John Dee's Actions with Spirits (Volumes 1 and 2)

22 December 1581 to 23 May 1583

Christopher Whitby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136158889
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

This was originally a two volume set which is now bound as one.

Here is presented an investigation of the nature of the earliest extant records of the supposed communication with angels and spirits of John Dee (1527-1608) with the assistance of his two mediums or 'scryers', Barnabas Saul and Edward Kelly. Volume 2 of this work is a transcription of the records in Dee's hand contained in Sloane MS 3188, which has been transcribed only once before, by Elias Ashmole in 1672. Volume 1 is an introduction and thorough commentary to the text which is primarily explaining its many obscurities. The author describes the physical state of the manuscript and its history then continues with a biography of Dee and his scryers and some background to Renaissance occult philosophy. Further chapters address the arguments that the manuscript represents a conscious fraud or a cryptographical exercise and describe the magical system and instruments evolved during the communications or 'Actions'. The last, fascinating chapter examines Dee's motives for believing so strongly in the truth of the Actions and suggests that a principal motive was the conviction, not held by Dee alone, that a new age was about to dawn upon earth.

Abbreviations

Calder	I.R.F. Calder, ‘John Dee Studied as an English Neo-Platonist’, unpublished University of London Ph.D. dissertation, 1952.
CR	‘The Compendious Rehearsall of John Dee his Dutifull Declaracion, and Proof of the Course aid Race of his Studious Lyfe’, Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John Dee, Warden of the College of Manchester, edited by James Crossley, Chetham Society Publications, vol. XXIV (Manchester 1851), pp. 1–45.
Diary	The Private Diary of Dr. John Lee, edited by James O. Halliwell, Camden Society Publications, vol. XIX (London 1842).
DNB	The Dictionary of National Biography, 21 vols (London, later Oxford, 1885–1909).
GRM	John Dee, General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (London 1577), facsimile edition, The English Experience No. 62 (Amsterdam and New York 1968).
Josten, Ashmole	Silas Ashmole, his Autobiographical and Historical Notes, his Correspondence, and other Contemporary Sources Relating to his Life and Work, edited by C.H. Josten, 5 vols (Oxford 1966).
Josten, ‘Unknown Chapter’	‘An Unknown Chapter in the Life of John Dee’, edited by C.H. Josten, JWCI, 28 (1965), pp. 223–257.
Monas	John Dee, Monas hieroglyphica, translated by C.H. Josten, Ambix, XII (1964), pp. 34–221.
Occ. Phil.	Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy. translated by J[ames] F[rench] (London 1651).
OED	A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles edited by James A.H. Murray et al., 10 vols (Oxford 1884–1928).
Preface	John Dee, ‘Mathematicall Preface’ to The Elements of Geometrie of the Most Auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara, translated by Sir Henry Billingsley (London 1570)
TFR	Meric Casaubon, A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers Between Dr: John Dee…and Some Spirits (London 1659).
Walker	D.P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London 1958, reprinted 1969).

I

THE MANUSCRIPT

Sloane MS 3188 contains the ‘Actions with spirits’ conducted by John Dee (1527–1608) and his scryers, principally Edward Kelly (1555–1595), between 22 December 1581 and 23 May 1583. These Actions are the records of visions of angels and other spirits and the messages delivered by them as seen and heard by the scryers with the aid of a crystal ball, and then immediately related to Dee, who though present saw and heard nothing. The manuscript contains 104 folios in Dee’s hand which form his fair copy of notes recording the events taken at the time the Actions were conducted.¹ A short preface by Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) and some notes in cipher by William Shippen (1635–1693) are also contained in the present binding.

a) Provenance

In 1662 or 1663 a Mr. and Mrs. Jones of Lombard Street in London had occasion to move a chest, which they had bought shortly after their marriage, from its customary place in their house. Hearing something rattle they looked closely at the chest and Mr. Jones discovered a secret drawer containing various manuscript papers and a rosary and cross of olive wood. Being unable to understand the contents of these papers, they paid no great attention to them and many were eventually lost through being used by their maid to line pie dishes.² Two years later Mr. Jones died and although the chest perished in the Fire of London, the manuscripts, such as were left, were preserved. Mrs. Jones married again, this time to Thomas Wale who was a warder at the Tower of London and acquainted with Elias Ashmole. Learning the story of the discovery of the manuscripts and that the chest had once belonged to John Dee, Wale sent them to Ashmole on 20 August 1672 for his perusal. The importance of the manuscripts was not lost upon Ashmole. Thirteen years before, most of the records of Dee’s magical dealings from 28 May 1583 until his death had been published by Meric Casaubon as a warning how easily man may be deluded into dealing with devils.³ Now Ashmole had in his hands four magical books written by Dee and also the diaries of his magical experiments between 22 December 1581 and 25 May 1583 that immediately preceded those in Casaubon’s edition. Here were the ‘Actions with spirits’ that formed the ground of all those contained in A True and Faithful Relation and without which the latter could not properly be understood. Consequently on 5 September 1672 Ashmole exchanged a copy of his popular work on the Order of the Garter⁴ for all the manuscripts that had been discovered in the chest.

After the attention of the Jones’s maid the manuscripts were in a rather poor condition and Ashmole bound them and made transcripts of his own.⁵ He also spent much time trying to solve some of the difficulties and inconsistencies of the magical system that was evolved during those early years and began to collect information concerning Dee. In January of 1672 John Aubrey (1626–1697) had written to Anthony à Wood (1632–1695) that he hoped to be able to persuade Ashmole to write a biography of Dee and Ashmole seems to have considered the proposal seriously for he began to search for the MSS of Dee’s that were reputed to be in the hands of Sir William Boswell, ambassador to the Hague.⁶ Anthony à Wood took up the task of writing Dee’s biography, however, or at least of writing something concerning him within a larger work,⁷ and Ashmole decided to leave the project in his hands, writing that he would contribute such material as he had towards Wood’s study. Yet although much of Ashmole’s information concerning Dee’s life and magic, including his own annotated copy of TFR,⁹ were handed over to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford either with the Tradescant collection in 1683 or in the legacy of 1,758 books (which included 620 MS volumes, 311 in folio) that reached Oxford by 22 August 1692 after his death,¹⁰ the manuscripts discovered by Mr. and Mrs. Jones and Ashmole’s transcripts of them were not included. They would else still be in the Bodleian with the other relevant manuscripts of both Dee and Ashmole. The reason concerns the directions given in Ashmole’s will. This granted to Oxford all printed books and MSS, bound and loose, which would be found at the time of his death ‘in the two uppermost Studies in my Turret at my house in South Lambeth’ and in the inner closet ‘within my lower Study over the Mi Ike house’ in the same house.¹¹ Evidently the manuscripts that now form part of the Sloane collection were not to be found there. It seems that they were not in the house at all since they were not catalogued among the J2 folio MSS that formed part of the collection of Ashmole’s library that was auctioned after his death on 22 February 1694 at Roll’s Auction House in Petty Canon Alley by St. Paul’s Churchyard.¹²

C.H. Josten writes that ‘it is not known how these Dee manuscripts, and Ashmole’s transcripts of them, have found their way into the Sloane collection of manuscripts at the British Museum.’¹³ There are a few hypotheses that may be put forward, however, based upon evidence from the manuscripts themselves. On the flyleaf of Sloane MS 3188 Sir Frederic Madden, head of the manuscripts department at the British Museum from 1837 to 1866, wrote in January 1854:

This volume [was purchased at the sale] is in Dr. Dee’s own handwriting, [of Sir Joseph Jekyll’s library in January 1739/40] as far as fol. 108. [Lot]
A fair copy of it by Elias Ashmole was purchased at the sane Sir Joseph Jekyll’s sale, January 1739/40 (Lot 405) and is now MS Sloane 3677.¹⁴

The deletions, signified here by square brackets, indicate that while Ashmole’s transcript was purchased at the above sale, there was some doubt concerning Dee’s original MS. Sloane MS 3191, which contains the other four books found in Dee’s chest, now bears no reference to its purchase, although there is an erased reference on the flyleaf by Madden to its having belonged to Thomas Cotton.¹⁵ Sloane MS 3189, which contains the so called Book of Enoch in Kelly’s hand, was certainly in the Cotton collection,¹⁶ as were the manuscripts from which TFR was printed,...