Isaac Adamson's Blog

September 20, 2012

The Ballad of Edward Kelley – Part 3

For our final excerpt from Prague Unbound, we were fortunate to be granted permission to publish, in its entirety, The Ballad of Edward Kelley — of course, it helped that the author is unknown and the poem has been so long out-of-print that it may as well never have existed.


In case you missed them, here are Part 1 and Part 2.


**SPOILER ALERT** – If you’ve not yet read COMPLICATION, you may want to skip this ballad and come back to it later.


*  *  *


When moon is high in autumn sky

And wind howls through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man stalks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock


* * *


In the morrow Kelley was found

In a pile of debris

With shattered leg they couldn’t save

But severed at the knee


The prisoner’s dismal escape

Much amused his captors

But the Executioner’s whip

Cut clean through their laughter


“The Philosopher’s Stone we seek,”

Said fearsome Jan Mydlář

“Share your knowledge and be set free.

Or die within the hour.”


Jan Mydlar


“Good sir,” Kelley beseeched,

“I know its secret not.

But I can grant His Majesty

What he hath so long sought.”


“In vision was revealed to me

As I coughed and bled

A miracle contraption

To stand time on its head.”


“Back and forward it runs at once,

Suspending the true hour,

Such device to bestow the King

An immortal power.”


“Speak plain,” barked executioner,

Sword poised at Kelley’s crotch,

“Ask His Majesty,” Kelley said,

“Would he care for a watch?”


Edward Kelley


The strange proposal much amused

The feckless, feeble King

“Set free the Irish dupe,” said he.

“Let’s see him make this thing.”


They cut for him a leg of wood,

Dressed his bloody wounds,

The gaolers all wagering

They’d again see him soon.


Freed at once from Křivoklád

And hastened unto Prague

Kelley set to fashioning

Springs, hands, gears and cogs


Madimi aided its design

So clever and infernal

To grant the frail Emperor

Life lasting eternal


Engraving heraldic lion white,

And snake self-consuming,

Watchmaker did little know his

Own soul he was dooming


Secret symbols etched on the key

In language of Enoch

Gave hint of needed sacrifice

To wind infernal clock


But Kelley understood them not,

No arcane scholar he,

And like a fool he gave his trust

To demon Madimi


Quickly hour was at hand to

Render unto the King

The Rudolf Complication which

Would Kelley’s pardon bring


To castle upon hill he was

Ushered in dead of night

To fabled Kunstkammer

Where shadows swallowed light


Where for days Rudolf would wander

Gazing at his treasures

Numbered in vast thousands,

Yielding maudlin pleasures


All torches were extinguished there

The windows bricked up all

Mounted birds and beasts stared out

As Kelley walked the halls


When suddenly the Sovereign

There materialized

An eerie, pale presence

Spoke at the skryer’s side


“Are ye a ghost?” asked the King,

Eyes clouded and confused

“Nay, loyal Kelley with your gift,”

Anxious skryer enthused


Emperor Rudolf II


In velvet cloth was swathed the watch

A thing of beauty, true

But one which had a fatal flaw

Only Madimi knew


The King with haste did snatch the watch

And draped it round his neck

And tried to wind the winding key

But the watch would not tick


“It makes no sound!” said angry King.

“Its hands they moveth not

Again you attempt to trick me

On pike your skull shall rot!”


From cloak the King withdrew a bell

And then but two chimes rung

From dark emerged the royal guards

And on the skryer sprung


In Hněvín Castle Kelley found

Himself again detained

While with the Executioner

His end was arranged


Hnevin Castle


Failed clock draped around his neck

He’d hid the winding key

For fear its eldritch symbols spoke

Of blasphemed sorcery


Inside hollowed leg it nested

Where it could not be found

And bring Kelley further torture

To misery compound


His death he thus accepted, true

There was no turning back

But he wished to avoid further

Sessions upon the rack


And so his spirit descended

His subterfuge in vain

Feared Jan Mydlář was coming back

To question him again


The rack, pear, hot iron poker

He had not strength to stand

Kelley determined to end his life

That night by his own hand


From castle window Kelley jumped

Tumbling from great height

Screaming he did plummet

Unseen in starless night


But again the fall did not perish

Kelley, not by Death blessed,

His other leg now broken

In fate’s cruel twinning jest


And in dark, noiseless night came sounds

Of remorseless glee

Laughter from the demon child

Who goes by Madimi


Madimi


“Aim not for Death,” said Madimi,

“For only Hell awaits!

Hear me now and I’ll tell you how

To postpone such a fate.”


“Accursed demon!” Kelley cried out,

“Ye’ll torment me no more.

“Satan’s tortures will prove fairer

“Than my life heretofore.”


But she then showed him vision

Of what in Hell he’d find

And star-crossed Edward Kelley

Abruptly changed his mind.


Madimi gave unto Kelley

Diabolic potion

To counterfeit the skryer’s death

Ceasing his heart’s motion


In pauper’s grave was Kelley tossed

But in three days would rise

Along with the infernal watch

In parody of Christ


What clamored forth from cold earth

In black congealed night

Was no longer Edward Kelley

Lime dusted, glowing white


Burnt with alkaline, in tatters

Crawling on his belly,

Shaking like infant newly born

Was undead Was-Kelley


He crawled for days ‘til strength returned

Then with hobbling walk

He made his way along the road

To golden city Prague


Madimi had revealed at last

The secret of the clock

To wind its key and bring to life

Nefarious tick tock


Once each year the watch must be wound

By dead hand severed fresh

Only then will dials turn,

And twinned gears enmesh


Whoever about their neck dons

Rudolf Complication

By time will be untouched

Despite earthly rotation


But should tribute remain unpaid

And watch hands cease to turn

Madimi would come claim his soul

And in Hell it would burn


In a terrifying vision

To Was-Kelley she showed

Grisly future laid before him

With gift she had bestowed


Murders foul and degradation

Faces of the dying

Dead children’s hands held with his own

Fingers intertwining


In killings she would guide him

Down a blood-soaked path

Until such day he’d fail and bear

Brunt of her hellish wrath


Was-Kelley hence by many names

For centuries will go

When his time runs out he’ll spend

Eternity below.



Now moon is high in August sky

And wind moans through the trees

In cover of night Was-Kelley walks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till his end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock.


Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock.

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Published on September 20, 2012 23:48

The Ballad of Edward Kelley – Part 2

For our final excerpt from Prague Unbound, we were fortunate to be granted permission to publish, in its entirety, The Ballad of Edward Kelley — of course, it helped that the author is unknown and the poem has been so long out-of-print that it may well have never existed.


In case you missed it, here’s Part 1.


*SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not yet read COMPLICATION, you may want to skip this ballad and come back to it later.


When moon is high in autumn sky 

And wind howls through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man stalks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock 


* * *


Dee’s fool promise of gold from stone

Tickled Rudolf so

Wealth, estates, and entitlements

On them he did bestow


“Thou hath five years,” Rudolf decreed,

“And five years alone,

To produce your Magnum Opus 

The Philosopher’s Stone.”


“Yet should thou fail,” Rudolf warned,

“A future have thee not.

I’ll have thee clapped in irons

In dungeons thou shalt rot.”


Emperor Rudolf II


But intemperate Kelley found

A kindred soul in Prague

The city of a thousand spires

Reaching into the fog


A thousand taverns too he found

With wine enough to drink

A thousand whores, a thousand ways

In oblivion to sink


Dee beseeched his skryer,

“Five years have near run out!”

“Yet nights you spend in low carousel

And days you lay about!”


“You must consult the shewstone to

Madimi’s counsel win.

She’ll tell us how to make gold

Rudolf’s patience wears thin.”


“Ye learned fool,” Kelley said,

“The girl has played a prank.

We’ll end upon the gallows pole,”

Kelley drank, and laughed, and drank.


Edward Kelley


Lo suddenly Dee understood

What Kelley’d always known

About their little angel

In flowing crimson gown


“Madimi is a demon true!”

Lamented Doctor Dee

“I tried to warn ye,” Kelley said,

“But ye refused to see.”


With no gold to fill his coffers

Rudolf’s mind did turn

Against the English charlatans

Whose keep remained unearned


The melancholy king cried out,

“Goldmakers to the noose!”

Dee fled Bohemia

But Kelley could not shake Prague loose


The ruined scholar Dee returned

To his burnt English home

Never again to knowledge seek

Outside the bounds of known


A quiet, simple life Dee led

‘Tis true, in poverty

Far worse proved the fate

Of his skryer Kelley


With halberds drawn troops descended

On Edward Kelley’s house

In manacles they dragged him out

An abject, drunken louse


At far-flung Castle Křivoklád

Kelley now made his home

In a dungeon tower

Among contravener’s bones


Krivoklad Castle


Rudolf sent Jan Mydlář

With instruments of truth

The Master Executioner

To his vengeance soothe


Down to his earless chalk white scalp

Kelley’s locks were shorn

Stretched he was upon the rack,

Until his skin was torn


“The Philosopher’s Stone we seek,”

Said the black masked man,

“Share your knowledge and be set free.

Or suffer by my hand.”


Notch by notch the rack it turned

Like some infernal clock

While Kelley screamed and cursed

“There is no magic rock!”


Each night the scene was repeated

Torture lasting three days

‘Til Kelley could endure no more

And tried to end his stay


From high window he descended

On crudely fashioned rope

Pathetic his conveyance be

But thinner proved his hope


The rope snapped and Kelley fell

Tumbling from great height

Screaming he did plummet

Unseen in starless night


At castle’s foot in filthy heap

Poor Kelley prayed for Death

His left leg crushed and three ribs broke,

No strength nor spirit left


Yet in dark, noiseless night came sounds

Of unrepentant glee

Laughter from the demon child

Who goes by Madimi


“Pray not for Death,” said Madimi,

“For only Hell awaits!

Hear me now and I’ll tell you how

To postpone such a fate.”


And so as Kelley lay in pooled

Blood and micturcation

The demon her plan revealed

For his false salvation.


Thus on moonless night was born the

Rudolf Complication.


(Part 3 coming soon…)


 

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Published on September 20, 2012 01:01

September 17, 2012

The Ballad of Edward Kelley

For our final excerpt from Prague Unbound, we were fortunate to be granted permission to publish, in its entirety, The Ballad of Edward Kelley — of course, it helped that the author is unknown and the poem has been so long out-of-print that it may well have never existed.


*SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not yet read COMPLICATION, you may want to skip this ballad and come back to it later.


*  *  *


When moon is high in August sky

And wind moans through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man walks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock 


* * *


Once long ago in Mortlake dwelt

Esteemed Doctor Dee

Astronomer and mathematist,

Subject of Queen Mary


Dr. John Dee


Rhadomancer, cleromancer,

Crystallomancer, he

A mapper of Atlantis,

Keen on astrology


Hermeticist, Divinator,

Hepatoscopist, Dee

Conversed in languages of birds yet

Sought the Angelic Key


Key to unite the Sciences,

And yield Philosopher’s Stone

Key to unlock forbidden truths,

And Nature’s great unknowns.


Earthly teachings he’d exhausted

And so Dee sought to learn

From those who dwelt in realms beyond;

With knowledge costly earned


But Dee was not by birth gifted -

Or cursed! – With piercing sight,

And so he sought skilled skryer

To crystal gaze by night


Whence came swindler Edward Kelley,

Irishman lowly born,

A forger and necromancer

Oft pilloried and scorned


Edward Kelley


With untamed hair and long of beard

He wore a cap pulled low

To hide the scars upon his head

Where once his ears did grow


“A skryer I declare myself!”

The charlatan told Dee

“With your shewstone I will reveal

Wonders revealed to me.”


In midnight dark the seekers met

At Chapel of Mortlake

But little did they countenance

Their mortal souls at stake


Kelley commenced to mislead Dee

Counterfeit vision true

But Lo! The spirits heard his call

And to his side they flew


Spirits by name were summoned,

And one by one awoke —

Jubanladec and Uriel

And Nalvage invoked


But one appeared unbidden,

Swathed in crimson flames

The little spirit Madimi

Who goes by many names


“A girl am I,” said she,

“Lo, but six years of age.

Yet have I been six thousand years

Locked in fiery cage.”


Vexed by this apparition

Kelley beseeched Dee

“This intruder be no Angel,

A Demon must she be!”



With scholar’s scoff Dee did reply,

“Fear not, simple magus —

Tis humbly God’s truth we seek, the

Spirits shan’t betray us.”


Yet fearsome visions she did show,

Images much tangled,

Coal black mouths of the damned

By serpents being strangled


Ensign bearers sounding trumpets

Thrice upon castle high,

Sun the red of new-smitten blood

Against a churning sky


A bishop naked to his paps

Writing forbidden names

In black wax dripped upon

A dying lion’s mane


Such scenes from shewstone conjured

Thrilled sagacious Dee

But in fear Kelley cowered

At what his eyes did see


“Demonic portents!” Kelley cried.

“Nonsense!” the scholar said.

And nightly forced his skryer

To skrye despite his dread


One moonlit night Madimi told,

“Your friends at court aspire

To see your heads upon the pikes

Against ye they conspire.”


“Whispered tales of sacrilege,

Black masses, sorcery.

They say you seek to necromance

Through consorts unholy.”


The crystal gazers fled Mortlake

As wrathful mob descended

And set aflame Dee’s high estate

Where God had been offended


To Bremen, Lubeck, Krakow, Lask

Cloaked in night and fog

Madimi bade them easterly

Toward golden city Prague



Where conjurors found audience

With the pale, wanton king,

The Holy Emperor Rudolf

A mind-sick, frail being


Where soothsayers and occultists,

Astronomers and clowns,

Wrested the king’s attention

From matters of the crown


Dee’s knowledge held no currency

With Rudolf on the throne

To win King’s favor he did pledge

To transmute gold from stone


And in promise rashly given

Was their damnation sewn.


When moon is high in autumn sky 

And wind howls through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man stalks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock 


* * *


Dee’s fool promise of gold from stone

Tickled Rudolf so

Wealth, estates, and entitlements

On them he did bestow


“Thou hath five years,” Rudolf decreed,

“And five years alone,

To produce your Magnum Opus 

The Philosopher’s Stone.”


“Yet should thou fail,” Rudolf warned,

“A future have thee not.

I’ll have thee clapped in irons

In dungeons thou shalt rot.”





Emperor Rudolf II


But intemperate Kelley found

A kindred soul in Prague

The city of a thousand spires

Reaching into the fog


A thousand taverns too he found

With wine enough to drink

A thousand whores, a thousand ways

In oblivion to sink


Dee beseeched his skryer,

“Five years have near run out!”

“Yet nights you spend in low carousel

And days you lay about!”


“You must consult the shewstone to

Madimi’s counsel win.

She’ll tell us how to make gold

Rudolf’s patience wears thin.”


“Ye learned fool,” Kelley said,

“The girl has played a prank.

We’ll end upon the gallows pole,”

Kelley drank, and laughed, and drank.





Edward Kelley


Lo suddenly Dee understood

What Kelley’d always known

About their little angel

In flowing crimson gown


“Madimi is a demon true!”

Lamented Doctor Dee

“I tried to warn ye,” Kelley said,

“But ye refused to see.”


With no gold to fill his coffers

Rudolf’s mind did turn

Against the English charlatans

Whose keep remained unearned


The melancholy king cried out,

“Goldmakers to the noose!”

Dee fled Bohemia

But Kelley could not shake Prague loose


The ruined scholar Dee returned

To his burnt English home

Never again to knowledge seek

Outside the bounds of known


A quiet, simple life Dee led

‘Tis true, in poverty

Far worse proved the fate

Of his skryer Kelley


With halberds drawn troops descended

On Edward Kelley’s house

In manacles they dragged him out

An abject, drunken louse


At far-flung Castle Křivoklád

Kelley now made his home

In a dungeon tower

Among contravener’s bones





Krivoklad Castle


Rudolf sent Jan Mydlář

With instruments of truth

The Master Executioner

To his vengeance soothe


Down to his earless chalk white scalp

Kelley’s locks were shorn

Stretched he was upon the rack,

Until his skin was torn


“The Philosopher’s Stone we seek,”

Said the black masked man,

“Share your knowledge and be set free.

Or suffer by my hand.”


Notch by notch the rack it turned

Like some infernal clock

While Kelley screamed and cursed

“There is no magic rock!”


Each night the scene was repeated

Torture lasting three days

‘Til Kelley could endure no more

And tried to end his stay


From high window he descended

On crudely fashioned rope

Pathetic his conveyance be

But thinner proved his hope


The rope snapped and Kelley fell

Tumbling from great height

Screaming he did plummet

Unseen in starless night


At castle’s foot in filthy heap

Poor Kelley prayed for Death

His left leg crushed and three ribs broke,

No strength nor spirit left


Yet in dark, noiseless night came sounds

Of unrepentant glee

Laughter from the demon child

Who goes by Madimi


“Pray not for Death,” said Madimi,

“For only Hell awaits!

Hear me now and I’ll tell you how

To postpone such a fate.”


And so as Kelley lay in pooled

Blood and micturcation

The demon her plan revealed

For his false salvation.


Thus on moonless night was born the

Rudolf Complication.


*  *  *


When moon is high in autumn sky

And wind howls through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man stalks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock


* * *


In the morrow Kelley was found

In a pile of debris

With shattered leg they couldn’t save

But severed at the knee


The prisoner’s dismal escape

Much amused his captors

But the Executioner’s whip

Cut clean through their laughter


“The Philosopher’s Stone we seek,”

Said fearsome Jan Mydlář

“Share your knowledge and be set free.

Or die within the hour.”





Jan Mydlar


“Good sir,” Kelley beseeched,

“I know its secret not.

But I can grant His Majesty

What he hath so long sought.”


“In vision was revealed to me

As I coughed and bled

A miracle contraption

To stand time on its head.”


“Back and forward it runs at once,

Suspending the true hour,

Such device to bestow the King

An immortal power.”


“Speak plain,” barked executioner,

Sword poised at Kelley’s crotch,

“Ask His Majesty,” Kelley said,

“Would he care for a watch?”


The strange proposal much amused

The feckless, feeble King

“Set free the Irish dupe,” said he.

“Let’s see him make this thing.”


They cut for him a leg of wood,

Dressed his bloody wounds,

The gaolers all wagering

They’d again see him soon.


Freed at once from Křivoklád

And hastened unto Prague

Kelley set to fashioning

Springs, hands, gears and cogs


Madimi aided its design

So clever and infernal

To grant the frail Emperor

Life lasting eternal


Engraving heraldic lion white,

And snake self-consuming,

Watchmaker did little know his

Own soul he was dooming


Secret symbols etched on the key

In language of Enoch

Gave hint of needed sacrifice

To wind infernal clock


But Kelley understood them not,

No arcane scholar he,

And like a fool he gave his trust

To demon Madimi


Quickly hour was at hand to

Render unto the King

The Rudolf Complication which

Would Kelley’s pardon bring


To castle upon hill he was

Ushered in dead of night

To fabled Kunstkammer

Where shadows swallowed light


Where for days Rudolf would wander

Gazing at his treasures

Numbered in vast thousands,

Yielding maudlin pleasures


All torches were extinguished there

The windows bricked up all

Mounted birds and beasts stared out

As Kelley walked the halls


When suddenly the Sovereign

There materialized

An eerie, pale presence

Spoke at the skryer’s side


“Are ye a ghost?” asked the King,

Eyes clouded and confused

“Nay, loyal Kelley with your gift,”

Anxious skryer enthused





Emperor Rudolf II


In velvet cloth was swathed the watch

A thing of beauty, true

But one which had a fatal flaw

Only Madimi knew


The King with haste did snatch the watch

And draped it round his neck

And tried to wind the winding key

But the watch would not tick


“It makes no sound!” said angry King.

“Its hands they moveth not

Again you attempt to trick me

On pike your skull shall rot!”


From cloak the King withdrew a bell

And then but two chimes rung

From dark emerged the royal guards

And on the skryer sprung


In Hněvín Castle Kelley found

Himself again detained

While with the Executioner

His end was arranged





Hnevin Castle


Failed clock draped around his neck

He’d hid the winding key

For fear its eldritch symbols spoke

Of blasphemed sorcery


Inside hollowed leg it nested

Where it could not be found

And bring Kelley further torture

To misery compound


His death he thus accepted, true

There was no turning back

But he wished to avoid further

Sessions upon the rack


And so his spirit descended

His subterfuge in vain

Feared Jan Mydlář was coming back

To question him again


The rack, pear, hot iron poker

He had not strength to stand

Kelley determined to end his life

That night by his own hand


From castle window Kelley jumped

Tumbling from great height

Screaming he did plummet

Unseen in starless night


But again the fall did not perish

Kelley, not by Death blessed,

His other leg now broken

In fate’s cruel twinning jest


And in dark, noiseless night came sounds

Of remorseless glee

Laughter from the demon child

Who goes by Madimi





Madimi


“Aim not for Death,” said Madimi,

“For only Hell awaits!

Hear me now and I’ll tell you how

To postpone such a fate.”


“Accursed demon!” Kelley cried out,

“Ye’ll torment me no more.

“Satan’s tortures will prove fairer

“Than my life heretofore.”


But she then showed him vision

Of what in Hell he’d find

And star-crossed Edward Kelley

Abruptly changed his mind.


Madimi gave unto Kelley

Diabolic potion

To counterfeit the skryer’s death

Ceasing his heart’s motion


In pauper’s grave was Kelley tossed

But in three days would rise

Along with the infernal watch

In parody of Christ


What clamored forth from cold earth

In black congealed night

Was no longer Edward Kelley

Lime dusted, glowing white


Burnt with alkaline, in tatters

Crawling on his belly,

Shaking like infant newly born

Was undead Was-Kelley


He crawled for days ‘til strength returned

Then with hobbling walk

He made his way along the road

To golden city Prague


Madimi had revealed at last

The secret of the clock

To wind its key and bring to life

Nefarious tick tock


Once each year the watch must be wound

By dead hand severed fresh

Only then will dials turn,

And twinned gears enmesh


Whoever about their neck dons

Rudolf Complication

By time will be untouched

Despite earthly rotation


But should tribute remain unpaid

And watch hands cease to turn

Madimi would come claim his soul

And in Hell it would burn


In a terrifying vision

To Was-Kelley she showed

Grisly future laid before him

With gift she had bestowed


Murders foul and degradation

Faces of the dying

Dead children’s hands held with his own

Fingers intertwining


In killings she would guide him

Down a blood-soaked path

Until such day he’d fail and bear

Brunt of her hellish wrath


Was-Kelley hence by many names

For centuries will go

When his time runs out he’ll spend

Eternity below.



Now moon is high in August sky

And wind moans through the trees

In cover of night Was-Kelley walks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till his end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock.


Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock.

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Published on September 17, 2012 23:41

The Ballad of Edward Kelley – Part 1

For our final excerpt from Prague Unbound, we were fortunate to be granted permission to publish, in its entirety, The Ballad of Edward Kelley — of course, it helped that the author is unknown and the poem has been so long out-of-print that it may well have never existed.


*SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not yet read COMPLICATION, you may want to skip this ballad and come back to it later.


*  *  *


When moon is high in August sky

And wind moans through the trees

It’s said at night a dead man walks

Prague’s gloomy, crooked streets


Condemned to wander till time’s end

Bowed neck hung with clock

His wretched fate to ever hear

The dread tick-tock, tick-tock 


* * *


Once long ago in Mortlake dwelt

Esteemed Doctor Dee

Astronomer and mathematist,

Subject of Queen Mary


Dr. John Dee


Rhadomancer, cleromancer,

Crystallomancer, he

A mapper of Atlantis,

Keen on astrology


Hermeticist, Divinator,

Hepatoscopist, Dee

Conversed in languages of birds yet

Sought the Angelic Key


Key to unite the Sciences,

And yield Philosopher’s Stone

Key to unlock forbidden truths,

And Nature’s great unknowns.


Earthly teachings he’d exhausted

And so Dee sought to learn

From those who dwelt in realms beyond;

With knowledge costly earned


But Dee was not by birth gifted -

Or cursed! – With piercing sight,

And so he sought skilled skryer

To crystal gaze by night


Whence came swindler Edward Kelley,

Irishman lowly born,

A forger and necromancer

Oft pilloried and scorned


Edward Kelley


With untamed hair and long of beard

He wore a cap pulled low

To hide the scars upon his head

Where once his ears did grow


“A skryer I declare myself!”

The charlatan told Dee

“With your shewstone I will reveal

Wonders revealed to me.”


In midnight dark the seekers met

At Chapel of Mortlake

But little did they countenance

Their mortal souls at stake


Kelley commenced to mislead Dee

Counterfeit vision true

But Lo! The spirits heard his call

And to his side they flew


Spirits by name were summoned,

And one by one awoke —

Jubanladec and Uriel

And Nalvage invoked


But one appeared unbidden,

Swathed in crimson flames

The little spirit Madimi

Who goes by many names


“A girl am I,” said she,

“Lo, but six years of age.

Yet have I been six thousand years

Locked in fiery cage.”


Vexed by this apparition

Kelley beseeched Dee

“This intruder be no Angel,

A Demon must she be!”



With scholar’s scoff Dee did reply,

“Fear not, simple magus —

Tis humbly God’s truth we seek, the

Spirits shan’t betray us.”


Yet fearsome visions she did show,

Images much tangled,

Coal black mouths of the damned

By serpents being strangled


Ensign bearers sounding trumpets

Thrice upon castle high,

Sun the red of new-smitten blood

Against a churning sky


A bishop naked to his paps

Writing forbidden names

In black wax dripped upon

A dying lion’s mane


Such scenes from shewstone conjured

Thrilled sagacious Dee

But in fear Kelley cowered

At what his eyes did see


“Demonic portents!” Kelley cried.

“Nonsense!” the scholar said.

And nightly forced his skryer

To skrye despite his dread


One moonlit night Madimi told,

“Your friends at court aspire

To see your heads upon the pikes

Against ye they conspire.”


“Whispered tales of sacrilege,

Black masses, sorcery.

They say you seek to necromance

Through consorts unholy.”


The crystal gazers fled Mortlake

As wrathful mob descended

And set aflame Dee’s high estate

Where God had been offended


To Bremen, Lubeck, Krakow, Lask

Cloaked in night and fog

Madimi bade them easterly

Toward golden city Prague



Where conjurors found audience

With the pale, wanton king,

The Holy Emperor Rudolf

A mind-sick, frail being


Where soothsayers and occultists,

Astronomers and clowns,

Wrested the king’s attention

From matters of the crown


Dee’s knowledge held no currency

With Rudolf on the throne

To win King’s favor he did pledge

To transmute gold from stone


And in promise rashly given

Was their damnation sewn.


(Part II coming soon…)

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Published on September 17, 2012 23:41

September 12, 2012

Křivoklát Castle

Prague Unbound takes us to one of two castles where alchemist and schemer Edward Kelley was once imprisoned…



Located some 18 miles west of Prague, the first stones of Křivoklát Castle were laid in the 13th century by Přemysl Otakar II, who used it primarily as a summer hunting lodge, as did Wenceslas IV, who spent much of his leisure time hunting deer, rams and wild boars. The castle’s first noteworthy use as a prison occurred when a 3-year-old Charles IV was sent there and put under house arrest for his own protection (it was feared if stayed in Prague he’d be kidnapped by Czech nobles). Protestant Bishop Jan Augusta was another famous prisoner, having spent sixteen years in the tower prison beginning in 1548.


But surely its most famous inhabitant was alchemist and schemer Edward Kelley, who was first imprisoned there in May 1591 by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II for his inability to produce the Philosopher’s Stone that would transmute base metals into gold. Kelley tried to escape by climbing out the tower window using a crudely fashioned rope. Bad idea – the rope snapped, and after a long plummet, so did his leg (you should have seen it – physical comedy worthy of Chaplin). Rudolf II eventually released the alchemist for reasons obscured by history (though ones we know very well), but this pardon was just the beginning of Kelley’s troubles.


(Photo via Miaow Miaow, Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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Published on September 12, 2012 23:33

September 10, 2012

Národní Muzeum

In today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound , we take a look at the massive National Museum…



Looking down on from Vítkov Hill over the bustling Wenceslas Square is Národní Muzeum, a sprawling, forbidding structure founded in 1818 that now counts over 15 million items in its vast collection (the Department of Numismatics alone boasts several million rare coins and medals). Though items range from artifacts that date back to the Neolithic times, to weapons used in the Hussite Wars, to an ornitopter aerosledge (don’t ask us), very little of the collection has ever been on permanent display.


The building has seen its share of damage of the years – from fires started during the Prague Uprising in the closing days of WWII, to submachine-gun rounds blasting its walls during the Soviet invasion of 1968, to rampant air pollution, dust and noise tremors when the building was on two sides engulfed by ill-situated highways constructed in 1978.


A recent National Museum exhibit highlights one of the stranger episodes in Czech history. When Communist leader and syphilitic alcoholic Klement Gottwald died just five days after attending the funeral of Josef Stalin in 1953, the KSČ (Czechoslovak Communist Party) decided to put his corpse on public display as had been done in Moscow with commie heroes Stalin and Lenin.


One problem – Czechoslovakia had no history of embalming, and so they had to call in experts from the Soviet Union. The Vítkov Memorial, honoring those who died in WWI, was repurposed as a mausoleum and an underground facility was built that included a laboratory where doctors could monitor the body. Also included was a control room for the small army of technicians charged with maintaining the perfect humidity and temperature control needed to preserve Gottwald’s corpse. In all over 100 people labored round-the-clock to preserve one dead guy.


The body remained on display behind glass for nine years and was a compulsory field-trip destination for Czech school children and visiting Eastern bloc tourists. But despite the best efforts of the technicians, Gottwald began to decompose, his face gradually blackening, his right hand disintegrating so completely it had to be amputated (which reminds us of something).


In 1962, with political winds changing and Gottwald no longer viewed as such a hero (especially for his role in the Slánský show trials which saw nine people executed and hundreds imprisoned), the rotting corpse was removed and cremated. Following the Velvet Revolution in 1990, his ashes were summarily dumped in a common grave in Olšany Cemetery.


The National Museum is currently undergoing renovation and is not scheduled to reopen until 2016.


When it does, we hope Gottwald’s right hand will also be put on display.


(Photo via joyocity, Flickr Creative Commons)

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Published on September 10, 2012 23:54

September 6, 2012

St. James Basilica

Prague Unbound goes inside a church where still hangs the severed hand of a 16th century thief…



The St. James Basilica (Kostel sv. Jakuba) was founded by Minorites in the 12th century before being rebuilt in the Baroque style after the fire that cleansed Old Town in 1689.


Among its many attractions is the unrestful resting place of Count Vratislav of Mitrovice, accidentally entombed alive by dimwitted clergy in the 15th century. For three days and three nights the Count’s agonized wails echoed throughout the church while palsied husks of men blinkered by their ignorance bowed their liverspotted skulls and shuffled in circles, mumbling in Latin. They cast holy water here and thereabout as the Count scraped and clawed at the walls of his enclosure and wore the very flesh from his fingers until they were bloodied shards of bone and there was no more air to breathe and so he breathed no more.


Of special interest is a severed, mummified arm that hangs inside the church’s entrance. One night some four hundred years ago, a thief tried to snatch a necklace of pearls from a statue of Mary, but Our Lady held fast to his arm and would not release it even in the morrow until at length the executioner was called to hack off the appendage. After prison, the repentant, one-armed thief returned to St. James and the monks accepted them into their brotherhood. It’s said he would late at night enter the church and gaze in reverie upon his own severed limb, which still hangs there to this day.


St. James is also acclaimed for it’s splendid pipe organ, said to be one of the finest in Europe.


(Photo via Anton Fedorenko, Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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Published on September 06, 2012 02:00

September 4, 2012

Old Town Square

Prague Unbound visits the city’s historic center…



The historic epicenter of the city, Staroměstské náměstí boasts some of the most well-known and culturally important sites in the city, from the Old Town Hall, to the Astronomical Clock, to the Jan Hus monument, to the Týn Church, to the St. Nicholas Church, to a host of colorfully named old buildings like the Stone Bell House, House of the Golden Unicorn, House of the White Unicorn, The Lazarus House, and The Black Angel.


A young, bat-eared, sharp-featured child named Franz Kafka grew up in Old Town Square’s House at the Minute and went to grammar school in a wing of the nearby Kinsky Palace (Kafka’s father also owned a haberdashery in the building). It was from a balcony of this same building that Communist leader Klement Gottwald stood next to Vladimir Clementis in 1948 to deliver a famous speech that ushered in the one of the darkest periods in Czech history (Clementis would later be convicted and executed during the 1950 show trials, and have his face systematically erased from photos of the famous Kinsky balcony speech).


For all its beauty, Old Town Square will always be associated with some decidedly ugly events. It was here that popular Hussite priest Jan Želivský was executed in 1422, and here where nearly 200 years later, legendary Master Executioner Jan Mydlář killed 27 Bohemian nobles following the Battle of White Mountain for their role in rebelling against the Hapsburg Empire. With their deaths Czech dreams of autonomy were laid to rest for some three centuries.



Today 27 white crosses remain inlaid in the stones next to Old Town Hall to commemorate that horrific day, and each year on July 21 the ghosts of these men return to the site where they drew their last earthly breaths (where they are elbowed out of the way by tourists taking pictures of the Astronomical Clock with their iPhones).


(Photos via Bogdan Migulski and Hynek Moravec, Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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Published on September 04, 2012 00:06

August 28, 2012

Týn Church

Prague Unbound offers a glimpse of the very pointy Church of Our Lady Before Týn…



With its asymmetrical spires looming over Old Town like, as one writer put it, “a congregation of pointy hated magicians,” the Týn Church is the latest of three houses of worship erected on the same spot. Constructed in the 14th century by architect Peter Parler (also responsible for the Charles Bridge and the St. Vitus Cathedral), the Church originally served as a gathering place of Hussites before Counter-Reformation Jesuits took over and slapped a statue of the Virgin Mary over the Hussite chalice.


Interred in the Týn Church are the bones of astronomer Tycho Brahe and those of Simon Abeles, a 12-year-old Jewish child who was in 1694 reputedly beaten to death by his father for converting to Christianity. When the boy’s body was exhumed from the Old Jewish Cemetery and all signs of violence miraculously erased, Abeles was celebrated as a martyr (his father, meanwhile, committed suicide by hanging in Old Town Hall while awaiting trial).


It’s also said the skulls of nobles executed following the Battle of White Mountain are hidden somewhere within the Týn Church walls. We could tell you where exactly they are, but this knowledge would come at such a horrific price that you should consider very, very carefully before asking.


(Photo via VitVit, Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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Published on August 28, 2012 11:00

August 24, 2012

Astronomical Clock

Today’s excerpt from Prague Unbound offers a glance at the city’s most famous clock



Legends abound regarding the celebrated Pražský orloj. Tales of conspiracy and mayhem and eye-gouging. Pay them no more mind than you would a drunken Turk. To wit – the clock wasn’t actually constructed by Master Jan Hanuš. Hanuš was not attacked and blinded at the behest of Prague Councillors, and he did not later disable the clock for his revenge.


If you’re expecting us to give you the real story about why this lovely horloge stopped working for one hundred years, you’re going to be disappointed. We can’t share all our secrets now, can we?


But we can tell you that as the third oldest operating astronomical clock in the world, it has seen its share of suffering over the years. We can tell you how after being built in the early 1400s it still didn’t work properly until repairs in 1610, and how it again fell into such a state of disrepair that in 1780 officials considered tearing it down altogether. During the Prague Uprising that occurred in the final week of WWII, the clock came under heavy artillery fire and the Nazis burned down much of the Old Town Hall that houses it.


It’s said that the fate of the Czech people is tied to that of the clock, and should the orloj again fall into disrepair, a great darkness will descend upon the land.


Tick…tock.


Note: If you’re in Old Town Square and wonder what time it is, don’t bother consulting the clock. Despite those many discs and dials, the one thing it actually doesn’t display is the time. 


(Photo via Krzysiu “Jarzyna” Szymański, Wikimedia Creative Commons)

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Published on August 24, 2012 22:00