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An English Opera, debuted in July 2011, was composed by frontman,
Damon Albarn, of the British pop rock band Blur.
A quintessential Renaissance man, Dee was a mathematician,
geometer and astronomer; a sincere Renaissance occultist, immersing
himself in astrology, alchemy and magic – astral, natural and angelic.
For Dee, the expanse between the earth and the heavens offered a stage
on which man could test and display the power and dignity of his soul.
His universe was intelligible and he believed the wise mage could take
advantage of the spiritual and physical gifts it offered to advance in life
and transcend to higher realms of existence.
2
His grip on popular imag-
ination is partly a result of his role as a popularizer of mathematics and
its handmaiden astrology as evinced by the preface he wrote for Henry
Billingsley’s English translation of Euclid’s Elements which was published
in 1570. Without condescension, it was intentionally addressed to the
public to be navigated by those other than Latin-reading university
students.
3
Dee’s taxonomy of knowledge in his Preface introduces the
basic principles of subjects and practices that he himself undertook,
including experimental and occult sciences.
4
His fame, in the present
and past, is also attributable to the intimate chronicles of his adventures
and enterprises found in his surviving diary and the detailed account of
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The Magic and Astrology of John Dee
145
his angelic conversations preserved and published by the scholar Meric
Casaubon (1599–1671). We have access to his library catalogue; Julian
Roberts and Andrew Watson’s edition of John Dee’s Library Catalogue was
published by the Bibliographical Society in 1990.
5
So John Dee appears
to be an accessible – so to speak – Renaissance mage.
Not restricted to the atmosphere of English universities, Dee trav-
elled in pursuit of knowledge and manuscripts. In Louvain, he nurtured
his interest in mathematics, astronomy and astrology by associat-
ing with mathematicians and cartographers such as Gemma Frisius
and Gerard Mercator.
6
The knowledge Dee accumulated during his
sojourn in the Low Countries in 1540s culminated in his Propaedeumata
Aphoristica (1558).
7
He was willing to travel far and pay considerably
for procuring and preserving manuscripts, particularly those dispersed
as a tragic result of the Dissolution of the Monasteries;
8
he owned
between 22 and 27 manuscripts of St Augustine’s Library, 80 per
cent of which were works on astrology, magic and alchemy.
9
He
acquired a rare manuscript of Johannes Trithemius’s cryptograph the
Steganographia (1499) in Antwerp.
10
In England, he was very well-
connected to influential figures including Queen Elizabeth I herself.
When he returned to England from the Low Countries he was intro-
duced to King Edward through William Cecil and as a result received
a yearly pension.
11
He also tutored the children of the Duke of
Northumberland, including Robert Dudley who later became the Earl of
Leicester.
12
Duke beheaded and a new Queen ascending to the throne,
Leicester and the Earl of Pembroke introduced Dee to Elizabeth whom
he instructed and performed small services to such as astrologically
electing a date for her coronation. It is during this period that Dee
was most prolific and produced the Propaedeumata Aphoristica, the
Mathematical Preface and his perplexing symbolic discourse the Monas
Hieroglyphica that preoccupied him from 1557 and was eventually
published in 1564.
13
His erudite knowledge of mathematics, geometry, metaphysics and
magic gained him an appreciable amount of support. Dee’s student
Thomas Digges (c.1546–1595) saw in Dee ‘a most expert in these sci-
ences, and admirable in philosophy’.
14
Supporting Dee’s endeavours,
Thomas Powell (1608–1660), in Humane Industry, referring to the science
of catoptrics mentioned in the Propaedeumata and Monas Hieroglyphica,
considered Dee as ‘an eminent Mathematician of this Nation’. The lat-
ter work was explicitly referred to by Powell.
15
The astrologer William
Lilly in The Starry Messenger described Dee as ‘a most learned man’ and
displayed knowledge of Dee’s Propaedeumata Aphoristica.
16
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