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John Dee (mathematician)
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John Dee (13 July 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 the study of 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 age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery.
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John Dee (13 July 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 the study of 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 age, he had been invited to lecture on advanced algebra at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery. In one of several tracts which Dee wrote in the 1580s encouraging British exploratory expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage, he appears to have coined (or at least introduced into print) the term "British Empire."
Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology, and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination, instead considering all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities".
Dee's status as a respected scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics. He served as an occasional adviser and tutor to Elizabeth I and nurtured relationships with her two leading ministers, Francis Walsingham and William Cecil. Dee also tutored and enjoyed patronage relationships with Sir Philip Sidney, Edward Dyer, and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
In his lifetime Dee amassed the largest library in England and one of the largest in Europe.
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. John claimed to be a descendant of Rhodri the Great, a Prince of Wales. Dee's family arrived in London in the wake of Henry Tudor's coronation as Henry VII.
Dee attended the Chelmsford Catholic School from 1535 (now King Edward VI Grammar School (Chelmsford)), then – from November 1542 to 1546 – St. John's College, Cambridge. His great abilities were recognized, and he was made a founding fellow of Trinity College, where the clever stage effects he produced for a production of Aristophanes' Peace procured him the reputation of being a magician that clung to him through life. In the late 1540s and early 1550s, he travelled in Europe, studying at Leuven (1548) 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.[5]
Rector at Upton-upon-Severn from 1553, 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.[6] In 1555, Dee became a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, as his father had, through the company's system of patrimony.[7]
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.[6][8] Dee appeared in the Star Chamber and exonerated himself, but was turned over to the 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.[6]
Dee presented Queen Mary with a visionary plan for the preservation of old books, manuscripts and records and the founding of a national library, in 1556, but his proposal was not taken up.[6] Instead, he expanded his personal library at his house in Mortlake, tirelessly acquiring books and manuscripts in England and on the European Continent. Dee's library, a center of learning outside the universities, became the greatest in England and attracted many scholars.[9]
When Elizabeth took the throne in 1558, Dee became her trusted advisor on astrological and scientific matters, choosing Elizabeth's coronation date himself.[10][11] 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", a term that he was the first to use.[12] 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.[12]In 1564, Dee wrote the Hermetic work Monas Hieroglyphica ("The Hieroglyphic Monad"), an exhaustive Cabalistic interpretation of a glyph of his own design, meant to express the mystical unity of all creation. He travelled to Hungary to present a copy personally to Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor. This work was highly valued by many of Dee's contemporaries, but the loss of the secret oral tradition of Dee's milieu makes the work difficult to interpret today.[13]
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.[14] Intended for an audience outside the universities, it proved to be Dee's most widely influential and frequently reprinted work.[15]
Achievements
Thought
Dee was an intensely pious Christian, but his Christianity was deeply influenced by the Hermetic and Platonic-Pythagorean doctrines that were pervasive in the Renaissance. He believed that number was the basis of all things and the key to knowledge, that God's creation was an act of numbering. From Hermeticism, he drew the belief that man had the potential for divine power, and he believed this divine power could be exercised through mathematics. His cabalistic angel magic (which was heavily numerological) and his work on practical mathematics (navigation, for example) were simply the exalted and mundane ends of the same spectrum, not the antithetical activities many would see them as today. His ultimate goal was to help bring forth a unified world religion through the healing of the breach of the Catholic and Protestant churches and the recapture of the pure theology of the ancients.
Reputation and significance
About ten years after Dee's death, the antiquarian Robert Cotton purchased land around Dee's house and began digging in search of papers and artefacts. He discovered several manuscripts, mainly records of Dee's angelic communications. Cotton's son gave these manuscripts to the scholar Méric Casaubon, who published them in 1659, together with a long introduction critical of their author, as A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and some spirits. As the first public revelation of Dee's spiritual conferences, the book was extremely popular and sold quickly. Casaubon, who believed in the reality of spirits, argued in his introduction that Dee was acting as the unwitting tool of evil spirits when he believed he was communicating with angels. This book is largely responsible for the image, prevalent for the following two and a half centuries, of Dee as a dupe and deluded fanatic.
Around the same time the True and Faithful Relation was published, members of the Rosicrucian movement claimed Dee as one of their number. 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. Dee's reputation as a magician and the vivid story of his association with Edward Kelley have made him a seemingly irresistible figure to fabulists, writers of horror stories and latter-day magicians. The accretion of false and often fanciful information about Dee often obscures the facts of his life, remarkable as they are in themselves.
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. The term "British Empire" is in fact Dee's own invention.
Dee promoted the sciences of navigation and cartography. He studied closely with Gerardus Mercator, and he owned an important collection of maps, globes and astronomical instruments. He developed new instruments as well as special navigational techniques for use in polar regions. Dee served as an advisor to the English voyages of discovery, and personally selected pilots and trained them in navigation.
He believed that mathematics (which he understood mystically) was central to the progress of human learning. The centrality of mathematics to Dee's vision makes him to that extent more modern than Francis Bacon, though some scholars believe Bacon purposely downplayed mathematics in the anti-occult atmosphere of the reign of James I. 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.
Dee was a friend of Tycho Brahe and was familiar with the work of Copernicus. Many of his astronomical calculations were based on Copernican assumptions, but he never openly espoused the heliocentric theory. Dee applied Copernican theory to the problem of calendar reform. His sound recommendations were not accepted, however, for political reasons.
He has often been associated with the Voynich Manuscript. 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.
At Elizabeth I's request Dee embraced the old Welsh 'Prince Madog' myth to lay claim to North America. The well known story was of a young Welsh prince who discovered America in 1170, over three hundred years before Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. The fact was that Elizabeth I had little interest in the New World and Dee's hopes were premature.
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 popular culture
Dee was a popular figure in literary works written by his own contemporaries, and he has continued to feature in popular culture ever since, particularly in fiction or fantasy set during his lifetime or that deals with magic or the occult.
Edmund Spenser may refer to Dee in The Faerie Queen (1596).
William Shakespeare may have modeled the character of Prospero in The Tempest (1610-11) on Dee.
Ben Jonson may have used Dee as the basis for the character of Subtle in his play The Alchemist (1610), which includes a scrying session during which the spirits render up Dee's name.
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.
In Dorothy Dunnett's novel The Ringed Castle (1971), Dee is depicted as a mathematician and astrologer who aids then-princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) in her various intrigues.
Dee appears as a character in Derek Jarman's Jubilee (1977).
In Michael Moorcock's novel Gloriana, or The Unfill'd Queen (1978), Dee is the only character drawn from actual history in an alternate history that reimagines the realm of Queen Elizabeth I as that of Queen Gloriana I of Albion, Empress of Asia and Virginia.
In the liner notes of Imaginos, a concept album by Blue Oyster Cult, John Dee is preported to be the spirital advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He is alleged to have used a mirror made by the Aztecs out of obsidian to help bring about the destruction of Spanish sea-power, securing England's dominance over world affairs for the next 150 years.
John Crowley's four-novel sequence Ægypt (1987-2007) includes Dee, Edward Kelley, and Giordano Bruno as major characters.
In Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum (1988), Dee is a central character in "The Plan" (the overall conspiracy that the book is concerned with) and in a fiction concerning it created by Belbo, one of the main characters.
Dee is a main character in Peter Ackroyd's novel The House of Doctor Dee (1993), which focuses on a young historian who forms a psychic link with Dee after inheriting his London house.
Dee is mentioned frequently in Philippa Gregory's novel, The Queen's Fool (1995), which is the sequel to The Other Boleyn Girl.
In Michael Chabon's novel Wonder Boys (1995), Dr. Dee is the name of the dog belonging to the chancellor.
Dee is mentioned as Queen Elizabeth I's magician in the novel The Devil And His Boy by Anthony Horowitz(1998).
Armin Shimerman fictionalizes Dee's life in the Merchant Prince series of juvenile books (2000-03) by providing a basis in science fiction for Dee's supposed magic.
Dee is a major character in Robin Jarvis's novel Deathscent (2001).
Lisa Goldstein's novel The Alchemist's Door (2002) features Dee as the main character, with his associate Edward Kelley appearing as a villain.
Dee makes a small appearance as a hidden boss in the video game Wild Arms 3 (2002).
Dee is a major character in Diana Redmond's time-travel children's book Joshua Cross & the Queen's Conjuror (2004).
Dee figures as the father of the character Ella in the Sky One TV series, Hex (2004-05).
Dee's legacy plays a prominent role in Elizabeth Redfern's novel Auriel Rising (2005).
Dee is a character in the Doctor Who audio drama A Storm of Angels (2005).
Dee appears as a character in Elizabeth:The Golden Age (2007) alongside Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth I.
Dee, known as The Walker, is the main antagonist of Charlie Fletcher's children's novel Stoneheart (2006) and its sequels Ironhand (2008) and Silvertongue (to be published in 2009).
Dee is one of the main antagonists of Michael Scott's six-volume fantasy series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, including The Alchemyst (2007) and The Magician (2008).
Dee plays an intricate role in author Titania Hardie's book "The Rose Labyrinth". He's the joining piece of the clues that the characters discover through out the journey of the book (2008).
Dee plays a brief but prominent role in Alan Moore's syndicated graphic novel Promethea, where he resides in the third sephirot, Binah, of a hermetic interpretation of Kabbalah, guiding the central character on her way towards Kether (2005)
Primary Sources
A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee... (1659) repr. "Magickal Childe" ISBN 0-939708-01-9 New York 1992) Dee, John Quinti Libri Mysteriorum. British Library, MS Sloane Collection 3188. Also available in a fair copy by Elias Ashmole, MS Sloane 3677. Dee, John John Dee's five books of mystery: original sourcebook of Enochian magic: from the collected works known as Mysteriorum libri quinque edited by Joseph H. Peterson, Boston: Weiser Books ISBN 1-57863-178-5. Dee, John The Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570). New York: Science History Publications (1975) ISBN 0-88202-020-X Dee, John John Dee on Astronomy: Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558 & 1568) edited by Wayne Shumaker, Berkley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-03376-0
Secondary Sources
A History of Mathematical Notations New York: Cosimo (2007) ISBN 1602066841 Calder, I.R.F. John Dee Studied as an English Neo-Platonist Ph.D. Dissertation, London: The Warburg Institute, London University (1952) * Clucas, Stephen, ed. John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in Renaissance Thought. Dordrecht: Springer (2006) ISBN 1402042450 Clucas, Stephen, ed. John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica. Ambix Special Issue. Vol. 52, Part 3, 2005, includes articles by Clulee, Norrgren, Forshaw and Bayer. Clulee, Nicholas H. John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion. London: Routledge (1988) ISBN 0-415-00625-2 Fell Smith, Charlotte John Dee: 1527–1608. London: Constable and Company (1909) French, Peter J. John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1972) ISBN 0-7102-0385-3 Kugler, Martin Astronomy in Elizabethan England, 1558 to 1585: John Dee, Thomas Digges, and Giordano Bruno. Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry (1982) Mandosio, Jean-Marc D'or et de sable (chapitre IV. Magie et mathématiques chez John Dee, pp. 143-170), Paris, éditions de l'Encyclopédie des Nuisances, (2008) ISBN 2910386260 Sherman, William Howard John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press (1995) ISBN 1558490701 Vickers, Brian ed. Occult & Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1984) ISBN 0-521-25879-0 Woolley, Benjamin The Queen's Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr. John Dee, Adviser to Queen Elizabeth I. New York: Henry Holt and Company (2001) Yates, Frances The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age London: Routledge (2001) ISBN 0415254094 Yates, Frances "Renaissance Philosophers in Elizabethan England: John Dee and Giordano Bruno." in her Lull & Bruno. Collected Essays Vol. I. London: Routledge & Kegan (1982) ISBN 0710009526
External links
- Full view book with PDF download at Google Books
- Full view book with PDF download at Google Books
- Full view book at Google Books
- It is a section of the e-journal
Azogue with original reproductions of Dee texts. edited in PDF by Clay Holden:- Mysteriorum Liber Primus (with Latin translations)
- Notes to Liber Primus by Clay Holden
- Mysteriorum Liber Secundus
- Mysteriorum Liber Tertius
from Twilit Grotto: Archives of Western Esoterica at Project Gutenberg
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