John Dee Totally Explained

Everything about John Dee totally explained

:For the American college basketball coach, see John Dee (basketball coach). For the DC Comics villain and Sandman character, see Dr. Destiny. John Dee (July 13, 1527 — 1608 or 1609) was a noted English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, occultist, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He also devoted much of his life to alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy.
Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his time, he'd lectured at the University of Paris when still in his early twenties. John was an ardent promoter of mathematics, a respected astronomer and a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery (he coined the term "British Empire").
At the same time, he immersed himself in magic and Hermetic philosophy, devoting the last third of his life almost exclusively to these pursuits.

Biography

Early life

Dee was born in Tower Ward, London, to a Welsh family, whose surname derived from the Welsh du ("black"). His father Roland was a mercer and minor courtier. Dee attended the Chelmsford Catholic School (now King Edward VI Grammar School (Chelmsford)), then – from 1543 to 1546 – St. John's College, Cambridge. His great abilities were recognized, and he was made a founding fellow of Trinity College. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled in Europe, studying at Leuven and Brussels and lecturing in Paris on Euclid. He studied with Gemma Frisius and became a close friend of the cartographer Gerardus Mercator, returning to England with an important collection of mathematical and astronomical instruments. In 1552, he met Gerolamo Cardano in London: during their acquaintance they investigated a perpetual motion machine as well as a gem purported to have magical properties.
   Dee was offered a readership in mathematics at Oxford in 1554, which he declined; he was occupied with writing and perhaps hoping for a better position at court. In 1555, Dee became a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, as his father had, through the company's system of patrimony.
   That same year, 1555, he was arrested and charged with "calculating" for having cast horoscopes of Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth; the charges were expanded to treason against Mary. Dee appeared in the Star Chamber and exonerated himself, but was turned over to the reactionary Catholic Bishop Bonner for religious examination. His strong and lifelong penchant for secrecy perhaps worsening matters, this entire episode was only the most dramatic in a series of attacks and slanders that would dog Dee through his life. Clearing his name yet again, he soon became a close associate of Bonner.
   When Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, Dee became her trusted advisor on astrological and scientific matters, choosing Elizabeth's coronation date himself. From the 1550s through the 1570s, he served as an advisor to England's voyages of discovery, providing technical assistance in navigation and ideological backing in the creation of a "British Empire", and was the first to use that term. Dee was also Elizabeth I's spy. He used as his signature on correspondences to Elizabeth the number "007" which would later be used by Ian Fleming in his James Bond novels. In 1577, Dee published General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation, a work that set out his vision of a maritime empire and asserted English territorial claims on the New World. Dee was acquainted with Humphrey Gilbert and was close to Sir Philip Sidney and his circle.
   He published a "Mathematical Preface" to Henry Billingsley's English translation of Euclid's Elements in 1570, arguing the central importance of mathematics and outlining mathematics' influence on the other arts and sciences. Intended for an audience outside the universities, it proved to be Dee's most widely influential and frequently reprinted work.

Later life

By the early 1580s, Dee was growing dissatisfied with his progress in learning the secrets of nature and with his own lack of influence and recognition. He began to turn towards the supernatural as a means to acquire knowledge. Specifically, he sought to contact angels through the use of a "scryer" or crystal-gazer, who would act as an intermediary between Dee and the angels. Dee's first attempts were not satisfactory, but, in 1582, he met Edward Kelley (then going under the name of Edward Talbot), who impressed him greatly with his abilities. Dee took Kelley into his service and began to devote all his energies to his supernatural pursuits. Kelley's "output" is remarkable for its sheer mass, its intricacy and its vividness.) Dee maintained that the angels laboriously dictated several books to him this way, some in a special angelic or Enochian language.
In 1583, Dee met the visiting Polish nobleman Albert Łaski, who invited Dee to accompany him on his return to Poland. Dee and Kelley began a nomadic life in Central Europe, but they continued their spiritual conferences, which Dee recorded meticulously.

Final years

Dee returned to Mortlake after six years to find his library ruined and many of his prized books and instruments stolen.
However, he couldn't exert much control over the Fellows, who despised or cheated him. By that time, Elizabeth was dead, and James I, unsympathetic to anything related to the supernatural, provided no help. Dee spent his final years in poverty at Mortlake, forced to sell off various of his possessions to support himself and his daughter, Katherine, who cared for him until the end.

Personal life

Dee was married twice and had eight children. Details of his first marriage are sketchy, but is likely to have been from 1565 to his wife's death in around 1576. From 1577 to 1601 Dee kept a meticulous diary. He believed that number was the basis of all things and the key to knowledge, that God's creation was an act of numbering. There is doubt, however, that an organized Rosicrucian movement existed during Dee's lifetime, and no evidence that he ever belonged to any secret fraternity.
   A re-evaluation of Dee's character and significance came in the 20th century, largely as a result of the work of the historian Frances Yates, who brought a new focus on the role of magic in the Renaissance and the development of modern science. As a result of this re-evaluation, Dee is now viewed as a serious scholar and appreciated as one of the most learned men of his day.
   His personal library at Mortlake was the largest in the country, and was considered one of the finest in Europe, perhaps second only to that of de Thou. As well as being an astrological, scientific and geographical advisor to Elizabeth and her court, he was an early advocate of the colonization of North America and a visionary of a British Empire stretching across the North Atlantic. It should be noted, though, that Dee's understanding of the role of mathematics is radically different from our contemporary view.
   Dee's promotion of mathematics outside the universities was an enduring practical achievement. His "Mathematical Preface" to Euclid was meant to promote the study and application of mathematics by those without a university education, and was very popular and influential among the "mecanicians": the new and growing class of technical craftsmen and artisans. Dee's preface included demonstrations of mathematical principles that readers could perform themselves. Wilfrid M. Voynich, who bought the manuscript in 1912, suggested that Dee may have owned the manuscript and sold it to Rudolph II. Dee's contacts with Rudolph were far less extensive than had previously been thought, however, and Dee's diaries show no evidence of the sale. Dee was, however, known to have possessed a copy of the Book of Soyga, another enciphered book.

Artifacts

The British Museum holds several items once owned by Dee and associated with the spiritual conferences:

Dee's Speculum or Mirror (an obsidian Aztec cult object in the shape of a hand-mirror, brought to Europe in the late 1520s), which was once owned by Horace Walpole.
The small wax seals used to support the legs of Dee's "table of practice" (the table at which the scrying was performed).
The large, elaborately-decorated wax "Seal of God", used to support the "shew-stone", the crystal ball used for scrying.
A gold amulet engraved with a representation of one of Kelley's visions.
A crystal globe, six centimetres in diameter. This item remained unnoticed for many years in the mineral collection; possibly the one owned by Dee, but the provenance of this object is less certain than that of the others.

In December 2004, both a shew stone (a stone used for scrying) formerly belonging to Dee and a mid-1600s explanation of its use written by Nicholas Culpeper were stolen from the Science Museum in London; they were recovered shortly afterwards.

Dee in fiction

Dee has become a popular figure in literary works, particularly fiction or fantasy set during his lifetime or which deals with magic or the occult. William Shakespeare may have modeled the character of Prospero in The Tempest on Dee; Woolley (see below), suggests that Edmund Spenser refers to Dee in The Faerie Queen (1596). Ben Jonson includes a scrying session, during which the spirits render up the name of Dee, in his play The Alchemist (1610).
   The Irish Gothic novelist Charles Maturin refers to Dee and Kelley in his novel Melmoth the Wanderer (1820). Dee and Kelley appear together in Manchester in Harrison Ainsworth's novel Guy Fawkes (1841), in which they exhume the body of Elizabeth Ortyn, and show Fawkes a vision of his coming tribulations. H. P. Lovecraft's short story "The Dunwich Horror" (1929) credits Dee with translating the Necronomicon into English; and John Crowley's sequence of novels Ægypt includes Dee, Edward Kelley, and Giordano Bruno as characters.
   In the Dorothy Dunnett novel The Ringed Castle, Dee is depicted as a mathematicians and astrologer who aids then-princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II) in her various intrigues.
   In Umberto Eco's book Foucault's Pendulum, Dee is presented as a central character in the "Plan" (the overall conspiracy that the book is concerned with) and in one of the main character (Belbo)'s fictions concerning it.
   A series of books by Armin Shimerman fictionalizes Dee's life by providing a basis in science fiction for his supposed magic, and he's a major character in Diana Redmond's time-travel children's book Joshua Cross & the Queen's Conjuror (2004).
   Dee is a major character in various fantasy novels set in Elizabethan England, such as Robin Jarvis's novel Deathscent. Lisa Goldstein's novel The Alchemist's Door features Dee as the main character, who works with Rabbi Judah Loew, a mystic who creates a golem to defend Prague's Jewish Quarter by preventing the door to the spirit world from opening and unleashing demons. Dee's assistant Edward Kelley appears in the novel as a villain.
   Dee also figures in Michael Moorcock's novel Gloriana set in the Elizabethan equivalent period of an alternate Earth's history.
   He appears as a character in various film, television, video game, and radio productions, such as Derek Jarman's Jubilee; in The Golden Age alongside Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth; as the father of the character Ella in the Sky One TV series, Hex; and in the Doctor Who audio drama A Storm of Angels. Dee also makes a small appearance as a hidden boss in the game "Wild Arms 3."
   Dr. John Dee is one of the main antagonist of Michael Scott's newest fantasy series

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