tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43753421260672292292024-03-05T07:20:20.759-08:00DR JOHN DEE Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-26823651623635960092023-09-21T09:39:00.001-07:002023-09-21T09:41:21.183-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: center;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-family: Oswald; font-size: medium;">
At an Extraordinary General Meeting on 20th November 2018, the decision was made to close the John Dee of Mortlake Society</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-32905377586327299642014-11-01T02:45:00.000-07:002018-11-21T00:54:51.618-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-64459685021572613812013-05-17T03:52:00.000-07:002018-11-21T00:50:39.446-08:00The Arch Conjurer of England<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>Glyn Parry. The Arch-Conjurer of England: John Dee. Yale University Press, 2012.</strong><br />
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Glyn Parry's new life of John Dee overturns many of the conventionally held views about this unique character. Living just across the road from the site of his house, laboratory and library in Mortlake my image of him was always as a white-bearded sage, living in a then-remote country village between the royal courts at Richmond and Whitehall; but conveniently situated beside the river for the visitors - from merchant venturers to the Queen herself - who would call on him for the benefit of his learning and his library.<br />
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It is difficult to appreciate now just how mainstream astrology and alchemy were in establishment circles at this period. When figures like Dee came under criticism and suspicion it was more often because their practices approached common superstition and 'conjuring' rather than the purer alchemical search for the Philosopher's stone - a prize which no European monarch could afford not to seek. </div>
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Dee lived in an age when the boundaries between magic and science were still unformed, and also when religion and politics were one and the same. Far from being a scholar in an ivory tower, Dee was deeply involved in the court and international politics of the time. Dee's father was an important figure in the court of Henry VIII, who made and lost a fortune through the sometimes extremely dubious operation of a City tax monopoly, possible theft of church plate, then involvement in political plots involving the royal succession - he supported plotters who planned to put the young Jane Gray on the throne - her reign lasted just nine days. <br />
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Like many other churchmen of the period John Dee’s loyalties were more than a little flexible through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, and there seems to have been as much re-writing of history and political spin over these manoeuvres than there has been over any 'dodgy dossier' of our own time. Although this may make Dee seem a cynical opportunist, Parry makes it clear that for any person in his position this was not just a policy of - literal - survival, but also a reflection of the religious ambiguity and political turmoil of the period. For example, it will be a surprise to many to discover that far from being the loyal Protestant cleric, Dee was actually consecrated as a Catholic priest, in a lightning process where he was taken though all the necessary processes in one day! <br />
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Dee's eventual position in the Elizabethan court was important and far more central than his image as the purely intellectual 'Magus of Mortlake' might make it appear, but like all courtiers he would be in and out of favour to some extent or other throughout his life, and although at times Elizabeth may have ridden past his Mortlake home without stopping for a chat at the garden gate, she was always supportive of his alchemical and navigational works, and would offer him some help at the low periods in his fortunes.<br />
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The world of the Tudor monarchs was a snake-pit of conspiracy, with invasion plotting, rumour-mongering and prediction of assassination, divine intervention and natural calamity aimed at undermining one faction or another. Dee was deeply involved in this, and perhaps one of the most surprising revelations of Parry's research is just how involved he became in these apocalyptic prophecies. He produced astrological predictions that Elizabeth would rule all Europe and become the 'Empress of the Last Days' before the end of history - Elizabeth was at one point offered the throne of Holland and Flanders after the end of Hapsburg rule. Dee is credited with the invention of the term 'British Empire', but this referred not only to the idea of an Empire rivalling the Spanish and Portuguese in America, but the recovery of an Arthurian Empire in Europe including not only the Low Countries but also France and Spain! Unfortunately, Dee's main problem was that although he was a key political figure in the Elizabethan Court he was just not very good at politics.<br />
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One of the most controversial parts of Dee's life relates to his relationship with his 'scryer' or medium, Edward Kelley, and biographers have usually portrayed this as Dee's great intellectual failing, to have been taken in by a man who is seen - from a modern perspective - as a fraud. Parry presents a far more nuanced depiction of this relationship, showing that figures such as Kelley were employed for similar purposes by most other magical practitioners of the period. Dee's belief in the genuineness of Kelley's visions would have been considered quite normal at the time, and increasingly it seems that Kelley himself believed his angelic messages. Even Kelley's role in the infamous 'wife-swapping' episode is far less clear-cut than we might think.</div>
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After Dee's return from Europe, when Kelley remained behind in Bohemia, the latter's stature with their former patrons rose to equal that of Dee, and back in England Elizabeth was as likely to seek news of Kelley from Dee as to learn of his own work. It is remarkable the extent to which Elizabeth herself was involved in practical alchemy, maintaining laboratories at Hampton Court where she would work alongside her own alchemists. <br />
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The final years of Dee's life saw his gradual removal from court life, his removal to Manchester as Warden of the Collegiate Church, another position where his poor grasp of political intrigue and posturing worked against him, although it was not quite the exile that Elizabeth and some of her courtiers though it might be - he spent as much time in Mortlake as in the northern town. The accession of James I/VI meant Dee's final eclipse as a public figure.</div>
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Parry has gone back to many of the original sources in plotting Dee's life through the hugely complex course of Elizabethan religious politics, which is his academic specialism, and there is a copious list of references to source documents. At times this can be baffling to the general reader and a fairly detailed knowledge of Elizabethan history would certainly be an advantage to get the most from this book. However this has uncovered a great deal of previously un-noticed material which overturns many accepted views of Dee. -- <em><span style="color: #666666;">John Rimmer</span></em>.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-56092875621985441482013-05-01T06:14:00.000-07:002016-10-12T01:46:52.535-07:00John Dee Memorial Plaque<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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On 7th May 2013 Dr Dee's biographer Benjamin Woolley unveiled a beautifully inscribed plaque commemorating the doctor's life and his otherwise unmarked last resting place in the church. This is, as far as we know, the only public commemoration of the life of one of the most influential figures of the Elizabethan era anywhere in the world, and as such is sure to become a site for all admirers and students of John Dee to visit.</div>
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The plaque was elegantly designed and cut by <a href="http://emilyhoffnung.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #a52e11;">Emily Hoffnung</span></a>, one of the finest letter-cutters working today, using slate from a Welsh quarry in a tribute to Dee's own Welsh roots. Here are pictures of the plaque in-situ on the wall, and Ms Hoffnung displaying the plaque before installing it in the church.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-74492633630057883632013-05-01T04:32:00.000-07:002018-11-21T00:48:52.831-08:00The Queen's Conjurer<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Dr Dee</span></b><br />
from <i>The Guardian</i>, Saturday 31 March 2001.<br />
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Dr John Dee is a Jekyll and Hyde kind of historical figure - intellectual giant or shady charlatan, depending on your point of view. Born in 1527, when England was enjoying that flowering of art and learning we call the Renaissance, he trained with the scientist and technical instrument-maker Gemma Frisius at Louvain in the Low Countries, and went on to become a mathematician of distinction.</div>
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A personal adviser and official writer of technical "position papers" on navigational and maritime policy matters to Queen Elizabeth I, his opinion was sought by the Tudor government on investment in new technologies and projects to smelt metals . He was a consultant to Martin Frobisher's 1576 attempt to discover the Northwest Passage (a northerly trading route by sea to the lucrative markets in Russia and beyond), and trained Frobisher's team of adventurers in navigational techniques. Dee's preface to the first English-language edition of the Greek mathematician Euclid's <i>Elementes of Geometrie</i> (1570), edited by Sir Henry Billingsley, is regarded as a landmark piece of writing on the applications of pure mathematics in science and technology.</div>
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On the other hand, Dee associated with disreputable "skryvers", or spiritual mediums, such as William Backhouse and Edward Kelley, and was widely known in his lifetime as a "notorious conjuror". He cast horoscopes, dabbled in alchemy and participated in elaborate attempts to acquire knowledge by consulting spirits summoned with the aid of crystal balls, spells and incantations derived from mysterious manuscripts. Many of those he associated with in these activities were well-known con-artists and fraudsters; some were religious dissidents and informers, others out-and-out criminals.</div>
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Benjamin Woolley has woven together the often contradictory evidence from the fragmentary remains concerning the life of Dee with considerable circumspection, so that the reader can make up his or her own mind over which Dr Dee they would rather believe in. This in itself makes <i>The Queen's Conjuror</i> an important book. All earlier biographers of Dee have plumped for their favourite version and suppressed material that fails to support it. If their inclination is towards serious history of science and mathematics, they mould from the fragments a serious Dee, who occasionally (like Newton) lost his head and dabbled in angel-summoning and alchemy. If their own tendency is towards communing with spirits or prophesying the future with the help of astrology, pentangles and magical stones, then they faithfully transcribe the fantastic visions relayed by Kelley to Dee and recorded in the latter's diary. There have been, it has to be said, a good number of these, with the result that Dee has become a popular-culture "magician" - he makes a cameo appearance in Derek Jarman's movie Jubilee , granting Elizabeth I a vision of what London will be like in the 1970s.</div>
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Of course, in allowing the reader to judge, Woolley does have to fudge a little. Lurid visions described by skryver Kelley at a seance and recorded by Dee in his diaries are reported by Woolley as though both men actually saw the apparition. Dee writes that "Suddenly, there seemed to come out of my Oratory a Spiritual Creature, like a pretty girl of seven or nine years of age, attired on her head with her hair rolled up before, and hanging down very long behind, with a gown of Sey changeable green and red, and with a train . . . And so I considered . . . the divers reports which Edward Kelley made to me of this pretty maiden." Here Woolley lets us believe Dee too saw (or thought he saw) her skipping about the room. In fact, as always, Kelley was the medium through whom Dee addressed the supposed spirit presence and who answered through Kelley's mouth.</div>
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Nonetheless, Woolley's level-headed, meticulously researched and readable book does allow us to stand back from the jumble of evidence - rescued, as Woolley elegantly shows via his preface and epilogue, by several partisan 17th-century scholars and mystical sympathisers - to assess the historical figure afresh. What stands out is Dee's steady association with known intelligence-gatherers - spies - as he moved between England, the Low Countries, Poland and Bohemia in the 1580s and 1590s. Whatever else Dee was doing as he criss-crossed Europe, trying, with increasing desperation, to realise the material wealth to which he believed his arcane knowledge entitled him, it looks as though he was collecting and sending back to Protestant England sensitive information from Catholic territories wherever he stopped.</div>
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Wealth, in the end, eluded him. In a final irony, it was the fraudulent Kelley who, for a time, lived the life of a lord under the patronage of Rudolph II in Prague. Dee eked out a meagre living back in London, petitioning unsuccessfully again and again to clear his reputation of the slur of "conjurer" and trying to regain his position as the distinguished early scientist and mathematician he probably was.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-89253949383290039392013-05-01T04:22:00.000-07:002018-11-21T01:01:35.932-08:00John Dee of Mortlake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<strong>Nicholas Dakin. John Dee of Mortlake. Barnes and Mortlake Local History Society, 2011</strong>.<br />
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Searching for ‘John Dee’ on Amazon brings up over 600 books by or about him. Many of these are detailed historical monographs, or attempts to understand and explain the details of his mystical and philosophical thought. And there are, indeed, some very interesting and readable biographies. <br />
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Nicholas Dakin’s book is not specifically a biography of John Dee (1527 - 1609), although it does give a broad outline of the life of this incredibly complex character. Nor is it an exposition of Dee’s occult beliefs, his mathematical work or his philosophical system. Rather it is a straightforward explanation of why John Dee is important and why Mortlake should honour the memory of its greatest resident<br />
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This book is called John Dee of Mortlake, and the ‘of Mortlake’ is the important bit. The author shows that John Dee’s house, with its library and its laboratory, was the centre of a great intellectual network that stretched across Europe, and in a way, across the Atlantic as well.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDFsoM3_vd_OcBWDkRZDVWe8QJLdj81oiKNb6HsB9RWvVHHBpgRZdtiRer-1GzxWEjiZQrPwB183YZRZfjdutY4LuGiivG7sSKgDa1F_xsi8eqw9mnTFLJ8PBtQlkiyYTrCyNwgQkCvKE/s1600/book+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDFsoM3_vd_OcBWDkRZDVWe8QJLdj81oiKNb6HsB9RWvVHHBpgRZdtiRer-1GzxWEjiZQrPwB183YZRZfjdutY4LuGiivG7sSKgDa1F_xsi8eqw9mnTFLJ8PBtQlkiyYTrCyNwgQkCvKE/s320/book+cover.jpg" width="212" /></a>He reconstructs Dee’s house and garden in Mortlake High Street from the barest hints of description in Dee’s diaries, and accounts by people who knew him. He describes the <em>Bibliotheca Mortlacensis</em>, the great library Dee created at Mortlake, probably one of the largest collections of books in the world at that time.</div>
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Next to the river, and convenient for travelling to and from London and to the Queen’s palace at Richmond, the Mortlake house received many visitors: Queen Elizabeth herself, explorers like Martin Frobisher, as well as some of the great Tudor noblemen and foreign statesmen. He taught Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster Lord Walsingham the art of code-breaking, others came to consult Dee for advice on navigation, for instruction in the use of mathematical instruments and maps, and in some cases to have horoscopes cast for them. Astrology was seen as a scientific practice, in the days before science and magic parted company. <br />
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But besides these affairs of state and Dee’s great project of promoting a ‘British Empire’ - a phrase he used first - we are also shown the domestic life of Dee and his family and his life in Mortlake. Although local children were sometimes frightened by his appearance, and reputation - entirely unjustified - as a sorcerer, he was also seen as a peacemaker in disputes between local families. </div>
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We learn of Jane Dee, a dutiful wife who bore him eight children, and sometimes despaired of the domestic chaos she witnessed around her, but who was very much her own person, juggling her domestic duties, but also helping organise the transport of her entire household across Europe when her husband travelled to the Court of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague.</div>
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The author challenges some of the stereotypes that have developed over the centuries, of Dee as a black magician, necromancer, or someone who raised the spirits of the dead, and shows him as a devout Christian whose so-called ‘occult’ work was an attempt to gain for himself a greater understanding of the word of God. He also gives a very clear explanation of the nature of Dee’s relationship with the medium Edward Kelley, carefully weighing up whether he was a charlatan, a chancer, or he genuinely believed he had talents which would be useful to Dee.</div>
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Dee was an astrologer, alchemist, mathematician, navigator, philosopher, spy, clergyman, traveller, and magician. Many of the 600 books on Amazon will tell you all about those parts of his life, but it would be difficult to find one which will give you a clearer, more entertaining and straightforward account of the man who made the little town of Mortlake into the centre of the world of scholarship and learning. <em><span style="color: #666666;">-- John Rimmer</span></em></div>
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<b>Order the book from Amazon here:</b><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-24039569733742610042013-01-01T04:04:00.000-08:002013-06-24T04:19:24.816-07:00Dr Dee, The Opera<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-size: large;">DR DEE THE OPERA.</span></strong> <br />
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Reviewed by Geraldine Beskin<br />
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Damon Albarn is a hugely successful and versatile musician. He is ambitious where his projects are concerned and immerses himself in a large number of them. So far, so typical of a creative man but when sincerity and scholarship are added to the mix, extraordinary things happen. <em>Dr Dee The Opera</em> is a classic example of that as the life and times of the Elizabethan polymath being set to music is not an obvious thing to do. Using classically trained voices and orchestra with World musicians, modern dress and Tudor costumes made this opera for modern minds and ears. </div>
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<a href="http://static.squarespace.com/static/511a0c27e4b0735b66261568/t/511a2ca8e4b0d00cab688c3c/1360669865365" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="http://static.squarespace.com/static/511a0c27e4b0735b66261568/t/511a2ca8e4b0d00cab688c3c/1360669865365" width="320" /></a>The use of the one quintessentially identifiably Elizabethan items, the ruff as a motif was inspired, as they transformed from neckwear to books to walls.The representation of Cardinal Wolsey growing and growing by giving him higher and higher boots and eventually, stilts, emphasised his political power as it grew. Queen Elizabeth's glory was demonstrated by her elevation to a monstrous height with a splendid gold dress that filled the stage and was truly dazzling. Kelley's falsetto voice kept him as an eerie and other worldly man. The complexities of the relationship between him and John Dee were most dramatically and disturbingly in the wife swapping scene. </div>
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The fierce, raging intellect of Dee was nowhere better demonstrated than the minutes long song about a mathematical equation that is surely also the hardest in any opera because of it's abstract content.</div>
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<em>Dr Dee The Opera</em> was produced as part of the Manchester Festival in 2011. The version that was at The Colosseum, London in 2012 was different in many ways. It seemed to have been 'focus grouped' too much and the passion of the piece was a little lacking. Both played to full houses and fans of the good Doctor were thrilled to have him acknowledged by such an important modern composer as Damon Albarn.</div>
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The CD <em>Dr Dee the Opera</em> is available and worth having. YouTube has a wonderful clip from Jules Holland Later with Damon Albarn singing one of the songs. This shows the depth of feeling he has for the subject and is more like a personal meditation than a performance.
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Dee the navigator knew about America, perhaps it is time Hollywood knew of him.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-66528103934913799412012-10-20T08:59:00.000-07:002014-11-03T09:09:43.802-08:00John Dee Master of DarknessChannel 4 programme<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-16787151312069166312000-06-01T09:07:00.000-07:002016-06-01T09:07:54.616-07:00Writer Simon Singh on John Dee and Tudor code-breaking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-36815791286111322482000-06-01T09:05:00.000-07:002016-06-01T09:06:22.331-07:00Jeanette Winterson on John Dee, alchemy and the imagination<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4375342126067229229.post-82943876463074975422000-06-01T08:59:00.000-07:002016-06-01T09:15:31.424-07:00Scholar, courtier, magician the lost library of John Dee at the Royal College of Physicians<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com