Francis Yates in The
Rosicrucian Enlightenment suggests that," in Bacon's writings there is
nowhere to be found any mention of Dee…
Dr. Dee
S Spoto. “Showeth
Herself All Naked”.
Daimonic
Imagination
, CSP 2013
FORTHCOMING
The fourth hour after dinner,
repair here again. And whatsoever you shall read out of this book, receive it
kneeling upon your knees: and see that you suffer no creature female to enter
within this place: neither shall the things that shall be opened unto you be
revealed unto your wives, or unto any creature as yet: for I will lie with you
a while, and you shall perceive that I am sweet
and full of comfort.
52
The spirits demand that in
order for Dee to continue in his occult pursuits of divine knowledge, he would,
essentially, have to engage in sex magic. These new commands on the part of the
spirits, and Dee’s acceptance of them, have often been regarded by serious
scholars as an embarrassment, but his compliance demonstrates just how far Dee
was willing to go in his zealous pursuit of knowledge. This quest is
illustrated in a contemporary rendering of the
Key of Solomon
, where the magus achieves
absolute wisdom:
And when I comprehended the
speech which was made unto me, I understood that in me was the knowledge of all
creatures, both things which are in the heavens and things which are beneath
the heavens; and I saw that all the writings and wisdom of this present age
were vain and futile, and that no man was perfect.
53
Both Dee and Kelley seemed
reluctant to submit to the new cross-marital doctrine, and Dee questioned the
spirits as to their exact meaning, hoping that perhaps they meant a more
metaphorical sharing.
54
The command was issued so
suddenly, and was so out of the norm from the previous expeditions into the
adamic lingua
and numerology, that it seems
that it can only be explained by Kelley’s extreme hatred of the angelic
exercises. Dee noted that Kelley had repeatedly said that he thought they
should not deal with the spirits any longer, and that he had long thought that
they were evil.
55
However, when Kelley’s pleas
(based on the supposed wickedness of the spirits) were ignored, he must have
pushed the issue even further. Dee’s diaries “attest to his fidelity as well as
the abstinence he practised as a means to attain the spiritual purity necessary
for those in search of higher mysteries”,
56
and an
important factor in remaining pure was
abstaining “with great and thorough continence during the space of nine days
from sensual pleasures” and “from all things unlawful, and from every kind of
impiety, wickedness, or immodesty, as well of body as of soul”.
57
Evidence from Dee’s
diaries—where he kept scrupulous records of dates and times of sexual
intercourse, and his wife's menstruation— points to his awareness of these
restrictions when practising magic, as he does not appear at any point to
engage in sexual activity within nine days of beginning a new angelic exercise.
Kelley, knowing Dee, could have invented the commands, never expecting him to
go through with it.
58
Very disappointed at
the turn in Dee’s angelic events, E. M. Butler wrote in 1948 that “[between]
them, he and his ‘skryer’ had also initiated a new kind of necromancy, imbued
with[a] peculiar blend of holiness,
phoneyness and feeble-mindedness”.
59
Though it may seem strange
that Dee accepted the new doctrine which sexualised their magic, he was well
aware of the complications surrounding female demons and there were hints of
sexual magic in his symbol of the Monas, which Dee used in his diaries to
indicate intercourse. Peter French claims this is a sexual symbol of the sun
and moon interlocking “to suggest their conjunction and generative faculty”
60
At the top is “Luna Exalted”,
and Dee writes in his
Monas Hieroglyphica:
It is
therefore clearly confirmed that the whole magistry depends upon the Sun and
the Moon. Thrice Great Hermes has repeatedly
told us in affirming that the Sun is its father and the Moon is its mother: and
we know truly that the red earth (terra lemnia) is nourished by the rays of the
Moon and the Sun which exercise a singular influence upon it.
61
Kelley’s own alchemical
writings developed from theories which were heavy in sexual metaphor, where
sexual union grew out of “the common and universal matter” which “is called
Chaos”—alchemy works with the wetness and dryness of opposing principles, and
Kelley maintains that “all teaching that changes Mercury is false and vain, for
this is the original sperm of metals, and its moisture must not be dried up”.
62
And though they seemed
willing to include sexual
52
Dee
1998: 226-227.
53
Solomon:
12.
54
Parry:
197-198.
55
Dee
1998: 216-217.
56
Feingold:
550-551.
57
Solomon:
14, 79.
58
Fenton:
209.
59
Butler: 172.
60
French:
79 fig. 14.
61
Dee
1947: 18.
62
Kelley:
8,22.
S Spoto. “Showeth
Herself All Naked”.
Daimonic
Imagination
, CSP 2013
FORTHCOMING
symbolism in their alchemical
and Hermetic philosophies, when it came to feminine spirits, Dee was more
anxious. In1583, when he comes in contact with Galvah, a female spirit, he
writes that “Tritemius sayeth that never any good angel was read to have appeared
in female form”. Galvah reassures him that angels are “neither man nor woman.
Thereforemay those that are the eternal ministers of God in his proportion of
sanctification take unto them the bodies of themboth”.
63
In 1968, Richard Deacon
shared this same discomfort and annoyance around the introduction of female
spirits,and when remarking on the language of the “angels” that Dee encounters
he says:
The vagueness of the angelic
pronouncements sometimes irritated Dee; the angels seemed to have all the unpredictability
ofthe female species, whether they were of the male or female sex, and they had
the habit of orating at great length in oftenincomprehensible language.
64
The elite occultism of Dee’s
time was meant to be a male-dominated endeavour with male scryers, magicians
and spirits,and deviation from this masculine ideal threatened chaos. Robert
Burton wrote that devils and demons would propagatewith witches and wicked
women, thereby creating new generations of demons, and also that female demons
would luremen into unholy unions, suggesting that women’s ravenous sexuality
caused the continuation of evil.
65
In the
Key of Solomon, the “Guide of these Demons
is Ashtaroth or Astarte, the impure Venus of the Syrians, whom they
representwith the head of an ass or of a bull, and the breasts of a woman”,
66
further connecting
feminine sexuality, the bestial andthe demonic.Women were not allowed in the
realm of elite occult practice, and—along with animals and
labourers—wererepresented by demons. The occult magic of Dee and the
continental philosophers engaged in a strict hierarchy whichplaced man above
animal and woman, and the learned philosopher above the labourer; any attempt
to corrupt thishierarchy threw the philosopher’s world into disorder. These
hierarchies were maintained in the journey “upwards”,whilst the aspiring
gnostic simultaneously tried to keep the uninitiated from progressing
heavenwards. When Dee beganpublishing his research, he became worried that it
would open the upper rungs of the ladder to those unworthy of it: “OhGod!
Pardon me if I have sinned against Thy Majesty in revealing such a great
mystery in my writings which all mayread, but I believe that only those who are
truly worthy will understand”
.
67
In this sense, the animal
demonic and the feminine demonic are bound together and are perhaps inseparable
when examining Dee’s conversations with angels. While it is tempting, given the
anxiety about animals and humans in this context, to look at these
transformations from a Deleuzian becoming-animal/becoming-woman perspective, I
think there is something more going on here. As the animal and the woman both represent
lower forms than the higher man, especially the educated occult philosopher,
perhaps these manifestations of women and animals are the demonic threat to
Dee’s pious reaching towards the heavens, and towards a transcendence of his
human self into the higher spheres of the divine. Anxiety surrounding the
feminine and the animal in Dee’s rituals then exposes the vulnerability of the
magician to influences which would weigh heavy on him, like the negative
influence of the stars, hindering him from progressing in gnostic insight.
Understanding the theological background of Dee’s philosophy raises interesting
questions when trying to interpret the eroticism present through much of his
theoretical and practical occultism. However, since the occult practitioner may
expend immense energy attempting to control the objects lower down on the scala naturae, then it is possible that
ascension from the mundane can only occur through an abandonment of the
worldly. Dee’s abandonment of worldly goods and pleasures is in line with this
abandonment of his prized possession, his wife. Only after he relinquishes this
final object from his guarded collection can he be truly be free from the
earthly, the mundane, and the sensual. Perhaps instead of looking at it as
engaging in sex magic with a multitude of sexual partners, it was this
abandonment of the earthly that put this practice in line with the philosophers
he so much admired. [there is the naked
at last. Turning a person to a possession. Turning a man into a spiritual whore]
63
Dee
1998: 91.
64
Deacon:
128.
65
Burton:
150-153.
66
Solomon:
111.
67
Dee
1947: 29.
“SHOWETH
HERSELF ALL NAKED”
Bibliography
Burton, R. (1621)
The anatomy of melancholy
vvhat it is. VVith all the kindes, causes, symptomes, prognostickes,
andseuerall cures of it
(Oxford, John Lichfield and
James Short)Butler, E. (1949)
The Myth of the Magus
(Cambridge: The Cambridge
University Press).Cavallaro, F. (2006) “The Alchemical Significance of John
Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica” in S. Clucas (ed.)
John
Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer), 159-176.Clucas, S. (2006a) “Introduction: Intellectual History and
the Identity of John Dee” in S. Clucas (ed).
John
Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer) 1-22.Clucas, S. (2006b) John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and the
Ars Notoria
: Renaissance Magic and
Mediaveal Theurgy”in S. Clucas (ed.)
John Dee: Interdisciplinary
Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, TheNetherlands:
Springer) 231-273.Clulee, N. (2006) “John Dee’s Natural Philosophy Revisited”
in S. Clucas (ed.)
John Dee: Interdisciplinary
Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer) 23-37.Couliano, I. (1987)
Eros and Magic in the
Renaissance
trans. M. Cook (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).Deacon, R. (1968)
John Dee: Scientist,
Geographer, Astrologer and Secret Agent to Elizabeth I
(London:
FrederickMuller).Dee, J. (1947)
The Hieroglyphic Monad [Monas
Hieroglyphica]
trans. J. Hamilton-Jones
(London: John M. Watkins).Dee, J. (1978)
John Dee on Astronomy:
Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558 and 1568), Latin and English
trans.
W.Shumaker (Berkeley: University of
California Press).Dee, J. (1986a) “The Preface to Euclid” in G. Suster,
John Dee: Essential Readings
(Great Britain: Thorsons
PublishingGroup) 37-46.Dee, J. (1986b)
The Heptarchia Mystica of
John Dee
ed. R. Turner (Wellingsborough,
Northamptonshire: The AquarianPress).Dee, J. (1998)
The Diaries of John Dee
ed. E. Fenton (Oxfordshire:
Day Books).Dee, J. (2004) “Tabula Bonum Angelorum Invocationes” in S. Skinner
& D. Rankine (eds),
Practical Angel Magic
&John Dee’s Enochian Tables
(London: Golden Hoard Press)
57-100.Feingold, M. (2005) “A Conjurer and a Quack? The Lives of John Dee and
Simon Forman”,
The Huntington Quarterly,
63(3), 545-559.Fell-Smith, C.
(1909)
John Dee
(London: Constable &
Company).Fenton, E. ed. (2004)
The Diaries of John Dee
(Oxfordshire: Day
Books).French, P. (1972)
John Dee: The World of an
Elizabethan Magus
(London:
Routledge).Hanegraaff, W. and Kripal, J. (2011) “ Introduction: Things We Do
Not Talk About” in Hanegraaff W. and Kripal J.(eds)
Hidden Intercourse:
Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism
(New York: FordhamUniversity
Press) ix-xxii.Harkness, D. (1999)
John Dee’s Conversations with
Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature
(Cambridge:Cambridge
University Press).Harkness, D. (2006) “The Nexus of Angelology, Eschatology and
Natural Philosophy in John Dee’s Angel Conversationsand Library” in S. Clucas (ed.),
John Dee: Interdisciplinary
Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer) 275-282.Kelley, E. (1983)
The Englishman’s Two
Excellent Treatises on the Philosopher's Stone 1676
in
The AlchemicalWritings of
Edward Kelley
trans. A. Waite (London:
James Elliot and Co.).Parry, G. (2011)
The Arch-Conjuror of England:
John Dee
(New Haven: Yale University
Press).Reeds, J. (2006) “John Dee and the Magic Tables in the
Book of Soyga
” in S. Clucas (ed).
John Dee:
InterdisciplinaryStudies in English Renaissance Thought.
Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Springer, pp. 144-204.Solomon, King of Israel (1889)
Key of Solomon the King
(Clavicula Salomonis), Now first translated and edited from Ancient MSS in
the British Museum
trans. S. Mathers (London:
George Redway).Szönyi, G. (2006a) “Paracelsus, Scrying, and the Lingua Adamica:
Contexts for John Dee’s Angel Magic” in S. Clucas(ed.),
John Dee: Interdisciplinary
Studies in English Renaissance Thought
(Dordrecht, The
Netherlands:Springer) 207-229.Szönyi, G. (2006b) “Talking with Demons: Early
Modern Theories and Practice” in G. Klaniczy & E. Pocs (eds),
Christian Demonology and
Popular Mythology
(Budapest: Central European
Press) 72-88.Turner, R. (ed.) (1986)
The Heptarchia Mystica of
John Dee
(Wellingsborough, Northamptonshire:
The AquarianPress).van den Broek, R. (2008) “Sexuality and Sexual Symbolism in
Hermetic and Gnostic Throught and Practice (Second-Fourth Centuries)” in W.
Hanegraaff & J. Kripal, (eds)
Hidden Intercourse:
Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism
(New York: Fordham University
Press).