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.
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…)
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.
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…)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)