Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim
Speaker 1: and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener Discretion advised.
Speaker 2: The year was sixteen sixty two and the owners of
Speaker 2: a little sweet shop in London were running their fingers
Speaker 2: over their newest acquisition, an antique cedar chest. Their fingertips
Speaker 2: found a strange opening in the body of the chest,
Speaker 2: a hidden drawer. Perhaps they used a knife to pull
Speaker 2: at it. The drawer opened, and inside not the treasures
Speaker 2: they may have dreamt of, but a beaded necklace, a cross,
Speaker 2: and some handwritten books the sweetshops made. Wasn't especially interested
Speaker 2: in whatever someone's old books might have to say. She
Speaker 2: had work to do. But as she baked her pies
Speaker 2: atop the pages she was using as parchment paper, the
Speaker 2: smell of caramelized sugar spinning in the air, it was
Speaker 2: hard to ignore an uncomfortable feeling stirring in her gut.
Speaker 2: When she looked at the books pages. They were strange. Yes,
Speaker 2: they contained words and dated entries, as she might have expected,
Speaker 2: But the pages also contained diagrams and signs and symbols
Speaker 2: that she didn't understand. Unnerving symbols, triangles inscribed inside circles,
Speaker 2: intricate stars that pointed toward what might have been Greek letters,
Speaker 2: maps of what might have looked like planets, complex mathematical
Speaker 2: symbols that could only be witchcraft. She quieted her mind.
Speaker 2: She lifted the surely devilish pages one by one, and
Speaker 2: one by one let them blacken in the fire beneath
Speaker 2: her baking pies.
Speaker 1: But it didn't take.
Speaker 2: Long before other people started noticing the strangeness of the
Speaker 2: pages that hadn't been burned. One antiquarian realized that these
Speaker 2: pages weren't just some devil's unhinged ramblings. They were the
Speaker 2: lost diary of Renaissance, England's greatest conjurer, the occultist, once
Speaker 2: employed as astronomer to Queen Elizabeth the First, a man
Speaker 2: named John Dee. John Dee was one of the most
Speaker 2: fascinating characters in all of Elizabethan court history. He was
Speaker 2: a learned mathematician and also a magician, an astronomer, and
Speaker 2: an astrologer. He was a trusted political advisor to the Queen.
Speaker 2: He was a scientist, a cartographer, and even a special
Speaker 2: effects technician. He was also an angelologist, a Christian lawmanser,
Speaker 2: an occultist and a dabbler in alchemy. He was a
Speaker 2: student of Hebrew and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah.
Speaker 2: In addition to Christianity, he believed he spoke with angels,
Speaker 2: both angels from the Old Testament and some of his
Speaker 2: own discovery. He recorded completely credulously his angelic conversations with
Speaker 2: the likes of the angels Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and Uriel.
Speaker 2: It may seem impossible to us now that someone so
Speaker 2: invested in the occult in sorcery could have had such
Speaker 2: a serious political career in a royal court. But it
Speaker 2: was the fifteen hundreds, the Renaissance. The classic Renaissance man
Speaker 2: did it all in part because it all was not
Speaker 2: so neatly divided into branches as it is today. Math,
Speaker 2: magic and miracle were not entirely distinct from each other.
Speaker 2: Politics were ordained by God, after all. Queen Elizabeth herself
Speaker 2: believed in the royal touch, the magic of her fingertips
Speaker 2: upon her subject's next to heal their ailments. The latest
Speaker 2: optical science was recognizing that light could bend it separated
Speaker 2: into rainbows through lenses and mirrors and crystals, where was
Speaker 2: the line between that science and the idea that gazing
Speaker 2: into a crystal ball might reveal concealed dimensions of God's creation,
Speaker 2: just as it revealed the different bands of color concealed
Speaker 2: within light. John Dee was a man who studied the heavens,
Speaker 2: and in fifteen seventy two he looked up as all
Speaker 2: of England cowered at a new star that suddenly appeared
Speaker 2: in the night sky, followed by a range comet. In
Speaker 2: fifteen seventy seven, and under the light of that comet,
Speaker 2: the Conjuror John d made a political plan for his queen.
Speaker 2: He encouraged Elizabeth to follow the path laid by King
Speaker 2: Arthur one thousand years earlier, to expand England into a
Speaker 2: term he coined, a British Empire. But the Great Conjurer
Speaker 2: would also do something else. Under the light of that
Speaker 2: mysterious comet. He would allow a man using a false
Speaker 2: name into his home, a man who would ultimately be
Speaker 2: his downfall. This was a man who would intercede with
Speaker 2: D's angelic conversations and put a wedge between d and
Speaker 2: the court life he was enjoying with Queen Elizabeth. When
Speaker 2: the Great Conjurer looked up into the sky and calculated
Speaker 2: the positions of the planets. It seems he couldn't have
Speaker 2: seen just how tenuous his own position was. I'm Danish
Speaker 2: schwartz and this is noble blood. John Dee was born
Speaker 2: in or around London on July thirteenth, fifteen twenty seven,
Speaker 2: during the reign of King Henry the Eighth. He was
Speaker 2: the son of a merchant who served within the king's court.
Speaker 2: If you're into astrology, you're in luck. With this episode,
Speaker 2: Dee mapped his own birth chart, as well as the
Speaker 2: astrological positionings of many of the events that took place
Speaker 2: throughout the sixteenth century. According to D's calculations, Jupiter and
Speaker 2: the Sun were strong together in Cancer at the moment
Speaker 2: of his birth. I'm sure some of you listeners can
Speaker 2: interpret those signs better than I can. Biographer Benjamin Woolley
Speaker 2: notes that the moon and the Sun were in opposition
Speaker 2: in d'cas charts, and even I could tell you that symbolically,
Speaker 2: at least in literary terms. That suggests some internal conflict
Speaker 2: that might have been brewing inside him. And so we
Speaker 2: begin today's episode appropriately in astrology, a field with plenty
Speaker 2: of adherents still today a realm that draws on astronomical
Speaker 2: science and then, at least in my estimation, heads into
Speaker 2: the direction of belief. By fifteen forty seven, John d
Speaker 2: was nineteen and England was transitioning from the reign of
Speaker 2: King Henry the Eighth to that of his short lived
Speaker 2: only son, King Edward. At that time John Dee was
Speaker 2: in the midst of some personal drama of his own,
Speaker 2: and I mean drama in the quite literal sense. He
Speaker 2: was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge, and he was
Speaker 2: putting on a play. It was a play called Peace
Speaker 2: by an ancient Greek playwright, Aristophanes, and it called for
Speaker 2: a dung beetle to fly with an actor on its back.
Speaker 2: This was the fifteen hundreds. D did not have the
Speaker 2: benefits of electricity in staging his play, let alone projectors,
Speaker 2: lasers or drones. And yet the actor on stage instructed
Speaker 2: his scare a beetle to lift him into the sky,
Speaker 2: and it did. There was a gasp in the audience
Speaker 2: next craned backward to watch in awe. How was it
Speaker 2: possible the flying beetle on stage was like a miracle,
Speaker 2: or else some thought like magic or as some whispered
Speaker 2: as the play went on, it was witchcraft. D must
Speaker 2: have dealt with the devil. Only a few people in
Speaker 2: the crowd recognized that the beatle must have been some
Speaker 2: application of mathematics. D probably used some combination of Pulley's mirrors, springs,
Speaker 2: and pressurized air or gas to create the illusion of
Speaker 2: a flying bug. But this was a time when mathematics
Speaker 2: as a discipline were viewed as essentially indistinguishable from conjuring.
Speaker 2: D was cast under suspicion. In another life, we can
Speaker 2: imagine that D might have gone on to become the
Speaker 2: best practical effects guy of the Elizabethan age. We can
Speaker 2: easily imagine a D who went on to be an
Speaker 2: artist of the theater what D himself called art mathematical.
Speaker 2: Of course, his beatle was considered wizardly. After all, what
Speaker 2: is special effects technology today but something we call movie magic.
Speaker 2: But aside from a brief stint when he was a student,
Speaker 2: D wasn't really interested in the theater. For D, the
Speaker 2: mathematical was only in service of his true aim, which
Speaker 2: was the revelation of some universal godly truth through the
Speaker 2: use of sciences that shaded without distinction in his mind
Speaker 2: into magic, and eight years later that lack of distinction
Speaker 2: between the occult and the approved came home to D
Speaker 2: in the form of a court order. It was fifteen
Speaker 2: fifty five and d was under arrest. This was during
Speaker 2: Queen Mary's reign. D stood accused of witchcraft, a serious
Speaker 2: charge under the new Catholic rule, which was definitely not
Speaker 2: opposed to burning heretics at the stake. D was also
Speaker 2: official accused of two other crimes, calculating and conjuring. Again,
Speaker 2: in that language, you can see the closeness of math
Speaker 2: and magic to this day. The word we use for
Speaker 2: solving a math problem calculating, it means something very different
Speaker 2: when applied to a person. A calculating person implies that
Speaker 2: they're sly bad scheming. And John Dee stood accused of
Speaker 2: doing the very thing that so many astrologically inclined bridesmaids
Speaker 2: do for their friends today. That is, mapping the horoscopes
Speaker 2: of Mary and her husband Philip to see if they
Speaker 2: made a good match. Kind of touchingly, de found in
Speaker 2: favor of Mary and Philip's union. It's pretty sweet, actually,
Speaker 2: His calculations suggested that their marriage took place under an
Speaker 2: auspicious rising sign for a new couple. But of course
Speaker 2: flick Queen Mary, defensive about an unpopular marriage, didn't exactly
Speaker 2: take the zodiac as a fun activity for a bridal shower. Luckily,
Speaker 2: Forde he escaped the fate of the heretics and outlived Mary,
Speaker 2: who died in fifteen fifty seven. That was when Mary's
Speaker 2: younger Protestant half sister, Elizabeth, came to the throne. Twenty
Speaker 2: five year old Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry
Speaker 2: the Eighth and the beheaded Anne Boleyn. She was the
Speaker 2: second woman ever to ascend to a throne that had
Speaker 2: been until recently only occupied by men, and she needed
Speaker 2: to secure her reign. She appointed her favorite Robert Dudley
Speaker 2: to advise her, and Dudley, needing the good graces of
Speaker 2: not only the earthly but heavenly realms as well as
Speaker 2: he put together Elizabeth's coronation, decided that he needed the
Speaker 2: one man in England who could read the planets better
Speaker 2: than anyone else. Robert Dudley called upon John d. When
Speaker 2: John d agreed to choose the date for Queen Elizabeth's coronation,
Speaker 2: it was the beginning of a major life change for him.
Speaker 2: After being arrested under Queen Mary's reign. Now he was
Speaker 2: not only set free, but he was welcomed into Elizabeth's court.
Speaker 2: As his first order of business, D consulted the stars.
Speaker 2: He measured and mapped the angles between the planets, the
Speaker 2: positions of major constellations, the twelve astrological houses, and rising signs.
Speaker 2: At last, he decided that January fifteenth, fifteen fifty nine
Speaker 2: would be the most Heavens approved date for the beginning
Speaker 2: of the Elizabethan Age. Obviously, Mars was in Scorpio that day.
Speaker 2: After the coronation, history loses track of D for about
Speaker 2: five years. I like to imagine the stage magician's sleight
Speaker 2: of hand. Here D ducking into a cleverly designed set
Speaker 2: piece through which the audience of history can't see him.
Speaker 2: But he was somewhere all along, studying the Jewish mystical
Speaker 2: tradition of Kabbalah. He was seeking the secret names of God,
Speaker 2: learning the Hebrew language and its mystical numerology, the alphabet
Speaker 2: arranged around the first letter olive, middle mem, last tav,
Speaker 2: spelling out emmett, the Hebrew word for truth. He was
Speaker 2: seeking divine truth in increasingly more mystical modes, but D
Speaker 2: was far from done with politics. Once history catches up
Speaker 2: with him again, he steps out from behind the curtain.
Speaker 2: On June fourteenth, fifteen sixty four, when he and Queen
Speaker 2: Elizabeth are walking together at Greenwich Palace on the south
Speaker 2: bank of the River Thames. D was holding something in
Speaker 2: his hands, a slim book, and he was brimming with
Speaker 2: excitement and perhaps a little bit of fear. He was
Speaker 2: about to show the Queen the work of his soul,
Speaker 2: his Monas Hieroglyphica. Listener, allow me to tell you the
Speaker 2: monas is truly wild. It's a whole book dedicated to
Speaker 2: explaining a mystical symbol of divine revelation that D invented himself.
Speaker 2: It looks kind of like a cross between the artist
Speaker 2: formerly known as Prince Symbol and Harry Potter's Deathly Hallows.
Speaker 2: D's symbol was a millage of Latin wordplay, alchemy, numerology,
Speaker 2: celestial calculations, and you know, his idea of the unity
Speaker 2: of all things. So was no doubt excited but nervous
Speaker 2: as he walked alongside the Queen, no doubt remembering how
Speaker 2: he had been arrested for doing a Queen's horoscope. Years before,
Speaker 2: Elizabeth had taken D's astrological advice for her coronation date.
Speaker 2: Though perhaps she would be open to his new book
Speaker 2: of divine celestial work, or perhaps she would have him
Speaker 2: arrested on the spot. He offered her the book. Elizabeth
Speaker 2: paused for a moment, observing the symbol. D's pulse pounded.
Speaker 2: Then he saw Elizabeth's eyes light up in curiosity. I
Speaker 2: will be your scholar, she told D if you explain
Speaker 2: this work to me. And so John D sat with
Speaker 2: the Queen of England and described to her his special
Speaker 2: invented brand of mysticism. John D and the Queen went
Speaker 2: on to have a good relationship. She paid him occasional
Speaker 2: visits at his home. She consulted with him about whether
Speaker 2: she should marry one of her suitors, the Duke of Anjou.
Speaker 2: He said she shouldn't, and she didn't. But the greatest
Speaker 2: cause De advocated with Elizabeth, and the one that would
Speaker 2: mark ultimately the end of his close relationship with her
Speaker 2: at court, was a bit of political fortune telling that
Speaker 2: would ultimately come to pass in a big way. It
Speaker 2: was D's deep belief that Elizabeth should set out to
Speaker 2: create a British empire. D wasn't just fortune telling when
Speaker 2: it came to this idea of empire, he was actively
Speaker 2: promoting it. As Sir Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe,
Speaker 2: D was coining the term British empire. He was hearkening
Speaker 2: back to King Arthur a thousand years before, arguing that
Speaker 2: the British right to an extensive empire had been established
Speaker 2: a millennium ago. He encouraged Elizabeth to challenge the Spanish
Speaker 2: and Portuguese claims to the New World, especially Spain's claims
Speaker 2: in North America. His suggestions were even more persuasive than usual,
Speaker 2: because just as D was petitioning Elizabeth on the idea
Speaker 2: of expansionism, there was a strange thing going on in
Speaker 2: the world, something that could seem like a message directly
Speaker 2: from the heavens, something no one in all of Britain,
Speaker 2: in all of Europe could possibly miss. All anyone needed
Speaker 2: to do was step outside and crane their necks back
Speaker 2: as they had years ago to gaze at John D's
Speaker 2: flying beetle on stage. But this time the magic was
Speaker 2: taking place on a much bigger stage, the night sky itself,
Speaker 2: And if anyone looked up to the night sky in
Speaker 2: November of fifteen seventy seven, there it would be the great, glittering,
Speaker 2: terrifying thing, the bright light with a luminous tail, a comet.
Speaker 2: Many believed that the cosmic event signaled some vexation from God,
Speaker 2: some calamity to befall mankind, or thought many of the
Speaker 2: English to specifically befall England or the Queen. But Elizabeth
Speaker 2: wasn't going to believe just anybody's fears about this strange
Speaker 2: celestial happening. She was going to consult one man when
Speaker 2: it came to the skies, John D. The comet is
Speaker 2: nothing to fear, he advised her. It is not important
Speaker 2: of approaching doom, but of your approaching greatness. Perhaps the
Speaker 2: bright light with the tale that arcing through the sky
Speaker 2: is a a sign of England's destiny to be the
Speaker 2: bright light with a long tail that is a global empire.
Speaker 2: Of course, D's vision for English expansionism is exactly what
Speaker 2: would happen. The English would defeat the Spanish Armada in
Speaker 2: fifteen eighty eight, when D was not yet sixty years old.
Speaker 2: But ultimately D had nothing to do with Elizabeth's actions,
Speaker 2: as she set out in favor of the empire that
Speaker 2: he had initially encouraged. The comet lit the sky, and
Speaker 2: D's eyes were drawn heavenward. He lost interest in court.
Speaker 2: He had begun his life with one interest, and it
Speaker 2: was not the earthly realms of battle and conquest and bloodshed,
Speaker 2: though his concept of empire would inevitably contain all three.
Speaker 2: The comet faded from the sky, and John D left
Speaker 2: his influence at court behind. From there, the rest of
Speaker 2: D's life became ever more involved in the occult. He
Speaker 2: worked closely with scriers, people who divined things via the
Speaker 2: use of objects like crystal balls. Some or I might
Speaker 2: say all of these were frauds. D's closest scrier was
Speaker 2: a man who first entered his life calling himself Edward Talbot.
Speaker 2: Talbot would later re enter D's life using his real name,
Speaker 2: Edward Kelly, which goes to show the type of upstanding
Speaker 2: honesty we're dealing with here. With Kelly's help, D communed
Speaker 2: with the angels in a special language called Inokian. D
Speaker 2: and Kelly conversed with some of the people you may
Speaker 2: have learned about in religious schools, like Raphael and Michael
Speaker 2: and Gabriel and Uriel. In his diaries, d earnestly record
Speaker 2: these angelic conversations. Uriel would say things like, quote, we
Speaker 2: cannot visit thee now at the twelfth hour, thou shalt
Speaker 2: use us. Then at the twelfth hour Michael would say
Speaker 2: something like, quote, divide the seven parts of the circle
Speaker 2: everyone into seven by seven. All government is to my understanding,
Speaker 2: It's not exactly a clear message. Sometimes D worried that
Speaker 2: he and Kelly were communicating with devils instead of angels,
Speaker 2: but for the most part D believed in Kelly. He
Speaker 2: and Kelly even traveled to Poland and Prague together, where
Speaker 2: they wound up banned by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph
Speaker 2: the Second on suspicion of necromancy. Eventually, Kelly received a
Speaker 2: message that he and D should share not only spiritual experience,
Speaker 2: but something a little closer to home, their wives. This
Speaker 2: experiment in sister wifing lasted only about one night. It
Speaker 2: seemed like a horrible incident for D's wife Jane, and
Speaker 2: in the end it sat very badly with D as well.
Speaker 2: Shortly after his relationship with Kelly finally broke down. Still,
Speaker 2: the timing of the wife swapping did throw the paternity
Speaker 2: of one of D's sons into doubt. To Dee's credit,
Speaker 2: he treated the boy as his own. He was an
Speaker 2: involved father to all of his children with Jane, who
Speaker 2: was his third wife. He was such an involved father
Speaker 2: that he even asked one of his sons to be
Speaker 2: a scrier for him, which ultimately wound up as a
Speaker 2: failed experiment. By the final years of D's life, he
Speaker 2: had outlived Jane and five of their eight children. He
Speaker 2: had also outlived Queen Elizabeth. He died in in December
Speaker 2: sixteen o eight at the age of eighty one. His
Speaker 2: hidden diaries would be baked under the Sweet Shop Pies
Speaker 2: fifty four years later. D may have been the inspiration
Speaker 2: for a lot of canonical characters who are well known
Speaker 2: to English lit majors. William Shakespeare's magician Prospero, Christopher Marlowe's
Speaker 2: necromancer Faust, Edmund Spencer's meditative Old Sage in the House
Speaker 2: of Temperance in The Fairy Queen. But above all, Dee's
Speaker 2: legacy is as a figure who strived earnestly for divine revelation,
Speaker 2: often in ways that seem profoundly unscientific to us today,
Speaker 2: and yet even today, the great contemporary mathematician Edward Frankel
Speaker 2: went on Lex Friedman's podcast this April to discuss the
Speaker 2: present state of math. They talked about contemporary physicist and
Speaker 2: the so far in vain quest for a grand, unifying
Speaker 2: theory of everything, and they joked about when you show
Speaker 2: up and meet God and there's one equation on the
Speaker 2: board and the two of you just chuckle. Unlike D,
Speaker 2: scholars today have separated math and science from religion. Yet
Speaker 2: the image of God's chalkboard is still there, even metaphorically.
Speaker 2: There's still some sense that when we try to derive
Speaker 2: the mathematical and physical underpinnings of the world, we are
Speaker 2: dealing with something bigger than ourselves. John D, for all
Speaker 2: he foresaw and failed to foresee about the future, probably
Speaker 2: would be happy about that. That's the story of Queen
Speaker 2: Elizabeth's court astrologer John D. But stick around after a
Speaker 2: brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about
Speaker 2: his astrological birth chart. All right, for all of you
Speaker 2: astrology buffs out there, let's dig some more into D's
Speaker 2: birth chart. First of all, D wrote his chart in
Speaker 2: the form of a square. More like the Vedic style
Speaker 2: natal chart than the typical circular charts he might see today.
Speaker 2: In a box at the center of D's chart, his
Speaker 2: careful script recorded the following his birthday fifteen twenty seven
Speaker 2: July thirteenth, his birth time four hours and two minutes
Speaker 2: in the afternoon, and his birthplace latitude fifty one degrees
Speaker 2: and thirty two seconds north latitude. We don't know what
Speaker 2: D made of his own chart. Surely he read a
Speaker 2: lot of meaning into it, but none of that made
Speaker 2: its way to us today, which leaves many modern biographers
Speaker 2: and podcasters a lot of interpretive wiggle room. Biographer Benjamin
Speaker 2: Woolley notes that the star Antaris in the planet Mars
Speaker 2: were together on D's chart, which, in his interpretation, was
Speaker 2: a disturbing or threatening sign. We reached out to a
Speaker 2: friend who's an amateur chart reader and with no knowledge
Speaker 2: of whose chart this was. She looked at the eleventh
Speaker 2: House and said, ruled by Mercury and reflects the archetypes
Speaker 2: of Aquarius, so futuristic ideas, thinking about innovation and the future,
Speaker 2: sort of space alien stuff. But a different friend replied
Speaker 2: that astrology is pseudoscience and no place to end a
Speaker 2: historical podcast, although to be fair, one could argue that historically,
Speaker 2: during this period in question, astronomy was thought of as
Speaker 2: a sign. But for those who think like the second
Speaker 2: Friend and to be blunt, think like me. One final, cold,
Speaker 2: hard fact the astronomy in D's chart is remarkably correct.
Speaker 2: Using Ptolemy's formulas, decalculated the positions of the known planets
Speaker 2: at the time of his birth with extreme accuracy, within
Speaker 2: a few thirtieths of a degree. The least accurate calculation
Speaker 2: he made was for mercury, and even then, with the
Speaker 2: science of the sixteenth century, he was only off by
Speaker 2: two degrees.
Speaker 1: Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted
Speaker 1: by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by
Speaker 1: Hannah Johnston, Hannahswick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman.
Speaker 1: The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and
Speaker 1: rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive
Speaker 1: producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts
Speaker 1: From iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
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