September 14, 2019 • 42 mins
Elizabethan scholar Dr. John Dee was one of the most learned men of the 16th century, applying his intense mathematical intellect to matters scientific, political, alchemical and occult. He advised Queen Elizabeth, sought communion with angelic beings, advocated British expansion and plunged the depths of human knowledge in age of great change. In this second of two episodes on the topic, Robert and Christian discuss Dr. Dee’s involvement in science, statecraft, cryptography and espionage. (Originally published Dec. 8, 2016)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the Old Vault. This time we're
going in for part two of last week's Vault episode
of You and Christian exploring Dr John d the Wizard
of the sixteenth century. Yeah, fascinating character, a character that
came up in there are recent episodes on the Bonage
(00:27):
Manuscript and uh and the sort of figure that I
think likely even very well may come up again someday.
Just such a fascinating figure, interested and seemingly everything, both
natural world enigmas as well as a cult mysteries. And uh. Yeah,
so let's dive right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
(00:53):
your Mind. From how Stuff Works dot com. There is,
gentle reader, nothing the works of God only set apart,
which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind
of man, as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences.
(01:14):
Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man,
But of all none do more garnish and beautify it
than those arts which are called and mathematical, unto the
knowledge of which no man can attain without perfect knowledge
and instruction of the principles, grounds and elements of geometry. Hey,
(01:41):
welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger. And if
last episode sounded like we were invoking a ritual to
summon angels or demons, this sounds like we are teaching
ap calculus. Yeah. That that those are the words of
Dr John D. Those are from his preface, his mathematical
preface to the fifeventy translation of Euclid's Elements. Now, at
(02:05):
this point we should we should mention that if you
did not listen to our previous episode on John D,
you definitely need to go back to that one, because
that that is the episode where we we really dove
into his timeline and discussed in broad strokes the major
events of his life. Yeah. We also focused on the
(02:25):
sort of magical occult aspects of John D's beliefs and
life in that episode. This episode, we're really going to
focus on his scientific education, his ability with mathematics, um,
how he participated in state craft in England and in
fact advocated for expanding the British Empire and especially developed
(02:47):
cryptography as we know it today. Yeah, and it's it's
interesting too, and that even though you know, in a sense,
the last episode was magic and this one is the
is the science. This is more rooted in the real world.
Old John d was not so firmly rooted. He seemed
to to live simultaneously in the mathematical and the magical world.
(03:10):
He did not really see a division like like the spiritual,
the mathematical, the magic. It was all part of the
world as he perceived it. Yeah, so get ready, as
we're talking about this stuff, it may seem like, oh,
we're going over some historical science here, and then all
of a sudden, you know, Merlin will pop up or
maybe some angelic influence here there. Yeah. Now, it's it's
(03:32):
really important to note here too though that as unique
as D was, this mixing of magic and math, this
suspicion of math, even was it was not unique to him.
It was it was very much a part of the day. Uh.
Mathematics was regarded in some circles with suspicion at the time.
(03:52):
During the Tutor era, mathematical books were sometimes burned as
alleged conjuring books. This according to seventeenth century antiquarian John Aubrey,
and it was, and it was still very much associated
with the dark arts. I mean, you have to to
think Pythagoras Key in the history of mathematics was also
considered a magician. Uh numbers had inherent powers, and this
(04:16):
is a theme that ran through the works of Kepler, Newton, Euclid,
and others. So there was a long tradition of of
mathematics and and magic kind of sharing the same space.
One of the things that I read was that mathematics
were considered disreputable and connected to witchcraft because they were
associated with numerology. And I mentioned this in the last
(04:36):
episode the Jewish mystical tradition of the kabbala uh And
we're gonna talk about the cryptography stuff in a minute.
But tri Themius, who wrote the book that D really
worked off of to create his version of cryptography, that
guy was also suspected of wizardry. So this had a
long standing tradition. Uh D for his part, though, in
terms of mathematics, his lectures on Euclid were wildly popular,
(05:01):
as he was seen as a leading scientific figure of
his day. I'm picturing that he's like the Neil deGrasse Tyson, right,
Like he's he's giving lectures. Everybody's really interested. Uh. These
lectures earned him an offer to join the faculty at
the Sorbonne in Paris in fifteen fifty one. We mentioned
that real briefly last time, but he turned stuff like
(05:22):
this down because he was hoping to obtain an official
position with the English Crown. He was also Robert read
from this at the beginning, but it's worth pointing out
the editor of the first English translation of Euclid's Elements,
and in that he added his preface, which what Robert
read came from. This preface argued for the usefulness of mathematics,
(05:45):
like people didn't regard mathematics as being important at that time,
and in fact, this was the first time the public
were introduced to the symbols plus minus, x, fra multiply
and the little dot dash dot for division. Yeah. In
this uh, this this preface, the mathematical preface. He proposed
(06:07):
an arts mathematical that he compared to thomaturgy, which is
a the use of magic for religious purposes. So he
saw mathematics, rather than magic, as the key to thomaturgical
wonder Men's work could rival the gods if they could
utilize mathematics correctly, and and in this, you know, you
(06:28):
could say d was correct. And we may disagree on
whether math is a human invention or human discovery, but
it has thus far proven to correspond to the inner
workings of the cosmos. It's our our best tool. Essentially.
He saw this reflected in the creation of automatons, those
of Alberta's Magnus uh and others. So, you know, all
these various mechanical devices that mimicked the the appearance of life,
(06:53):
and the movement and the and the willfulness of life.
And in fact, that's where that uh, his FX work
in fifty six comes into play. That's what he was
essentially dabbling in. Yeah, we talked about this in the
last episode. He apparently created this giant automaton. Reportedly it
was a mechanical flying beetle. I don't know if it
(07:14):
actually flew or not, but apparently it was. It was
so impressive that people thought that it was magic. Yeah,
and that was very much in keeping with his view
of what math was and what what science was was
capable of doing. That it could replicate the wonders of
nature by manipulating the same properties and he saw. He
(07:34):
saw things like automatons and even his own special effects work,
uh as proof of that. He saw the optics of
his special mirror is kind of reverse mirror that he
would wow people with. He saw that as an example
of look that these amazing feats are possible through optics,
through mathematics, through science, and ultimately his mathematics led to
(07:57):
him advocating for the expansion of the British Empire. And
he reportedly is the one who coined the term British Empire. Yeah,
which is crazy, and it's also it's it's sometimes you forget,
like it's it's hard to think back to a time
where the British Empire wasn't a thing, not only in
in actuality but even in concept. So we're traveling back
(08:22):
to seven here, and this is kind of what was
going on at the time. Sir Francis Drake was preparing
for an epic voyage around the globe. Um Washingham spies
had exposed another plot against the British Crown, and he
had noted a significant problematic comment amid the meaning saturated stars.
And on November twenty eight, amid all of these excitements,
(08:43):
de comes and he proposes this concept, this idea to
the Queen of England that she should challenge Spain's imperial
claim to the New World. Yeah, and a lot of
this was based around how do I put this? He
so on top of being a brilliant mathematician, he was
able to apply that to cartography and mapping out routes
(09:06):
or understanding the geography of the New World. Yeah, it's
you mentioned cartographers here. We mentioned in the past episode
that that he he'd learned from and was in correspondence
with with noted cartographer um Garatiscator. Yeah, and uh Mercator
is apparently the guy who filled him in about this idea,
(09:30):
that that there was a precedence for the British Empire
set by a legendary incursion into the northern in drawing
seas around the Pole by King Arthur in the year
five thirty lands that had since been claimed by Iberian nations.
This is where he got the whole idea. He being
(09:51):
d got the whole idea for him being the modern
day Merlin and Elizabeth being the modern day Arthur. He
actually presented Elizabeth with a treatise on Britain's imperial limits
at one point. And it suggested that the America's had
actually been discovered by King Arthur centuries before. Yeah, and
and also that the British Empire was already a thing. This,
(10:13):
this concept is not something that that England could claim
for itself but reclaimed. This was a this was part
of its identity already. Yeah. So you might be wondering
what's a courtier anyways? Right, A lot of people when
they're describing d they just say, well, he's a courtier.
I don't know what that means. Apparently it is a
(10:33):
man that is concerned with the operation of the Royal
Court and by extension, the Kingdom, of which it was
an effective ruling body. So it was in his interests
to make sure that the ruling body of Britain expanded. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought up the court as well, because
the court at the time was was was lavish and uh,
(10:55):
you know, rather impressive to behold, but at the same
time it was horriblely in debt. The likewise, the English
military was weak, the political condition was far from stable,
where England was a relatively poor nation, and the idea
of challenging Spain Imperial Spain in such a manner was
(11:17):
was highly ambitious, if not outright ridiculous. Remember, at the
time there was a there was a Papal bull Uh
dividing the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese. So
it wasn't just that England should challenge Spain. It was
that English England should challenge the papacy's division of the globe.
This was this was this was not just hey, we're
(11:38):
we're we're pretty awesome. We should go over and claim this.
It's like, no, we This involves a leveling up of
the nation that might not be practical and it worked. Yeah. Um.
And for his part, the way that de assisted was
with his knowledge of cartography and mathematical modeling. So he
instructed captains and pilots in the samples of mathematical navigation.
(12:02):
He would prepare maps for their use, and he furnished
them with various navigational instruments. In the fifteen fifties he
actually advised Richard Chancellor's expedition through the North Sea so
that he could establish a trade route between England and Moscow.
And there's there's some evidence that d was I guess
uh financially involved in that as well. Like he had
(12:23):
he had something to gain from this um trade route.
In fifteen seventy two, a new star appeared and it
was visible for seventeen months. Now today we know that
this was a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. Uh D
saw this as the signal for the beginning of the
(12:44):
English Protestant Empire, and so he also instructed an expedition
to discover the Northwest Passage to China in fifteen seventies six. Now,
I've talked a lot about Northwest passages befo the or
the Northwest pas Sage and expeditions through it before on
the show, because I've done research on the past. Um
(13:04):
you know, like like almost all of these, it was
totally fruitless, but it did lead to English settlements in
Canadian North America. And this is where it gets crazy.
Deformed his own company to colonize the America's and there's
some evidence that he was the intellectual force behind Francis
Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, and d would be awarded
(13:28):
rights to any new newly discovered land that was north
of the fiftieth parallel. If Drake had gone any further
north than Oregon. This basically would have given him all
of Canada. So D would have like, if this had
all worked out, D would own Canada. How different might
(13:49):
Canadian history bay if it had been founded by a wizard?
Right exactly? Um and you know we talked about this
in the last episode. Uh. You know, D moved his
family to crack Up Poland and three. A lot of
it had to do with the whole angela communication thing
and Lasky and and Kelly as we previously described, but
(14:12):
some believed that the whole reason he was there was
actually to act as a spy. Uh. And when the
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second suspected D, that's when
he was banished from the empire and he went to
a small town called Trebonn in at what the time
was southern Bohemia. I imagine now it's probably part of
the Czech Republic or maybe Slovakia. But um uh, this
(14:35):
is fascinating. That's what gets him kicked out when, as
we know from last episode, he just basically went up
to Rudolph and was like, hey, angels told me you're
possessed by demons, and Rudolph was like whatever. But then
he's like, maybe this guy's a spy and he gets
rid of him. Now here's a really fun factor. You ready,
everybody D signed his letters to Elizabeth as double O seven. Yes,
(15:00):
secret sign of cipher that at least looked like double os.
So I mean, I'm wondering if that's where um uh
Ian Fleming got the idea for double A seven from,
or if it's maybe an actual has a historical precedence.
So I've read two different versions of this. One is
that Ian Fleming was reading about John D at the
time directly got this, uh, this idea from these writings.
(15:25):
And I've also read some people that cast doubt on
this whole connection say that, oh, well, actually John D
didn't really use double O seven. So um, I'm not
sure exactly where the truth lies there somewhere in the middle.
But but we will get back to this whole spying thing,
this whole espionage thing, because as incredible as everything has
been thus far, um, it really gets crazier in the
(15:47):
episode where we're not even talking about angelic communication all that, Like, Okay,
why don't we take a quick break and when we
come back, we're going to talk about the cryptography aspects
of the career alright, we're back. So cryptography the the study,
(16:08):
the creation and the breaking of codes and ciphers. Yeah,
so we we've already covered this slightly. But D was
taken with the work of German abbot Trithemius. Uh and
he was an important figure in the history of cryptography
as well as occultism. And in fifteen sixty four, while
D was in Antwerp, he tracked down a copy of
(16:30):
themis is most famous work, the stick I'm going to
get this wrong, the Stagana of Grafia, and copied it.
Now you were telling me that there was this like
whole weird thing about the copying of it. Oh yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's pretty strange. So certainly Trithemius was a
big deal. Again, important figure in the history of cry
(16:52):
cryptography and occultism and uh and and D was already
a fan. He owned several copies of is of his
book Polygraphia, which was the first printed book about the
subject of cryptography. Uh. Not to say, you know, certainly
not the first book. It's also worth noting that there
was there was an Arabic book that that was already
(17:16):
out there in the world. And this book was by
a man by the name of al Kindy. But this
was the first that was, you know, certainly the first
Western tone dealing with cryptography. Uh. They were twelve rotating
paper a cipher discs embedded within the pages, and even
today they're in remarkably good condition. They still turn. Uh.
(17:40):
So it was a pretty phenomenal book. I'm kind of
thinking of I don't think you've seen this movie yet,
but that Doctor Strange movie came up. You saw it, Yeah,
you know the library and that that's what I'm imagining. Yeah, yeah,
very much. Yeah, and certainly there's a lot of like
circular devices and and glyphs that should pop up in
that movie that that feel aide at home in the
(18:01):
world of John d except not glowing and spinning in
the right unless you're talking to Edward Kelly and he
will say, yeah, I can see those disks probably U. So, yeah,
he finds out there's a copy of Steganographia out there,
which was a rare book. It was an essentially an
an abandoned work of Trithemius is because it dealt with,
at least on the surface, dealt with angelic communication. It
(18:25):
dealt with communing of spirits and using spirits to relay
messages over vast distances. Okay, hold on a second, I
think I've got a theory here. Let's see if this
plays out as we're talking more about Trithemius. What if
so we know that D was really into Trithemius, and
(18:46):
then he gathered all of this information before he met
Edward Kelly. What if Edward Kelly was using Trithemius to
create his version of a Nochian that eventually D wrote
down and and and hearkened as the Angelic language. Yeah,
maybe that's it. It sounds it sounds compelling to me.
(19:09):
I guess I should probably say a little more about
Trithemius before I go any any further here. But this
guy alone was pretty fascinating. This was the man who
served as advisors to emperors, was among the most erudite
German book collectors of his time, author of more than
fifty books himself, and the founder of scientific bibliography. He was,
as previously noted, the first printed author on the subject
(19:32):
of cryptography in the West. And um and yet then
here's this book, this seems to be devoted to angelic magic,
that he was forced to abandon writing because he was
talking to other people about it, and they were like, Oh,
I don't know about about this book you're working on Trithemius. Uh.
Even as he was making writing it, he made claims
(19:53):
that the text would enable communication over vast distances, to
communicate one's thoughts by fire and other claims. So basically,
like other individuals hearing about this, they were like like, well,
this means this makes it sound like either you're lying
or you're a demonic sorcerer, right or smiled upon? Yeah,
(20:16):
not so much in the in the church. So the
crazy thing is that over the centuries, it's been revealed
that all three volumes of this work are concerned with cryptography,
the most and most recently volume three. So pretty early
on commentators figured out, all, right, well, these first two
books are only like surface level about angelic magic. They're
(20:38):
really about cryptography and codes and ciphers. But they thought
for the longest well, this third book, though, this just
seems to be about magic. There's no code here um,
And that's kind of a fitting read for the life
of John d the idea of like, at what point
does the magic become the main thing? But here's the
crazy part. This only this a view of the third
(21:02):
Book of Steganographia only lasted until the late nineteen nineties.
That's when two individuals experienced unrelated breakthroughs and cracking it
German linguist Thomas Ernst and Jim Reid's, who is working
in the mathematics and cryptography research department at A T
and T. That this is Wait, so A T and
(21:23):
T paid for somebody to research this old book on
angelic communication and cryptography. Well, it's uh. I don't know
if he did. I'm not certain if he did. This
part on the A. T. And D Die, but reads
is a guy who's subsequently written a few different books
on this and other D related works. Um and uh.
He he wrote about about this particular work in summing
(21:47):
it up with the following, which is I think rather
illuminating as we continue to look at these obsessions. Quote.
The question now is why did Trimetheus so thoroughly embrace
the red wrick of magic for such a non magical
as re regarded purpose. Did he regard cryptography as inherently magical?
Or was his choice of the language that language a
(22:10):
solution to the stylistic problem that all authors of cryptographic
exposition have to solve how to sustain the reader's interest
through example after example of usually tedious plain texts, possibly
tedious explanations of cryptographic techniques, and always tedious cipher texts.
(22:30):
Trimetheus use of angel language might thus be a rhetorical
strategy to engage the reader's interest. If so, he was
vastly successful, even if he completely miscalculated how his book
would be received, because this basically, like I said that,
he was an important figure in occult circles because for
(22:50):
the longest like, that's what these books look like, that's
what those books mean if you're not breaking the crowd,
the code and sort of finding the deeper symbolism, the
deeper purpose of the text. Yeah, so he's he's thinking
along the lines of I'm going to write this really groundbreaking,
uh piece of linguistic science, but that's not really sexy,
(23:13):
so I'll tell everyone it's about angels. Yeah, Or it's
like it's kind of thinking think about it like this.
If you have you have a grammar lesson, what kind
of sentence are you gonna use? You're gonna use a
boring sentence or an exciting one, right, So, in a sense,
he used the exciting sentence. Uh he put he put
a dog in a sentence. So another Okay, another theory.
And again I'm no d scholar, and I know there's
(23:34):
lots of people out there who have poured through his diaries,
but maybe D was doing the same thing. Well that
that that becomes the crazy thing to try and figure out,
like where where we're what we're D's interest here? Was
he interested in the magic? Was he interested in I
mean sure, clearly he was interested in cryptography. He'd read
his other book, That's why he sought out this one.
(23:55):
There was the whole wife swapping thing though, so there
is a certain amount of him actually believing angels telling
him to do things he doesn't want to do. It
makes one think, like, at what point, in studying cryptography
through the language of magic, do you become kind of
ensourceful by the magic, by the language of of of
of magic. Uh? Yeah, it's crazy. Now, now back to
(24:16):
this whole expedition where he ends up finding this copy
of this rare book. So, as Benjamin Willy points out
in his book, this was no small accomplishment. It was
a really difficult book to steal a peek at it was.
It was banned it was actually actually the Church had
placed it on the Index liberal Um Prohibitorium in sixteen
(24:37):
o nine and it remained there until nineteen hundred. So
this was this was a this was a band book.
This was like a dark book and uh magic, yeah,
this is this is this is a dangerous text. Uh.
So D had to spend money to travel, he probably
had to pay bribes, and he worked with a mysterious
nobleman of Hungary who required that D, in turn, quote,
(25:01):
pleasure him with such points of science as he requireth
that sounds filthy. I hope it's not. I hope it's not.
Maybe he was just like performing scientific tricks like I
don't know, fire or it kind of sounds like you
have like in this case with the nobleman of Hungary,
kind of like a rich science fanboy who has access
(25:25):
to something amazing and then therefore uses it and as
an excuse to make the real scientists slash magician hang
out with him. And then on top of this, so
I mean the whole thing was not only to look
at it, not only to read it, but to copy
it so he would have his own copy. And this
was a difficult book to copy because it's it's full
of tables and charts, moving parts, apparently meaningless names, angelic language,
(25:52):
and uh he only had ten days to get it
all copied down, likely with this Hungarian guy just standing
over over for him the whole time, trying to make
a small talk. Oh wow, Then you really feel for
John do when you dive into the details here, you know,
I mean, yeah, he wasn't the greatest guy in the world.
He did, you know, make his young wife sleep with
(26:16):
his squire at one point, but he really seemed to
be doing his best to try to gather this information
up for the benefit of I guess like as he
saw it mankind. Yeah, yeah, I increasingly sympathize with d
through through all these adventures and misadventures, increasingly more misadventures
(26:37):
than an adventure. Right. So, yeah, we're forced to try
and understand the role of this book really in Indeed's
life and what his his obsession with this book tells
us about his life. A book that is at once
both concerned with purely with codes and also concerned with
(26:57):
very strange magical concept were very esoteric concepts. I imagine
he kept this in the internal part of his Uh,
his Sanctum sanct This was definitely an inner library product here. Now,
according to to contemporary cryptologists Simon singh Um, it's important
(27:18):
to note here that UH, that you know, encryption had
been around for a while. He particularly mentions that al
Kindi book that I mentioned earlier, UH, in the simplest forms,
encryption is about swapping letters for symbols and the use
of frequency analysis to break it. And by the Elizabethan era,
UH cryptography was already getting a bit more advanced. This
(27:42):
was again a time of plots, espionage, deep political intrigue,
and encryption UH was was an important tool. Code making
and code breaking was very much a part of the
the actual game of thrones of the day. One example
that sing throws out is just considered the intrigue surrounding Mary,
Queen Scott's. She wanted to take the English throne, so
(28:02):
Elizabeth imprisoned her, but she used But then Mary used
coded messages that she sent out to her co conspirators
looking to work with the Spanish to put her on
the throne instead of Elizabeth. Chief codebreaker Thomas Phillips, Uh,
this is Elizabeth's a codebreaker came along. He broke this
code she was using, and he broke it easily because
(28:24):
she was using an outdated, simple form of cipher. So
Mary was found out, she was tried, she was executed
in seven So this serves as an example that that codes,
the making of the use of codes, and the breaking
of them was life and death. Yeah, especially when you consider,
like how much of this story that we've already told
(28:44):
has involved political actors traveling around Europe, uh suspected of
being spies, but you know, basically just saying like either
like oh, I'm just here to see the sites, or
I'm here to scribe crystals and talk to angels or whatever. Right, Um,
so code and cryptography would be essential to them passing
(29:04):
messages back and forth, either from their home countries or
to their associates in these these other empires. That's right.
So we're going about to take another break. But as
we take the break, think to yourself, which which is
better is you're out traveling around continental Europe to be
found out and accused as a spy or a magician?
(29:27):
Which which is the more dangerous scenario? All right, we're back, Okay,
So we asked which was better to be accused of
being a spy at the time, or a magician. Now,
given what we know about how many people accepted quote
(29:50):
magic as being a part of not I wouldn't say
daily life, but like, uh uh the sciences. Probably being
accused of being a spy was worse. I feel there's
there's less ambiguity, isn't there because if you can you
imagine you're you're accused of, Oh, you're trying to speak
to angels and you have all this angelic language, you know,
(30:12):
depending on some individuals would certainly be very quick to
condemn you and say, well, you're practicing horrible magic and
this is bad. But there's seems like you have a
certain amount of wiggle room there. Yeah. Well, I mean
considered D's own case, right, he goes to the Holy
Roman Emperor and he says, angels told me you're possessed
by demons, and the guy was like whatever. But then
(30:32):
they think he might be a spy. Kick him out
of the country, yeah at least, right, I mean, or
or throw him into a dungeon, execute him, etcetera. So
so that's the the the question that one raises here
was John D a spy? The answer kind of varies
because it seems undoubtedly he played a role in introducing
(30:55):
some some concepts in cryptography to his Elizabethan mask. He
had a great cover story. Yeah, he did cover story,
that's the other thing. To what extent is this a
guy who ended up buying into his cover story, like
he went so deep cover that he himself had vast
difficulties uh re emerging and returning to h Elizabethan England.
(31:18):
Uh yeah, It's it's difficult to piece it together because
we have a guy here who seems to have been
a pretty serious Christian, but he was also engaged in
all of this, uh, these occult interests. We have a
guy who believed mathematics was the key to unlocking the
secrets of the universe, who studied cryptography, who advised Queen
Elizabeth the First, who traveled rather extensively throughout Europe during
(31:40):
a time of plots, political unrest, in war, and so yeah,
this has led some historians to ponder whether, uh we're
not really whether, but to what degree John d was
engaged in the espionage of the day As early as
the seventeenth century. English polly math Robert Hoake suggested that
D's Book of the Spirits was actually a book of
(32:02):
code rather than an account of angelic conversations, and that
it would be to go back to our our previous question,
that it would be far better to be charged with
being a quote pretend enthusiast rather than a real spy. Okay, yeah,
you know, I'm starting to lean more and more towards
that as a theory. Here's another interesting uh tidbit following
(32:23):
these um copying of the Steganographia. In fifteen sixty three,
he certainly wrote to William Cecil, that's Queen Elizabeth's key
minister at the time, uh, and who was just beginning
to put in place the espionage network that, under his predecessor,
the spy Master Francis so Walshingham UM would become one
(32:47):
of the most formidable and effective UM spy systems spionar
systems in Europe. So we're talking about the origins of
M I S X basically basically, yeah, like the he
he he wrote in writing to Cecil, he's writing to
one of the one of two key individuals. Yeah, and
laying the groundwork for a vast network of spies, a
(33:08):
vast coded network of spies. It depended on Coats D
wrote to Cecil apparently with great enthusiasm, telling him that
this book was quote that the most precious jewel that
I have yet of other men's travails recovered, and that
it would benefit quote the advancement of good letters and
wonderful divine and secret sciences. So Benjamin Woolly and his
(33:31):
book notes that that Cecil was a very practical conservative
sort of fellow and not the kind of guy to
put a lot of stock in occult rituals. He was religious,
he probably believed in spirits, you know, in kind of
an abstract sense of the word. That he wasn't going
to go rattling off a list of angel names or anything.
So the secret sciences that we're talking about here might
(33:52):
very well refer to interest far more earthly, uh, far
more espionage related than anything to do with you know,
angelic communication. So maybe D was duping Kelly. Yeah, like
he used a known occultists alchemist criminal as his companion
(34:17):
for ten years, possibly so that he could travel around
and pretend like he was doing these rituals when in
fact he was up to something a little bit more concrete. Yeah,
it's I think one of the difficult things and trying
to figure out someone like D is we kind of
look for this, not certainly not maybe not a simple interpretation,
(34:38):
but we want a solid interpretation. And I guess the
way I keep trying to make sense of it is
to think, all right, every one of us has a
fairly complex worldview, a lot of contradictions, a lot of
I we believe in various ideas simultaneously even though they
don't match up, and we all have you know, I'm
(34:59):
just to generalize here, and let's say, let's say we
all have very fairly normal brains, and D had an
abnormal brain. D was a brilliant man, one of the
most brilliant men of his day, and therefore perhaps his
contradictions were just that that much greater, that much stranger,
that much more out of proportion to what the rest
(35:20):
of us live with. Yeah, I think I can see
where you're going with this, that there's there's a little
bit of truth to all of this. Yeah, that's that's
that's where I keep coming coming back to, because it's
it's tempting to say, oh, well, he was only in
it for the he was only in it for the codes.
He was a spy the whole time. He wasn't duped
by this this this weird Edward Kelly character. Uh he was.
(35:43):
He was the secret secret master the whole time. But
as as Willie Wright said, D didn't see uh the
steganographia as a purely diplomatic or political tool like based
on his writings, he he clearly considered it to have
far more esoteric uses. He lieve that the cryptography could
help him decipher other ancient texts, such as the Book
(36:05):
of Siga on an anonymous tone that he believed to
have been written in the in the the Anochian language,
and another was a book that was attributed to Roger Bacon,
The Voyage, which is still yet to be deciphered. Yeah,
voyage manuscript is something that comes up a lot around here.
Um yeah, I know several of our other shows here
(36:28):
have done episodes on it and how stuff works as
like a pretty long windage manuscript article, I think as well.
Um yeah, so maybe maybe D. Then he's playing all
sides for his own and interests, you know, like he
believes in the angel stuff, but he's also playing it
out for this code stuff. He has interests in mathematics
(36:53):
and discovering the origins of the universe, in bettering the
English Empire, and all of those coincide with talking to
angels and spycraft and assisting trade agencies and being a
courtier to the queen. It's all it's all very I mean,
it's alien to us from present day perspective. Yeah, but
(37:15):
it does it does seem that it seemed to be
the case that it was all connected to him. Yeah,
this was this was the world that he lived, and
he lived in a world in which the British Empire
had great things ahead of it, that things were cosmically
aligned for it, that he himself was kind of the
the second coming of Merlin, That that that mathematics was
(37:39):
the key to to understanding and manipulating the forces in
the world around him, and that you could you could
use some of these properties to communicate with essentially extra
dimensional beings who would reveal the secrets of science too. Yeah. Uh,
it's not like he was looking to cast fireballs and
lightning bolts. He just wanted to know the world worked.
(38:01):
He was he was he was in endlessly curious, huh.
And that's John d the Good Doctor. So you know,
he's got this reputation now that's endured as an astrologer
and a magician. But I think you know, what we
should get out of these two episodes should be remembered
that D was an accomplished mathematician and he influenced the
(38:23):
field as well as physics, music, philosophy, optical theory, and
mechanical engineering. I mean, he really Robert and I were
talking about this outside the studio. I mean, he was
very influential in the history of the world in a
lot of ways. Uh. We remember him as being this
deluded guy who could talk to angels, but he contributed
(38:44):
to European intellectual history. There's actually an organization called the
John D Society, uh that I found in my searching around.
It's an organization dedicated to producing standard editions of his work,
and they're trying to reconstruct his library. So they're assembling
an archive of this material as they find it on microfilm,
although I imagine, uh that they're probably scanning it in
(39:07):
digitally at this point. And I'd like to leave us
with a quote from one of the books that I
was consulting by R. W. Baron. It's called a reputation
History of John D. The Life of an Elizabethan Intellectual,
and he says, four centuries after his death, we are
still debating and wrestling with where D's work fits into
(39:28):
the Elizabethan world picture and what contributions, if any, he
made to those intellectual advancements. So there we have it.
I mean, he's a fascinating fellow. He seems to have
influenced our sciences. He's perfect for our for stuff to
blow your mind. You know, he's got a little bit
of the weirdness of the bizarre, bringing it into his
(39:51):
understanding of the world, bringing wonder to these things, and
then simultaneously using things that we now consider every day
like optics or cartography or or or just basic math, uh,
in the same respect. Yeah, And it's it's it's just
amazing that he's one of these guys that we know
a fair amount about, and yet you the more you
(40:13):
read about him, the more you just ask, who who
was this guy? You know? Was he he really? Like? What? What?
What was the world he saw when he looked out
the window? You know? And uh, yeah, it's just just
an amazing character. So it's been a great pleasure to
to research him and discuss him here on the podcast. Yeah,
(40:33):
I for one, next time I'm in London. I am
definitely gonna go to the British Museum and try to
get a look at some of those occult artifacts. And
I'd really like to visit the site of more Lake.
I always kind of see what it's like to from
looking at Google Maps, doesn't seem like it's that far
southwest of London. So hey, anybody out there, have you
(40:53):
been there? Have you seen this stuff in the British Museum?
Maybe you know, Uh, like I said at the top
of all of this, the so much research into John
d that maybe you know there's stuff that we don't
know about that we missed here. Maybe there's something you'd
like to add that we could read in a future
listener mail episode. Uh. You can hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
or Instagram, and don't forget to visit Stuff to Blow
(41:17):
your Mind dot com, which is our landing site where
we'll have images that accompany this episode, as well as
all of the blog posts and all of the videos
and all the other podcasts that we do here. And
real quick, on a personal note, I just want to
thank my my cousin father be Price, for suggesting research
into these life and studies. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this
(41:38):
was this was really a pleasure, all right. So if
you want to get in touch with the old fashioned way,
put aside the your your very scrying instruments, put aside
the magic mirror, and to simply send us an email.
I blow the mind at how stuff works dot com
(42:01):
for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
it how stuff Work stopped? Colum? Come the big Believe.
I think the Big Man
Hey you, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Time to go into the Old Vault. This time we're
going in for part two of last week's Vault episode
of You and Christian exploring Dr John d the Wizard
of the sixteenth century. Yeah, fascinating character, a character that
came up in there are recent episodes on the Bonage
(00:27):
Manuscript and uh and the sort of figure that I
think likely even very well may come up again someday.
Just such a fascinating figure, interested and seemingly everything, both
natural world enigmas as well as a cult mysteries. And uh. Yeah,
so let's dive right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow
(00:53):
your Mind. From how Stuff Works dot com. There is,
gentle reader, nothing the works of God only set apart,
which so much beautifies and adorns the soul and mind
of man, as does knowledge of the good arts and sciences.
(01:14):
Many arts there are which beautify the mind of man,
But of all none do more garnish and beautify it
than those arts which are called and mathematical, unto the
knowledge of which no man can attain without perfect knowledge
and instruction of the principles, grounds and elements of geometry. Hey,
(01:41):
welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and my name is Christian Seger. And if
last episode sounded like we were invoking a ritual to
summon angels or demons, this sounds like we are teaching
ap calculus. Yeah. That that those are the words of
Dr John D. Those are from his preface, his mathematical
preface to the fifeventy translation of Euclid's Elements. Now, at
(02:05):
this point we should we should mention that if you
did not listen to our previous episode on John D,
you definitely need to go back to that one, because
that that is the episode where we we really dove
into his timeline and discussed in broad strokes the major
events of his life. Yeah. We also focused on the
(02:25):
sort of magical occult aspects of John D's beliefs and
life in that episode. This episode, we're really going to
focus on his scientific education, his ability with mathematics, um,
how he participated in state craft in England and in
fact advocated for expanding the British Empire and especially developed
(02:47):
cryptography as we know it today. Yeah, and it's it's
interesting too, and that even though you know, in a sense,
the last episode was magic and this one is the
is the science. This is more rooted in the real world.
Old John d was not so firmly rooted. He seemed
to to live simultaneously in the mathematical and the magical world.
(03:10):
He did not really see a division like like the spiritual,
the mathematical, the magic. It was all part of the
world as he perceived it. Yeah, so get ready, as
we're talking about this stuff, it may seem like, oh,
we're going over some historical science here, and then all
of a sudden, you know, Merlin will pop up or
maybe some angelic influence here there. Yeah. Now, it's it's
(03:32):
really important to note here too though that as unique
as D was, this mixing of magic and math, this
suspicion of math, even was it was not unique to him.
It was it was very much a part of the day. Uh.
Mathematics was regarded in some circles with suspicion at the time.
(03:52):
During the Tutor era, mathematical books were sometimes burned as
alleged conjuring books. This according to seventeenth century antiquarian John Aubrey,
and it was, and it was still very much associated
with the dark arts. I mean, you have to to
think Pythagoras Key in the history of mathematics was also
considered a magician. Uh numbers had inherent powers, and this
(04:16):
is a theme that ran through the works of Kepler, Newton, Euclid,
and others. So there was a long tradition of of
mathematics and and magic kind of sharing the same space.
One of the things that I read was that mathematics
were considered disreputable and connected to witchcraft because they were
associated with numerology. And I mentioned this in the last
(04:36):
episode the Jewish mystical tradition of the kabbala uh And
we're gonna talk about the cryptography stuff in a minute.
But tri Themius, who wrote the book that D really
worked off of to create his version of cryptography, that
guy was also suspected of wizardry. So this had a
long standing tradition. Uh D for his part, though, in
terms of mathematics, his lectures on Euclid were wildly popular,
(05:01):
as he was seen as a leading scientific figure of
his day. I'm picturing that he's like the Neil deGrasse Tyson, right,
Like he's he's giving lectures. Everybody's really interested. Uh. These
lectures earned him an offer to join the faculty at
the Sorbonne in Paris in fifteen fifty one. We mentioned
that real briefly last time, but he turned stuff like
(05:22):
this down because he was hoping to obtain an official
position with the English Crown. He was also Robert read
from this at the beginning, but it's worth pointing out
the editor of the first English translation of Euclid's Elements,
and in that he added his preface, which what Robert
read came from. This preface argued for the usefulness of mathematics,
(05:45):
like people didn't regard mathematics as being important at that time,
and in fact, this was the first time the public
were introduced to the symbols plus minus, x, fra multiply
and the little dot dash dot for division. Yeah. In
this uh, this this preface, the mathematical preface. He proposed
(06:07):
an arts mathematical that he compared to thomaturgy, which is
a the use of magic for religious purposes. So he
saw mathematics, rather than magic, as the key to thomaturgical
wonder Men's work could rival the gods if they could
utilize mathematics correctly, and and in this, you know, you
(06:28):
could say d was correct. And we may disagree on
whether math is a human invention or human discovery, but
it has thus far proven to correspond to the inner
workings of the cosmos. It's our our best tool. Essentially.
He saw this reflected in the creation of automatons, those
of Alberta's Magnus uh and others. So, you know, all
these various mechanical devices that mimicked the the appearance of life,
(06:53):
and the movement and the and the willfulness of life.
And in fact, that's where that uh, his FX work
in fifty six comes into play. That's what he was
essentially dabbling in. Yeah, we talked about this in the
last episode. He apparently created this giant automaton. Reportedly it
was a mechanical flying beetle. I don't know if it
(07:14):
actually flew or not, but apparently it was. It was
so impressive that people thought that it was magic. Yeah,
and that was very much in keeping with his view
of what math was and what what science was was
capable of doing. That it could replicate the wonders of
nature by manipulating the same properties and he saw. He
(07:34):
saw things like automatons and even his own special effects work,
uh as proof of that. He saw the optics of
his special mirror is kind of reverse mirror that he
would wow people with. He saw that as an example
of look that these amazing feats are possible through optics,
through mathematics, through science, and ultimately his mathematics led to
(07:57):
him advocating for the expansion of the British Empire. And
he reportedly is the one who coined the term British Empire. Yeah,
which is crazy, and it's also it's it's sometimes you forget,
like it's it's hard to think back to a time
where the British Empire wasn't a thing, not only in
in actuality but even in concept. So we're traveling back
(08:22):
to seven here, and this is kind of what was
going on at the time. Sir Francis Drake was preparing
for an epic voyage around the globe. Um Washingham spies
had exposed another plot against the British Crown, and he
had noted a significant problematic comment amid the meaning saturated stars.
And on November twenty eight, amid all of these excitements,
(08:43):
de comes and he proposes this concept, this idea to
the Queen of England that she should challenge Spain's imperial
claim to the New World. Yeah, and a lot of
this was based around how do I put this? He
so on top of being a brilliant mathematician, he was
able to apply that to cartography and mapping out routes
(09:06):
or understanding the geography of the New World. Yeah, it's
you mentioned cartographers here. We mentioned in the past episode
that that he he'd learned from and was in correspondence
with with noted cartographer um Garatiscator. Yeah, and uh Mercator
is apparently the guy who filled him in about this idea,
(09:30):
that that there was a precedence for the British Empire
set by a legendary incursion into the northern in drawing
seas around the Pole by King Arthur in the year
five thirty lands that had since been claimed by Iberian nations.
This is where he got the whole idea. He being
(09:51):
d got the whole idea for him being the modern
day Merlin and Elizabeth being the modern day Arthur. He
actually presented Elizabeth with a treatise on Britain's imperial limits
at one point. And it suggested that the America's had
actually been discovered by King Arthur centuries before. Yeah, and
and also that the British Empire was already a thing. This,
(10:13):
this concept is not something that that England could claim
for itself but reclaimed. This was a this was part
of its identity already. Yeah. So you might be wondering
what's a courtier anyways? Right, A lot of people when
they're describing d they just say, well, he's a courtier.
I don't know what that means. Apparently it is a
(10:33):
man that is concerned with the operation of the Royal
Court and by extension, the Kingdom, of which it was
an effective ruling body. So it was in his interests
to make sure that the ruling body of Britain expanded. Yeah,
I'm glad you brought up the court as well, because
the court at the time was was was lavish and uh,
(10:55):
you know, rather impressive to behold, but at the same
time it was horriblely in debt. The likewise, the English
military was weak, the political condition was far from stable,
where England was a relatively poor nation, and the idea
of challenging Spain Imperial Spain in such a manner was
(11:17):
was highly ambitious, if not outright ridiculous. Remember, at the
time there was a there was a Papal bull Uh
dividing the Americas between the Spanish and the Portuguese. So
it wasn't just that England should challenge Spain. It was
that English England should challenge the papacy's division of the globe.
This was this was this was not just hey, we're
(11:38):
we're we're pretty awesome. We should go over and claim this.
It's like, no, we This involves a leveling up of
the nation that might not be practical and it worked. Yeah. Um.
And for his part, the way that de assisted was
with his knowledge of cartography and mathematical modeling. So he
instructed captains and pilots in the samples of mathematical navigation.
(12:02):
He would prepare maps for their use, and he furnished
them with various navigational instruments. In the fifteen fifties he
actually advised Richard Chancellor's expedition through the North Sea so
that he could establish a trade route between England and Moscow.
And there's there's some evidence that d was I guess
uh financially involved in that as well. Like he had
(12:23):
he had something to gain from this um trade route.
In fifteen seventy two, a new star appeared and it
was visible for seventeen months. Now today we know that
this was a supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. Uh D
saw this as the signal for the beginning of the
(12:44):
English Protestant Empire, and so he also instructed an expedition
to discover the Northwest Passage to China in fifteen seventies six. Now,
I've talked a lot about Northwest passages befo the or
the Northwest pas Sage and expeditions through it before on
the show, because I've done research on the past. Um
(13:04):
you know, like like almost all of these, it was
totally fruitless, but it did lead to English settlements in
Canadian North America. And this is where it gets crazy.
Deformed his own company to colonize the America's and there's
some evidence that he was the intellectual force behind Francis
Drake's circumnavigation of the globe, and d would be awarded
(13:28):
rights to any new newly discovered land that was north
of the fiftieth parallel. If Drake had gone any further
north than Oregon. This basically would have given him all
of Canada. So D would have like, if this had
all worked out, D would own Canada. How different might
(13:49):
Canadian history bay if it had been founded by a wizard?
Right exactly? Um and you know we talked about this
in the last episode. Uh. You know, D moved his
family to crack Up Poland and three. A lot of
it had to do with the whole angela communication thing
and Lasky and and Kelly as we previously described, but
(14:12):
some believed that the whole reason he was there was
actually to act as a spy. Uh. And when the
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph the Second suspected D, that's when
he was banished from the empire and he went to
a small town called Trebonn in at what the time
was southern Bohemia. I imagine now it's probably part of
the Czech Republic or maybe Slovakia. But um uh, this
(14:35):
is fascinating. That's what gets him kicked out when, as
we know from last episode, he just basically went up
to Rudolph and was like, hey, angels told me you're
possessed by demons, and Rudolph was like whatever. But then
he's like, maybe this guy's a spy and he gets
rid of him. Now here's a really fun factor. You ready,
everybody D signed his letters to Elizabeth as double O seven. Yes,
(15:00):
secret sign of cipher that at least looked like double os.
So I mean, I'm wondering if that's where um uh
Ian Fleming got the idea for double A seven from,
or if it's maybe an actual has a historical precedence.
So I've read two different versions of this. One is
that Ian Fleming was reading about John D at the
time directly got this, uh, this idea from these writings.
(15:25):
And I've also read some people that cast doubt on
this whole connection say that, oh, well, actually John D
didn't really use double O seven. So um, I'm not
sure exactly where the truth lies there somewhere in the middle.
But but we will get back to this whole spying thing,
this whole espionage thing, because as incredible as everything has
been thus far, um, it really gets crazier in the
(15:47):
episode where we're not even talking about angelic communication all that, Like, Okay,
why don't we take a quick break and when we
come back, we're going to talk about the cryptography aspects
of the career alright, we're back. So cryptography the the study,
(16:08):
the creation and the breaking of codes and ciphers. Yeah,
so we we've already covered this slightly. But D was
taken with the work of German abbot Trithemius. Uh and
he was an important figure in the history of cryptography
as well as occultism. And in fifteen sixty four, while
D was in Antwerp, he tracked down a copy of
(16:30):
themis is most famous work, the stick I'm going to
get this wrong, the Stagana of Grafia, and copied it.
Now you were telling me that there was this like
whole weird thing about the copying of it. Oh yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's pretty strange. So certainly Trithemius was a
big deal. Again, important figure in the history of cry
(16:52):
cryptography and occultism and uh and and D was already
a fan. He owned several copies of is of his
book Polygraphia, which was the first printed book about the
subject of cryptography. Uh. Not to say, you know, certainly
not the first book. It's also worth noting that there
was there was an Arabic book that that was already
(17:16):
out there in the world. And this book was by
a man by the name of al Kindy. But this
was the first that was, you know, certainly the first
Western tone dealing with cryptography. Uh. They were twelve rotating
paper a cipher discs embedded within the pages, and even
today they're in remarkably good condition. They still turn. Uh.
(17:40):
So it was a pretty phenomenal book. I'm kind of
thinking of I don't think you've seen this movie yet,
but that Doctor Strange movie came up. You saw it, Yeah,
you know the library and that that's what I'm imagining. Yeah, yeah,
very much. Yeah, and certainly there's a lot of like
circular devices and and glyphs that should pop up in
that movie that that feel aide at home in the
(18:01):
world of John d except not glowing and spinning in
the right unless you're talking to Edward Kelly and he
will say, yeah, I can see those disks probably U. So, yeah,
he finds out there's a copy of Steganographia out there,
which was a rare book. It was an essentially an
an abandoned work of Trithemius is because it dealt with,
at least on the surface, dealt with angelic communication. It
(18:25):
dealt with communing of spirits and using spirits to relay
messages over vast distances. Okay, hold on a second, I
think I've got a theory here. Let's see if this
plays out as we're talking more about Trithemius. What if
so we know that D was really into Trithemius, and
(18:46):
then he gathered all of this information before he met
Edward Kelly. What if Edward Kelly was using Trithemius to
create his version of a Nochian that eventually D wrote
down and and and hearkened as the Angelic language. Yeah,
maybe that's it. It sounds it sounds compelling to me.
(19:09):
I guess I should probably say a little more about
Trithemius before I go any any further here. But this
guy alone was pretty fascinating. This was the man who
served as advisors to emperors, was among the most erudite
German book collectors of his time, author of more than
fifty books himself, and the founder of scientific bibliography. He was,
as previously noted, the first printed author on the subject
(19:32):
of cryptography in the West. And um and yet then
here's this book, this seems to be devoted to angelic magic,
that he was forced to abandon writing because he was
talking to other people about it, and they were like, Oh,
I don't know about about this book you're working on Trithemius. Uh.
Even as he was making writing it, he made claims
(19:53):
that the text would enable communication over vast distances, to
communicate one's thoughts by fire and other claims. So basically,
like other individuals hearing about this, they were like like, well,
this means this makes it sound like either you're lying
or you're a demonic sorcerer, right or smiled upon? Yeah,
(20:16):
not so much in the in the church. So the
crazy thing is that over the centuries, it's been revealed
that all three volumes of this work are concerned with cryptography,
the most and most recently volume three. So pretty early
on commentators figured out, all, right, well, these first two
books are only like surface level about angelic magic. They're
(20:38):
really about cryptography and codes and ciphers. But they thought
for the longest well, this third book, though, this just
seems to be about magic. There's no code here um,
And that's kind of a fitting read for the life
of John d the idea of like, at what point
does the magic become the main thing? But here's the
crazy part. This only this a view of the third
(21:02):
Book of Steganographia only lasted until the late nineteen nineties.
That's when two individuals experienced unrelated breakthroughs and cracking it
German linguist Thomas Ernst and Jim Reid's, who is working
in the mathematics and cryptography research department at A T
and T. That this is Wait, so A T and
(21:23):
T paid for somebody to research this old book on
angelic communication and cryptography. Well, it's uh. I don't know
if he did. I'm not certain if he did. This
part on the A. T. And D Die, but reads
is a guy who's subsequently written a few different books
on this and other D related works. Um and uh.
He he wrote about about this particular work in summing
(21:47):
it up with the following, which is I think rather
illuminating as we continue to look at these obsessions. Quote.
The question now is why did Trimetheus so thoroughly embrace
the red wrick of magic for such a non magical
as re regarded purpose. Did he regard cryptography as inherently magical?
Or was his choice of the language that language a
(22:10):
solution to the stylistic problem that all authors of cryptographic
exposition have to solve how to sustain the reader's interest
through example after example of usually tedious plain texts, possibly
tedious explanations of cryptographic techniques, and always tedious cipher texts.
(22:30):
Trimetheus use of angel language might thus be a rhetorical
strategy to engage the reader's interest. If so, he was
vastly successful, even if he completely miscalculated how his book
would be received, because this basically, like I said that,
he was an important figure in occult circles because for
(22:50):
the longest like, that's what these books look like, that's
what those books mean if you're not breaking the crowd,
the code and sort of finding the deeper symbolism, the
deeper purpose of the text. Yeah, so he's he's thinking
along the lines of I'm going to write this really groundbreaking,
uh piece of linguistic science, but that's not really sexy,
(23:13):
so I'll tell everyone it's about angels. Yeah, Or it's
like it's kind of thinking think about it like this.
If you have you have a grammar lesson, what kind
of sentence are you gonna use? You're gonna use a
boring sentence or an exciting one, right, So, in a sense,
he used the exciting sentence. Uh he put he put
a dog in a sentence. So another Okay, another theory.
And again I'm no d scholar, and I know there's
(23:34):
lots of people out there who have poured through his diaries,
but maybe D was doing the same thing. Well that
that that becomes the crazy thing to try and figure out,
like where where we're what we're D's interest here? Was
he interested in the magic? Was he interested in I
mean sure, clearly he was interested in cryptography. He'd read
his other book, That's why he sought out this one.
(23:55):
There was the whole wife swapping thing though, so there
is a certain amount of him actually believing angels telling
him to do things he doesn't want to do. It
makes one think, like, at what point, in studying cryptography
through the language of magic, do you become kind of
ensourceful by the magic, by the language of of of
of magic. Uh? Yeah, it's crazy. Now, now back to
(24:16):
this whole expedition where he ends up finding this copy
of this rare book. So, as Benjamin Willy points out
in his book, this was no small accomplishment. It was
a really difficult book to steal a peek at it was.
It was banned it was actually actually the Church had
placed it on the Index liberal Um Prohibitorium in sixteen
(24:37):
o nine and it remained there until nineteen hundred. So
this was this was a this was a band book.
This was like a dark book and uh magic, yeah,
this is this is this is a dangerous text. Uh.
So D had to spend money to travel, he probably
had to pay bribes, and he worked with a mysterious
nobleman of Hungary who required that D, in turn, quote,
(25:01):
pleasure him with such points of science as he requireth
that sounds filthy. I hope it's not. I hope it's not.
Maybe he was just like performing scientific tricks like I
don't know, fire or it kind of sounds like you
have like in this case with the nobleman of Hungary,
kind of like a rich science fanboy who has access
(25:25):
to something amazing and then therefore uses it and as
an excuse to make the real scientists slash magician hang
out with him. And then on top of this, so
I mean the whole thing was not only to look
at it, not only to read it, but to copy
it so he would have his own copy. And this
was a difficult book to copy because it's it's full
of tables and charts, moving parts, apparently meaningless names, angelic language,
(25:52):
and uh he only had ten days to get it
all copied down, likely with this Hungarian guy just standing
over over for him the whole time, trying to make
a small talk. Oh wow, Then you really feel for
John do when you dive into the details here, you know,
I mean, yeah, he wasn't the greatest guy in the world.
He did, you know, make his young wife sleep with
(26:16):
his squire at one point, but he really seemed to
be doing his best to try to gather this information
up for the benefit of I guess like as he
saw it mankind. Yeah, yeah, I increasingly sympathize with d
through through all these adventures and misadventures, increasingly more misadventures
(26:37):
than an adventure. Right. So, yeah, we're forced to try
and understand the role of this book really in Indeed's
life and what his his obsession with this book tells
us about his life. A book that is at once
both concerned with purely with codes and also concerned with
(26:57):
very strange magical concept were very esoteric concepts. I imagine
he kept this in the internal part of his Uh,
his Sanctum sanct This was definitely an inner library product here. Now,
according to to contemporary cryptologists Simon singh Um, it's important
(27:18):
to note here that UH, that you know, encryption had
been around for a while. He particularly mentions that al
Kindi book that I mentioned earlier, UH, in the simplest forms,
encryption is about swapping letters for symbols and the use
of frequency analysis to break it. And by the Elizabethan era,
UH cryptography was already getting a bit more advanced. This
(27:42):
was again a time of plots, espionage, deep political intrigue,
and encryption UH was was an important tool. Code making
and code breaking was very much a part of the
the actual game of thrones of the day. One example
that sing throws out is just considered the intrigue surrounding Mary,
Queen Scott's. She wanted to take the English throne, so
(28:02):
Elizabeth imprisoned her, but she used But then Mary used
coded messages that she sent out to her co conspirators
looking to work with the Spanish to put her on
the throne instead of Elizabeth. Chief codebreaker Thomas Phillips, Uh,
this is Elizabeth's a codebreaker came along. He broke this
code she was using, and he broke it easily because
(28:24):
she was using an outdated, simple form of cipher. So
Mary was found out, she was tried, she was executed
in seven So this serves as an example that that codes,
the making of the use of codes, and the breaking
of them was life and death. Yeah, especially when you consider,
like how much of this story that we've already told
(28:44):
has involved political actors traveling around Europe, uh suspected of
being spies, but you know, basically just saying like either
like oh, I'm just here to see the sites, or
I'm here to scribe crystals and talk to angels or whatever. Right, Um,
so code and cryptography would be essential to them passing
(29:04):
messages back and forth, either from their home countries or
to their associates in these these other empires. That's right.
So we're going about to take another break. But as
we take the break, think to yourself, which which is
better is you're out traveling around continental Europe to be
found out and accused as a spy or a magician?
(29:27):
Which which is the more dangerous scenario? All right, we're back, Okay,
So we asked which was better to be accused of
being a spy at the time, or a magician. Now,
given what we know about how many people accepted quote
(29:50):
magic as being a part of not I wouldn't say
daily life, but like, uh uh the sciences. Probably being
accused of being a spy was worse. I feel there's
there's less ambiguity, isn't there because if you can you
imagine you're you're accused of, Oh, you're trying to speak
to angels and you have all this angelic language, you know,
(30:12):
depending on some individuals would certainly be very quick to
condemn you and say, well, you're practicing horrible magic and
this is bad. But there's seems like you have a
certain amount of wiggle room there. Yeah. Well, I mean
considered D's own case, right, he goes to the Holy
Roman Emperor and he says, angels told me you're possessed
by demons, and the guy was like whatever. But then
(30:32):
they think he might be a spy. Kick him out
of the country, yeah at least, right, I mean, or
or throw him into a dungeon, execute him, etcetera. So
so that's the the the question that one raises here
was John D a spy? The answer kind of varies
because it seems undoubtedly he played a role in introducing
(30:55):
some some concepts in cryptography to his Elizabethan mask. He
had a great cover story. Yeah, he did cover story,
that's the other thing. To what extent is this a
guy who ended up buying into his cover story, like
he went so deep cover that he himself had vast
difficulties uh re emerging and returning to h Elizabethan England.
(31:18):
Uh yeah, It's it's difficult to piece it together because
we have a guy here who seems to have been
a pretty serious Christian, but he was also engaged in
all of this, uh, these occult interests. We have a
guy who believed mathematics was the key to unlocking the
secrets of the universe, who studied cryptography, who advised Queen
Elizabeth the First, who traveled rather extensively throughout Europe during
(31:40):
a time of plots, political unrest, in war, and so yeah,
this has led some historians to ponder whether, uh we're
not really whether, but to what degree John d was
engaged in the espionage of the day As early as
the seventeenth century. English polly math Robert Hoake suggested that
D's Book of the Spirits was actually a book of
(32:02):
code rather than an account of angelic conversations, and that
it would be to go back to our our previous question,
that it would be far better to be charged with
being a quote pretend enthusiast rather than a real spy. Okay, yeah,
you know, I'm starting to lean more and more towards
that as a theory. Here's another interesting uh tidbit following
(32:23):
these um copying of the Steganographia. In fifteen sixty three,
he certainly wrote to William Cecil, that's Queen Elizabeth's key
minister at the time, uh, and who was just beginning
to put in place the espionage network that, under his predecessor,
the spy Master Francis so Walshingham UM would become one
(32:47):
of the most formidable and effective UM spy systems spionar
systems in Europe. So we're talking about the origins of
M I S X basically basically, yeah, like the he
he he wrote in writing to Cecil, he's writing to
one of the one of two key individuals. Yeah, and
laying the groundwork for a vast network of spies, a
(33:08):
vast coded network of spies. It depended on Coats D
wrote to Cecil apparently with great enthusiasm, telling him that
this book was quote that the most precious jewel that
I have yet of other men's travails recovered, and that
it would benefit quote the advancement of good letters and
wonderful divine and secret sciences. So Benjamin Woolly and his
(33:31):
book notes that that Cecil was a very practical conservative
sort of fellow and not the kind of guy to
put a lot of stock in occult rituals. He was religious,
he probably believed in spirits, you know, in kind of
an abstract sense of the word. That he wasn't going
to go rattling off a list of angel names or anything.
So the secret sciences that we're talking about here might
(33:52):
very well refer to interest far more earthly, uh, far
more espionage related than anything to do with you know,
angelic communication. So maybe D was duping Kelly. Yeah, like
he used a known occultists alchemist criminal as his companion
(34:17):
for ten years, possibly so that he could travel around
and pretend like he was doing these rituals when in
fact he was up to something a little bit more concrete. Yeah,
it's I think one of the difficult things and trying
to figure out someone like D is we kind of
look for this, not certainly not maybe not a simple interpretation,
(34:38):
but we want a solid interpretation. And I guess the
way I keep trying to make sense of it is
to think, all right, every one of us has a
fairly complex worldview, a lot of contradictions, a lot of
I we believe in various ideas simultaneously even though they
don't match up, and we all have you know, I'm
(34:59):
just to generalize here, and let's say, let's say we
all have very fairly normal brains, and D had an
abnormal brain. D was a brilliant man, one of the
most brilliant men of his day, and therefore perhaps his
contradictions were just that that much greater, that much stranger,
that much more out of proportion to what the rest
(35:20):
of us live with. Yeah, I think I can see
where you're going with this, that there's there's a little
bit of truth to all of this. Yeah, that's that's
that's where I keep coming coming back to, because it's
it's tempting to say, oh, well, he was only in
it for the he was only in it for the codes.
He was a spy the whole time. He wasn't duped
by this this this weird Edward Kelly character. Uh he was.
(35:43):
He was the secret secret master the whole time. But
as as Willie Wright said, D didn't see uh the
steganographia as a purely diplomatic or political tool like based
on his writings, he he clearly considered it to have
far more esoteric uses. He lieve that the cryptography could
help him decipher other ancient texts, such as the Book
(36:05):
of Siga on an anonymous tone that he believed to
have been written in the in the the Anochian language,
and another was a book that was attributed to Roger Bacon,
The Voyage, which is still yet to be deciphered. Yeah,
voyage manuscript is something that comes up a lot around here.
Um yeah, I know several of our other shows here
(36:28):
have done episodes on it and how stuff works as
like a pretty long windage manuscript article, I think as well.
Um yeah, so maybe maybe D. Then he's playing all
sides for his own and interests, you know, like he
believes in the angel stuff, but he's also playing it
out for this code stuff. He has interests in mathematics
(36:53):
and discovering the origins of the universe, in bettering the
English Empire, and all of those coincide with talking to
angels and spycraft and assisting trade agencies and being a
courtier to the queen. It's all it's all very I mean,
it's alien to us from present day perspective. Yeah, but
(37:15):
it does it does seem that it seemed to be
the case that it was all connected to him. Yeah,
this was this was the world that he lived, and
he lived in a world in which the British Empire
had great things ahead of it, that things were cosmically
aligned for it, that he himself was kind of the
the second coming of Merlin, That that that mathematics was
(37:39):
the key to to understanding and manipulating the forces in
the world around him, and that you could you could
use some of these properties to communicate with essentially extra
dimensional beings who would reveal the secrets of science too. Yeah. Uh,
it's not like he was looking to cast fireballs and
lightning bolts. He just wanted to know the world worked.
(38:01):
He was he was he was in endlessly curious, huh.
And that's John d the Good Doctor. So you know,
he's got this reputation now that's endured as an astrologer
and a magician. But I think you know, what we
should get out of these two episodes should be remembered
that D was an accomplished mathematician and he influenced the
(38:23):
field as well as physics, music, philosophy, optical theory, and
mechanical engineering. I mean, he really Robert and I were
talking about this outside the studio. I mean, he was
very influential in the history of the world in a
lot of ways. Uh. We remember him as being this
deluded guy who could talk to angels, but he contributed
(38:44):
to European intellectual history. There's actually an organization called the
John D Society, uh that I found in my searching around.
It's an organization dedicated to producing standard editions of his work,
and they're trying to reconstruct his library. So they're assembling
an archive of this material as they find it on microfilm,
although I imagine, uh that they're probably scanning it in
(39:07):
digitally at this point. And I'd like to leave us
with a quote from one of the books that I
was consulting by R. W. Baron. It's called a reputation
History of John D. The Life of an Elizabethan Intellectual,
and he says, four centuries after his death, we are
still debating and wrestling with where D's work fits into
(39:28):
the Elizabethan world picture and what contributions, if any, he
made to those intellectual advancements. So there we have it.
I mean, he's a fascinating fellow. He seems to have
influenced our sciences. He's perfect for our for stuff to
blow your mind. You know, he's got a little bit
of the weirdness of the bizarre, bringing it into his
(39:51):
understanding of the world, bringing wonder to these things, and
then simultaneously using things that we now consider every day
like optics or cartography or or or just basic math, uh,
in the same respect. Yeah, And it's it's it's just
amazing that he's one of these guys that we know
a fair amount about, and yet you the more you
(40:13):
read about him, the more you just ask, who who
was this guy? You know? Was he he really? Like? What? What?
What was the world he saw when he looked out
the window? You know? And uh, yeah, it's just just
an amazing character. So it's been a great pleasure to
to research him and discuss him here on the podcast. Yeah,
(40:33):
I for one, next time I'm in London. I am
definitely gonna go to the British Museum and try to
get a look at some of those occult artifacts. And
I'd really like to visit the site of more Lake.
I always kind of see what it's like to from
looking at Google Maps, doesn't seem like it's that far
southwest of London. So hey, anybody out there, have you
(40:53):
been there? Have you seen this stuff in the British Museum?
Maybe you know, Uh, like I said at the top
of all of this, the so much research into John
d that maybe you know there's stuff that we don't
know about that we missed here. Maybe there's something you'd
like to add that we could read in a future
listener mail episode. Uh. You can hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler,
or Instagram, and don't forget to visit Stuff to Blow
(41:17):
your Mind dot com, which is our landing site where
we'll have images that accompany this episode, as well as
all of the blog posts and all of the videos
and all the other podcasts that we do here. And
real quick, on a personal note, I just want to
thank my my cousin father be Price, for suggesting research
into these life and studies. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this
(41:38):
was this was really a pleasure, all right. So if
you want to get in touch with the old fashioned way,
put aside the your your very scrying instruments, put aside
the magic mirror, and to simply send us an email.
I blow the mind at how stuff works dot com
(42:01):
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