John Dee popularized crystal gazing in 16th century England, was a contemporary of Nostradamus, and, like his famous French rival, was an offical astrologist for the Queen.

Son of a minor official at the English court of Henry VIII, Dee was somewhat of a child prodigy in a stunted backwater educational climate. One must understand that England was not nearly as progressive in its approach to worldly or other-worldly affairs as the more eager intelligentsia on the continent.

Dee's early enthusiasm for browsing through books and manuscripts in his quiet quest for complete knowledge was kept sharp by the slim pickings offered by a series of school curricula. Although Dee maintained throughout his life that he possessed absolutely no occult faculties, by the age of nineteen he was a fellow of Trinity College, a gifted astronomer, and Catholic in his faith. Influenced by Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy Dee was not only excited but stirred by Agrippa's notion that magic and alchemy were not merely diabolic meditations, but a practical aid in the mystical approach to God.

While magic suffered a less than stellar reputation on the island, one should realize that magic and science were indubitably linked in the sixteenth century. Even mathematics and number theory, with Pythagoras as its prophet, were considered magical studies.

In 1552 Dee met occultist Jerome Cardan, who practiced regularly, among other occult faculties, his high degree of second sight. Cardan operated under the title of witch, and is a notable candidate for one of the most intriguing psychological curiosities of the period. His influence on Dee was immediate and significant. Dee was now charged with the idea that spirits thrived just beyond the human realm who might be contacted to aid him in his researches, an idea of Cardan's especially germane to helping him resolve his most pressing problem -- cracking the mystery of the Philosopher's Stone.

But alchemy, like most other human endeavors, cost buckets of money. The throne of England would be headed by no less than five monarchs during the eighty-one years of Dee's life, and securing high ranking philanthropic friends, and keeping them, was no easy task.

Casting horoscopes of the rich and powerful became John Dee's passion and dominating facet of occult finesse, and soon he became the English court's Royal Astrologer. Among his milepost astrological charts are readings he did for Mary, Queen of Scots, her sister Elizabeth who succeeded her, and numerous enemies of English intrigue who were kept at bay through an astrological technique Dee had devised.

From his star gazing, Dee moved into readings of his magical glass, which seems to have been nothing but a convex mirror. His readings of the glass and of astrological signs were soon focused on plans for naval defense, and thus, at least in his own day, gained some credit for England's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

His interest in occult matters never relaxed. In his Spiritual Diary Dee records dreams, tales of spirit rappings, and other manifestations of the other world. While his latter-day obsession was crystal gazing (an idea that gazing at length into any kind of clear depth can induce a trance-like state in which the future can be foreseen) Dee's sharp and agile mind made this sort of activity fruitless.

In his middle years he worked through a series of young scryers, as they were called, and sure enough, Dee and his occult partners were soon busy entertaining a steady parade of various spirit guides and messengers. Dee, speaking from his Catholic experience, assumed that these spirits were angels, and addressed them as such. Among the spirit guides making contact, Dee's account includes Medicina, Madimi, Raphael, Uriel, and the Archangel Michael.

Two brief tales of Dee's intercourse with spirit guides are worth noting. The first involves a vision Dee had of a childlike angel figure floating outside his window. He identified this angel as Uriel, and in its hand was a crystal egg. Dee was then confronted with the Archangel Michael who appeared to persuade Dee not to fear, but to pick up the egg. This crystal ball is currently on display in the British Museum

The second story involves one of Dee's longtime accomplices, an Irish scryer named Edward Kelley. The Irishman was often a quarrelsome fellow, and had finally decided to abandon Dee to his own efforts, having had enough of Dee's crystals. In desperation for a new message, Dee used his eight year old son Arthur to help conjure up a spirit guide. Nothing happened. Kelley agreed to try again, and was greeted by an intriguing utterance by a guide named Madimi, who ordered Kelley and Dee to engage in a wife-swapping liaison.

Jane Dee immediately went into hysterics, having loathed Edward Kelley for several years. The child-angel Uriel later confirmed the counsel, and from Dee's own language, it appears that the wife-sharing event did take place, although Kelley soon departed Dee's company, never to work with Dee again.

Ultimately, Dee's contribution to the body of evidence called occultism is significant because he was one of the first great witnesses to make constant use of spirit communication and is considered the founder of modern psychical research, two hundred years before his time. His later years were spent in obscurity at Christ's College in Manchester. When Elizabeth the First died in 1603, Dee's arts were no longer appealing to the Crown. James the First, noted for ordering a scholarly English translation of the scriptures, had no sympathy for a purported magician.
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