Move Aside, Merlin

Benjamin Breen schools us on the original wizard:

John Dee of England, born in 1527, the astrologer to Queen Elizabeth and advisor to Sir Walter Raleigh, was the true founder of the wizardly iconography and mythos. A skilled mathematician, geographer, and inventor, Dee also delved into grimoires, kabbalah, alchemy, and Biblical prophecy. He believed he’d been chosen by God to receive a new divine revelation—angels were sending him a new set of Biblical texts from heaven. And he had a sidekick: Dee believed the ultimate conduit was not himself but his servant, a mysterious ex-con named Edward Kelley, who spoke with the angels through a glass orb that the two called a “shew-stone,” or crystal ball.

Dee’s beliefs gained currency among notables including Sir Walter Raleigh and the poet Philip Sidney. Yet the Dee-Kelley enterprise ended badly, with professional failures and a surprisingly salacious personal dispute—Kelley claimed that the angels required the two men to keep everything “in common,” including Dee’s much younger wife, Jane, who was nonplussed by the idea. Kelley died young, dashing out his brains in a botched escape from a Czech castle where the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II had imprisoned him for claiming to transmute mercury into gold. But Dee and his mythos lived on, resurfacing throughout the seventeenth century in publications with such eye-catching titles as A True & Faithful Relation of what Passed for Many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits; according to Frances Yates, Dee inspired the character of Prospero in The Tempest.

(Image: Portrait of Dee, 16th century, via Wikimedia Commons)