John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature

by Deborah E. Harkness, Deborah Harkness, John Dee (Contributor)

'Elizabethan England's most famous natural philosopher John Dee recorded his reflections on the natural world, the practice of natural philosophy, and the apocalypse in a series of conversations with angels, which have long been an enigmatic facet of his life and work. This book makes extensive use of Dee's library and annotations to clarify this mystery by providing a detailed analysis of these conversations. Professor Harkness contextualizes Dee's angel conversations within the natural, philosophical, religious, and social contexts of his time, arguing that the conversations represent a continuing development of John Dee's earlier concerns and interests. This book will appeal to those with an interest in the history of science, students of religion, and everyone who approaches the new millennium with a wary eye.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Occult, Philosophy, Alchemy, Science, Historical

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Katharine Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book well-written, well-researched, and extremely interesting. Harkness is an academic who's done a great deal of original research in difficult sources and materials. Deciphering Dee's handwriting alone should have earned her a medal. One of its most valuable aspects is her overturning or debunking a great many popular ideas and myths about Dee that still have wide currency today. He was far from solitary, for example. He worked with four "scryers", not merely Edward Kelley, for another.

(As for Kelley himself, no, he did not die trying to escape from prison. He was released, then disappeared into the mists of history.)

A small warning: to get the full benefit of her footnotes, though, the reader needs to know some Latin. It was the scholarly "universal" language of Europe in Dee's time.

[Nancy Goldberg Wilks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book!Deborah Harkness has a knack of making History fun and interesting - even in her non-fiction, academic work! I have no History background, yet I thoroughly enjoyed - and understood - this book. It is well written, interesting, and I learned a great deal. Highly recommended.

[Ankh156 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well-written, good historical and philological background, but hopeless on the content of the Spiritual Diaries. Ultimately it's rather disappointing. University-based historians seem incapable of approaching the religious/magical aspects of renaissance thought without becoming 'queasy'. Maybe it's time for religionists and anthropologists to take a good look at the subject. There's a lot of naive rubbish written on the late renaissance/early enlightenment period in the History of Science and the History of Ideas, and Dee's reforming spirit should be recognised to bear directly on these, but academic writers can't resist the temptation to recount unlikely 'just-so stories' on the emergence of inductive reasoning, and they miss the richness and subtility of the alchemical, theological and magical thought. The dogmatic positivism of the post-enlightenment epistemology and ideology creates a dense fog on the mindset of Dee's period. Historically, he is contemporary with Copernicus and precedes Galileo. This makes him an important link in the move towards modern science, But books like this only give this confused lip-service and uniformly fail to demonstrate it. A notable exception is Dr Frances Yates, but even she avoids textual analysis of the content of beliefs of the time for most thinkers and writers other than Giordano Bruno, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare.

[Gia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting read. Well written with a lot of sources for more information.

[Julián David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una obra exelente.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

From amazon:
John Dee's angel conversations have been an enigmatic facet of Elizabethan England's most famous natural philosopher's life and work. Professor Harkness contextualizes Dee's angel conversations within the natural philosophical, religious and social contexts of his time philosophy, and the apocalypse, and argues that they represent a continuing development of John Dee's earlier concerns and interests. These conversations include discussions of the natural world, the practice of natural philosophy, and the apocalypse.
From Wikipedia:
Elias Ashmole recorded that the Duke of Lauderdale owned a manuscript titled Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor that had formerly belonged to Dee. The manuscript was sold at auction in 1692 and is now probably Sloane MS. 8, based on Jim Reeds' identification. Bodley MS. 908 was donated to the Bodleian Library in 1605.[2]
. . .
During Dee's long trip to the Continent, he sought to supernaturally contact angels through the services of a scryer, Edward Kelley. On the subject of the Book of Soyga, Dee claimed to have questioned the angel Uriel about the significance of the book and asked for guidance. The reply that Dee received was that the book had been revealed to Adam in Paradise by angels, and could be interpreted by the archangel Michael.
After Harkness rediscovered the two copies of the book, Jim Reeds uncovered the mathematical formula used to construct the tables (starting with the seed word given for each table), and identified errors of various types made by the manuscripts' scribes. He showed that a subset of the errors were common to the two copies, suggesting that they were derived from a common ancestor which contained that subset of errors (and thus was presumably itself a copy of another work).

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

In elegant yet straight-ahead prose (my favorite!), Dr. Harkness does what she does best: show the impact of the social climate on the intellectual community embedded within it. Her deconstruction of the strange pursuits of one Dr. John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth, who died a pauper, illustrates a point often lost by historians of science, namely the fact that empirical observers are influenced by social and cultural definitions of what is and is not observable. John Dee attempted to observe angels because--well--angels "existed" in Elizabethan England, and everybody from the Queen to the green grocer knew it. Yet Dee believed the charlatans who skryed for him, feeding him what he wanted to hear, long after other natural philosophers realized that his work had fallen from the precipice. I love this book.

[Kwan-Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

harkness not only a good novelist, but a life saver when it comes to my essay this week on john dee & prophetic language

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting and really well written !

[Michael Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grest resouce book on John Dees history with magic practicescusing a seeing stone to communicate with angels.

[Enimizufa Diepreye]

I would like to read this book

[Cherise Rayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and written.

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gotta love John Dee being incredibly pissed years later that people thought his badass set design for a college play was achieved through magic.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harkness gives us the ability to dive deeply into the motivations of John Dee in regards to his alchemical studies as well as his focus on his conversations with angels. She fully explores Dee's obsession with natural history, angelic language, and the application of his studies. Though Dee's end does not mirror his famed beginnings, Harkness takes the readers step-by-step into the evidence regarding his frame of mind and ultimate goals.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deborah's non-fiction brings greater depth to the world of John Dee, mathematician, alchemist, learned man of many talents. We find this book a wealth of information. Dr. Dee wrestles with complex questions that even today are unanswered. Consider the Book of Nature and its impact on the thought leader and conveners of knowledge in the sixteenth century. A huge collector of books on many diverse topics Dr. Dee's library, a source of Natural Philosophy, Scientific Revolution and alchemical knowledge is advanced by his extensive use of marginalia to bring a glimpse into his incredible mind.

[Cheryl Lassiter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of (but by no means all) the inside baseball on John Dee, his strange conversations with angels, and his thinking about how the world worked. Plus excellent list of sources for further reading. Deborah Harkness never dangles her intellect (which is considerable) before your nose. Nor is she snarky; her writing is clear, plain-spoken, and respectful of her subject.

The book could have benefited from a sharper-eyed editor and proofreader.

[Monica · Rating 4 out of 5]

weirdly fascinating look at an odd element of Elizabethan England. Harkness (who since then has gone on to write some great fiction) does not write like an academic, in my opinion, making this very accessible to those who have an interest.

[Chris Feldman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent scholarly work on Dee, highly recommended to Enochian students.

[Tadas Sandanavicius]

nera vertimo.