Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's
Speaker 1: time to venture into the vault for a classic episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This one originally published
Speaker 1: in December of and uh, I hope you like wizards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. This is the first of two episodes that
Speaker 1: dealt with the enigmatic Dr d Dr John d who
Speaker 1: was quite an interesting character. He advised Queen Elizabeth, sought
Speaker 1: communion with angelic being's advocated British expansion, and it just
Speaker 1: generally plunged the depths of human knowledge in an age
Speaker 1: of great change. Uh. He's a figure that we discussed
Speaker 1: in our recent episodes on the Vontage Manuscript and uh
Speaker 1: and it may well come up again, like very a
Speaker 1: very notable historic figure, no doubt. We hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this classic episode about Oh wait this episode, I'm not
Speaker 1: on this one. Just to warn you. This is you
Speaker 1: and Christian, right, This was an episode I did with Christian.
Speaker 1: Not like you need a warning. I'm just I'm about
Speaker 1: to disappear. fALS warning Joe fans. Uh, He's not going
Speaker 1: to be present in this episode. But it sounds like
Speaker 1: a really good one. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: From how stuff works dot com. Thy character must have
Speaker 1: the names of the five angels written in the midst
Speaker 1: of sigellum, a myth graven upon the other side in
Speaker 1: a circle in the midst whereof must the stone be
Speaker 1: which was also brought wherein thou shalt at time to
Speaker 1: behold privately to thyself the state of God's people through
Speaker 1: the whole earth. Go and thou shalt receive terry, and
Speaker 1: you shall receive sleep, and you shall see. But walk
Speaker 1: and your eyes shall be fully opened. One thing, which
Speaker 1: is the ground and element of thy desire, is already profited.
Speaker 1: And out of seven thou hast been instructed of the
Speaker 1: lesser pot most perfectly. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Christian Sager.
Speaker 1: And from the beginning there you may think that we were,
Speaker 1: I don't know, performing a ritual of some kind and
Speaker 1: trying to summon an angel, And you would be half right.
Speaker 1: That's right. That is uh. That is a quote from
Speaker 1: the writings of the legendary, the mysterious, the influential Dr
Speaker 1: John d. The topic of both episodes this week. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he is a fascinating character and elizabethan mathematician, UH, conjurer,
Speaker 1: possibly a spy cryptographer. The list goes on first and
Speaker 1: foremost a mathematician, but it gets it gets a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. Is you try and piece together
Speaker 1: this man, the world he lived in, and what he
Speaker 1: really believed in. D Is is one of those characters
Speaker 1: that we've We've been talking about doing an episode on
Speaker 1: him for a while now, and when we dove into
Speaker 1: the research, we we really realized, Okay, this needs to
Speaker 1: be two episodes. And the way that we've decided to
Speaker 1: split these episodes categorically is this first episode is going
Speaker 1: to be more grounded in the sexy, occult magical stuff,
Speaker 1: and the second episode is going to be grounded in
Speaker 1: his scientific endeavors and his state craft. Um. There's so
Speaker 1: much about him that I learned doing this, and there's
Speaker 1: so many different interpretations too. He's just this fascinating individual. UM.
Speaker 1: If you're unfamiliar with him, I guess the best way
Speaker 1: to describe him is that he was one of the
Speaker 1: leading intellectuals of his time. It may not sound like it,
Speaker 1: given some of the things we're gonna say in these episodes,
Speaker 1: but he had magical interests. But despite that, he brought
Speaker 1: developments to England and cartography, navigation, mathematics, astronomy and cryptography,
Speaker 1: and his reputation in alchemy and astrology totally influenced the
Speaker 1: court of Queen Elizabeth the first. He was no doubt
Speaker 1: influential in that respect. Yeah, he he he had a
Speaker 1: rapport with with Queen Elizabeth. Uh. Some historians go as
Speaker 1: far as to say that they were friends, and you
Speaker 1: do get the idea that there may have been as
Speaker 1: much of a friendship as was possible between the Queen
Speaker 1: of England and uh, you know, essentially a common born
Speaker 1: intellectual who dabbled in magic. Right yeah, um, we'll say
Speaker 1: this later, but he did think of himself as her Merlin,
Speaker 1: which is really fascinating and comes into play. So the
Speaker 1: I said that we're going to split these episodes up,
Speaker 1: but one thing that you have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that the magic and the science overlap a lot too. Um,
Speaker 1: and so even in things like when he's advising them
Speaker 1: on national matters, on expanding the English Empire, he's still
Speaker 1: thinking in magical terms, like he's Merlin and she's King Arthur, right,
Speaker 1: He's he's a guy who, like I said, it's it's
Speaker 1: essential to keep the mathematics and in mind. But it's
Speaker 1: not like he's a guy who, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do my job here, which is science or mathematics, and
Speaker 1: then in my free time I'm going to do a
Speaker 1: little sorcery and in and then also I have this
Speaker 1: advising gig with the Queen. He saw it all connected.
Speaker 1: He saw it as part of a single tapestry of cosmos.
Speaker 1: And so there's a note I just want to provide
Speaker 1: here before we really dive in deep, which is I
Speaker 1: was reading an article in History Today that came out
Speaker 1: earlier this year by a woman named Katie Burkewood, and
Speaker 1: she says, keep in mind, the main sources for the
Speaker 1: story of Dee's life are all his own. Um so
Speaker 1: mainly what we're looking at. What we didn't look at
Speaker 1: this We looked at people's interpretation of those primary sources.
Speaker 1: That's true, But mainly his diaries, which cover the period
Speaker 1: from fifteen seventy seven to sixteen oh seven, so about
Speaker 1: from his age of fifty until he died. Those were
Speaker 1: a big source of his uh. I guess life history,
Speaker 1: and this also coincides with the period of time where
Speaker 1: he was up to his most fantastic endeavors, so keep
Speaker 1: that in mind. His early years were documented in his
Speaker 1: own autobiographical account, which was written in fifteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: and what he was trying to do is explain his
Speaker 1: past to the crown, basically to Queen Elizabeth, because he
Speaker 1: was trying to secure a royal position or an appointment
Speaker 1: that would secure him a regular income. Uh. And another
Speaker 1: source is the books that were recovered from his stolen collection.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk probably a lot throughout the course
Speaker 1: of these episodes about he had this infamously huge library
Speaker 1: and it was ransacked at one point, and some of
Speaker 1: those books have been recovered, uh. And he wrote extensive
Speaker 1: annotations in their margins, so some uh D scholars, I guess,
Speaker 1: go and find these copies and read those annotations to
Speaker 1: try to learn more about him. Apparently much of that
Speaker 1: library now resides with the Royal College of Physicians, I
Speaker 1: think in England. Yeah, so it's it's kind of difficult
Speaker 1: to tell truth from fiction in some of these cases.
Speaker 1: And Robert and I did our best when we read
Speaker 1: something that sounded really strange to corroborate it with multiple sources,
Speaker 1: and we we did find that, But then again, like
Speaker 1: those sources were all mainly coming from D's own writings,
Speaker 1: that's right there. There. Of course a number of wonderful
Speaker 1: books out there on D and his work, some books
Speaker 1: with with with different focuses than others. Uh. One book
Speaker 1: that I kept looking at was the one by Benjamin Wooley.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, The Queen's Conjure. Uh, excellent book, very readable.
Speaker 1: I recommend that to to anybody. But yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a guy that is really, in many ways a near
Speaker 1: unbelievable character, truly stranger than fiction. Like if if Alan
Speaker 1: Moore wrote him into a story, you chalk it up to, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's just Alan Moore's wondrous imagination and use of fictional
Speaker 1: and historic and pop culture hybridization. The same if he
Speaker 1: had appeared in an umberto Echo book, it might be
Speaker 1: tempted to think, oh, this is a fantastic creation, this
Speaker 1: Dr D. But but no, he this was a real
Speaker 1: real man. He lived, he wrote, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: there has been anyone quite like him since. We we
Speaker 1: see parallels and some of the figures that we've covered
Speaker 1: on the show, and we'll and and are planning to
Speaker 1: cover such as John c. Lilly or Jack Parsons, but
Speaker 1: but D kind of stands alone. Yeah, And it's funny
Speaker 1: that you mentioned Alan Moore because one of the sources
Speaker 1: that I went to was a History Channel special that
Speaker 1: aired in two thousand and two and it was narrated
Speaker 1: by Brian Cox. It's all about John D's life, and
Speaker 1: Alan Moore is one of the go to experts that
Speaker 1: the summoned. You know, they cut to him every once
Speaker 1: in a while and you hear that out in more voice.
Speaker 1: But he's he really knows his stuff about d um
Speaker 1: I imagine because Alan Moore is really into sort of
Speaker 1: like the history of English magic and stuff like that
Speaker 1: outside of his own fiction. But um, yeah, he the
Speaker 1: first first of all, I recommend, like, if you're really
Speaker 1: into John D. Go check out this this video. I
Speaker 1: watched it on YouTube, and uh, some of it's hilarious
Speaker 1: and some of it's really illuminating. But there's um they
Speaker 1: like do that thing that the History Channel used to
Speaker 1: do where they like re enact scenes of a person's
Speaker 1: life with actors and they have like kind of makeshift
Speaker 1: low budget like sets and stuff, so like shadowy scenes
Speaker 1: if somebody dressed as John D shuffling papers around sort
Speaker 1: of yeah that thing, or like him looking into a
Speaker 1: crystal ball, or him just walking across the field. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think probably the best way for us to
Speaker 1: to really first introduce you to John D is let's
Speaker 1: just do a broad stroke overview of his life. You know,
Speaker 1: we've given you sort of the the two sentence summary
Speaker 1: of who John D was, but we'll start with his
Speaker 1: life and then we'll really dive in deep into the
Speaker 1: magic stuff. Yeah, for with a guy like this, and
Speaker 1: I feel like this is the best approach. We'll give
Speaker 1: you the broad strokes and then we'll go back in
Speaker 1: and discuss the areas that we we we have time
Speaker 1: to discuss in these episodes. Yeah, Yeah, And I just
Speaker 1: want to say to like, keep in mind that there
Speaker 1: are people whose like entire career is writing about this guy.
Speaker 1: So what we cover in like two two and a
Speaker 1: half hours and podcasts, maybe you may be out there,
Speaker 1: you may know some stuff about D and be like, well,
Speaker 1: why didn't you you cover that? There's only so much
Speaker 1: we could do here, So we really tried to condense
Speaker 1: it down to fit the show. All right, well here
Speaker 1: we go, let's kick it off with July. John d
Speaker 1: is born in London, England. Yeah, and my first question
Speaker 1: is who raises a guy like John D? Like, how
Speaker 1: does he how does he end up like this? So
Speaker 1: his father, Roland, was a merchant of fabrics and textiles
Speaker 1: and he worked for King Henry the eighth. In fifteen
Speaker 1: fifty three, his father was actually indicted and imprisoned in
Speaker 1: the Tower of London, presumably because he had ties to
Speaker 1: Protestant reformists and sympathizers of the late King Edward. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of This is a theme that goes
Speaker 1: on throughout D's life, is the political struggles back and
Speaker 1: forth between the Catholic and Protestant Church. Yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: going on in the background the whole time. Now fifty two,
Speaker 1: John d enters St. John's College at Cambridge. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so from what I read at the time, the curriculum
Speaker 1: for such a college included something called the trivium, which
Speaker 1: is grammar, rhetoric and logic. And once you master those
Speaker 1: things you get your what would be your your bachelor's basically, uh,
Speaker 1: and then the quadrivium is what you study for your masters,
Speaker 1: and that's astronomy, geography, music and mathematics. Now okay, again
Speaker 1: this is self reported from his own thing that he
Speaker 1: wrote to the Queen later in life. But D says
Speaker 1: that while he was there he only slept four hours
Speaker 1: a night, so all he could do is study. So
Speaker 1: on one hand he was essentially applying for a position
Speaker 1: in this but also as as as we discussed more
Speaker 1: about John D, I don't really doubt this for a second.
Speaker 1: He seems like the kind of guy who who may
Speaker 1: have only slept four hours a night, he can constantly
Speaker 1: consume information. So in fifty five he really he receives
Speaker 1: that bachelor's degree in Arts and readership. Seven he takes
Speaker 1: his first scientific learning excursion of the Low Countries of
Speaker 1: continental Europe, and this becomes important later on because he
Speaker 1: spends an increasingly increasing amount of times there on various excursions.
Speaker 1: Eight he gets his master's degree from Cambridge studying mathematics
Speaker 1: and navigation, and then fifteen forty eight to fifteen fifty
Speaker 1: one his second learning excursion to the Low Countries and
Speaker 1: uh in particular. On this trip he studied under mathematician
Speaker 1: cartographers pezro Nonez Gema for Silius, Abraham Ortelius and Gerardis Mercator,
Speaker 1: as well as through his own studies in Paris and elsewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these the second set of travels, these benefited England.
Speaker 1: What he would do is he'd share his findings from
Speaker 1: these travels with Queen Elizabeth's associate. So for here's an example,
Speaker 1: in fifteen sixty two he discovered the works of Trithemius,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about this later. He introduced
Speaker 1: the court and subsequently Elizabeth to the study of modern
Speaker 1: cryptography through this, ultimately changing I guess war games, right
Speaker 1: with the way that they used cryptography. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we'll definitely get into that in this into the second episode.
Speaker 1: But this was a time when when coded messages were
Speaker 1: were really important. There was a mayor a matter of
Speaker 1: life and life and death. Now, as you mentioned, at
Speaker 1: this time, he is he's he seems to have his
Speaker 1: sight set on official, on an official position with the crown,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, he turned down a mathematical professorship
Speaker 1: at the University of Paris, and he turned down a
Speaker 1: similar position at the University of Oxford that was in
Speaker 1: fifty one and fifty four, and then he returned to England.
Speaker 1: He went to court and there he offered mathematical science
Speaker 1: instruction to courtiers, to navigators, just generally trying to make
Speaker 1: himself useful to the court. He served as a consultant
Speaker 1: and an astrologer to, among others, Queen Mary the first. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So before he worked for Mary's court, he had a
Speaker 1: patron who was the Duke of Northumberland, and this guy
Speaker 1: tried to place his own utter in law on the
Speaker 1: throne before Mary was placed there. He was charged with
Speaker 1: treason and executed. And this is one of the first
Speaker 1: of many times indeed's life where he had less influence
Speaker 1: because he had sort of like followed the wrong person.
Speaker 1: And he has these periods of like waxing and waning
Speaker 1: influence over the English monarchy. Yeah, getting involved in the
Speaker 1: machinations of of the court. Here, um, who's in and
Speaker 1: who's out, Which which stars rising, which one's falling. So
Speaker 1: then in fifteen fifty five, this is when he's jailed
Speaker 1: on the charge of being a conjuror. He was soon
Speaker 1: released thereafter. But let's let's pause for a second and
Speaker 1: try to figure this out. So the thinking here is
Speaker 1: that Queen Mary's examiners were the ones who jailed him,
Speaker 1: possibly with charges of conspiring with her sister Elizabeth, who
Speaker 1: was arrival at the time, and he was allegedly casting
Speaker 1: horoscopes for Queen Mary and her family without their permission,
Speaker 1: and because the predictions were bad for Mary, it was
Speaker 1: considered to be practicing witchcraft against the crown. The story
Speaker 1: goes like this that while Elizabeth was under house arrest,
Speaker 1: she asked d to perform her in Mary's horoscope, and
Speaker 1: so he did, and it predicted that Elizabeth would have
Speaker 1: a long reign and that Mary would die, which you
Speaker 1: know kind of happened, uh, And this is what landed
Speaker 1: him in jail. Now after this, after he gets out
Speaker 1: of jail, he's placed under the charge of Edmund Bonner,
Speaker 1: who is the Bishop of London. And in one of
Speaker 1: these writings he actually refers to Bonner as his quote
Speaker 1: singular friend, and there's some dispute about like are they
Speaker 1: actually friends or is this like his sarcastic term for
Speaker 1: this guy who's like kind of his jailer um. But
Speaker 1: after this point, all of these written works included sections
Speaker 1: defending his reputation from slander. So he was well aware
Speaker 1: that his mixture of astrology and magic and conjuring with
Speaker 1: science and mathematics and statesmanship was under scrutiny, and not
Speaker 1: for the last time. So in eight he published an
Speaker 1: Afrotistic Introduction which presented his his own views on natural philosophy, philosophy,
Speaker 1: and astrology. And then fifteen fifty eight, the same year,
Speaker 1: this is also when the rule of Queen Elizabeth the
Speaker 1: First begins. Yeah, and so the rumor here again this
Speaker 1: is from d Zone writings, is that when Elizabeth took power,
Speaker 1: she asked d to choose her coronation date based on astrology.
Speaker 1: Now who knows. I mean, yes, there's evidence that he
Speaker 1: was jailed performing horoscopes for her previously, so why wouldn't she.
Speaker 1: But then, you know he's the one claiming this stuff,
Speaker 1: and we know that later on in life he's just
Speaker 1: constantly trying to gain favor of the court by sort
Speaker 1: of but he's he's bolstering his resume. So yeah, he
Speaker 1: becomes the scientific and medical advisor to the Queen and
Speaker 1: uh and we're in the mid fifteen sixties. He establishes
Speaker 1: himself at more Lake near London, where he builds a laboratory,
Speaker 1: the largest private library in England more than four thousand
Speaker 1: books in manuscripts, and he, uh, you know, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: describe some more of the settings here. But it sounds
Speaker 1: like a fabulous place. And he would he would invite
Speaker 1: other scholars to come in and and use his books
Speaker 1: if they needed to look something up. And of course
Speaker 1: he was constantly in communication with other people, Like it
Speaker 1: was I was reading just yesterday about how he had
Speaker 1: these correspondence, uh, series of correspondence with with Chico Brahi,
Speaker 1: the really yeah, the famed astronomer. Yeah, famously lost his
Speaker 1: nose in a sword fight, another fabulous character at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should totally do it, Tycho Brahe episode. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the other thing about this to note, just for
Speaker 1: context about the library, we say four thousand books, and
Speaker 1: some of you are like, y, I got four thousand
Speaker 1: books in my house, right. Well, here's context. He had
Speaker 1: two thousand, six seventy menu scripts in that collection. Cambridge
Speaker 1: University at the time only had four hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: one manuscripts and Oxford University only had three hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy nine. So this was considered a massive library at
Speaker 1: the time. Like, if you're thinking about this, like uh,
Speaker 1: going back to the Grimoire episode that you and I
Speaker 1: did a couple of years ago, right, like, like, these
Speaker 1: are not just like pulp books. They're not like soft covers, right,
Speaker 1: Like some of these are written on parchment or their
Speaker 1: palamp sests. Right, So I mean he's got like a
Speaker 1: serious collection here in The books are unique too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In many cases, these would be books where you're wanting
Speaker 1: to read them. You might ask arounding and you'll find out, oh,
Speaker 1: well Dr D has a copy of that. You should
Speaker 1: go ask him. Maybe you'll get to look at it.
Speaker 1: Here's another interesting thing I wanted to point out as well.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that he ever earned a doctoral degree,
Speaker 1: but he was always referred to as Dr D. Kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Now. In a fifteen sixty four he published
Speaker 1: the Hieroglyphic Monad, in which he offered a single mathematical
Speaker 1: magical symbol as the key to unlocking, uh, the unity
Speaker 1: of nature. Yeah, and this, I mean, I guess we'll
Speaker 1: maybe like post this on the landing page or something
Speaker 1: we we actually shared or you shared it on Facebook yesterday,
Speaker 1: kind of teasing the audience, say this is what we're
Speaker 1: working on. One person got it and they referred to
Speaker 1: him as the d um But it kind of looks like,
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce that that German industrial band e'
Speaker 1: Stretton's nine streads into a new Boton. Yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: In fact, I had to look up a new Boton's
Speaker 1: logo just to make sure that they weren't too similar,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, I never thought about this before, but
Speaker 1: you know, they're two distinct symbols, but they are reminiscent
Speaker 1: of one another. Yeah, very much. So for some reason,
Speaker 1: I also find it looks like it kind of looks
Speaker 1: like it could be a character from a SpongeBob cartoon.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It does have like an anthropologic quality
Speaker 1: to it, of like a head with arms and legs
Speaker 1: and then like devil's horns. Yeah, or it makes me
Speaker 1: think of the the aliens from Slaughterhouse Five for some reason,
Speaker 1: the ones that was like an eye on a hand.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of them, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: this was his his Lands and Slaughterhouse five. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a there's an alien zoo for humans. I forgot all
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, okay, I just think about the horrors
Speaker 1: of so In fifteen seventy he created the first English
Speaker 1: translation of Euclid's Elements and added an influential preface that
Speaker 1: offered a powerful manifesto unquote the dignity and usefulness of
Speaker 1: the mathematical sciences, and he seems to certainly have highly
Speaker 1: regarded mathematics is the key to understanding the natural world,
Speaker 1: but also believed in the value of the occult to
Speaker 1: unlock the deeper mysteries of the universe. And again, his
Speaker 1: ideas of the occult and mathematics are kind of intertwined.
Speaker 1: This is definitely going to be a theme that we
Speaker 1: returned to over and over again in these episodes. Mathematics
Speaker 1: is like the through line for him, whether he or
Speaker 1: odd he's trying to talk to angels or if he's
Speaker 1: just trying to plot out maps for people to discover
Speaker 1: the Northwest Passage. Yeah, I feel like his mind was
Speaker 1: inherently mathematic. If you if he had lived in our age,
Speaker 1: I feel like you would undoubtedly be a hacker or
Speaker 1: a high level program in addition to to whatever else
Speaker 1: he was into. The History special compared him to Stephen Hawking,
Speaker 1: and I thought that was an interesting comparison. Although I'm
Speaker 1: still I'm still trying to I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: anybody alive that that really has these two things together.
Speaker 1: You're right, Lily and Jack Parsons are similar. But I'm
Speaker 1: really trying to rack my brain for somebody who's like
Speaker 1: a really influential intellectual but also dabbles in the occult right,
Speaker 1: that's still very much an outsider in his interest and
Speaker 1: speaking of being an outsider in his interest three three
Speaker 1: through fifteen eighty nine, in order to unlock the deeper
Speaker 1: mysteries of the universe, the sought communication with angelic entities
Speaker 1: with the aid of convicted counterfeiter towards turn to occult sensation.
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly, who's a very complex character and of himself,
Speaker 1: will get into Kelly. So so these two end up
Speaker 1: running around conducting seances in England, Poland and Bohemia and
Speaker 1: have this rather volatile partnership. So it's like something out
Speaker 1: of a reality TV show, like oh, you know how
Speaker 1: like every time on the show, on this show, when
Speaker 1: when we do some of these historical characters are like, oh,
Speaker 1: this would make a great amc oh yeah show. The
Speaker 1: Dr D Edward Kelly's show would be amazing because it
Speaker 1: would be like them constantly like conniving behind one another's backs,
Speaker 1: and then sitting in a room looking into a crystal ball,
Speaker 1: talking to angels, and then like trying to figure out
Speaker 1: a sleep with one another's wives. Yeah, this is another
Speaker 1: situation where d described Kelly as a friend and it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder, like what it makes me question his, uh,
Speaker 1: his criteria for friendship because he talks about Kelly who
Speaker 1: was arguably a scoundrel and may have been conning him
Speaker 1: half the time at least. And then there's Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: who you know, there's no way they were really friends.
Speaker 1: They were as you know, like I say, as much
Speaker 1: of a friendship as you could have with the Queen
Speaker 1: of England. Uh, that bishop I mentioned earlier. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then his his his the warden of his prison essentially
Speaker 1: at the time. So I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if he ever really got friendship exactly, but it's difficult
Speaker 1: in life. So Kelly and him, they they end up
Speaker 1: going to essentially Poland and then Bohemia, conducting their seances
Speaker 1: all along the way, and then they come back. Yeah
Speaker 1: that kind of falls up, comes back. Yeah, their their
Speaker 1: relationship falls apart. He returns to England nine to try
Speaker 1: and try and put things back together. He finds his
Speaker 1: home vandalized, his library has been ransacked. Uh, and he's
Speaker 1: also come back to in England that is less tolerant
Speaker 1: of his ideas, increasingly less tolerant. And then the Bubonic
Speaker 1: plague strikes and kills pretty much everybody in his family,
Speaker 1: including his wife and five of his eight children. So
Speaker 1: he's utterly devastated. He's lost his library, he's lost his family.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have as much influence as he used to,
Speaker 1: so in fift his friends raised money for him and
Speaker 1: interceded on his behalf with Queen Elizabeth, you know, just
Speaker 1: trying to land him in the right place, right, So
Speaker 1: she appoints him warden of Manchester College. And and this
Speaker 1: is from what I was reading, this is not an
Speaker 1: ideal place for him to wind up. He's not, you know,
Speaker 1: he's constantly being undermined minded by other individuals there. He
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of clout, but he has a
Speaker 1: good way to shuffle him off and get him. So
Speaker 1: he doesn't really have any influence over her court, but
Speaker 1: he still feels, you know, he's cashing a paycheck. And
Speaker 1: in sixteen o three, Queen Elizabeth dies and James the
Speaker 1: First takes to the throne and provides no support for D. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so for some context, James the First was fervent
Speaker 1: against witchcraft and he personally oversaw the torture of women
Speaker 1: who were accused of it. So he's not going to
Speaker 1: be particularly fond of John D and his angels crying
Speaker 1: and astrology and alchemy. And then in December of eight
Speaker 1: D dies following what is described as years of poverty
Speaker 1: and isolation. However, it so even for someone like D,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like poverty and isolation for him is
Speaker 1: you know, quite the bottom of the barrel poverty and
Speaker 1: isolation like this. A lot of this is him being
Speaker 1: forced to sell off a lot of his prize possessions,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Maybe not the proudest period of
Speaker 1: his of his life. But I didn't read anything to
Speaker 1: indicate that he was on the streets. Yeah, so I mean,
Speaker 1: like to get an indication. I was looking at pictures
Speaker 1: of um, what Mortlake looked like his estate and where
Speaker 1: it is now today. I think there's like apartments right
Speaker 1: along the River Thames, and uh it's you know, by
Speaker 1: all accounts like it was a huge house. Uh. He
Speaker 1: still had a lot of things. I don't think he
Speaker 1: was going hungry. I just don't think he was wealthy
Speaker 1: or had influence over the aristocracy the way he might
Speaker 1: ride in the past. Um, now here's this is really interesting.
Speaker 1: There's also evidence that he didn't actually die in December, uh,
Speaker 1: and that he three months later was when he died
Speaker 1: in the following March in the London home of an acquaintance.
Speaker 1: So get ready out there, conspiracy theorist, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people out there who are like, oh,
Speaker 1: John D found the Philosopher's Stone and his immortal and
Speaker 1: uh is still with us today or something, or these
Speaker 1: are fake accounts of his death, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But the amazing thing about D is it's all everything
Speaker 1: is already unbelievable enough with how to even going into
Speaker 1: the conjecture of conspiracy theory. Uh, though there's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to be had there as well. Um. Hey,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we are going to break into
Speaker 1: the spirituality of John D and ultimately into his occult practices.
Speaker 1: So it's important to remember that that D was born
Speaker 1: into an age and a place of Christendom. So yes,
Speaker 1: everyone still murdered each other every year over their beliefs,
Speaker 1: and much of this entailed conflicts of Protestants versus Catholics,
Speaker 1: the church versus heretics, and so forth. Uh, you really
Speaker 1: had to go quite rustic or quite esoteric in order
Speaker 1: to find alternative modes of belief that you could, you know,
Speaker 1: actually embrace all of the stranger ideas that D entangled
Speaker 1: himself with astrology, angelic communication, magic, etcetera. These were all
Speaker 1: still connected to the culture of Christianity into the essentially
Speaker 1: like the mythos of Christianity, I guess you'd say. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evidence to suggest that D was
Speaker 1: a devoted Christian his entire life, though certainly in a
Speaker 1: challenging time for the faithful, which I guess it always
Speaker 1: is uh, And he was. He was not afraid to
Speaker 1: explore ideas and writings that others deemed danger is to
Speaker 1: the faithful. And it's also worth noting here that like
Speaker 1: a guy like the who you know you can say
Speaker 1: was a weird guy, he had a he had a
Speaker 1: unique brain. He had a unique view of everything. This
Speaker 1: ability to see magic and mathematics and everything else wrapped
Speaker 1: up into one, so he could, you know, cling to
Speaker 1: a Christian faith. But his view of the Christian faith
Speaker 1: was was and it was inherently different I think from
Speaker 1: from most people's at the time. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: was different. But at the same the way I like
Speaker 1: to think of it is that he was into Christian mysticism, right,
Speaker 1: and that like he he he was a believer. He
Speaker 1: was trying to do the right thing. I think he
Speaker 1: was trying to ride the line between Protestantism and Catholicism
Speaker 1: so that he basically could stay alive. Um, but that
Speaker 1: the stuff that he believed was the mystical parts that
Speaker 1: were sort of like some people were like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that exists. I don't know if I subscribed
Speaker 1: to that or not, and others were like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. Yeah, talking to angels, uh, looking
Speaker 1: into crystal balls. Yeah, definitely astrology, Okay, you know. Um
Speaker 1: in the same way, I don't know, I'm like trying
Speaker 1: to think of a modern day example, Like I guess
Speaker 1: Caballa keeps coming to mind, and that's not even modern day.
Speaker 1: I mean Cabrala was around at the time of d
Speaker 1: was alive. Um, So maybe that's an example, and he
Speaker 1: mentioned astrology. D kept a private diary where he mentioned
Speaker 1: a lot of when we know comes from his own writings.
Speaker 1: But this was a time before diaries and calendars of
Speaker 1: the modern sort, so d would would plot out the
Speaker 1: positions of the planets in reference to the recorded details
Speaker 1: of his daily life, likely in order to identify links
Speaker 1: between his personal life and celestial events. So it's an
Speaker 1: uncharacteristically intimate account of Elizabethan life, much of it lost, however,
Speaker 1: but still there's a there's a lot there. It's kind
Speaker 1: of been written in shorthand, and it will include things like,
Speaker 1: you know, his personal finances, jobs he picked up. Um.
Speaker 1: I actually have an example here from his diary October
Speaker 1: seven My anger with Edward my coke because of his disorder.
Speaker 1: October eight Mr Richard Western lent me ten pounds for
Speaker 1: a year. October nine, I dined with Sir Walter Rawleigh
Speaker 1: at Durham House. October eleven to Edwards part of wagons.
Speaker 1: Mr Banks lent me upon loan till after Christmas five pounds.
Speaker 1: Mr Emory sent me three pounds by my servant Richard
Speaker 1: walka dine. So it's that sort of thing. So he's
Speaker 1: just like kind of acquiring like a couple of pounds here,
Speaker 1: a couple of pounds there for his services presumably. I mean,
Speaker 1: I doubt that they're just giving it to him as donations.
Speaker 1: Maybe he read their horoscope or maybe he I don't know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a map for them or something. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like an It's kind of like he kept
Speaker 1: an astrologically aligned chart of his finances to a certain
Speaker 1: extent in these and he was doing a lot of
Speaker 1: freelance activities like to to sup because he's a guy
Speaker 1: who's spent a lot of money on books and UH
Speaker 1: and his his his interests, and to support that, he
Speaker 1: would do freelance horoscopes, you have freelance dream interpretations. And
Speaker 1: I was even reading that he occasionally did some freelance
Speaker 1: forensics work account of him apparently of him weighing in
Speaker 1: on a robbery UH and deciding who was who was guilty.
Speaker 1: It's kind of it's kind of faint going from his notes,
Speaker 1: but that seems to be the case. So d you
Speaker 1: believed in a natural magic? When we start talking about
Speaker 1: his use of magic and his belief in magic and
Speaker 1: his magic, that's tied up with mathematics. He saw magic
Speaker 1: as the human ability to tap into the forces that
Speaker 1: God unleashed when he created the cosmos, and that set
Speaker 1: things in motion. So that's important, not not the power
Speaker 1: of God, but the powers that God unleashed. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: saw natural magic as actually a legitimate study of science,
Speaker 1: and in his own books he listed the magical arts
Speaker 1: as being a derivative subject of mathematics. Keep in mind
Speaker 1: that his thought process wasn't usual at the time. Many
Speaker 1: thought science and magic were different facets to just understand
Speaker 1: understand what was going on in the mind of God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting too to look at his thoughts on
Speaker 1: magic that he's essentially talking about technology here, granted with
Speaker 1: a lot of occult bells and whistles, but he's talking
Speaker 1: about figuring out how these forces in the universe work
Speaker 1: and figuring out how to manipulate those forces. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting connection to to the magic as
Speaker 1: technology thing for him. When he was in college, he
Speaker 1: created special effects for a production of Aristophanes packs and
Speaker 1: he was branded Sorcerer because of it. He apparently built
Speaker 1: a giant mechanical flying scare of I don't know if
Speaker 1: it actually flew, but it was it was like an automaton,
Speaker 1: and it was apparently so realistic to the people who
Speaker 1: were watching it that they were like, oh, he must
Speaker 1: have used magic to do this, but it was just engineering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a crazy moment in his life, and his
Speaker 1: life was just full of these where yeah, he just
Speaker 1: did f X for a play and the FX were
Speaker 1: so good that people said, well, that was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: This guy is probably somehow involved with demonic forces. It's
Speaker 1: the only excuse. And I was reading like people weren't
Speaker 1: really sure exactly how he pulled it off, too, because
Speaker 1: he would have had limited resources with the stage at
Speaker 1: that time, so it's not we're not even exactly sure
Speaker 1: what he did how he achieved the effect, but but
Speaker 1: he certainly what was I think it was pretty clear
Speaker 1: that he was using practical effects and not not actual
Speaker 1: sorcery here. Um. Another thing that we should note here too,
Speaker 1: especially before we really get into his angelic communication, is
Speaker 1: that the idea of an angelic language, which is referred
Speaker 1: to as a Nochian, is said to be the mathematics
Speaker 1: behind how creation was was made. So you know, keep
Speaker 1: in mind, like as we're going through all of this
Speaker 1: he's thinking of his interrogations of angels as being scientific
Speaker 1: in nature, and that he's trying to understand how the
Speaker 1: world works. Yes. Yeah, so in a sense, the Anochian
Speaker 1: language and mathematics are like one is the secular and
Speaker 1: one is the spiritual version of the same idea that
Speaker 1: there's this underlying word, there's this underlying system that we
Speaker 1: can understand, tap into and therefore gain insight into how
Speaker 1: the universe works. Yeah. Alright, so here's the juicy stuff,
Speaker 1: the angelic communication. So he really wanted to communicate with
Speaker 1: angels to help him understand natural knowledge. And the way
Speaker 1: he did this was by attempting to conjure spirits using
Speaker 1: a crystal and this this was common at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's I want to add real quick for anyone
Speaker 1: out there is not familiar with with Christianity and angels
Speaker 1: and all that, because I found myself trying to explain
Speaker 1: angels to my son the other that's gonna about it,
Speaker 1: about what angels were, uh, And I didn't tell him
Speaker 1: all of this, but in the in the Christian tradition,
Speaker 1: the angels, of course the the servants of God. They
Speaker 1: are powerful and at times very terrifying beings that do
Speaker 1: everything from deliver messages to you know, destroy whole cities
Speaker 1: and turn people into pillars of salt, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I I wrote a video that we shot here about
Speaker 1: different types of angels throughout Christian mysticism, and there's like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's the thrones and the dominions, and they're
Speaker 1: all there's like nine different categories. I think cherubs yeah,
Speaker 1: uh and yeah, I mean they're utterly alien and terrifying
Speaker 1: when you think about them from the context of these time. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're not the fluffy cherubs of the modern version
Speaker 1: of the cherubs or renaissance cherub that you see on
Speaker 1: a coffee mug or something. Yeah. No, not at all,
Speaker 1: not at all. Some of them were like wheels of
Speaker 1: burning fire with eyeballs in the middle and stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: like truly horrifying kind of imagery. Yeah. Fantasy illustra der
Speaker 1: Michael Kluda, great. Yeah, he did a number of angel
Speaker 1: illustrations for a short lived card game called Harressy Kingdom
Speaker 1: Comeback in the nineties, and he did a fabulous job
Speaker 1: invoking this I feel like that this this potent, intimidating
Speaker 1: alien but also kind of but also holy feeling vision
Speaker 1: of of an angelic entity. So I always connected those
Speaker 1: when I try and think about these these angelic beings
Speaker 1: as we encounter in UH in Christian tradition, and I
Speaker 1: imagine as D was performing these seances that we're about
Speaker 1: to talk about, although he didn't really see anything himself,
Speaker 1: that's what he was imagining was in the room with him.
Speaker 1: So why didn't he see anything himself? Well, D himself
Speaker 1: couldn't see spirits, so he relied on psychics enter Edward Kelly.
Speaker 1: So Edward Kelly, uh is this twenty six year old
Speaker 1: cunning man. You may have heard us talk about cunning
Speaker 1: men before on the show. I was referring to them
Speaker 1: in an episode of UM when we were talking about
Speaker 1: Warren Ellis's book Cunning Plans, because cunning men are sort
Speaker 1: of I guess the best way to explain it real
Speaker 1: quickly is just like an English shamanic tradition maybe UM.
Speaker 1: And but he was also you know, a criminal and
Speaker 1: a counterfeitter. He had his ears cropped from his head
Speaker 1: before he met D. So think about that when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about this guy. At least one of them, and
Speaker 1: he apparently always wore a cowl to cover up the garage,
Speaker 1: and that was for counterfeiting coins. Um okay. So D
Speaker 1: and Kelly they meet for the first time in fifteen two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this, this whole episode has there there's a lot
Speaker 1: more detail, but I'll just try to go through the
Speaker 1: basics here. So Kelly was calling himself Talbot at the time,
Speaker 1: which is one of his his aliases. And uh, and
Speaker 1: it's I think it's certainly fitting that even his introduction
Speaker 1: to D was was clothed in deception. So he was
Speaker 1: apparently he was apparently a pretty curious man character, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about. He had difficulty kneeling, he walked with
Speaker 1: the staff, and he's a young dude. But but he
Speaker 1: also had had at least one ear cropped, uh for
Speaker 1: for for engaging in counterfeiting. He also may have served
Speaker 1: as a crooked notary in London at one port at
Speaker 1: one point reputed to have dabbled in necromancy. He arrived
Speaker 1: at D's to lie low after allegedly cheating a lady
Speaker 1: out of some jewels. But he seems to have to
Speaker 1: have talked his way out of trouble with with the
Speaker 1: individuals who were pursuing him over this, and in his
Speaker 1: private diary, D noted that quote I have confirmed that
Speaker 1: Talbot was was a fraud. And Kelly himself came along
Speaker 1: later at some point and scribbled Inde's diary a horrible
Speaker 1: and slander's life, which which I think says a lot
Speaker 1: about this friendship. Um. So that yeah, their friendship seems
Speaker 1: to have been rather complicated. Uh D seems to have
Speaker 1: considered him a friend, and certainly it would go on
Speaker 1: to and a great deal of time with him in
Speaker 1: the years they had. But it's also a quarrelsome intense relationship.
Speaker 1: And to what extent was Kelly using D? To what
Speaker 1: extent did D c himself is using Kelly if he
Speaker 1: saw he saw perhaps Kelly is as an in the
Speaker 1: way of of of better communicating with this spiritual realm
Speaker 1: um So it's it's it's a complex relationship again. So
Speaker 1: D's diary recounts a series of conversations with angels that
Speaker 1: Kelly facilitated, and the hope was that D would get
Speaker 1: these angels to help him recover the original language spoken
Speaker 1: by Adam before the confusion at Babel, which you know
Speaker 1: we referred to earlier as a nokian Um. And the
Speaker 1: way that we know about this was the Spirit Diaries
Speaker 1: were actually dug up in a field ten years after
Speaker 1: his death, and in them is a completely new language
Speaker 1: with its own grammar and syntax. Uh. The angels supposedly
Speaker 1: provided him with the Anochian language, which they said was
Speaker 1: the er language of humanity. And I want to I
Speaker 1: want to add one thing in here, which is that,
Speaker 1: you know, as I was reading through all this stuff,
Speaker 1: I was utterly convinced that Edward Kelly was scamming d
Speaker 1: the whole time, and that he was just making up
Speaker 1: the names of these angel characters and performing there whatever
Speaker 1: their traits were, and just making the whole thing up.
Speaker 1: But Alan Moore in that History Channel thing points out, sure,
Speaker 1: that's probably true, but how on earth did somebody like
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly invent an entire language on the fly. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a linguistics expert. He would have had to have
Speaker 1: been a genius to just create a fake language out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. And people have since studied an Occhi and
Speaker 1: have looked over these notes and it's you know, it
Speaker 1: functions as a language. So uh, the you know, the
Speaker 1: big question is like, well, okay, if he wasn't talking
Speaker 1: to angels, how did Edward Kelly come up with this? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're left with a few possibilities here. As I understand,
Speaker 1: it's either, ay, he actually did come up with this
Speaker 1: this material, and there's some questions about about whether or
Speaker 1: not he had the background to do it. Um the
Speaker 1: other possibility and this seems this seems to to square
Speaker 1: with what we know about his his character. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: stole it from somewhere he he copied it from someone else,
Speaker 1: and we're just there's a there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: ambiguity about where that might have been, where where it
Speaker 1: might have been stolen from, right, Yeah, and that we
Speaker 1: don't know now. Kelly, as he was looking through his
Speaker 1: crystal ball or his scrying mirror, said that the angels
Speaker 1: were angry with humanity for being captivated by anything but God,
Speaker 1: and they described to d the order of the Cosmos,
Speaker 1: instructions for rituals and predictions of the future, as well
Speaker 1: as the Anochian language. Their major pronouncement was that that
Speaker 1: they wanted the world to be united under a single
Speaker 1: religion that united all the denominations of Christianity, along with
Speaker 1: Judaism and Islam. So essentially, you know, four hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: these angels quote unquote, we're advocating for globalism. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating when you think about it, especially like
Speaker 1: if we consider like Kelly was probably making the whole
Speaker 1: thing up. He was like advocating for this very like
Speaker 1: futuristic idea of socioeconomics. You know, it's it's fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can easily imagine a scenario where where one of
Speaker 1: these angels is saying, look, Christianity, juda Judaism, Islam, these uh,
Speaker 1: these factions are not gonna work everything out in the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future. Better that we just combine it all into
Speaker 1: one and then everybody can be unified. Now, for Kelly's part,
Speaker 1: as you know, as he's relaying these messages from the angels,
Speaker 1: he's also saying to D these angels are actually demons,
Speaker 1: and I'm terrified to them because they know that I
Speaker 1: previously had participated in some demonic grim wire magic Um
Speaker 1: and D was like, nope, we've got to continue. I
Speaker 1: absolutely insisted that we continue. I mean, Kelly was basically
Speaker 1: like a prisoner and dzone um and the two of
Speaker 1: them even asked the angels for money at one point,
Speaker 1: and Kelly reportedly asked them for a loan, like like
Speaker 1: they were gonna make money appear out of nowhere and
Speaker 1: then he would give it back to them or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So and and keep in mind too,
Speaker 1: it's very likely that this is all just a fiction
Speaker 1: in his own head that he's enacting in front of
Speaker 1: D for D's purposes. Right. But then also, I mean,
Speaker 1: when when you're when you're dealing with this kind of
Speaker 1: magic and and if you're considering this some sort of
Speaker 1: demonic entity that you're you're communicating with, uh, I mean
Speaker 1: that that has some very real life ramifications, not an
Speaker 1: age where you can just walk around on the street
Speaker 1: and talk about your conversations with demons. So while they're
Speaker 1: in the middle of all this and they're they're working
Speaker 1: at AM more like they UH come into contact with
Speaker 1: the third party. And this guy's name, he's a Polish
Speaker 1: prince in his him is Lord Albert Laski UH, and
Speaker 1: he had visited England and claimed that he was there
Speaker 1: simply to meet the queen and enjoy the sceneries. UH.
Speaker 1: He had previously been suspected of trying to steal the
Speaker 1: Polish throne. Everybody's trying to steal a throne in this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's an important thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: about the about the European setting at the time is
Speaker 1: this was not an age of stability. This was an
Speaker 1: age of tense politics, an age of war, an age
Speaker 1: of of rather robust espionage, UM coded messages going back
Speaker 1: and forth, and and people people dying when these codes
Speaker 1: are unraveled. So Lasky's involvement with these guys is is
Speaker 1: weird and debated, and Robert and I had to look
Speaker 1: to a couple of different books to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how much we could, you know, resolve as to
Speaker 1: what was his involvement in the situation. Apparently he started
Speaker 1: showing up at the ances and this was considered problematic,
Speaker 1: I think by Kelly because there was a third party
Speaker 1: involved there, probably because Kelly was afraid that he would
Speaker 1: get caught um. But also the idea was basically like
Speaker 1: why would you why would you sit on on these seances?
Speaker 1: Some demon could come out and destroy you. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like this horribly scary thing. There's also, you know,
Speaker 1: some question about whether or not he was an informer
Speaker 1: either for Poland or possibly the Holy Roman Empire. Um.
Speaker 1: Either way, it seems that he was the one who
Speaker 1: eventually leads them to Poland. Um. And the story goes
Speaker 1: that he was duped by Edward Kelly and the whole
Speaker 1: scrying thing, and he believed that great things were meant
Speaker 1: for Kelly. Uh, and so he convinces them to return
Speaker 1: to Poland with him in fifteen eighty three, and they
Speaker 1: pack up their whole family, uh, and all their stuff
Speaker 1: with them, except for the library, this huge library. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now there's a lot of stuff that goes on in Poland.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that. But when they get there, their experiments,
Speaker 1: whatever they were doing, I think it was alchemical in nature,
Speaker 1: were so costly that Laski lost his fortune in lands
Speaker 1: trying to fund the two of their work. And when
Speaker 1: it became apparent that he couldn't afford this any longer, uh,
Speaker 1: the spirits began to express their doubts through Kelly that
Speaker 1: Laski may not have been the right man to bring
Speaker 1: about the changes in Europe that they desired. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a period of time where where Kelly just
Speaker 1: increasingly seems like he's just a con artist, you know,
Speaker 1: making promises of gold, like generating gold through alchemy for
Speaker 1: his benefactors, and then here when things don't go as planned,
Speaker 1: when he can't deliver, he cast doubt on his benefactors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and the way that the last KI basically
Speaker 1: gets rid of them as he says, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pay for you guys to go to Prague and
Speaker 1: I'll provide you with a letter of introduction to Emperor
Speaker 1: Rudolph the second his problem. Then, Now, I think we
Speaker 1: mentioned this in the you know, the short bio at
Speaker 1: the beginning, but apparently you know Rudolph threw D out
Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Empire. Now, some say it was
Speaker 1: because he suspected that D was an English spy. Now,
Speaker 1: considering you know what we know about D and cryptography
Speaker 1: and statecraft, maybe he was. We're gonna talk about that
Speaker 1: more in the next episode. But there's also evidence that
Speaker 1: the Angels told D that he needed to go to
Speaker 1: Rudolph and tell Rudolph that he was possessed by demons. Now,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church were aware of this, and they considered
Speaker 1: D and Kelly a threat. Think about this though, like
Speaker 1: in context of the time, D is so much of
Speaker 1: a believer in what Kelly is telling him that he's
Speaker 1: willing to go to the Emperor and be like, sorry,
Speaker 1: you're possessed by demons and you you know you need
Speaker 1: to really turn your life around. Why don't you listen
Speaker 1: to us? I mean, that's an executable offense. Luckily he
Speaker 1: just was exiled. Now it seems that D was very
Speaker 1: sincere about this, while it also seems that Kelly was
Speaker 1: probably duping him and their relationship lasted for ten years.
Speaker 1: Here's where it all falls apart. So the angels told
Speaker 1: them to swap wives. Sound again, it sounds like reality
Speaker 1: TV show to me. Uh. There's this angel that they
Speaker 1: keep communicating with named Medimi, and she's described as being
Speaker 1: kind of this, um, I don't know, like coquettish little
Speaker 1: girl that uh Kelly would describers like running around the
Speaker 1: room and stuff. And she told them you guys have
Speaker 1: to share all things in common, and they interpreted that
Speaker 1: as meaning their wives. Now, Jane d was D's wife
Speaker 1: at the time. She was his third wife. He had
Speaker 1: had two previous wives who died I believe of illness.
Speaker 1: She was much younger than him. I think she was
Speaker 1: in like her mid twenties. And he was in his fifties,
Speaker 1: and she was reportedly very upset about this because, by
Speaker 1: all accounts, Edward Kelly was not uh an attractive man
Speaker 1: or you know, a trustworthy man. So the last thing
Speaker 1: she wanted to do was have to sleep with this guy.
Speaker 1: But D thought it was a valid command from the angels,
Speaker 1: especially because then even D was like, hey, I need
Speaker 1: some uh some confirmation on this. So Kelly's like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me look into the screwing ball over here, and
Speaker 1: he summons the angel Uriel, who's like a pretty high
Speaker 1: up in the hierarchy of angels, and Uriel confirms that
Speaker 1: He's like, yep, you guys have to share everything. So
Speaker 1: two days after they drew up their wife swapping contract,
Speaker 1: then the Scarlet Woman Babylon appeared to Kelly. Now some
Speaker 1: of you may recognize this from like a Crowley in
Speaker 1: magic Um. She's also known as the Horror of Babylon
Speaker 1: and Revelations. This was so scary to them, or at
Speaker 1: least two D that they parted ways and their sessions
Speaker 1: east forever. They they they their relationship ended. Kelly ended
Speaker 1: up wandering around Bohemia, and he then convinces Rudolph the second, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know alchemy, I might be able to use the
Speaker 1: Philosopher's stone to make you gold. Yeah, and this would uh,
Speaker 1: this would seem to be the just to spell the
Speaker 1: final chapter of of Edward Kelly's life. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: at this point the story I really d and Kelly
Speaker 1: certainly kind of created, seemed to have created like codependently,
Speaker 1: their their own little crazy trip here and uh and
Speaker 1: I feel feel bad for the women that were sucked
Speaker 1: along the way. But things finally come apart, they come
Speaker 1: to pieces. I feel like the is the character who
Speaker 1: certainly comes out off as more honest, more devout, whereas,
Speaker 1: as you know, Kelly is is probably just a con
Speaker 1: artist who's also buying into certain amounts of his own
Speaker 1: con So I don't think one should take solace from
Speaker 1: such things. But it seems that Kelly died in fifteen
Speaker 1: seven or fifty in a check castle where he was
Speaker 1: imprisoned for failing to produce that alchemist gold. And he
Speaker 1: apparently died from injury sustained while trying to escape. According
Speaker 1: to Benjamin Woolly's book, UM, Kelly tried to climb from
Speaker 1: the window on a rope of knotted sheets. You know,
Speaker 1: just like in the movies, and then fell breaking both legs.
Speaker 1: And this was after drugging the guards with opium smuggled
Speaker 1: in by his wife Joanna. This guy. Yeah. D later
Speaker 1: writes that he'd heard that Kelly quote had been Swain,
Speaker 1: and there were rumors that that Kelly, even at the time,
Speaker 1: had faked his own death and was continuing to practice
Speaker 1: alchemy in southern Germany or possibly Russia. But then then
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theorists would say, like, he went on to
Speaker 1: live for hundreds of years and he was rescputed. But
Speaker 1: I have a feeling and it seems like the more
Speaker 1: historians tend to agree that, yeah, he probably fell out
Speaker 1: of that fell from that that that rope of sheets
Speaker 1: and broke both his legs and then subsequently died of
Speaker 1: the injuries. Yeah, that sounds right to me. So why
Speaker 1: don't we take one more break, and then let's talk
Speaker 1: about the sort of spiritual artifacts that come up after
Speaker 1: D's death. All right, we're back. So D was for
Speaker 1: for whatever else he was, And certainly he was a
Speaker 1: lot of things again, all kind of woven together. He
Speaker 1: was certainly a collector of occult paraphernalia and occult books. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we still have some of these spiritual artifacts. The
Speaker 1: British Museum retains ownership of several items that he and
Speaker 1: and Kelly utilized in seances and other rights. So we've
Speaker 1: already talked about these extensive library and you can think
Speaker 1: of it in these terms. This is the way the
Speaker 1: d divided it. You had the external bibliotheca, which is
Speaker 1: the external library. You had several rooms or appendices which
Speaker 1: led off from the library, and in these dependencies of
Speaker 1: visitors to his home, described celestial and terrestrial globes, a
Speaker 1: five foot quadrant, a ten foot to cross staff, a
Speaker 1: sea compass, an accurate quote watch clock, uh portable time piece,
Speaker 1: various marvels from his travels. And these rooms also housed
Speaker 1: his libraries laboratories, so where multiple skills bubbled. You know,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a complete uh you know, set from
Speaker 1: like a hammer horror film. Yeah, there's no h It's
Speaker 1: not a coincidence that our modern day idea of what
Speaker 1: a wizard or a sorcerer looks like is d We
Speaker 1: had that idea of him in the robe with a big,
Speaker 1: long white beard. Yeah, we have some various we have
Speaker 1: various illustrations of of what he looked like and I
Speaker 1: think there's probably one the cover image for this episode,
Speaker 1: so you have already have an idea in your head.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he looked like our modern conception of a wizard.
Speaker 1: So he had he had all these these rooms filling
Speaker 1: off from the library, from the external library. But then
Speaker 1: there was also the internal bibliotheca, the private study, an
Speaker 1: adjoining chapel, and there was also an adjoining chapel where,
Speaker 1: to quote Wullie, he presumably shelved the Bibles and devotional
Speaker 1: texts so conspicuously lacking from the catalogs of the external bibliotheca.
Speaker 1: But the internal bibliotheca, the internal library, this is where
Speaker 1: he stored his magical equipment, his confidential writings, and certain
Speaker 1: books of frequent use. And uh, by the way, this,
Speaker 1: if this sounds like a rather costly man cave, you're right. Uh.
Speaker 1: It steadily became unsustainable on his mirror eighty pound annual
Speaker 1: stipend from his rectory at Long Leadenham. And so he
Speaker 1: provided this. Whine provided no number of freelance services, including tutoring,
Speaker 1: astrological readings, dream interpretation, medical consultations, and forensic advice, which
Speaker 1: already mentioned. So among the various items in his possession. Again,
Speaker 1: a few of them survived this day, and one of
Speaker 1: them is uh Dr D's Magical mirror, also known as
Speaker 1: Dr D's Magical speculum. That I don't know where we're going,
Speaker 1: but the party sounds bad. So there's some wonderful images
Speaker 1: of this, and I'll try to include some on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode of Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. The black mirror here, this uh, this
Speaker 1: magical mirror. It's probably not quite what you would imagine
Speaker 1: if someone asks you to envision on elizabethan sorcerer's mirror.
Speaker 1: It looks rather like part of an Ikea coffee table. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's an obsidian quote smoking mirror, so named because the
Speaker 1: squire gazing into the mirror would see clouds of smoke,
Speaker 1: which would part to reveal a vision. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: this is definitely an item that Edward Kelly made use
Speaker 1: of as well. Apparently it's of Aztec origin, brought to
Speaker 1: Europe after the conquest of Mexico, acquired by Dr D
Speaker 1: for use in his magical pursuits in the late sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: perhaps created though up to two centuries earlier in Mexico,
Speaker 1: and this is in the British Museum. Yeah, it's a obsidian.
Speaker 1: There's a wood case covered in tooled leather with label
Speaker 1: and a handwriting of one Horace Walpole and a quotation
Speaker 1: from a Samuel Butler poem. So do you think this
Speaker 1: is where the idea for the title of the show
Speaker 1: Black Mirror came from. I've I've never seen there. I've
Speaker 1: never seen any connective tissue there, but I couldn't help
Speaker 1: but think of it, you know, the scrying mirror. I
Speaker 1: know that the black mirror that on the TV show
Speaker 1: is you know, supposed to have to do with like
Speaker 1: the the the the black screens of personal devices. But
Speaker 1: it does make me think too now about scrying mirrors.
Speaker 1: And I wondered, Yeah, I wondered to what extent a
Speaker 1: smoking mirror is invoked in that. Now, this is not
Speaker 1: to be confused with the strange mirror um just as
Speaker 1: as it was sometimes called, that was given to d
Speaker 1: by one William Pickering the quote great perspective glass. And
Speaker 1: this apparently stood in a corner of his study, And
Speaker 1: according to Wully, anyone who lunged at the glass with
Speaker 1: a dagger found their reflection lunging back at them. Quote
Speaker 1: with like hand sword or dagger creating an unsettling effect,
Speaker 1: but one that d would use to explain how all
Speaker 1: strange effects could be explained by the mathematics of perspective.
Speaker 1: So this was not something that he apparently used in
Speaker 1: occult practices, and I guess based on what we know
Speaker 1: about it, it would have been a nonreversing mirror, of
Speaker 1: which there's a few different varieties, and the Queen herself
Speaker 1: apparently once stood before this mirror. Now, he also had
Speaker 1: two crystal balls, one of which good Old Edward Kelly
Speaker 1: or Talbot used to see Uriel. Uh. There's the seal
Speaker 1: of God or Sigillum Day used to support other occult
Speaker 1: objects such as the crystals. This is also in the
Speaker 1: British Museum, so this would have been kind of you know,
Speaker 1: the table for their their other objects. Uh. There there
Speaker 1: are the crystals themselves, one of which is in the
Speaker 1: British Museum. John D's crystal who used for a clairvoyance
Speaker 1: and for curing disease metal in courts uh from around
Speaker 1: fight two. You can also see images of this, so
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating we have some of the magical artifacts
Speaker 1: of his life of his time still with us today.
Speaker 1: He Yeah, I can't help but think about again, like
Speaker 1: the research that we did about grimoires in that uh,
Speaker 1: that a lot of those were created I think earlier
Speaker 1: than days time, but he's still relying on a lot
Speaker 1: of the I guess magical thinking would be the right
Speaker 1: way to put it. Um that surrounded those texts and
Speaker 1: then applied them to objects in the way that we
Speaker 1: now understand as being just like part of fantasy genre
Speaker 1: of like, well, this is how a wizard works. They
Speaker 1: have a staff and a crystal and a huge library. Right. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you know, certainly Merlin is the the
Speaker 1: the the the perfect example of the the the English
Speaker 1: wizarding character, and it's certainly a character that had an
Speaker 1: influence on D. But then D himself becomes this this
Speaker 1: influential icon of of English wizardry. Uh. And it's almost
Speaker 1: certain that William Shakespeare modeled the character of Prospero in
Speaker 1: The Tempest on the character of D. Yeah. Uh And
Speaker 1: interesting again, tying it back to the whole Alan Moore thing.
Speaker 1: In Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Prospero shows up
Speaker 1: as a character and it's heavily implied that he is
Speaker 1: John d you know, speaking of sort of modern interpretations
Speaker 1: as looking around. Uh interestingly enough, Rocky horror our mastermind
Speaker 1: Richard O'Brien played Dr D in the nine film Jubilee,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a time traveling Elizabethan thing.
Speaker 1: Actor David Threlfall played both the Prospero and Dr John
Speaker 1: d uh the later in the second Elizabeth movie. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna add because there's been these Elizabeth movies
Speaker 1: and I thought they must have included D somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have not seen the Golden Age, but he apparently
Speaker 1: he shows up in that, as do some of these
Speaker 1: other characters, especially ones will discuss in the next episode
Speaker 1: that that deals a little more closely with his you know,
Speaker 1: his real world pursuits. And then wait a minute, there's
Speaker 1: a note here about Terrence McKenna. Yeah, so this largely
Speaker 1: according to the Internet movie Database, Terence McKenna played D
Speaker 1: in The Alchemical Dream, Rebirth of the Great Work and
Speaker 1: the Whole. You can find the whole thing on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It seems like he just like McKenna, just narrates it.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch the whole, but I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: notice a scene in which he dresses up as D.
Speaker 1: But still that's like a um, I don't know, like
Speaker 1: modern day quote magicians slash psychedelic psychonauts dream come true,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a thing. Yeah, So it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see these influence in uh in in modern society and entertainment. There,
Speaker 1: they're a whole list of of examples, and we're not
Speaker 1: even gonna get into where D shows up in various
Speaker 1: fictional works to varying degrees, either as a as an
Speaker 1: amazing side character or occasionally as a central character. Huh Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so I feel like we've covered as well as we
Speaker 1: can in the time available to us the occult, magical
Speaker 1: aspects of D. Now we're gonna cut this episode and
Speaker 1: our next episode this week is going to be all
Speaker 1: about his contributions to science, to state craft and cryptography.
Speaker 1: That's right, So pick up with us again in the
Speaker 1: next episode and we will dive into more uh tantalizing
Speaker 1: details about the life and work of Dr John A. D. Now.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, don't forget that we are available on social
Speaker 1: media at Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: can always visit us at stuff to Blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. And if you want to send us an
Speaker 1: email the old fashioned way, you don't have to use
Speaker 1: any fancy wizarding equipment. You don't need a magic mirror
Speaker 1: or a scrying crystal. Just send it to blow the
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