Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From house thy
Speaker 1: character must have the names of the five angels written
Speaker 1: in the midst of sigellum, a myth graven upon the
Speaker 1: other side in a circle in the midst whereof must
Speaker 1: the stone be which was also brought wherein thou shalt
Speaker 1: at time to behold privately to thyself the state of
Speaker 1: God's people through the whole earth. Go and thou shalt
Speaker 1: receive terry, and you shall receive sleep, and you shall see.
Speaker 1: But watch, and your eyes shall be fully opened. One thing,
Speaker 1: which is the ground and element of thy desire, is
Speaker 1: already profited. And out of seven thou hast been instructed
Speaker 1: of the lesser pot most perfectly. Hey, welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Christian Seger. And from the beginning there you may
Speaker 1: think that we were, I don't know, performing a ritual
Speaker 1: of some kind and trying to summon an angel, And
Speaker 1: you would be half right. That's right. That is uh.
Speaker 1: That is a quote from the writings of the legendary,
Speaker 1: the mysterious, the influential Dr John d the topic of
Speaker 1: both episodes this week. Uh, and he is a fascinating
Speaker 1: character and elizabethan mathematician, uh conjurer, possibly a spy cryptographer.
Speaker 1: The list goes on first and foremost a mathematician, but
Speaker 1: it gets it gets a lot more complicated than that,
Speaker 1: is you try and piece together this man, the world
Speaker 1: he lived in, and what he really believed in. D
Speaker 1: Is is one of those characters that we've We've been
Speaker 1: talking about doing an episode on him for a while now,
Speaker 1: and when we dove into the research, we we really realized, Okay,
Speaker 1: this needs to be two episodes. And the way that
Speaker 1: we've decided to split these episodes categorically is this first
Speaker 1: episode is going to be more grounded in the sexy,
Speaker 1: occult magical stuff, and the second episode is going to
Speaker 1: be grounded in his scientific endeavors and his state craft. Um.
Speaker 1: There's so much about him that I learned doing this,
Speaker 1: and there's so many different interpretations too. He's just this
Speaker 1: fascinating individual. Um. If you're unfamiliar with him, I guess
Speaker 1: the best way to describe him is that he was
Speaker 1: one of the leading intellectuals of his time. It may
Speaker 1: not sound like it given some of the things we're
Speaker 1: gonna say in these episodes, but he had magical interests.
Speaker 1: But despite that, he brought developments to England and cartography, navigation, mathematics,
Speaker 1: astronomy and cryptography, and his reputation in alchemy and astrology
Speaker 1: totally influenced the court of Queen Elizabeth the first. He
Speaker 1: was no doubt influential in that respect. Yeah, he He
Speaker 1: had a rapport with with Queen Elizabeth. Uh. Some historians
Speaker 1: go as far as to say that they were friends,
Speaker 1: and you do get the idea that there may have
Speaker 1: been as much of a friendship as was possible between
Speaker 1: the Queen of England and uh, you know, essentially a
Speaker 1: common born intellectual who dabbled in magic. Right yeah, um,
Speaker 1: we'll say this later, but he did think of himself
Speaker 1: as her Merlin, which is really fascinating and comes into play.
Speaker 1: So the I said that we're going to split these
Speaker 1: episodes up. But one thing that you have to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is that the magic and the science overlap
Speaker 1: a lot too. Um, and so even in things like
Speaker 1: when he's advising them on national matters, on expanding the
Speaker 1: English Empire, he's still thinking in magical terms, like he's
Speaker 1: Merlin and she's King Arthur. Right, He's he's a guy who,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's it's essential to keep the mathematics
Speaker 1: and he in mind. But it's not like he's a
Speaker 1: guy who, all right, I'm gonna do my job here,
Speaker 1: which is science or mathematics, and then in my free
Speaker 1: time I'm going to do a little sorcery and in
Speaker 1: and then also I have this advising gig with the Queen.
Speaker 1: He saw it all connected. He saw it as part
Speaker 1: of a single tapestry of cosmos. And so there's a
Speaker 1: note I just want to provide here before we really
Speaker 1: dive in deep, which is I was reading an article
Speaker 1: in History Today that came out earlier this year by
Speaker 1: a woman named Katie Burkewood, and she says, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that the main sources for the story of Dee's
Speaker 1: life are all his own. Um so mainly what we're
Speaker 1: looking at. What we didn't look at this, We looked
Speaker 1: at people's interpretation of those primary sources, but we da
Speaker 1: that's true. But mainly his diaries, which cover the period
Speaker 1: from fifteen seventy seven to sixteen o 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 anybody. But yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: guy that is really, in many ways a near unbelievable character,
Speaker 1: truly stranger than fiction. Like if if Alan Moore wrote
Speaker 1: 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, you 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. Lily or Jack Parsons, but
Speaker 1: D kind of stands alone. Yeah, And it's funny that
Speaker 1: you mentioned Alan Moore because one of the sources that
Speaker 1: I went to was a History Channel special that aired
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two and it was narrated by
Speaker 1: Brian Cox all about John D's life, and Alan Moore
Speaker 1: is one of the go to experts that they summon.
Speaker 1: You know, they cut to him every once in a while,
Speaker 1: and you hear that out in more voice, he's he
Speaker 1: really knows his stuff about d um I imagine because
Speaker 1: Alan Moore is really into sort of like the history
Speaker 1: of English magic and stuff like that outside of his
Speaker 1: own fiction. But um, yeah, he the first first of all,
Speaker 1: I recommend, like, if you're really into John D, go
Speaker 1: check out this this video. I watched it on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and uh, some of it's hilarious and some of it's
Speaker 1: really illuminating. But there's um they like do that thing
Speaker 1: that the History Channel used to do where they like
Speaker 1: re enact scenes of a person's life with actors and
Speaker 1: they have like kind of makeshift, low budget like sets
Speaker 1: and stuff, so like shadowy scenes of somebody dressed as
Speaker 1: John D shuffling papers around sort of yeah, that thing,
Speaker 1: or like him looking into a crystal ball, or him
Speaker 1: just walking across the field. Yeah. So I think probably
Speaker 1: the best way for us to to really first introduce
Speaker 1: you to John D is let's just do a broad
Speaker 1: stroke overview of his life. You know, we've given you
Speaker 1: sort of the two sentence summary of who John D was,
Speaker 1: but we'll start with his life and then we'll really
Speaker 1: dive in deep into the magic stuff. Yeah, for with
Speaker 1: a guy like this, I feel like this is the
Speaker 1: best approach. We'll give you the broad strokes and then
Speaker 1: we'll go back in and discuss the areas that we
Speaker 1: we we have time to discuss in these episodes. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just want to say to like, keep in
Speaker 1: mind that there are people whose like entire career is
Speaker 1: writing about this guy. So what we cover in like
Speaker 1: two too and a half hours and podcasts, maybe you
Speaker 1: may be out there, you may know some stuff about
Speaker 1: D and be like, well, why didn't you you cover that.
Speaker 1: There's only so much we could do here, so we
Speaker 1: really tried to condense it down to fit the show.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, here we go, let's kick it off
Speaker 1: with the July. John d is born in London, England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and my first question is who ray this is a
Speaker 1: guy like John D. Like, how does he how does
Speaker 1: he end up like this? So his father, Roland, was
Speaker 1: a merchant of fabrics and textiles and he worked for
Speaker 1: King Henry the Eighth. Uh. In fifteen fifty three, his
Speaker 1: father was actually indicted and imprisoned in the Tower of London,
Speaker 1: presumably because he had ties to Protestant reformists and sympathizers
Speaker 1: of the late King Edward. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: This is a theme that goes on throughout D's life,
Speaker 1: is the political struggles back and forth between the Catholic
Speaker 1: and Protestant Church. Yeah, that's definitely going on in the
Speaker 1: background the whole time. Now fifty two, John D enters St.
Speaker 1: John's College at Cambridge. Yeah, and so from what I
Speaker 1: read at the time, the curriculum for such a college
Speaker 1: included something called the trivium, which is grammar, rhetoric and logic.
Speaker 1: And once you master those things you get your what
Speaker 1: would be your your bachelor's basically, uh. And then the
Speaker 1: quadrivium is what you study for your masters, and that's
Speaker 1: astronomy geography, music, and mathematics. Now, okay, again this is
Speaker 1: self reported from his own thing that he wrote to
Speaker 1: the Queen later in life. But D says that while
Speaker 1: he was there he only slept four hours a night,
Speaker 1: so all he could do is study. So on one
Speaker 1: hand he was essentially applying for a position in this
Speaker 1: but also, as as as we discussed more about John D,
Speaker 1: I don't really doubt this for a second. He seems
Speaker 1: like the kind of guy who who may have only
Speaker 1: slept four hours a night, could constantly consume information. So
Speaker 1: in fifty five he really he receives that bachelor's degree
Speaker 1: in Arts and readership. Fifty seven he takes his first
Speaker 1: scientific learning excursion to the Low Countries of continental Europe,
Speaker 1: and this becomes important later on because he spends an
Speaker 1: increasingly increasing amount of times there on various excursions. Eight
Speaker 1: he gets his master's degree from Cambridge studying mathematics and navigation,
Speaker 1: and then fifteen forty eight to fifteen fifty one his
Speaker 1: second learning excursion to the Low Countries and Uh in particular.
Speaker 1: On this trip he studied under mathematician cartographers Pezro Nonez
Speaker 1: Gema for Silius Abraham Ortelius and gerardis Mercator, as well
Speaker 1: 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: where 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 daughter 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 and Mary's horror scope,
Speaker 1: and so he did, and it predicted that Elizabeth would
Speaker 1: have a long reign and that Mary would die, which
Speaker 1: you know kind of happened, uh, And this is what
Speaker 1: landed him in jail. Now after this, after he gets
Speaker 1: out 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,
Speaker 1: forspy and astrology and h then fifteen fifty eight the
Speaker 1: same year, this is also when the rule of Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the First begins. Yeah, and so the rumor here
Speaker 1: again this is from d Zone writings, is that when
Speaker 1: Elizabeth took power, she asked d to choose her coronation
Speaker 1: date based on astrology. Now who knows. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: there's evidence that he was jailed performing horoscopes for her previously,
Speaker 1: so why wouldn't she. But then you know he's the
Speaker 1: one claiming this stuff, and we know that later on
Speaker 1: in life he's just constantly trying to gain favor with
Speaker 1: the court by it sort of, but he's he's bolstering
Speaker 1: his resume. So yeah, he becomes the scientific and medical
Speaker 1: advisor to the Queen and uh were in the mid
Speaker 1: fifteen sixties, he establishes himself at more Lake, near London,
Speaker 1: where he builds a laboratory, the largest private library in England,
Speaker 1: more than four thousand books and manuscripts, and he ut,
Speaker 1: you know, well, we'll describe some more of the settings here,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like a fabulous place. And he would
Speaker 1: he would invite other scholars to come in and and
Speaker 1: use his books if they needed to look something up.
Speaker 1: And of course he was constantly in communication with other people,
Speaker 1: Like it was I was reading just yesterday about how
Speaker 1: he had these correspondence, uh, series of correspondence with with
Speaker 1: Chico Brahi, the real Yeah, the famed astronomer. Yeah, famously
Speaker 1: lost his nose in a sword fight. Fabulous character of
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, we should totally do it, Tycho Brahe episode. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the other thing about this to note, just for context,
Speaker 1: about the library, we say four thousand books, and some
Speaker 1: of you are like, yeah, I got four thousand books
Speaker 1: in my house, right. Well, here's context. He had two thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and seventy manuscripts in that collection. Cambridge University
Speaker 1: at the time only had four hundred and fifty one
Speaker 1: manuscripts and Oxford University only had three hundred and seventy nine.
Speaker 1: So this was considered a massive library at the time. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about this, like, uh, going back to
Speaker 1: the Grimoire episode that you and I did a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, right, Like, like, these are not just
Speaker 1: like pulp books. They're not like soft covers, right, Like
Speaker 1: some of these are written on parchment or their palap sests. Right,
Speaker 1: So I mean he's got like a serious collection here
Speaker 1: in The books are unique too. Yeah. In many cases,
Speaker 1: these would be books where you're wanting to read them,
Speaker 1: you might ask arounding and you would find out, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Dr D has a copy of that. You should go
Speaker 1: ask him. Maybe you'll get to look at it. Here's
Speaker 1: 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 the
Speaker 1: unity of nature. Yeah, and this, I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll maybe like post this on the landing page or
Speaker 1: something thing we we actually shared or you shared it
Speaker 1: on Facebook yesterday, kind of teasing the audience. Hey, this
Speaker 1: is what we're working on. One person got it and
Speaker 1: they referred to him as the d um but it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like, how do you pronounce that that
Speaker 1: German industrial band ein Stretton's nine streas into a new Boton. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. In fact, I had to to look up
Speaker 1: a New Boton's logo just to make sure that they
Speaker 1: weren't too similar to them. Like, I never thought about
Speaker 1: this before, but you know, they're two distinct symbols, but
Speaker 1: they are reminiscent of one another. Yeah, very much so.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I also find it looks like it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like it could be a character from
Speaker 1: a SpongeBob cartoon. I don't know. It does have like
Speaker 1: an anthropologic quality to it, of like a head with
Speaker 1: arms and legs and then like devil's horns. Yeah, or
Speaker 1: it makes me think of the the aliens from Slaughterhouse
Speaker 1: Five for some reason, the ones. It was like an
Speaker 1: eye on a hand. I can't remember the name of him,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, this was his there's his lands
Speaker 1: and Slaughterhouse five. Yeah, there's a there's an alien zoo
Speaker 1: for humans. I forgot all about that, but okay, I
Speaker 1: just think about the horrors of world Mongola do so
Speaker 1: in fifteen seventy he created the first English translation of
Speaker 1: Euclid's Elements and added an influential preface that offered a
Speaker 1: powerful manifesto en quote the dignity and usefulness of the
Speaker 1: mathematical sciences, and he seems to certainly have highly regarded
Speaker 1: mathematics is the key to understanding the natural world, but
Speaker 1: also believed in the value of the occult to unlock
Speaker 1: the deeper mysteries of the universe. And again, his ideas
Speaker 1: of the occult and mathematics are kind of intertwined. This
Speaker 1: is definitely going to be a theme that we returned
Speaker 1: to over and over again in these episodes. Mathematics is
Speaker 1: like the through line for him, whether or not he's
Speaker 1: trying to talk to angels or if he's just trying
Speaker 1: to plot out maps for people to discover the Northwest Passage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like his mind was inherently mathematic if he
Speaker 1: if he had lived in our age, I feel like
Speaker 1: he would under probably be a hacker, right or a
Speaker 1: high level program in addition to to whatever else he
Speaker 1: 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, de sought communication with angelic entities
Speaker 1: with the aid of convicted counterfeitter towards turned occult sensation
Speaker 1: Edward Kelly, who's a very complex character and of himself
Speaker 1: into Kelly. Uh So, so these two end up running
Speaker 1: around conducting seances in England, Poland and Bohemia and have
Speaker 1: this rather volatile partnership. So it's like something out of
Speaker 1: a reality TV show, like oh, you know how like
Speaker 1: every time on the show, on this show, when when
Speaker 1: we do some of these historical characters are like, oh,
Speaker 1: this would make a great amc H show. The Dr
Speaker 1: D Edward Kelly's show would be amazing because it would
Speaker 1: 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: how to sleep with one another's wives. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: another situation where d described Kelly as a friend and
Speaker 1: it 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 you know, like I say, as much of
Speaker 1: a friendship. So you could have with the Queen of England, Uh,
Speaker 1: that bishop I mentioned earlier. Yeah, and then his his
Speaker 1: his the warden of his prison essentially at the time.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I don't know if he ever
Speaker 1: really got friendship exactly, but it's difficult in life. So
Speaker 1: Kelly and him, they they end up going to essentially
Speaker 1: Poland and then Bohemia, conducting their seances all along the way,
Speaker 1: and then they come back. Yeah, that kind of falls
Speaker 1: comes back, their their relationship falls apart. He returns to
Speaker 1: England nine to try and try and put things back together.
Speaker 1: He finds his home vandalized, his library has been ransacked. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he's also come back to in England that is
Speaker 1: less tolerant of his ideas, increasingly less tolerant. And then
Speaker 1: the Bubonic plague strikes and kills pretty much everybody in
Speaker 1: his family, including his wife and five of his eight children.
Speaker 1: So he's utterly devastated. He's lost his library, he's lost
Speaker 1: his family. He doesn't have as much influence and says
Speaker 1: he used to. So in fift his friends raised money
Speaker 1: for him and interceded on his behalf with Queen Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: you know, just trying to land him in the right place, right.
Speaker 1: So she appoints him warden of Manchester College. And and
Speaker 1: this is from what I was reading, this is not
Speaker 1: an ideal place for him to wind up. He's not,
Speaker 1: you know, he's constantly being undermined minded by other individuals there.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have a lot of clout, but a good
Speaker 1: way to shuffle him off and get him. So he
Speaker 1: doesn't really have any influence over her court, but he
Speaker 1: still feels, you know, he's cashing a paycheck. And in
Speaker 1: sixteen o three, Queen Elizabeth dies and James the First
Speaker 1: takes to the throne and provides no support for D. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so for some context, James the First was fervently
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 alca me. And then in December of
Speaker 1: eight D dies following what is described as years of
Speaker 1: poverty 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 the proudest period
Speaker 1: of his of his life. But I didn't read anything
Speaker 1: to indicate that he was on the streets. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, like to get an indication. I was looking
Speaker 1: at pictures of um, what Mortlake looked like his estate
Speaker 1: and where it is now today. I think there's like
Speaker 1: apartments right along the River Thames, and uh it's you know,
Speaker 1: by all accounts like it was a huge house. Uh.
Speaker 1: He still had a lot of things. I don't think
Speaker 1: he was going hungry. I just don't think he was
Speaker 1: wealthy or had influence over the aristocracy the way he
Speaker 1: might ride in the past. Um, now here's this is
Speaker 1: really interesting. There's also evident that he didn't actually die
Speaker 1: in December, uh, and that he three months later was
Speaker 1: when he died in the following March in the London
Speaker 1: home of an acquaintance. So get ready out there conspiracy things,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there
Speaker 1: who are like, oh, John D found the Philosopher's Stone
Speaker 1: and his immortal and uh is still with us today
Speaker 1: or something, or these are fake accounts of his death,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. But the amazing thing about
Speaker 1: D is it's all everything is already unbelievable enough with
Speaker 1: how to even going into the conjecture of conspiracy theory. Uh,
Speaker 1: though there's a lot of fun to be had there
Speaker 1: as well. Um. Hey, on that note, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, and when we come back, we are
Speaker 1: going to break into the spirituality of John D and
Speaker 1: ultimately into his occult practices. Hi. I'm Holly Fry, and
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and We're the co host of
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class. We are a history
Speaker 1: podcast that tries to look at the things that maybe
Speaker 1: we're overlooked in your street classes, maybe not covered in
Speaker 1: as much detail, or frankly, maybe covered in a way
Speaker 1: that was not accurate. New episodes come out every Monday
Speaker 1: and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else
Speaker 1: that podcasts can be listened to. So it's important to
Speaker 1: remember that that D was born into an age and
Speaker 1: a place of Christendom. So yes, everyone still murdered each
Speaker 1: other every year over their beliefs, and much of this
Speaker 1: entailed conflicts of Protestants versus Catholics, the Church versus heretics,
Speaker 1: and so forth. Uh, you really had to go quite
Speaker 1: rustic or quite esoteric in order to find alternative modes
Speaker 1: of belief that you could, you know, actually embrace all
Speaker 1: of the stranger ideas that D entangled himself with astrology,
Speaker 1: angelic communication, magic, etcetera. These were all still connected to
Speaker 1: the culture of Christianity into the essentially like the mythos
Speaker 1: of Christianity, I guess you'd say. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence to suggest that D was a devoted Christian
Speaker 1: his entire life, though certainly in a challenging time for
Speaker 1: the faithful, which I guess it always is, uh, and
Speaker 1: he was he was not afraid to explore ideas and
Speaker 1: writings that others deemed dangerous to the faithful. And it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting here that like a guy like d
Speaker 1: who you know, you can say was a weird guy,
Speaker 1: he had a he had a unique brain. He had
Speaker 1: a unique view of everything, this ability to see magic
Speaker 1: and mathematics and everything else wrapped up into one. So
Speaker 1: he could, you know, cling to a Christian faith. But
Speaker 1: his view of the Christian faith was was and it
Speaker 1: was inherently different I think from from most people's at
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I think it was different. But at
Speaker 1: the same the way I like to think of it
Speaker 1: is that he was into Christian mysticism right, and that
Speaker 1: like he he he was a believer. He was trying
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. I think he was trying
Speaker 1: to ride the line between Protestantism in Catholicism so that
Speaker 1: he basically could stay alive. Um, but that the stuff
Speaker 1: that he believed was the mystical parts that were sort
Speaker 1: of like some people were like, oh yeah, that that
Speaker 1: that exists. I don't know if I subscribed to that
Speaker 1: or not. And others were like, oh, yeah, that's part
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, talking to angels sure, uh, looking into
Speaker 1: crystal balls, Yeah, definitely astrology. Okay, you know, Um in
Speaker 1: the same way, I don't know, I'm like trying to
Speaker 1: think of a modern day example, Like, I guess Cabala
Speaker 1: 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 he now 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 it, Liz BeFAN life, much of
Speaker 1: it lost, however, but still there's a there's a lot there.
Speaker 1: It's kind of been written in shorthand, and it will
Speaker 1: include things like you know, his personal finances, jobs he
Speaker 1: picked up. Um, I actually have an example here from
Speaker 1: his diary October seven, My anger with Edward my coke
Speaker 1: because of his disorder. October eight Mr Richard Western lent
Speaker 1: me ten pounds for a year. October nine, I dined
Speaker 1: with Sir Walter Rawleigh at Durham House. October eleven to
Speaker 1: Edwards part of wagons. Mr Banks lent me upon loan
Speaker 1: till after Christmas five pounds. Mr Emery sent me three
Speaker 1: pounds by my servant Richard walka dine. So it's that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So it's just like kind of acquiring
Speaker 1: like a couple of pounds here, a couple of pounds
Speaker 1: there for his services presumably. I mean, I doubt that
Speaker 1: they're just giving it to him as donations. Maybe he
Speaker 1: read their horoscope or maybe he I don't know, I
Speaker 1: wrote a map for them or something. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an it's kind of like he kept an
Speaker 1: astrologically aligned chart of his finances to a certain extent
Speaker 1: in these and he was doing a lot of freelance
Speaker 1: activities like to to Sup because he's a guy who's
Speaker 1: spent a lot of money on books and UH and
Speaker 1: his uh, 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 believed
Speaker 1: in a natural magic. When we start talking about his
Speaker 1: use of magic and his belief in magic and his magic,
Speaker 1: that's tied up with mathematics. He saw magic as the
Speaker 1: human ability to tap into the forces that God unleashed
Speaker 1: when he created the cosmos, and that set things in motion.
Speaker 1: So that's important, not not the power of God, but
Speaker 1: the powers that God unleashed. Yeah, he saw natural magic
Speaker 1: as actually a legitimate study of science, and in his
Speaker 1: own books he listed the magical arts as being a
Speaker 1: derivative subject of mathematics. Keep in mind that his thought
Speaker 1: process wasn't unusual at the time. Many thought science and
Speaker 1: magic were different facets to just understand understand what was
Speaker 1: going on in the mind of God. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting too to look at his thoughts on magic that
Speaker 1: he's essentially talking about technology here, granted with a lot
Speaker 1: of occult bells and whistles, but he's talking about figuring
Speaker 1: out how these forces in the universe work and figuring
Speaker 1: out how to manipulate those forces. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: really interesting connection to to the magic as technology thing
Speaker 1: for him. When he was in college, he created special
Speaker 1: effects for a production of Aristophanes packs and he was
Speaker 1: branded Sorcerer because of it. He apparently built a giant
Speaker 1: mechanical flying scare of I don't know if it actually flew,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was like an automaton, and it
Speaker 1: was apparently so realistic to the people who were watching
Speaker 1: it that they they were like, oh, he must have
Speaker 1: 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 FX for a play and the FX were so
Speaker 1: good that people said, well, that was pretty amazing. This
Speaker 1: guy is probably somehow involved with demonic forces, was the
Speaker 1: only excuse. And I was reading like people weren't really
Speaker 1: sure exactly how he pulled it off, too, because he
Speaker 1: would have had limited resources with the stage at that time,
Speaker 1: so it's not we're not even exactly sure what he did,
Speaker 1: how he achieved the effect, but but he certainly what
Speaker 1: was I think it was pretty clear that he was
Speaker 1: using practical effects and not not actual sourcery here. Um.
Speaker 1: Another thing that we should note here too, especially before
Speaker 1: we really get into his angelic communicate Shan, is that
Speaker 1: the idea of an angelic language, which is referred to
Speaker 1: as a Nochian, is said to be the mathematics behind
Speaker 1: how creation was was made. So you know, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: like as we're going through all of this, he's thinking
Speaker 1: of his interrogations of angels as being scientific in nature
Speaker 1: and that he's trying to understand how the world works. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in a sense, the Anochian language and mathematics are
Speaker 1: like one is the secular and one is the spiritual
Speaker 1: version of the same idea that there's this underlying word,
Speaker 1: there's this underlying system that we can understand, tap into
Speaker 1: and therefore gain insight into how the universe works. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: so here's the juicy stuff, the angelic communication. So he
Speaker 1: really wanted to communicate with angels to help him understand
Speaker 1: natural knowledge, and the way he did this was by
Speaker 1: attempting to conjure spirits using a crystal and this was
Speaker 1: and at the time. Yeah, and it's I want to
Speaker 1: add real quick for anyone out there is not familiar
Speaker 1: with with Christianity and angels and all that, because I
Speaker 1: found myself trying to explain angels to my son the
Speaker 1: other that's gonna about it, about what angels were, uh,
Speaker 1: And I didn't tell him all of this. But in
Speaker 1: the in the Christian tradition, the angels, of course, the
Speaker 1: the servants of God. They are powerful and at times
Speaker 1: very terrifying beings that do everything from deliver messages to
Speaker 1: you know, destroy whole cities and turn people into pillars
Speaker 1: of salt, that sort of thing. I I wrote a
Speaker 1: video that we shot here about different types of angels
Speaker 1: throughout Christian mysticism, and there's like, you know, there's the
Speaker 1: thrones and the dominions and they're all there's like nine
Speaker 1: different categories. I think cherubs yeah, uh and yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean they're utterly alien and terrifying when you think about
Speaker 1: them from the context of these time. Yeah. Um, So
Speaker 1: we're not the fluffy cherubs of the modern version of
Speaker 1: the the cherubs or Renaissance chairub 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 illustrator Michael Caluda, great, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did a number of angel illustrations for a short
Speaker 1: lived card game called Harresy Kingdom Come Back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: and he did a fabulous dut job invoking this. I
Speaker 1: feel like that this this potent, intimidating alien but also
Speaker 1: kind of but also holly feeling vision of of an
Speaker 1: angelic entity. So I always connected those when I try
Speaker 1: and think about these these angelic beings as we encounter
Speaker 1: in uh in Christian tradition, and I imagine as D
Speaker 1: was performing these seances that we're about to talk about,
Speaker 1: although he didn't really see anything himself, that's what he
Speaker 1: was imagining was in the room with him. So why
Speaker 1: didn't he see anything himself? Well, D himself couldn't see spirits,
Speaker 1: so he relied on psychics enter Edward Kelly. So, Edward Kelly,
Speaker 1: uh is this twenty six year old cunning man. You
Speaker 1: may have heard us talk about cunning men before on
Speaker 1: the show. I was referring to them in an episode
Speaker 1: of UM when we were talking about Warren Ellis's book
Speaker 1: Cunning Plans, because cunning men are sort of I guess
Speaker 1: the best way to explain it real quickly is just
Speaker 1: like an English shamanic tradition maybe. Um. And but he
Speaker 1: was also, you know, a criminal and a counterfeitter. He
Speaker 1: had his ears cropped from his head before he met D.
Speaker 1: So think about that when you're thinking about this guy,
Speaker 1: at least one of them. And he apparently always wore
Speaker 1: a cowl to cover up the garage, and that was
Speaker 1: for counterfeiting coins. Um. Okay, So D and Kelly they
Speaker 1: meet for the first time in fIF two. Yeah, and this,
Speaker 1: this whole episode had there There's a lot more detail,
Speaker 1: but I just try to go through the basics here.
Speaker 1: So Kelly was calling himself Talbot at the time, which
Speaker 1: was one of his his aliases. And uh, and it's
Speaker 1: I think it's certainly fitting that even his introduction to
Speaker 1: D was was clothed in deception. So he was apparently
Speaker 1: he was apparently a pretty charismatic character. As we've talked about.
Speaker 1: He had difficulty kneeling, he walked with the staff and
Speaker 1: he's a young dude, but but he also had had
Speaker 1: at least one ear cropped uh for for for engaging
Speaker 1: in counterfeiting. He also may have served as a crooked
Speaker 1: notary in London at one port. At one point reputed
Speaker 1: to have dabbled in necromancy. He arrived at D's to
Speaker 1: lie low after allegedly cheating a lady out of some jewels.
Speaker 1: But he seems to have to have talked his way
Speaker 1: out of trouble with with the individuals who were pursuing
Speaker 1: him over this, and in his private diary, D noted
Speaker 1: that quote I have confirmed that Talbot was was a fraud.
Speaker 1: And Kelly himself came along later at some point and
Speaker 1: scribbled indeed's diary a horrible and sat under his life,
Speaker 1: which which I think says a lot about this friendship. UM.
Speaker 1: And so that, yeah, their friendship seems to have been
Speaker 1: rather complicated. Uh D seems to have considered him a friend,
Speaker 1: and certainly it would go on to spend a great
Speaker 1: deal of time with him in the years they had,
Speaker 1: but it's also a quarrelsome intense relationship. And to what
Speaker 1: extent was Kelly using d To what extent did D
Speaker 1: c himself is using Kelly if he saw he saw
Speaker 1: perhaps Kelly as a as an in the way of
Speaker 1: of of better communicating with this spiritual realm um. So
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a complex relationship again. So D's diary
Speaker 1: recounts a series of conversations with angels that Kelly facilitated,
Speaker 1: and the hope was that D would get these angels
Speaker 1: to help him recover the original language spoken by Adam
Speaker 1: before the confusion at Babel, which you know we referred
Speaker 1: to earlier as a nokian um. And the way that
Speaker 1: we know about this was the spirit diaries were actually
Speaker 1: dug up in a field ten years after his death,
Speaker 1: and in them is a completely new language with its
Speaker 1: own grammar and syntax. Uh. The angels supposedly provided him
Speaker 1: with the Anochian language, which they said was the er
Speaker 1: language of humanity. And I want to I want to
Speaker 1: add one thing in here, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: as I was reading through all this stuff, I was
Speaker 1: utterly convinced that Edward Kelly was scamming D the whole time,
Speaker 1: and that he was just making up the names of
Speaker 1: these angel characters and performing there whatever their traits were,
Speaker 1: and just making the whole thing up. But Alan Moore
Speaker 1: in that History Channel thing points out, sure, that's probably true,
Speaker 1: but how on earth did somebody like Edward Kelly invent
Speaker 1: an entire language on the fly. He wasn't a linguistics expert.
Speaker 1: He would have had to have been a genius to
Speaker 1: just create a fake language out of nowhere. And people
Speaker 1: have since studied and Ochi and have looked over these
Speaker 1: notes and it's you know, it functions as a language,
Speaker 1: so uh that you know, the big question is like, well, Okay,
Speaker 1: if he wasn't talking to angels, how did Edward Kelly
Speaker 1: come up with this stuff? Yeah? Because you're left with
Speaker 1: a few possibilities here. As I understand, it's either, ay,
Speaker 1: he actually did come up with this this material, and
Speaker 1: there's some questions about about whether or not he had
Speaker 1: the background to do it. Um the other possibility and
Speaker 1: this seems this seems to to square with what we
Speaker 1: know about his his character. Perhaps he stole it from
Speaker 1: somewhere he he copied it from someone else, and we're
Speaker 1: just there's a there's a certain amount of ambiguity about
Speaker 1: where that might have been, where where it might have
Speaker 1: been stolen from. Yeah, and that we don't know now. Kelly,
Speaker 1: as he was looking through his crystal ball or his
Speaker 1: scrying mirror, said that the angels were angry with humanity
Speaker 1: for being captivated by anything but God, and they described
Speaker 1: to d the order of the Cosmos, instructions for rituals
Speaker 1: and predictions of the future, as well as the Anochian language.
Speaker 1: Their major pronouncement was that that they wanted the world
Speaker 1: to be united under a single religion that united all
Speaker 1: the denominations of Christianity along with Judaism and Islam. So essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, four hundred years ago, these angels quote unquote,
Speaker 1: we're advocating for globalism. So it's kind of fascinating when
Speaker 1: you think about it, especially like if we consider like
Speaker 1: Kelly was probably making the whole thing up. He was
Speaker 1: like advocating for this very like futuristic idea of socioeconomics.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's fascinating. Yeah, I can easily imagine
Speaker 1: a scenario where where one of these angels is saying, look, Christianity,
Speaker 1: juda Judaism, Islam, these uh, these factions are not gonna
Speaker 1: work everything out in the foreseeable future. Better that we
Speaker 1: just combine it all into one and then everybody can
Speaker 1: be unified. Now. For Kelly's part, as you know, as
Speaker 1: he's relaying these messages from the angels, he's also saying
Speaker 1: to D, these angels are actually demons, and I'm terrified
Speaker 1: to them because they know that I previously had participated
Speaker 1: in some demonic grim wire magic um, and D was like, nope,
Speaker 1: we've got to continue. I absolutely insisted that we continue.
Speaker 1: I mean, Kelly was basically like a prisoner INDs home
Speaker 1: um and the two of them even asked the angels
Speaker 1: for money at one point, and Kelly reportedly asked them
Speaker 1: for a loan, like like they were gonna make money
Speaker 1: appear out of nowhere and then he would give it
Speaker 1: back to them or something. I don't know. So and
Speaker 1: and keep in mind too, it's very likely that this
Speaker 1: is all just a fiction in his own head that
Speaker 1: he's enacting in front of D for D's purposes, right,
Speaker 1: But then also, I mean, when when you're when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with this kind of magic and and if you're
Speaker 1: considering this some sort of demonic entity that you're you're
Speaker 1: communicating with, uh, I mean that that has some very
Speaker 1: real life ramifications, not an age where you can just
Speaker 1: walk around on the street and talk about your conversations
Speaker 1: with demons. So while they're in the middle of all this,
Speaker 1: and they're they're working at a more like they uh
Speaker 1: come into contact with the third party. And this guy's name,
Speaker 1: he's a Polish prince in his name is Lord Albert Laski. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he had visited England and claimed that he was
Speaker 1: there 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 Laski's involvement with these guys is weird
Speaker 1: and debated, and Robert and I had to look to
Speaker 1: a couple of different books to try to figure out
Speaker 1: how much we could, you know, resolve as to what
Speaker 1: was his involvement in the situation. Apparently he started showing
Speaker 1: up at the seances, and this was considered problematic, I
Speaker 1: think by Kelly because there was a third party involved there,
Speaker 1: probably because Kelly was afraid that he would get caught um.
Speaker 1: But also the idea was basically like, why would you
Speaker 1: why would you sit on these seances? Some demon could
Speaker 1: come out and destroy you. You know, it's like this
Speaker 1: horribly scary thing. There's also, you know, some question about
Speaker 1: whether or not he was an informer, either for Poland
Speaker 1: or possibly the Holy Roman Empire UM. Either way, it
Speaker 1: seems that he was the one who eventually leads them
Speaker 1: to Poland. UM and the story goes that he was
Speaker 1: duped by Edward Kelly and the whole scrying thing, and
Speaker 1: he believed that great things were meant for Kelly uh
Speaker 1: And so he convinces them to return to Poland with
Speaker 1: him in fifteen eighty three, and they pack up their
Speaker 1: whole family, uh and all their stuff with them, except
Speaker 1: for the library, this huge library. Uh. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff that goes on in Poland. We'll get
Speaker 1: into that. But when they get there, their experiments, whatever
Speaker 1: they were doing, I think it was alchemical in nature
Speaker 1: were so costly that Laski lost his fortune and 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 has been factors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and in the way that Laski basically gets rid
Speaker 1: of them, as he says, you know, I'm gonna pay
Speaker 1: for you guys to go to Prague and I'll provide
Speaker 1: you with a letter of introduction to Emperor Rudolph the
Speaker 1: second his problem. Now, now we I think we mentioned
Speaker 1: this in the you know, the short bio at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but apparently, you know, Rudolph threw d out of the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire. Now, some say it was because he
Speaker 1: suspected that D was an English spy. Now, considering you
Speaker 1: know what we know about D and cryptography and statecraft,
Speaker 1: maybe he was. We're gonna talk about that more in
Speaker 1: the next episode. But there's also evidence that the angels
Speaker 1: told D that he needed to go to Rudolph and
Speaker 1: tell Rudolph that he was possessed by demons. Now, the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church were aware of this, and they considered D
Speaker 1: and Kelly a threat. Think about this though, Like, in
Speaker 1: context of the time, D is so much of a
Speaker 1: believer in what Kelly is telling him that he's willing
Speaker 1: to go to the Emperor and be like, sorry, you're
Speaker 1: possessed by demons and you you know you need to
Speaker 1: really turn your life around. Why don't you listen to us?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's an executable offense. Luckily he just was exiled. Now,
Speaker 1: it seems that D was very sincere about this, while
Speaker 1: it also seems that Kelly was probably duping him and
Speaker 1: their relationship lasted for ten years. Here's where it all
Speaker 1: falls apart. So the angels told them to swap wives.
Speaker 1: Sounds again, It sounds like reality TV show to me. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's this angel that they keep communicating with named Medemi,
Speaker 1: and she's described as being kind of this um, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like coquettish little girl that uh Kelly would
Speaker 1: describers like running around the room and stuff. And she
Speaker 1: told them, you guys have to share all things in common,
Speaker 1: and they interpreted that as meaning their wives. Now, Jane
Speaker 1: d was D's wife at the time. She was his
Speaker 1: third wife. He'd had two previous wives who died I
Speaker 1: believe of illness. She was much younger than him. I
Speaker 1: think she was in like her mid twenties and he
Speaker 1: was in his fifties. And she was reportedly very upset
Speaker 1: about this because, by all accounts, Edward Kelly was not
Speaker 1: uh an attractive man or you know, a trustworthy man.
Speaker 1: So the last thing she wanted to do was have
Speaker 1: to sleep with this guy. But D thought it was
Speaker 1: a valid command from the angels, especially because then even
Speaker 1: D was like, hey, I need some uh some confirmation
Speaker 1: on this. So Kelly's like, okay, let me look into
Speaker 1: the screwing ball over here, and he summons the angel Uriel,
Speaker 1: who's like a pretty high up in the hierarchy of angels,
Speaker 1: and Uriel confirms that He's like, yep, you guys have
Speaker 1: to share everything. So two days after they drew up
Speaker 1: their wife swapping contract, then the Scarlet Woman Babylon appeared
Speaker 1: to Kelly. Now some of you may recognize this from
Speaker 1: like a Crowley in magic. Uh. She's also known as
Speaker 1: the Horror of Babylon and revelations. This was so scary
Speaker 1: to them, or at least two d that they parted
Speaker 1: ways and their sessions ceased forever they they they their
Speaker 1: relationship ended. Kelly ended up wandering around Bohemia, and he
Speaker 1: then convinces Rudolph the Second, Hey, I know alchemy. I
Speaker 1: might be able to use the Philosopher's Stone to make
Speaker 1: you gold. Yeah, and this would uh, this would seem
Speaker 1: to be the just to spell the final chapter of
Speaker 1: of Edward Kelly's life. You know, at this point the
Speaker 1: story I really D and Kelly certainly kind of created,
Speaker 1: seemed to have created like codependently, their their own little
Speaker 1: crazy trip here and uh and I feel feel bad
Speaker 1: for the women that were sucked along the way. But
Speaker 1: things finally come apart. They come to pe says, I
Speaker 1: feel like D is the character who certainly comes out
Speaker 1: off as more honest, more devout, whereas, as you know,
Speaker 1: Kelly is is probably just a con artist who's also
Speaker 1: buying into certain amounts of his own con So I
Speaker 1: don't think one should take solace from such things. But
Speaker 1: it seems that Kelly died in fifteen seven or fifty
Speaker 1: in a check castle where he was imprisoned for failing
Speaker 1: to produce that alchemist gold, and he apparently died from
Speaker 1: injuries sustained while trying to escape. According to Benjamin Woolly's book, Um,
Speaker 1: Kelly tried to climb from the window on a rope
Speaker 1: of knotted sheets, you know, just like in the movies,
Speaker 1: and then fell, breaking both legs. And this was after
Speaker 1: drugging the guards with opium smuggled in by his wife Joanna.
Speaker 1: This guy, yeah d later writes that he'd heard that
Speaker 1: Kelly quote had been Swain, and there were rumors that
Speaker 1: that Kelly, even at the time, had faked his own
Speaker 1: death and was continuing to practice alchemy in southern Germany
Speaker 1: or possibly Russia. But then and then the conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: would say like he went on to live for hundreds
Speaker 1: of years, and he was resputing. But I have a feeling,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the more historians tend to agree
Speaker 1: that yeah, he probably fell out of that fell from
Speaker 1: that that that rope of sheets and broke both his
Speaker 1: legs and then subsequently died of the injuries. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds right to me. So why don't we take one
Speaker 1: more break, and then let's talk about the sort of
Speaker 1: spiritual artifacts that come up after D's death. I'm Kristin
Speaker 1: Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and together we host a
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Speaker 1: So D was for for whatever else D was, And
Speaker 1: certainly he was a lot of things again, all kind
Speaker 1: of woven together. He was certainly a collector of occult
Speaker 1: paraphernalia and occult books. Uh. And we still have some
Speaker 1: of these spiritual artifacts. The British Museum retains ownership of
Speaker 1: several items that he and and Kelly utilized in seances
Speaker 1: and other rights. So we've already talked about these extensive
Speaker 1: library and you can think of it in these terms.
Speaker 1: This is the way that D divided it. You had
Speaker 1: the external bibliotheca, which is the external library. You had
Speaker 1: several rooms or appendices which led off from the library,
Speaker 1: and in these dependencies of visitors to his home, described
Speaker 1: celestial and terrestrial globes, a five foot quadrant, a ten
Speaker 1: foot to cross staff, a sa compass, an accurate quote
Speaker 1: watch clock, uh portable time piece, various marvels from his travels.
Speaker 1: And these rooms also housed his libraries laboratories, so where
Speaker 1: multiple skills bubbled. You know, it sounds like a complete
Speaker 1: uh you know, set from a hammer horror film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no uh, it's not a coincidence that our modern
Speaker 1: day idea of what a wizard or a sorcerer looks
Speaker 1: like is d We had that idea of him in
Speaker 1: the robe with a big, long white beard. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have some various we have various illustrations of of what
Speaker 1: he looked like, and I think there's probably one is
Speaker 1: the cover image for this episode. So you have already
Speaker 1: have an idea in your head. But yeah, he looked
Speaker 1: like our modern conception of a wizard. So he had
Speaker 1: he had all these these rooms filling off from the library,
Speaker 1: from the external library, but then there was also the
Speaker 1: internal bibliotheca, the private study an adjoining chapel, and there
Speaker 1: was also an adjoining chapel where, to quote Wullie, he
Speaker 1: presumably shelved the Bibles and devotion text so conspicuously lacking
Speaker 1: from the catalogs of the external bibliotheca, but the internal bibliotheca,
Speaker 1: the internal library, this is where he stored his magical equipment,
Speaker 1: his confidential writings, and certain books of frequent use. And uh,
Speaker 1: by the way, this, if this sounds like a rather
Speaker 1: costly man cave, you're right. Uh it steadily became unsustainable
Speaker 1: on his mirror eighty pound annual stipend from his rectory
Speaker 1: at Long Leadenham, And so he provided. This is why
Speaker 1: he provided a number of freelance services, including tutoring, astrological readings,
Speaker 1: dream interpretation, medical consultations and forensic advice, which already mentioned.
Speaker 1: So uh. 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 this already 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 handwriting of one Horace Walpole and a quotation from
Speaker 1: a Samuel Butler poem. So do you think this is
Speaker 1: where the idea for the title of the show Black
Speaker 1: Mirror came from? I have. 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 wonder, 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. Uh, 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 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 used for a clairvoyance and
Speaker 1: for curing disease metal in courts uh from around fIF two.
Speaker 1: You can also see images of this. So it's it's
Speaker 1: fascinating we have some of the magical artifacts of his life,
Speaker 1: of his time still with us today. He Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't help but think about again, like the research that
Speaker 1: we did about grimoires in that uh, that a lot
Speaker 1: of those were created I think earlier than Day's time,
Speaker 1: but he's still relying on a lot of the I
Speaker 1: guess magical thinking would be the right way to put it.
Speaker 1: Um that surrounded those texts and then applied them to
Speaker 1: objects in the way that we now understand as being
Speaker 1: just like part of fantasy genre of like, well, this
Speaker 1: is how a wizard works. They have a staff and
Speaker 1: a crystal and a huge library. Right. Uh. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you know, certainly Merlin is the the the
Speaker 1: the the perfect example of the the the English wizarding character.
Speaker 1: And it's certainly a character that, uh, 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 Allen Moore thing.
Speaker 1: In Ellen 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 of looking around. Uh. Interestingly enough, Rocky horror mastermind
Speaker 1: Richard O'Brien played Dr D in the nine film Jubilee,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like a time traveling elizabe Ethan 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 adde 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 only
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 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, Terrence 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: Uh it seems like he just like McKenna, just narrates it.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch the whole thing, but I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't notice a scene in which he dresses up as D.
Speaker 1: But still that's like, um, I don't know, like modern
Speaker 1: day quote magicians slash psychedelic psychonauts dream come true. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. Yeah, so it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: these influence in uh in in modern society. And entertainment.
Speaker 1: There they're a whole list of of examples. And we're
Speaker 1: not even gonna get into where d shows up in
Speaker 1: various fictional works to varying degrees, either as a as
Speaker 1: an amazing side character or occasionally as a central character.
Speaker 1: Huh well, okay, so I feel like we've covered as
Speaker 1: well as we can in the time available to us
Speaker 1: the occult magical aspects of D. Now we're gonna cut
Speaker 1: this episode and our next episode this week is going
Speaker 1: to be all about his contributions to science, to state
Speaker 1: craft and cryptography. That's right, So pick up with us
Speaker 1: again in the next episode and we will dive into more,
Speaker 1: uh cantalizing details about the life and work of Dr
Speaker 1: John d Now. In the meantime, if you want to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us, don't forget that we are
Speaker 1: available on social media at Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Uh and you can always visit us at stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. And if you want to
Speaker 1: send us an email the old fashioned way, you don't
Speaker 1: have to use any of fancy wizarding equipment. You don't
Speaker 1: need a magic mirror or a scrying crystal. Just send
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Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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