Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World: The Ultimate A–Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 236

Official court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, admiralty spy - with the code name 007 - and transcriber of the angelic Enochain alphabet of alchemy and magic, John Dee was one of the most learned and remarkable occultists of his day. It is thought that Shakespeare used him for his model of the magician Prospero in The Tempest.

Dee was responsible for setting the date of Elizabeth’s coronation by casting a horoscope to find the most auspicious day, but he is perhaps best known for his relationship with medium Edward Kelley Dee was greatly interested in communicating with spirits and employed Kelley for the sum of £50 a year. The two men believed themselves to be in contact with a number of entities, including an impatient angel called Ave. It was Ave who dictated to Kelley, with Dee recording, the text of an entirely new system of magic in a language called Enochain. Dee and Kelley were also associated with the divinatory art of scrying (crystal gazing). Their experiments in crystal gazing, using a shewstone that is now in the British Museum, began in 1582 and continued to 1587.

Kelley may have had some psychic ability but he was undoubtedly a scoundrel as well. On one occasion he managed to persuade Dee that the spirits had instructed them to ‘hold their wives in common’, an arrangement that broke down within a matter of weeks when the less gullible wives began to get suspicious.

Kelley also persuaded Dee to leave his position at court and concentrate on producing gold alchemically When this failed the Queen took pity on Dee and reinstated him as a rector of a small college, but he was never to regain his earlier prestige.