John Dee's Conversations with Angels

«Dee's angel diaries are now British Library Sloane MSS 3188, 3189, 3191; British Library Add. MS 36674 and Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1790» — las signaturas, en nota de la autora.

«Today, only a small number of them remain; the greater proportion were destroyed by Dee and by a zealous seventeenth-century kitchen maid who used the pages from the volumes to line her employer's pie plates» — y su destrucción, entre las manos de Dee y las de una criada del siglo XVII.

«Dee first sets the scene in a descriptive note, marking his role in the conversations with his personal hieroglyph, the delta. The angel's responses are marked by a two-letter abbreviation of its name - here "An" for the angel Anael» — la convención de marcas del diario.

«Barnabas Saul is the first scryer who can be positively identified from the surviving records. He took part in the first extant angel conversation, which occurred on 22 December 1581» — el primer scryer identificable.

«Kelly was introduced to Dee by "Mr. Clerkson," who had been to the house a week before bearing a copy of a work by the medieval magus Albertus Magnus» — la llegada de Kelly.

«The facts surrounding Kelly's life are obscure. Various biographies assert that he studied at Oxford under the name "Edward Talbot," trained as an apothecary, had his ears cropped at Lancaster for forgery, and was a secretary to the bibliophile Thomas Allen» — y sus biografías contradictorias, todas en modo reportado.

«Dee wrote a brief, pointed entry in his personal diary - "Pactu[m] factu[m]" - suggesting that the agreement to share wives, bizarre as it was, was indeed physically consummated» — el pacto de las esposas, de 1587: la frase latina es de DEE en su diario privado; la lectura de que se consumó es de Harkness.

«When the nine years and three months milestone was reached, Dee lamented that the period of waiting had been "co[n]futed as vayne."64 On 29 September 1600 Dee manifested his disappointment by burning the angel diaries that he had kept during those nine long years» — la quema de los diarios, con la fecha exacta.

«Dee's final surviving angel conversation, dated 2 July 1607 25 3 The Sigillum Dei, inscribed in and used as a support for Dee's crystal showstone 36 4 A page from the Liber Logaeth showing numbers and letters inscribed in a table 42 5 A page from the angel diaries showing Dee's command of cabala and Hebrew 163 6 Diary entry in which Dee sketched the angel Carmara, an example of Dee's practices of marginal notation and underlining 170 7 Illustration of "Fermentatio" from Mylius's Philosophia reformata 211» — y la última conversación conservada, en pie de lámina.

«He used at least three showstones in the angel conversations: a "great Chrystaline Globe," a "stone in the frame," and a stone Dee believed had been brought by the angels and left in his oratory window at Mortlake. The last was the most powerful, and only Dee was allowed to touch it» — las tres piedras.

«A fourth "stone" associated with Dee's angel conversations is the black obsidian mirror currently owned by the British Museum. Based on the evidence from the angel diaries, this mirror was not used in the angel conversations» — y la negación sobre el espejo de obsidiana del British Museum.

«The legend associating the black mirror with the angel conversations was based on the 1748 catalogue of Horace Walpole's collection of curiosities» — de dónde nace la leyenda.

«a speculum of kennel-coal, in a leathern [sic] case. It is curious for having been used to deceive the mob by Dr. Dee, the conjurer, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth» — y el catálogo de Horace Walpole de 1748 que la funda.

«might have been linked by contemporaries to his expertise in alchemy because of analogies drawn between the showstone and the closed vessel of an alchemical experiment» — el showstone leído como vaso cerrado: es conjetura de Harkness sobre lo que pudieron pensar los contemporáneos.

«I did coniecture the biasing star in Cassiopeia appering a° 1572 to signify the fynding of some great Thresor or the Philosophers stone. . . . This I told to Mr. Ed. Dier. at the same tyme. How truly it fell out in a° 1582 Martij 10 it may appere in tyme to come ad stuporem Mundi» — y la anotación marginal de DEE en su Manilio; «biasing» es lo que imprime la capa de texto, y la lectura restituida —blasing— no está cotejada contra el facsímil.

«It hath a Divine Power, Celestiall, and Invisible, above the rest; and endowes the possessor with Divine Gifts. It affords the Apparition of Angells, and gives a power of conversing with them by Dreames and Revelations: nor do any Evil Spirits approach the Place where it lodgeth» — el «angelic stone» según Elias Ashmole, en su Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum de 1652.

«the elusive philosopher's stone, when subjected to even higher and more mystical processes, yielded "vegetable," "magical," and "angelic" stones, each characterized by its own specific properties and powers» — y la escala de piedras en que se inserta.

«The large wax seal was known as the "Sigillum Dei," whose proper name, the angels told Dee, was "Emeth" (Figure 3).108 Emeth, the Hebrew word for "truth," was one of the seventy-two names of God in the cabalistic tradition» — el Sigillum Dei y el nombre Emeth.

«Dee made a marginal note to remind him to investigate both Reuchlin and Agrippa for this name, and specifically mentioned Agrippa's De occulta philosophia III, chap. 11» — de dónde viene: Dee anotó ir a BUSCARLO en Reuchlin y en Agrippa, que no es lo mismo que haberlo tomado de ahí.

«the ring was to be made of precious metals and inscribed with the name "PELE."114 Dee made a note to check for the name "PELE" in his most authoritative Christian cabalistic text, Johannes Reuchlin's De verbo mirifico» — el anillo PELE y la consulta a Reuchlin.

«there, but could be found instead in Agrippa's De occulta philosophia» — y el resultado de esa consulta, en la plana siguiente: PELE no estaba en Reuchlin.

«The first revealed book conveyed to Dee and Kelly was the Liber Logaeth, or "the Book of the Speech of God."129 It conveyed the angelic language and emphasized the role that language would play in perfecting the world and returning it to its original state» — el Liber Logaeth.

«The Liber Logaeth consisted of forty-nine "calls" or prayers and ninety-five tables containing small square spaces filled with letters» — y su composición.

«The second book the angels revealed, De heptarchia mystica, was a reference summary of information conveyed to Dee before he departed for the Continent in 1583.132 It contained prayers to specific angels that were to be repeated at different times of the day and on different days of the week, as well as the seals for forty-nine elemental angels with powers over aspects of the natural world» — la De heptarchia mystica.

«Claves angelicae contained verses in both English and the angels' language, and Dee translated the keys with the angels' assistance. His finished copy of the work contained the keys in both languages» — las Claves angelicae.

«Information of a different kind concerning the angelic governors of various geographical areas and their true names could be found in the Liber scientiae auxilii» — y el Liber scientiae.

«ys my boke, of Soyga, of any excellency?"140 The angel Uriel replied that it was a book that "God's good angels revealed to Adam in Paradise."141 Dee was absorbed in interpreting his "Book of Soyga" and asked the angels for help, but Uriel demurred, reporting that he could not help Dee understand the text any further because the angel Michael was its» — el Libro de Soyga: pregunta DEE, responde el ángel URIEL, y es Miguel quien queda por intérprete.

«One provocative similarity between the Book of Soyga and Dee's angel conversations, for example, are the tables of repeating letters that resemble, in some cases exactly, the tables of letters revealed by the angels in their mystical books» — y la semejanza de sus tablas, que adjudica Harkness.

«From his reading Dee came to believe that there were two cabalas: the "vulgar cabala," based on Hebrew and centuries of Jewish tradition; and the "real cabala," which was based on divine messages embedded in the Book of Nature» — las dos cábalas.

«His separation of the "real cabala," or, as he described it, the cabala "of that which is," from the "vulgar cabala," or the cabala "of that which is said," is essential to an understanding of the Monas hieroglyphica» — y su función en la Monas.

«lies in Pantheus's contention that a "cabala of metals" could be traced back to the Chaldeans and his assertion that the cabala of metals provided a means to restore alchemy» — la «cábala de los metales» es tesis DE PANTHEUS, no rótulo de Dee.

«Dee described archemastrie as a universal science that was experimental, revelatory, earthly, and divine.123 Also, he stated his belief that the "chief Science, of the Archemaster, (in this world) as yet known, is an other (as it were) OPTICAL Science" - quite possibly the use of a stone to see angels» — la archemastrie; el «quite possibly» del final es conjetura declarada de Harkness.

«Dee considered his "Archemastrie" to be the unification of all branches of natural philosophy into a single discipline that explored the propagation of rays, employed mathematical aspects of optics, depended upon astrology to capture astral radiation, and utilized a highly refined stone resulting from an alchemical experiment» — y su definición completa.

«Dee used prayer to facilitate the angel conversations rather than spells and conjuring» — oración en lugar de invocación.

«Prayer is the Key, sanctified by the Holy Ghost, which openeth the way unto God» — dicho por un ángel sin nombrar.

«The key of Prayer openeth all things» — y la formulación de MICHAEL, que es otra.

«The angels revealed that Adam knew two languages, and that both had been lost. The first was a "greater" language that Adam used to communicate his deteriorating "knowledge of God [and] his Creatures" to his descendants; the second was a "lesser" language that Adam used in everyday speech and communication» — las dos lenguas de Adán.

«The basis of the divine language was an alphabet of twenty-one regular characters and one aspirated character.37 Here Dee would have seen a similarity between the divine language of God and contemporary Hebrew, since the Hebrew alphabet contained the same number of characters» — el alfabeto divino y su semejanza con el hebreo.

«like Hebrew - to be read from right to left.39 Later, when words and phrases were drawn together into revealed books, they were arranged like a Hebrew text, with the first page of the book at the back of the volume and the final page at the front.40 The divine language's alphabet related only superficially to Hebrew» — y su diferencia: la fuente separa las dos cosas en dos frases, y la cláusula causal pertenece a la de la SEMEJANZA.

«Dee's cabala of nature was based on the interplay between the elemental and spiritual numbers of the numerological tradition: four (signifying fire, air, earth, and water) and three (signifying the holy trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), respectively» — el cuatro y el tres.

«Dee's final surviving angel conversation, dated 2 July 1607 25 3 The Sigillum Dei, inscribed in and used as a support for Dee's crystal showstone 36 4 A page from the Liber Logaeth showing numbers and letters inscribed in a table 42 5 A page from the angel diaries showing Dee's command of cabala and Hebrew 163 6 Diary entry in which Dee sketched the angel Carmara, an example of Dee's practices of marginal notation and underlining 170 7 Illustration of "Fermentatio" from Mylius's Philosophia reformata 211» — el pie de la lámina que fecha la última conversación conservada.

«for a sensitive but still guarded interpretation» — cómo valora Harkness la lectura de Frances Yates.

«Shumaker interpreted the angel diaries as evidence that Dee was gullible to a fault, pointing out that "even in his own period few men were so susceptible to the portentous» — la objeción de Wayne Shumaker.

«But he was forced to admit that Dee appeared entirely rational throughout, noting he "does not lose control, he does not rave, but transcribes the visions and conversations reported by his scryers with sober accuracy» — y lo que el propio Shumaker concede.

«Dee's angel diaries remained an intellectual aberration to Clulee, one that "cannot be considered as science or natural philosophy," despite their inclusion of concepts from the cabalistic and alchemical traditions» — la de Nicholas Clulee.

«Dee's natural philosophy was based on a theory of astral radiation» — a quien Harkness invoca, en cambio, para anclar el showstone en la óptica.

«the largest collection of Hebrew language materials in England during the early modern period» — G. Lloyd Jones sobre la biblioteca hebrea de Dee.

«Pantheus's work contained an alphabet labeled "Enochian" that strongly resembles Dee's divine script» — y la tercera hipótesis sobre el origen del alfabeto divino, que Harkness expone sin elegir entre las tres.

«in Mylius's Philosophia reformata (1622) an engraving appeared which included, not only the revivification of the dead, but also the philosopher sowing gold and an angel blowing a trumpet signaling the Apocalypse, when the dead shall rise and be damned or redeemed» — el grabado de Mylius donde convergen resurrección alquímica y apocalipsis.

«Casaubon hoped that the publication of the sordid details of Dee's angel conversations would convert atheists to a belief in the spiritual world, moderate the opinions of advocates of prophecy and revelation (such as the Anabaptists) who relied too much on spirits for answers to their dilemmas, and encourage people to appreciate the power of prayer» — el propósito editorial que Harkness le atribuye a Meric Casaubon.

«Hooke referred scathingly to the angel conversations as "Dr. Dee's Delusion," though he considered Dee to have been "an extraordinary Man, both for Learning, Ingenuity and Industry» — el juicio de Robert Hooke, con la concesión que lo acompaña.

«He believed that the conversations should not be accepted at face value, but were a form of cryptography - one of Hooke's own passions - which hid valuable political information that Dee had gathered for Queen Elizabeth» — y su lectura criptográfica.