Dee’s Showstones from the biography by G M Hort
Ars Magica and Magonomia players are interested in how other wizards comport themselves, and how they arrange their laboratories. While I was reading through the biography of John Dee, I found a section about how his lab was laid out. He upgraded it by adding extra furniture and equipment, some of which comes from a supernatural source.
Before I read it for you, I’ll just remind you that John Dee was an astrologer and cartographer. He did not believe he had the Second Sight. He was an alchemist only in the most basic of senses and his great desire was to be a Theurgist: to speak with angelic beings. His way of managing this, since he himself could not see these beings, was to have a person with sensitivity (from his perspective) who he led into trances and then questioned. He had several of these over his career. The one he has at the start of this episode is the most notorious one, his long-term partner Edward Kelley. With that background we’ll move onto the text.
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Angelic visions in the showstone came thick and fast now. Angelic voices sounded often in the little inner room, once a bedchamber, where the philosopher, withdrawn from the household’s comings and goings, and denied even to important guests, gave himself over more and more to the life of dreams.
There were not wanting all the ” magical ” accessories of ceremonial scrying. By the end of the spring Kelley had obtained, with Dee’s aid and approval, the so- called ” table of practice ” on which the stone was to be set, with a red silk cloth of peculiar make spread under it, and an inscribed tablet of wax to serve as a pedestal. The legs of the table itself were also to be supported by similar, but smaller, tablets of wax. Then, in late autumn, came the acquisition of another crystal, called, from the circumstances of its giving, ” the angelical stone.”
Towards sunset, in the November of 1582, in the western window of the laboratory, there came to Dee’s tranced eyes a vision of a child-angel, bearing in his hand “a bright object, clear and glorious, of the bigness of an egg.” Later, Dee spoke to the Emperor Rudolph of this crystal as the gift of Uriel, the spirit of light, and said that it was of greater value than any earthly kingdom.
It is almost certain that this showstone, however obtained, is the one still to be seen in the British Museum, together with three of the inscribed tablets of wax. Of these mystic seals it should here be mentioned that they bore, on their upper sides, the familiar cabalistic figure of interlaced triangles—the so-called pentacle or seal of Solomon—together with the seven “hidden names ” of God and the names of certain angels and spirits.
The ” table of practice,” which was made of ” sweet wood,” and was two cubits, or about 3 feet, in height, was also inscribed with sacred characters and with a mystic cruciform sign. In the accounts of the sittings, we sometimes hear, moreover, of “the curtain of the stone.” But this was seen in the crystal, and belonged, not to the material, but to the psychic, accessories. The peculiar clouding of the stone which precedes the vision, and follows after its departure, is familiar to all crystalgazers.
Stress has often been laid on the fact that Dee himself saw little or nothing. We have his own regretful statement : ” You know I cannot see or scry.” But although both the character of his gift and the imperiousness of his temper made Kelley seem the leading spirit in this strange partnership, Dee, the careful recorder, eager questioner, and learned interpreter, was still, in a sense, the dominant force. The complaint of Kelley that the spirits address him in learned tongues which are incomprehensible to him is, to say the least of it, significant. And the angelic visitants were certainly more likely to have used Dee than Kelley for such a message, addressed to the younger man, as this : ” Thou, youngling, but old sinner, why dost thou suffer thy blindness to increase ? Why not yield thy limbs to the service and fulfilling of an eternal
verity ? Pluck up thy heart and follow the way that leadeth to the knowledge of the end.” Again, on an occasion of Dee’s absence, we hear of Kelley’s unsuccessful attempt to summon a spirit known as Medicina, who had, in Dee’s presence, previously appeared in the crystal.
We have to bear in mind that the phenomena of these seances cannot be explained as mere
crystallomancy. The crystal purports to give no more than a fleeting vision of some future
or far-off event. It utters no voice ; and the figures that move in its dream-like scenes are
silent as puppets. Here the part played by the crystal irresistibly reminds us of ” the cabinet ” of modern spiritualistic seances. It is, generally speaking, a place from which materialised spirits emerge, and to which, having made themselves known and conversed for awhile, they again return. The language of Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum, or Book of Mysteries, otherwise known as the
Spiritual Diary, in which the record of the transactions is set down, is often vague and ambiguous ; but at least it leaves us in no doubt that the spiritual creatures were heard
as well as seen, and that many of them manifested themselves outside the limits of the crystal. Dee, if he never actually saw them, was conscious of their presence ; and, as we have already said, there were many occasions when he, and not Kelley, seems to have been the mouthpiece of their messages.
There is no doubt that he also had mediumistic gifts, though not of the showier order. Equally there is no doubt that he did not knowingly employ those gifts in mere necromancy. The spirits he wished to converse with were not spirits of the dead, but ” the living angels of God,” the higher ranks of creatures. But although the scrying now took up so much time and thought, and was rewarded by such frequent visions, it could not be said to be of much practical assistance in Dee’s involved personal affairs. We know that he had expected that it would be, and that he repeatedly put questions to the apparitions upon matters that troubled him ; for instance, the refusal of the Queen’s advisers to reform the Calendar according to the calculations he (Dee) had made, and the baffling characters of some manuscripts of Kelley’s which were supposed
to relate to hidden treasure or the means of manufacturing gold.
Worldly . anxieties were natural, since his debts at this time amounted to £300. But the spiritual voices answered him but vaguely. Even Michael, the spirit of wisdom, who frequently appeared in, and sometimes outside, the limits of the crystal, said little that could be used for practical guidance. He gave but mystic encouragements, and counselled faith and patience.
Nor did the scryer invariably have sight of such heavenly apparitions. ” Merry ” spirits of fantastic dress and foolish speech came and went, and vexed the grave scholar with occasional ribaldries. Yet withal Dee’s confidence remained unbroken. His profound piety probably made him blame himself that knowledge was withheld. When the spirit known as Medicina finely said
that there were” no secrets save those that were “buried in the shadow of men’s souls,” he
voiced Dee’s own belief that God desired to hide nothing from the faithful seeker. And to Kelley’s frequent outbursts of angry impatience, and threats to leave the unprofitable scrying and ” follow some study whereby he may live,” the scholar answered with firm serenity that he, for his part, was content to wait God’s time.
