Dr. Dee and his Angelic Art

Occult Philosophies, Symbolism & Science in the Work of Dr. Dee  

- Eline Bochem, November 2013 -

Contents• Background Prof. Gyorgi E. Szonyi & Dr. Stephen Clucas

• Background Dr. Dee

• Dr. Dee’s Inspirations & the Phenomenon of Exaltatio

• Dr Dee’s Angelic Art

• Critical Questions

• EXTRA >> The Round Tablet of Nalvage

• EXTRA >> Initiation in the Angelic Art: an ArtWork

Prof. György E. Szőnyi (1952)

Reading material: John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs (2004)

Forthcoming works:

Exaltation and Power. Studies in Early Modern Hermeticism and Magic

The Enoch Readers. Apocalypticism and “Ascension on High” From Biblical to Postmodern Times.

Dr. Stephen Clucas

Reading material: John Dee: Interdisciplinary studies in English Renaissance Thought (2006)

Forthcoming works:

currently working with Timothy J. Raylor on an edition of Thomas Hobbes's De Corpore for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes.

Dr. John Dee (July 13th 1527 - 1608/1609)

• In 1558 Dee became the first 007 and trusted advisor of Queen Elizabeth I on astrological and scientific matters. He even choose Elizabeth's coronation date himself. Dee also had one of the largest libraries in England and had a high status as a scholar. His library became a centre of learning outside the universities, even the greatest in England and attracted many scholars.

Dr. Dee’s inspiration: Ars Notoria & Pseudo Solomonic Arts

• Included texts overlap in that they all claim to pass on techniques and mysteries originally revealed to King Solomon through a ministering Angel. The texts speak of the attainment of knowledge or power by mediate or immediate revelation. This attained by mix of ceremonial ascetic preparation, prayers and orations and the use of talismanic instruments like tables, seals, shewstones etc. The role of prayer is significant. Ascetic preparation, the regimen animarum includes for instance: fasting, space purification and purification of the magical instruments.

Dr. Dee’s inspiration:Thrithemius

• He was inspired by Pico and one of the most important Renaissance thinkers devoted to angelology seeking to synchretize medieval tradition with that of neo-platonist philosophy. He could be considered an apologetic thinker trying to put magic into the service of Christian theology and to apply it to a religious quest for God. Magic therefore was related to highest intellectual activity. Thrithemius is sometimes seen as a forerunner of rationalism, though he underlines the necessity and importance of revelation

Dr. Dee’s inspiration: Agrippa

• ‘Therefore our mind being pure and divine, inflamed with a religious love, adorned with hope, directly by faith, placed in the height and top of the human soul, doth attract the truth and suddenly comprehend it, and beholdeth all the stations, grounds, causes and sciences of things [...] as it were in a glass of eternity’. (3.6; Agrippa 1997:455).

Agrippa: De Occulta Philosophica

• ‘Herefore o ye asses, [...] be you loosed from the darkness of flesh and blood. If ye desire to attain this divine and true wisdom, not of the tree of knowledge of good and ill, but of the tree of life, cast aside the sciences of man. Now entering not into the schools of philosophers and sophisters, but into your own selves, ye shall know all things: for the knowledge of all things is compact in you’... (Peroratio, Agrippa, 1575: 186).

Dr. Dee’s inspiration: Paracelsus

• ‘To become Gods, man needs hermetic knowledge which provides the key to the secrets of the universe by the help of personalized Wisdom. God is present in man and that permeates him to become a creator of miracles. When this happens, this happens by the help of magic: ‘After all this is a sign that we may use it; it is also a sign of what we are’.. (Die Bucher von den unsichtbaren Krankheiten, I:9:271; Paracelsus 1951:138).

Dr. Dee’s inspiration: Adam & Enoch

• It was Enoch who is said to have invented the human crafts. Eusebius considers him to be Atlas, the King of the lost land of Atlantis, the land to be discussed firstly by Plato in his Timaeus and Critias. The Zohar mentions that when Enoch died he ascended to the heavens and there he became rewarded by God and became the Archangel Metatron (Zohar 43, Balak 6:86). Interesting is that the geometrical shape of Metratron’s cube is the six pointed star of the mer-ka-bah (divine Light body/chariot) and the name of Enoch also refers to a text in merkabah (divine chariot) mystical literature.

Renaissance Magical Zeitgeist

‘I am as Great as GodAnd he is small like meHe cannot be AboveNor I below him Be’.

(Jung, 1983, 117)

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art

• ‘Hereupon I began to declare that all my life time I had spent in learning, but for this forty years continually, in sundry manners, and in divers Countries, with great pain, care and cost, I had from degree to degree sought to come by the best knowledge that man might attain unto in the world: and I found (at length) that neither any man living, nor any Book I could yet meet withal, was a able to teach me those truths I desired and longed for: And therefore I concluded with my self, to make intercession and prayer to the giver of Wisdom and all good things, to send me such Wisdom, as I might know the natures of his creatures; and also enjoy means to use them to His Honour and Glory’. (Dee, 1659:231).

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art

• ‘Spirits often teach those persons who deal with them to perform certain ceremonies, to speak certain words and names in which there is no meaning [...] On the whole, all these Spirits surpass each other in deception and lies’... (quoted by Hartman, 1891:149).

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art: Crystallomancy

• Dee or rather Kelly made use of a shewstone: a mountain quartz crystall ball and/or obsidian black mirror. His interest in crystal magic lays probably in his earlier fascination for medieval optics. Scrying is also called crystallomancy. In fact he started scrying sessions already during writing the Mathematical Praeface although scrying was damned by both secular and ecclestial law.

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art(es)

Ars Prophetica: the revelation of Divine secrets, to know all things present, past and to comeArs Apocalyptica: the culmination of a single Art: the end of history and time and the subsumation of all human sciencesArs Operativa or Instrumentiva: Becoming the human Vessel of God, the Instrumentum Instrumentorum

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art: the Temple

The spaces Dee and Kelly executed their Operations were constructed with a magical circle, a Terra. with the 12 banners at the circle’s edges. in the middle stood a red silk rug, 4 tablets were arranged in square pattern in the centre of the rug, a table was balanced on the 4 tablets, the large wax tablet (Sigillum Dei AEMAETH) was placed on the center with a silk cloth over it and thereover the crystal ball. Dee recorded all happenings.

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art: Sigillum dei AEMAETH

Text

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art: The Golden Talisman

Critical Questions (I)

How to combine humility and at the same time feeling special and a chosen One? The Angels say Dee is given a special privilige not granted to prophets and apostles. At the same time Dee advocates humility towards the Divine. Can human Ego survive this?

Critical Questions (II)

Related to the 1st remark: How does submission to Divine Will and prayers combines with magical Renaissance Zeitgeist as formulated by Jung: ‘He cannot be Above, Nor I below Him Be’? How to combine Superman or ‘UberMensch’ attitude in combination with being God’s Vessel when prayer rests on a foundation of deep humility?

Critical Questions (III)

How to call Angels when a Cherubic Spirit says in scrying session: ‘AVE shall come when thou hast need of him’? That looks like Angels are only coming when they Need and not (always) when called by a (chosen) human being..

Critical Questions (IV)

Dee and most of his inspirations like Agrippa and Paracelus left the human sciences after studying in depth different disciplines quite disappointed in order to devote themselves completely to the Divine Science of Magic. Might we argue their seemingly negative attitude towards the human sciences could be to rigid? According to the Emerald Tablet and Hermetic and Renaissance magical Zeitgeist axiom ‘ as Above, so Below’, it could be argued in order to understand Above (ascend) one must first understand Below (descend). Dee and the others might have been able to study the Divine faculties only, because they completed the human studies first. To say the human sciences are not worth is to not recognize their essential contribution to man’s spiritual development, also it does not correspond to Dee’s fascination for Enoch, who is said to be the inventor of the human sciences...

Critical Questions (V)

How can the rightful Angels appear to a medium that is involved in demonic practices and necromancy? Agrippa and also Paracelsus mention the great dangers of Angel Magic: the Angelic Beings would speak no Truth and play with the operator and scryer by giving random assignments (the incident of wife-swopping might be reminded here). How could Dee, who knew of Kelly’s demonic magical operations and necromancy continue his Operations with him in which purity played an important or at least significant role? In what way does the seemingly obscure Kelly match with the Highest of Highest Magic that is the Angelic Art?

Dr. Dee’s Angelic Art: The Round Table of Nalvage

The Round Tablet of Nalvage: Continent 1

I) LVAS (praisers) >> Continent Guardian Angel (YOD)II) IAD MOZ ZIR (God’s joy & present) >> continent energy or fieldIII) IDZ AOI MZR (joy presence praising) >> classifications of continent Angels: Gaudium, Presentia, Laudantes

The Round Tablet of Nalvage: Continent 2

I) LANG (ministers or servants) >> Continent Guardian Angel (HE)II) IAB BAD ZNA (God’s power & motion) >> continent energy or fieldIII) BNA DAZ IAB (power motion ministry) >> classifications of continent Angels: Potestas, Motus, Ministrantes

The Round Tablet of Nalvage: Continent 3

I) SACH (supporters) >> Continent Guardian Angel (VAU)II) IAD SOR GRU (God’s action & performing) >> continent energy or fieldIII) SAI GOD URR (action events establishing) >> classifications of continent Angels: Actio, Factum, Confirmantes

The Round Tablet of Nalvage: Continent 4

VRCH (disturbers) >> Continent Guardian Angel (HE final)IAD SER OSF (God’s lamentation & dissension) >> continent energy or fieldFOS SEA RDI (lamentation discord confusing) >> classifications of continent Angels: Luctus, Discordia, Confundantes

An ArtWork for Initiation in the Angelic Art

1 >> Banishing pentagram and hexagram ritual (micro- & macrocosm)2 >> Purification & consecration of the circle, magical instruments, operator & scryer3 >> Opening of the Temple (form)4 >> General invocation of the Temple (substance)5 >> Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel6 >> Opening of the 30th Aether TEX and scrying7 >> Banishing hexagram ritual and banishing pentagram ritual (micro- & macrocosm)

FIN