A nice email arrives from Anne Reeves of The John Dee of Mortlake Society: there’s an AGM scheduled for Tuesday 19th October 2010 at 8pm at St Mary’s in Mortlake (£5 for non-members, but includes a glass of wine), though you can turn up to chat from 7pm. According to the JDoMS’s newsletter, their guest speaker will be Jenny Rampling, who will give a talk on “Dee the Alchemist“. Rampling is a Wellcome Research Fellow at Cambridge’s Department of the History and Philosophy of Science, is doing a PhD on 16th century intellectual history, and even organized a two day conference on Dee at St John’s last year… so doubtless knows her stuff.
Given that I didn’t know that Dee had any strong connection with alchemy beyond owning a copy of the Voarchadumia (which reminds me that I still haven’t got round to reviewing that here, sorry!), this sounds fairly intriguing. Most of the ‘alchemical-Dee’ literature I’ve seen seems pretty speculative and thin (e.g. I’m far from convinced that the Monas Hieroglyphica is Dee’s alchemical pièce-de-resistance, even if lots of alchemists did appropriate his Prince-like monad), so it should be quite fun.
Oh, and if you can’t wait that long for your fix of Dee-related arcana, she’s also giving a talk at the British Society for the History of Mathematics Autumn Meeting and AGM on 2nd October 2010 in Birmingham, entitled “John Dee and the Elizabethan mathematics of everything“, which focuses more on his Mathematicall Praeface to Henry Billingsley’s (1570) “Elements of Geometrie“. Just so you know! 😉
I am interested in the mysteries of the Great I AM and geography. I love history and learning.
A rather enjoyable site!
Noticed that the title ‘Dr’ is not used, which I think is correct, as it seems to me that John Dee never used those letters in any of his own works.
Regards
Hi Nick – would appreciate some guidance from you and/or from your readers.
One of the papers to be read at the upcoming (and not inexpensive) online conference is by Alexander Boxer, and is entitled, “Fingerprinting Gibberish: A Quantitative Comparison of the Voynich and Sloane MS 3188”.
now, Sloane MS 3188 is a volume of Dee’s recorded conversations with an about angels. The text is no more gibberish than most ‘visionary’ literature of any age, whether overtly religious or not.
I have a question for the speaker direct “To which level of the angelic hierarchies do Dee’s come, or purport to come?”
but the *other* question – about which I’d be most grateful to have advice is whether anyone has yet translated the enciphered text on ff. 109r–169v.
This section is not by Dee, according to the holding library, but is Notes in cipher by William Shippen. The ‘William Shippen’ they mean is not the medical chap who lived in America, but
“Reverend William Shippen, D.D. (b.1637, Cheshire d. 1693), son of William Shippen and Mary Shippen (wife unknown).
Fathered Edward Shippen, M.D.; William Shippen, MP; Robert Shippen, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University (1718); John Shippen and Anne Shippen.
Siblings: Robert Shippen; Dorathe Shippen; Ann Shippen; Mary Chapman and Honorable Edward Shippen – who was the First Elected Mayor of Philadelphia.
However, according to the holding library (British Library), which gives his dates as (1635–1693), he was actually *Sir* William Shippen and came to own the manuscript only in in 1672, after Elias Ashmole’s death (1617–1692), and before its acquisition by Sir Hans Sloane, whose executors would sell it to the British Museum in 1753.
I add the details about dates for the information of cryptographers. Apart from hoping to learn if Shippen’s cipher has ever been broken, and if so what those folios contain, I’d be very interested indeed to know which cipher-methods Shippen employed in England during the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
Ps.130 v.1
I’m not the speaker but I am very familiar with Sloane MS 3188 and can probably answer your questions.
First, the angels. Apart from the four archangels (Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel) the names and attributes of most of the entities with whom Dee and Kelley communicated are unique. Dee did not attempt to situate any of these within the pseudo-Dionysian angelic hierarchies, so far as I recall.
Second, William Shippen’s notes at fols 109–169. These comprise copies and extracts from Dee’s libri mysteriorum and ‘private diary’ (the marginal notes Dee wrote in printed ephemerides) and a few other analytical notes compiled by Shippen. Many of the extracts are written in shorthand; it looks similar in form (but not identical) to the shorthand employed by Elias Ashmole and William Lilly. It’s pretty clear from the context (dates, page numbers and interspersed longhand words) what these notes refer to, so I’ve never considered it worth the effort to learn how to read his shorthand.
Nevertheless, Shippen does seem to have some interest in ciphers. Letters from him containing numerical codes survive in Add. MS 32499.
Alan,
Thank you very much indeed.