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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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Welcome to the Otherworld, Patreon. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. In this episode, I am once again joined by Wolf Fleetwood Ross to dive into the life of a historical figure who had a profound influence on all of the things that we cover on Otherworld. This time, we're talking about John Dee. John Dee was born in 1527. He is a preeminent English polymath, mathematician and astronomer who served as a trusted advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. John Dee was many, many things as you're about to hear, but I feel like the simplest way to explain him is that he's the real life inspiration for the medieval scholar, magician or wizard archetype that you've probably seen replicated in so many books, TV shows and movies. John Dee was that this was back in a time when science, religion and magic sometimes weren't all that different from each other. And during that time, John Dee made significant contributions to navigation and cartography that helped lay the groundwork for the British Empire. However, he spent much of his life pursuing alchemy and having angelic conversations, believing that the secrets of the universe can be unlocked through mathematics and the supernatural. And you're about to hear all about it. Part of what makes John Dee's story so interesting is that this took place over 400 years ago and humans didn't know as much about the world and how it works. So it's fun to hear about the Queen of England and other powerful people relying on this strange man who's using alchemy and divination to make extremely critical decisions that affect the course of history for the entire world. But recently, after recording these episodes, I started thinking that we've begun seeing militaries use artificial intelligence not only to navigate bombs, but even to choose targets. That's very frightening to me, but it's also not that different at all from what we're talking about in this episode. Outsourcing major decisions to a third party non human source that we don't fully understand yet. So I think these episodes accidentally ended up being very relevant to our modern times. And maybe things aren't so different right now after all. I barely knew anything about John D. Before making this episode. Luckily, I have Wolf, who spent tons of time researching him, reading every book he could find about it. And he is here now, joining me in this two part episode to do his best to educate me on the very surreal life of John Dee. Previously, we did episodes on Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley and I feel like John Dee is the perfect figure to complete this Trilogy. So this is the Life of John Dee, part one, and you're listening to the Otherworld Patreon. If you want to hear the full version of this episode and the second part when it comes out, you can sign up@patreon.com Otherworld.
- [03:35]
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So D is in the Low Countries in. Not called the Netherlands yet. But you know, he's getting this reputation as a map maker, an astronomer, a mathematician. He would even get so big that kings from other kingdoms, big ones, would send him letters to offer him positions in their court and he would turn them all down and he would live to regret that. So in the 1550s, he's in Paris, he's lecturing on Euclid's Elements, which. Imagine this, like, that was like packed hall, that was maybe the punk band of the night was D. Like, they had to usher people back from the hall because everyone was trying to get into his lecture on Euclid's elements.
- [04:21]
B
That sounds great.
- [04:23]
A
Yeah. His presence is growing and he's ready to come back to England and sort of like claim his spot as a top philosopher in England or a top intellectual. And he finds England much changed. Obviously. King Henry has died and put his very, very young son, King Edward, on the throne, who's 11 at this time and who's famously dangle off the throne. And Dee gets an audience with him, presents him with two books about theories on astrology that are extremely complicated. The 11 year old. 11 year old, yes. Like, presents them like he's like playing peekaboo. Yeah. Does not understand it. Famous, like, does not know what is going on in these books. But he gives John Dee a pension and a small role at the court, sort of like helping with maps and minor astrological matters. If there was a comet, he would be the one that was called in to sort of talk about it. And funnily enough, even though Dee would have a much closer relationship with future queens, he will never get this high in court again. So this is. This is as high as he goes.
- [05:42]
B
The 11 year old just liked the cut of his jib.
- [05:45]
A
Yeah, basically.
- [05:47]
B
That's pro. Honestly, that's probably better in some ways.
- [05:50]
A
No, and if King Edward had just stayed, I mean, John Dee probably would have had a fairly normal life. We would not be talking about him. So then after getting his pension and his small place at court, it's kind of confusing. John Dee goes to work for John Dudley, who is protectorate of the king, and he becomes an advisor to him as well as tutor of his children. So while his role at the Court is small and his pension is small. He's ingratiated with the most important people. He's teaching their children. The future is probably looking really bright. Until King Edward died, basically.
- [06:32]
B
How old was he when he died?
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I think off the top of my head, he was probably 14. 14 or 15.
- [06:40]
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Oh, he. He died from tuberculosis. He was heard praying, lord God, deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life and defend this realm from papistry and maintain thy true religion. Okay, so, yeah, he did not want this to go back to the Pope.
- [06:56]
A
No, no. So if you'll remember, King Henry split the Church. His first wife was Catherine, who he had a daughter with called Mary, and he divorced Mary's mother and had subsequent marriages. So Mary probably feeling pretty fucking angry about everything that's happened in her life. And Mary is next in line for the crown. Mary is a Catholic. She will become to be known as Bloody Mary because she will unleash a war basically on everyone who has done her wrong in the court, who is mean to her mother, who sided with her father. Like, it is a crazy shakeup. Separated them, too. King Henry would not let the daughter see the mother ever again until they died because he was terrified of Spain taking them or them escaping in some way. Like, Mary had a really, as. I mean, everyone kind of had a rough go of it, but Mary really had a bad time after her dad divorced her mother, so she's very angry. And now she is, like, in complete control of the levers of power. She brings back a lot of Catholic rituals, but doesn't go back to the Pope. She puts back the cross and the decorations in a lot of churches, and she starts burning people at the stake.
- [08:27]
B
Great.
- [08:28]
A
Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's where she's known as Bloody Mary. I think she'll burn around 350 people during her reign, roughly. So De sort of senses what's going on around him, and he does the only sensible thing, which he goes and gets himself ordained as a Catholic priest, even though he's married at the time, which you're not allowed to be. But he sort of enters. Enters seminary or does it very fast, gets ordained, and just sort of as a, please leave me alone. I'm on your side now. He also starts making more planetary charts in secret, and he does one for Mary's reign, which is at this time, it is considered treasonous, spying to do charts about monarchs. To his credit, he does call a sort of calamitous, short, horrible reign for Mary and a great new age for Elizabeth. Mary's sister who will enter the story in a little bit.
- [09:35]
B
Does he keep this secret or is he presenting it to her?
- [09:38]
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No, he's keeping it secret. There are rumors that he might have done it with future Queen Elizabeth, but those are unsubstantiated. He's definitely telling people that he's doing this, but he's telling the wrong people because over the next couple months, his sort of like, intelligentsia friends will get arrested and will squeal on him. So unfortunately, somehow someone told the Queen about the horoscopes and, and the planetary charts and he gets taken to Hampton Court and put in solitary confinement. He was charged with calculating and conjuring the Queen's horoscope. Treason could lead to death.
- [10:21]
B
That's an incredible crime.
- [10:23]
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Yeah, it's a crazy crime to be
- [10:25]
B
calculating a horoscope as the actual name of the crime. That is really wild.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah, well, it was thought of as like NSA spying, basically, you know. Yeah, like they're very art when, when our phones are being tapped, that's what they were sort of we're seeing. And then, okay, this is like, you could say, we don't know, maybe magic. Somehow he gets out of it. So we like find him in, in prison on the historical record. And then there was another character called Edward Bonner who goes by several nicknames. Bloody Bonner, Bloody Bishop, Bloody Baron. All his nicknames have blood bloody in them. He was quite high up in the court. He was an advisor to Mary. But really what his day to day was is, was rooting out secret Protestants or spies within her court and sort of burning them. And he would have been the guy probably interviewing John Dee while he was in confinement. So we don't know what happened. But the next time we find John Dee, he is Edward Bonner's personal chaplain as well as chaplain to his children and is potentially living in Edward Bonner's palace. How he pulled this off, we have no idea.
- [11:46]
B
He snitched. He had to have done a huge medieval or I guess post medieval snitching. Somebody was in there watching, watching John Dee in the medieval interrogation room eating the equivalent of McDonald's yapping of the storm. He was eating a turkey leg.
- [12:04]
A
But I mean, again, goes beyond that because then he becomes this cop's personal chaplain.