January 16, 2024 • 29 mins
Alchemist, magician, astronomer, astrologer - John Dee served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, interpreting the stars for her. And when a comet crossed the sky, he told her that it portended the birth of something he came up with the name for: the British Empire.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener Discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The year was sixteen sixty two and the owners of
a little sweet shop in London were running their fingers
over their newest acquisition, an antique cedar chest. Their fingertips
found a strange opening in the body of the chest,
a hidden drawer. Perhaps they used a knife to pull
(00:33):
at it. The drawer opened, and inside not the treasures
they may have dreamt of, but a beaded necklace, a cross,
and some handwritten books the sweetshops made. Wasn't especially interested
in whatever someone's old books might have to say. She
had work to do. But as she baked her pies
(00:56):
atop the pages she was using as parchment paper, the
smell of caramelized sugar spinning in the air, it was
hard to ignore an uncomfortable feeling stirring in her gut.
When she looked at the books pages. They were strange. Yes,
they contained words and dated entries, as she might have expected,
(01:20):
But the pages also contained diagrams and signs and symbols
that she didn't understand. Unnerving symbols, triangles inscribed inside circles,
intricate stars that pointed toward what might have been Greek letters,
maps of what might have looked like planets, complex mathematical
(01:43):
symbols that could only be witchcraft. She quieted her mind.
She lifted the surely devilish pages one by one, and
one by one let them blacken in the fire beneath
her baking pies.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
But it didn't take.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Long before other people started noticing the strangeness of the
pages that hadn't been burned. One antiquarian realized that these
pages weren't just some devil's unhinged ramblings. They were the
lost diary of Renaissance, England's greatest conjurer, the occultist, once
(02:23):
employed as astronomer to Queen Elizabeth the First, a man
named John Dee. John Dee was one of the most
fascinating characters in all of Elizabethan court history. He was
a learned mathematician and also a magician, an astronomer, and
(02:45):
an astrologer. He was a trusted political advisor to the Queen.
He was a scientist, a cartographer, and even a special
effects technician. He was also an angelologist, a Christian lawmanser,
an occultist and a dabbler in alchemy. He was a
(03:05):
student of Hebrew and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.
In addition to Christianity, he believed he spoke with angels,
both angels from the Old Testament and some of his
own discovery. He recorded completely credulously his angelic conversations with
(03:26):
the likes of the angels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel.
It may seem impossible to us now that someone so
invested in the occult in sorcery could have had such
a serious political career in a royal court. But it
was the fifteen hundreds, the Renaissance. The classic Renaissance man
(03:50):
did it all in part because it all was not
so neatly divided into branches as it is today. Math,
magic and miracle were not entirely distinct from each other.
Politics were ordained by God, after all. Queen Elizabeth herself
believed in the royal touch, the magic of her fingertips
(04:14):
upon her subject's next to heal their ailments. The latest
optical science was recognizing that light could bend it separated
into rainbows through lenses and mirrors and crystals, where was
the line between that science and the idea that gazing
into a crystal ball might reveal concealed dimensions of God's creation,
(04:39):
just as it revealed the different bands of color concealed
within light. John Dee was a man who studied the heavens,
and in fifteen seventy two he looked up as all
of England cowered at a new star that suddenly appeared
in the night sky, followed by a range comet. In
(05:01):
fifteen seventy seven, and under the light of that comet,
the Conjuror John d made a political plan for his queen.
He encouraged Elizabeth to follow the path laid by King
Arthur one thousand years earlier, to expand England into a
term he coined, a British Empire. But the Great Conjurer
(05:26):
would also do something else. Under the light of that
mysterious comet. He would allow a man using a false
name into his home, a man who would ultimately be
his downfall. This was a man who would intercede with
D's angelic conversations and put a wedge between d and
(05:48):
the court life he was enjoying with Queen Elizabeth. When
the Great Conjurer looked up into the sky and calculated
the positions of the planets. It seems he couldn't have
seen just how tenuous his own position was. I'm Danish
schwartz and this is noble blood. John Dee was born
(06:14):
in or around London on July thirteenth, fifteen twenty seven,
during the reign of King Henry the Eighth. He was
the son of a merchant who served within the king's court.
If you're into astrology, you're in luck. With this episode,
Dee mapped his own birth chart, as well as the
astrological positionings of many of the events that took place
(06:37):
throughout the sixteenth century. According to D's calculations, Jupiter and
the Sun were strong together in Cancer at the moment
of his birth. I'm sure some of you listeners can
interpret those signs better than I can. Biographer Benjamin Woolley
notes that the moon and the Sun were in opposition
(06:59):
in d'cas charts, and even I could tell you that symbolically,
at least in literary terms. That suggests some internal conflict
that might have been brewing inside him. And so we
begin today's episode appropriately in astrology, a field with plenty
of adherents still today a realm that draws on astronomical
(07:23):
science and then, at least in my estimation, heads into
the direction of belief. By fifteen forty seven, John d
was nineteen and England was transitioning from the reign of
King Henry the Eighth to that of his short lived
only son, King Edward. At that time John Dee was
(07:45):
in the midst of some personal drama of his own,
and I mean drama in the quite literal sense. He
was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he was
putting on a play. It was a play called Peace
by an ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes, and it called for
(08:07):
a dung beetle to fly with an actor on its back.
This was the fifteen hundreds. D did not have the
benefits of electricity in staging his play, let alone projectors,
lasers or drones. And yet the actor on stage instructed
(08:27):
his scare a beetle to lift him into the sky,
and it did. There was a gasp in the audience
next craned backward to watch in awe. How was it
possible the flying beetle on stage was like a miracle,
or else some thought like magic or as some whispered
(08:52):
as the play went on, it was witchcraft. D must
have dealt with the devil. Only a few people in
the crowd recognized that the beatle must have been some
application of mathematics. D probably used some combination of Pulley's mirrors, springs,
(09:13):
and pressurized air or gas to create the illusion of
a flying bug. But this was a time when mathematics
as a discipline were viewed as essentially indistinguishable from conjuring.
D was cast under suspicion. In another life, we can
(09:34):
imagine that D might have gone on to become the
best practical effects guy of the Elizabethan age. We can
easily imagine a D who went on to be an
artist of the theater what D himself called art mathematical.
Of course, his beatle was considered wizardly. After all, what
(09:54):
is special effects technology today but something we call movie magic.
But aside from a brief stint when he was a student,
D wasn't really interested in the theater. For D, the
mathematical was only in service of his true aim, which
was the revelation of some universal godly truth through the
(10:18):
use of sciences that shaded without distinction in his mind
into magic, and eight years later that lack of distinction
between the occult and the approved came home to D
in the form of a court order. It was fifteen
(10:39):
fifty five and d was under arrest. This was during
Queen Mary's reign. D stood accused of witchcraft, a serious
charge under the new Catholic rule, which was definitely not
opposed to burning heretics at the stake. D was also
official accused of two other crimes, calculating and conjuring. Again,
(11:05):
in that language, you can see the closeness of math
and magic to this day. The word we use for
solving a math problem calculating, it means something very different
when applied to a person. A calculating person implies that
they're sly bad scheming. And John Dee stood accused of
(11:28):
doing the very thing that so many astrologically inclined bridesmaids
do for their friends today. That is, mapping the horoscopes
of Mary and her husband Philip to see if they
made a good match. Kind of touchingly, de found in
favor of Mary and Philip's union. It's pretty sweet, actually,
(11:51):
His calculations suggested that their marriage took place under an
auspicious rising sign for a new couple. But of course
flick Queen Mary, defensive about an unpopular marriage, didn't exactly
take the zodiac as a fun activity for a bridal shower. Luckily,
(12:11):
Forde he escaped the fate of the heretics and outlived Mary,
who died in fifteen fifty seven. That was when Mary's
younger Protestant half sister, Elizabeth, came to the throne. Twenty
five year old Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry
the Eighth and the beheaded Anne Boleyn. She was the
(12:34):
second woman ever to ascend to a throne that had
been until recently only occupied by men, and she needed
to secure her reign. She appointed her favorite Robert Dudley
to advise her, and Dudley, needing the good graces of
not only the earthly but heavenly realms as well as
(12:54):
he put together Elizabeth's coronation, decided that he needed the
one man in England who could read the planets better
than anyone else. Robert Dudley called upon John d. When
John d agreed to choose the date for Queen Elizabeth's coronation,
(13:17):
it was the beginning of a major life change for him.
After being arrested under Queen Mary's reign. Now he was
not only set free, but he was welcomed into Elizabeth's court.
As his first order of business, D consulted the stars.
He measured and mapped the angles between the planets, the
(13:37):
positions of major constellations, the twelve astrological houses, and rising signs.
At last, he decided that January fifteenth, fifteen fifty nine
would be the most Heavens approved date for the beginning
of the Elizabethan Age. Obviously, Mars was in Scorpio that day.
(14:00):
After the coronation, history loses track of D for about
five years. I like to imagine the stage magician's sleight
of hand. Here D ducking into a cleverly designed set
piece through which the audience of history can't see him.
But he was somewhere all along, studying the Jewish mystical
(14:22):
tradition of Kabbalah. He was seeking the secret names of God,
learning the Hebrew language and its mystical numerology, the alphabet
arranged around the first letter olive, middle mem, last tav,
spelling out emmett, the Hebrew word for truth. He was
seeking divine truth in increasingly more mystical modes, but D
(14:47):
was far from done with politics. Once history catches up
with him again, he steps out from behind the curtain.
On June fourteenth, fifteen sixty four, when he and Queen
Elizabeth are walking together at Greenwich Palace on the south
bank of the River Thames. D was holding something in
(15:07):
his hands, a slim book, and he was brimming with
excitement and perhaps a little bit of fear. He was
about to show the Queen the work of his soul,
his Monas Hieroglyphica. Listener, allow me to tell you the
monas is truly wild. It's a whole book dedicated to
(15:31):
explaining a mystical symbol of divine revelation that D invented himself.
It looks kind of like a cross between the artist
formerly known as Prince Symbol and Harry Potter's Deathly Hallows.
D's symbol was a millage of Latin wordplay, alchemy, numerology,
(15:53):
celestial calculations, and you know, his idea of the unity
of all things. So was no doubt excited but nervous
as he walked alongside the Queen, no doubt remembering how
he had been arrested for doing a Queen's horoscope. Years before,
Elizabeth had taken D's astrological advice for her coronation date.
(16:17):
Though perhaps she would be open to his new book
of divine celestial work, or perhaps she would have him
arrested on the spot. He offered her the book. Elizabeth
paused for a moment, observing the symbol. D's pulse pounded.
Then he saw Elizabeth's eyes light up in curiosity. I
(16:41):
will be your scholar, she told D if you explain
this work to me. And so John D sat with
the Queen of England and described to her his special
invented brand of mysticism. John D and the Queen went
(17:03):
on to have a good relationship. She paid him occasional
visits at his home. She consulted with him about whether
she should marry one of her suitors, the Duke of Anjou.
He said she shouldn't, and she didn't. But the greatest
cause De advocated with Elizabeth, and the one that would
mark ultimately the end of his close relationship with her
(17:27):
at court, was a bit of political fortune telling that
would ultimately come to pass in a big way. It
was D's deep belief that Elizabeth should set out to
create a British empire. D wasn't just fortune telling when
it came to this idea of empire, he was actively
(17:48):
promoting it. As Sir Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe,
D was coining the term British empire. He was hearkening
back to King Arthur a thousand years before, arguing that
the British right to an extensive empire had been established
a millennium ago. He encouraged Elizabeth to challenge the Spanish
(18:11):
and Portuguese claims to the New World, especially Spain's claims
in North America. His suggestions were even more persuasive than usual,
because just as D was petitioning Elizabeth on the idea
of expansionism, there was a strange thing going on in
the world, something that could seem like a message directly
(18:35):
from the heavens, something no one in all of Britain,
in all of Europe could possibly miss. All anyone needed
to do was step outside and crane their necks back
as they had years ago to gaze at John D's
flying beetle on stage. But this time the magic was
taking place on a much bigger stage, the night sky itself,
(19:00):
And if anyone looked up to the night sky in
November of fifteen seventy seven, there it would be the great, glittering,
terrifying thing, the bright light with a luminous tail, a comet.
Many believed that the cosmic event signaled some vexation from God,
(19:23):
some calamity to befall mankind, or thought many of the
English to specifically befall England or the Queen. But Elizabeth
wasn't going to believe just anybody's fears about this strange
celestial happening. She was going to consult one man when
it came to the skies, John D. The comet is
(19:46):
nothing to fear, he advised her. It is not important
of approaching doom, but of your approaching greatness. Perhaps the
bright light with the tale that arcing through the sky
is a a sign of England's destiny to be the
bright light with a long tail that is a global empire.
(20:09):
Of course, D's vision for English expansionism is exactly what
would happen. The English would defeat the Spanish Armada in
fifteen eighty eight, when D was not yet sixty years old.
But ultimately D had nothing to do with Elizabeth's actions,
as she set out in favor of the empire that
(20:30):
he had initially encouraged. The comet lit the sky, and
D's eyes were drawn heavenward. He lost interest in court.
He had begun his life with one interest, and it
was not the earthly realms of battle and conquest and bloodshed,
though his concept of empire would inevitably contain all three.
(20:51):
The comet faded from the sky, and John D left
his influence at court behind. From there, the rest of
D's life became ever more involved in the occult. He
worked closely with scriers, people who divined things via the
(21:13):
use of objects like crystal balls. Some or I might
say all of these were frauds. D's closest scrier was
a man who first entered his life calling himself Edward Talbot.
Talbot would later re enter D's life using his real name,
Edward Kelly, which goes to show the type of upstanding
(21:36):
honesty we're dealing with here. With Kelly's help, D communed
with the angels in a special language called Inokian. D
and Kelly conversed with some of the people you may
have learned about in religious schools, like Raphael and Michael
and Gabriel and Uriel. In his diaries, d earnestly record
(22:00):
these angelic conversations. Uriel would say things like, quote, we
cannot visit thee now at the twelfth hour, thou shalt
use us. Then at the twelfth hour Michael would say
something like, quote, divide the seven parts of the circle
everyone into seven by seven. All government is to my understanding,
(22:23):
It's not exactly a clear message. Sometimes D worried that
he and Kelly were communicating with devils instead of angels,
but for the most part D believed in Kelly. He
and Kelly even traveled to Poland and Prague together, where
they wound up banned by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph
(22:45):
the Second on suspicion of necromancy. Eventually, Kelly received a
message that he and D should share not only spiritual experience,
but something a little closer to home, their wives. This
experiment in sister wifing lasted only about one night. It
(23:08):
seemed like a horrible incident for D's wife Jane, and
in the end it sat very badly with D as well.
Shortly after his relationship with Kelly finally broke down. Still,
the timing of the wife swapping did throw the paternity
of one of D's sons into doubt. To Dee's credit,
(23:30):
he treated the boy as his own. He was an
involved father to all of his children with Jane, who
was his third wife. He was such an involved father
that he even asked one of his sons to be
a scrier for him, which ultimately wound up as a
failed experiment. By the final years of D's life, he
(23:51):
had outlived Jane and five of their eight children. He
had also outlived Queen Elizabeth. He died in in December
sixteen o eight at the age of eighty one. His
hidden diaries would be baked under the Sweet Shop Pies
fifty four years later. D may have been the inspiration
(24:13):
for a lot of canonical characters who are well known
to English lit majors. William Shakespeare's magician Prospero, Christopher Marlowe's
necromancer Faust, Edmund Spencer's meditative Old Sage in the House
of Temperance in The Fairy Queen. But above all, Dee's
(24:33):
legacy is as a figure who strived earnestly for divine revelation,
often in ways that seem profoundly unscientific to us today,
and yet even today, the great contemporary mathematician Edward Frankel
went on Lex Friedman's podcast this April to discuss the
(24:55):
present state of math. They talked about contemporary physicist and
the so far in vain quest for a grand, unifying
theory of everything, and they joked about when you show
up and meet God and there's one equation on the
board and the two of you just chuckle. Unlike D,
(25:16):
scholars today have separated math and science from religion. Yet
the image of God's chalkboard is still there, even metaphorically.
There's still some sense that when we try to derive
the mathematical and physical underpinnings of the world, we are
dealing with something bigger than ourselves. John D, for all
(25:39):
he foresaw and failed to foresee about the future, probably
would be happy about that. That's the story of Queen
Elizabeth's court astrologer John D. But stick around after a
brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about
(26:02):
his astrological birth chart. All right, for all of you
astrology buffs out there, let's dig some more into D's
birth chart. First of all, D wrote his chart in
the form of a square. More like the Vedic style
(26:24):
natal chart than the typical circular charts he might see today.
In a box at the center of D's chart, his
careful script recorded the following his birthday fifteen twenty seven
July thirteenth, his birth time four hours and two minutes
in the afternoon, and his birthplace latitude fifty one degrees
(26:48):
and thirty two seconds north latitude. We don't know what
D made of his own chart. Surely he read a
lot of meaning into it, but none of that made
its way to us today, which leaves many modern biographers
and podcasters a lot of interpretive wiggle room. Biographer Benjamin
(27:09):
Woolley notes that the star Antaris in the planet Mars
were together on D's chart, which, in his interpretation, was
a disturbing or threatening sign. We reached out to a
friend who's an amateur chart reader and with no knowledge
of whose chart this was. She looked at the eleventh
(27:29):
House and said, ruled by Mercury and reflects the archetypes
of Aquarius, so futuristic ideas, thinking about innovation and the future,
sort of space alien stuff. But a different friend replied
that astrology is pseudoscience and no place to end a
historical podcast, although to be fair, one could argue that historically,
(27:55):
during this period in question, astronomy was thought of as
a sign. But for those who think like the second
Friend and to be blunt, think like me. One final, cold,
hard fact the astronomy in D's chart is remarkably correct.
Using Ptolemy's formulas, decalculated the positions of the known planets
(28:19):
at the time of his birth with extreme accuracy, within
a few thirtieths of a degree. The least accurate calculation
he made was for mercury, and even then, with the
science of the sixteenth century, he was only off by
two degrees.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and
Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted
by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by
Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
(29:07):
rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
For more podcasts
Speaker 1 (29:18):
From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener Discretion advised.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The year was sixteen sixty two and the owners of
a little sweet shop in London were running their fingers
over their newest acquisition, an antique cedar chest. Their fingertips
found a strange opening in the body of the chest,
a hidden drawer. Perhaps they used a knife to pull
(00:33):
at it. The drawer opened, and inside not the treasures
they may have dreamt of, but a beaded necklace, a cross,
and some handwritten books the sweetshops made. Wasn't especially interested
in whatever someone's old books might have to say. She
had work to do. But as she baked her pies
(00:56):
atop the pages she was using as parchment paper, the
smell of caramelized sugar spinning in the air, it was
hard to ignore an uncomfortable feeling stirring in her gut.
When she looked at the books pages. They were strange. Yes,
they contained words and dated entries, as she might have expected,
(01:20):
But the pages also contained diagrams and signs and symbols
that she didn't understand. Unnerving symbols, triangles inscribed inside circles,
intricate stars that pointed toward what might have been Greek letters,
maps of what might have looked like planets, complex mathematical
(01:43):
symbols that could only be witchcraft. She quieted her mind.
She lifted the surely devilish pages one by one, and
one by one let them blacken in the fire beneath
her baking pies.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
But it didn't take.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Long before other people started noticing the strangeness of the
pages that hadn't been burned. One antiquarian realized that these
pages weren't just some devil's unhinged ramblings. They were the
lost diary of Renaissance, England's greatest conjurer, the occultist, once
(02:23):
employed as astronomer to Queen Elizabeth the First, a man
named John Dee. John Dee was one of the most
fascinating characters in all of Elizabethan court history. He was
a learned mathematician and also a magician, an astronomer, and
(02:45):
an astrologer. He was a trusted political advisor to the Queen.
He was a scientist, a cartographer, and even a special
effects technician. He was also an angelologist, a Christian lawmanser,
an occultist and a dabbler in alchemy. He was a
(03:05):
student of Hebrew and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.
In addition to Christianity, he believed he spoke with angels,
both angels from the Old Testament and some of his
own discovery. He recorded completely credulously his angelic conversations with
(03:26):
the likes of the angels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel.
It may seem impossible to us now that someone so
invested in the occult in sorcery could have had such
a serious political career in a royal court. But it
was the fifteen hundreds, the Renaissance. The classic Renaissance man
(03:50):
did it all in part because it all was not
so neatly divided into branches as it is today. Math,
magic and miracle were not entirely distinct from each other.
Politics were ordained by God, after all. Queen Elizabeth herself
believed in the royal touch, the magic of her fingertips
(04:14):
upon her subject's next to heal their ailments. The latest
optical science was recognizing that light could bend it separated
into rainbows through lenses and mirrors and crystals, where was
the line between that science and the idea that gazing
into a crystal ball might reveal concealed dimensions of God's creation,
(04:39):
just as it revealed the different bands of color concealed
within light. John Dee was a man who studied the heavens,
and in fifteen seventy two he looked up as all
of England cowered at a new star that suddenly appeared
in the night sky, followed by a range comet. In
(05:01):
fifteen seventy seven, and under the light of that comet,
the Conjuror John d made a political plan for his queen.
He encouraged Elizabeth to follow the path laid by King
Arthur one thousand years earlier, to expand England into a
term he coined, a British Empire. But the Great Conjurer
(05:26):
would also do something else. Under the light of that
mysterious comet. He would allow a man using a false
name into his home, a man who would ultimately be
his downfall. This was a man who would intercede with
D's angelic conversations and put a wedge between d and
(05:48):
the court life he was enjoying with Queen Elizabeth. When
the Great Conjurer looked up into the sky and calculated
the positions of the planets. It seems he couldn't have
seen just how tenuous his own position was. I'm Danish
schwartz and this is noble blood. John Dee was born
(06:14):
in or around London on July thirteenth, fifteen twenty seven,
during the reign of King Henry the Eighth. He was
the son of a merchant who served within the king's court.
If you're into astrology, you're in luck. With this episode,
Dee mapped his own birth chart, as well as the
astrological positionings of many of the events that took place
(06:37):
throughout the sixteenth century. According to D's calculations, Jupiter and
the Sun were strong together in Cancer at the moment
of his birth. I'm sure some of you listeners can
interpret those signs better than I can. Biographer Benjamin Woolley
notes that the moon and the Sun were in opposition
(06:59):
in d'cas charts, and even I could tell you that symbolically,
at least in literary terms. That suggests some internal conflict
that might have been brewing inside him. And so we
begin today's episode appropriately in astrology, a field with plenty
of adherents still today a realm that draws on astronomical
(07:23):
science and then, at least in my estimation, heads into
the direction of belief. By fifteen forty seven, John d
was nineteen and England was transitioning from the reign of
King Henry the Eighth to that of his short lived
only son, King Edward. At that time John Dee was
(07:45):
in the midst of some personal drama of his own,
and I mean drama in the quite literal sense. He
was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he was
putting on a play. It was a play called Peace
by an ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes, and it called for
(08:07):
a dung beetle to fly with an actor on its back.
This was the fifteen hundreds. D did not have the
benefits of electricity in staging his play, let alone projectors,
lasers or drones. And yet the actor on stage instructed
(08:27):
his scare a beetle to lift him into the sky,
and it did. There was a gasp in the audience
next craned backward to watch in awe. How was it
possible the flying beetle on stage was like a miracle,
or else some thought like magic or as some whispered
(08:52):
as the play went on, it was witchcraft. D must
have dealt with the devil. Only a few people in
the crowd recognized that the beatle must have been some
application of mathematics. D probably used some combination of Pulley's mirrors, springs,
(09:13):
and pressurized air or gas to create the illusion of
a flying bug. But this was a time when mathematics
as a discipline were viewed as essentially indistinguishable from conjuring.
D was cast under suspicion. In another life, we can
(09:34):
imagine that D might have gone on to become the
best practical effects guy of the Elizabethan age. We can
easily imagine a D who went on to be an
artist of the theater what D himself called art mathematical.
Of course, his beatle was considered wizardly. After all, what
(09:54):
is special effects technology today but something we call movie magic.
But aside from a brief stint when he was a student,
D wasn't really interested in the theater. For D, the
mathematical was only in service of his true aim, which
was the revelation of some universal godly truth through the
(10:18):
use of sciences that shaded without distinction in his mind
into magic, and eight years later that lack of distinction
between the occult and the approved came home to D
in the form of a court order. It was fifteen
(10:39):
fifty five and d was under arrest. This was during
Queen Mary's reign. D stood accused of witchcraft, a serious
charge under the new Catholic rule, which was definitely not
opposed to burning heretics at the stake. D was also
official accused of two other crimes, calculating and conjuring. Again,
(11:05):
in that language, you can see the closeness of math
and magic to this day. The word we use for
solving a math problem calculating, it means something very different
when applied to a person. A calculating person implies that
they're sly bad scheming. And John Dee stood accused of
(11:28):
doing the very thing that so many astrologically inclined bridesmaids
do for their friends today. That is, mapping the horoscopes
of Mary and her husband Philip to see if they
made a good match. Kind of touchingly, de found in
favor of Mary and Philip's union. It's pretty sweet, actually,
(11:51):
His calculations suggested that their marriage took place under an
auspicious rising sign for a new couple. But of course
flick Queen Mary, defensive about an unpopular marriage, didn't exactly
take the zodiac as a fun activity for a bridal shower. Luckily,
(12:11):
Forde he escaped the fate of the heretics and outlived Mary,
who died in fifteen fifty seven. That was when Mary's
younger Protestant half sister, Elizabeth, came to the throne. Twenty
five year old Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry
the Eighth and the beheaded Anne Boleyn. She was the
(12:34):
second woman ever to ascend to a throne that had
been until recently only occupied by men, and she needed
to secure her reign. She appointed her favorite Robert Dudley
to advise her, and Dudley, needing the good graces of
not only the earthly but heavenly realms as well as
(12:54):
he put together Elizabeth's coronation, decided that he needed the
one man in England who could read the planets better
than anyone else. Robert Dudley called upon John d. When
John d agreed to choose the date for Queen Elizabeth's coronation,
(13:17):
it was the beginning of a major life change for him.
After being arrested under Queen Mary's reign. Now he was
not only set free, but he was welcomed into Elizabeth's court.
As his first order of business, D consulted the stars.
He measured and mapped the angles between the planets, the
(13:37):
positions of major constellations, the twelve astrological houses, and rising signs.
At last, he decided that January fifteenth, fifteen fifty nine
would be the most Heavens approved date for the beginning
of the Elizabethan Age. Obviously, Mars was in Scorpio that day.
(14:00):
After the coronation, history loses track of D for about
five years. I like to imagine the stage magician's sleight
of hand. Here D ducking into a cleverly designed set
piece through which the audience of history can't see him.
But he was somewhere all along, studying the Jewish mystical
(14:22):
tradition of Kabbalah. He was seeking the secret names of God,
learning the Hebrew language and its mystical numerology, the alphabet
arranged around the first letter olive, middle mem, last tav,
spelling out emmett, the Hebrew word for truth. He was
seeking divine truth in increasingly more mystical modes, but D
(14:47):
was far from done with politics. Once history catches up
with him again, he steps out from behind the curtain.
On June fourteenth, fifteen sixty four, when he and Queen
Elizabeth are walking together at Greenwich Palace on the south
bank of the River Thames. D was holding something in
(15:07):
his hands, a slim book, and he was brimming with
excitement and perhaps a little bit of fear. He was
about to show the Queen the work of his soul,
his Monas Hieroglyphica. Listener, allow me to tell you the
monas is truly wild. It's a whole book dedicated to
(15:31):
explaining a mystical symbol of divine revelation that D invented himself.
It looks kind of like a cross between the artist
formerly known as Prince Symbol and Harry Potter's Deathly Hallows.
D's symbol was a millage of Latin wordplay, alchemy, numerology,
(15:53):
celestial calculations, and you know, his idea of the unity
of all things. So was no doubt excited but nervous
as he walked alongside the Queen, no doubt remembering how
he had been arrested for doing a Queen's horoscope. Years before,
Elizabeth had taken D's astrological advice for her coronation date.
(16:17):
Though perhaps she would be open to his new book
of divine celestial work, or perhaps she would have him
arrested on the spot. He offered her the book. Elizabeth
paused for a moment, observing the symbol. D's pulse pounded.
Then he saw Elizabeth's eyes light up in curiosity. I
(16:41):
will be your scholar, she told D if you explain
this work to me. And so John D sat with
the Queen of England and described to her his special
invented brand of mysticism. John D and the Queen went
(17:03):
on to have a good relationship. She paid him occasional
visits at his home. She consulted with him about whether
she should marry one of her suitors, the Duke of Anjou.
He said she shouldn't, and she didn't. But the greatest
cause De advocated with Elizabeth, and the one that would
mark ultimately the end of his close relationship with her
(17:27):
at court, was a bit of political fortune telling that
would ultimately come to pass in a big way. It
was D's deep belief that Elizabeth should set out to
create a British empire. D wasn't just fortune telling when
it came to this idea of empire, he was actively
(17:48):
promoting it. As Sir Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe,
D was coining the term British empire. He was hearkening
back to King Arthur a thousand years before, arguing that
the British right to an extensive empire had been established
a millennium ago. He encouraged Elizabeth to challenge the Spanish
(18:11):
and Portuguese claims to the New World, especially Spain's claims
in North America. His suggestions were even more persuasive than usual,
because just as D was petitioning Elizabeth on the idea
of expansionism, there was a strange thing going on in
the world, something that could seem like a message directly
(18:35):
from the heavens, something no one in all of Britain,
in all of Europe could possibly miss. All anyone needed
to do was step outside and crane their necks back
as they had years ago to gaze at John D's
flying beetle on stage. But this time the magic was
taking place on a much bigger stage, the night sky itself,
(19:00):
And if anyone looked up to the night sky in
November of fifteen seventy seven, there it would be the great, glittering,
terrifying thing, the bright light with a luminous tail, a comet.
Many believed that the cosmic event signaled some vexation from God,
(19:23):
some calamity to befall mankind, or thought many of the
English to specifically befall England or the Queen. But Elizabeth
wasn't going to believe just anybody's fears about this strange
celestial happening. She was going to consult one man when
it came to the skies, John D. The comet is
(19:46):
nothing to fear, he advised her. It is not important
of approaching doom, but of your approaching greatness. Perhaps the
bright light with the tale that arcing through the sky
is a a sign of England's destiny to be the
bright light with a long tail that is a global empire.
(20:09):
Of course, D's vision for English expansionism is exactly what
would happen. The English would defeat the Spanish Armada in
fifteen eighty eight, when D was not yet sixty years old.
But ultimately D had nothing to do with Elizabeth's actions,
as she set out in favor of the empire that
(20:30):
he had initially encouraged. The comet lit the sky, and
D's eyes were drawn heavenward. He lost interest in court.
He had begun his life with one interest, and it
was not the earthly realms of battle and conquest and bloodshed,
though his concept of empire would inevitably contain all three.
(20:51):
The comet faded from the sky, and John D left
his influence at court behind. From there, the rest of
D's life became ever more involved in the occult. He
worked closely with scriers, people who divined things via the
(21:13):
use of objects like crystal balls. Some or I might
say all of these were frauds. D's closest scrier was
a man who first entered his life calling himself Edward Talbot.
Talbot would later re enter D's life using his real name,
Edward Kelly, which goes to show the type of upstanding
(21:36):
honesty we're dealing with here. With Kelly's help, D communed
with the angels in a special language called Inokian. D
and Kelly conversed with some of the people you may
have learned about in religious schools, like Raphael and Michael
and Gabriel and Uriel. In his diaries, d earnestly record
(22:00):
these angelic conversations. Uriel would say things like, quote, we
cannot visit thee now at the twelfth hour, thou shalt
use us. Then at the twelfth hour Michael would say
something like, quote, divide the seven parts of the circle
everyone into seven by seven. All government is to my understanding,
(22:23):
It's not exactly a clear message. Sometimes D worried that
he and Kelly were communicating with devils instead of angels,
but for the most part D believed in Kelly. He
and Kelly even traveled to Poland and Prague together, where
they wound up banned by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph
(22:45):
the Second on suspicion of necromancy. Eventually, Kelly received a
message that he and D should share not only spiritual experience,
but something a little closer to home, their wives. This
experiment in sister wifing lasted only about one night. It
(23:08):
seemed like a horrible incident for D's wife Jane, and
in the end it sat very badly with D as well.
Shortly after his relationship with Kelly finally broke down. Still,
the timing of the wife swapping did throw the paternity
of one of D's sons into doubt. To Dee's credit,
(23:30):
he treated the boy as his own. He was an
involved father to all of his children with Jane, who
was his third wife. He was such an involved father
that he even asked one of his sons to be
a scrier for him, which ultimately wound up as a
failed experiment. By the final years of D's life, he
(23:51):
had outlived Jane and five of their eight children. He
had also outlived Queen Elizabeth. He died in in December
sixteen o eight at the age of eighty one. His
hidden diaries would be baked under the Sweet Shop Pies
fifty four years later. D may have been the inspiration
(24:13):
for a lot of canonical characters who are well known
to English lit majors. William Shakespeare's magician Prospero, Christopher Marlowe's
necromancer Faust, Edmund Spencer's meditative Old Sage in the House
of Temperance in The Fairy Queen. But above all, Dee's
(24:33):
legacy is as a figure who strived earnestly for divine revelation,
often in ways that seem profoundly unscientific to us today,
and yet even today, the great contemporary mathematician Edward Frankel
went on Lex Friedman's podcast this April to discuss the
(24:55):
present state of math. They talked about contemporary physicist and
the so far in vain quest for a grand, unifying
theory of everything, and they joked about when you show
up and meet God and there's one equation on the
board and the two of you just chuckle. Unlike D,
(25:16):
scholars today have separated math and science from religion. Yet
the image of God's chalkboard is still there, even metaphorically.
There's still some sense that when we try to derive
the mathematical and physical underpinnings of the world, we are
dealing with something bigger than ourselves. John D, for all
(25:39):
he foresaw and failed to foresee about the future, probably
would be happy about that. That's the story of Queen
Elizabeth's court astrologer John D. But stick around after a
brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about
(26:02):
his astrological birth chart. All right, for all of you
astrology buffs out there, let's dig some more into D's
birth chart. First of all, D wrote his chart in
the form of a square. More like the Vedic style
(26:24):
natal chart than the typical circular charts he might see today.
In a box at the center of D's chart, his
careful script recorded the following his birthday fifteen twenty seven
July thirteenth, his birth time four hours and two minutes
in the afternoon, and his birthplace latitude fifty one degrees
(26:48):
and thirty two seconds north latitude. We don't know what
D made of his own chart. Surely he read a
lot of meaning into it, but none of that made
its way to us today, which leaves many modern biographers
and podcasters a lot of interpretive wiggle room. Biographer Benjamin
(27:09):
Woolley notes that the star Antaris in the planet Mars
were together on D's chart, which, in his interpretation, was
a disturbing or threatening sign. We reached out to a
friend who's an amateur chart reader and with no knowledge
of whose chart this was. She looked at the eleventh
(27:29):
House and said, ruled by Mercury and reflects the archetypes
of Aquarius, so futuristic ideas, thinking about innovation and the future,
sort of space alien stuff. But a different friend replied
that astrology is pseudoscience and no place to end a
historical podcast, although to be fair, one could argue that historically,
(27:55):
during this period in question, astronomy was thought of as
a sign. But for those who think like the second
Friend and to be blunt, think like me. One final, cold,
hard fact the astronomy in D's chart is remarkably correct.
Using Ptolemy's formulas, decalculated the positions of the known planets
(28:19):
at the time of his birth with extreme accuracy, within
a few thirtieths of a degree. The least accurate calculation
he made was for mercury, and even then, with the
science of the sixteenth century, he was only off by
two degrees.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and
Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted
by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by
Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
(29:07):
rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
For more podcasts
Speaker 1 (29:18):
From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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