John Dee and Alchemy

The spring meeting of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry was held on 28 May 2005 at the Department of English, Birkbeck College, Russell Square, London. This building previously housed the Royal Institute for Chemistry and Dr Stephen Clucas, who was chairing the meeting, began the day by drawing attention to some of the building’s interesting architectural features and their links to chemistry.

The first paper entitled ‘Monas Hieroglyphica and the Alchemical Thread of John Dee’s Career’ was given by Nicholas H. Clulee of Frostburg State University. He began by highlighting how alchemy was a significant cultural current in the sixteenth century and how Dee was an important part of this. The Monas Hieroglyphica of 1564 has often been seen as the major expression of Dee’s engagement with alchemy, but his involvement with the art did not begin and end in 1564. He avidly collected and studied alchemical works from the ‘classics’ to the most up-to-date Paracelsian literature. He attempted to master the art of alchemy through experimental practice. He sought to transcend the limits of human learning with the instruction of the angels in Adam’s true alchemy. Despite the frustration of his loftiest aspirations, his most enduring legacy was his integration of alchemy with his natural philosophy in the Monas Hieroglyphica. The Monas Hieroglyphica was a daring and inventive proposal for a symbolic language that had the power to reveal the divine plan of creation, to explain the workings of the material world in the principles of alchemy, and to assist the mystic ascent of the soul. Here alchemy finds a place within his conviction of the mathematical nature of divine creation and the unity of the heavens and the earth. The cosmos may be understood by mastering the language of the geometrical cabala of the real which speaks the truths of alchemy, astronomy, and permits the magus to attain the exalted status of adept. In the alchemical dimension of the Monas, Dee participated in an important new dimension taken by alchemy in the Renaissance, and provided one foundation for the spiritual idea of alchemy.

The second paper, ‘John Dee and his reading of Voarchadumia’ was given by Hilde Norrgrén, an independent scholar from Norway. John Dee’s marginalia in Pantheus’s Voarchadumia are an interesting source of information about the development of Dee’s scientific ideas in the period between Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558) and Monas Hieroglyphica (1564). In reading the book Dee has systematically compared the text with Pantheus’s earlier work Ars Metallicæ and noted any differences between the two largely identical works. Therefore most of Dee’s notations are not indications of his own interests, as previously assumed. Only the marginalia that evade this picture can be taken to express Dee’s own views. These marginalia, probably written in 1559, bear evidence that at this time Dee already had a strong interest in kabbalistic methods as a means of gaining knowledge about natural substances. Kabbalistic speculation was to be central to Dee’s thought in Monas Hieroglyphica, and has previously been taken to indicate a dramatic change in Dee’s scientific outlook, towards a spiritual quest. In his marginalia in Voarchadumia, however, Dee used kabbala to gain information on wholly material, non-spiritual matters. The abundant use of the symbol of the hieroglyphic monad in the marginalia further provides a source of insight into the alchemical import of the symbol, five years before the publication of Monas Hieroglyphica.

After lunch, Peter J. Forshaw of Birkbeck College, University of London, delivered his paper ‘The Early Alchemical Reception of John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica’. He began by quoting Brian Vickers who once described John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica as “possibly the most obscure work ever written by an Englishman”, asking whether there were even ten references to it in the seventeenth century. The paper considered Dee’s reputation as an alchemist, in particular the reception of his Monas Hieroglyphica, in Latin, French and German works published in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It examined two themes: firstly, discussion of the Monas in the context of Kabbalistic calculations and Pythagorean symbolic numbers; secondly, references to, and appropriations of, the hieroglyphic monad in the context of chemical notation. It shows how Dee’s work was read by alchemists influenced by Trithemius’s exposition of the Emerald Tablet, including major promulgators of Paracelsian thought like Gerhard Dorn, Oswald Croll, Joseph Duchesne, and Heinrich Khunrath. The paper also noted how the Monas appealed to purveyors of both physical-chemistry and more theosophical forms of alchemy, such as the Rosicrucian Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz. It concluded with a discussion of the somewhat surprising approval of Dee’s enigmatic work from one so utterly antagonistic to Paracelsian and Rosicrucian thought, the chemist Andreas Libavius, who openly admitted to using the hieroglyphic monad as the basis for the ground plan for his ideal laboratory.

The final paper was given by Penny Bayer, an independent scholar, and was entitled ‘Lady Margaret Clifford’s alchemical receipt book and the John Dee Circle’. Penny’s work is the first detailed analysis of “Lady Margaret Clifford’s Alchemical Receipt Book”, which is held in the Cumbrian Record Office. It examines the basis for the receipt book’s association with Lady Margaret Clifford (1560-1616), placing particular emphasis on the connections in the manuscript book with the John Dee circle. After a brief introduction to the manuscript, the external evidence for its association with Lady Margaret was described. This was followed by a discussion of the internal evidence within the manuscript which suggests links with the John Dee circle, in several ways – by source of receipts, signs of ownership and possible authorship, and access to Paracelsian books. Penny also highlighted Lady Margaret’s links with the circle of Edward Kelley and her connections with two Elizabethan courtiers sent to check on him during his exile in Prague. Finally Lady Margaret’s connections with John Dee were examined and it was suggested that she had the opportunity to obtain receipts and to access library material for the manuscript during her visit to Dee’s Mortlake home in 1593 and through intermediaries with Dee at Manchester 1597-1600. A hypothesis for one of the main hands was put forward: that the alchemist-vicar Christopher Taylour compiled the receipt book for Lady Margaret by liaising on her behalf with members of the Dee-Kelley circle.

The meeting concluded with a short talk by Bill Griffith of Imperial College, London on Dee’s connections with Mortlake and notably the church of St Mary the Virgin, which was adjacent to his home. Although Dee’s house no longer exists, he is buried in an unmarked grave just in front of St Mary the Virgin’s high altar, while a chest that reputedly belonged to him is also housed in the church, although somewhat out of sight. Following the previous discussion of the alchemical aspects of Dee’s work, these comments conveyed a sense of the environment with which Dee would have been very familiar and provided a fitting end to the meeting.

The four papers delivered at the meeting will be published in Ambix, the journal for the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, in November 2005. Details on subscribing to the journal can be found on www.ambix.org

Anna Simmons