Within the early phases of the Protestant Reformation and the first formalizing stirrings of the Witch Craze would emerge, the most important of the Righteous Scholar Magicians for the English-speaking world, Dr. John Dee (1527–1608).
Dee would integrate a profound understanding of Mathematics, Astronomy, and Astrology with the magical methods developed from the distribution of the Hermetica as well as other texts drawn from the Islamic World (or claimed to come from the Islamic World and before) that would make up the Grimoiric tradition of Angelic and Demonic Magic.* He would serve on the Court of Elizabeth I of England, travel throughout Europe, and would make contact with such vital figures of Modernity as Rudolph II of Bohemia, Astronomer Tycho Brahe, and at least met with the father of Modern Empirical Science Francis Bacon.
Dee’s contribution has been much discussed of late, so I will not reiterate it here. What is significant, however, is that his reception of the Enochian Angelic Magic with the help of Edward Kelly can only be understood within the context it was received: a radical Apocalypticism that saw England as the place for the Final Kingdom of the Millennium. The Enochian materials speak directly of being means by which the End Times would be catalyzed.
With the coming End at hand, finally were living men capable of receiving the wisdom God had given to the First Men, whereby they would know the Mind of God as they entered the New World on the other side of the Apocalypse. This notion of the Apocalypse revealing the Mind of God underpins not only Dee’s Work but nearly all of the works of the great thinkers of Modernity. The development of the Sciences, Empiricism, and the new mathematics, Calculus, which would allow for developments in Physics, were part of a pre-Millennial dispensation.
Among Dee’s visions was placing England as the Final Kingdom by creating a grand empire that would span the world. He would create unfulfilled plans for the colonization of Narraganset Bay in what is now Rhode Island and developed navigation methods that would lead the British Navy to become the most powerful in the world. These notions were greeted warmly by Elizabeth I, however, her successor James I, was uninterested.
James I cared little for the supernatural and marginalized those who did. Dee, who had found patronage under Elizabeth I, would find none with James I. He would live out the end of his life at his dwindling estate of Mortlake. His close association with occultism and mathematics would affect the wave of intellectuals after him. It may have been the reason for the depreciation of mathematics in the work of Francis Bacon. James I would pick up the significance of building an Empire in the New World. Still, he chose the area that is now the American South rather than Dee’s northern suggestions.
James I’s son Charles I would seek to unify England, Scotland, and Ireland under a unified rule, as had been his father’s dream. His actions would lead to contention in parliament and the English Civil War. Unshockingly, issues related to religion and to Apocalypse would play into this conflict, from the issue of the Divine Right of Kings to the role of the Puritans and other even more radical Christian Sects like the Levelers and Diggers. The aftermath of the Civil War would inspire perhaps one of the most enduring Modern myths of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Interestingly it would be a father and son, both Classicists, who would undo the Righteous Scholar Magician’s role in the West. Isaac Casaubon (1559 EV –1614 EV) was among the most learned men of his time and focused firmly on philology, the comparative study of texts. He was well known for translating Aristotle, Pliny, and others. Of importance to our story, Isaac Casaubon turned his attention to the Hermetica and made a remarkable discovery. Rather than the primordial, pre-Moseic origin of this material widely accepted for Theological reasons, the books of the Hermetica betrayed linguistic attributes suggesting that they were of origin by his estimation in the 1st Century EV. This would undermine the notion that what the Scholar Magicians were doing was righteous and shook their claims of spiritual authority.
Isaac’s son Meric Casaubon (1599 EV – 1671 EV) had held the favor of James I. He fell strongly out of favor during the Civil War and by its victor, Oliver Cromwell. Casaubon was a strong critic of supernaturalism, and in 1657 EV published an account of Dee’s contact with Spirits and the origins of the Enochian system. Casaubon regarded these interactions as Satanic in origin and called upon those of his time to repudiate Dee’s Work entirely.
The Magicians were now cast down into the same terrain as the Witches, mere Heretics to be disregarded. Into the void, this created in the culture would move the Scientists, many of whom would forget their own “demonic” origins in successive generations. Neither group would vanish completely, but they would have to take refuge in the fringes of culture, no longer holding patronages of Crowns and places of prestige in universities. Magic would continue, but it would do so behind closed doors. Behind those closed doors, it would run into another tradition long marginalized, European Jewry.
*Owen Davies’ Grimoires: A History of Magic Books is the best scholarly starter source on this subject presently available.
Setemheb 