Dectera
A figure of Irish medieval romance. She was the daughter of Cathbad the Druid, and mother of Cuchulain (q.v.). She and fifty other maidens disappeared from the court of Conor mac Nessa. Three years later, while pursuing a flock of birds which were spoiling the crops, the king and courtiers came upon a magnificent palace inhabited by a youth of noble mien and a beautiful woman and fifty maidens. These were recognised as Dectera and her companions, and the youth as Lugh, the sun-god.
Conor summoned Dectera to him, but she sent him instead her new-born son, Cuchulain.
Dee, John: Born in London 1527, this remarkable mathematician and astrologer is supposed to have been descended from a noble old Welsh House, the Dees of Nant y Groes in Radnorshire; while he himself affirmed that among his direct ancestors was Roderick the Great, Prince of Wales. Dee's father appears to have been a gentleman server at the court of Henry VIII., and, being consequently in tolerably affluent circumstances, he was able to give his son a good education. So at the age of fifteen John proceeded to Cambridge, and after two years there he took his degree as Bachelor of Arts; while a little later on his becoming intensely interested in astronomy and the like, he decided to leave England and go and study abroad. In 1547, accordingly, he went to the Low Countries, where he consorted with numerous scholars, and whence he eventually brought home the first astronomer's staff of brass, and also two gloves constructed by Gerard Mercetor; but Dee was not destined to remain in his native land for long, and in 1548 he lived for some time at Louvain, and in 1550 he spent several months in Paris, lecturing there on the principles of geometry. He was offered, indeed, a permanent post at the Sorbonne; but he declined this, and in 1551 he returned to England, where, having been recom- Dee, John mended to Edward VI., he was granted the rectory of Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire. 66
The astrologer was now in a delightful and enviable position, having a comfortable home and assured income, and being able to devote himself exclusively to the studies he loved. But hardly had he begun to enjoy these benefits ere an ugly cloud darkened his horizon, for, on the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, he was accused of trying to take the new sovereign's life by thaumaturgic means, and was imprisoned at Hampton Court. He gained his liberty soon afterwards, but he felt very conscious that many people looked on him askance on account of his scientific predilections; and, in a preface which he wrote for an English translation of Euclid, he complains bitterly of being regarded as a companion of the helhounds, a caller and a conjuror of wicked and damned spirits." However, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth his fortunes began to improve again; and after making another long tour abroad, going on this occasion so far afield as St. Helena, he took a house at Mortlake on the Thames, and while staying there he rapidly became famous for his intimate knowledge of astronomy. In 1572 on the advent of a new star, people flocked to hear Dee descant on the subject; while five years later, on the appearance of a mysterious comet, the scholar was again vouchsafed ample opportunity of displaying his learning, Elizabeth herself being among those who came to ask him what this addition to the stellar bodies might portend.
The most romantic circumstances in Dee's life, however, are those which deal with his experiments in crystallomancy. Living in comparative solitude-practising astrology for bread, but studying alchemy for pleasure- brooding over Talmudic mysteries and Rosicrucian theories-immersed in constant contemplation of wonders which he longed to penetrate and dazzled by visions of the elixir of life and the Philosopher's Stone, Dee soon attained to such a condition of mystic exaltation that his visions became to him as realities, and he persuaded himself that he was the favoured of the Invisible. In his Diary he records that he first saw in his crystal-globe—that is, saw spiritson the 25th of May, 1581. In another year he had attained to a higher level, and one day, in November, 1582, while on his knees and fervently praying, he became aware of a sudden glory which filled the west window of his laboratory, and in whose midst shone the bright angel Uriel. It was impossible for Dee to speak. His tongue was frozen with awe. But Uriel smiled benignly upon him, gave him a convex piece of crystal, and told him that when he wished to communicate with the beings of another world he had but to examine it intently, and they would immediately appear and reveal the mysteries of the future. Then the angel vanished.
Dee, however, found from experience that it was needful to concentrate all one's faculties upon the crystal before the spirits would obey him. In other words, it was necessary to stimulate the imagination to the highest pitch, until the soul became a willing agent in its self-deception. Bring the will to bear upon the imagination, and it is possible to realize a spirit in every shadowy corner-to hear the song of the spirits in the low crooning of the evening wind- to read in the starry heavens the omens and portents of the future. One may become with marvellous ease the deceiver of one-self, the dupe of one's own delusions, and brood upon a particular subject until one passes the mysterious border between sanity and madness -passes from imagination into mania.
Dee could never remember what the spirits said in their frequent conversations with him. When the excitement was over, he forgot the fancies with which he had been beguiled. He resolved, therefore, to discover some fellow- Dee, John worker, or neophyte, who should converse with the spirits while he himself, in another part of the room, sat and recorded the interesting dialogue. He found the assistant he sought in one Edward Kelly, who unhappily possessed just the requisite boldness and cunning for making a dupe of the amiable and credulous enthusiast.
Edward Kelly was a native of Lancashire, born, according to Dee's own statement, in 1555. We know nothing of his early years, but after having been convicted at Lancaster of coining-for which offence he lost his ears-he removed to Worcester, and established himself as a druggist. Sensual, ambitious, and luxurious, he longed for wealth, and despairing of securing it by honest industry, began to grope after the Philosopher's Stone, and to employ what magical secrets he picked up in imposing upon the ignorant and profligate. Dee sought knowledge for the love of it; Kelly as a means to gratify his earthly passions. He concealed the loss of his ears by a black skull-cap, and being gifted with a good figure and tolerably handsome countenance, looked the very incarnation of mysterious wisdom, Before his acquaintance with Dee began, he had obtained some repute as a necromancer and alchymist, who could make the dead utter the secrets of the future. One night he took a wealthy dupe with some of his servants, into the park of Walton le Dale, near Preston in Lancashire, and there alarmed him with the most terrific incantations. He then inquired of one of the servants whose corpse had been last buried in the neighbouring churchyard, and being told that a poor man had been interred there within a very few hours, exhumed the body, and pretended to draw from it oracular utterances.
Dee appears to have had a skryer, or seer before his introduction to Kelly, who was named Barnabas Saul. He records in his Diary on the 9th of October, 1581, that the unfortunate medium was strangely troubled by a "spiritual creature" about midnight. On the 2nd of December he willed his skryer to look into the "great crystalline globe " for the apparition of the holy angel Anael. Saul looked and saw. But his invention appears to have become exhausted by the following March, when he confessed that he neither saw nor heard any spiritual creature any more; whereat the enthusiastic Dee grew strangely dissatisfied, and soon dismissed the unsatisfactory and unimaginative medium. Then came Edward Kelly (who appears to have been also called Talbot), and the conferences with the spitits rapidly increased in importance as well as curiosity. A clever rogue was Kelly. Gifted with a fertile fancy and prolific invention, he never gazed into the "great crystalline globe" without making some wondrous discoveries, and by his pretended enthusiasm gained the entire confidence of the credulous Dee. The mathematician, despite his learning and his profound intellect, became the easy tool of the plastic, subtle Skryer. The latter would sometimes pretend that he doubted the innocent character of the work upon which he was engaged; would affect a holy horror of the unholy; and profess that the spirits of the crystal were not always "spirits of health," but perish the thought!" goblins damn'd;" demons whose task it was to compass their destruction. The conferences held between Kelly and the spirits were meanwhile, carefully recorded by Dr. Dee; and whoever has stomach for the perusal of a great deal of absurdity and not a little blasphemy, may consult the folio published in 1659 by the learned Méric Casaubon, and entitled " A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some Spirits; tending, had it succeeded, to a General Alteration of most States and Kingdoms in the World."
Two such shining lights could not hide themselves under a bushel, and their reputation extended from Mortlake / Dee, John even to the Continent. Dee now declared himself possessed of the elixir vitae, which he had found he said, among the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey; so that the curious were drawn to his house by a double attraction. Gold flowed into his coffers in an exhaustless stream, but his experiments in the transmutation of metals absorbed a great portion of his substance.
At this time the court of England was visited by a Polish nobleman named Albert Laski, Count Palatine of Siradz, who was desirous to see the magnificence of the famous "Gloriana." Elizabeth received him with the flattering welcome she always accorded to distinguished strangers, and placed him in charge of the splendid Leicester. He visited all the England of the sixteenth century worth showing, and especially her two Universities, but was sorely disappointed at not finding the famous Dr. Dee at Oxford. "I would not have come hither," he said to the Earl, "had I wot that Dee was not here." Leicester undertook to introduce him to the learned philosopher on their return to London, and so soothed his discontent. A few days afterwards the Pole and Leicester were waiting in the ante-chamber at Whitehall for an audience of the Queen, when Dr. Dee arrived. Leicester embraced the opportunity, and introduced him to Albert Laski. The interview between two genial spirits was interesting, and led to frequent visits from Laski to Dee's house at Mortlake. Kelly soon perceived what a Pactolus this Pole would prove, and as he was imbued with all the extravagant superstitions of the age relative to the elixir and the Philosopher's Stone, it was easy enough to play upon his imagination, and entangle him in the meshes of an inextricable deception. Dee, in want of money to prosecute his splendid chimeras, and influenced by Kelly's artful suggestions, lent himself in some measure to the fraud, and speedily the great crystalling globe" began to reveal hints and predictions which inflamed the ardent fancy of the "noble Polonian." But Kelly imposed upon Dee as well as upon Laski. He appears to have formed some wild but magnificent projects for the reconstruction of Europe, to be effected through the agency of the Pole, and thenceforth the spirits could converse upon nothing but hazy politics. 66 On a careful perusal of Dee's Diary, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that he was imposed upon by Kelly, and accepted his revelations as the actual utterances of the spirits; and it seems probable that the clever, plastic, slippery Kelly not only knew something of the optical delusions then practised by the pretended necromancers, but possessed considerable ventriloquial powers, which largely assisted in his nefarious deceptions.
Kelly had undoubtedly conceived some extravagant notions of a vast European monarchy, in which Laski was to play the part of a Roi fainéant and he himself of a Maire du Palais. To this point all the spiritual revelations now tended, and they were managed, it must be owned, with consummate skill. Laski was proved, by the agency of Madinie, to be descended from the Anglo-Norman family of the Lacies. Then an angel named Murifre, who was clothed like a husbandman, pointed out Laski as destined to effect the regeneration of the world.
But it did not answer Kelly's purposes to bring matters too suddenly to a conclusion, and with the view of showing the extreme value of his services, he renewed his complaints upon the wickedness of dealing with spirits, and his fear of the perilous enterprises they might enjoin. He threatened, moreover, to abandon his task, a threat which completely perturbed the equanimity of Dr. Dee. Where indeed, could he hope to meet with another skryer of such infinite ability? Once when Kelly expressed his desire of riding from Mortlake to Islington on some pretended busi- Dee, John ness, the doctor grew afraid that it was only an excuse to cover his absolute evasion. "Whereupon," says the doctor, I asked him why he so hasted to ride thither, and I said if it were to ride to Mr. Harry Lee I would go thither, and to be acquainted with him, seeing now I had so good leisure, being eased of the book writing. Then he said that one told him the other day that the duke (Laski) did but flatter him, and told him other things both against the duke and me. I answered for the duke and myself, and also said that if the forty pounds annuity which Mr. Lee did offer him was the chief cause of his mind setting that way (contrary to many of his former promises to me), that then I would assure him of fifty pounds yearly, and would do my best, by following of my suit, to bring it to pass as soon as I possibly could; and thereupon did make him promise upon the Bible. "Then Edward Kelly again upon the same Bible did swear unto me constant friendship, and never to forsake me; and moreover said that unless this had so fallen about he would have gone beyond the seas, taking ship at Newcastle within eight days next. 66
And so we plight our faith each to the other, taking. each other by the hand, upon these points of brotherly and friendly fidelity during life, which covenant I beseech God to turn to his honour, glory, and service, and the comfort of our brethren (his children) here on earth." Kelly now returned to his crystal and his visions, and Laski was soon persuaded that he was destined by the spirits to achieve great victories over the Saracens, and win enduring glory. But for this purpose it was needful he should return to Poland, and to Poland the poor dupe went, taking with him the learned Dr. Dee, the invaluable Edward Kelly, and their wives and families. The spirits continued to respond to their inquiries even while at sea, and so they landed at the Brill on the 30th of July 1583, and traversed Holland and Friesland to the opulent free town of Lubeck. There they lived sumptuously for a few weeks, and with recruited strength set out for Poland. On Christmas Day they arrived at Stettin, where they remained till the middle of January 1584. They gained Lasco, the Pole's principal estate, early in February. Immediately the grand work commenced for the transmutation of iron into gold, boundless wealth being obviously needful for so grand an enterprise as the regeneration of Europe. Laski liberally supplied them with means, but the alchymists always failed on the very threshold of success. Day by day the prince's trees melted away in the deceptive crucible; he mortgaged his estates, he sold them, but the hungry furnace continued to cry for "More! more!" It soon became apparent to the philosopher's that Laski's fortune was nearly exhausted. Madinie, Uriel, and their comrades made the same discovery at the same time, and, moreover, began to doubt whether Laski, after all, was the great regenerator intended to revolutionize Europe. The whole party lived at Cracow from March 1584 until the end of July, and made daily appeals to the spirits in reference to the Polish prince. They grew more and more discouraging in their replies, and as Laski began slowly to awake to the conviction that he had been a monstrous dupe, in order to rid himself of the burthen, he proposed to furnish them with sufficient funds for a journey to Prague, and letters of introduction to the Emperor Rudolph. At this very moment the spirits discovered that it was necessary Dee should bear a divine message to the Emperor, and Laski's proposal was gladly accepted. At Prague the two philosophers were well received by the Emperor. They found him very willing to believe in the existence of the famous stone, very courteous to Dee as a man of European celebrity, but very suspicious of the astute and plausible Kelly. They remained some Dee, John months at Prague, living upon the funds which Laski had supplied, and cherishing hopes of being attached to the imperial service. At last the Papal Nuncio complained to the countenance afforded to heretical magicians, and the Emperor ordered them to quit his dominions within four-and-twenty hours. They precipitately complied, and by so doing escaped a prison or the stake, to which the Nuncio had received orders from Rome to consign them (May 1586).
They now proceeded to Erfurdt, and from thence to Cassel, but meeting with a cold reception, made their way once more to Cracow. Here they earned a scanty living by telling fortunes and casting nativities; enduring the pangs of penury with an almost heroic composure, for they, the pretended possessors of the Philosopher's Stone, durst not reveal their indigence to the world, if they would not expose themselves to universal ridicule.. After a while, they found a new dupe in Stephen, king of Poland, to whom Kelly's spirits predicted that the Emperor Rudolph would shortly be assassinated, and that the Germans would elect him to the Imperial throne. But he in his turn grew weary of the ceaseless demands for pecuniary supplies. Then arose a new disciple in the person of Count Rosenberg, a nobleman of large estates at Trebona, in Bohemia. At his castle they remained for upwards of two years, eagerly pursuing their alchemical studies, but never approaching any nearer to the desired result.
Dee's enthusiasm and credulity had degraded him into the tool and slave of Kelly; but the latter was nevertheless very wroth at the superior respect which Dee, as really a man of surprising scholarship and considerable ability, enjoyed. Frequent quarrels broke out between them, aggravated by the criminal passion which Kelly had conceived for the doctor's young and handsome wife, and which he had determined to gratify. He matured at length an artful plan to obtain the fulfilment of his wishes. Knowing Dee's entire dependence upon him as a skryer, he suddenly announced his intention of resigning that honoured and honourable office, and only consented to remain on the doctor's urgent entreaties. That day (April 18, 1587) they consulted the spirits. Kelly professed to be shocked at the revelation they made, and refused to repeat it. Dee's curiosity was aroused, and he insisted upon hearing it, but was exceedingly discomposed when he found that the spirits enjoined the two philosophers to have their wives in common. Kelly expressed his own abhorrence of the doctrine, and when the spirits repeated it, with a mixture of socialistic extravagance to the effect that sin was only relative, and could not be sinful if ordered by God, protested they must be spirits of evil, not of good, once more resigned his post as skryer, and left the Castle. Dee now attempted to convert his son Arthur into a medium, but the lad had neither the invention, the faith, nor the deceptive powers for such an office, and the philosopher, deprived of those conferences with the other world which he had so long enjoyed, began to lament the absence of his old confederate. At this juncture Kelly suddenly returned. Again he consulted the crystal, and again was ordered to practise the socialistic rule of all things in common. Dee was too delighted at his return to oppose any longer the will of the spirits. The two wives resisted the arrangement for some time, but finally yielded to what was represented to be the will of Heaven, and Dee notes in his Diary that "on Sunday the 3rd of May, anno 1587 (by the new account), I, John Dee, Edward Kelly, and our two wives covenanted with God, and subscribed the same for indissoluble and inviolable unities, charity, and friendship keeping, between us four, and all things between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do."
Dee, John The alchymists now resumed their pursuits with eagerness; but discord soon crept into this happy family of four. The wives, never very well content with the socialistic theory, quarrelled violently; the husbands began to be pinched for want of means; and Dee turned his eyes towards England as a pleasanter asylum than the castle of Trebona was likely to prove for his old age. He obtained permission from Queen Elizabeth to return, and separated finally from Kelly. The latter, who had been knighted at Prague, took with him an elixir found at Glastonbury Abbey, and ventured to proceed to the Bohemian capital. He was immediately arrested by order of the Emperor, and flung into prison. Obtaining his release after some months' imprisonment, he wandered over Germany, telling fortunes, and angling for dupes with the customary magical baits, but never getting a whit nearer that enjoyment of boundless resources which the possession of the Philosopher's Stone should have ensured him. Arrested a second time as a heretic and a sorcerer, and apprehending perpetual imprisonment, he endeavoured to escape, but fell from the dungeon-wall, and broke two of his ribs and both of his legs. He expired of the injuries he had received in February 1593.
Dr. Dee set out from Trebona with a splendid train, the expenses of his journey apparently being defrayed by the generous Bohemian noble. Three waggons carried his baggage; three coaches conveyed himself, his family, and servants. A guard of twenty-four soldiers escorted him; each carriage was drawn by four horses. In England he was well received by the Queen, as far as courteous phrases went, and settling himself at Mortlake, he resumed his chemical studies, and his pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone. But nothing prospered with the unfortunate enthusiast. He employed two skryers-at first a rogue, named Bartholomew, and afterwards a charlatan named Heckman-but neither could discover anything satisfactory in the great crystalline globe." He grew poorer and poorer; he sank into absolute indigence; he wearied the Queen with ceaseless importunities; and at length obtained a small appointment as Chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral, which in 1595 he exchanged for the wardenship of Manchester College. He performed the duties of this position until age and a failing intellect compelled him to resign it about 1602 or 1603. 66
He then retired to his old house at Mortlake, where he practised as a common fortune-teller, gaining little in return but the unenviable reputation of a wizard, "a conjuror, a caller, or invocator of devils." On the 5th of June 1604, he presented a petition to James the First, imploring his protection against such injurious calumnies, and declaring that none of all the great number of "the very strange and frivolous fables or histories reported and told of him (as to have been of his doing) were true."
Dee is an exceptionally interesting figure, and he must have been a man of rare intellectual activity. He made calculations to facilitate the adoption in England of the Gregorian calendar; and he virtually anticipated the Historical Manuscripts Commission, addressing to the crown a petition wherein he wrote on the desirability of carefully preserving the old, unpublished records of England's past, many of which documents were at this period domiciled in the archives of monasteries. Moreover he was a voluminous writer on science, and, though lack of space makes it impossible to give a full list of his works here, it certainly behoves to mention the following: Monas Hieroglyphica 1564, De Trigono 1565, Testamentum Johannis Dee Philosophi Summi ad Johannem Guryun Transmissum 1568, An Account of the Manner in which a certayn Copper-smith in the Land of Moores, and a certayn Moore transmuted Copper to Gold, 1576.