Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism

374 Pages·2016·7.71 MB·English

Seeing the Word : John Dee and Renaissance Occultism
Håkansson, Håkan
2001
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Citation for published version (APA):
Håkansson, H. (2001). Seeing the Word : John Dee and Renaissance Occultism. [Doctoral Thesis (monograph),
Division of History of Ideas and Sciences]. Department of Cultural Sciences, Lund University.
Total number of authors:
1
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LUND UNIVERSITY
PO Box 117
221 00 Lund
[phone]
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
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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. 35.
5 Dee, The Compendious Rehersall, p. 5.
6 Dee, The Compendious Rehersall, pp. 5-6.
7 Dee, The Compendious Rehersall, p. 5.
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