WEBVTT - Artes Mathematicall: The Diviner John Dee 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.480 I am Scott and I'm then and work from car Stuff. 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:05.760 We're the podcast that covers everything that flutes, flies, swims, 0:00:05.960 --> 0:00:10.840 or drives, adventures, thrills, chills, literally, planes, trains and automobiles. 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.360 That's right, And you can find all of our episodes 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.279 on Google Play, Spotify, iTunes, and really anywhere else you 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:24.280 get your podcasts. Welcome to you Stuf to Blow your 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:34.360 Mind from housetop work dot com. There is, gentle reader, 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:37.640 nothing the works of God, only set apart, which so 0:00:37.800 --> 0:00:41.400 much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind of man, 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:46.120 as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences. Many 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:50.040 arts there are which beautify the mind of man, But 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:54.319 of all none do more garnish and beautify it than 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:58.600 those arts which are called and mathematical, unto the knowledge 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:02.440 of which no man can tane without perfect knowledge and 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:12.479 instruction of the principles, grounds and elements of geometry. Hey, 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.160 welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:16.800 Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger. And if 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.800 last episode sounded like we were invoking a ritual to 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.720 summon angels or demons, this sounds like we are teaching 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.120 ap calculus. Yeah, that those are the words of Dr 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:32.480 John D. Those are from his preface, his mathematical preface 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:36.680 to the fifteen seventy translation of Euclid's Elements. Now at 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:39.080 this point we should we should mention that if you 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.880 did not listen to our previous episode on John D, 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:45.600 you definitely need to go back to that one, because 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.200 that that is the episode where we we really dove 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:51.919 into his timeline and discussed in broad strokes the major 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:56.920 events of his life. Yeah, we also focused on the 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:01.040 sort of magical occult aspects of John these beliefs and 0:02:01.200 --> 0:02:04.520 life in that episode. This episode, we're really going to 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:09.639 focus on his scientific education, his ability with mathematics, um, 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.480 how he participated in state craft in England and in 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:18.040 fact advocated for expanding the British Empire and especially developed 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:21.839 cryptography as we know it today. Yeah, and it's it's 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.400 interesting too, and that even though you know, in a 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:26.920 sense the last episode was magic and this one is 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:30.400 the is the science. This is more rooted in the 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:35.400 real world. John D was not so firmly rooted. He 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:40.200 seemed to to live simultaneously in the mathematical and the 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:44.360 magical world. He did not really see a division like 0:02:44.360 --> 0:02:47.960 like the spiritual, the mathematical, the magic. It was all 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:51.040 part of the world as he perceived it. Yeah, so 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:53.240 get ready, as we're talking about this stuff, it may 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.120 seem like, oh, we're going over some historical science here, 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:58.560 and then all of a sudden, you know, Merlin will 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:02.680 pop up, or may be some angelic influence here there. Yeah. Now, 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:04.880 it's it's really important to note here too, though, that 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:10.400 as unique as he was, this mixing of magic and math, 0:03:10.560 --> 0:03:14.720 this suspicion of math even was it was not unique 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:17.480 to him, it was it was very much a part 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.840 of the day. Uh, mathematics was regarded in some circles 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:25.720 with suspicion at the time. During the Tutor era, mathematical 0:03:25.800 --> 0:03:30.120 books were sometimes burned as alleged conjuring books. This according 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:34.360 to seventeenth century antiquarian John Aubrey. And it was and 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:36.920 it was still very much associated with the dark arts. 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:40.640 I mean, you have to think to think Pythagoras Key 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.080 in the history of mathematics, was also considered a magician. Uh. 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.720 Numbers had inherent powers, and this is a theme that 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:51.040 ran through the works of Kepler, Newton, Euclid and others. 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:56.000 So there was a long tradition of mathematics and and 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.880 magic kind of sharing the same space. One of the 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.440 things that I read was a mathematics were considered disreputable 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:06.600 and connected to witchcraft because they were associated with numerology. 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:08.960 And I mentioned this in the last episode the Jewish 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:11.840 mystical tradition of the Kabbalah. Uh And we're gonna talk 0:04:11.880 --> 0:04:14.960 about the cryptography stuff in a minute. But tri Themius, 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:17.520 who wrote the book that D really worked off of 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.440 to create his version of cryptography. That guy was also 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.719 suspected of wizardry, so this had a long standing tradition. 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.400 Uh D. For his part, though, in terms of mathematics, 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:33.080 his lectures on euclid were wildly popular, as he was 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.000 seen as a leading scientific figure of his day. I'm 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.200 picturing that he's like the Neil degrass Tyson, right Like 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:44.880 he's he's giving lectures. Everybody's really interested. Uh These lectures 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:47.440 earned him an offer to join the faculty at the 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.720 Sorbonne in Paris in fifteen fifty one. We mentioned that 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:53.479 real briefly last time, But he turned stuff like this 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.480 down because he was hoping to obtain an official position 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:01.440 with the English crown. He was also Robert read from 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:03.320 this at the beginning, but it's worth pointing out the 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:08.120 editor of the first English translation of Euclid's Elements, and 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.679 in that he added his preface, which what Robert read 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:16.360 came from. This preface argued for the usefulness of mathematics, 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:21.159 like people didn't regard mathematics as being important at that time, 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.280 and in fact, this was the first time the public 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:28.840 were introduced to the symbols plus minus, x, fra, multiply, 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.800 and the little dot uh dash dot for division. Yeah. 0:05:33.880 --> 0:05:37.000 In this uh this, this preface, the mathematical preface, he 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:42.680 proposed an arts mathematical that he compared to thomaturgy, which 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:46.120 is a the use of magic for religious purposes. So 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.240 he saw mathematics, rather than magic, as the key to 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:55.120 thomaturgical wonder Men's work could rival the gods if they 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:59.320 could utilize mathematics correctly. And and in this you know 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.279 you say d was correct. I mean, we may disagree 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.239 on whether math is a human invention or human discovery, 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:07.800 but it has thus far proven to correspond to the 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:11.159 inner workings of the cosmos. It's our our best tool. Essentially. 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.920 He saw this reflected in the creation of automatons, those 0:06:16.040 --> 0:06:19.160 of Alberta's magnus uh and others. So you know, all 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:24.040 these various mechanical devices that mimicked the the the appearance 0:06:24.040 --> 0:06:26.960 of life, and the movement and the and and the 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:31.200 willfulness of life. And in fact, that's where that his 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.760 FX work in fifty six comes into play. That's what 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:37.560 he was essentially dabbling in. Yeah, we talked about this 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.320 in the last episode. He apparently created this giant automaton. 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.040 Reportedly it was a mechanical flying beetle. I don't know 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.760 if it actually flew or not, but apparently it was. 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:52.279 It was so impressive that people thought that it was magic. Yeah, 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.159 and that was very much in keeping with his view 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:58.000 of what math was and what what science was was 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.960 capable of doing. That it could replicate the wonders of 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:05.560 nature by manipulating the same properties. And he saw he 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.680 saw things like automatons and even his own special effects 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:12.880 work UH as proof of that. He saw the optics 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.520 of his special mirror is kind of reverse mirror that 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.320 he would wow people with. He saw that as an 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:23.240 example of look, the these amazing feats are possible through optics, 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:28.720 through mathematics, through science, and Ultimately, his mathematics led to 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.760 him advocating for the expansion of the British Empire, and 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:38.280 he reportedly is the one who coined the term British Empire. Yeah, 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:41.520 which is crazy, and it's also it's it's sometimes you 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:43.720 forget like it's it's hard to think back to a 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.400 time where the British Empire wasn't a thing, not only 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:52.960 in in actuality but even in concept. So we're traveling 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.680 back to seventy seven here, and this is kind of 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:57.720 what was going on at the time. Sir Francis Drake 0:07:57.800 --> 0:08:01.160 was preparing for an epic voyage around the globe. Um 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:05.480 Washingham spies had exposed another plot against the British crown, 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:09.400 and he had noted a significant problematic comment amid the 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:13.640 meaning saturated stars. And on November twenty eight, amid all 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:17.600 of these excitements, he comes and he proposes this concept, 0:08:17.640 --> 0:08:20.280 this idea to the Queen of England that she should 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:24.720 challenge Spain's imperial claim to the New World. Yeah, and 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:29.200 a lot of this was based around how do I 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.240 put this? He so on top of being a brilliant mathematician, 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.920 he was able to apply that to cartography and mapping 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:42.120 out routes or understanding the geography of the New World. Yeah, 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.640 it's you mentioned cartographers here. We mentioned in the past 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:49.600 episode that that he uh he'd learned from and was 0:08:49.600 --> 0:08:55.040 in correspondence with with noted cartographer um Garatis Mercator. Yeah, 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:59.440 and uh Mercator is apparently the guy who filled him 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:03.360 in a about this idea, that that there was a 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:07.480 precedence for the British Empire set by a legendary incursion 0:09:07.559 --> 0:09:12.040 into the northern in drawing seas around the Pole by 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.719 King Arthur in the year five thirty lands that had 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:20.200 hence been claimed by Iberian nations. This is where he 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:23.880 got the whole idea. He being d got the whole 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.520 idea for him being the modern day Merlin and Elizabeth 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.280 being the modern day Arthur. He actually presented Elizabeth with 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:34.880 a treatise on Britain's imperial limits at one point, and 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.000 it suggested that the America's had actually been discovered by 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.840 King Arthur centuries before. Yeah, and and and also that 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:45.000 the British Empire was already a thing. This this concept 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:48.040 is not something that that England could claim for itself, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:50.360 but reclaimed. This was a This was part of its 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:55.720 identity already. Yeah, so you might be wondering what's a 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:58.560 courtier anyways. Right, it's a lot of people when they're 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:00.760 describing d they just say, well, was a court here. 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.559 I don't know what that means. Apparently it is a 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.480 man that is concerned with the operation of the Royal 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:11.079 Court and by extension, the Kingdom, of which it was 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:15.040 an effective ruling body. So it was in his interests 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:20.080 to make sure that the ruling body of Britain expanded. Yeah, 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.160 I'm glad you brought up the court as well, because 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.800 the court at the time was was was lavish and uh, 0:10:26.280 --> 0:10:29.640 you know, rather impressive to behold. But at the same 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:34.840 time he was horribly in debt. The likewise, the the 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:39.480 English military was weak, the political condition was far from stable, 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.720 where England was a relatively poor nation, and the idea 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:48.640 of challenging Spain, Imperial Spain in such a manner was 0:10:48.640 --> 0:10:52.520 was highly ambitious, if not outright ridiculous. Remember, at the 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.040 time there was a there was a papal bull uh 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.400 dividing the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese. So 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.319 it wasn't just that England should challenge Spain, it was 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:05.640 that English England should challenge the papacy's division of the globe. 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.520 This was this was this was not just hey, we're 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.320 we're we're pretty awesome. We should go over and claim this. 0:11:12.360 --> 0:11:15.839 It's like, no, we This involves a leveling up of 0:11:16.000 --> 0:11:20.400 the nation that might not be practical, and it worked 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:24.880 um And for his part, the way that d assisted 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.560 was with his knowledge of cartography and mathematical modeling, so 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:33.120 he instructed captains and pilots and the principles of mathematical navigation. 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:35.960 He would prepare maps for their use and he furnished 0:11:36.000 --> 0:11:39.960 them with various navigational instruments. In the fifties and fifties 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.360 he actually advised Richard Chancellor's expedition through the North Sea 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.439 so that he could establish a trade route between England 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:50.720 and Moscow. And there's there's some evidence that D was, 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.160 I guess uh financially involved in that as well, like 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:56.959 he had he had something to gain from this um 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:02.280 trade route. In fIF teen seventy two, a new star 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.800 appeared and it was visible for seventeen months. Now today 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.360 we know that this was a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:15.040 Uh D saw this as the signal for the beginning 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:20.439 of the English Protestant Empire. And so he also instructed 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.760 an expedition to discover the Northwest Passage to China in 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.480 fifteen seventies six. Now, I've talked a lot about Northwest 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:32.280 passages before the or d Northwest Passage and expeditions through 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:34.040 it before on the show, because I've done research on 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.400 the past. Um, you know, like like almost all of these, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.440 it was totally fruitless, but it did lead to English 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:45.559 settlements in Canadian North America. And this is where it 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.760 gets crazy. Deformed his own company to colonize the Americas, 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.000 and there's some evidence that he was the intellectual force 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:59.000 behind Francis drake circumnavigation of the globe, and D would 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:04.400 be awarded rights to any new newly discovered land that 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:08.240 was north of the fiftieth parallel. If Drake had gone 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.840 any further north than Oregon, this basically would have given 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.360 him all of Canada. So D would have like, if 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:19.520 this had all worked out, D would own Canada. How 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.880 different might Canadian history be if it had been founded 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:27.880 by a wizard right exactly? Um, And you know we 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:30.920 talked about this in the last episode. Uh, you know, 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.880 D moved his family to crack up Poland and three. 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.160 A lot of it had to do with the whole 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:41.679 angela communication thing and Lasky and and Kelly as we 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:45.640 previously described, but some believed that the whole reason he 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.559 was there was actually to act as a spy. Uh. 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:52.960 And when the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second suspected 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:55.800 D that's when he was banished from the empire, and 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:58.400 he went to a small town called Trebonn in at 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:00.920 what the time was southern Bohemian I imagine now it's 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.040 probably part of the Czech Republic or maybe Slovakia. But 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.480 um uh, this is fascinating. That's what gets him kicked 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.400 out when, as we know from last episode, he just 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:13.800 basically went up to Rudolph and was like, hey, angels 0:14:13.800 --> 0:14:17.600 told me you're possessed by demons. And Rudolph was like whatever. 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:20.840 But then he's like, maybe this guy's a spy and 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:23.640 he gets rid of him. Now here's a really fun factor. 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:28.720 You're ready, everybody. D signed his letters to Elizabeth as 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.640 double O seven. Yeah, a secret sign of cipher that 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:35.600 at least looked like double os. Yeah. So I mean 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.480 I'm wondering if that's where um uh Ian Fleming got 0:14:39.480 --> 0:14:42.360 the idea for double seven from or if it's maybe 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:45.360 an actual has a historical precedence. So I've read two 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.000 different versions of this. One is that Ian Fleming was 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.920 reading about John D at the time directly got this, uh, 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:57.360 this idea from these writings. And I've also read some 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:00.560 people cast doubt on this whole connection that oh, well, 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:05.479 actually John D didn't really use double A seven. So um, 0:15:05.680 --> 0:15:08.640 I'm not sure exactly where the truth lies there somewhere 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:10.920 in the middle. But but we will get back to 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.520 this whole spying thing, this whole espionage thing, because as 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:17.080 incredible as everything has been thus far, um, it really 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:19.960 gets crazier in the episode where we're not even talking 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.560 about angelic communication all that weight. Okay, why don't we 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:25.680 take a quick break and when we come back, we're 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:31.440 gonna talk about the cryptography aspects of the career. What 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:34.520 happens to our digital lives when we're gone? Could our 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:38.400 online personalities be brought back to life? What could artificial 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:43.000 intelligence do when combined with saved digital memories. A new 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:47.480 podcast from ge podcast theater Impanoply, the creators of last 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:51.600 year's award winning The Message, explores those very questions. The 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:55.280 story follows Ross Barnes, at low level employee at the 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:59.600 FBI who spends his days conversing online with his wife, Charlie, 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.520 who died eight months ago. But the technology behind this 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:07.320 digital resurrection leads Ross down a dangerous path that threatens 0:16:07.360 --> 0:16:10.840 his job, his own life, and maybe even the world. 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.080 The title of the series is Life After. That's all 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:18.680 one word. It's ten episodes in length. Listen, subscribe and 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:26.640 download it today. Alright, we're back. So cryptography the the study, 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.440 the creation and the breaking of codes and ciphers. Yeah, 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.640 so we we've already covered this slightly. But D was 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:38.200 taken with the work of German abbot Trithemius uh and 0:16:38.280 --> 0:16:40.880 he was an important figure in the history of cryptography 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:44.640 as well as occultism. And in fifteen sixty four, while 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:48.880 D was in Antwerk, he tracked down a copy of 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:53.320 truths most famous work, The stick I'm gonna get this wrong, 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:57.840 the Stagana of Grafia and copied it. Now, you were 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.400 telling me that there is this like whole weird thing 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:03.160 about the copying of it. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's it's 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:09.160 it's pretty strange. So certainly Trithemius was a big deal again, 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:13.920 important figure in the history of cryptography and occultism and 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:17.080 uh and and D was already a fan. He owned 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:21.280 several copies of his of his book Polygraphia, which was 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:25.240 the first printed book about the subject of cryptography. Uh, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:28.000 not to say, you know, certainly not the first book. 0:17:28.080 --> 0:17:31.040 It's also worth noting that there was there was an 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:35.960 Arabic book that that was already out there in the world, 0:17:36.440 --> 0:17:39.560 and this book was by a man by the name 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:43.159 of al Kindy. But this was the first that was, 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:47.840 you know, certainly the first Western tone dealing with cryptography. Uh. 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:52.960 They were twelve rotating paper, a cipher discs embedded within 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.480 the pages, and even today they're in remarkably good condition. 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.359 They still turn. Uh. So it was a pretty phenomenal book. 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:02.480 I'm kind of thinking of I don't think you've seen 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:04.840 this movie yet, but that Doctor Strange movie came up. 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:07.920 You saw it, Yeah, you know, the library and that 0:18:07.920 --> 0:18:11.280 that's what I'm imagining. Yeah, yeah, very much. Yeah, And 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:14.280 certainly there's a lot of like circular devices and and 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:17.800 glyphs that should pop up in that movie that that 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:20.919 feel right at home in the world of John D. 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:24.240 Except not glowing and spinning in the air, right unless 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:26.040 you're talking to Edward Kelly and he will say, yeah, 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:28.440 I can see those disks probably. Uh so, Yeah, he 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:31.840 finds out there's a copy of Steganographia out there, which 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:34.800 was a rare book. It was an essentially an an 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:39.400 abandoned work of the Athenius is because it dealt with, 0:18:39.920 --> 0:18:43.600 at least on the surface, dealt with angelic communication. It 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.800 dealt with communing with spirits and using spirits to relay 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:53.119 messages over vast distances. Okay, hold on a second, I 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:55.600 think I've got a theory here. Let's see if this 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.880 plays out as we're talking more about Trithemius. What if 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.399 so we know that D was really into Trithemius, and 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:08.840 then he gathered all of this information before he met 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:14.320 Edward Kelly. What if Edward Kelly was using Trithmius to 0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:19.200 create his version of a Nokian that eventually D wrote 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:24.040 down and and and hearkened as the angelic language. Yeah, 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:27.080 maybe that's it. It sounds it sounds compelling to me. 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:29.720 I guess I should probably say a little more about 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.040 Trithemius before I by go any any further here. But 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.320 this guy alone was pretty fascinating. This was the man 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.800 who served as advisors to emperors, was among the most 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:42.399 erudite German book collectors of his time, author of more 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.840 than fifty books himself, and the founder of scientific bibliography. 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.320 He was, as previously noted, the first printed author on 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.919 the subject of cryptography in the West. And um and 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.880 yet then here's this book, this seems to be devoted 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:00.359 to angelic magic that he was forced to and in 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.080 writing because he was talking to other people about it 0:20:03.119 --> 0:20:05.840 and they were like, Oh, I don't know about about 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:10.119 this book you're working on Acthemius. Uh. Even as he 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:12.639 was making writing it, he made claims that the text 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:17.400 would enable communication over vast distances, to communicate one's thoughts 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:22.440 by fire and other claims. So basically, like like other 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.159 individuals hearing about this, they were like like, well, this 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.640 means this makes it sound like either you're lying or 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:35.479 you're a demonic sorcerer, right smiled upon Yeah, not so 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:39.520 much in the uh, in the church. So the crazy 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.600 thing is that over the centuries, it's been revealed that 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.960 all three volumes of this work are concerned with cryptography, 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.320 the most and most recently volume three. So pretty early 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:53.080 on commentators figured out, all right, well, these first two 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:57.120 books are only like surface level about angelic magic. They're 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.879 really about cryptography and codes and ciphers. But they thought 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:02.960 for the longest, well, this third book, though, this just 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.560 seems to be about magic. There's no code here. Um 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.760 and that's kind of a fitting read for the life 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:12.800 of John d. The idea of like, at what point 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:16.199 does the magic become the main thing? But here's the 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:20.639 crazy part. This only this a view of the third 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:26.119 book of Steconographia only lasted until the late nineteen nineties. 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:31.280 That's when two individuals experienced unrelated breakthroughs and cracking it 0:21:31.560 --> 0:21:35.320 German linguist Thomas Ernst and Jim Reid's, who is working 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:38.439 in the mathematics and cryptography research department at A T 0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:42.159 and T. That this is Wait, so A T and 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.919 T paid for somebody to research this old book on 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.960 Angela communication and cryptography. Well, it's uh, I don't know 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:51.919 if he did. I'm not certain if he did. This 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:55.159 part on the A T and D died, but reads 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:57.600 is a guy who's subsequently written a few different books 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:01.680 on this and other D related works. Um and uh. 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:06.159 He he wrote about about this particular work in summing 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:09.920 it up with the following uh, which is I think 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.680 rather illuminating as we continue to look at these obsessions quote. 0:22:13.680 --> 0:22:17.800 The question now is why did Trimetheus so thoroughly embrace 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:21.320 the rhetoric of magic for such a non magical as 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:25.560 we regarded purpose. Did he regard cryptography as inherently magical 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:28.440 or was his choice of the language that language a 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:32.960 solution to the stylistic problem that all authors of cryptographic 0:22:33.080 --> 0:22:37.000 exposition have to solve, how to sustain the reader's interest 0:22:37.359 --> 0:22:42.600 through example after example of usually tedious plain texts, possibly 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:48.439 tedious explanations of cryptographic techniques, and always tedious cipher texts. 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:53.200 Trimetheus use of angel language might thus be a rhetorical 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:56.920 strategy to engage the reader's interest. If so, he was 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:01.159 vastly successful, even if he completely miss calculated how his 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:05.800 book would be received, because this basically, like I said that, 0:23:05.880 --> 0:23:08.800 he was an important figure in in occult circles because 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:11.080 for the longest like, that's what these books look like, 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:14.639 That's what those books mean. If you're not breaking the 0:23:14.720 --> 0:23:18.080 crowd the code and sort of finding the deeper symbolism 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:22.320 that the deeper purpose of the text. Yeah, so he's 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:25.480 he's thinking along the lines of I'm gonna write this 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:30.840 really groundbreaking, uh piece of linguistic science, but that's not 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:34.760 really sexy, so I'll tell everyone it's about angels. Yeah, 0:23:34.880 --> 0:23:36.680 or it's like it's kind of thinking. You think about 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:38.560 it like this. If you have you have a grammar lesson, 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:40.640 what kind of sentence are you gonna use? You're gonna 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:44.080 use a boring sentence or an exciting one. So in 0:23:44.200 --> 0:23:47.159 a sense, he used the exciting sentence. Uh, he put 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:49.679 he put a dog in a sentence. So another okay, 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:52.680 another theory. And again I'm no d scholar, and I 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:54.399 know there's lots of people out there who have poured 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:57.400 through his diaries, but maybe D was doing the same thing. 0:23:58.080 --> 0:24:01.000 Well that that that becomes the the crazy thing to 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:03.400 try and figure out, like where where we're what we're 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:06.040 D's interest here? Was he interested in the magic? Was 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.600 he interested in I mean, clearly he was interested in cryptography. 0:24:09.880 --> 0:24:11.760 He'd read his other book, That's why he sought out 0:24:11.840 --> 0:24:15.440 this one. There was the whole wife swapping thing though, 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:17.760 so there is a certain amount of him actually believing 0:24:17.800 --> 0:24:19.720 angels are telling him to do things he doesn't want 0:24:19.720 --> 0:24:22.760 to do. It makes one think, like, at what point 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:26.560 in studying cryptography through the language of magic, do you 0:24:26.680 --> 0:24:30.360 become kind of ensourcefuled by the magic, by the language 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:34.560 of of of of magic. Uh yeah, it's crazy. Now 0:24:34.720 --> 0:24:37.679 now back to this whole expedition where he ends up 0:24:37.800 --> 0:24:40.600 finding this copy of this rare book. So, as Benjamin 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:43.360 Willy points out in his book, this was no small accomplishment. 0:24:43.400 --> 0:24:46.000 It was a really difficult book to steal a peek 0:24:46.080 --> 0:24:50.200 at it was. It was banned. It was actually actually 0:24:50.200 --> 0:24:54.880