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John Dee: The Original 007

MrRING

MrRING

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From A Bond for All the Ages : Sir Francis Bacon and John Dee : the Original 007:

Elizabeth was very much interested in the occult. Dee was responsible for choosing the most auspicious date for Elizabeth's coronation which was on January 15th, 1559. The Queen was so impressed by Dee that she eventually travelled with her court to Mortlake, for the purpose of seeing his great library.

Dee has been defamed through the centuries as a necromancer, but it's the opinion of many writers that his angelic-cabalistic- alchemical work, his Philosophers Stone, the"Monad Hieroglyphica"(1564) may have been a cover for covert operations carried on in the name of her majesty. The 007 was the insignia number that Elizabeth was to use for private communiques between her Court and Dee.

Dee signed his letters with two circles symbolising his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen.The two circles are guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. For Dee, seven was a sacred cabbalistic and lucky number.(Richard Deacon)


Could this have lead to the designation of the 00 line in the secret service, and in particular guided Sir Ian Flemming in using 007? Or was it a happy coincidnce? Or is there no such thing as coincidence? :D
 
let's see: an avid code-breaker via the Cabbala, etc; member of secretive "think-tanks" for the Queen; was at one point seen as a double agent for both the Protestants and the Catholics.

hmmmm, maybe so.
 
And now, The Opera.

Damon Albarn sings of magical scholar
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/cultu ... ician.html
15:46 4 July 2011

David Robson, features editor

(Image: Jonny Donovan)

In a new opera, Damon Albarn explores the life of Dr John Dee, 16th-century mathematician and adviser to Queen Elizabeth I

JOHN DEE, the 16th-century mathematician and occultist at the centre of Queen Elizabeth I's court, has inspired some of the world's greatest minds. Shakespeare evoked him as the enigmatic conjuror Prospero in The Tempest, while Christopher Marlowe created the power-hungry Doctor Faustus, who sold his soul to the devil for greater knowledge.

"Those are rather fantastical fictions," says Rufus Norris, who is directing a new opera about Dee written by Damon Albarn. "But sometimes the truth is far more interesting."

The opera, Dr Dee, which premieres at the Manchester International Festival in the UK this week, was conceived when festival organisers approached graphic novelist Alan Moore - who created V for Vendetta and From Hell - to work on a new project about the life of an obscure but important figure from English history. Moore chose Dee as his subject, and Albarn, best known as the lead singer and songwriter of the bands Blur and Gorillaz, came on board to write the music. Moore later left "for reasons that we're not quite sure of", says Norris, but the seeds of the idea had been sown.

Albarn and Norris could hardly have had a richer source of inspiration for their opera. Dee's early life was marked by intellectual successes that earned him respect in Elizabeth's court. He popularised Euclidean geometry in academic circles and was an early supporter of Copernicus's model of the universe. He also developed mathematical techniques to help sailors navigate by the stars, meaning that boats could venture out on new routes away from the coast - a key development in exploring the New World and ultimately building England's empire. And, like other intellectuals of his era, after the emergence of the supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia in 1572, Dee likely contemplated the universe as a never-ending expanse of space and stars, says his biographer Benjamin Woolley.

Dee's magpie curiosity was ultimately his downfall, however. Frustrated by the limits of his knowledge, in the 1580s he turned to the occult under the guidance of the medium Edward Kelley. Yet Kelley - a charismatic and manipulative individual - seems to have had an ulterior motive. "He took a fancy to Dee's wife," says Woolley. While the group was in Bohemia, Kelley persuaded Dee that the angel Uriel had ordered them to share their wives.

It was a massive turning point in Dee's life. His relationship with Kelley collapsed, and he returned home to find his famous library ransacked by rivals. Thanks to his forays into mysticism, he also received an icy reception at the court that had once adored him. Dee eventually died in poverty.

So how do you dramatise such a life? Norris and Albarn have taken an unusual approach. Though he will sometimes sing as Dee, Albarn will play himself. "I'm singing but I'm not an actor - I'm not wearing a ruff and tights," he says. The opera will open with Albarn by himself, before cutting to Dee's deathbed to explore the incidents and characters that shaped his life.

Albarn's music will be performed with a mixture of traditional Elizabethan instruments and west African drumming by Nigerian composer and drummer Tony Allen. "The sounds that travelled from Africa into Europe at that time were really important," says Albarn. "That's been somewhat passed over in modern history." The show also features 23 members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. "It's a big sound."

The ensemble hopes to explore the resonances between the England of today and Dee's nation at the cusp of its golden age. "Dee was a huge figure in the reign of Elizabeth I, and here we are at the end of another Elizabeth's reign, her twilight years - and the empire has sort of evaporated," says Albarn. "I think there's a real connection between these two moments."

The result would have perhaps found favour with Dee, says Woolley. "It's just the kind of weird and wonderful experiment that he would have loved."


Exhibition Information
Dr Dee
Palace Theatre, Manchester International Festival, Manchester
Until 9 July
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MrRING said:
From A Bond for All the Ages : Sir Francis Bacon and John Dee : the Original 007:


Dee signed his letters with two circles symbolising his own two eyes and indicating that he was the secret eyes of the Queen.The two circles are guarded by what may be considered a square root sign or an elongated seven. For Dee, seven was a sacred cabbalistic and lucky number.(Richard Deacon)
[/color]

Could this have lead to the designation of the 00 line in the secret service, and in particular guided Sir Ian Flemming in using 007? Or was it a happy coincidnce? Or is there no such thing as coincidence? :D
Click to expand...



I read it that while Dee flounced around the High Courts of Europe doing the whole lead into gold thing, he was reporting back to Elizabeth who signed her communicatications to him as 'My eyes' symbolised by 007 - a drawing of pair of eyeglasses with the handle.
 
John Dee Conference in Shropshire

The Pagan Federation are holding a one day symposium about John Dee. Speakers include Charles Topham, David Cypher, Tracy Thursfield, Chad Henshaw and Gary Nottingham. 31st March 2012
To be held at Clun Memorial Hall in Shropshire SY7 8NY
Tickets £8 to P.F. members or £10 others. For tickets please send cheque (made payable to Pagan Federation Mid-West) to 36 Marina Drive, May Bank, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, ST5 0RS. For more info go to www.myddle-earth.info

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''Beware of wavering: Blot owte suspition of us; for we are gods Creatures that haue Raigned, do Raigne, and shall Raigne for eu^. All our Mysteries shalbe known unto you.
Behold, these things and theyre Mysteries, shalbe known unto you.''

From 'On the Mystical Rule of the Seven Planets' (1582-83) by John Dee.
 
Good little podcast discussion here between occult authors Gordon White and Enochian practitioner, Jason Louv.

Louv's written a book on Dee's massive contribution to western traditions of all sorts. There's a suggestion in this conversation (indication?) that The British Empire emerged from an occult conspiracy. Louv also states that there would be no space program without A Crowley. Interesting given there's a new series out next month about Thelemite Jack Parsons, the founder of the JPL - forerunner of NASA.

I'm really starting to get into the ideas, histories and practices of the western magic tradition. There's definitely something there to savour.

Excuse the dropouts in the audio - they're annoying but don't cut the flow of key points.

 
Louv in another excellent podcast expanding on the key focus and purpose of writing John Dee and the Empire of Angels. Louv gets fairly evangelical about the urgent need for a global spiritual renaissance at the end of the show, and I think what he has to say will resonate positively with the way some of the members here are inclined to live. Enjoy.
 
The fact is that there is a HUGE Boolean intersection between espionage and the supernatural. In Roman times it was the done thing to create a faux haunting (often with associated "occult" murders) at contact points in order to deter further investigations. Spies in China and Japan did similar things. Occult circles and secret societies were great ways to create an off-beat excuse to meet people who were out of one's normal social circle, which was a boon to spies. It is distinctly possible that a number of stories about cryptids are actually hoaxes created by spies to mask their operations, but that being said, how many? All? Some? None? Probably the more hostile the cryptid the more likely it is a spy ring.
Skinwalker Ranch springs to mind, but OMFG, how did they do it (if that is the answer)?

Then there is the all important issue of ciphers. When you say someone is a calculating individual today, it generally means they are cold and manipulative, and have a "mind like a steel trap". The term originates in the occult however. Once mathematics was considered to be magic (True Story!), and a calculating individual was actually a sorcerer, who might cast horoscopes to know the future of individuals, or use statistics to crack coded messages. Dee benefitted from all of this. Enochian was presented as an angelic language, but it was actually merely one of many espionage ciphers Dee was carrying. Of course when a man of action is carrying something like that he gets drawn and quartered as a spy, but when a doddering old fart of an occultist is carrying documents like that he is just a harmless new age flake with silly old books full of magical diagrams. Interestingly, US Cipher crackers in the "Black Chamber" around WW2 used to take pleasure in cracking the ciphers in old occult texts, and the only one they didn't manage was the Voynich Manuscript. So, when you are next pondering, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious grimoire of forgotten lore, consider looking for codes. The results may surprise you.

Much of this comes to a head during the period directly after the Wars of Religion when Freemasonry is becoming prominent in the wake of the Rosicrucians. The Jansenist Protestants and the Jesuit Catholics both made a point of infiltrating Freemasonry and turned it into a tool of espionage. We can see this in how the Founding Fathers (especially Benjamin Franklin) used Freemasonic networks in Europe to buoy up the diplomatic capital of the nascent USA. We can also see, by following the history of Freemasonry how it fermented the Liberal Revolt in Germany, and overthrew the corrupt French monarchy. The Freemasons often served as a 5th Column against both Protestants and Catholics due to the egalitarian access across Social Class and free thought that the movement promoted.
 
AlchoPwn said:
The fact is that there is a HUGE Boolean intersection between espionage and the supernatural. In Roman times it was the done thing to create a faux haunting (often with associated "occult" murders) at contact points in order to deter further investigations. Spies in China and Japan did similar things. Occult circles and secret societies were great ways to create an off-beat excuse to meet people who were out of one's normal social circle, which was a boon to spies. It is distinctly possible that a number of stories about cryptids are actually hoaxes created by spies to mask their operations, but that being said, how many? All? Some? None? Probably the more hostile the cryptid the more likely it is a spy ring.
Skinwalker Ranch springs to mind, but OMFG, how did they do it (if that is the answer)?

Then there is the all important issue of ciphers. When you say someone is a calculating individual today, it generally means they are cold and manipulative, and have a "mind like a steel trap". The term originates in the occult however. Once mathematics was considered to be magic (True Story!), and a calculating individual was actually a sorcerer, who might cast horoscopes to know the future of individuals, or use statistics to crack coded messages. Dee benefitted from all of this. Enochian was presented as an angelic language, but it was actually merely one of many espionage ciphers Dee was carrying. Of course when a man of action is carrying something like that he gets drawn and quartered as a spy, but when a doddering old fart of an occultist is carrying documents like that he is just a harmless new age flake with silly old books full of magical diagrams. Interestingly, US Cipher crackers in the "Black Chamber" around WW2 used to take pleasure in cracking the ciphers in old occult texts, and the only one they didn't manage was the Voynich Manuscript. So, when you are next pondering, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious grimoire of forgotten lore, consider looking for codes. The results may surprise you.

Much of this comes to a head during the period directly after the Wars of Religion when Freemasonry is becoming prominent in the wake of the Rosicrucians. The Jansenist Protestants and the Jesuit Catholics both made a point of infiltrating Freemasonry and turned it into a tool of espionage. We can see this in how the Founding Fathers (especially Benjamin Franklin) used Freemasonic networks in Europe to buoy up the diplomatic capital of the nascent USA. We can also see, by following the history of Freemasonry how it fermented the Liberal Revolt in Germany, and overthrew the corrupt French monarchy. The Freemasons often served as a 5th Column against both Protestants and Catholics due to the egalitarian access across Social Class and free thought that the movement promoted.
Click to expand...
All of this and more in Louv's precis.
 
Naughty_Felid said:
sadly forgotten by most.
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I agree with the sentiment. A true renaissance man wrongly denegrated for his method of enquiry. His journey through black magic notwithstanding, he is said to have pioneered the western esoteric tradition as it would come to be known. I still don't know fully what that means, but I'm certain what he learned in life would be of immense value today if it could be recovered. So little left. There was an exhibition in London a couple of years back. Anybody posting go see it?

Gordon White went. Here's his report. Fascinating.
 
I don't know that this will come up, as it's an academically published article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3778877/
Rampling, Jennifer M.. “John Dee and the sciences: early modern networks of knowledge.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science vol. 43,3 (2012): 432–436. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2011.12.001
Click to expand...

And this seems of interest too:
https://museu.ms/article/details/11...ls-resemblance-to-mother-and-mysterious-dwarf

New John Dee discovery reveals resemblance to mother and mysterious 'dwarf'​

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Tantalising clues about the family of Tudor magician John Dee emerge from a newly deciphered manuscript

Curators putting together the Royal College of Physicians’ forthcoming exhibition about the mysterious Tudor courtier, magician, astrologer and polymath John Dee have discovered a page of handwritten text full of intriguing riddles and new clues about his life.

Discovered at the end of a 1547 treatise on how to cast horoscopes by the Italian astrologer and physician Girolamo Cardano, the intriguing page of dense scribbles remained hidden for years - glued to the back cover of the book.

And although it was separated from the book cover as early 1901, it is only now that anyone has tried to unpick all of the writing.

Dee was an inveterate doodler and scribbler in his books, but the text, which is in Dee’s own handwriting, appears to record birth dates and other biographical information about Dee himself, his mother (Joan or Joanna née Wild), and other as yet unidentified individuals.

Half-way through the text he notes the birth date of his mother and the strong facial resemblance he shared with her – apart from her nose.

‘Anno 1508 vel 1509 on Crispinians day 21 [sic] octobris my mother was borne, to whome I am very like in visnomy [physiognomy] saving my nares [nostrils or nose].’

At the top of the page he also records a mysterious person born at four o’clock on Christmas day 1519:

‘in northwales both his feet croked inward as yf they war broken, he being a dwarf, and creping on hand and foote, big hedded and chested with a prety berd’.

Although there was a tradition of “court dwarfs” before and after the reign of Elizabeth I, conjecture abounds as to the identity of this new mysterious person born just a few years before Dee himself.

Given the apparent autobiographical subject of the page, curators believe there may even be a family connection. Dee himself was born in London, in the parish of St Dunstan’s in the East near the Tower, but his family had recently moved from North Wales.

Describing the find as “a tantalizing fragment of what we would call autobiography” Katie Birkwood, Rare Books and Special Collections Librarian and exhibition curator, said the dwarf appeared to have been “introduced into what seems to be the family history”.

“Typically for one of Elizabethan England’s most enigmatic characters, it provides us with intriguing information at the same time as creating more mysteries about this riddle of a man.”

Dee continues to fascinate, centuries after he first set foot in the court of Elizabeth I. A mathematician, magician, astronomer, astrologer, explorer, occultist, imperialist, alchemist and spy he was also one of Tudor England’s most fervent scholars of cryptography - the art or science of making and breaking codes.

“The best part is, the page is yet to be completely deciphered," added Birkwood, "there may yet be more details of the life of Dee and, who knows, more mysteries for us to discover.”

Visitors can see the page as part of the eagerly anticipated new exhibition about the man known as the Queen’s Conjurer as it delves into his enigmatic and paradoxical world.

The Royal College of Physicians holds the largest known collection, more than 100 works, formerly owned by John Dee and the exhibition guides visitors through them – not only exploring the things he read but also the words he wrote, the drawings he drafted, the objects he owned and his life and influence over hundreds of years.

Scholar, courtier, magician: The lost library of John Dee is at the museum of the Royal College of Physicians from January 18 to July 29 2016. The exhibition and museum are open Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. Admission Free.
Click to expand...


That 2016 exhibition is currently housed virtually online here:
https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/exh...holar-courtier-magician-lost-library-john-dee
 
Aubrey in his `Brief Lives` mentions that Dee was treasure hunting on a pool in Brecknockshire, and found some gold.

(Llangorse lake with its royal crannog?)
 
Esoterica (see above) has an entire Dee playlist, all of which Doctor Sledge created himself. Loves the alchemy.

Sledge is brilliant. I've watched every episode at Esoterica and not a speck of woo. He's a Dee nut. Says Dee was the character who piqued his interest in the occult as a teen. A Jewish academic lecturer, philosopher and antiquarian from Mississippi, his wife Alanah is a Rabbi. Yep. Big fan.
 
I'm right now watching an interview with Armin Shimerman, who played Quark on Deep Space 9. It turns out he has also written a few books where Dee and Shakespeare solve crimes together.
 
AlchoPwn said:
Enochian was presented as an angelic language, but it was actually merely one of many espionage ciphers Dee was carrying.
Click to expand...
I know Alchy isn't able to respond, but this bit of his post got past me. Pretty huge claim. Anybody want to try and defend or critique it? I'm a beginner.
 
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