Lore - Episode 75: Black and Wild

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

The pages of our greatest literature are full of tales of powerful wizards. People gifted with abilities that stand head and shoulder above their peers. They act as guides, ushering us into a new world with fresh possibilities. And yet they are much more than simply a tool used by storytellers. In fact, history paints a much more fascinating—and dark—picture for us. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the world of fairy tales and adventure stories, we are often invited into a strange new land, a place of monsters and magic, of danger and destiny. That's what we love about these powerful stories. They transport us. They move us. They show us another world. Fantasy is more mainstream today than it's ever been, from the Lord of the Rings to the Game of Thrones. We love it all. But each new fictional world needs a new guide, a voice to help the reader find their bearings and make sense of it all. And for a very long time, that voice has been The Wizard. Everyone has their favorite wizard, from the Arthurian Merlin and Shakespeare's Prospero to the more modern Gandalf and Dumbledore.

The Wizard is the voice of reason, our tour guide in a strange and dangerous place. They often speak for the author and serve as a tutor for the uninitiated, readers and fictional characters alike. We could spend the next 20 minutes discussing why that is, why it seems that deep down our brains cry out for a sage old voice, full of power and magic and depth to walk us through a strange new world. But I'm not going to do that, because some things are better left unspoken. The wizards, you see, are the stuff of legend. We've invented them to help us cope, to help us understand, or to help us find our way. They're a pillar of storytelling, and yet they're nothing more than make-believe. At least,

that's what most of us think. But history hides many secrets, and if you know where to look, you might be surprised by the sorts of individuals tucked away in those dusty pages. Real people, people who lived and breathed and walked among us, and who had a reputation for the otherworldly. One such man existed in the middle of the 16th century, and if you consider the stories, you'll risk coming face to face with a startling conclusion. Wizards just might be real. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. Roland and Jane lived in the area of London, known as Tower Ward,

during the first half of the 1500s. Roland was a businessman who specialized in textiles, but thanks to his reputation and close proximity to the White Tower, he also had the opportunity to serve as the court tailor for King Henry VIII. Their only child, John, was born in 1527. We don't know much about his childhood, but by the age of 15, he was on his way to Cambridge, where he studied, well, everything. While there, he barely managed to get four hours of sleep each night due to the number of subjects he was studying. His mind was hungry. He wanted to know everything, to master it, and connect it all. So he poured himself into every topic available. Navigation, astronomy, engineering, theology, law, mathematics, medicine,

even astrology and cryptography. In the truest sense of the word, John was a polymath, but it still wasn't enough. After Cambridge, he boarded a ship and sailed for the Netherlands, where he would study at the old University of Leuven, and that's where he dug deeper into the one subject that intrigued him the most, the occult. When John finally returned to England in 1551, he brought a collection of European navigational equipment with him, as well as a solid reputation as a sorcerer. That last bit was certainly his fault. Months before, he'd been hired to help with a particular problem in a stage production of Pax, the ancient comedy by the Greek philosopher Aristophanes. It was a story that called for a large flying scarab, a dung beetle,

basically, but it was proving tricky to actually make one that was believable enough. Not for John, though. He dug in, worked hard, and returned to them with a mechanical version, and it was a massive hit. Legend says that the audiences were so terrified by his animatronic beetle that they assumed he'd acquired his skills by selling his soul to the devil himself. Rather than deny it, John stayed quiet, adding a whole new layer to his reputation, a perfect example of how silence can speak just as loudly as words. But things had changed in England while he'd been away. Henry VIII had died in 1547, and although his nine-year-old son Edward VI took the throne, the boy king just couldn't compare.

The economy began to fall apart, riot and rebellion became commonplace, war with Scotland broke out. When John returned, the England he remembered was in turmoil. Then, in 1553, young Edward died and his half-sister Mary succeeded him on the throne. Seeing his chance, John used his reputation to gain an audience and then cast horoscopes for both Mary and her younger sister Elizabeth, offering each of them a glimpse into their future. But this gift didn't seem to connect with the new ruler. In fact, as Catholic Mary began to crack down on Protestant citizens, she didn't hesitate to arrest John's father. He was thrown in prison and stripped of his

entire fortune, which was bad on many levels. John lost his father, and at the same time, he lost his inheritance, something he'd been counting on for a very long time. You see, John had a dream. He wanted to spend the rest of his life furthering his studies without having to worry about paying the bills. But thanks to Queen Mary, that dream had been torn out of his hands. And then, things got worse. Shortly after his father's arrest, John himself was brought to court for a crime of his own. And the charge, John D., they said, was guilty of calculating. No, really, John was arrested for engaging in mathematics.

Remember, this was an era when the line between math and magic was a lot more blurry than it is today. And it could get you into a lot of trouble. Very few people were educated, and to most of them, math really was magic. It was divination and sorcery and conjuring all rolled into one. To use the darkest of magical descriptors, it was black and wild. So for the dark crime of calculating, John found himself in prison. When he was released three months later, he headed straight back to Queen Mary. He had a grand idea, but he needed her approval. John wanted to build a national library, where old manuscripts and scientific records could be stored and used by scholars like himself.

So he presented this plan to her. Sadly, Mary passed on the idea. So John shifted to a backup plan. In 1556, he moved back to the London home of his mother and began setting up a personal library there. Over time, he would amass a collection of nearly 4,000 books, larger than Cambridge and Oxford combined many times over. See? Who says you can't accomplish great things while living in your parents' basement? In all of that change, though, when Mary died and her sister Elizabeth took the throne, because Elizabeth, it seems, remembered John D. She remembered his horoscope and his passion and his wisdom. With her coronation approaching, Elizabeth asked John to pick the perfect date for the ceremony. And when it went

off without a hitch, John's place at her side was secured. Then in November of 1572, everything blew up. Well, in the sky, at least. That was the year something appeared overhead. It wasn't a comet, though. Most people had seen those before, and while they were exciting, they weren't new. No, this was much more significant, inspiring some, and frightening others. It was a brand new star. We now know that this new star was actually a massive supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia. After it appeared, it remained there, visible to the naked eye, for well over a year. Astronomers as close as England and Europe, and as far away as China, all recorded it,

and everyone seemed to have their own way of interpreting it. To scholars like John, though, this new star's appearance had deep occult undertones. He made the detailed observations you might expect from an astronomer, sure, but he also used the opportunity to make predictions, something much more in line with his wizardly reputation. A new star, he said, meant the rise of a new empire, and at the center of it all was Queen Elizabeth. He viewed this new empire as a new Camelot, Elizabeth as the new King Arthur, and himself, of course, as the new Merlin. He also had this bizarre belief that the new world, the one across the Atlantic Ocean that they were beginning to get a glimpse of,

would be the jewel in the crown of this new majestic British Empire, as he called it. For the next two decades, John and Elizabeth worked together to advance that vision of England. It was everything he'd hoped for. He was in his prime, publishing books, and deepening his understanding of the world around him, and that success was spilling over into the political sphere, including heavy influence over England's colonization efforts in the new world. John became advisor to many of the first explorers to sail from England to North America. And after all, he had the unique advantage of owning that collection of European navigational instruments, as well as a deep understanding of astronomy and geometry, all of which meant

that there were few individuals in the world that knew as much about navigation as he did. If you wanted to get around in the mid-16th century, John D was the closest to Google maps you were going to get, and everyone knew that. But as the world got bigger, John grew increasingly aware of just how little he truly understood. There were just so many questions he couldn't find answers to, so many challenges he couldn't overcome, and that frustration was pushing him deeper into occult territory. So rather than seek out answers in this world, John tried to peer into the next. With tools like scrine mirrors and crystal balls, he pushed hard into the world beyond the veil, with the goal of making contact with the spirits there. And according to his own

journal, those efforts were paying off, if only slightly. The one entry from the 25th of May, 1581, describes an unusual encounter that involves seeing shapes and movement in his crystal ball. It was the first time it had happened, but it was also incredibly frustrating. He could only see the shapes. Communication, either receiving or sending, was completely non-existent. Remember who this man was? Cambridge educated by the age of 19, advisor to the Queen of England, and wizard in nearly every sense of the word. He was used to setting his mind to something and achieving it. Complex mathematics, global navigation, language and theology and law. And yet here he was, stumped by something. He'd failed.

To John, the reason was clear. It wasn't that he lacked the knowledge or focus. No, he simply lacked the natural ability to do it. This thing that he was attempting must require a special gift that some were born with, while others weren't. So John went looking for those gifted individuals. Thankfully, there was no shortage of people in London who claimed to be able to do the thing that John was pursuing. One by one, these people were invited into his process and put to the test, only to fail just as consistently. They tried, of course, and they told a good story. But John never fell for it. Then in 1582, after months of frustration, John met someone special, someone who claimed to be able to do all that John required and more.

His name was Edward Kelly. And although he was much younger than the experienced and educated scientist, he claimed to have the skills necessary for the task. So he got the job. John went into this arrangement with a lot of hope. His dream of seeking out deeper knowledge in the world beyond our own had a deceptively simple requirement, to be able to hear the messages from the other side and then send back replies. Kelly seemed to have potential if his resume was any indication. The younger man claimed to be able to do a lot of things that most people couldn't. Adept in alchemy and necromancy, he told John that he could learn things from the dead, magically teasing out their past secrets while also predicting the future. Oh, and one more

important skill. Kelly, it seems, could talk to angels. Kelly was a serial liar by trade, which made it a huge risk for him to set up shop right beside the smartest man in England. What little we know about him from history paints him as an overweight alcoholic con man with no ears. That last part wasn't a deformity. You see, Kelly had been punished by the crown. It was called cropping, literally cutting off a person's ears as punishment for their crimes, which meant there was no way for Edward Kelly to hide his past. But John, for his part, didn't really seem to care. He just wanted the man to deliver on his promise. The two men approached this task with reverence. They would fast and pray before each angelic

session and always went into it with an eye for knowledge and answers that could benefit humanity. For years, both men would reach out. Kelly would listen and then write down what he heard. The messages came from an assortment of angels who identified themselves by names familiar to most of us, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and these messages filled volumes, too, sometimes consisting of English prose that was said to rival the very best of his day, while other times in the indecipherable language of the angels themselves. In 1583, a Polish scholar and alchemist named Albert Lasky reached out and told John about the riches that awaited him in Europe and in Poland specifically. Nobles and the wealthy elite who were willing to fund the esoteric experiments of

people like John D. So on September 21st of 1583, he and Kelly packed up and headed to the continent, leaving his home and enormous library in the hands of his brother-in-law, Nicholas Framond. The conversations with angels continued while they were on the road. For nearly six years, John D. and Edward Kelly traveled through Europe, mostly in Poland and Bohemia, showing their work to people with the wealth to fund it. Think of it like a medieval version of Shark Tank, but with the constant risk of imprisonment or exile. There were certainly high points in the journey. On April 17th of 1585, he and Kelly were given an audience with King Stephen of Poland. In fact, the ruler became a repeat patron of theirs, sharing their deep interest in communicating with the

angels. Later, the men were each given a chance to stay and work for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. That experience began on a positive note, but ended with the two sorcerers being kicked out of the capital for necromancy and other prohibited arts. But something unusual happened while they traveled and worked in Europe. John's reputation, decades in the making and practically legendary in certain circles, began to be eclipsed by that of Edward Kelly. It was Kelly who listened and spoke with the angels after all. Kelly relayed their instructions, which covered a whole assortment of topics from when and where to travel to binding new books of imparted wisdom. Another unexpected moment occurred in 1587, when Kelly relayed a bizarre message. On Saturday,

April 18th, while in their temporary residence in the Bohemian city of Trebonne, Kelly reported that Uriel had instructed he and John to exchange wives for a night. John, blinded by his relentless pursuit of favor with the angels, reluctantly complied. Things fell apart quickly after that. John and his wife Jane found it more and more awkward to be around the Kellys, which I'm sure comes as anything but a shock to us today. And that awkwardness wasn't the only thing growing between them. Jane D., it turns out, was pregnant. When she gave birth in February of 1588, nine months after that April night, they referred to as their cross-matching. It was to a baby boy. John gave his new son the middle name Trebonneus,

which means a gift from God at Trebonne. Some historians think the name hints at the boy's true father, while others are unsure. But the birth does seem to signal the end of their European adventures. Within a year, Dee and his family were packing up to head back to England, and they arrived ten months later after a long difficult journey. But his return home wasn't as rewarding as he'd hoped. He arrived to a house in disarray. His precious library, amassed over many decades in full of rare and annotated volumes, had been looted, as had his collection of scientific instruments. Some things would later be recovered, but the losses kept stacking up. In 1594, his young

son Michael died unexpectedly. A year later, Queen Elizabeth appointed him warden of Christ College in Manchester, which turned out to be a frustrating and painful experience. Then, in 1604, his youngest son Theodore also passed away, followed by his wife Jane and three of their daughters, Medina, Francis, and Margaret. In the end, he moved back to London in 1605 and lived his last remaining years in poverty, forced to sell off his precious library, book by book, so he could buy food. What came next didn't happen with the dramatic bang of one of his experiments, or even with the fanfare that he rightly deserved. On March 26th of 1609, at the age of 82, a great light within John Dee flickered and went out, and then darkness flooded in.

I can't help but wonder how John would fare in our modern times, where the battle between science and superstition is supposed to have ended decades ago. But has it really? Maybe he'd be right in his element, guiding us toward progress with steely determination. Maybe he would be overwhelmed, or maybe he would just be sad that, even after these long years, people really haven't changed that much. There's so much to love about John Dee. He knew more about everything than most people alive at the time. His personal library was a legendary collection of everything he could get his hands on, the things he could do. Well, people viewed it all as magic, and on some level, it really was. He predicted the rise of the British Empire. He proposed a national library long

before anyone else valued the idea, and he enabled much of the global navigation that consumed European culture for another century and a half. John Dee, at least as he was seen through the eyes of his contemporaries, was a wizard. But if you asked him yourself, Dee would tell you he was a scientist, a scientist who just happened to live in a culture where advanced knowledge about the world around him was viewed as necromancy or witchcraft. If it was magic, it was black and wild. It's interesting to note that John's surname, Dee, was of Welsh origin. It's a word that means, of all things, black. And his mother's maiden name, before she was Jane Dee, she was Jane Wilde. Black and wild. John, it seems, was born for the life he lived.

It turns out he also held one more role during his time in the service of Queen Elizabeth. There are some who think he served as a spy during England's war with the Spanish, which began in 1585. Espionage like that was common in his day, and during his adventures across Europe, he encountered many others who were rumored to be spies for Elizabeth. We know from historical documents that many Elizabethan spies used a codename, rather than their real identity. The Earl of Leicester, for example, signed his letters to the Queen with two zeros. She, in turn, replied with communications signed with her own unique codename. John Dee seems to have played along, and in doing so, set wheels in motion that even

his brilliant mind could never have predicted. He appreciated the symbolism of the two zeros, drawn on the page like a pair of eyes. Sometimes they would even have dots inside them to highlight that. But he added something else to perfect it, to fully represent himself as a man who sought perfection and piety. Over three centuries later, one British author would discover these tantalizing bits while reading a biography of John Dee. When he set pen to paper soon after, he gave birth to a literary character that the entire world has grown to love. A spy, in fact, who used John Dee's own codename. 007 This episode of Lore was written and produced by me,

Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marseille Crockett and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than a podcast. There is a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central

place, theworldoflore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.