John Dee
| John Dee | |
|---|---|
A 16th-century portrait by
an unknown artist. |
|
| Born |
13 July 1527 Tower Ward, London |
| Died | December 1608 or March 1609 (age 81) Mortlake, Surrey, England |
| Residence | England |
| Citizenship | Kingdom of England |
| Nationality | English |
| Fields | Mathematics, alchemy, astrology, Hermeticism, navigation, |
| Institutions |
Trinity College, Cambridge Christ's College, Manchester |
| Alma mater |
St John's College, Cambridge Louvain University |
| Academic advisors | Gemma Frisius, Gerardus Mercator |
| Notable students | Thomas Digges |
| Known for | Advisor to Queen Elizabeth I |
John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher, and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. He was also an advocate of England's imperial expansion.
Dee straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on the geometry of Euclid at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery.
Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities".
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