There are few figures in history that are at once as mysterious, nefarious and intriguing as Dr John Dee, mathematician and astrologer to two Tudor Queens of England. Educated at the University of Cambridge, Dee travelled the continent before becoming astrologer to the queen, ‘Bloody’ Mary Tudor. Shortly thereafter, however, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London for being a sorcerer. This lifelong reputation as a magician was procured partly by the stage effects that he introduced into a performance of the Peace of Aristophanes while he was at Cambridge and partly by his erudition and practice of both crystallomancy and astrology. Although he was a profoundly learned scholar and hermeticist, as a sorcerer he is mainly today thought to have been a sham. In his time, however, among the many who consulted him on matters metaphysical included Sir Philip Sidney and various princes of Poland and Bohemia. He enjoyed the favour of Elizabeth I, gave instructions and advice to pilots and navigators who were exploring the New World and gave lessons to the Virgin Queen in the mystical interpretation of his writings. Most interestingly, he devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. About ten years after his death, several manuscripts, mainly records of Dee’s angelic communications, were discovered in the house and gardens where he had lived. Could it be that Dr Dee was no mere sham after all?
Top Posts & Pages
The Inn at the Edge of the World
Click image to read my short story 'The Inn at the Edge of the World' in Bardic Tales and Sage Advice, Vol. 8.
The Witch of Wicken Fen
Click image to read my short story 'The Witch of Wicken Fen' in Aphelion, the Webzine of sci-fi and fantasy.
Tolkien
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After the King: Tolkien’s heirs
It is something of a relief, having looked last month at his critics, to turn this time to Tolkien’s many admirers. It would not be true to say that there was no such thing as epic fantasy before Tolkien: there was a tradition of English and Irish writers before him, such as E R Eddison and […]
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Tolkien: The Monsters and the Critics
“This is not a work that many adults will read right through more than once.” With these words the anonymous reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement (25 November 1955) summed up his judgment of J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It must have seemed a pretty safe prophecy at the time, for of […]
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The Wolf in the Attic
1920s Oxford: home to C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien and, in Paul Kearney’s novel The Wolf in the Attic, Anna Francis, a young Greek girl looking to escape the grim reality of her new life. The night they cross paths, none suspect the fantastic world at work all around them. Anna lives in a […]
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Of Wood Woses and Wild Men
In The Lord of the Rings a strange and primitive folk named the Woses came to aid the men of Gondor in breaking the siege of Minas Tirith. These wild woodland people lived in the ancient forest of Druadan, below the White Mountains. In form they were weather-worn, short-legged, thick-armed and stumpy-bodied and they knew wood-craft […]
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Spawn of Ungoliant
Among the foulest beings that ever inhabited Middle Earth were the Great Spiders. They were dark and filled with envy, greed and the poison of malice. First of the beings that took spider form was Ungoliant, mother of the evil race that plagued the world thereafter, as well as a close ally of the first […]
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