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Was John Dee’s Fascination With the Occult Driven by Espionage?
- http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/12/was-john-dees-fascination-with-the-occult-driven-by-espionage/
- December 23, 2015
- Micah Hanks
Throughout the middle 1500s, renowned
scientist and philosopher John Dee became what many would recognize as
the first of the famous British spies. Whilst working as an educator in
the fields of astronomy and mathematics (among other areas of
expertise), Dee had famously been an advisor to Queen Elizabeth during
his lifetime, occasionally working to secretly collect and transfer
information to her as a personal liaison. Foreshadowing things to come,
it had even been the insignia for Queen Elizabeth’s nickname for Dee—she
referred to him as “eyes”—that likely inspired the later codename “007”
that would appear in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.
Despite his scientific prowess and work
as a statesman, John Dee has remained a controversial historical figure
due to his occult leanings. Dee, after all, had aspired to study the
fields of science in equal measure to that of magic and hermeticism, all
during in an era in which the divide between the two was growing to be
ever-more divided.
Because of his indistinguishable focus
between such disparate fields of study, many scholars looking back on
Dee’s life and work consider him a troubling–and perhaps also a troubled–figure.
While obviously one of the great minds of his era, he had seemingly
also appeared to be, at times, a rather credulous dupe.
Etching that depicts John Dee and Edward Kelley conjuring a spirit by magical means.
Dee’s infamous partnership with occult
seer Edward Kelley, for instance, would produce the “Enochian scripts”
for which Dee is perhaps most famous; though at times, this came
with great personal struggle and loss on Dee’s part. Kelley, for
instance, wishing to rid himself of such boring pursuits with the
passing of time, would go to great extremes with hope of repelling Dee
from any further interest in such collaborations. In one notable
instance, Kelley even advised Dee that the “angels” they communicated
with had advised that the two men must share their wives. Rather than
rejecting the idea (and Kelley) as intended, Dee begrudgingly agreed to
the arrangement, revealing his apparent utter trust for Kelley’s
divining abilities, which, as history has since shown, were probably
little more than the acts of an opportunistic charlatan.
The prolonged fascination that Dee
maintained for such occult studies have remained a dark mark in the
minds of many modern scholars, who cannot accept how such faith and
fascination in the realms of “magic” might have complimented a learned
man like Dee in any manner. And yet, there is perhaps another,
less-often observed possibility pertaining to Dee, which some scholars
suggest as an underlying reason for his devotion to magical studies. If
true, it would suggest far less about his interest in the occult,
instead having everything to do with his operations as a spy for the
Queen during this period.
Around the same period Dee had been
enthralled with his magical studies, Sir Francis Walsingham had served
his tenure as Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state. It has been
speculated by some historians that Dee and Walsingham, with Dee’s role
as spy and advisor to Elizabeth at the time, may indeed have been
involved in British espionage work while he was visiting Prague (this is
also where his angelic collaborations with Kelley had taken place).
Given this set of circumstances, the angelic “revelations”, and their
focus on the creation of a secret language, may be interpreted
differently from having been an obsessive occult interest; the
“Enochian” scripts may in fact have been representative of a coded
language which Dee might use to communicate secretly with Walsingham,
who remained in England at the same time.
Further, the language itself, rather than having been “divinely” inspired by Kelley’s alleged observations through his shew stone of
an angel Dee recognized as “Madimi”, could have had simpler origins:
the earlier work of German cryptographer Johannes Trithemius may even
have served as the inspiration for these scripts.
However, there are other possible
implications that would have resulted from this odd tidbit in the annals
of secret history. As suggested by occult scholar Peter Levenda, “the
entire basis of the famous occult order known as the Golden Dawn may
well have had its origins in espionage work.” It is well known, of
course, that Dee’s works would go on to inspire the likes of MacGregor
Mathers, as well as William Wynn Wescott, principle founder of the
Golden Dawn that emerged, in part, from the earlier Masonic traditions
that influenced these men. Later, Aliester Crowley would similarly
borrow from the Enochian scripts of Dee (the latter, though, having
expressed a certain disdain for Dee, ascribing the greater importance to
the manipulator Kelley. We know, of course, that Kelley would go on to
practice the magical arts well beyond his years with Dee, though none of
this would end well for him. Kelley, after making the claim that he
possessed knowledge on how to alchemically produce gold, would become
essentially imprisoned by Emperor Rudolph II at Křivoklát Castle, near
Prague. None of this, of course, might remove Kelley from having been
complicit with Dee’s espionage operations, had he in fact been aware of
them during their cooperative years.
It would indeed be interesting if Dee’s
involvement in occult workings while in Prague might have had far less
to do with the pseudoscientific “obsession” that many modern scholars
attribute to him. In fact, due to his known activities as an Elizabethan
spy, it may very well be the case that Dee was up to more than many may
ever have realized.
