27 апр 1584 г. - John Dee

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in Prague

John Dee (1527–1608), the Elizabethan mathematician and natural philosopher, illustrates some of the realms beyond natural magic and their potentially close connection with things we more readily label as “scientific.” A. Dee was recognized as a mathematician, polymath, and writer, as well as the collector of the largest private library in England. 1. He wrote the preface to the first English translation of Euclid from the Greek (1570) and argued for the importance of mathematics. 2. He was asked to choose the date for Queen Elizabeth I’s coronation based on astrological considerations. ***He also urged the queen to explore and exploit the New World.*** (in search of shamanic secrets)

3. There was a popular rumor that he was a sorcerer, partly on account of a mechanical flying beetle that he supposedly built and used at Cambridge in the performance of a play by Aristophanes. 4. He knew and used medieval sources more than most of his humanist contemporaries; Dee used Roger Bacon’s multiplication of species idea to account for astrological effects and the action by correspondence. B. For more than twenty years, Dee carried out conversations with angels. 1. He used a “Holy Table” and gazing stones (e.g., a mirror of polished obsidian) and “scryers” (Edward Kelly being the most famous) to communicate with spiritual entities. 2. What was actually going on in these sessions remains a mystery, but the records of these conversations fill many surviving volumes. 3. What is clear is that Dee thought he could learn the secrets of the universe by appealing for instruction from God’s angels. 4. Many of his surviving notes are full of an “angelic language,” which, being the language by which God created the world, would have great power to reveal and command the natural world.

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