Artes Mathematicall: The Conjurer John Dee

But watch, and your eyes shall be fully opened. One thing, which is the ground and element of thy desire, is already profited. And out of seven thou hast been instructed of the lesser pot most perfectly. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Seger. And from the beginning there you may think that we were, I don't know, performing a ritual of some kind and trying to summon an angel, And you would be half right. That's right. That is uh.

That is a quote from the writings of the legendary, the mysterious, the influential Dr John d the topic of both episodes this week. Uh, and he is a fascinating character and elizabethan mathematician, uh conjurer, possibly a spy cryptographer. The list goes on first and foremost a mathematician, but it gets it gets a lot more complicated than that, is you try and piece together this man, the world

he lived in, and what he really believed in. D Is is one of those characters that we've We've been talking about doing an episode on him for a while now, and when we dove into the research, we we really realized, Okay, this needs to be two episodes. And the way that we've decided to split these episodes categorically is this first episode is going to be more grounded in the sexy, occult magical stuff, and the second episode is going to

be grounded in his scientific endeavors and his state craft. Um. There's so much about him that I learned doing this, and there's so many different interpretations too. He's just this fascinating individual. Um. If you're unfamiliar with him, I guess the best way to describe him is that he was one of the leading intellectuals of his time. It may not sound like it given some of the things we're gonna say in these episodes, but he had magical interests.

But despite that, he brought developments to England and cartography, navigation, mathematics, astronomy and cryptography, and his reputation in alchemy and astrology totally influenced the court of Queen Elizabeth the first. He was no doubt influential in that respect. Yeah, he He

had a rapport with with Queen Elizabeth. Uh. Some historians go as far as to say that they were friends, and you do get the idea that there may have been as much of a friendship as was possible between the Queen of England and uh, you know, essentially a common born intellectual who dabbled in magic. Right yeah, um, we'll say this later, but he did think of himself as her Merlin, which is really fascinating and comes into play. So the I said that we're going to split these

episodes up. But one thing that you have to keep in mind is that the magic and the science overlap a lot too. Um, and so even in things like when he's advising them on national matters, on expanding the English Empire, he's still thinking in magical terms, like he's Merlin and she's King Arthur. Right, He's he's a guy who, like I said, it's it's essential to keep the mathematics

and he in mind. But it's not like he's a guy who, all right, I'm gonna do my job here, which is science or mathematics, and then in my free time I'm going to do a little sorcery and in and then also I have this advising gig with the Queen. He saw it all connected. He saw it as part

of a single tapestry of cosmos. And so there's a note I just want to provide here before we really dive in deep, which is I was reading an article in History Today that came out earlier this year by a woman named Katie Burkewood, and she says, keep in mind that the main sources for the story of Dee's life are all his own. Um so mainly what we're looking at. What we didn't look at this, We looked at people's interpretation of those primary sources, but we da

that's true. But mainly his diaries, which cover the period from fifteen seventy seven to sixteen o seven, so about from his age of fifty until he died, those were a big source of his uh I guess life history. And this also coincides with the period of time where he was up to his most fantastic endeavors, so keep

that in mind. His early years were documented in his own autobiographical account, which was written in fifteen ninety four, and what he was trying to do is explain his past to the crown, basically to Queen Elizabeth, because he was trying to secure a royal position or an appointment that would secure him a regular income. Uh And another source is the books that were recovered from his stolen collection.

So we're gonna talk probably a lot throughout the course of these episodes about he had this infamously huge library and it was ransacked at one point, and some of those books have been recovered, uh and he wrote extensive annotations in their margins, so some uh D scholars, I guess, go and find these copies and read those annotations to try to learn more about him. Apparently much of that library now resides with the Royal College of Physicians, I

think in England. Yeah, so it's it's kind of difficult to tell truth from fiction in some of these cases. And Robert and I did our best when we read something that sounded really strange to corroborate it with multiple sources, and we we did find that. But then again, like those sources were all mainly coming from D's own writings, that's right there. There of course a number of wonderful books out there on D and his work, some books

with with with different focuses than others. Uh. One book that I kept looking at was the one by Benjamin Wooley. Oh yeah, The Queen's Conjure. Uh. Excellent book, very readable. I recommend that to anybody. But yeah, this is a guy that is really, in many ways a near unbelievable character, truly stranger than fiction. Like if if Alan Moore wrote him into a story, you chalk it up to, oh, well, that's just Alan Moore's wondrous imagination and use of fictional

and historic and pop culture hybridization. The same if he had appeared in an umberto Echo book, you might be tempted to think, oh, this is a fantastic creation, this Dr D. But but no, he this was a real, real man. He lived, he wrote, and I'm not sure there has been anyone quite like him since we we see parallels and some of the figures that we've covered on the show and we'll and and are planning to cover such as John C. Lily or Jack Parsons, but

D kind of stands alone. Yeah, And it's funny that you mentioned Alan Moore because one of the sources that I went to was a History Channel special that aired in two thousand and two and it was narrated by Brian Cox all about John D's life, and Alan Moore is one of the go to experts that they summon.

You know, they cut to him every once in a while, and you hear that out in more voice, he's he really knows his stuff about d um I imagine because Alan Moore is really into sort of like the history of English magic and stuff like that outside of his own fiction. But um, yeah, he the first first of all, I recommend, like, if you're really into John D, go check out this this video. I watched it on YouTube, and uh, some of it's hilarious and some of it's

really illuminating. But there's um they like do that thing that the History Channel used to do where they like re enact scenes of a person's life with actors and they have like kind of makeshift, low budget like sets and stuff, so like shadowy scenes of somebody dressed as John D shuffling papers around sort of yeah, that thing, or like him looking into a crystal ball, or him

just walking across the field. Yeah. So I think probably the best way for us to to really first introduce you to John D is let's just do a broad stroke overview of his life. You know, we've given you sort of the two sentence summary of who John D was, but we'll start with his life and then we'll really dive in deep into the magic stuff. Yeah, for with a guy like this, I feel like this is the best approach. We'll give you the broad strokes and then we'll go back in and discuss the areas that we

we we have time to discuss in these episodes. Yeah. Yeah, And I just want to say to like, keep in mind that there are people whose like entire career is writing about this guy. So what we cover in like two too and a half hours and podcasts, maybe you may be out there, you may know some stuff about D and be like, well, why didn't you you cover that. There's only so much we could do here, so we really tried to condense it down to fit the show. All Right, Well, here we go, let's kick it off

with the July. John d is born in London, England. Yeah, and my first question is who ray this is a guy like John D. Like, how does he how does he end up like this? So his father, Roland, was a merchant of fabrics and textiles and he worked for King Henry the Eighth. Uh. In fifteen fifty three, his father was actually indicted and imprisoned in the Tower of London, presumably because he had ties to Protestant reformists and sympathizers

of the late King Edward. So there's a lot of This is a theme that goes on throughout D's life, is the political struggles back and forth between the Catholic and Protestant Church. Yeah, that's definitely going on in the background the whole time. Now fifty two, John D enters St. John's College at Cambridge. Yeah, and so from what I read at the time, the curriculum for such a college included something called the trivium, which is grammar, rhetoric and logic.

And once you master those things you get your what would be your your bachelor's basically, uh. And then the quadrivium is what you study for your masters, and that's astronomy geography, music, and mathematics. Now, okay, again this is self reported from his own thing that he wrote to the Queen later in life. But D says that while he was there he only slept four hours a night,

so all he could do is study. So on one hand he was essentially applying for a position in this but also, as as as we discussed more about John D, I don't really doubt this for a second. He seems like the kind of guy who who may have only slept four hours a night, could constantly consume information. So in fifty five he really he receives that bachelor's degree

in Arts and readership. Fifty seven he takes his first scientific learning excursion to the Low Countries of continental Europe, and this becomes important later on because he spends an increasingly increasing amount of times there on various excursions. Eight he gets his master's degree from Cambridge studying mathematics and navigation, and then fifteen forty eight to fifteen fifty one his second learning excursion to the Low Countries and Uh in particular.

On this trip he studied under mathematician cartographers Pezro Nonez Gema for Silius Abraham Ortelius and gerardis Mercator, as well as through his own studies in Paris and elsewhere. Yeah, and these the second set of travels, these benefited England. What he would do is he'd share his findings from these travels with Queen Elizabeth's associate. So for here's an example, in fifteen sixty two he discovered the works of Trithemius,

and we're going to talk about this later. He introduced the Court and subsequently Elizabeth to the study of modern cryptography through this, ultimately changing I guess war games, right with the way that they used cryptography. Yeah, yeah, well, we'll definitely get into that in this into the second episode. But this was a time when when coded messages were where really important. There was a mayor a matter of

life and life and death. Now, as you mentioned, at this time, he is he's he seems to have his sight set on official, on an official position with the Crown, and in doing so, he turned down a mathematical professorship at the University of Paris, and he turned down a similar position at the University of Oxford that was in fifty one and fifty four, and then he returned to England.

He went to Court and there he offered mathematical science instruction to courtiers, to navigators, just generally trying to make himself useful to the court. He served as a consultant and an astrologer to, among others, Queen Mary the first. Yeah. So before he worked for Mary's court, he had a patron who was the Duke of Northumberland, and this guy tried to place his own daughter in law on the throne before Mary was placed there. He was charged with

treason and executed. And this is one of the first of many times indeed's life where he had less influence because he had sort of like followed the wrong person, and he has these periods of like waxing and waning influence over the English monarchy. Yeah, getting involved in the machinations of of the court. Here, um, who's in and who's out, Which which stars rising, which one's falling. So then in fifteen fifty five, this is when he's jailed on the charge of being a conjuror. He was soon

released thereafter. But let's let's pause for a second and try to figure this out. So the thinking here is that Queen Mary's examiners were the ones who jailed him, possibly with charges of conspiring with her sister Elizabeth, who was arrival at the time, and he was allegedly casting horoscopes for Queen Mary and her family without their permission, and because the predictions were bad for Mary, it was

considered to be practicing witchcraft against the crown. The story goes like this that while Elizabeth was under house arrest, she asked d to perform her and Mary's horror scope, and so he did, and it predicted that Elizabeth would have a long reign and that Mary would die, which you know kind of happened, uh, And this is what landed him in jail. Now after this, after he gets out of jail, he's placed under the charge of Edmund Bonner,

who is the Bishop of London. And in one of these writings he actually refers to Bonner as his quote singular friend, and there's some dispute about like are they actually friends or is this like his sarcastic term for this guy who's like kind of his jailer um. But after this point, all of these written works included sections

defending his reputation from slander. So he was well aware that his mixture of astrology and magic and conjuring with science and mathematics and statesmanship was under scrutiny, and not for the last time. So in eight he published an afrotistic Introduction which presented his his own views on natural philosophy, forspy and astrology and h then fifteen fifty eight the same year, this is also when the rule of Queen

Elizabeth the First begins. Yeah, and so the rumor here again this is from d Zone writings, is that when Elizabeth took power, she asked d to choose her coronation date based on astrology. Now who knows. I mean, yes, there's evidence that he was jailed performing horoscopes for her previously, so why wouldn't she. But then you know he's the one claiming this stuff, and we know that later on in life he's just constantly trying to gain favor with the court by it sort of, but he's he's bolstering

his resume. So yeah, he becomes the scientific and medical advisor to the Queen and uh were in the mid fifteen sixties, he establishes himself at more Lake, near London, where he builds a laboratory, the largest private library in England, more than four thousand books and manuscripts, and he ut, you know, well, we'll describe some more of the settings here,

but it sounds like a fabulous place. And he would he would invite other scholars to come in and and use his books if they needed to look something up. And of course he was constantly in communication with other people, Like it was I was reading just yesterday about how he had these correspondence, uh, series of correspondence with with Chico Brahi, the real Yeah, the famed astronomer. Yeah, famously lost his nose in a sword fight. Fabulous character of

the time. Yeah, we should totally do it, Tycho Brahe episode. Um. Yeah. So the other thing about this to note, just for context, about the library, we say four thousand books, and some of you are like, yeah, I got four thousand books in my house, right. Well, here's context. He had two thousand, six hundred and seventy manuscripts in that collection. Cambridge University at the time only had four hundred and fifty one manuscripts and Oxford University only had three hundred and seventy nine.

So this was considered a massive library at the time. Like, if you're thinking about this, like, uh, going back to the Grimoire episode that you and I did a couple of years ago, right, Like, like, these are not just like pulp books. They're not like soft covers, right, Like some of these are written on parchment or their palap sests. Right, So I mean he's got like a serious collection here

in The books are unique too. Yeah. In many cases, these would be books where you're wanting to read them, you might ask arounding and you would find out, oh, well, Dr D has a copy of that. You should go ask him. Maybe you'll get to look at it. Here's another interesting thing I wanted to point out as well. There's no evidence that he ever earned a doctoral degree, but he was always referred to as Dr D. Kind

of interesting. Now. In a fifteen sixty four he published the Hieroglyphic Monad, in which he offered a single mathematical magical symbol as the key to unlocking, uh, the the unity of nature. Yeah, and this, I mean, I guess we'll maybe like post this on the landing page or something thing we we actually shared or you shared it on Facebook yesterday, kind of teasing the audience. Hey, this

is what we're working on. One person got it and they referred to him as the d um but it kind of looks like, how do you pronounce that that German industrial band ein Stretton's nine streas into a new Boton. Yeah, it does. In fact, I had to to look up a New Boton's logo just to make sure that they weren't too similar to them. Like, I never thought about this before, but you know, they're two distinct symbols, but they are reminiscent of one another. Yeah, very much so.

For some reason, I also find it looks like it kind of looks like it could be a character from a SpongeBob cartoon. I don't know. It does have like an anthropologic quality to it, of like a head with arms and legs and then like devil's horns. Yeah, or it makes me think of the the aliens from Slaughterhouse Five for some reason, the ones. It was like an eye on a hand. I can't remember the name of him, but at any rate, this was his there's his lands

and Slaughterhouse five. Yeah, there's a there's an alien zoo

for humans. I forgot all about that, but okay, I just think about the horrors of world Mongola do so in fifteen seventy he created the first English translation of Euclid's Elements and added an influential preface that offered a powerful manifesto en quote the dignity and usefulness of the mathematical sciences, and he seems to certainly have highly regarded mathematics is the key to understanding the natural world, but also believed in the value of the occult to unlock

the deeper mysteries of the universe. And again, his ideas of the occult and mathematics are kind of intertwined. This is definitely going to be a theme that we returned to over and over again in these episodes. Mathematics is like the through line for him, whether or not he's trying to talk to angels or if he's just trying

to plot out maps for people to discover the Northwest Passage. Yeah, I feel like his mind was inherently mathematic if he if he had lived in our age, I feel like he would under probably be a hacker, right or a high level program in addition to to whatever else he was into. The History special compared him to Stephen Hawking, and I thought that was an interesting comparison. Although I'm

still I'm still trying to. I don't know if there's anybody alive that that really has these two things together.

You're right, Lily and Jack Parsons are similar. But I'm really trying to rack my brain for somebody who's like a really influential intellectual but also dabbles in the occult right, that's still very much an outsider in his interest and speaking of being an outsider in his interest three three through fifteen eighty nine, in order to unlock the deeper mysteries of the universe, de sought communication with angelic entities

with the aid of convicted counterfeitter towards turned occult sensation Edward Kelly, who's a very complex character and of himself into Kelly. Uh So, so these two end up running around conducting seances in England, Poland and Bohemia and have this rather volatile partnership. So it's like something out of a reality TV show, like oh, you know how like every time on the show, on this show, when when we do some of these historical characters are like, oh,

this would make a great amc H show. The Dr D Edward Kelly's show would be amazing because it would be like them constantly like conniving behind one another's backs, and then sitting in a room looking into a crystal ball, talking to angels, and then like trying to figure out

how to sleep with one another's wives. Yeah, this is another situation where d described Kelly as a friend and it makes me wonder, like what it makes me question his, uh, his criteria for friendship because he talks about Kelly who was arguably a scoundrel and may have been conning him half the time at least. And then there's Queen Elizabeth, who you know, there's no way they were really friends. They were you know, like I say, as much of

a friendship. So you could have with the Queen of England, Uh, that bishop I mentioned earlier. Yeah, and then his his his the warden of his prison essentially at the time. So I don't know, I don't know if he ever really got friendship exactly, but it's difficult in life. So Kelly and him, they they end up going to essentially Poland and then Bohemia, conducting their seances all along the way, and then they come back. Yeah, that kind of falls

comes back, their their relationship falls apart. He returns to England nine to try and try and put things back together. He finds his home vandalized, his library has been ransacked. Uh, and he's also come back to in England that is less tolerant of his ideas, increasingly less tolerant. And then the Bubonic plague strikes and kills pretty much everybody in his family, including his wife and five of his eight children. So he's utterly devastated. He's lost his library, he's lost

his family. He doesn't have as much influence and says he used to. So in fift his friends raised money for him and interceded on his behalf with Queen Elizabeth, you know, just trying to land him in the right place, right. So she appoints him warden of Manchester College. And and this is from what I was reading, this is not an ideal place for him to wind up. He's not, you know, he's constantly being undermined minded by other individuals there. He doesn't have a lot of clout, but a good

way to shuffle him off and get him. So he doesn't really have any influence over her court, but he still feels, you know, he's cashing a paycheck. And in sixteen o three, Queen Elizabeth dies and James the First takes to the throne and provides no support for D. Yeah. So so for some context, James the First was fervently against witchcraft and he personally oversaw the torture of women who were accused of it. So he's not going to be particularly fond of John D and his angels crying

and astrology and alca me. And then in December of eight D dies following what is described as years of poverty and isolation. However, it so even for someone like D, it doesn't seem like poverty and isolation for him is you know, quite the bottom of the barrel poverty and isolation like this. A lot of this is him being forced to sell off a lot of his prize possessions, that sort of thing. Maybe not the the proudest period of his of his life. But I didn't read anything

to indicate that he was on the streets. Yeah, so, I mean, like to get an indication. I was looking at pictures of um, what Mortlake looked like his estate and where it is now today. I think there's like apartments right along the River Thames, and uh it's you know, by all accounts like it was a huge house. Uh. He still had a lot of things. I don't think he was going hungry. I just don't think he was wealthy or had influence over the aristocracy the way he

might ride in the past. Um, now here's this is really interesting. There's also evident that he didn't actually die in December, uh, and that he three months later was when he died in the following March in the London home of an acquaintance. So get ready out there conspiracy things, because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who are like, oh, John D found the Philosopher's Stone and his immortal and uh is still with us today or something, or these are fake accounts of his death,

you know, stuff like that. But the amazing thing about D is it's all everything is already unbelievable enough with how to even going into the conjecture of conspiracy theory. Uh, though there's a lot of fun to be had there as well. Um. Hey, on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we are going to break into the spirituality of John D and ultimately into his occult practices. Hi. I'm Holly Fry, and I'm Tracy V. Wilson and We're the co host of

stuff you missed in history class. We are a history podcast that tries to look at the things that maybe we're overlooked in your street classes, maybe not covered in as much detail, or frankly, maybe covered in a way that was not accurate. New episodes come out every Monday and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else that podcasts can be listened to. So it's important to remember that that D was born into an age and

a place of Christendom. So yes, everyone still murdered each other every year over their beliefs, and much of this entailed conflicts of Protestants versus Catholics, the Church versus heretics, and so forth. Uh, you really had to go quite rustic or quite esoteric in order to find alternative modes of belief that you could, you know, actually embrace all of the stranger ideas that D entangled himself with astrology,

angelic communication, magic, etcetera. These were all still connected to the culture of Christianity into the essentially like the mythos of Christianity, I guess you'd say. And there's a lot of evidence to suggest that D was a devoted Christian his entire life, though certainly in a challenging time for the faithful, which I guess it always is, uh, and he was he was not afraid to explore ideas and

writings that others deemed dangerous to the faithful. And it's also worth noting here that like a guy like d who you know, you can say was a weird guy, he had a he had a unique brain. He had a unique view of everything, this ability to see magic and mathematics and everything else wrapped up into one. So he could, you know, cling to a Christian faith. But his view of the Christian faith was was and it was inherently different I think from from most people's at

the time. Yeah, I think it was different. But at the same the way I like to think of it is that he was into Christian mysticism right, and that like he he he was a believer. He was trying to do the right thing. I think he was trying to ride the line between Protestantism in Catholicism so that he basically could stay alive. Um, but that the stuff that he believed was the mystical parts that were sort of like some people were like, oh yeah, that that

that exists. I don't know if I subscribed to that or not. And others were like, oh, yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, talking to angels sure, uh, looking into crystal balls, Yeah, definitely astrology. Okay, you know, Um in the same way, I don't know, I'm like trying to think of a modern day example, Like, I guess Cabala keeps coming to mind, and that's not even modern day. I mean Cabrala was around at the time of D was alive. Um, so maybe that's an example. And he

mentioned astrology. D kept a private diary where he mentioned a lot of when he now comes from his own writings, but this was a time before diaries and calendars of the modern sort. So D would would plot out the positions of the planets in reference to the recorded details of his daily life, likely in order to identify links

between his personal life and celestial events. So it's an uncharacteristically intimate account of it, Liz BeFAN life, much of it lost, however, but still there's a there's a lot there. It's kind of been written in shorthand, and it will include things like you know, his personal finances, jobs he picked up. Um, I actually have an example here from his diary October seven, My anger with Edward my coke because of his disorder. October eight Mr Richard Western lent

me ten pounds for a year. October nine, I dined with Sir Walter Rawleigh at Durham House. October eleven to Edwards part of wagons. Mr Banks lent me upon loan till after Christmas five pounds. Mr Emery sent me three pounds by my servant Richard walka dine. So it's that sort of thing. So it's just like kind of acquiring like a couple of pounds here, a couple of pounds there for his services presumably. I mean, I doubt that

they're just giving it to him as donations. Maybe he read their horoscope or maybe he I don't know, I wrote a map for them or something. Yeah, it's kind of like an it's kind of like he kept an astrologically aligned chart of his finances to a certain extent in these and he was doing a lot of freelance activities like to to Sup because he's a guy who's spent a lot of money on books and UH and his uh, his his interests, and to support that he

would do freelance horoscopes, you have freelance dream interpretations. And I was even reading that he occasionally did some freelance forensics work. Account of him apparently of him weighing in on a robbery, uh and deciding who was who was guilty. It's kind of it's kind of faint going from his notes, but that seems to be the case. So d believed in a natural magic. When we start talking about his use of magic and his belief in magic and his magic,

that's tied up with mathematics. He saw magic as the human ability to tap into the forces that God unleashed when he created the cosmos, and that set things in motion. So that's important, not not the power of God, but the powers that God unleashed. Yeah, he saw natural magic as actually a legitimate study of science, and in his own books he listed the magical arts as being a derivative subject of mathematics. Keep in mind that his thought

process wasn't unusual at the time. Many thought science and magic were different facets to just understand understand what was going on in the mind of God. Yeah, and it's interesting too to look at his thoughts on magic that he's essentially talking about technology here, granted with a lot of occult bells and whistles, but he's talking about figuring out how these forces in the universe work and figuring

out how to manipulate those forces. You know, it's a really interesting connection to to the magic as technology thing for him. When he was in college, he created special effects for a production of Aristophanes packs and he was branded Sorcerer because of it. He apparently built a giant mechanical flying scare of I don't know if it actually flew, but it was. It was like an automaton, and it was apparently so realistic to the people who were watching it that they they were like, oh, he must have

used magic to do this, but it was just engineering. Yeah, this was a crazy moment in his life, and his life was just full of these where yeah, he just did FX for a play and the FX were so good that people said, well, that was pretty amazing. This guy is probably somehow involved with demonic forces, was the

only excuse. And I was reading like people weren't really sure exactly how he pulled it off, too, because he would have had limited resources with the stage at that time, so it's not we're not even exactly sure what he did, how he achieved the effect, but but he certainly what was I think it was pretty clear that he was

using practical effects and not not actual sourcery here. Um. Another thing that we should note here too, especially before we really get into his angelic communicate Shan, is that the idea of an angelic language, which is referred to as a Nochian, is said to be the mathematics behind how creation was was made. So you know, keep in mind, like as we're going through all of this, he's thinking of his interrogations of angels as being scientific in nature

and that he's trying to understand how the world works. Yes. Yeah, so in a sense, the Anochian language and mathematics are like one is the secular and one is the spiritual version of the same idea that there's this underlying word, there's this underlying system that we can understand, tap into and therefore gain insight into how the universe works. Yeah. Alright,

so here's the juicy stuff, the angelic communication. So he really wanted to communicate with angels to help him understand natural knowledge, and the way he did this was by attempting to conjure spirits using a crystal and this was and at the time. Yeah, and it's I want to add real quick for anyone out there is not familiar with with Christianity and angels and all that, because I found myself trying to explain angels to my son the other that's gonna about it, about what angels were, uh,

And I didn't tell him all of this. But in the in the Christian tradition, the angels, of course, the the servants of God. They are powerful and at times very terrifying beings that do everything from deliver messages to you know, destroy whole cities and turn people into pillars

of salt, that sort of thing. I I wrote a video that we shot here about different types of angels throughout Christian mysticism, and there's like, you know, there's the thrones and the dominions and they're all there's like nine different categories. I think cherubs yeah, uh and yeah, I mean they're utterly alien and terrifying when you think about

them from the context of these time. Yeah. Um, So we're not the fluffy cherubs of the modern version of the the cherubs or Renaissance chairub that you see on a coffee mug or something. Yeah. No, not at all, not at all. Some of them were like wheels of burning fire with eyeballs in the middle and stuff. I mean,

like truly horrifying kind of imagery. Yeah. Fantasy illustrator Michael Caluda, great, Yeah, he did a number of angel illustrations for a short lived card game called Harresy Kingdom Come Back in the nineties, and he did a fabulous dut job invoking this. I feel like that this this potent, intimidating alien but also kind of but also holly feeling vision of of an

angelic entity. So I always connected those when I try and think about these these angelic beings as we encounter in uh in Christian tradition, and I imagine as D was performing these seances that we're about to talk about, although he didn't really see anything himself, that's what he was imagining was in the room with him. So why didn't he see anything himself? Well, D himself couldn't see spirits, so he relied on psychics enter Edward Kelly. So, Edward Kelly,

uh is this twenty six year old cunning man. You may have heard us talk about cunning men before on the show. I was referring to them in an episode of UM when we were talking about Warren Ellis's book Cunning Plans, because cunning men are sort of I guess the best way to explain it real quickly is just like an English shamanic tradition maybe. Um. And but he

was also, you know, a criminal and a counterfeitter. He had his ears cropped from his head before he met D. So think about that when you're thinking about this guy, at least one of them. And he apparently always wore a cowl to cover up the garage, and that was for counterfeiting coins. Um. Okay, So D and Kelly they meet for the first time in fIF two. Yeah, and this, this whole episode had there There's a lot more detail, but I just try to go through the basics here.

So Kelly was calling himself Talbot at the time, which was one of his his aliases. And uh, and it's I think it's certainly fitting that even his introduction to D was was clothed in deception. So he was apparently he was apparently a pretty charismatic character. As we've talked about. He had difficulty kneeling, he walked with the staff and he's a young dude, but but he also had had at least one ear cropped uh for for for engaging in counterfeiting. He also may have served as a crooked

notary in London at one port. At one point reputed to have dabbled in necromancy. He arrived at D's to lie low after allegedly cheating a lady out of some jewels. But he seems to have to have talked his way out of trouble with with the individuals who were pursuing him over this, and in his private diary, D noted that quote I have confirmed that Talbot was was a fraud. And Kelly himself came along later at some point and scribbled indeed's diary a horrible and sat under his life,

which which I think says a lot about this friendship. UM. And so that, yeah, their friendship seems to have been rather complicated. Uh D seems to have considered him a friend, and certainly it would go on to spend a great deal of time with him in the years they had, but it's also a quarrelsome intense relationship. And to what extent was Kelly using d To what extent did D c himself is using Kelly if he saw he saw perhaps Kelly as a as an in the way of

of of better communicating with this spiritual realm um. So it's it's it's a complex relationship again. So D's diary recounts a series of conversations with angels that Kelly facilitated, and the hope was that D would get these angels to help him recover the original language spoken by Adam before the confusion at Babel, which you know we referred

to earlier as a nokian um. And the way that we know about this was the spirit diaries were actually dug up in a field ten years after his death, and in them is a completely new language with its own grammar and syntax. Uh. The angels supposedly provided him with the Anochian language, which they said was the er

language of humanity. And I want to I want to add one thing in here, which is that you know, as I was reading through all this stuff, I was utterly convinced that Edward Kelly was scamming D the whole time, and that he was just making up the names of these angel characters and performing there whatever their traits were, and just making the whole thing up. But Alan Moore in that History Channel thing points out, sure, that's probably true, but how on earth did somebody like Edward Kelly invent

an entire language on the fly. He wasn't a linguistics expert. He would have had to have been a genius to just create a fake language out of nowhere. And people have since studied and Ochi and have looked over these notes and it's you know, it functions as a language, so uh that you know, the big question is like, well, Okay, if he wasn't talking to angels, how did Edward Kelly come up with this stuff? Yeah? Because you're left with

a few possibilities here. As I understand, it's either, ay, he actually did come up with this this material, and there's some questions about about whether or not he had the background to do it. Um the other possibility and this seems this seems to to square with what we know about his his character. Perhaps he stole it from somewhere he he copied it from someone else, and we're just there's a there's a certain amount of ambiguity about where that might have been, where where it might have

been stolen from. Yeah, and that we don't know now. Kelly, as he was looking through his crystal ball or his scrying mirror, said that the angels were angry with humanity for being captivated by anything but God, and they described to d the order of the Cosmos, instructions for rituals and predictions of the future, as well as the Anochian language. Their major pronouncement was that that they wanted the world to be united under a single religion that united all

the denominations of Christianity along with Judaism and Islam. So essentially, you know, four hundred years ago, these angels quote unquote, we're advocating for globalism. So it's kind of fascinating when you think about it, especially like if we consider like Kelly was probably making the whole thing up. He was like advocating for this very like futuristic idea of socioeconomics.

You know, it's it's fascinating. Yeah, I can easily imagine a scenario where where one of these angels is saying, look, Christianity, juda Judaism, Islam, these uh, these factions are not gonna work everything out in the foreseeable future. Better that we just combine it all into one and then everybody can

be unified. Now. For Kelly's part, as you know, as he's relaying these messages from the angels, he's also saying to D, these angels are actually demons, and I'm terrified to them because they know that I previously had participated in some demonic grim wire magic um, and D was like, nope, we've got to continue. I absolutely insisted that we continue.

I mean, Kelly was basically like a prisoner INDs home um and the two of them even asked the angels for money at one point, and Kelly reportedly asked them for a loan, like like they were gonna make money appear out of nowhere and then he would give it

back to them or something. I don't know. So and and keep in mind too, it's very likely that this is all just a fiction in his own head that he's enacting in front of D for D's purposes, right, But then also, I mean, when when you're when you're dealing with this kind of magic and and if you're considering this some sort of demonic entity that you're you're communicating with, uh, I mean that that has some very real life ramifications, not an age where you can just

walk around on the street and talk about your conversations with demons. So while they're in the middle of all this, and they're they're working at a more like they uh come into contact with the third party. And this guy's name, he's a Polish prince in his name is Lord Albert Laski. Uh. And he had visited England and claimed that he was there simply to meet the queen and enjoy the sceneries. Uh. He had previously been suspected of trying to steal the

Polish throne. Everybody's trying to steal a throne in this story. Yeah, I think that's an important thing to keep in mind about the about the European setting at the time is this was not an age of stability. This was an age of tense politics, an age of war, an age of of rather robust espionage, um coded messages going back and forth, and and people people dying when these codes

are unraveled. So Laski's involvement with these guys is weird and debated, and Robert and I had to look to a couple of different books to try to figure out how much we could, you know, resolve as to what was his involvement in the situation. Apparently he started showing up at the seances, and this was considered problematic, I think by Kelly because there was a third party involved there, probably because Kelly was afraid that he would get caught um.

But also the idea was basically like, why would you why would you sit on these seances? Some demon could come out and destroy you. You know, it's like this horribly scary thing. There's also, you know, some question about whether or not he was an informer, either for Poland or possibly the Holy Roman Empire UM. Either way, it seems that he was the one who eventually leads them

to Poland. UM and the story goes that he was duped by Edward Kelly and the whole scrying thing, and he believed that great things were meant for Kelly uh And so he convinces them to return to Poland with him in fifteen eighty three, and they pack up their whole family, uh and all their stuff with them, except for the library, this huge library. Uh. Now, there's a lot of stuff that goes on in Poland. We'll get

into that. But when they get there, their experiments, whatever they were doing, I think it was alchemical in nature were so costly that Laski lost his fortune and lands trying to fund the two of their work. And when it became apparent that he couldn't afford this any longer, uh, the spirits began to express their doubts through Kelly that Laski may not have been the right man to bring

about the changes in Europe that they desired. Yeah. Now, this is a period of time where where Kelly just increasingly seems like he's just a con artist, you know, making promises of gold, like generating gold through alchemy for his benefactors, and then here when things don't go as planned,

when he can't deliver, he cast doubt on has been factors. Yeah, and and in the way that Laski basically gets rid of them, as he says, you know, I'm gonna pay for you guys to go to Prague and I'll provide you with a letter of introduction to Emperor Rudolph the second his problem. Now, now we I think we mentioned this in the you know, the short bio at the beginning, but apparently, you know, Rudolph threw d out of the Holy Roman Empire. Now, some say it was because he

suspected that D was an English spy. Now, considering you know what we know about D and cryptography and statecraft, maybe he was. We're gonna talk about that more in the next episode. But there's also evidence that the angels told D that he needed to go to Rudolph and tell Rudolph that he was possessed by demons. Now, the Catholic Church were aware of this, and they considered D

and Kelly a threat. Think about this though, Like, in context of the time, D is so much of a believer in what Kelly is telling him that he's willing to go to the Emperor and be like, sorry, you're possessed by demons and you you know you need to really turn your life around. Why don't you listen to us? I mean, that's an executable offense. Luckily he just was exiled. Now, it seems that D was very sincere about this, while it also seems that Kelly was probably duping him and

their relationship lasted for ten years. Here's where it all falls apart. So the angels told them to swap wives. Sounds again, It sounds like reality TV show to me. Uh, there's this angel that they keep communicating with named Medemi, and she's described as being kind of this um, I don't know, like coquettish little girl that uh Kelly would describers like running around the room and stuff. And she told them, you guys have to share all things in common,

and they interpreted that as meaning their wives. Now, Jane d was D's wife at the time. She was his third wife. He'd had two previous wives who died I believe of illness. She was much younger than him. I think she was in like her mid twenties and he was in his fifties. And she was reportedly very upset about this because, by all accounts, Edward Kelly was not uh an attractive man or you know, a trustworthy man. So the last thing she wanted to do was have

to sleep with this guy. But D thought it was a valid command from the angels, especially because then even D was like, hey, I need some uh some confirmation on this. So Kelly's like, okay, let me look into the screwing ball over here, and he summons the angel Uriel, who's like a pretty high up in the hierarchy of angels, and Uriel confirms that He's like, yep, you guys have to share everything. So two days after they drew up their wife swapping contract, then the Scarlet Woman Babylon appeared

to Kelly. Now some of you may recognize this from like a Crowley in magic. Uh. She's also known as the Horror of Babylon and revelations. This was so scary to them, or at least two d that they parted ways and their sessions ceased forever they they they their relationship ended. Kelly ended up wandering around Bohemia, and he then convinces Rudolph the Second, Hey, I know alchemy. I might be able to use the Philosopher's Stone to make

you gold. Yeah, and this would uh, this would seem to be the just to spell the final chapter of of Edward Kelly's life. You know, at this point the story I really D and Kelly certainly kind of created, seemed to have created like codependently, their their own little crazy trip here and uh and I feel feel bad for the women that were sucked along the way. But

things finally come apart. They come to pe says, I feel like D is the character who certainly comes out off as more honest, more devout, whereas, as you know, Kelly is is probably just a con artist who's also buying into certain amounts of his own con So I don't think one should take solace from such things. But it seems that Kelly died in fifteen seven or fifty in a check castle where he was imprisoned for failing to produce that alchemist gold, and he apparently died from

injuries sustained while trying to escape. According to Benjamin Woolly's book, Um, Kelly tried to climb from the window on a rope of knotted sheets, you know, just like in the movies, and then fell, breaking both legs. And this was after drugging the guards with opium smuggled in by his wife Joanna.

This guy, yeah d later writes that he'd heard that Kelly quote had been Swain, and there were rumors that that Kelly, even at the time, had faked his own death and was continuing to practice alchemy in southern Germany or possibly Russia. But then and then the conspiracy theorists would say like he went on to live for hundreds

of years, and he was resputing. But I have a feeling, and it seems like the more historians tend to agree that yeah, he probably fell out of that fell from that that that rope of sheets and broke both his legs and then subsequently died of the injuries. Yeah, that sounds right to me. So why don't we take one more break, and then let's talk about the sort of

spiritual artifacts that come up after D's death. I'm Kristin Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and together we host a podcast stuff Mom never told you that gets down to the business of being women from every imaginable angle. New episodes come out Mondays and Wednesdays on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. So D was for for whatever else D was, And certainly he was a lot of things again, all kind

of woven together. He was certainly a collector of occult paraphernalia and occult books. Uh. And we still have some of these spiritual artifacts. The British Museum retains ownership of several items that he and and Kelly utilized in seances and other rights. So we've already talked about these extensive library and you can think of it in these terms. This is the way that D divided it. You had

the external bibliotheca, which is the external library. You had several rooms or appendices which led off from the library, and in these dependencies of visitors to his home, described celestial and terrestrial globes, a five foot quadrant, a ten foot to cross staff, a sa compass, an accurate quote watch clock, uh portable time piece, various marvels from his travels. And these rooms also housed his libraries laboratories, so where multiple skills bubbled. You know, it sounds like a complete

uh you know, set from a hammer horror film. Yeah, there's no uh, it's not a coincidence that our modern day idea of what a wizard or a sorcerer looks like is d We had that idea of him in the robe with a big, long white beard. Yeah, we have some various we have various illustrations of of what he looked like, and I think there's probably one is the cover image for this episode. So you have already have an idea in your head. But yeah, he looked

like our modern conception of a wizard. So he had he had all these these rooms filling off from the library, from the external library, but then there was also the internal bibliotheca, the private study an adjoining chapel, and there was also an adjoining chapel where, to quote Wullie, he presumably shelved the Bibles and devotion text so conspicuously lacking from the catalogs of the external bibliotheca, but the internal bibliotheca,

the internal library, this is where he stored his magical equipment, his confidential writings, and certain books of frequent use. And uh, by the way, this, if this sounds like a rather costly man cave, you're right. Uh it steadily became unsustainable on his mirror eighty pound annual stipend from his rectory

at Long Leadenham, And so he provided. This is why he provided a number of freelance services, including tutoring, astrological readings, dream interpretation, medical consultations and forensic advice, which already mentioned. So uh. Among the various items in his possession, again, a few of them survived this day, and one of them is uh Dr D's Magical mirror, also known as Dr D's Magical Speculum. That I don't know where we're going,

but this already sounds bad. So there's some wonderful images of this, and I'll try to include some on the landing page for this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. The Black Mirror here this uh, this magical mirror. It's probably not quite what you would imagine if someone asks you to envision on elizabethan sorcerer's mirror.

It looks rather like part of an Ikea coffee table. Actually, it's an obsidian quote smoking mirror, so named because the squire gazing into the mirror would see clouds of smoke, which would part to reveal a vision. Uh. And and this is definitely an item that Edward Kelly made use of as well. Apparently it's of Aztec origin, brought to Europe after the conquest of Mexico, acquired by Dr d for use in his magical pursuits in the late sixteenth century.

Perhaps created though up to two centuries earlier in Mexico. And this is in the British Museum. Yeah, it's a obsidian. There's a wood case covered in tooled leather with label and handwriting of one Horace Walpole and a quotation from a Samuel Butler poem. So do you think this is where the idea for the title of the show Black Mirror came from? I have. I've never seen there, I've never seen any connective tissue there, but I couldn't help

but think of it. You know, the scrying mirror. I know that the black mirror that on the TV show is you know, supposed to have to do with like the the the the black screens of personal devices. But it does make me think too now about scrying mirrors, and I wonder, yeah, I wondered to what extent a smoking mirror is invoked in that. Now, this is not

to be confused with the strange mirror. Uh, just as as it was sometimes called that was given to D by one William Pickering the quote great perspective glass, and this apparently stood in a corner of his study, and according to Wully, anyone who lunged at the glass with a dagger found their reflection lunging back at them quote with like hand, sword or or dagger, creating an unsettling effect, but one that D would use to explain how all

strange effects could be explained by the mathematics of perspective. So this was not something that he apparently used in occult practices. And I guess, based on what we know about it, it would have been a nonreversing mirror, of which there's a few different varieties, and the Queen herself apparently once stood before this mirror. Now he also had two crystal balls, one of which good Old Edward Kelly or Talbot used to see uriel. Uh. There's the seal

of God or Sigillum. Day used to support other occult objects such as the crystals. This is also in the British Museum, so this would have been kind of you know, the table for their their other objects. Uh. There there are the crystals themselves, one of which is in the British Museum. John D's crystal used for a clairvoyance and for curing disease metal in courts uh from around fIF two. You can also see images of this. So it's it's fascinating we have some of the magical artifacts of his life,

of his time still with us today. He Yeah, I can't help but think about again, like the research that we did about grimoires in that uh, that a lot of those were created I think earlier than Day's time, but he's still relying on a lot of the I guess magical thinking would be the right way to put it. Um that surrounded those texts and then applied them to objects in the way that we now understand as being just like part of fantasy genre of like, well, this

is how a wizard works. They have a staff and a crystal and a huge library. Right. Uh. Yeah, it's interesting that you know, certainly Merlin is the the the the the perfect example of the the the English wizarding character. And it's certainly a character that, uh, that had an influence on D. But then D himself becomes this this influential icon of of English wizardry. Uh. And it's almost certain that William Shakespeare modeled the character of Prospero in

The Tempest on the character of D. Yeah. Uh and interesting again, tying it back to the whole Allen Moore thing. In Ellen Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Prospero shows up as a character and it's heavily implied that he is John D. You know, speaking of sort of modern interpretations as of looking around. Uh. Interestingly enough, Rocky horror mastermind Richard O'Brien played Dr D in the nine film Jubilee, which is kind of like a time traveling elizabe Ethan Thing.

Actor David Threlfall played both the Prospero and Dr John d uh the later in the second Elizabeth movie. Okay, yeah, I was gonna adde because there's been these Elizabeth movies and I thought they must have included D somehow. Yeah. I have not seen the Golden Age, but he only he shows up in that, as do some of these other characters, especially ones will discuss in the next episode that deals a little more closely with his you know, his real world pursuits. And then wait a minute, there's

a note here about Terrence McKenna. Yeah, so this largely according to the Internet Movie Database, Terrence McKenna played D in The Alchemical Dream Rebirth of the Great Work and the whole You can find the whole thing on YouTube. Uh it seems like he just like McKenna, just narrates it. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I didn't. I didn't notice a scene in which he dresses up as D. But still that's like, um, I don't know, like modern

day quote magicians slash psychedelic psychonauts dream come true. That's kind of a thing. Yeah, so it's interesting to see these influence in uh in in modern society. And entertainment. There they're a whole list of of examples. And we're not even gonna get into where d shows up in various fictional works to varying degrees, either as a as an amazing side character or occasionally as a central character.

Huh well, okay, so I feel like we've covered as well as we can in the time available to us the occult magical aspects of D. Now we're gonna cut this episode and our next episode this week is going to be all about his contributions to science, to state craft and cryptography. That's right, So pick up with us again in the next episode and we will dive into more, uh cantalizing details about the life and work of Dr

John d Now. In the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, don't forget that we are available on social media at Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. Uh and you can always visit us at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And if you want to send us an email the old fashioned way, you don't have to use any of fancy wizarding equipment. You don't

need a magic mirror or a scrying crystal. Just send it to blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com