(woodcut of John Dee from Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation, 1659)
E-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World --
What ever happened to John Dee after he broke up with Edward Kelley and returned to England?
This e-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World touches me to the heart, because I have a deep fondness for John Dee, Edward Kelley, their wives, and the entire extraordinary circumstances surrounding their five year communication with the hierarchy of spiritual beings that claimed to be the angels who had instructed the patriarch Enoch in the holy magic of heaven.
Since writing my book Enochian Magic for Beginners I have become clearer in my understanding of the relationship between Dee, Kelley and the angels. I am convinced now that the angels, as they called themselves, were intent solely upon conveying their system of Enochian magic to John Dee, but found that Dee was unable to perceive their teachings directly, and so induced Edward Kelley to come to Dee in 1582 for the purpose of using Kelley's innate talents as a crystal scryer and medium to convey their messages to Dee.
The angels were resident within John Dee's subconscious mind, but were unable to communicate with Dee's conscious mind directly. They contrived to bring Kelley to Dee so that Kelley could speak for them, and further contrived to cause Kelley to remain with Dee as their instrument.
In a sense, John Dee was carrying on a conversation with himself when he talked with the angels through Kelley. This is why some of the angelic communications involve material in Dee's own library of occult books, such as the Occult Philosophy of Cornelius Agrippa -- a fact that outraged Kelley when he realized it, because he jumped to the not unreasonable conclusion that the angels were frauds. Actually it was a case of the angels drawing upon material that lay in Dee's memory, then echoing it back to Dee's conscious awareness through the mouth of Kelley.
As to the ultimate intentions of the angels, good or bad, I remain uncertain. I believe they conveyed Enochian magic to Dee in order to implant within the human race a magical trigger for the period of violent transformation generally known in the Christian world as the Apocalypse. This is not to say that the angels were actually capable of conveying such a trigger -- merely that they thought this is what they were doing when the gave Enochian magic to Dee.
The Apocalypse is generally presented as a wholly evil series of events, but we only have the account of one Christian prophet, the author of Revelation, upon which to base this view. Assuming for the moment that there is to be such a thing as the Apocalypse -- and history would seem to suggest otherwise, since it has frequently been predicted, and always these predictions have come to nothing -- it may be that this period of transformation from the old age to the new age is not only inescapable but necessary for the continuing prosperity and happiness of the human race.
I cannot claim to have answers for these weighty questions. In my book Enochian Magic For Beginners I briefly considered the matter of the Apocalypse from the Christian perspective, as the violent and destructive end of the present age, and presented it as an evil thing; but who can know what its ultimate effects may be, if indeed it is destined to occur? Perhaps it is a necessary purging that will usher in a golden age the like of which the world has never known.
What happened to Dee and Kelley? Quite a story.
After Kelley made his way to Dee's family house at Mortlake, on the River Thames not too far from London, and Dee recognized his abilities as a crystal scryer and hired him on at the rate of 50 English pounds per year, Kelley and Dee spent almost every day working together communicating with the Enochian angels and receiving the Enochian magic and language. Kelley thought he had come to Dee on his own initiative, to get Dee to unravel the secrets of his alchemical manuscript, the Book of Dunstan. But I noticed when I was researching their lives that Kelley arrived at Mortlake exactly -- exactly mind you -- one year after Dee's first experience with spirits at Mortlake.
On March 8th, 1581, Dee recorded in his diary: "the strange noyse in my chamber of knocking; and the voyce, ten tymes repeated, somewhat like the shrich of an owle, but more longly drawn, and more softly, as it were in my chamber." This was so unusual that it led Dee to try his hand at crystal gazing, but he discovered that his talents were weak, and he hired a local scryer in an attempt to communicate with whatever supernatural intelligence had contacted him on March 8th. But his hired scryer was not very talented, either.
When Kelley showed up at Dee's door on March 8th, 1582, introduced to Dee by a mutual friend, Kelley immediately told Dee that his present scryer was cheating him and intended to betray his researches to the authorities. Kelley saw this with his psychic gift, which was considerable. Magic was forbidden in those days, so Dee was taking a chance trying to communicate with spirits, but he could do so because he was a close friend of Queen Elizabeth the First -- even so, Dee knew that if proof of sorcery could be brought against him in a court of law, his connection with the Queen would not be enough to save him, so he took Kelley's warning seriously and dismissed his scryer. When he learned what Kelley was capable of, he hired Kelley in his place.
Kelley believed that coming to Mortlake had been his idea, but my belief is that he was actually impelled to visit Dee by the agency of the Enochian angels. In his first crystal gazing session with Dee -- his first -- Kelley made contact with the Enochian angels and began to receive amazing information, which Dee carefully recorded word for word in a magical diary. So it was the Enochian angels who first caused John Dee, the greatest scholar of his century, to become interested in spirit communication by making him hear sounds and a voice in his chamber, on several occasions (I've mentioned only the first time). But Dee was not a good enough psychic for them to communicate clearly with him, so they induced Kelley to visit Dee at Dee's home, using Kelley's lust for alchemical gold as a carrot to draw him to Dee.
This is my firm belief. Why else would Kelley have arrived exactly one year to the day after the initial attempt at communication by the Enochian angels with Dee? And why else would Kelley have achieved contact with the Enochian angels at his very first attempt at crystal gazing in Dee's company?
For a time Dee and Kelley stayed at Mortlake receiving information about the Enochian system of magic, and the apocalyptic utterances of the angels. Then the angels abruptly ordered -- and I do mean ordered -- Dee and Kelley to leave England and travel to Bohemia in the company of a Bohemian nobleman named Laski who, while staying in London, had come to Mortlake to consult with Dee (men traveled from all over Europe to talk to Dee, so great was his reputation as a scholar).
Dee was shocked and bewildered. He had no desire whatsoever to leave England. Neither did Kelley. But the angels revealed that if Dee and Kelley did not leave very soon, they would be arrested for treason. This was their stick, so to speak. It terrified Dee, who was always a bit afraid all his life that men were plotting against him. Since he was an espionage agent for Elizabeth and privy to the secrets of her Court, he may have had reason to worry (just because he was paranoid doesn't mean he didn't have enemies).
Anyway, I believe the Enochian angels were lying about the treason charges. But Dee accepted the angels as the true messengers of God, and he believed everything they told him. Even though he could not afford it, he picked up his entire household, Kelley and Kelley's new wife included, and transported them to Bohemia, where Kelley and Dee continued to receive the angelic teachings.
By the way, I should mention as a matter of interest that the Enochian angels ordered -- again, ordered -- Kelley to get married, even though Kelley had no wish whatsoever to marry anyone. Kelley was enough in awe or fear of the angels that he obeyed them, especially after Dee begged him to heed their advice. Naturally, Kelley's marriage was not happy. But think of the degree of control over these men exercised by the Enochian angels. They literally commanded Kelley to take a wife.
After transmitting the bulk of the Enochian magic to Dee through Kelley, the Enochian angels told him that he should never attempt to use the magic unless they gave him permission. They was never given in Dee's lifetime.
While in Prague the angels commanded Dee and Kelley to use their wives in common -- that is, enter into a communal marriage, or wife-swap. And you thought this was something invented in the 60s! Dee, a good Christian, was horrified. Kelley was so upset, that at first he wouldn't even tell Dee what the angels had said -- even though Kelley was so honest at his job, he repeated the words of the angels verbatim even when they insulted Kelley before Dee, so that he was at times compelled to insult himself with his own lips.
Dee soon came around. He was sure the angels were messengers of God, and that God had chosen him for some higher purpose. Actually, Dee believed that he was to be a prophet of the End Times and was to warn the leaders of Europe about the coming Apocalypse so that they could repent their sins. This is what the angels led him to believe.
Dee was able to persuade Kelley because the crafty angels vowed that they would teach the two men the secret of making gold if they agreed to the group marriage. Dee had a harder time convincing his wife. The poor woman broke down in tears when Dee first spoke his intention to her. But ultimately the wives trusted their husbands, and all four signed an extraordinary Covenant that in return for wife-swapping, the angels would reveal all their secrets to Dee and Kelley.
And this is just about the end of Dee's diary. All of a sudden, after the Covenant between the four, it falls silent for a period of years. What happened was that Kelley attracted the notice of the German Emperor Rudolph the Second, who was a very strange bird indeed. Rudolph had spend a fortune gathering wizards and astrologers and alchemists at his court in Prague. Kelley met him through Dee.
Dee was put off by the Emperor when a lackey of the Emperor tried to get at Dee's books and magical instruments behind Dee's back. This cooled Dee's enthusiasm for Rudolph. But Kelley pursued the Emperor and flattered him, until Rudolph agreed to finance Kelley's alchemical experiments at his palace.
Who knows? It may be that by this time the Enochian angels had revealed alchemical secrets to Kelley. John Dee's oldest son would later in life swear that while a child in Prague, he had actually seen Kelley make gold, and had sat on the floor playing with the golden bars that Kelley had alchemically created.
Anyway, Kelley was in tight with Emperor Rudolph, and Dee was out. Dee didn't want to leave Prague because he needed Kelley to keep up his communications with the Enochian angels. Kelley for his part despised and feared the angels and was extremely glad to have nothing to do with them. He was much happier working at his alchemical furnace, now that he had the means to do so. He consulted Dee on alchemical matters from time to time, and remained friendly with Dee, but he wouldn't communicate with the Enochian angels. He must have had some success making gold, or simulated some success, because he was able to string the Emperor along for years.
Meanwhile, back in England, reports had reached Queen Elizabeth about Dee and Kelley's wonderful gold-making abilities. Elizabeth missed Dee and wanted him back where she could draw upon his scholarship in matters of state and espionage. She ordered Dee to return immediately. Dee could do nothing but obey. Reluctantly, he left Kelley to continue trying to make gold in Prague and traveled with his family back to England.
Kelley's poor wife had left her husband and returned to England alone some time earlier, so Kelley was alone in Prague except for his brother, who stayed on to help him. Dee returned to England in some pomp and style. Although he had been living in Prague hand to mouth, not even able to buy food or pay his rent without pawning his possessions, he returned to England with apparent wealth. No one knows where this money came from, but there is speculation that Kelley provided it, or induced the Emperor to give it to Dee. I have even floated the notion that it was alchemical gold made by Kelley using the Enochian secrets.
That was the end of the Enochian communications. Dee could not reach the angels by himself, or with any other seer. He always hoped Kelley would come back to England, but Kelley was mesmerized by the wealth of Rudolph's royal court and the prospect of finally discovering the secret of gold-making. Rudolph got fed up with Kelley's promises from time to time, and periodically threw him into dungeons, but always he relented and set Kelley back to work at his furnace.
Years after Dee's return to England, Queen Elizabeth decided that a man who could make gold was too valuable to leave in Bohemia, so she ordered Kelley to return to England. This was at a time when Kelley's favor with Rudolph was low, so he agreed. He was in prison. One of Elizabeth's operatives contrived to break Kelley out of jail, but Kelley died in the attempt -- some say by falling from a high place while climbing down a wall.
Dee was heart-broken when he learned the news of Kelley's death. Kelley, for all his rashness and drunkenness and temper, had been the best friend of Dee's life.
In their communications, the Enochian angels said plainly that Dee and Kelley were two halves of a single whole. They warned that neither man would prosper without the other. They said that they had given Kelley his gift of scrying so that he could serve Dee, and if Kelley left Dee, they would take it away. They warned Dee that he needed Kelley to be their instrument of communication.
Dee accepted the warnings of the angels. Probably Kelley believed them also. But the difference between the men was that Dee always had faith that the Enochian angels were angels of light. He obeyed them with childlike obedience, although at times his faith was shaken, as when they told him to sleep with Kelley's wife, and to let Kelley sleep with his own dear wife Jane. By contrast, Kelley always mistrusted the angels, and over time grew to genuinely hate them.
They didn't treat Kelley very well, to be sure. They told Kelley in no uncertain terms that they would punish him if he crossed them, and that his only purpose was to serve Dee as a means of communication with them. This kind of talk was not calculated to make Kelley feel fondly toward them. They promised Kelley that they would teach him the secret of making gold, but in my view they were only leading him on to get him to stay with Dee.
The wife-swapping Covenant between the four human beings and the angels was signed by the four on April 18th, 1587. Later that year, Dee and Kelley stopped living in the same house at Prague, although they still occasionally saw each other and communicated by letter. They had spent five years in close companionship, receiving the Enochian system of magic. Their wives had lived together as best friends.
In 1589 Dee returned to England at the command of his Queen. Kelley stayed in Bohemia for another eight years, sometimes working to make gold for Rudolph, sometimes out of favor with the Emperor and cast into prison. He ended up as little more than Rudolph's slave, although he showed his courage and independence by his escape attempt in 1597, during which he fell to his death.
After Kelley's death, Dee continued at Mortlake to conduct scrying sessions with local seers, but none of them produced good results. His link with the Enochian angels had been severed by his break with Kelley and he knew it. Dee also conducted his own alchemical experiments. On one occasion, Queen Elizabeth told Dee to perform whatever experiments he wished, he would always be safe from persecution. Although the Queen was so thrifty as to be almost a miser when it came to giving away money, from time to time she made gifts to Dee so that he could keep his family going and buy supplies for her experiments. Dee was even able to hire a workman to help him with his alchemy.
Elizabeth could not live forever. When she died, King James the First ascended to the throne. James is responsible for the new English translation of the Bible (the King James Version). He is also the author of a little tract called Daemonologie, which I have on my shelf, and in it he teaches the ways to recognize a witch. He was extremely religious and narrow-minded, and saw witchcraft and devilishness everywhere. He loathed Dee because he regarded Dee as an old sorcerer.
Dee generally had a very bad reputation as a black magician among the common folk. While he had been away at Prague, they showed their feelings for him by looting his family home at Mortlake, destroying Dee's library and his scientific instruments, and trying to burn his house down (they failed in this last effort).
Dee had been protected by Elizabeth. James completely turned his back on the old scholar, who was by this time very advanced in years. Dee died in poverty in 1608, generally snubbed by the nobles who a few decades earlier had been so eager to visit his house and get his advice.
On the bright side, his oldest son, Arthur, who had played on the floor in Prague with Kelley's bars of alchemical gold, went on to become a successful doctor and took up practice in a royal household in Europe.
So, that's the story of what happened to Dee and Kelley. Longer than I intended it to be, but it's such a fascinating tale I love to retell it. I hope it didn't bore you. When I consider these men and their strange partnership, I can scarcely believe that it is fact and not fiction, it is so incredible.
Until I wrote about Dee and Kelley, much of what I've told you wasn't clearly known. For example, few if anyone had noticed that it was the angels who had commanded Dee and Kelley to leave England and travel to Prague; or that Kelley arrived exactly one year after Dee's first contact with the Enochian angels; or that the reason Kelley had sought out Dee, and stayed with him, was Kelley's desire to solve the puzzle of his Book of Dunstan and make gold by alchemical means. No one had really seen that the Enochian angels regarded Kelley with contempt, and treated him merely as a psychic telephone through which they could talk to Dee. Most important, no one has suspected that there might be a darker reason behind the transmission of Enochian magic -- that it might be intended as a magical trigger for the Apocalypse, which the angels could not trigger themselves, but needed the free will of a human being to initiate.
Donald Tyson