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Black Magic?

Dr John Dee (1527-1608)

Some say that Dr John Dee's genius led him to become deranged and deluded, others believe he was in league with angels and devils. He caused uproar in 16th-century Europe with his 'angelic conversations' - and he inspired the character of Prospero in William Shakespeare's The Tempest and the main character in Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. But was Dee really 'a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits' or simply the dupe of a clever con man?

Early promise

When he was still a child, it became clear that John Dee was an exceptional student. At 15, he got a place at St John's College, Cambridge University, and quickly built a reputation as a mathematician, philosopher and astrologer. His skills were so renowned that by his early twenties he began drawing up astrological charts for Mary Tudor, the fiercely Catholic Queen who'd come to the throne in 1553.

But Dee lived in a time where superstition and fear of the supernatural was rife and when he made the mistake of presenting Mary with an unfavourable horoscope, she charged him with witchcraft and imprisoned him at Hampton Court. Luckily Mary relented and released him, but this incident began a habit of arrest and release on the Queen's whim. Unsurprisingly, Dee became secretive about his blossoming interest in the occult.

In 1558, Dee's fortunes took an upturn. Mary died and her Protestant sister Elizabeth came to the throne, immediately consulting Dee on the best astrological date for her coronation. Free from the suspicious Mary, Dee began to delve deeper into the spirit-world. He came across a copy of the Stenographia, a text written in the 1400s by a German monk called Trimethius. It had a profound effect on him, containing information on magic numbers, ciphers and symbols. More importantly, however, it talked of angel magic. Dee, insatiable for otherworldly knowledge, was enthralled.

Enter Edward Kelley

By 1581, three years after his third marriage, Dee was reporting many strange dreams and disturbing noises in his house. Convinced that spirits were trying to contact him he began crystal gazing, or scrying, to communicate with them.

A year later, Dee met an Irishman named Edward Talbot, a necromancer and alchemist. Dee, already convinced that the angels had chosen him as their messenger, showed Talbot a shewstone, or crystal ball. Talbot proved a natural and began to relay angelic messages to Dee, who wrote down every detail with growing excitement. Shortly after their meeting, Talbot changed his name to Kelley, perhaps in an attempt to hide his criminal past. Dee was unconcerned, however. He was desperate to continue his conversations with the angels and convinced Kelley to continue scrying.

Angels or devils?

In 1583, Dee and Kelley produced what was to be their most lasting legacy - the Liber Logaeth, or Book of Enoch.. This comprised a language dictated by the angels, made up of a series of squares containing letters and numbers. The angels told Dee that, when complete, it would offer him perfect truth from God.

Despite this promise, financial times were hard for Dee and he began to question the angels about treasure, but was sternly warned against the pursuit of wealth. Kelley didn't like this as his interest had always been more in riches than divine answers. He began to complain bitterly. To force him into continuing their sessions, Dee began paying Kelley a wage. As the 'angelic conversations' drew on, however, Kelley began to have fits of terror. He became certain the angels were in fact dark forces and demons. But Dee was a man possessed and despite Kelley's growing exhaustion and fits of terror, the work continued.

It is difficult to know what really happening during Dee and Kelley's sessions. The levels of concentration required by Kelley were enormous and perhaps the intensity of his scrying led to delusions. Or perhaps, as is often suggested, Kelley was conning Dee. Whatever the reality, the doctor's belief was unfaltering and when a young angel called Madini warned them that Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's spymaster, was suspicious of their activities, Dee and Kelley fled to Poland.

Myth in exile

Early in 1584, the angels revealed a mission for Dee. He was to visit the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, in Prague. Once there, he was to tell him he was evil. Such was Dee's belief in Kelley's scrying that he complied, telling the king to reform or God would put his foot against his breast and throw him down. That Rudolf didn't execute Dee is a miracle, but on a later visit Dee also told him that the angels had promised him the secrets of the Philosopher's Stone. This, above all else, may have persuaded Rudolf to keep Dee alive.

Dee was always struggling for money, and for many years had been obsessed with the finding the mythical Philosopher's Stone. When claims of heresy and the conjuring of evil spirits were levied against Dee by the Pope in 1586, Rudolf arranged for Dee and Kelley to hide out with his friend Vilem Rozemberk in Trebon to practice alchemy. It seems the Holy Roman Emperor wanted the Philosopher's Stone badly. Dee and Kelley began practising alchemy in earnest and Arthur, Dee's son, later claimed that they did transmute base metals into gold in this period.

Dee and Kelley also continued scrying, but Kelley was again becoming exhausted and the angels were becoming much more dark and disturbing. Kelley once more raised fears they were dealing with demons but the single-minded Dee was deaf to his concerns.

Disturbing demands

The angels had not yet delivered the final key to the Enochian language, but in April 1587 they made a disturbing demand. Kelley told Dee they were required to swap wives, a sin that would damn both their souls to hell. Remembering Abraham sacrificing his son for God, Dee agreed. His wife Jane, who despised Kelley, was unhappy with the idea, and even more so when she became pregnant. Wife-swapping also changed the relationship of the men, and in 1589 they finally parted company when Dee and his family returned to England.

Dee wrote a total of 79 manuscripts in his lifetime, but the period he spent scrying with Kelley has overshadowed many of his other achievements. When Elizabeth I died in 1603, her successor, James I, was deeply opposed to any form of magic and Dee's quest for divine knowledge was over. After Jane's death, he retired to Mortlake, the village of his birth, and died in poverty in 1608, never completing the Enochian language or receiving the wisdom that his angels had promised him. His legend didn't die, however, and his Enochian keys are still used by occultists to this day.

In his own words

Echoes of Dee: Enochian magic

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