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Seeing the Word : John Dee and Renaissance Occultism Seeing the Word : John Dee and Renaissance Occultism Håkansson, Håkan 2001 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Håkansson, H. (2001). Seeing the Word : John Dee and Renaissance Occultism. Department of Cultural Sciences, Lund University. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 Seeing the Word To Susan and Åse of course Seeing the Word John Dee and Renaissance Occultism Håkan Håkansson Lunds Universitet Ugglan Minervaserien 2 Cover illustration: detail from John Dee’s genealogical roll (British Library, MS Cotton Charter XIV, article 1), showing his self-portrait, the “Hieroglyphic Monad”, and the motto supercaelestes roretis aquae, et terra fructum dabit suum — “let the waters above the heavens fall, and the earth will yield its fruit”. Repro- duced by permission of the British Library. Ugglan, Minervaserien utges av avdelningen för Idé- och lärdomshistoria vid Lunds universitet, Biskopsgatan 7, 223 62 Lund Redaktör för bokserien: professor Gunnar Broberg Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism © Håkan Håkansson, 2001 Grafisk form: Stefan Stenudd Tryck: Reprocentralen, Lunds Universitet, 2001 ISBN 91-974153-0-8 Contents Prologue “I come as sent by God.” 7 Introduction Understanding early modern occultism. Retrospection and reassess- ment 35 I. Symbolic exegesis, language, and history 73 The Word of God and the languages of man 84 The Word of God and the Book of Nature 96 John Dee: nature, language, and the Word of God 100 The wisdom of the ancients and the unity of knowledge 109 Roger Bacon and the universal grammar 119 The inner word and man’s quest for reformation 129 II. The Language of Symbols 139 The Neoplatonic tradition of hieroglyphics 139 Emblematics and the Book of Nature 147 The mimetic metaphor 157 Allegorical imagery and the wisdom of the ancients 162 Dee and the mind of the adept 166 The kabbalistic teachings 170 Christian kabbalah 174 Dee and kabbalah 180 The Pythagorean scheme of creation 184 Dee’s mathematical kabbalah 192 Scriptural exegesis 200 The power of mathematical symbolism 202 “Occult” intellection and Mens adepta 209 Alchemy and the transmutation of the human soul 223 Trithemius and magical theology 231 5 III. The Language of Magic 240 Magic and religion 243 Dee and medieval ritual magic 246 True faith and orthodox faith 255 Trithemius and ritual magic 259 Natural and celestial magic in medieval philosophy 268 Renaissance magic and Dee’s Propaedeumata aphoristica 274 Magic in Dee’s Monas hieroglyphica 289 Neoplatonic theurgy and Renaissance magic 301 The magical power of language 309 Dee, the medicina Dei, and the end of the world 318 Epilogue 332 Acknowledgements 338 References 340 Index 370 6 Prologue “I come as sent by God” Evening, May 28th, 1583. The philosopher John Dee sits in his cham- ber in Mortlake, deeply involved in a conversation with his assistant Edward Kelley. With trembling voice he fumes at the gossip and slander of the simple people, at the malicious whisperings about sor- cery and witchcraft that seem to be humming in every street corner and every bedchamber in London. “Suddenly”, he writes in his diary, “there seemed to come out of my Oratory a Spirituall creature, like a pretty girle of 7 or 9 yeares of age”. The creature, dressed in a red and green gown, “seemed to play up and down and seemed to go in and out of my bokes lying in heaps, and as she should ever go between them, the bokes seemed to give place sufficiently, dividing one heap from the other, while she passed between them”. While the little spiritual creature “went up and down with most lively gestures of a young girle, playing with her selfe”, Dee asked her who she was, but from one of the corners of the room a threatening voice raised a war- ning: “You will be beaten if you tell.” After some anxious glances towards the corner, the girl nonethe- less replied: “Give me leave to play in your house, my Mother told me she would come and dwell here ... you let me play a little, and I will tell you who I am.” Dee assured her that anybody who spoke truthfully had nothing to fear in his house, and she said: “I rejoyce in the name of Jesus, and I am a poor little Maiden, Madini, I am the last but one of my Mothers children, I have little Baby-children at home.” 7 She refused to tell them where her home was, however, since she was afraid of getting beaten. Instead, she took out a book and enthu- siastically displayed the handsome pictures of kings and celebrities from British history which it contained. After a while she begged them not to reveal her visit to anyone, whereupon she seemed to dissolve and disappear. The moment afterwards, Dee concludes, “We were earnestly called for to Supper by my folks”.1 Madini’s visit was not the first of Dee’s encounters with spiritual creatures. For three years his alchemical vessels had lain idle in his laboratory and his research in the mathematical sciences had been left untended, while he was pursuing his studies in natural philosophy by less orthodox means. He was talking to angels. In the decades before the spiritual conversations became his main preoccupation, Dee had made a name for himself as the foremost of British scholars. He had written extensively on such widely differing subjects as navigation technology, mechanics, geometry, logic, astrol- ogy, alchemy, history, heraldry and genealogy.2 He had become Queen Elizabeth’s confidant, treating Her Majesty’s toothache as proficiently as he calculated her horoscope. Visitors came flocking from all over Europe to his home a few miles from London to see his laboratories and his imposing library, and by correspondence and travels he kept in touch with scholars on the Continent, who at times sent him their works in the hope of a competent opinion.3 He was, to 1 Dee, A True & Faithful Relation, pp. 1-2. This printed edition of Dee’s spiritual conferences, recording sessions performed between 1583 and 1607, was published by Meric Casaubon in 1659. Spelling and punctuation differs considerably from the original manuscript (British Library, MS Cotton Appendix XLVI) and in some occasional places passages have been omitted. However, since the printed text has been published in a number of facsimile editions and is thus easily accessible, I will primarily make use of this edition. 2 Dee presents a list of 49 published and unpublished works in A Letter, containing a most briefe discourse Apologeticall, pp. 73-77, reprinted in A True & Faithful Relation, sigs. K1r-K3r. See also The Compendious Rehersall, pp. 24-27. A detailed bibliography of the texts still extant can be found in Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy, pp. 302-309. 3 For example, Tycho Brahe sent his De mundi aetherei recentioribus phaenomenis to “the most noble and illustrious John Dee” in 1590, long after the rumour of his angelic conversations had reached the European courts and cities; see French, John Dee, p. 5n. 8 put it short, a man of considerable reputation — a reputation he took a certain pride in himself: “in zeale to the best lerning and knowl- edge”, he confidently stated in a letter to Lord Burghley, “I know most assuredly that this land never bred any man, whose account therein can evidently be proved greater than myne”.4 As a boy of fifteen he was registered at St. John’s College at Cambridge University, and later he claimed that he had been so vehemently bent to studie, that for those yeares I did inviolably keepe this in order; only to sleepe four houres every night; to allow to meate and drink (and some refresh- ing after) two houres every day; and of the other eighteen houres all (except the tyme of going to and being at divine service) was spent in my studies and learning.5 Despite his insatiable thirst for scholarly studies, however, he allowed himself the time to construct a mechanical scarab for the performance of Aristophanes’ drama Peace, in which an actor was flown up to Jupiter’s palace — “whereat was great wondring, and many vain reportes spread abroad of the meanes how that was ef- fected”.6 In his twenties he travelled to Antwerp and Louvain, where he made the acquaintance of famous scientists such as Gerard Merca- tor, Gemma Frisius and Antonio Gogava. Taking an increasing inter- est in astrology and applied mathematics, he also “began to make observations (very many to the houre and minute) of the heavenly influences and operations actuall in this elementall portion of the world”.7 From Louvain, he later claimed, “did the favourable fame of my skill in good literature so spread” that scholars from Spain, Italy and Denmark came to visit him, and when he as a precocious scholar of twenty-three arrived in Paris, he was allowed to “read freely and publiquely Euclide’s Elements Geometricall” — “a thing”, he empha- sized, “never done publiquely in any University in Christendome”: My auditory in Rhemes Colledge was so great, and the most part elder than my selfe, that the mathematical schooles could not hold them; for many were faine, without 4 Dee, “Letter to Lord Burghley, 3 October 1574”, p.
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