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John
Dee's Conversations With Angels |
Chapter XIII
A DREAM OF GOLD
"Now,
Epicure,
Heighten thyself, talk to her all in gold,
Rain her as many showers as Jove did drips
Unto his Danaid, shew the gold a miser
Compared with Mammon. What! the stone will do't.
She shall feel gold, taste gold, hear gold, sleep gold." - Jonson, The
Alchemist
On February 27, 1585, Dee and Kelly, with Thomas Kelly, rode with great secrecy to Limburg, six miles from Prague, in obedience to Madimi, who however told them on arriving that Rudolph know of their departure. Dee suspected Laski's man, Sontag, of treachery. Michael appeared to them there, and instructed Dee to name his new-born child Michael. The infant was baptised by the Court chaplain in Prague Cathedral (which is dedicated to the very unpopular Saint Vitus) on March 18, the Spanish ambassador being godfather and the Lady Dietrichstein, wife of the Emperor's major-domo, godmother.
Kelly was still murmuring under the mystical dealings of the angels. "Let them give me somewhat profitable to my body, or some wisdom to my mind's behoof, and then I will believe in them," he says. Then he protests he will confess all to the priest, and if the holy father does not allow their doings or counsel to be genuine, neither will he.
The remarkable answer that Dee gives again shows us how in advance he was of his times in matters spiritual as well as scientific. "The authority of good angels or messengers from God is greater," says he, "than the authority of the Pope, or priests."
So the weeks went on. Kelly postponed the day of taking the sacrament. At Easter will be a fit time. He will wait till then. He is tired of skrying: "I pray you to deal with another. Here is John, a boy in the house. You may use him." Thus, for the third time, a boy is suggested.
It is a curious piece of psychology, or crystallomancy, that Kelly, who possessed the mediumistic powers, was always so reluctant to use them, while Dee, who as Madimi told him, had clearer sight than his skryer, was entirely unable to open up communication with the unseen.
Money was scarcer than ever. "My wife being in great perplexity, requested E.K. and me that the annexed petition might be propounded to God and his good angels, to give answer or counsel in the cause." Jane's petition set out simply that they had no provision for meat and drink for their family, that it "would discredit the actions wherewith they are vowed and linked unto the heavenly majesty" to lay the ornaments of their house or coverings of their bodies in pawn to the Jews, and that the city was full of malicious slanders. Aid and direction are implored how or by whom they are to be aided and relieved. The spirits, while reminding her grandiloquently that she is only a woman, full of infirmities, frail in soul, and not fit to enter the synagogue, yet favourably listen, and bid her be faithful and obedient as she is yoked, promising that she and her children shall be cared for. Meanwhile her husband is to gird himself together and hasten to see Laski and King Stephan.
This injunction seems not to have been obeyed for some time, for Dee was now very busy inditing letters to Queen Elizabeth and to other of his friends in England. He was reminded of it later when something went wrong, and another crisis arrived with Kelly. On March 27, a Wednesday, Dee was busy in his study, when the skryer burst in, demanding unceremoniously a copy of a certain magic circle of letters which he professed to have had revealed to him by spirits at Oxford. He wished to show it to a Jesuit priest with whom he had made friends. He protested he would quit the company of the spirits with whom they had recently dealt and return to his former associates - the evil set. Dee said he had no leisure to look for the paper now, he was writing letters of importance, and in a week's time or when able, he would see it was found. This of course was irritating. Kelly stormed and raged, said the old man should not stir his foot from the room till it had been produced, and was about to lock up the door when Dee caught him by the shoulders, "calling aloud to my folks. They came in all, and my wife, and so afterwards by degrees his fury assuaged, and my folks, my wife and his, went away, and after he had sitten two or three hours with me, he saw on my head, as I sat writing, Michael stand with a sword, who willed him to speak, which he did forbear to do above a quarter of an hour."
Kelly, like a spoilt child, demanded of Michael if he should have his circle of letters. The angel addressed him then in a passage of exceeding beauty, seeming to scorch and wither the promptings of the skryer's evil nature, while wrestling at the same time with all the powers of darkness for his soul: -
"O Jehovah, whose look is more terrible to thy angels than all the fires thou hast created,...wilt thou suffer one man to be carried away, to the dishonouring and treading under foot of thee and thy light, of thee and thy truth? Can one man be dearer unto thee thanthe whole world was? Shall the heavens be thrown headlong down, and he go uncorrected?"
He intimates to the partners that their work and calling is greater than honour, money, pride and jewels. As it is great, so must their temptation be great.
"Therefore God has framed one of you as a stiffe-made Ashe, to bind up the continuance of his work, and to be free from yielding unto Satan."
As for the other, Michael promises Kelly that no evil spirit shall visibly show himself unto him any more as long as he is in the flesh.
"Whosoever therefore appeareth hereafter is of good."
Thus begins to yawn before the pair the most dangerous pitfall of all. Pride and confidence in the perfect intuition of God's will has led many a good and holy man astray. Soon even the stiff-made ash is to arrive at the pitch of believing that their teachers cannot err, and then comes a terrible downfall. Michael in an exquisite little parable bids them cleave fast together. And again it is clear why the elder man, the seeker after hidden knowledge, the pure-minded and gentle-hearted old mathematician and astrologer, though torn in pieces with his partner's wild outbursts, his notorious cupidity, impatience, and evil living, yearned over him and his rebellious youth as a mother over her child. Like Michael, he seems involved in a prolonged struggle for the rescue of his soul from the demons in whose power he devoutly believed.
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