WEBVTT - From the Vault: John Dee, Part 2 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:07.520 Hey you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:07.600 --> 0:00:10.800 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:12.800 Time to go into the Old Vault. This time we're 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:16.720 going in for part two of last week's Vault episode 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:21.440 of You and Christian exploring Dr John d the Wizard 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.959 of the sixteenth century. Yeah, fascinating character, a character that 0:00:25.160 --> 0:00:27.720 came up in there are recent episodes on the Bonage 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:30.600 Manuscript and uh and the sort of figure that I 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:34.360 think likely even very well may come up again someday. 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:39.720 Just such a fascinating figure, interested and seemingly everything, both 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:46.720 natural world enigmas as well as a cult mysteries. And uh. Yeah, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:53.000 so let's dive right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:53.040 --> 0:01:02.400 your Mind. From how Stuff Works dot com. There is, 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.040 gentle reader, nothing the works of God only set apart, 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.679 which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:14.160 of man, as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:18.360 Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:22.679 But of all none do more garnish and beautify it 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.959 than those arts which are called and mathematical, unto the 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:31.200 knowledge of which no man can attain without perfect knowledge 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:41.360 and instruction of the principles, grounds and elements of geometry. Hey, 0:01:41.480 --> 0:01:43.040 welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:45.680 Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger. And if 0:01:45.800 --> 0:01:48.680 last episode sounded like we were invoking a ritual to 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.600 summon angels or demons, this sounds like we are teaching 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.680 ap calculus. Yeah. That that those are the words of 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:00.840 Dr John D. Those are from his preface, his mathematical 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:05.560 preface to the fifeventy translation of Euclid's Elements. Now, at 0:02:05.560 --> 0:02:07.960 this point we should we should mention that if you 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.799 did not listen to our previous episode on John D, 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.480 you definitely need to go back to that one, because 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.120 that that is the episode where we we really dove 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.800 into his timeline and discussed in broad strokes the major 0:02:20.840 --> 0:02:25.800 events of his life. Yeah. We also focused on the 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.920 sort of magical occult aspects of John D's beliefs and 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:33.400 life in that episode. This episode, we're really going to 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:38.519 focus on his scientific education, his ability with mathematics, um, 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:41.400 how he participated in state craft in England and in 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:46.959 fact advocated for expanding the British Empire and especially developed 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.720 cryptography as we know it today. Yeah, and it's it's 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:53.680 interesting too, and that even though you know, in a sense, 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:55.920 the last episode was magic and this one is the 0:02:56.440 --> 0:03:00.000 is the science. This is more rooted in the real world. 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.720 Old John d was not so firmly rooted. He seemed 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:10.000 to to live simultaneously in the mathematical and the magical world. 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.760 He did not really see a division like like the spiritual, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:18.079 the mathematical, the magic. It was all part of the 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.799 world as he perceived it. Yeah, so get ready, as 0:03:20.800 --> 0:03:22.840 we're talking about this stuff, it may seem like, oh, 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.360 we're going over some historical science here, and then all 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.640 of a sudden, you know, Merlin will pop up or 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:32.040 maybe some angelic influence here there. Yeah. Now, it's it's 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:35.160 really important to note here too though that as unique 0:03:35.160 --> 0:03:39.520 as D was, this mixing of magic and math, this 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.960 suspicion of math, even was it was not unique to him. 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:47.800 It was it was very much a part of the day. Uh. 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.960 Mathematics was regarded in some circles with suspicion at the time. 0:03:52.560 --> 0:03:56.760 During the Tutor era, mathematical books were sometimes burned as 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:02.200 alleged conjuring books. This according to seventeenth century antiquarian John Aubrey, 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:04.720 and it was, and it was still very much associated 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:06.840 with the dark arts. I mean, you have to to 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.200 think Pythagoras Key in the history of mathematics was also 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:16.040 considered a magician. Uh numbers had inherent powers, and this 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:19.360 is a theme that ran through the works of Kepler, Newton, Euclid, 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:22.840 and others. So there was a long tradition of of 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:27.280 mathematics and and magic kind of sharing the same space. 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:29.800 One of the things that I read was that mathematics 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.520 were considered disreputable and connected to witchcraft because they were 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:36.680 associated with numerology. And I mentioned this in the last 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.200 episode the Jewish mystical tradition of the kabbala uh And 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:42.479 we're gonna talk about the cryptography stuff in a minute. 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.599 But tri Themius, who wrote the book that D really 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:48.640 worked off of to create his version of cryptography, that 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.200 guy was also suspected of wizardry. So this had a 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:56.040 long standing tradition. Uh D for his part, though, in 0:04:56.120 --> 0:05:01.279 terms of mathematics, his lectures on Euclid were wildly popular, 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.359 as he was seen as a leading scientific figure of 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.880 his day. I'm picturing that he's like the Neil deGrasse Tyson, right, 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:12.760 Like he's he's giving lectures. Everybody's really interested. Uh. These 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.240 lectures earned him an offer to join the faculty at 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.559 the Sorbonne in Paris in fifteen fifty one. We mentioned 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.240 that real briefly last time, but he turned stuff like 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:24.839 this down because he was hoping to obtain an official 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:30.120 position with the English Crown. He was also Robert read 0:05:30.160 --> 0:05:31.880 from this at the beginning, but it's worth pointing out 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:36.560 the editor of the first English translation of Euclid's Elements, 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:40.240 and in that he added his preface, which what Robert 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:45.240 read came from. This preface argued for the usefulness of mathematics, 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:50.039 like people didn't regard mathematics as being important at that time, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:53.160 and in fact, this was the first time the public 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:57.720 were introduced to the symbols plus minus, x, fra multiply 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:02.880 and the little dot dash dot for division. Yeah. In 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:06.600 this uh, this this preface, the mathematical preface. He proposed 0:06:07.520 --> 0:06:11.640 an arts mathematical that he compared to thomaturgy, which is 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:15.240 a the use of magic for religious purposes. So he 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:20.240 saw mathematics, rather than magic, as the key to thomaturgical 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:24.279 wonder Men's work could rival the gods if they could 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:28.760 utilize mathematics correctly, and and in this, you know, you 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.279 could say d was correct. And we may disagree on 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:34.240 whether math is a human invention or human discovery, but 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:36.960 it has thus far proven to correspond to the inner 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:40.039 workings of the cosmos. It's our our best tool. Essentially. 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:44.800 He saw this reflected in the creation of automatons, those 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:48.040 of Alberta's Magnus uh and others. So, you know, all 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:53.480 these various mechanical devices that mimicked the the appearance of life, 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:57.080 and the movement and the and the willfulness of life. 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:01.000 And in fact, that's where that uh, his FX work 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.960 in fifty six comes into play. That's what he was 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:06.600 essentially dabbling in. Yeah, we talked about this in the 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:11.920 last episode. He apparently created this giant automaton. Reportedly it 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:14.200 was a mechanical flying beetle. I don't know if it 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.040 actually flew or not, but apparently it was. It was 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:21.160 so impressive that people thought that it was magic. Yeah, 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:23.040 and that was very much in keeping with his view 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.880 of what math was and what what science was was 0:07:26.920 --> 0:07:29.840 capable of doing. That it could replicate the wonders of 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:34.440 nature by manipulating the same properties and he saw. He 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.880 saw things like automatons and even his own special effects work, 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.880 uh as proof of that. He saw the optics of 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.560 his special mirror is kind of reverse mirror that he 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.720 would wow people with. He saw that as an example 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:52.120 of look that these amazing feats are possible through optics, 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:57.640 through mathematics, through science, and ultimately his mathematics led to 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:01.640 him advocating for the expansion of the British Empire. And 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:07.200 he reportedly is the one who coined the term British Empire. Yeah, 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.800 which is crazy, and it's also it's it's sometimes you forget, 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:12.920 like it's it's hard to think back to a time 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:17.239 where the British Empire wasn't a thing, not only in 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:22.080 in actuality but even in concept. So we're traveling back 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.760 to seven here, and this is kind of what was 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:27.200 going on at the time. Sir Francis Drake was preparing 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:31.280 for an epic voyage around the globe. Um Washingham spies 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:35.079 had exposed another plot against the British Crown, and he 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:40.319 had noted a significant problematic comment amid the meaning saturated stars. 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:43.520 And on November twenty eight, amid all of these excitements, 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.280 de comes and he proposes this concept, this idea to 0:08:47.320 --> 0:08:50.920 the Queen of England that she should challenge Spain's imperial 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:54.280 claim to the New World. Yeah, and a lot of 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:59.240 this was based around how do I put this? He 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.560 so on top of being a brilliant mathematician, he was 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:06.640 able to apply that to cartography and mapping out routes 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:11.280 or understanding the geography of the New World. Yeah, it's 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.280 you mentioned cartographers here. We mentioned in the past episode 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:19.360 that that he he'd learned from and was in correspondence 0:09:19.360 --> 0:09:25.640 with with noted cartographer um Garatiscator. Yeah, and uh Mercator 0:09:25.800 --> 0:09:30.000 is apparently the guy who filled him in about this idea, 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:34.080 that that there was a precedence for the British Empire 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.640 set by a legendary incursion into the northern in drawing 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.319 seas around the Pole by King Arthur in the year 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:46.840 five thirty lands that had since been claimed by Iberian nations. 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.319 This is where he got the whole idea. He being 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:54.600 d got the whole idea for him being the modern 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:58.640 day Merlin and Elizabeth being the modern day Arthur. He 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:02.680 actually presented Elizabeth with a treatise on Britain's imperial limits 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:05.840 at one point. And it suggested that the America's had 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:08.760 actually been discovered by King Arthur centuries before. Yeah, and 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:13.280 and also that the British Empire was already a thing. This, 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.280 this concept is not something that that England could claim 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:18.960 for itself but reclaimed. This was a this was part 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:23.560 of its identity already. Yeah. So you might be wondering 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.240 what's a courtier anyways? Right, A lot of people when 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:29.640 they're describing d they just say, well, he's a courtier. 0:10:30.440 --> 0:10:33.439 I don't know what that means. Apparently it is a 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:36.360 man that is concerned with the operation of the Royal 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.959 Court and by extension, the Kingdom, of which it was 0:10:40.000 --> 0:10:43.920 an effective ruling body. So it was in his interests 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:48.960 to make sure that the ruling body of Britain expanded. Yeah, 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:51.040 I'm glad you brought up the court as well, because 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.720 the court at the time was was was lavish and uh, 0:10:55.160 --> 0:10:58.520 you know, rather impressive to behold, but at the same 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:04.120 time it was horriblely in debt. The likewise, the English 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:08.360 military was weak, the political condition was far from stable, 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:12.600 where England was a relatively poor nation, and the idea 0:11:12.640 --> 0:11:17.520 of challenging Spain Imperial Spain in such a manner was 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:21.400 was highly ambitious, if not outright ridiculous. Remember, at the 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:23.920 time there was a there was a Papal bull Uh 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.280 dividing the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese. So 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:30.199 it wasn't just that England should challenge Spain. It was 0:11:30.240 --> 0:11:34.520 that English England should challenge the papacy's division of the globe. 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:37.880 This was this was this was not just hey, we're 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.200 we're we're pretty awesome. We should go over and claim this. 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:44.800 It's like, no, we This involves a leveling up of 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:51.480 the nation that might not be practical and it worked. Yeah. Um. 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.360 And for his part, the way that de assisted was 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:57.600 with his knowledge of cartography and mathematical modeling. So he 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:02.000 instructed captains and pilots in the samples of mathematical navigation. 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:04.840 He would prepare maps for their use, and he furnished 0:12:04.880 --> 0:12:08.920 them with various navigational instruments. In the fifteen fifties he 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:13.840 actually advised Richard Chancellor's expedition through the North Sea so 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:17.040 that he could establish a trade route between England and Moscow. 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.480 And there's there's some evidence that d was I guess 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.480 uh financially involved in that as well. Like he had 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:27.400 he had something to gain from this um trade route. 0:12:28.120 --> 0:12:32.959 In fifteen seventy two, a new star appeared and it 0:12:33.000 --> 0:12:36.240 was visible for seventeen months. Now today we know that 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:40.400 this was a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. Uh D 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.200 saw this as the signal for the beginning of the 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:50.439 English Protestant Empire, and so he also instructed an expedition 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:55.200 to discover the Northwest Passage to China in fifteen seventies six. Now, 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.120 I've talked a lot about Northwest passages befo the or 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:01.640 the Northwest pas Sage and expeditions through it before on 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.440 the show, because I've done research on the past. Um 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:06.640 you know, like like almost all of these, it was 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:10.960 totally fruitless, but it did lead to English settlements in 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:15.040 Canadian North America. And this is where it gets crazy. 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:19.040 Deformed his own company to colonize the America's and there's 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.880 some evidence that he was the intellectual force behind Francis 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:28.800 Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, and d would be awarded 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:33.959 rights to any new newly discovered land that was north 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:37.840 of the fiftieth parallel. If Drake had gone any further 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:42.080 north than Oregon. This basically would have given him all 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:44.520 of Canada. So D would have like, if this had 0:13:44.520 --> 0:13:49.160 all worked out, D would own Canada. How different might 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.480 Canadian history bay if it had been founded by a wizard? 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:57.319 Right exactly? Um and you know we talked about this 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.200 in the last episode. Uh. You know, D moved his 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.240 family to crack Up Poland and three. A lot of 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:08.080 it had to do with the whole angela communication thing 0:14:08.240 --> 0:14:12.400 and Lasky and and Kelly as we previously described, but 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.000 some believed that the whole reason he was there was 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:19.080 actually to act as a spy. Uh. And when the 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.760 Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second suspected D, that's when 0:14:22.800 --> 0:14:25.160 he was banished from the empire and he went to 0:14:25.280 --> 0:14:27.920 a small town called Trebonn in at what the time 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.640 was southern Bohemia. I imagine now it's probably part of 0:14:30.680 --> 0:14:35.400 the Czech Republic or maybe Slovakia. But um uh, this 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:38.680 is fascinating. That's what gets him kicked out when, as 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.040 we know from last episode, he just basically went up 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.160 to Rudolph and was like, hey, angels told me you're 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:47.640 possessed by demons, and Rudolph was like whatever. But then 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.200 he's like, maybe this guy's a spy and he gets 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:52.920 rid of him. Now here's a really fun factor. You ready, 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:59.760 everybody D signed his letters to Elizabeth as double O seven. Yes, 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:03.560 secret sign of cipher that at least looked like double os. 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:07.320 So I mean, I'm wondering if that's where um uh 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:10.400 Ian Fleming got the idea for double A seven from, 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.240 or if it's maybe an actual has a historical precedence. 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.360 So I've read two different versions of this. One is 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:19.320 that Ian Fleming was reading about John D at the 0:15:19.400 --> 0:15:24.600 time directly got this, uh, this idea from these writings. 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.360 And I've also read some people that cast doubt on 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.880 this whole connection say that, oh, well, actually John D 0:15:31.040 --> 0:15:34.800 didn't really use double O seven. So um, I'm not 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.080 sure exactly where the truth lies there somewhere in the middle. 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.840 But but we will get back to this whole spying thing, 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.760 this whole espionage thing, because as incredible as everything has 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:47.320 been thus far, um, it really gets crazier in the 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:51.960 episode where we're not even talking about angelic communication all that, Like, Okay, 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:53.600 why don't we take a quick break and when we 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.280 come back, we're going to talk about the cryptography aspects 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:08.360 of the career alright, we're back. So cryptography the the study, 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:12.160 the creation and the breaking of codes and ciphers. Yeah, 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.360 so we we've already covered this slightly. But D was 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:19.920 taken with the work of German abbot Trithemius. Uh and 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:22.600 he was an important figure in the history of cryptography 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.400 as well as occultism. And in fifteen sixty four, while 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:30.560 D was in Antwerp, he tracked down a copy of 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:34.360 themis is most famous work, the stick I'm going to 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.920 get this wrong, the Stagana of Grafia, and copied it. 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:41.320 Now you were telling me that there was this like 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:44.479 whole weird thing about the copying of it. Oh yeah, yeah, 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:49.840 it's it's it's pretty strange. So certainly Trithemius was a 0:16:49.880 --> 0:16:52.320 big deal. Again, important figure in the history of cry 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:57.880 cryptography and occultism and uh and and D was already 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:00.960 a fan. He owned several copies of is of his 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.680 book Polygraphia, which was the first printed book about the 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.359 subject of cryptography. Uh. Not to say, you know, certainly 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.400 not the first book. It's also worth noting that there 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:16.320 was there was an Arabic book that that was already 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:19.760 out there in the world. And this book was by 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:23.679 a man by the name of al Kindy. But this 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.600 was the first that was, you know, certainly the first 0:17:26.640 --> 0:17:31.560 Western tone dealing with cryptography. Uh. They were twelve rotating 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:36.040 paper a cipher discs embedded within the pages, and even 0:17:36.080 --> 0:17:40.000 today they're in remarkably good condition. They still turn. Uh. 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.600 So it was a pretty phenomenal book. I'm kind of 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:44.840 thinking of I don't think you've seen this movie yet, 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:48.160 but that Doctor Strange movie came up. You saw it, Yeah, 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.600 you know the library and that that's what I'm imagining. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.119 very much. Yeah, and certainly there's a lot of like 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:58.480 circular devices and and glyphs that should pop up in 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.280 that movie that that feel aide at home in the 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.440 world of John d except not glowing and spinning in 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:07.200 the right unless you're talking to Edward Kelly and he 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.120 will say, yeah, I can see those disks probably U. So, yeah, 0:18:10.119 --> 0:18:12.920 he finds out there's a copy of Steganographia out there, 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.199 which was a rare book. It was an essentially an 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:21.120 an abandoned work of Trithemius is because it dealt with, 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:25.320 at least on the surface, dealt with angelic communication. It 0:18:25.400 --> 0:18:29.560 dealt with communing of spirits and using spirits to relay 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:34.840 messages over vast distances. Okay, hold on a second, I 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:37.320 think I've got a theory here. Let's see if this 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:41.600 plays out as we're talking more about Trithemius. What if 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:46.119 so we know that D was really into Trithemius, and 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:50.560 then he gathered all of this information before he met 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:56.040 Edward Kelly. What if Edward Kelly was using Trithemius to 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.960 create his version of a Nochian that eventually D wrote 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:05.840 down and and and hearkened as the Angelic language. Yeah, 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:08.840 maybe that's it. It sounds it sounds compelling to me. 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:11.440 I guess I should probably say a little more about 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:15.159 Trithemius before I go any any further here. But this 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.280 guy alone was pretty fascinating. This was the man who 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.400 served as advisors to emperors, was among the most erudite 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:24.280 German book collectors of his time, author of more than 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:29.119 fifty books himself, and the founder of scientific bibliography. He was, 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.560 as previously noted, the first printed author on the subject 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:36.040 of cryptography in the West. And um and yet then 0:19:36.160 --> 0:19:39.720 here's this book, this seems to be devoted to angelic magic, 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.320 that he was forced to abandon writing because he was 0:19:43.359 --> 0:19:45.600 talking to other people about it, and they were like, Oh, 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:51.000 I don't know about about this book you're working on Trithemius. Uh. 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:53.720 Even as he was making writing it, he made claims 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.520 that the text would enable communication over vast distances, to 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:03.080 communicate one's thoughts by fire and other claims. So basically, 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.760 like other individuals hearing about this, they were like like, well, 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:09.040 this means this makes it sound like either you're lying 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:15.840 or you're a demonic sorcerer, right or smiled upon? Yeah, 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:20.560 not so much in the in the church. So the 0:20:20.840 --> 0:20:24.160 crazy thing is that over the centuries, it's been revealed 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.680 that all three volumes of this work are concerned with cryptography, 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:32.040 the most and most recently volume three. So pretty early 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:34.800 on commentators figured out, all, right, well, these first two 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.840 books are only like surface level about angelic magic. They're 0:20:38.880 --> 0:20:42.600 really about cryptography and codes and ciphers. But they thought 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.679 for the longest well, this third book, though, this just 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:48.280 seems to be about magic. There's no code here um, 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:52.480 And that's kind of a fitting read for the life 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:54.520 of John d the idea of like, at what point 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:57.919 does the magic become the main thing? But here's the 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:02.359 crazy part. This only this a view of the third 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:07.840 Book of Steganographia only lasted until the late nineteen nineties. 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:13.040 That's when two individuals experienced unrelated breakthroughs and cracking it 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:17.040 German linguist Thomas Ernst and Jim Reid's, who is working 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.159 in the mathematics and cryptography research department at A T 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:23.879 and T. That this is Wait, so A T and 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.639 T paid for somebody to research this old book on 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:31.680 angelic communication and cryptography. Well, it's uh. I don't know 0:21:31.720 --> 0:21:33.639 if he did. I'm not certain if he did. This 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:36.879 part on the A. T. And D Die, but reads 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.320 is a guy who's subsequently written a few different books 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:43.320 on this and other D related works. Um and uh. 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:47.879 He he wrote about about this particular work in summing 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:51.960 it up with the following, which is I think rather 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:55.400 illuminating as we continue to look at these obsessions. Quote. 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:59.520 The question now is why did Trimetheus so thoroughly embrace 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:02.480 the red wrick of magic for such a non magical 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:07.360 as re regarded purpose. Did he regard cryptography as inherently magical? 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:10.199 Or was his choice of the language that language a 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:14.720 solution to the stylistic problem that all authors of cryptographic 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:18.719 exposition have to solve how to sustain the reader's interest 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:24.359 through example after example of usually tedious plain texts, possibly 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:30.320 tedious explanations of cryptographic techniques, and always tedious cipher texts. 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.960 Trimetheus use of angel language might thus be a rhetorical 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:38.680 strategy to engage the reader's interest. If so, he was 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:43.240 vastly successful, even if he completely miscalculated how his book 0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:47.560 would be received, because this basically, like I said that, 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:50.639 he was an important figure in occult circles because for 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:53.400 the longest like, that's what these books look like, that's 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:56.680 what those books mean if you're not breaking the crowd, 0:22:56.800 --> 0:23:00.240 the code and sort of finding the deeper symbolism, the 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:05.040 deeper purpose of the text. Yeah, so he's he's thinking 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:08.399 along the lines of I'm going to write this really groundbreaking, 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:13.600 uh piece of linguistic science, but that's not really sexy, 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:16.840 so I'll tell everyone it's about angels. Yeah, Or it's 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:18.800 like it's kind of thinking think about it like this. 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:21.000 If you have you have a grammar lesson, what kind 0:23:21.000 --> 0:23:22.639 of sentence are you gonna use? You're gonna use a 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:26.280 boring sentence or an exciting one, right, So, in a sense, 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:29.200 he used the exciting sentence. Uh he put he put 0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:32.399 a dog in a sentence. So another Okay, another theory. 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:34.800 And again I'm no d scholar, and I know there's 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:37.040 lots of people out there who have poured through his diaries, 0:23:37.040 --> 0:23:40.359 but maybe D was doing the same thing. Well that 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:43.640 that that becomes the crazy thing to try and figure out, 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:46.280 like where where we're what we're D's interest here? Was 0:23:46.280 --> 0:23:48.560 he interested in the magic? Was he interested in I 0:23:48.600 --> 0:23:52.040 mean sure, clearly he was interested in cryptography. He'd read 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:53.920 his other book, That's why he sought out this one. 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:57.520 There was the whole wife swapping thing though, so there 0:23:57.600 --> 0:24:00.240 is a certain amount of him actually believing angels telling 0:24:00.320 --> 0:24:02.040 him to do things he doesn't want to do. It 0:24:02.080 --> 0:24:06.480 makes one think, like, at what point, in studying cryptography 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:09.400 through the language of magic, do you become kind of 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:13.040 ensourceful by the magic, by the language of of of 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:16.879 of magic. Uh? Yeah, it's crazy. Now, now back to 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:20.359 this whole expedition where he ends up finding this copy 0:24:20.359 --> 0:24:23.159 of this rare book. So, as Benjamin Willy points out 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:25.280 in his book, this was no small accomplishment. It was 0:24:25.320 --> 0:24:28.679 a really difficult book to steal a peek at it was. 0:24:28.880 --> 0:24:32.479 It was banned it was actually actually the Church had 0:24:32.520 --> 0:24:37.320 placed it on the Index liberal Um Prohibitorium in sixteen 0:24:37.359 --> 0:24:41.320 o nine and it remained there until nineteen hundred. So 0:24:41.359 --> 0:24:43.120 this was this was a this was a band book. 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:47.800 This was like a dark book and uh magic, yeah, 0:24:47.800 --> 0:24:51.120 this is this is this is a dangerous text. Uh. 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:53.720 So D had to spend money to travel, he probably 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:56.399 had to pay bribes, and he worked with a mysterious 0:24:56.760 --> 0:25:01.159 nobleman of Hungary who required that D, in turn, quote, 0:25:01.200 --> 0:25:04.760 pleasure him with such points of science as he requireth 0:25:05.520 --> 0:25:10.120 that sounds filthy. I hope it's not. I hope it's not. 0:25:11.080 --> 0:25:14.560