Artes Mathematicall: The Conjurer John Dee

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 first of two episodes on the topic, Robert and Christian discuss the world, life and magic of the enigmatic Dr. Dee.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. From house thy
character must have the names of the five angels written
in the midst of sigellum, a myth graven upon the
other side in a circle in the midst whereof must

(00:25):
the stone be which was also brought wherein thou shalt
at time to behold privately to thyself the state of
God's people through the whole earth. Go and thou shalt
receive terry, and you shall receive sleep, and you shall see.

(00:46):
But watch, and your eyes shall be fully opened. One thing,
which is the ground and element of thy desire, is
already profited. And out of seven thou hast been instructed
of the lesser pot most perfectly. Hey, welcome to stuff

(01:09):
to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Christian Seger. And from the beginning there you may
think that we were, I don't know, performing a ritual
of some kind and trying to summon an angel, And
you would be half right. That's right. That is uh.
That is a quote from the writings of the legendary,
the mysterious, the influential Dr John d the topic of

(01:31):
both episodes this week. Uh, and he is a fascinating
character and elizabethan mathematician, uh conjurer, possibly a spy cryptographer.
The list goes on first and foremost a mathematician, but
it gets it gets a lot more complicated than that,

(01:52):
is you try and piece together this man, the world
he lived in, and what he really believed in. D
Is is one of those characters that we've We've been
talking about doing an episode on him for a while now,
and when we dove into the research, we we really realized, Okay,
this needs to be two episodes. And the way that
we've decided to split these episodes categorically is this first

(02:16):
episode is going to be more grounded in the sexy,
occult magical stuff, and the second episode is going to
be grounded in his scientific endeavors and his state craft. Um.
There's so much about him that I learned doing this,
and there's so many different interpretations too. He's just this

(02:37):
fascinating individual. Um. If you're unfamiliar with him, I guess
the best way to describe him is that he was
one of the leading intellectuals of his time. It may
not sound like it given some of the things we're
gonna say in these episodes, but he had magical interests.
But despite that, he brought developments to England and cartography, navigation, mathematics,

(02:59):
astronomy and cryptography, and his reputation in alchemy and astrology
totally influenced the court of Queen Elizabeth the first. He
was no doubt influential in that respect. Yeah, he He
had a rapport with with Queen Elizabeth. Uh. Some historians
go as far as to say that they were friends,

(03:20):
and you do get the idea that there may have
been as much of a friendship as was possible between
the Queen of England and uh, you know, essentially a
common born intellectual who dabbled in magic. Right yeah, um,
we'll say this later, but he did think of himself
as her Merlin, which is really fascinating and comes into play.

(03:45):
So the I said that we're going to split these
episodes up. But one thing that you have to keep
in mind is that the magic and the science overlap
a lot too. Um, and so even in things like
when he's advising them on national matters, on expanding the
English Empire, he's still thinking in magical terms, like he's
Merlin and she's King Arthur. Right, He's he's a guy who,

(04:08):
like I said, it's it's essential to keep the mathematics
and he in mind. But it's not like he's a
guy who, all right, I'm gonna do my job here,
which is science or mathematics, and then in my free
time I'm going to do a little sorcery and in
and then also I have this advising gig with the Queen.
He saw it all connected. He saw it as part
of a single tapestry of cosmos. And so there's a

(04:33):
note I just want to provide here before we really
dive in deep, which is I was reading an article
in History Today that came out earlier this year by
a woman named Katie Burkewood, and she says, keep in
mind that the main sources for the story of Dee's
life are all his own. Um so mainly what we're

(04:54):
looking at. What we didn't look at this, We looked
at people's interpretation of those primary sources, but we da
that's true. But mainly his diaries, which cover the period
from fifteen seventy seven to sixteen o seven, so about
from his age of fifty until he died, those were
a big source of his uh I guess life history.

(05:17):
And this also coincides with the period of time where
he was up to his most fantastic endeavors, so keep
that in mind. His early years were documented in his
own autobiographical account, which was written in fifteen ninety four,
and what he was trying to do is explain his
past to the crown, basically to Queen Elizabeth, because he

(05:39):
was trying to secure a royal position or an appointment
that would secure him a regular income. Uh And another
source is the books that were recovered from his stolen collection.
So we're gonna talk probably a lot throughout the course
of these episodes about he had this infamously huge library
and it was ransacked at one point, and some of

(06:00):
those books have been recovered, uh and he wrote extensive
annotations in their margins, so some uh D scholars, I guess,
go and find these copies and read those annotations to
try to learn more about him. Apparently much of that
library now resides with the Royal College of Physicians, I
think in England. Yeah, so it's it's kind of difficult

(06:22):
to tell truth from fiction in some of these cases.
And Robert and I did our best when we read
something that sounded really strange to corroborate it with multiple sources,
and we we did find that. But then again, like
those sources were all mainly coming from D's own writings,
that's right there. There of course a number of wonderful

(06:43):
books out there on D and his work, some books
with with with different focuses than others. Uh. One book
that I kept looking at was the one by Benjamin Wooley.
Oh yeah, The Queen's Conjure. Uh. Excellent book, very readable.
I recommend that to anybody. But yeah, this is a
guy that is really, in many ways a near unbelievable character,

(07:05):
truly stranger than fiction. Like if if Alan Moore wrote
him into a story, you chalk it up to, oh, well,
that's just Alan Moore's wondrous imagination and use of fictional
and historic and pop culture hybridization. The same if he
had appeared in an umberto Echo book, you might be
tempted to think, oh, this is a fantastic creation, this
Dr D. But but no, he this was a real,

(07:27):
real man. He lived, he wrote, and I'm not sure
there has been anyone quite like him since we we
see parallels and some of the figures that we've covered
on the show and we'll and and are planning to
cover such as John C. Lily or Jack Parsons, but
D kind of stands alone. Yeah, And it's funny that

(07:47):
you mentioned Alan Moore because one of the sources that
I went to was a History Channel special that aired
in two thousand and two and it was narrated by
Brian Cox all about John D's life, and Alan Moore
is one of the go to experts that they summon.
You know, they cut to him every once in a while,

(08:09):
and you hear that out in more voice, he's he
really knows his stuff about d um I imagine because
Alan Moore is really into sort of like the history
of English magic and stuff like that outside of his
own fiction. But um, yeah, he the first first of all,
I recommend, like, if you're really into John D, go

(08:29):
check out this this video. I watched it on YouTube,
and uh, some of it's hilarious and some of it's
really illuminating. But there's um they like do that thing
that the History Channel used to do where they like
re enact scenes of a person's life with actors and
they have like kind of makeshift, low budget like sets
and stuff, so like shadowy scenes of somebody dressed as

(08:52):
John D shuffling papers around sort of yeah, that thing,
or like him looking into a crystal ball, or him
just walking across the field. Yeah. So I think probably
the best way for us to to really first introduce
you to John D is let's just do a broad
stroke overview of his life. You know, we've given you
sort of the two sentence summary of who John D was,

(09:14):
but we'll start with his life and then we'll really
dive in deep into the magic stuff. Yeah, for with
a guy like this, I feel like this is the
best approach. We'll give you the broad strokes and then
we'll go back in and discuss the areas that we
we we have time to discuss in these episodes. Yeah. Yeah,
And I just want to say to like, keep in
mind that there are people whose like entire career is

(09:35):
writing about this guy. So what we cover in like
two too and a half hours and podcasts, maybe you
may be out there, you may know some stuff about
D and be like, well, why didn't you you cover that.
There's only so much we could do here, so we
really tried to condense it down to fit the show.
All Right, Well, here we go, let's kick it off
with the July. John d is born in London, England. Yeah,

(09:57):
and my first question is who ray this is a
guy like John D. Like, how does he how does
he end up like this? So his father, Roland, was
a merchant of fabrics and textiles and he worked for
King Henry the Eighth. Uh. In fifteen fifty three, his
father was actually indicted and imprisoned in the Tower of London,
presumably because he had ties to Protestant reformists and sympathizers

(10:21):
of the late King Edward. So there's a lot of
This is a theme that goes on throughout D's life,
is the political struggles back and forth between the Catholic
and Protestant Church. Yeah, that's definitely going on in the
background the whole time. Now fifty two, John D enters St.
John's College at Cambridge. Yeah, and so from what I

(10:41):
read at the time, the curriculum for such a college
included something called the trivium, which is grammar, rhetoric and logic.
And once you master those things you get your what
would be your your bachelor's basically, uh. And then the
quadrivium is what you study for your masters, and that's
astronomy geography, music, and mathematics. Now, okay, again this is

(11:06):
self reported from his own thing that he wrote to
the Queen later in life. But D says that while
he was there he only slept four hours a night,
so all he could do is study. So on one
hand he was essentially applying for a position in this
but also, as as as we discussed more about John D,
I don't really doubt this for a second. He seems

(11:27):
like the kind of guy who who may have only
slept four hours a night, could constantly consume information. So
in fifty five he really he receives that bachelor's degree
in Arts and readership. Fifty seven he takes his first
scientific learning excursion to the Low Countries of continental Europe,

(11:49):
and this becomes important later on because he spends an
increasingly increasing amount of times there on various excursions. Eight
he gets his master's degree from Cambridge studying mathematics and navigation,
and then fifteen forty eight to fifteen fifty one his
second learning excursion to the Low Countries and Uh in particular.

(12:10):
On this trip he studied under mathematician cartographers Pezro Nonez
Gema for Silius Abraham Ortelius and gerardis Mercator, as well
as through his own studies in Paris and elsewhere. Yeah,
and these the second set of travels, these benefited England.
What he would do is he'd share his findings from

(12:30):
these travels with Queen Elizabeth's associate. So for here's an example,
in fifteen sixty two he discovered the works of Trithemius,
and we're going to talk about this later. He introduced
the Court and subsequently Elizabeth to the study of modern
cryptography through this, ultimately changing I guess war games, right

(12:50):
with the way that they used cryptography. Yeah, yeah, well,
we'll definitely get into that in this into the second episode.
But this was a time when when coded messages were
where really important. There was a mayor a matter of
life and life and death. Now, as you mentioned, at
this time, he is he's he seems to have his
sight set on official, on an official position with the Crown,
and in doing so, he turned down a mathematical professorship

(13:14):
at the University of Paris, and he turned down a
similar position at the University of Oxford that was in
fifty one and fifty four, and then he returned to England.
He went to Court and there he offered mathematical science
instruction to courtiers, to navigators, just generally trying to make
himself useful to the court. He served as a consultant

(13:34):
and an astrologer to, among others, Queen Mary the first. Yeah.
So before he worked for Mary's court, he had a
patron who was the Duke of Northumberland, and this guy
tried to place his own daughter in law on the
throne before Mary was placed there. He was charged with
treason and executed. And this is one of the first
of many times indeed's life where he had less influence

(13:58):
because he had sort of like followed the wrong person,
and he has these periods of like waxing and waning
influence over the English monarchy. Yeah, getting involved in the
machinations of of the court. Here, um, who's in and
who's out, Which which stars rising, which one's falling. So
then in fifteen fifty five, this is when he's jailed

(14:20):
on the charge of being a conjuror. He was soon
released thereafter. But let's let's pause for a second and
try to figure this out. So the thinking here is
that Queen Mary's examiners were the ones who jailed him,
possibly with charges of conspiring with her sister Elizabeth, who
was arrival at the time, and he was allegedly casting

(14:41):
horoscopes for Queen Mary and her family without their permission,
and because the predictions were bad for Mary, it was
considered to be practicing witchcraft against the crown. The story
goes like this that while Elizabeth was under house arrest,
she asked d to perform her and Mary's horror scope,
and so he did, and it predicted that Elizabeth would

(15:03):
have a long reign and that Mary would die, which
you know kind of happened, uh, And this is what
landed him in jail. Now after this, after he gets
out of jail, he's placed under the charge of Edmund Bonner,
who is the Bishop of London. And in one of
these writings he actually refers to Bonner as his quote

(15:24):
singular friend, and there's some dispute about like are they
actually friends or is this like his sarcastic term for
this guy who's like kind of his jailer um. But
after this point, all of these written works included sections
defending his reputation from slander. So he was well aware
that his mixture of astrology and magic and conjuring with

(15:47):
science and mathematics and statesmanship was under scrutiny, and not
for the last time. So in eight he published an
afrotistic Introduction which presented his his own views on natural philosophy,
forspy and astrology and h then fifteen fifty eight the
same year, this is also when the rule of Queen
Elizabeth the First begins. Yeah, and so the rumor here

(16:10):
again this is from d Zone writings, is that when
Elizabeth took power, she asked d to choose her coronation
date based on astrology. Now who knows. I mean, yes,
there's evidence that he was jailed performing horoscopes for her previously,
so why wouldn't she. But then you know he's the

(16:31):
one claiming this stuff, and we know that later on
in life he's just constantly trying to gain favor with
the court by it sort of, but he's he's bolstering
his resume. So yeah, he becomes the scientific and medical
advisor to the Queen and uh were in the mid
fifteen sixties, he establishes himself at more Lake, near London,
where he builds a laboratory, the largest private library in England,

(16:56):
more than four thousand books and manuscripts, and he ut,
you know, well, we'll describe some more of the settings here,
but it sounds like a fabulous place. And he would
he would invite other scholars to come in and and
use his books if they needed to look something up.
And of course he was constantly in communication with other people,
Like it was I was reading just yesterday about how

(17:16):
he had these correspondence, uh, series of correspondence with with
Chico Brahi, the real Yeah, the famed astronomer. Yeah, famously
lost his nose in a sword fight. Fabulous character of
the time. Yeah, we should totally do it, Tycho Brahe episode. Um. Yeah.
So the other thing about this to note, just for context,

(17:37):
about the library, we say four thousand books, and some
of you are like, yeah, I got four thousand books
in my house, right. Well, here's context. He had two thousand,
six hundred and seventy manuscripts in that collection. Cambridge University
at the time only had four hundred and fifty one
manuscripts and Oxford University only had three hundred and seventy nine.
So this was considered a massive library at the time. Like,

(18:00):
if you're thinking about this, like, uh, going back to
the Grimoire episode that you and I did a couple
of years ago, right, Like, like, these are not just
like pulp books. They're not like soft covers, right, Like
some of these are written on parchment or their palap sests. Right,
So I mean he's got like a serious collection here
in The books are unique too. Yeah. In many cases,

(18:21):
these would be books where you're wanting to read them,
you might ask arounding and you would find out, oh, well,
Dr D has a copy of that. You should go
ask him. Maybe you'll get to look at it. Here's
another interesting thing I wanted to point out as well.
There's no evidence that he ever earned a doctoral degree,
but he was always referred to as Dr D. Kind
of interesting. Now. In a fifteen sixty four he published

(18:45):
the Hieroglyphic Monad, in which he offered a single mathematical
magical symbol as the key to unlocking, uh, the the
unity of nature. Yeah, and this, I mean, I guess
we'll maybe like post this on the landing page or
something thing we we actually shared or you shared it
on Facebook yesterday, kind of teasing the audience. Hey, this
is what we're working on. One person got it and

(19:06):
they referred to him as the d um but it
kind of looks like, how do you pronounce that that
German industrial band ein Stretton's nine streas into a new Boton. Yeah,
it does. In fact, I had to to look up
a New Boton's logo just to make sure that they
weren't too similar to them. Like, I never thought about
this before, but you know, they're two distinct symbols, but

(19:27):
they are reminiscent of one another. Yeah, very much so.
For some reason, I also find it looks like it
kind of looks like it could be a character from
a SpongeBob cartoon. I don't know. It does have like
an anthropologic quality to it, of like a head with
arms and legs and then like devil's horns. Yeah, or
it makes me think of the the aliens from Slaughterhouse
Five for some reason, the ones. It was like an

(19:49):
eye on a hand. I can't remember the name of him,
but at any rate, this was his there's his lands
and Slaughterhouse five. Yeah, there's a there's an alien zoo
for humans. I forgot all about that, but okay, I
just think about the horrors of world Mongola do so
in fifteen seventy he created the first English translation of

(20:12):
Euclid's Elements and added an influential preface that offered a
powerful manifesto en quote the dignity and usefulness of the
mathematical sciences, and he seems to certainly have highly regarded
mathematics is the key to understanding the natural world, but
also believed in the value of the occult to unlock
the deeper mysteries of the universe. And again, his ideas

(20:36):
of the occult and mathematics are kind of intertwined. This
is definitely going to be a theme that we returned
to over and over again in these episodes. Mathematics is
like the through line for him, whether or not he's
trying to talk to angels or if he's just trying
to plot out maps for people to discover the Northwest Passage. Yeah,
I feel like his mind was inherently mathematic if he

(20:57):
if he had lived in our age, I feel like
he would under probably be a hacker, right or a
high level program in addition to to whatever else he
was into. The History special compared him to Stephen Hawking,
and I thought that was an interesting comparison. Although I'm
still I'm still trying to. I don't know if there's
anybody alive that that really has these two things together.

(21:19):
You're right, Lily and Jack Parsons are similar. But I'm
really trying to rack my brain for somebody who's like
a really influential intellectual but also dabbles in the occult right,
that's still very much an outsider in his interest and
speaking of being an outsider in his interest three three
through fifteen eighty nine, in order to unlock the deeper
mysteries of the universe, de sought communication with angelic entities

(21:43):
with the aid of convicted counterfeitter towards turned occult sensation
Edward Kelly, who's a very complex character and of himself
into Kelly. Uh So, so these two end up running
around conducting seances in England, Poland and Bohemia and have
this rather volatile partnership. So it's like something out of

(22:07):
a reality TV show, like oh, you know how like
every time on the show, on this show, when when
we do some of these historical characters are like, oh,
this would make a great amc H show. The Dr
D Edward Kelly's show would be amazing because it would
be like them constantly like conniving behind one another's backs,

(22:27):
and then sitting in a room looking into a crystal ball,
talking to angels, and then like trying to figure out
how to sleep with one another's wives. Yeah, this is
another situation where d described Kelly as a friend and
it makes me wonder, like what it makes me question his, uh,
his criteria for friendship because he talks about Kelly who

(22:48):
was arguably a scoundrel and may have been conning him
half the time at least. And then there's Queen Elizabeth,
who you know, there's no way they were really friends.
They were you know, like I say, as much of
a friendship. So you could have with the Queen of England, Uh,
that bishop I mentioned earlier. Yeah, and then his his
his the warden of his prison essentially at the time.

(23:09):
So I don't know, I don't know if he ever
really got friendship exactly, but it's difficult in life. So
Kelly and him, they they end up going to essentially
Poland and then Bohemia, conducting their seances all along the way,
and then they come back. Yeah, that kind of falls
comes back, their their relationship falls apart. He returns to

(23:32):
England nine to try and try and put things back together.
He finds his home vandalized, his library has been ransacked. Uh,
and he's also come back to in England that is
less tolerant of his ideas, increasingly less tolerant. And then
the Bubonic plague strikes and kills pretty much everybody in
his family, including his wife and five of his eight children.

(23:53):
So he's utterly devastated. He's lost his library, he's lost
his family. He doesn't have as much influence and says
he used to. So in fift his friends raised money
for him and interceded on his behalf with Queen Elizabeth,
you know, just trying to land him in the right place, right.
So she appoints him warden of Manchester College. And and

(24:14):
this is from what I was reading, this is not
an ideal place for him to wind up. He's not,
you know, he's constantly being undermined minded by other individuals there.
He doesn't have a lot of clout, but a good
way to shuffle him off and get him. So he
doesn't really have any influence over her court, but he
still feels, you know, he's cashing a paycheck. And in

(24:35):
sixteen o three, Queen Elizabeth dies and James the First
takes to the throne and provides no support for D. Yeah.
So so for some context, James the First was fervently
against witchcraft and he personally oversaw the torture of women
who were accused of it. So he's not going to
be particularly fond of John D and his angels crying

(24:58):
and astrology and alca me. And then in December of
eight D dies following what is described as years of
poverty and isolation. However, it so even for someone like D,
it doesn't seem like poverty and isolation for him is
you know, quite the bottom of the barrel poverty and
isolation like this. A lot of this is him being

(25:19):
forced to sell off a lot of his prize possessions,
that sort of thing. Maybe not the the proudest period
of his of his life. But I didn't read anything
to indicate that he was on the streets. Yeah, so,
I mean, like to get an indication. I was looking
at pictures of um, what Mortlake looked like his estate
and where it is now today. I think there's like
apartments right along the River Thames, and uh it's you know,

(25:42):
by all accounts like it was a huge house. Uh.
He still had a lot of things. I don't think
he was going hungry. I just don't think he was
wealthy or had influence over the aristocracy the way he
might ride in the past. Um, now here's this is
really interesting. There's also evident that he didn't actually die
in December, uh, and that he three months later was

(26:06):
when he died in the following March in the London
home of an acquaintance. So get ready out there conspiracy things,
because I'm sure there's a lot of people out there
who are like, oh, John D found the Philosopher's Stone
and his immortal and uh is still with us today
or something, or these are fake accounts of his death,
you know, stuff like that. But the amazing thing about
D is it's all everything is already unbelievable enough with

(26:30):
how to even going into the conjecture of conspiracy theory. Uh,
though there's a lot of fun to be had there
as well. Um. Hey, on that note, we're gonna take
a quick break, and when we come back, we are
going to break into the spirituality of John D and
ultimately into his occult practices. Hi. I'm Holly Fry, and

(26:50):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and We're the co host of
stuff you missed in history class. We are a history
podcast that tries to look at the things that maybe
we're overlooked in your street classes, maybe not covered in
as much detail, or frankly, maybe covered in a way
that was not accurate. New episodes come out every Monday
and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else

(27:12):
that podcasts can be listened to. So it's important to
remember that that D was born into an age and
a place of Christendom. So yes, everyone still murdered each
other every year over their beliefs, and much of this
entailed conflicts of Protestants versus Catholics, the Church versus heretics,

(27:34):
and so forth. Uh, you really had to go quite
rustic or quite esoteric in order to find alternative modes
of belief that you could, you know, actually embrace all
of the stranger ideas that D entangled himself with astrology,
angelic communication, magic, etcetera. These were all still connected to
the culture of Christianity into the essentially like the mythos

(27:57):
of Christianity, I guess you'd say. And there's a lot
of evidence to suggest that D was a devoted Christian
his entire life, though certainly in a challenging time for
the faithful, which I guess it always is, uh, and
he was he was not afraid to explore ideas and
writings that others deemed dangerous to the faithful. And it's
also worth noting here that like a guy like d

(28:19):
who you know, you can say was a weird guy,
he had a he had a unique brain. He had
a unique view of everything, this ability to see magic
and mathematics and everything else wrapped up into one. So
he could, you know, cling to a Christian faith. But
his view of the Christian faith was was and it

(28:40):
was inherently different I think from from most people's at
the time. Yeah, I think it was different. But at
the same the way I like to think of it
is that he was into Christian mysticism right, and that
like he he he was a believer. He was trying
to do the right thing. I think he was trying
to ride the line between Protestantism in Catholicism so that

(29:01):
he basically could stay alive. Um, but that the stuff
that he believed was the mystical parts that were sort
of like some people were like, oh yeah, that that
that exists. I don't know if I subscribed to that
or not. And others were like, oh, yeah, that's part
of it. Yeah, talking to angels sure, uh, looking into
crystal balls, Yeah, definitely astrology. Okay, you know, Um in

(29:23):
the same way, I don't know, I'm like trying to
think of a modern day example, Like, I guess Cabala
keeps coming to mind, and that's not even modern day.
I mean Cabrala was around at the time of D
was alive. Um, so maybe that's an example. And he
mentioned astrology. D kept a private diary where he mentioned
a lot of when he now comes from his own writings,
but this was a time before diaries and calendars of

(29:44):
the modern sort. So D would would plot out the
positions of the planets in reference to the recorded details
of his daily life, likely in order to identify links
between his personal life and celestial events. So it's an
uncharacteristically intimate account of it, Liz BeFAN life, much of
it lost, however, but still there's a there's a lot there.
It's kind of been written in shorthand, and it will

(30:07):
include things like you know, his personal finances, jobs he
picked up. Um, I actually have an example here from
his diary October seven, My anger with Edward my coke
because of his disorder. October eight Mr Richard Western lent
me ten pounds for a year. October nine, I dined
with Sir Walter Rawleigh at Durham House. October eleven to

(30:29):
Edwards part of wagons. Mr Banks lent me upon loan
till after Christmas five pounds. Mr Emery sent me three
pounds by my servant Richard walka dine. So it's that
sort of thing. So it's just like kind of acquiring
like a couple of pounds here, a couple of pounds
there for his services presumably. I mean, I doubt that

(30:50):
they're just giving it to him as donations. Maybe he
read their horoscope or maybe he I don't know, I
wrote a map for them or something. Yeah, it's kind
of like an it's kind of like he kept an
astrologically aligned chart of his finances to a certain extent
in these and he was doing a lot of freelance
activities like to to Sup because he's a guy who's
spent a lot of money on books and UH and

(31:11):
his uh, his his interests, and to support that he
would do freelance horoscopes, you have freelance dream interpretations. And
I was even reading that he occasionally did some freelance
forensics work. Account of him apparently of him weighing in
on a robbery, uh and deciding who was who was guilty.

(31:33):
It's kind of it's kind of faint going from his notes,
but that seems to be the case. So d believed
in a natural magic. When we start talking about his
use of magic and his belief in magic and his magic,
that's tied up with mathematics. He saw magic as the
human ability to tap into the forces that God unleashed
when he created the cosmos, and that set things in motion.

(31:54):
So that's important, not not the power of God, but
the powers that God unleashed. Yeah, he saw natural magic
as actually a legitimate study of science, and in his
own books he listed the magical arts as being a
derivative subject of mathematics. Keep in mind that his thought
process wasn't unusual at the time. Many thought science and

(32:17):
magic were different facets to just understand understand what was
going on in the mind of God. Yeah, and it's
interesting too to look at his thoughts on magic that
he's essentially talking about technology here, granted with a lot
of occult bells and whistles, but he's talking about figuring
out how these forces in the universe work and figuring

(32:38):
out how to manipulate those forces. You know, it's a
really interesting connection to to the magic as technology thing
for him. When he was in college, he created special
effects for a production of Aristophanes packs and he was
branded Sorcerer because of it. He apparently built a giant
mechanical flying scare of I don't know if it actually flew,

(33:01):
but it was. It was like an automaton, and it
was apparently so realistic to the people who were watching
it that they they were like, oh, he must have
used magic to do this, but it was just engineering. Yeah,
this was a crazy moment in his life, and his
life was just full of these where yeah, he just
did FX for a play and the FX were so

(33:22):
good that people said, well, that was pretty amazing. This
guy is probably somehow involved with demonic forces, was the
only excuse. And I was reading like people weren't really
sure exactly how he pulled it off, too, because he
would have had limited resources with the stage at that time,
so it's not we're not even exactly sure what he did,

(33:43):
how he achieved the effect, but but he certainly what
was I think it was pretty clear that he was
using practical effects and not not actual sourcery here. Um.
Another thing that we should note here too, especially before
we really get into his angelic communicate Shan, is that
the idea of an angelic language, which is referred to

(34:04):
as a Nochian, is said to be the mathematics behind
how creation was was made. So you know, keep in mind,
like as we're going through all of this, he's thinking
of his interrogations of angels as being scientific in nature
and that he's trying to understand how the world works. Yes. Yeah,

(34:26):
so in a sense, the Anochian language and mathematics are
like one is the secular and one is the spiritual
version of the same idea that there's this underlying word,
there's this underlying system that we can understand, tap into
and therefore gain insight into how the universe works. Yeah. Alright,
so here's the juicy stuff, the angelic communication. So he

(34:51):
really wanted to communicate with angels to help him understand
natural knowledge, and the way he did this was by
attempting to conjure spirits using a crystal and this was
and at the time. Yeah, and it's I want to
add real quick for anyone out there is not familiar
with with Christianity and angels and all that, because I
found myself trying to explain angels to my son the
other that's gonna about it, about what angels were, uh,

(35:14):
And I didn't tell him all of this. But in
the in the Christian tradition, the angels, of course, the
the servants of God. They are powerful and at times
very terrifying beings that do everything from deliver messages to
you know, destroy whole cities and turn people into pillars
of salt, that sort of thing. I I wrote a
video that we shot here about different types of angels

(35:37):
throughout Christian mysticism, and there's like, you know, there's the
thrones and the dominions and they're all there's like nine
different categories. I think cherubs yeah, uh and yeah, I
mean they're utterly alien and terrifying when you think about
them from the context of these time. Yeah. Um, So
we're not the fluffy cherubs of the modern version of

(35:59):
the the cherubs or Renaissance chairub that you see on
a coffee mug or something. Yeah. No, not at all,
not at all. Some of them were like wheels of
burning fire with eyeballs in the middle and stuff. I mean,
like truly horrifying kind of imagery. Yeah. Fantasy illustrator Michael Caluda, great, Yeah,
he did a number of angel illustrations for a short

(36:20):
lived card game called Harresy Kingdom Come Back in the nineties,
and he did a fabulous dut job invoking this. I
feel like that this this potent, intimidating alien but also
kind of but also holly feeling vision of of an
angelic entity. So I always connected those when I try
and think about these these angelic beings as we encounter

(36:42):
in uh in Christian tradition, and I imagine as D
was performing these seances that we're about to talk about,
although he didn't really see anything himself, that's what he
was imagining was in the room with him. So why
didn't he see anything himself? Well, D himself couldn't see spirits,
so he relied on psychics enter Edward Kelly. So, Edward Kelly,

(37:08):
uh is this twenty six year old cunning man. You
may have heard us talk about cunning men before on
the show. I was referring to them in an episode
of UM when we were talking about Warren Ellis's book
Cunning Plans, because cunning men are sort of I guess
the best way to explain it real quickly is just
like an English shamanic tradition maybe. Um. And but he

(37:32):
was also, you know, a criminal and a counterfeitter. He
had his ears cropped from his head before he met D.
So think about that when you're thinking about this guy,
at least one of them. And he apparently always wore
a cowl to cover up the garage, and that was
for counterfeiting coins. Um. Okay, So D and Kelly they
meet for the first time in fIF two. Yeah, and this,

(37:54):
this whole episode had there There's a lot more detail,
but I just try to go through the basics here.
So Kelly was calling himself Talbot at the time, which
was one of his his aliases. And uh, and it's
I think it's certainly fitting that even his introduction to
D was was clothed in deception. So he was apparently
he was apparently a pretty charismatic character. As we've talked about.

(38:15):
He had difficulty kneeling, he walked with the staff and
he's a young dude, but but he also had had
at least one ear cropped uh for for for engaging
in counterfeiting. He also may have served as a crooked
notary in London at one port. At one point reputed
to have dabbled in necromancy. He arrived at D's to
lie low after allegedly cheating a lady out of some jewels.

(38:39):
But he seems to have to have talked his way
out of trouble with with the individuals who were pursuing
him over this, and in his private diary, D noted
that quote I have confirmed that Talbot was was a fraud.
And Kelly himself came along later at some point and
scribbled indeed's diary a horrible and sat under his life,

(39:01):
which which I think says a lot about this friendship. UM.
And so that, yeah, their friendship seems to have been
rather complicated. Uh D seems to have considered him a friend,
and certainly it would go on to spend a great
deal of time with him in the years they had,
but it's also a quarrelsome intense relationship. And to what
extent was Kelly using d To what extent did D

(39:23):
c himself is using Kelly if he saw he saw
perhaps Kelly as a as an in the way of
of of better communicating with this spiritual realm um. So
it's it's it's a complex relationship again. So D's diary
recounts a series of conversations with angels that Kelly facilitated,
and the hope was that D would get these angels

(39:46):
to help him recover the original language spoken by Adam
before the confusion at Babel, which you know we referred
to earlier as a nokian um. And the way that
we know about this was the spirit diaries were actually
dug up in a field ten years after his death,
and in them is a completely new language with its

(40:07):
own grammar and syntax. Uh. The angels supposedly provided him
with the Anochian language, which they said was the er
language of humanity. And I want to I want to
add one thing in here, which is that you know,
as I was reading through all this stuff, I was
utterly convinced that Edward Kelly was scamming D the whole time,

(40:28):
and that he was just making up the names of
these angel characters and performing there whatever their traits were,
and just making the whole thing up. But Alan Moore
in that History Channel thing points out, sure, that's probably true,
but how on earth did somebody like Edward Kelly invent

(40:49):
an entire language on the fly. He wasn't a linguistics expert.
He would have had to have been a genius to
just create a fake language out of nowhere. And people
have since studied and Ochi and have looked over these
notes and it's you know, it functions as a language,
so uh that you know, the big question is like, well, Okay,

(41:10):
if he wasn't talking to angels, how did Edward Kelly
come up with this stuff? Yeah? Because you're left with
a few possibilities here. As I understand, it's either, ay,
he actually did come up with this this material, and
there's some questions about about whether or not he had
the background to do it. Um the other possibility and
this seems this seems to to square with what we

(41:31):
know about his his character. Perhaps he stole it from
somewhere he he copied it from someone else, and we're
just there's a there's a certain amount of ambiguity about
where that might have been, where where it might have
been stolen from. Yeah, and that we don't know now. Kelly,
as he was looking through his crystal ball or his
scrying mirror, said that the angels were angry with humanity

(41:53):
for being captivated by anything but God, and they described
to d the order of the Cosmos, instructions for rituals
and predictions of the future, as well as the Anochian language.
Their major pronouncement was that that they wanted the world
to be united under a single religion that united all
the denominations of Christianity along with Judaism and Islam. So essentially,

(42:18):
you know, four hundred years ago, these angels quote unquote,
we're advocating for globalism. So it's kind of fascinating when
you think about it, especially like if we consider like
Kelly was probably making the whole thing up. He was
like advocating for this very like futuristic idea of socioeconomics.
You know, it's it's fascinating. Yeah, I can easily imagine

(42:41):
a scenario where where one of these angels is saying, look, Christianity,
juda Judaism, Islam, these uh, these factions are not gonna
work everything out in the foreseeable future. Better that we
just combine it all into one and then everybody can
be unified. Now. For Kelly's part, as you know, as
he's relaying these messages from the angels, he's also saying

(43:03):
to D, these angels are actually demons, and I'm terrified
to them because they know that I previously had participated
in some demonic grim wire magic um, and D was like, nope,
we've got to continue. I absolutely insisted that we continue.
I mean, Kelly was basically like a prisoner INDs home
um and the two of them even asked the angels

(43:25):
for money at one point, and Kelly reportedly asked them
for a loan, like like they were gonna make money
appear out of nowhere and then he would give it
back to them or something. I don't know. So and
and keep in mind too, it's very likely that this
is all just a fiction in his own head that
he's enacting in front of D for D's purposes, right,

(43:46):
But then also, I mean, when when you're when you're
dealing with this kind of magic and and if you're
considering this some sort of demonic entity that you're you're
communicating with, uh, I mean that that has some very
real life ramifications, not an age where you can just
walk around on the street and talk about your conversations
with demons. So while they're in the middle of all this,

(44:06):
and they're they're working at a more like they uh
come into contact with the third party. And this guy's name,
he's a Polish prince in his name is Lord Albert Laski. Uh.
And he had visited England and claimed that he was
there simply to meet the queen and enjoy the sceneries. Uh.
He had previously been suspected of trying to steal the

(44:27):
Polish throne. Everybody's trying to steal a throne in this story. Yeah,
I think that's an important thing to keep in mind
about the about the European setting at the time is
this was not an age of stability. This was an
age of tense politics, an age of war, an age
of of rather robust espionage, um coded messages going back

(44:50):
and forth, and and people people dying when these codes
are unraveled. So Laski's involvement with these guys is weird
and debated, and Robert and I had to look to
a couple of different books to try to figure out
how much we could, you know, resolve as to what
was his involvement in the situation. Apparently he started showing

(45:13):
up at the seances, and this was considered problematic, I
think by Kelly because there was a third party involved there,
probably because Kelly was afraid that he would get caught um.
But also the idea was basically like, why would you
why would you sit on these seances? Some demon could
come out and destroy you. You know, it's like this
horribly scary thing. There's also, you know, some question about

(45:36):
whether or not he was an informer, either for Poland
or possibly the Holy Roman Empire UM. Either way, it
seems that he was the one who eventually leads them
to Poland. UM and the story goes that he was
duped by Edward Kelly and the whole scrying thing, and
he believed that great things were meant for Kelly uh

(45:57):
And so he convinces them to return to Poland with
him in fifteen eighty three, and they pack up their
whole family, uh and all their stuff with them, except
for the library, this huge library. Uh. Now, there's a
lot of stuff that goes on in Poland. We'll get
into that. But when they get there, their experiments, whatever

(46:18):
they were doing, I think it was alchemical in nature
were so costly that Laski lost his fortune and lands
trying to fund the two of their work. And when
it became apparent that he couldn't afford this any longer, uh,
the spirits began to express their doubts through Kelly that
Laski may not have been the right man to bring

(46:39):
about the changes in Europe that they desired. Yeah. Now,
this is a period of time where where Kelly just
increasingly seems like he's just a con artist, you know,
making promises of gold, like generating gold through alchemy for
his benefactors, and then here when things don't go as planned,
when he can't deliver, he cast doubt on has been factors. Yeah,

(47:01):
and and in the way that Laski basically gets rid
of them, as he says, you know, I'm gonna pay
for you guys to go to Prague and I'll provide
you with a letter of introduction to Emperor Rudolph the
second his problem. Now, now we I think we mentioned
this in the you know, the short bio at the beginning,
but apparently, you know, Rudolph threw d out of the

(47:21):
Holy Roman Empire. Now, some say it was because he
suspected that D was an English spy. Now, considering you
know what we know about D and cryptography and statecraft,
maybe he was. We're gonna talk about that more in
the next episode. But there's also evidence that the angels
told D that he needed to go to Rudolph and
tell Rudolph that he was possessed by demons. Now, the

(47:46):
Catholic Church were aware of this, and they considered D
and Kelly a threat. Think about this though, Like, in
context of the time, D is so much of a
believer in what Kelly is telling him that he's willing
to go to the Emperor and be like, sorry, you're
possessed by demons and you you know you need to
really turn your life around. Why don't you listen to us?

(48:08):
I mean, that's an executable offense. Luckily he just was exiled. Now,
it seems that D was very sincere about this, while
it also seems that Kelly was probably duping him and
their relationship lasted for ten years. Here's where it all
falls apart. So the angels told them to swap wives.

(48:30):
Sounds again, It sounds like reality TV show to me. Uh,
there's this angel that they keep communicating with named Medemi,
and she's described as being kind of this um, I
don't know, like coquettish little girl that uh Kelly would
describers like running around the room and stuff. And she
told them, you guys have to share all things in common,

(48:53):
and they interpreted that as meaning their wives. Now, Jane
d was D's wife at the time. She was his
third wife. He'd had two previous wives who died I
believe of illness. She was much younger than him. I
think she was in like her mid twenties and he
was in his fifties. And she was reportedly very upset
about this because, by all accounts, Edward Kelly was not

(49:15):
uh an attractive man or you know, a trustworthy man.
So the last thing she wanted to do was have
to sleep with this guy. But D thought it was
a valid command from the angels, especially because then even
D was like, hey, I need some uh some confirmation
on this. So Kelly's like, okay, let me look into
the screwing ball over here, and he summons the angel Uriel,

(49:39):
who's like a pretty high up in the hierarchy of angels,
and Uriel confirms that He's like, yep, you guys have
to share everything. So two days after they drew up
their wife swapping contract, then the Scarlet Woman Babylon appeared
to Kelly. Now some of you may recognize this from

(50:00):
like a Crowley in magic. Uh. She's also known as
the Horror of Babylon and revelations. This was so scary
to them, or at least two d that they parted
ways and their sessions ceased forever they they they their
relationship ended. Kelly ended up wandering around Bohemia, and he

(50:21):
then convinces Rudolph the Second, Hey, I know alchemy. I
might be able to use the Philosopher's Stone to make
you gold. Yeah, and this would uh, this would seem
to be the just to spell the final chapter of
of Edward Kelly's life. You know, at this point the
story I really D and Kelly certainly kind of created,

(50:45):
seemed to have created like codependently, their their own little
crazy trip here and uh and I feel feel bad
for the women that were sucked along the way. But
things finally come apart. They come to pe says, I
feel like D is the character who certainly comes out
off as more honest, more devout, whereas, as you know,

(51:06):
Kelly is is probably just a con artist who's also
buying into certain amounts of his own con So I
don't think one should take solace from such things. But
it seems that Kelly died in fifteen seven or fifty
in a check castle where he was imprisoned for failing
to produce that alchemist gold, and he apparently died from

(51:29):
injuries sustained while trying to escape. According to Benjamin Woolly's book, Um,
Kelly tried to climb from the window on a rope
of knotted sheets, you know, just like in the movies,
and then fell, breaking both legs. And this was after
drugging the guards with opium smuggled in by his wife Joanna.
This guy, yeah d later writes that he'd heard that

(51:52):
Kelly quote had been Swain, and there were rumors that
that Kelly, even at the time, had faked his own
death and was continuing to practice alchemy in southern Germany
or possibly Russia. But then and then the conspiracy theorists
would say like he went on to live for hundreds
of years, and he was resputing. But I have a feeling,

(52:14):
and it seems like the more historians tend to agree
that yeah, he probably fell out of that fell from
that that that rope of sheets and broke both his
legs and then subsequently died of the injuries. Yeah, that
sounds right to me. So why don't we take one
more break, and then let's talk about the sort of
spiritual artifacts that come up after D's death. I'm Kristin

(52:41):
Conger and I'm Caroline Irvan, and together we host a
podcast stuff Mom never told you that gets down to
the business of being women from every imaginable angle. New
episodes come out Mondays and Wednesdays on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,
or wherever else you get your podcasts. All right, we're back.

(53:04):
So D was for for whatever else D was, And
certainly he was a lot of things again, all kind
of woven together. He was certainly a collector of occult
paraphernalia and occult books. Uh. And we still have some
of these spiritual artifacts. The British Museum retains ownership of
several items that he and and Kelly utilized in seances

(53:26):
and other rights. So we've already talked about these extensive
library and you can think of it in these terms.
This is the way that D divided it. You had
the external bibliotheca, which is the external library. You had
several rooms or appendices which led off from the library,
and in these dependencies of visitors to his home, described

(53:50):
celestial and terrestrial globes, a five foot quadrant, a ten
foot to cross staff, a sa compass, an accurate quote
watch clock, uh portable time piece, various marvels from his travels.
And these rooms also housed his libraries laboratories, so where
multiple skills bubbled. You know, it sounds like a complete

(54:12):
uh you know, set from a hammer horror film. Yeah,
there's no uh, it's not a coincidence that our modern
day idea of what a wizard or a sorcerer looks
like is d We had that idea of him in
the robe with a big, long white beard. Yeah, we
have some various we have various illustrations of of what
he looked like, and I think there's probably one is

(54:34):
the cover image for this episode. So you have already
have an idea in your head. But yeah, he looked
like our modern conception of a wizard. So he had
he had all these these rooms filling off from the library,
from the external library, but then there was also the
internal bibliotheca, the private study an adjoining chapel, and there
was also an adjoining chapel where, to quote Wullie, he

(54:57):
presumably shelved the Bibles and devotion text so conspicuously lacking
from the catalogs of the external bibliotheca, but the internal bibliotheca,
the internal library, this is where he stored his magical equipment,
his confidential writings, and certain books of frequent use. And uh,
by the way, this, if this sounds like a rather

(55:19):
costly man cave, you're right. Uh it steadily became unsustainable
on his mirror eighty pound annual stipend from his rectory
at Long Leadenham, And so he provided. This is why
he provided a number of freelance services, including tutoring, astrological readings,
dream interpretation, medical consultations and forensic advice, which already mentioned.

(55:42):
So uh. Among the various items in his possession, again,
a few of them survived this day, and one of
them is uh Dr D's Magical mirror, also known as
Dr D's Magical Speculum. That I don't know where we're going,
but this already sounds bad. So there's some wonderful images
of this, and I'll try to include some on the

(56:04):
landing page for this episode of Stuff to Blow Your
Mind dot com. The Black Mirror here this uh, this
magical mirror. It's probably not quite what you would imagine
if someone asks you to envision on elizabethan sorcerer's mirror.
It looks rather like part of an Ikea coffee table. Actually,
it's an obsidian quote smoking mirror, so named because the

(56:25):
squire gazing into the mirror would see clouds of smoke,
which would part to reveal a vision. Uh. And and
this is definitely an item that Edward Kelly made use
of as well. Apparently it's of Aztec origin, brought to
Europe after the conquest of Mexico, acquired by Dr d
for use in his magical pursuits in the late sixteenth century.

(56:47):
Perhaps created though up to two centuries earlier in Mexico.
And this is in the British Museum. Yeah, it's a obsidian.
There's a wood case covered in tooled leather with label
and handwriting of one Horace Walpole and a quotation from
a Samuel Butler poem. So do you think this is
where the idea for the title of the show Black

(57:08):
Mirror came from? I have. I've never seen there, I've
never seen any connective tissue there, but I couldn't help
but think of it. You know, the scrying mirror. I
know that the black mirror that on the TV show
is you know, supposed to have to do with like
the the the the black screens of personal devices. But
it does make me think too now about scrying mirrors,

(57:30):
and I wonder, yeah, I wondered to what extent a
smoking mirror is invoked in that. Now, this is not
to be confused with the strange mirror. Uh, just as
as it was sometimes called that was given to D
by one William Pickering the quote great perspective glass, and
this apparently stood in a corner of his study, and

(57:50):
according to Wully, anyone who lunged at the glass with
a dagger found their reflection lunging back at them quote
with like hand, sword or or dagger, creating an unsettling effect,
but one that D would use to explain how all
strange effects could be explained by the mathematics of perspective.
So this was not something that he apparently used in

(58:12):
occult practices. And I guess, based on what we know
about it, it would have been a nonreversing mirror, of
which there's a few different varieties, and the Queen herself
apparently once stood before this mirror. Now he also had
two crystal balls, one of which good Old Edward Kelly
or Talbot used to see uriel. Uh. There's the seal

(58:36):
of God or Sigillum. Day used to support other occult
objects such as the crystals. This is also in the
British Museum, so this would have been kind of you know,
the table for their their other objects. Uh. There there
are the crystals themselves, one of which is in the
British Museum. John D's crystal used for a clairvoyance and
for curing disease metal in courts uh from around fIF two.

(58:59):
You can also see images of this. So it's it's
fascinating we have some of the magical artifacts of his life,
of his time still with us today. He Yeah, I
can't help but think about again, like the research that
we did about grimoires in that uh, that a lot
of those were created I think earlier than Day's time,

(59:23):
but he's still relying on a lot of the I
guess magical thinking would be the right way to put it.
Um that surrounded those texts and then applied them to
objects in the way that we now understand as being
just like part of fantasy genre of like, well, this
is how a wizard works. They have a staff and
a crystal and a huge library. Right. Uh. Yeah, it's

(59:48):
interesting that you know, certainly Merlin is the the the
the the perfect example of the the the English wizarding character.
And it's certainly a character that, uh, that had an
influence on D. But then D himself becomes this this
influential icon of of English wizardry. Uh. And it's almost

(01:00:09):
certain that William Shakespeare modeled the character of Prospero in
The Tempest on the character of D. Yeah. Uh and
interesting again, tying it back to the whole Allen Moore thing.
In Ellen Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Prospero shows up
as a character and it's heavily implied that he is
John D. You know, speaking of sort of modern interpretations

(01:00:31):
as of looking around. Uh. Interestingly enough, Rocky horror mastermind
Richard O'Brien played Dr D in the nine film Jubilee,
which is kind of like a time traveling elizabe Ethan Thing.
Actor David Threlfall played both the Prospero and Dr John
d uh the later in the second Elizabeth movie. Okay, yeah,

(01:00:52):
I was gonna adde because there's been these Elizabeth movies
and I thought they must have included D somehow. Yeah.
I have not seen the Golden Age, but he only
he shows up in that, as do some of these
other characters, especially ones will discuss in the next episode
that deals a little more closely with his you know,
his real world pursuits. And then wait a minute, there's

(01:01:13):
a note here about Terrence McKenna. Yeah, so this largely
according to the Internet Movie Database, Terrence McKenna played D
in The Alchemical Dream Rebirth of the Great Work and
the whole You can find the whole thing on YouTube.
Uh it seems like he just like McKenna, just narrates it.
I didn't watch the whole thing, but I didn't. I

(01:01:35):
didn't notice a scene in which he dresses up as D.
But still that's like, um, I don't know, like modern
day quote magicians slash psychedelic psychonauts dream come true. That's
kind of a thing. Yeah, so it's interesting to see
these influence in uh in in modern society. And entertainment.

(01:01:56):
There they're a whole list of of examples. And we're
not even gonna get into where d shows up in
various fictional works to varying degrees, either as a as
an amazing side character or occasionally as a central character.
Huh well, okay, so I feel like we've covered as
well as we can in the time available to us
the occult magical aspects of D. Now we're gonna cut

(01:02:22):
this episode and our next episode this week is going
to be all about his contributions to science, to state
craft and cryptography. That's right, So pick up with us
again in the next episode and we will dive into more,
uh cantalizing details about the life and work of Dr
John d Now. In the meantime, if you want to

(01:02:44):
get in touch with us, don't forget that we are
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Uh and you can always visit us at stuff to
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have to use any of fancy wizarding equipment. You don't
need a magic mirror or a scrying crystal. Just send

(01:03:06):
it to blow the mind at how stuff works dot
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