор Ди, который был… (В. В. Винокуров) . . 141
Алхимическая легенда творчества Ди и Келли...................151
«Дневники» и «Книги тайн»: частное и публичное.............152
Корпус текстов «енохианской магии»..................................156
«Книги тайн» Джона Ди и Гоэтия........................................159
«Книга Еноха» в широком и узком смыслах .......................166
Первообраз и культовый миф Гоэтии..................................172
Полемика ангела Гальвы с точкой зрения Тритемия..........177
Алхимик...184

Библиография...193

Front matter and table of contents of Vincent Bridges' posthumous work, a biography of Sir Edward Kelley.  Along with editing and footnoting the work, I wrote the introduction and two of the appendices.  Two other appendicis, written by Eliska Bridges, are also part of the work.  Available: https://www.amazon.com/Alchemical-Enigma-History-Edward-Kelley/dp/0999663151

| "John Dee and alchemy"-this phrase, particularly in and around Bohemia, almost automatically triggers the qualifi cation: "Dee was interested in alchemy, but the real adept in their tandem was his scryer, Edward Kelly. " Well, this is not necessarily true. Although it is indeed probable that Kelly was more accomplished and also more devoted to pursuing the way of transmut-ing base metals to gold, his master approached alchemy in a more subtle and complex way. He did not stand next to the furnace and the alembic day and night, but in his diaries he documented his practical experiments. More importantly, however, he theorized about alchemy in an intriguingly abstract way in which he connected alchemy with other sciences, with religion, with human cognition as well as with spiritual regeneration. His work, fi rst and foremost the Monas hieroglyphica, is consequently an important testimony to the recent scholarly debate about the nature of premodern alchemy, championed by William Newman and Lawrence Principe. I would like to revisit in this paper the Monas hieroglyphica as a strong counter argument against Newman and Principe's skepticism about the possible symbolic and spiritual nature of Renaissance alchemy.

Introduction to the most recent translation of John Dee's Hieroglyphic Monad and a word about the translation, completed by Dr. Nancy Turner and myself in 2021.  More on this book may be found at:
https://www.bookarts.org/store/p110/Monas_Hieroglyphica.html#/

Brian Vickers once described John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica as “possibly the most obscure work ever written by an Englishman,” asking whether there were even ten references to it in the seventeenth century. This article considers Dee’s reputation as an alchemist, in particular the reception of his Monas Hieroglyphica, in Latin, French, and German texts published in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and examines two themes: first, discussion of the Monas Hieroglyphica in the context of cabbalistic calculations and Pythagorean symbolic numbers; and second, references to, and appropriations of, the hieroglyphic monad in the context of chemical notation. It shows how Dee’s work was read by alchemists influenced by Trithemius’s exposition of the Emerald Tablet, including major promulgators of Paracelsian thought such as Gerard Dorn, Oswald Croll, Joseph Duchesne, and Heinrich Khunrath. The article also notes how the Monas Hieroglyphica appealed to purveyors of both physical and more theosophical forms of alchemy, such as the Rosicrucian Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz. It concludes with a discussion of the somewhat surprising approval of Dee’s enigmatic work from one who was utterly antagonistic to Paracelsian and Rosicrucian philosophy, the chemist Andreas Libavius, who openly admitted to using the hieroglyphic monad as the basis for the ground plan for his ideal laboratory.

This essay sets forth to analyze the various attributions of the Watchtowers and their components. It strives to cover all the pertinent material from the Spirit Actions of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelly, along with subsequent sources that have influenced the Golden Dawn and its successors. It may result in more questions than answers, but it is the hope that sources and logic herein provide sufficient information for serious students of Enochian magick to draw their own conclusions or at least to begin the process of fruitful inquiry into the problems that they pose.

Notes on Matt Cardin, “In Search of Higher Intelligence: The Daemonic Muse(s) of Crowley, Leary, & Robert Anton Wilson,” in Angela Voss & William Rowlandson (eds.), Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle, 2013, pp. 266-281.

Most musicians, artists, poets, adepts and shamans collaborate with the Muse. The Hindu knew the phenomenon as apauruseya, śruti, and ākāśavāni. We discuss it as prophecy, Dionysian ecstasy, Bacchus, the Jungian collective unconscious, race consciousness, and the Akashic Record.

The metaphysics of the multiverses demand that we understand the Muse as an autonomous projection of human consciousness.

In an address to Maximilian II, which prefaces his Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), John Dee emphasises that the Monad is not only an alchemical device, but a universal one, with the potential to revolutionise all the arts and sciences. Amongst the examples given are applications to geography, astronomy and music, of which Dee writes:

“How justly may the musician be struck with wonder when here he will perceive inexplicable, celestial harmonies without any movement and sound.” (Josten 1964, 130-1)

Dee’s harmonic conception of the Monad may be interpreted as a progenitor to later alchemical traditions in which music plays an underrated part: music was not only the audible expression of the mathematical, rational world of the celestial spheres, but also of influences the soul, the preparation of which is a necessity for the Great Work (Forshaw 2010, 175). In alchemical practice, ‘speculative music’ potentially bridges the spheres of nature and theology, labour and oratory.

This presentation will summarise the historical and contemporary implications of a musical reading of Dee’s Monad. Commencing with a survey of John Dee’s own musical experience and readings, it will contextualize the philosophical connections between the Monad, alchemy, magic, music, geometry and astronomy.

The concepts of harmonic investigation that characterise Medieval and Renaissance musica speculativa will be applied to the forms and theorems of the Monad as a means of interpreting Dee’s ‘inexplicable, celestial harmonies’. In the spirit of Dee’s age, such an interpretation allows us also to reflect on the tensions between conservative Pythagorean musical mysticism and the more ‘strange and informal’ approaches of composers such as John Dowland: emphasizing  the space between tradition and innovation, wherein Dee’s own work often sits.

I will also explore Dee’s Monad into more contemporary areas, based on my use of the text and symbol in my own composition and music-making. The compositional and technological approaches behind a number of my own pieces will be outlined, for example: spectral transformation and the Monad’s proportions in The Great Chord (2012); the relationship between geomancy and the Monad in Horizon of Eternity (2006); the Monad as a graphical sequencer in Hieroglyphic Pathwork (2016); and the use of alchemical cabala in the work of Dee and Pantheus in Osiro Ngatso Nutu Marthek Dei (2016). Many of these works use the aesthetic of drone to provide sonifications of alchemical and Monadic concepts, to create contemplative spaces in which to consider the relationship between alchemy, music and the soul.

References
Forshaw, Peter. 2010. ‘Oratorium-Auditorium-Laboratorium: Early Modern Improvisations on Cabala, Music, and Alchemy’ in Aries, vol. 20.2, pp. 169-195.

Josten, C.H. ‘John Dee’s Monas Hireoglyphica’ in Ambix, vol. 12, pp.84-221.

A detailed study of John Dee's late sixteenth-century claim that King Arthur conquered the far northern world and North America. Although sometimes treated as Dee's own invention, the concept of Arthur as a conqueror of the Arctic and even parts of North America clearly antedates Dee. One witness to it is the Gestae Arthuri, which was seen and summarized by Jacob Cnoyen, who probably wrote in the fourteenth century. This medieval document apparently described Arthur's attempts to conquer the far north, including an expedition launched against the North Pole itself. Another witness is the Leges Anglorum Londoniis Collectae, which dates from the start of the thirteenth century and provides a list of Arthur's northern conquests, including Greenland, Vinland and the North Pole. On the basis of these and other documents, it would appear that the concept of Arthur as an Arctic conqueror can be traced at least to the later twelfth century, if not before.  (Heroic Age, 15, October 2012)

"Abstract:

Heavily influenced by the earlier Neoplatonic and Hermetic works of Pico della Mirandola, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Marsilio Ficinio, John Dee constructed a practical form of angelic magic which allegedly allowed him to use spirits in order to spy for Elizabeth I and catalogue a host of “angels” using his infamous scryer, Edward Kelly. The appearance of one spirit, in particular, would recur throughout their occult experiments: Madimi, who would age throughout the process of scrying, and though she first appeared as a young girl, she later began to appear as a young woman.

Simon Forman—another Elizabethan astrologer-physician—would often employ herbs or talismans which connected to the supralunar spheres and planet-daemones using the hermetic properties of sympathies. In constructing his talismans, he would appropriate the sympathetic metals, colors, and stones in connection with a planet, or sphere, which was chosen because its particular power over a certain part of human anatomy. Lauren Kassell would write that “Simon Forman is infamous for his astrology, notorious for his magic and legendary for his sexual exploits”, and he would later appear in the works of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe. Alongside Forman's detailed daily astrological calculations, he would mark in detail with which women he had sex, and at what times—creating a connection between his occult practices and his sexual practices.

As the spirit Madimi grew older during her conversations with Dee, she became increasingly sexualized, until Dee became to question the legitimacy of his 'angelic' experiments. If John Dee had, in fact, been receiving advice from demons rather than angels, he would have been soliciting help using black magic, a practice all semi-respectable magicians were eager to avoid. Their magical practices become increasingly questionable when Kelly informs Dee that the “angels” have requested that the two men share everything between them, even their wives.

The connection between magic and sexuality as practised in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries becomes a concern for historians trying to construct a coherent philosophy surrounding early modern occult cosmologies and intentions. When magicians, who previously followed in the near gnostic and ascetic traditions of preceding occult philosophers, begin to slip into magic mixed with sex-rituals their status as natural, or divine, magician becomes questionable."

Marsilio Ficino's De Vita libri tres (1489) has been an important influence on the history of magic in the Christian West, both for its transmission of ancient and medieval astral magic and for his reflections on licit and illicit forms of practice and how this magic worked. This article introduces his ideas about "subtle" matter (Spiritus) and considerations concerning suitable material for the fashioning of magical amulets and talismans, attuned to the influences of the planets and stars. It then moves on to discuss the impact of these ideas on subsequent generations of magical practitioners. These include Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, author of the sixteenth century's encyclopedia of magic, De Occulta Philosophia (1533), whose influence can be see in the designs of talismans in the British Museum, and his contemporary, the revolutionary alchemist and idiosyncratic magus, Philippus Theophrastus Paracelsus, who provides instructions for the creation of magic mirrors and talismans in his Archidoxis magicae (1570). The chapter concludes with a brief look at the work of someone extremely familiar with Agrippa and Paracelsus's works, the theosophical alchemist, Christian Cabalist and hyperphysical magus, Heinrich Khunrath, whose magical mirrors, concrete examples of engravings from his Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (1595), can still be found in the British Library.

Extract from Urszula Szulakowska, The Alchemy of Light: Geometry and Optics in Late Renaissance Alchemical Illustration (Leiden: Brill, 2000)
An examination of Dee's text "Monas Hieroglyphica" in the context of his interest in magic mirrors and cabbalism

Anyone who has had the pleasure to browse magic manuscripts in the British Library knows how rewarding the experience can be, particularly if the books belong to collections that have not been made accessible through adequate descriptive catalogues. A case in point are the magic manuscripts once in the possession of John Somers (1651-1716) and Sir Joseph Jekyll (ca. 1662-1738). With the exception of one item in the Additional collection, 23 of these important sources on medieval and early modern magical practices ended up in the library of the physician and antiquary Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), whose books and artifacts formed the founding collection of the British Museum in 1753. In order to draw attention to these manuscripts not as isolated books but as a corpus of sources on ritual magic, this paper identifies these books and discusses how they entered the collections of the British Library.