Author: Glyn Parry
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300117191
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 358
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Book Description
Outlandish alchemist and magician, political intelligencer, apocalyptic prophet, and converser with angels, John Dee (1527–1609) was one of the most colorful and controversial figures of the Tudor world. In this fascinating book—the first full-length biography of Dee based on primary historical sources—Glyn Parry explores Dee's vast array of political, magical, and scientific writings and finds that they cast significant new light on policy struggles in the Elizabethan court, conservative attacks on magic, and Europe's religious wars. John Dee was more than just a fringe magus, Parry shows: he was a major figure of the Reformation and Renaissance.
Author: John Dee
Publisher: Weiser Books
ISBN: 9781578631780
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 500
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Book Description
Discovered in a hidden compartment of an old chest long after his death, the secret writings of John Dee, one of the leading scientists and occultists of Elizabethan England, record in minute detail his research into the occult. Dee concealed his treatises on the nature of humankind's contact with angelic realms and languages throughout his life, and they were nearly lost forever. In his brief biography of John Dee, Joseph Peterson calls him a "true Renaissance man"? detailing his work in astronomy, mathematics, navigation, the arts, astrology, and the occult sciences. He was even thought to be the model for Shakespeare's Prospero. All this was preparation for Dee's main achievement: five books, revealed and transcribed between March 1582 and May 1583, bringing to light mysteries and truths that scholars and adepts have been struggling to understand and use ever since. These books detail his system for communicating with the angels, and reveal that the angels were interested in and involved with the exploration and colonization of the New World, and in heralding in a new age or new world order. While Dee's influence was certainly felt in his lifetime, his popularity has grown tremendously since. His system was used and adapted by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and subsequently by Aleister Crowley. This new edition of John Dee's Five Books of Mystery is by far the most accessible and complete published to date. Peterson has translated Latin terms and added copious footnotes, putting the instructions and references into context for the modern reader.
Author: Glynn Parry
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300183704
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
Outlandish alchemist and magician, political intelligencer, apocalyptic prophet, and converser with angels, John Dee (1527–1609) was one of the most colorful and controversial figures of the Tudor world. In this fascinating book—the first full-length biography of Dee based on primary historical sources—Glyn Parry explores Dee’s vast array of political, magical, and scientific writings and finds that they cast significant new light on policy struggles in the Elizabethan court, conservative attacks on magic, and Europe's religious wars. John Dee was more than just a fringe magus, Parry shows: he was a major figure of the Reformation and Renaissance.
Author: Benjamin Woolley
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805065107
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380
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Book Description
Although his accomplishments were substantial-he became a trusted confidante to Queen Elizabeth I, inspired the formation of the British Empire, and plotted voyages to the New World-John Dee's story has been largely lost to history. In The Queen's Conjurer, Benjamin Woolley brings to life the tale of one of the most colorful characters of the Renaissance. In the midst of a pivotal era when the age of superstition collided with the world of science and reason, Dee's mathematics anticipated Newton by nearly a century, and his mapmaking and navigation were critical to exploration. Obsessed with alchemy, astrology, and mysticism, his library was one of the finest in Europe, a vast compendium of thousands of volumes. Yet, despite his powerful position and prodigious intellect, Dee died in poverty and obscurity, reviled and pitied as a madman. Written with flair and vigor, and based on numerous surviving diaries of the period, The Queen's Conjurer is a highly readable account of an extraordinary and nearly forgotten life.
Author: Jason Louv
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620555905
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 771
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Book Description
A comprehensive look at the life and continuing influence of 16th-century scientific genius and occultist Dr. John Dee • Presents an overview of Dee’s scientific achievements, intelligence and spy work, imperial strategizing, and his work developing methods to communicate with angels • Pieces together Dee’s fragmentary Spirit Diaries and examines Enochian in precise detail and the angels’ plan to establish a New World Order • Explores Dee’s influence on Sir Francis Bacon, modern science, Rosicrucianism, and 20th-century occultists such as Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and Anton LaVey Dr. John Dee (1527-1608), Queen Elizabeth I’s court advisor and astrologer, was the foremost scientific genius of the 16th century. Laying the foundation for modern science, he actively promoted mathematics and astronomy as well as made advances in navigation and optics that helped elevate England to the foremost imperial power in the world. Centuries ahead of his time, his theoretical work included the concept of light speed and prototypes for telescopes and solar panels. Dee, the original “007” (his crown-given moniker), even invented the idea of a “British Empire,” envisioning fledgling America as the new Atlantis, himself as Merlin, and Elizabeth as Arthur. But, as Jason Louv explains, Dee was suppressed from mainstream history because he spent the second half of his career developing a method for contacting angels. After a brilliant ascent from star student at Cambridge to scientific advisor to the Queen, Dee, with the help of a disreputable, criminal psychic named Edward Kelley, devoted ten years to communing with the angels and archangels of God. These spirit communications gave him the keys to Enochian, the language that mankind spoke before the fall from Eden. Piecing together Dee’s fragmentary Spirit Diaries and scrying sessions, the author examines Enochian in precise detail and explains how the angels used Dee and Kelley as agents to establish a New World Order that they hoped would unify all monotheistic religions and eventually dominate the entire globe. Presenting a comprehensive overview of Dee’s life and work, Louv examines his scientific achievements, intelligence and spy work, imperial strategizing, and Enochian magick, establishing a psychohistory of John Dee as a singular force and fundamental driver of Western history. Exploring Dee’s influence on Sir Francis Bacon, the development of modern science, 17th-century Rosicrucianism, the 19th-century occult revival, and 20th-century occultists such as Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and Anton LaVey, Louv shows how John Dee continues to impact science and the occult to this day.
Author: William Howitt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Country life
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
Author: Francis Young
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009079603
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 407
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Book Description
Belief in magic was, until relatively recent times, widespread in Britain; yet the impact of such belief on determinative political events has frequently been overlooked. In his wide-ranging new book, Francis Young explores the role of occult traditions in the history of the island of Great Britain: Merlin's realm. He argues that while the great magus and artificer invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth was a powerful model for a succession of actual royal magical advisers (including Roger Bacon and John Dee), monarchs nevertheless often lived in fear of hostile sorcery while at other times they even attempted magic themselves. Successive governments were simultaneously fascinated by astrology and alchemy, yet also deeply wary of the possibility of treasonous spellcraft. Whether deployed in warfare, rebellion or propaganda, occult traditions were of central importance to British history and, as the author reveals, these dark arts of magic and politics remain entangled to this day.
Author: Jonathan Bate
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588367819
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 495
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Book Description
“One man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.” In this illuminating, innovative biography, Jonathan Bate, one of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, has found a fascinating new way to tell the story of the great dramatist. Using the Bard’s own immortal list of a man’s seven ages in As You Like It, Bate deduces the crucial events of Shakespeare’s life and connects them to his world and work as never before. Here is the author as an infant, born into a world of plague and syphillis, diseases with which he became closely familiar; as a schoolboy, a position he portrayed in The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which a clever, cheeky lad named William learns Latin grammar; as a lover, married at eighteen to an older woman already pregnant, perhaps presaging Bassanio, who in The Merchant of Venice won a wife who could save him from financial ruin. Here, too, is Shakespeare as a soldier, writing Henry the Fifth’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, with a nod to his own monarch Elizabeth I’s passionate addresses; as a justice, revealing his possible legal training in his precise use of the law in plays from Hamlet to Macbeth; and as a pantaloon, an early retiree because of, Bate postulates, either illness or a scandal. Finally, Shakespeare enters oblivion, with sonnets that suggest he actively sought immortality through his art and secretly helped shape his posthumous image more than anyone ever knew. Equal parts masterly detective story, brilliant literary analysis, and insightful world history, Soul of the Age is more than a superb new recounting of Shakespeare’s experiences; it is a bold and entertaining work of scholarship and speculation, one that shifts from past to present, reality to the imagination, to reveal how this unsurpassed artist came to be.
Author: Lisa Hopkins
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317102754
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
Magical Transformations on the Early Modern Stage furthers the debate about the cultural work performed by representations of magic on the early modern English stage. It considers the ways in which performances of magic reflect and feed into a sense of national identity, both in the form of magic contests and in its recurrent linkage to national defence; the extent to which magic can trope other concerns, and what these might be; and how magic is staged and what the representational strategies and techniques might mean. The essays range widely over both canonical plays-Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Doctor Faustus, Bartholomew Fair-and notably less canonical ones such as The Birth of Merlin, Fedele and Fortunio, The Merry Devil of Edmonton, The Devil is an Ass, The Late Lancashire Witches and The Witch of Edmonton, putting the two groups into dialogue with each other and also exploring ways in which they can be profitably related to contemporary cases or accusations of witchcraft. Attending to the representational strategies and self-conscious intertextuality of the plays as well as to their treatment of their subject matter, the essays reveal the plays they discuss as actively intervening in contemporary debates about witchcraft and magic in ways which themselves effect transformation rather than simply discussing it. At the heart of all the essays lies an interest in the transformative power of magic, but collectively they show that the idea of transformation applies not only to the objects or even to the subjects of magic, but that the plays themselves can be seen as working to bring about change in the ways that they challenge contemporary assumptions and stereotypes.
Author: Bruce Janacek
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271078022
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their national—and in some cases royalist—loyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in England’s church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake.
