Open Channel Dee

Dear Folk,

Happiest of Solar Returns (birthday anniversaries, sort of) to a mathematician, an alchemist and an astrologer to queens, Was he a scoundrel or a dupe? A fool or wiser than any of us? You decide. For Dr. John Dee was born on this date, July 13, 1527.

Dee was a whiz kid. At fifteen he entered Cambridge U and was made an Underreader (staff at low pay) before he graduated. After Cambridge, he decided to get some more education (wise move) and went over to the Continent (1547 - 1550). He wowed them in Paris with lectures on the recently dug up works of Euclid. Wasn't that a golden age: Euclid getting a packed houses? When he got back home, he was recommended to Queen Mary Tudor. She hired him as her astrologer (see: Nancy Reagan wasn't the first, after all) but that gig turned sour when he was accused of being a magician. I guess it was that rabbit that kept popping out of his hat.

While in the slammer, he met Elizabeth Tudor (the future Lizzie I). Lizzie was being held in protective custody by her half-sis, Bloody Mary. Dee and Lizzie were both in rather scary straits, smart folk, young, well educated - nerds in trouble. My confidential sources do not tell me how close they became but it was a lifelong friendship that they struck up. Later on when Lizzie was queen, she gave John money and protected him from charges of witchcraft. Pretty important meeting they had, I would say.

Dee not only did Lizzie's astrological advice (he even picked out the date for her coronation) but also gave advice on navigation to English pilots who were exploring the New World. He taught Lizzie how to interpret mystic writings. Said she was a very avid pupil. Dee had an enormous library (over 4000 books) of very rare tomes which he rescued from the Protestants set on burning them all. Many of these books had been in the Roman Catholic Church monasteries of the which had been dissolved in England during the Reformation.

In 1564, Dee published his most important book, the Monas Hieroglyphica, (One Hieroglyph). He said that there was a primal symbol which incorporated the blue print of all of reality. Drop this symbol upon the lake of possibilities and all matter and energy would organize into a Universe very much like this one (with a few less Starbucks and Blockbuster Videos, though). What this symbol looked like, I am not quite sure. It was not the thing used by the Artist formerly known as Prince. If any of you have a good copy of it, scan it in and send it to me. *G* Just wonder if it would cause the Internet to crystallize out. Al Gore would just have to reinvent it then.

In 1581 Dee's life took another strange turn. He was praying and was visited by the angel Uriel (played by Christopher Walken.) Uriel told him there was a mission for Dee. Uriel dropped off an egg-shaped crystal, Dee later called it his "shew-stone," which Dee was to use to talk with the dead and with angels. It was a sort of psychic cellular phone. BTW, can anyone tell me why I have this unreasonable wish to grab cell phones away from people and smash them to little plastic bits? I am just afraid I shall succumb to temptation some day. Maybe I need to see Dr. Dee about this. But I digress.

Just like so much of technology, the shew-stone was a bit touchy, not fully beta-tested. Dee found that he had little or no luck in using it. As William Burroughs might say, "He was an unworthy vessel." He had to hire others to look into it and tell him what they saw. Dee wrote it all down.

The most enterprising of these seers was Edward Kelley. Kelley had been a lawyer and a ventriloquist. Oh, he actually had had his ears cropped (ouch!) for being a counterfeiter before he met Dee. That Kelley had also been accused of necromancy - using dead bodies for magickal divination - did not deter lovable old Dr. Dee from hiring the morally-impaired. From Kelley, Dee learned that through the crystal angelic beings were attempting to teach Dee the Enochian language which was spoken by angels and Adam and Eve when they lived in the Garden of Eden. It appears that Dee and Kelley were trying to contact the ancient ones, the Watchers, known in the Bible as the Nephelim.

Small aside about Enochian. Some of my sources think either Dee or Kelley were improvising this as they went along. Some think Dee had an ancient copy of the Book of Enoch in Ethiopian which he could not translate and so just made up some stuff sounding like it. One source speculates that it really was a code that Dee used as a spy on the Continent for Queen Lizzie. That is a cool thought: former cell block mates, now Royal Astrologer and Queen, sending encrypted spy messages back and forth. I rather like that.

There is a rather amusing story that Mr. Kelley told Dr. Dee that the spirits wanted them to hold everything in common. That included each other's wives. Although Dr. Dee was not too happy about that (there seemed no magnetism between himself and the rather plain Mrs. Kelley) he still was game to obey those voices. Mrs. Dee and Mrs. Kelley had other thoughts about that and put an end to those shenanagans right away. Really, Mr. Kelley!

Dee and Kelley had to leave England because the preachers really were down on anything which smacked of magick. These guys were as bad as the Harry Potter books, at least. A mob destroyed much of Dee's books. Dee and Kelley toured Poland and Bohemia from 1583-1589, giving magic shows and mystifying princes. Wow! I wish I had a tee shirt from that road tour. In 1595, Kelley got busted in Prague by the Emperor Rudolf II for wizardry and sorcery. He tried to escape but fell to his death. Dee returned home to a quiet life protected by Queen Lizzie. He was appointed a warden of Christ's College in Manchester and even got a small stipend from the Queen.

In the last days of his life he was reduced to telling fortunes and had to sell his books one by one to have something to eat. He died in 1608 in Mortlake, England. His work is still regarded highly by modern alchemists, and may have been very influential upon the mind of Adam Weishaupt, father of the Bavarian Illuminati. But that, as they say, is another story.

What have we learned from Dr. Dee (and Mr. Kelley)? Friends help friends move, but real friends help friends move bodies? Just because a being is disincarnate does not make it wise or benevolent? Be careful to whom you show magic tricks and always, always emphasize they are *tricks*? Lawyers can be unreliable mouthpieces, especially for the dead? I like the Girl Scout song "Make New Friends but Keep the Old."

As always, forward these to whomever might be amused but keep my name and sig attached. You don't want I should send Uriel over to hit you with a shew-stone, believe me.

Doing something magickal every day,
J. Ellsworth Weaver

SCA - Sir Balthazar of Endor
AS - Polyphemus Theognis
TRV - Sebastian Yeats