The Queen’s Conjuror: The Life and Magic of Dr. Dee

Trithemius gave several examples of how the system would work. For instance, the sender of a message first writes it out, using any language he chooses, after a preamble of paternosters and other supplications. He then speaks a special formula to summon one of the many spirits identified by Trithemius, say, Padiel:

Padiel aporsy mesarpon omeuas peludyn malpreaxo. Condusen, vlearo thersephi bayl merphon, paroys gebuly mailthomyon ilthear tamarson acrimy Ion peatha Casmy Chertiel, medony reabdo, lasonti iaciel mal arti bulomeon abry pathulmon theoma pathormyn.14

Padiel should then appear, whereupon the sender hands over the message. The spirit takes it to the recipient, who must speak another incantation, and the meaning of the message becomes clear.

To complicate matters further, the sender must learn the ‘places, names, and signs of the principal spirits, lest through ignorance one calls from the north a spirit dwelling in the south; which would not only hinder the purpose but might also injure the operator’.15 There are hundreds of thousands of spirits – some of which appear in the day, others of which prefer the dark of the night, some subordinate to others – each with its own sign. Books I and II list many of them, giving details of their powers and peculiarities and the conjurations needed to call them.

Book III, which is incomplete, is very different. It begins by promising even greater feats of communication than the first two, which are based on the discoveries of an ancient (apparently fictional) philosopher called Menastor. In the tradition of occult knowledge, the findings have been, Trithemius warns, presented in a way so that ‘to men of learning and men deeply engaged in the study of magic, it might, by the Grace of God, be in some degree intelligible’ but not to ‘thick-skinned turnip-eaters’.16

Instead of endless epistles, Book III is filled with tables. They are messily laid out, except for the one which appears in the book’s preface. This assigns numerical values for twenty-one spirits, each of which is associated with one of the seven planets. There will, Trithemius promises, be seven chapters in the following book, one for each planet. Chapter 1, which is the only one to survive, duly follows with a description of how to call on the help of Saturn to communicate with a fellow adept. It is accompanied by a series of numerical tables which are apparently to be used to perform astronomical calculations.

It would be another forty years before the manuscript that Dee now had in his possession was published. It appeared in Frankfurt in 1606, together with a shorter work called the Clavis (or ‘key’) to the Steganographia. It was the Clavis that revealed Trithemius’s true purpose. The apparently nonsensical spiritual incantations of the first two books turned out to be coded messages. For example, in the case of the call for Padiel:

Padiel aporsy mesarpon omeuas peludyn malpreaxo

the message, or ‘plain text’ as cryptographers now call it, was encoded in alternate letters of alternate words:

padiel aPoRsY mesarpon oMeUaS peludyn mAlPrEaXo

which yields the words ‘Primus apex’ (the first summit). The Clavis thus showed that Books I and II of the Steganographia were not really about magic. They were full of sample ciphers. However, the Clavis did not include a key for Book III. Did this mean it was really a work of magic or a code book too? The question remained unresolved for centuries. Gustavus Selenus (the pseudonym of Duke August II of Brunswick-Lüneburg) reprinted Book III in his definitive 1624 study Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae, establishing Trithemius’s position as a founding father of modern cryptography, but offered no solution. W. E. Heidel claimed to have cracked the code in 1676, but published his results in the form of a series of equally indecipherable cryptograms, thereby managing merely to add to the mystery.

By the late twentieth century, most scholars seem to have given up, and had consigned the work to the occult.17 Then, in the late 1990s, two people settled the matter once and for all, one in 1993, the other in 1996. The first to succeed was a German linguist called Thomas Ernst.18 The second, who had no idea of Ernst’s success until he had published his own paper, was Jim Reeds, working in the Mathematics and Cryptography Research Department at AT&T. Reeds’s diligent efforts at analysing this and other mysterious texts associated with Dee have proved extraordinarily successful.

Ernst and Reeds discovered that the third book of the Steganographia did indeed contain a code. There were hints as to how it might work in the tables and the text. For example, Reeds noticed that the first column of the table in the preface contained multiples of twenty-five. What was the significance of this number? There was also a passage in the first chapter that seemed suggestive:

If you wish to operate in Steganography… you must first of all acquaint yourself with [Saturn’s] various and diverse motions; and first the various motions, pure, proper, mixed, direct, retrograde and perplexed.

With a combination of skill and guesswork, Reeds worked out that the numbers in the tables represented letters of an alphabet, with each letter being a number added to a multiple of twenty-five. Lengthy analysis revealed the alphabet to comprise twenty-two of the Roman characters (A to Z minus J, K and W), supplemented by three other symbols. It was also in reverse order, which was perhaps what Trithemius was hinting at in his reference to the ‘retrograde’ motions of Saturn.

Reeds tested the key by trying it out on various sections of the book. For example, a series of numbers in the first table spelt out ‘Ioannes’, the Latin form of John, Trithemius’s first name. A selection of words in one of the tables in chapter 1 contained German words which translate into the phrase ‘the bringer of this letter is a bad rogue and a thief’. Reeds found another puzzling phrase, this one in Latin. It was repeated several times: ‘Gaza frequens Libycos duxit Carthago triumphos’. It turns out to be a pangram, a phrase that contains all the letters of the alphabet (like ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’).19 Presumably these phrases were chosen to demonstrate the capabilities of the cipher.

Having broken the code, the tables yielded up the secrets they had hoarded for five hundred years. Unfortunately these proved uninformative: besides one or two gnomic phrases, the remainder of the plain text seemed unintelligible. This may be because the plain text is itself encoded in some further way, or because the tables became corrupted over years of underground circulation in manuscript form. Nevertheless, the discovery of the true purpose of Book III of the Steganographia was a breakthrough, because it proved for the first time that it was primarily a work of cryptography, not magic.

But whether Dee realised that the Steganographia was a code book remains unclear. He may not have seen the Clavis, the key to Books I and II. So, when he so excitedly commended the work to William Cecil as ‘meeter’ (more suitable or useful) and ‘more behoveful’ (more beneficial) to ‘your honor or a Prince’ (Queen Elizabeth) than any other, what did he mean? Spiritual communication is a possibility – but unlikely. Cecil was both very practical and conservative, and, though he undoubtedly accepted the existence of spirits, was unlikely to have been persuaded to practise the elaborate rituals Trithemius described.20

Dee was fascinated by, and evidently expert in, cryptography. He owned several copies of Trithemius’s Polygraphia, which was explicitly about codes, and studied other key texts on the subject, notably Jacques Gohorry’s De Usu et Mysteriis Notarum and Jacopo Silvestri’s Opus Novum, the latter of which Dee used to practise writing in cipher for himself.21 Thus, when he promised Cecil that the book would advance the ‘secret sciences’, he was not necessarily referring to the occult. When Dee sent his letter, Cecil was just beginning to put in place the espionage network which, under Francis Walsingham, his successor as spymaster, would become one of the most formidable and effective in Europe. This network came to rely heavily on codes.22

Dee did not see the Stegonographia as merely a political or diplomatic tool, considering the text to have other, more esoteric uses. Cryptography, particularly of the sort practised by Trithemius, was closely connected to the Cabala and it was conceivable that the same techniques used in the Steganographia could be used to decipher other texts written in forgotten or corrupted languages. One that would arouse particular excitement was called The Book of Soyga, an anonymous tome which Dee came to believe contained an ancient message written in the language originally spoken by Adam – in other words the true, unspoiled word of God. Another was a mysterious volume attributed to Roger Bacon which in coming centuries became notorious among cryptanalysts as the Voynich Manuscript.23 It has yet to be deciphered. The study of codes, which was also the study of the structure of language, might yield the magic key to decoding such texts and revealing the messages they contained.

Beyond even that, Dee commended the Steganographia to Cecil as an example of the intellectual treasures the Continent held and that England so conspicuously lacked. In his letter, he deplored the lack of an English philosopher able to produce works ‘in the Science De Numeris formalibus, the Science De Ponderibus mysticis, and ye Science De Mensuris diuinis: (by which three, the huge frame of this world is fashioned…)’. His travels, learning and access to rare texts and Europe’s leading thinkers meant that he could be just such a philosopher, opening up the riches of the Renaissance to the English court.

X

During his stay in Antwerp, Dee wrote:

‘When infancy and childhood are past, the choice of a future way of life begins to present itself to young men as a problem. Having hesitated for some time at the crossroads of their wavering judgment, they at last come to a decision: Some (who have fallen in love with truth and virtue) will for the rest of their lives devote their entire energy to the pursuit of philosophy, whilst others (ensnared by the enticements of this world or burning with a desire for riches) cannot but devote all their energies to a life of pleasure and profit.’1

From this earnest assessment, it is clear in which direction Dee imagined he would go. But when he decided to return to England after his lengthy Continental tour, he was to find the choice not as clear-cut as he had assumed.

He arrived at Greenwich Palace on 14 June 1564, accompanied by the Marchioness of Northampton and a slender volume entitled Monas Hieroglyphica, ‘The Hieroglyphic Monad’. The marchioness had arrived in Antwerp in April, as Dee was preparing to come home. She had breast cancer, and was there hoping to benefit from the more advanced medical knowledge found in the Low Countries. Dee offered to accompany her back to England, and in return she promised to reintroduce him to the court.

The first thing he did was show Elizabeth the Monas. He considered it his most important work to date. He said that he had felt ‘pregnant’ with it for seven years, then written it in a fit of intellectual and mystical rapture in just twelve days.

For a man once arrested for ‘calculing’ and still arousing suspicion because of his interest in the ‘uncanny arts’, the presentation of such a work as the Monas to the Queen was risky. It was filled with magical ideas, deeply influenced by Continental thinking, dangerously preoccupied with what churchmen, both Catholic and Protestant, considered pagan matters, combining numerology, the Cabala, astrology, cosmology and mathematics. This may explain why Dee decided to dedicate it not to Elizabeth, but the newly-crowned Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian II, nephew of Charles V of Spain. As Dee had discovered during a stay the previous year at the Emperor’s court in Bratislava, Maximilian was both broad-minded and interested in the sorts of ideas the Monas explored. Dee had no guarantee that Elizabeth would show such an attitude.

His decision to present the work to her could be seen as a sort of test, a way of seeing whether his homeland was ready for the philosopher skilled in the science ‘De Ponderibus mysticis’ that he had told Cecil England lacked and which he had now become.

Elizabeth’s response was encouraging. Intrigued, if baffled, by the Monas, she promised to become Dee’s ‘scholar’ if he disclosed ‘unto her the secrets of that book’.2 The two of them sat together ‘perusing’ the mysterious work; queen and subject, pupil and master, magician and apprentice. She became, he later proclaimed, a ‘sacred witness’ of its secrets.3

The title refers to a symbol or hieroglyph. The same symbol appeared on the title page on the Propaedeumata. Like the Propaedeumata, Monas comprises a series of theorems. But there the similarities between the two works end. Where the Propaedeumata is about observation and experimentation, the Monas rather arises from pure thought and mystical intuition.

A clue to its meaning is contained in a question posed in Dee’s dedication to Maximilian:

Is it not rare, I ask, that the common astronomical symbols of the planets, instead of being dead, dumb, or, up to the present hour at least, quasi-barbaric signs, should have become characters imbued with immortal life and should now be able to express their especial meanings most eloquently in any tongue and to any nation?4

It was ‘as if in an age long past they had been the same, or as if our forefathers had wished that in the future they would be such’.

In other words, Dee thought that the ‘astronomical’ symbols were relics of a lost universal language that transcended national and, by implication, religious barriers. The aim of the Monas was to test this hypothesis by looking for suggestive structures within the symbols themselves. What Dee claimed to have discovered, the ‘very rarest thing of all’, was that all the symbols could be combined into one, a variant on the sign for Mercury. This symbol formed the central motif of the Monas, exemplifying the unity of the universe.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the book’s inherent dangers, Elizabeth seemed drawn to the Monas. She even suggested she might act upon its findings.5 In the dedication, Dee wrote that if Maxmilian ‘will look at [the book] with attention, still greater mysteries will present themselves such as we have described in our cosmopolitical theories’.6 Presumably the same applied to Elizabeth.

Unfortunately, the nature of these ‘cosmopolitical theories’ remains obscure, as the work in which Dee apparently expounded them is lost. Dee later used the term ‘cosmopolitical’ in the sense of cosmopolitan, referring to a more global perspective on political affairs. In one book he described himself as a ‘Cosmopolites’, a ‘Citizen and Member of the whole and only one Mystical City Universal’.7 Perhaps these theories in some way related to his ideas on imperialism, a vision of world government run according to universal Christian principles.

Whether or not these were the ‘cosmopolitical’ concerns that Dee discussed with Elizabeth, she was beguiled by them, and ‘in most heroical and princely wise did comfort me and encourage me in my studies’.

He needed all the comfort and encouragement he could get, as the book received a less welcome reception in other quarters. ‘University Graduates of high degree’, Dee later wrote, ‘dispraised it, because they understood it not’.8 He does not say why, but its unorthodox treatment of what were essentially foreign philosophical and mathematical ideas was a likely reason.

Dee’s relationship with English academia had been deteriorating since he left Trinity College in 1548. The first sign of trouble had come in 1554, when he turned down a post to teach the ‘Mathematical Sciences’ at Oxford. The Monas marked a decisive split. In his preface to the English edition of Euclid’s Elements he pointedly identified the book’s readership as ‘unlatined people, and not University scholars’. He increasingly saw the latter as provincial, dogmatic and mathematically illiterate.

This antagonism may have preserved his intellectual freedom, but it came at a high price. An independent mind needs independent means, but, thanks to his father’s catastrophic fall from grace during Mary’s reign, that luxury was denied him. Without the support of an academic stipend, he had to look elsewhere to make a living.

There was only one alternative: the court, which was filled with the very people he had so roundly condemned for becoming ‘ensnared by the enticements of this world or burning with a desire for riches’.

In his poem ‘The Lie’, Sir Walter Raleigh described the court as a place that ‘glows and shines like rotting wood’. Its theatricals were spectacular, often entertaining, but always deadly serious. The stakes were very high: wealth, status, power, or poverty, oblivion and annihilation. In the Presence Chamber of the Queen’s palaces, where the courtiers gathered each day to catch Elizabeth’s attention and, hopefully, her favours, the selective pressures were intense and remorseless. It was survival of the quickest, smartest, prettiest and wittiest.

Everything revolved around Elizabeth. For courtiers such as the poet Sir John Davies, she was literally at the centre of the universe, and they railed against the newfangled Copernicanism espoused by Dee, for fear it might knock her and their whole world off balance. In a poem inspired by the sight of the Queen dancing, Davies wrote:

Only the earth doth stand for ever still,

Her rocks remove not nor her mountains meet;

(Although some wits enricht with learning’s skill

Say heav’n stands firm and that the earth doth fleet

And swiftly turneth under their feet):

Yet, though the earth is ever steadfast seen,

On her broad breast hath dancing ever been.9

Those who fell out of Elizabeth’s orbit found themselves banished into utter darkness, without money, influence or prospects. Following some unrecorded slight or insult, the poet and diplomat Sir Edward Dyer, Dee’s pupil and close, if sometimes troublesome friend, was excluded for years, and driven to the edge of destitution. He eventually won his way back to favour by staging a spectacular pageant featuring himself dressed as a minstrel, singing to the Queen from the branches of an oak tree of his ‘tragical complaint’.10 Elizabeth was charmed, and patted a place for him by her side.

Dee believed he also had a special place next to Elizabeth. He was one of very few commoners to be honoured with personal visits. Twice, they coincided with Dee’s personal tragedies. The first time she arrived, with the entire Privy Council in attendance, was just four hours after the death of his second wife. On the second occasion, Dee had just buried his beloved mother. On both occasions, Elizabeth refused his befuddled entreaties to come into his house, and offered consolation. Both times Dee anxiously struggled to overcome the awkwardness of the situation by trying to entertain her as she waited outside. During the first visit, he brought out the magical mirror Sir William Pickering had given him, which ‘to her Majestie’s great contentment and delight’ he demonstrated to her.11

He was frequently summoned to court to talk to her about various matters, some of which were quite intimate, such as the prospects for her proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou. He had become, one commentator noticed, ‘hyr philosopher’.12

He reciprocated such attentions with strong devotion – something she engendered in many of her courtiers, who often translated their dependence upon her into expressions of rapturous love. He devised a special symbol, a capital letter ‘E’ topped with a crown, which he used to refer to her in his diaries. Minutely noting every favour she granted, he refused to blame her for the many denied.

In January, 1568, he gave copies of a new edition of Propaedeumata to William Cecil and the Earl of Pembroke to present to her. Three days later Dee heard back from Pembroke of her ‘gracious accepting and well liking of the said book’.13

On 16 February he was invited to Westminster Palace. He approached her in the palace gallery, Elizabeth’s preferred location for informal, unscheduled and confidential meetings, as she could pick out from the courtiers hovering nervously those she wished to talk to. Today it was her philosopher’s turn and their conversation quickly moved on from a discussion of the Propaedeumata’s astronomical findings to something more sensational. He revealed to her ‘the great secret for my sake to be disclosed unto her Majesty by Nicolaus Grudius Nicolai, sometime one of the Secretaries to the Emperor Charles the Fifth’.14 He never let on what this secret was, and little is known about Grudius, a Belgian poet. Dee noted his death in 1569 in one of his books, describing him as a ‘friend’. They also shared the same publisher in Antwerp, Willem Silvius.15 The assumption is that Grudius’s secret related to alchemy, a recurring interest among European monarchs desperate to find easier ways of filling coffers regularly depleted by wars.

The promise of such mystical revelations undoubtedly drew Elizabeth to Dee and her appetite for them drew him to her. Elizabeth had a profound sense of the forces of the cosmos acting upon her, and regarded her monarchical powers as magical in some way. For example, she was an enthusiastic practitioner of the ‘royal touch’. In this rite, which had origins reaching back at least to the reign of Henry II, a monarch would touch the neck of a sufferer of epilepsy or scrofula (a painful and disfiguring inflammation of the lymph glands which was also known as ‘the king’s evil’), who would then be cured. Elizabeth’s touch appeared so effective, it was often cited as vindication of her claim to the throne and proof that the Pope’s attempt to excommunicate her had been vetoed by God.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm off from an anointed king,

…as Shakespeare put it.16

Dee understood better than anyone how the magical balm worked. He could help Elizabeth make the most of it and become an adept at the magical practice of monarchy. However, as he was to discover, even these powers were not enough to levitate him above life’s necessities.

XI

Light miles upstream from the city of London along the Thames’s meandering course lies the village of Mortlake. According to dubious tradition, its name means ‘dead lake’. No such lake exists there now, nor in recorded history, though in the distant past one may have gathered on the bend of the river, a dark pool perhaps fouled with the rotting remains of plague or war victims. A less picturesque explanation, suggested by Daniel Lysons in his 1792 survey of London, is that the name comes from the Saxon ‘mortlage’, meaning a compulsory law.1

The village that Lysons described in the late eighteenth century was much as it had been in the sixteenth, a small community that had expanded gently over the centuries. It served the stream of river and road traffic that passed by every day, delivering goods and travellers between London and the towns and palaces upstream. Two thousand acres in size, part of the manor of Wimbledon, it comprised a modest church, a cluster of houses mostly concentrated along the Thames tow-path, and a few asparagus fields.

Even without its dead lake, Lysons found that Mortlake had its local legends. One was recorded by Raphael Holinshed, a contemporary of Dee’s and source for Shakespeare’s history plays, who wrote of a monstrous fish caught there in 1240. Another legend Lysons mentioned was that the village had once held the extraordinary library and laboratory of the great conjuror John Dee.