PARACELSUS, SCRYING, AND THE LINGUA ADAMICA: Contexts for John Dee’s Angel Magic

Abstract

Two recent monographs have shown once again that John Dee is worthy of the attention of scholars from many different fields of studies, since he was himself involved in the whole spectrum of Renaissance scholarship.1 In his early career he had had a humanistic orientation and focused on mathematics but from the 1580s he gave up these endeavours and almost entirely involved himself with angel magic, that is to say spiritual séances, or in Dee’s terminology “angelic conversations”. During these “conversations”, Dee – aided by certain rituals, paraphernalia (including a crystal ball or “shewstone”), and a medium, or “scryer” – tried to gain various pieces of information from the celestial beings.