Text source: Isis, Vol. 70, No. 3, (Sep., 1979), pp. 385-393

Text source: Isis, Vol. 70, No. 3, (Sep., 1979), pp. 385-393

Hermetic Geocentricity:

John Dee's Celestial Egg

By J. Peter Zetterberg*

IN THIS PAPER I will reconsider John Dee's opinion of the Copernican hypothe- sis, especially the claim that Dee's Hermeticism predisposed him toward heliocen-

tricity. I grant at the outset that Dee may have been a Copernican, since it is always possible that he may have held in private what he would not advocate in print. However, I believe that Dee never accepted Copernican cosmology. And I will argue that he never accepted it because he was instead deeply committed-and the commit- ment was Hermetically inspired-to what he believed to be the geocentric cosmology of the ancient magi.

Not until 1573, when Thomas Digges, in his Alae seu scalae mathematicae, accepted the Copernican system as a physical theory, did any Englishman openly defend the new system as something more than a useful mathematical device or, as Osiander had cautioned, a hypothesis, which "need not be true nor even probable."1 Robert Recorde had included a brief discussion of the Copernican system in his Castle of Knowledge (1556), letting any examination of the cosmology of the theory "passe tyll some other time,"2 and several of Recorde's English contemporaries were undoubtedly familiar with the work of Copernicus. But as a physical theory, the novel hypothesis of De revolutionibus generated no debate in England prior to Digges' work. Even Dee, who tutored Digges in mathematics and astronomy, never expressed an opinion regarding the cosmology of the new system.

Despite Dee's silence, a number of historians have speculated that Dee may have been a true Copernican. As evidence they commonly cite the laudatory references to the mathematical achievement of De revolutionibus that Dee makes in his earliest extant work, a preface to John Feild's Ephemeris anni 1557 (London), and also Dee's association with Digges. Lynn Thorndike, for example, grudgingly concedes that Dee may have quietly accepted the Copernican cosmology, although he adds that Dee "believed in so many things that were wrong, that we could not give him personally any high credit, even if in this one instance he believed in something that happened to be right."3

More recently Peter French has drawn attention to another factor that he regards as relevant to the question of Dee and the Copernican hypothesis-Dee's Hermeti-

*Department of History, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, Missouri 63103. 1"To the Reader Concerning the Hypothesis of this Work," trans. Edward Rosen, in Three Copernican

Treatises (New York: Dover, 1959), p. 25. On Digges see F. R. Johnson and S. V. Larkey, "Thomas Digges, the Copernican System, and the Idea of the Infinity of the Universe in 1576," Huntington Library Bulletin, 1934, 5:69-117. See also F. R. Johnson, Astronomical Thought in Renaissance England (1937; reprint New York: Octagon Books, 1968), Chs. 5 and 6.

2Castle of Knowledge (London, 1556), pp. 164-165. 3A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Vol. VI (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941),

p. 26. On Dee and the Copernican hypothesis see also, e.g., Johnson, Astronomical Thought, p. 135 and Richard Deacon, John Dee (London: Frederick Muller, 1968), pp. 36-37.

ISIS, 1979, 70 (No. 253) 385

386 J. PETER ZETTERBERG

cism. French believes that Renaissance magi like Dee, far from retarding the rise of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, may actually have stimulated the movement. He cites Dee's supposed Copernicanism in support of this view, arguing that

... magic did not impede the acceptance of heliocentricity. Indeed, the Renaissance magus was ready and willing to embrace the Copernican hypothesis. Dee apparently did so, but without fanfare. Thus, we come to the conclusion that, although the Renaissance magus worked his magic within a geocentric system, he had a spiritual affinity with heliocentric- ity.... In this case, then, scientific advance was spurred by the renewed interest in the magical Hermetic religion of the world.4

As I will demonstrate, the geocentric system in which Dee worked his magic was far from conventional. According to Dee, ancient magi had known the true structure of the heavens and preserved their knowledge for subsequent generations in the common planetary signs that they carefully designed not only to represent the heavenly bodies but also to reveal cryptically what was true of them. In the Monas hieroglyphica (1564), his principal Hermetic work, Dee claims to have discovered the truth of geocentric cosmology by deciphering these ancient signs and other hiero- glyphs and symbols. In this ancient cosmology, the sun occupies a very special place. Indeed, the sun may well be the body about which one planet turns, for Dee suggests in a veiled way that Mercury's deferent is sun-centered. The sun itself, however, orbits the earth, which retains its position as the true center of the universe.

When Dee first learned of the work of Copernicus is not known; however, it must certainly have been no later than May of 1547, when he traveled to the Continent to study with Gemma Frisius among others. Frisius, in his "Epistola" to the Ephemer- ides novae (1556) of Joannes Stadius, was among the first to comment favorably on the work of Copernicus, although he never accepted Copernican cosmology.5

Dee's first published reference to the work of Copernicus was in 1557, several years after his return to England. In 1555 he had been arrested with John Feild and charged with "endeavoring by enchantmentes to destroy Queen Mary."6 Feild was planning an ephemeris, and Dee, evidently during their confinement together, suggested that he base it on the work of Copernicus and Reinhold. Feild accepted the suggestion and asked Dee to write a preface to the work.

The preface itself is brief. Dee begins by explaining that there were many errors in the old astronomical tables-a theme of the "Epistola" of Frisius, who like Dee cites errors in the position of Mercury as an example. These had been corrected by the "Herculean" labors of Copernicus, Reinhold, and Rheticus, whom he lauds as "restorers of the heavenly discipline," especially the "god-like" Copernicus, whose splendor "blinds the eye."7 Dee concludes by urging his countrymen to use the work

4Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 103. French shares this view with Frances Yates; see her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964), Ch. 8. See also Yates, "The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance Science," in Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, ed. Charles S. Singleton (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 255-274.

5See Grant McColley, "An Early Friend of the Copernican Theory: Gemma Frisius," Isis, 1937, 26: 322-325. On Frisius see also John D. North, "The Reluctant Revolutionaries," in Studia Copernicana, Vol. VIII: Colloquia Copernicana III (Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1975), p. 173, and Owen Gingerich, "The Role of Erasmus Reinhold and the Prutenic Tables in the Dissemination of Copernican Theory," in Studia Copernicana, Vol. VI: Colloquia Copernicana II (Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1973), pp. 51-52.

6This is how Dee recalls the charge in his "Compendious Rehearsall," in Autobiographical Tracts of Dr. John Dee, ed. J. Crossley (London: Chetham Society, 1851), p. 20. The official charge was "lewde and vayne practices of calculing and conjuring" (Acts of the Privy Council, Vol. V, p. 137).

7Ephemeris anni 1557, sigs. Aiir-Aiiv. On Frisius and the Mercury problem see McColley, "Gemma

JOHN DEE'S CELESTIAL EGG 387

of these reformers, noting that it was he who had convinced Feild to base his tables on their work. Dee does speak highly of the work of Copernicus. However, he defers from any discussion of the heliocentric hypothesis, claiming that the preface is not the proper place to consider such things. Dee's support of Copernican planetary theory is thus qualified and limited, as it is also in his proposal for calendar reform, which was written twenty-five years later and contains his only other significant reference to Copernicus.

It was at Queen Elizabeth's request in 1582 that Dee submitted a proposal for calendar reform. In the proposal he relies on what he regards as the most accurate astronomical data available: the "Calculation and Phaenomenies" of Copernicus and the Prutenic Tables of Reinhold. As in the preface to Feild's Ephemeris, Dee accepts the work of Copernicus in this proposal, but again only in a qualified way. For after acknowledging his dependence on the "Calculation and Phaenomenies" of Coperni- cus, Dee hastens to add that this is "excepting his Hypotheses Theoricall: not here to be brought in question."8

The works considered above contain Dee's only discussions of Copernican plane- tary theory. In neither is there any indication that he accepted the heliocentric hypothesis as anything more than a useful mathematical fiction. Both works deal with practical concerns, and in both the Prutenic Tables of Reinhold, who never accepted heliocentricity, are as much the object of Dee's support as the planetary theory used in their computation.9

Dee and Digges were closely associated as master and pupil for a period of time after Dee had written his preface to Feild's Ephemeris and well before he composed his calendar reform proposal. That Dee's qualified acceptance of Copernican theory is markedly similar in both works suggests that Dee did not share his student's enthusiasm for heliocentric cosmology. So too do the known facts of their associa- tion, the decisive event of which was the appearance of a supernova in the constella- tion of Cassiopeia in November of 1572.

Both studied the nova carefully and established that it was a phenomenon located in the supposedly unchangeable celestial region of the universe. Dee's contribution to the literature on the nova was a book of trigonometric theorems for use in determin- ing stellar parallax.10 Among Dee's unpublished treatises is another work on the nova, now lost, in which he evidently discussed the star's diminishing appearance.'1

Frisius," p. 323. Dee lists among his unpublished works Mercurius caelestis, which he claims to have written while at Louvain in 1549 and is now lost. Perhaps Dee explored the problem of calculating Mercury's orbit in this work. It is item 17 in Dee's "unprinted Bookes and Treatises," which he included in "A Letter Containing a most briefe Discourse Apologeticall," in Autobiographical Tracts, p. 74.

8Quoted in Robert Westman, "Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform: The Yates Thesis Reconsid- ered," in Hermeticism and the Scientific Revolution (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1977), p. 47. The best discussion of this proposal is by I. R. F. Calder in his unpublished doctoral dissertation "John Dee Studied as an English Neoplatonist" (University of London, 1952), pp. 725-733.

90n the importance of the Prutenic Tables in the early years of the Copernican Revolution see Gingerich, "The Role of Erasmus Reinhold and the Prutenic Tables." Gingerich also explores at length Reinhold's cosmological beliefs (esp. pp. 55-62). From what little Dee says, his interpretation of Coperni- can planetary theory seems similar to the conservative interpretation of the Melancthon circle, which tended to ignore the cosmological implications of De revolutionibus. See Robert Westman, "The Melanc- thon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory," Isis, 1975, 66: 165-193.

10Parallaticae commentationis praxeosq; nucleus quidam (London, 1573). On Dee, Digges, and their study of the nova see Johnson, Astronomical Thought, pp. 154-160.

1 1 De stella admiranda in Cassiopeiae Asterismo, coelitus demissa ad orbem usque Veneris, iterumque in coeli penetralia perpendiculariter retracta (1573). This is item 37 in Dee's list in his "A Letter Containing a most briefe Discourse Apologeticall," p. 76.

388 J. PETER ZETTERBERG

The title of this work indicates that he believed the nova to be moving perpendicu- larly away from the earth ("in coeli penetralia perpendiculariter retracta"). Digges parted company with Dee on this issue and considered another possibility. In the Alae he wondered whether "the motion of the Earth set forth in the Copernican theory is the sole reason why this star is diminishing in magnitude."12 His attempts to verify this supposition were inconclusive and confused.13 Nonetheless, Digges was clearly willing to treat the heliocentric hypothesis as a physical theory, while Dee, who from all indications left the earth at rest and assumed instead that the star was moving, was evidently not.

Several years after his work on the nova, Digges published an English translation of the principal sections of the first book of De revolutionibus.'4 Included with the translation were arguments offered by Digges in support of heliocentric cosmology. Digges gives no indication in either of the works in which he defends the Copernican system that Dee shared his views. References to Dee are limited to an apology to him in the Alae, in which Digges explains why he is issuing his work on the nova prior to Dee's Parallaticae commentationis, and a note of indebtedness to Dee, whom Digges refers to as his "second parent in Mathematics and Astronomy."'5

As in both of the works in which Dee briefly refers to Copernicus, nothing in his association with Digges justifies the conclusion that he was a true Copernican. Nor does a remark by the Elizabethan Richard Forster in his Ephemerides meteorogra- phicae (1575) lend itself to such a conclusion: "Astronomy, which in England, first began to revive and emerge from darkness into light through the efforts of John Dee, Keen champion of new hypotheses and Ptolemaic Theory, will, as a result of the interference of unskilled persons, go to ruin with the heavens of Copernicus and Rheinhold unless Dee again interposes his Atlantean shoulders."'6 The remark is admittedly ambiguous, but it seems to be based on nothing more than what Dee says in his preface to Feild's Ephemeris. To resolve the general ambiguity that surrounds the question of Dee's cosmological views it is necessary to leave his works on practical science and turn instead to his occult interests. For only in his occult works, in particular the Monas hieroglyphica, the subject of which is alchemy, does Dee reveal a cosmology.

In the "Mathematicall Preface," the work in which Dee's interest in both practical and occult science is evident, "Cosmographie" is defined to be "the whole and perfect description of the heavenly, and also elementall parte of the world, and their homologall application, and mutuall collation necessarie."'7 With other Renaissance alchemists, Dee believed that there was a direct correspondence between celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies, and he claimed to have a "Globe Cosmographical" that demonstrated this by matching "Heaven, and the Earth, in one frame, and aptly applieth parts Correspondent."'8 Through study of the relations among celestial

12Quoted in Johnson, Astronomical Thought, pp. 158-159. 130n the confused nature of Digges' argument see John L. Russell, "The Copernican System in Great

Britain," in Studia Copernicana, Vol. V: Colloquia Copernicana I (Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1973), pp. 192-193.

14"A Perfit Description of the Caelestial Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, Latelye revised by Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved" (1576). This was included as a supplement to a revised edition of his father's (Leonard) Prognostication Everlasting.

15AIae, sig. Aiir. 16Quoted in Deacon, John Dee, p. 37. 17"Mathematicall Preface" to The Elements of Geometrie of the Most Aunciente Philosopher Euclide of

Megara, trans. Henry Billingsley (London, 1570), sig. biiir. 18Ibid. Dee deals with these correspondences most fully in his Propaedeumata aphoristica (1558), a work

on astrology. N. H. Clulee explores the sources and character of Dee's astrological physics in "Astrology,

JOHN DEE'S CELESTIAL EGG 389

bodies, one could learn of the relations among terrestrial bodies. In particular, one could learn of alchemical processes through study of the heavens, provided that the correspondences between the celestial and terrestrial realms were known. As defined by Dee, cosmography was, in part, the study of such correspondences, and hence cosmological considerations play an important part in the Monas hieroglyphica and its alchemical mysteries.

In the Monas Dee claims to disclose the secrets of alchemy by means of a special hieroglyph: the "hieroglyphic monad" (Fig. 1).19 Throughout the work he analyzes this hieroglyph "mathematically, magically, cabbalistically, and anagogically," as he outlines his scheme in a subtitle.20 Dee cautions the reader in a prefatory letter that as there is a differ- ence between a body and its shadow, so too is there a difference between what words and symbols appear to mean and what they really mean. He adds: "The ignorant, rash, and presumptuous apes grasp mere shadows, naked and inane, while the wiser philosophers enjoy the solid doctrine and very pleasing effects of the [real] bodies."'21 Students of the Monas are thus advised by Dee to search deeply for the mysterious truths that he claims to reveal.

The caution to readers of this difficult and abstruse work applies not only to the work itself but also to all symbols and ,. signs in it. They too may have multiple, hidden meanings. In- deed, at least one thing is clear in the Monas, and that is Dee's Figure 1. Dee's belief that the common planetary signs have hidden meanings. monad.

They are cryptic representations of cosmic truths, carefully crafted by ancient magi to preserve God-given truths through time. According to Dee, to understand the universe one need only decipher the signs of the heavenly bodies, for "the common astronomical symbols of the planets (instead of being dead, dumb, or up to the present hour at least, quasi-barbaric signs) . . . [are really] characters imbued with immortal life and should now be able to express their especial meanings most eloquently in any tongue and to any nation."22

Dee demonstrates in the Monas that the planetary signs are each "composed of [elements derived from] the symbols of Moon [ )] and Sun [0] and [from] the hieroglyphic sign[s] of the elements [+] and of Aries [T]."23 These are the four special signs or symbols that combine to form the hieroglyphic monad. The powers, virtues, and place of each planet in the universe are supposedly evident in the symbols of which it is made. Jupiter (2t), for example, is somehow under the influence of the moon and Venus ( y) the sun, since the former contains the symbol of the moon, the latter that of the sun.

Magic, and Optics: Facets of John Dee's Early Natural Philosophy," Renaissance Quarterly, 1977, 30: 632-680.

19C. H. Josten, "A Translation of John Dee's 'Monas Hieroglyphica' (Antwerp, 1564), With an Introduction and Annotations," Ambix, 1964, 12:84-220, p. 206. This symbol, which appears throughout the Monas hieroglyphica, also appears on the title page of the Propaedeumata aphoristica. On the symbol and its subsequent history see Josten's introduction, pp. 90-99. All subsequent references to the Monas are to Josten's translation (pp. 112-219), and unless otherwise indicated all brackets are his.

2OIbid., p. 155. 21Ibid., p. 145. 22Ibid., p. 121; brackets are mine. 23Ibid., p. 161. I have added the symbols; the other brackets are Josten's.

390 J. PETER ZETTERBERG

What then of the sun; what does its symbol reveal to Dee about the most important of celestial bodies? Among other things, it reveals that the sun orbits the earth. Not only is the cosmology Dee reveals through his interpretation of planetary symbols geocentric, it is geocentric as a matter of mathematical necessity. Dee begins in the Monas with these three theorems:

Theorem I: The first and most simple manifestation and representation of things, non- existent as well as latent in the folds of Nature, happened by means of straight line and circle. Theorem II: Yet the circle cannot be artificially produced without the straight line, or the straight line without the point. Hence, things first begin to be by way of a point, and a monad. And things related to the periphery (however big they may be) can in no way exist without the aid of the central point. Theorem III: Thus the central point to be seen in the centre of the hieroglyphic monad represents the earth, around which the Sun as well as the Moon and the other planets complete their courses. And since in that function the Sun occupies the highest dignity, we represent it (on account of the superiority) by a full circle, with a visible centre.24

These theorems clearly depict a universe that is geocentric, and they are intended, moreover, as an explanation of why the universe is so structured.

According to Dee, the universe was created by God in a mathematical way. This is a recurrent theme in his works, especially the "Mathematicall Preface," in which he expounds upon it at length and refers to God's creating as His "Numbryng."25 The sun, like all other things, had been created by God in a mathematical way (Theorems I and II); in particular, it had been created to travel in a circular orbit. However, as the circle cannot be produced without the aid of a central point (Theorem II), so God could not have created the sun and its orbit without first creating a central point: the earth or "terrestrial monad." For this reason God placed the earth in the center of the universe (Theorem III). The ancient magi, according to Dee, have sent this truth to us hidden in a symbol (0D), the sun (0) circling the earth ( - ), which was the primal point in the chaos to which God affixed His celestial ruler and compass when constructing the rest of the world. This is the cryptic truth that the symbol reveals.

Peter French acknowledges in his study of Dee that a geocentric cosmology is assumed in both of Dee's major works on occult science, the Propaedeumata aphoristica (astrology) and the Monas hieroglyphica (alchemy). He regards this geocentric framework as strictly conventional, however, and after noting that in both works the sun "is accorded a place of primary importance," he goes on to argue that despite Dee's silence on the matter "for a Hermeticist like Dee, the sun-centred universe of Copernicus would have been a mysterious, mystical and pregnant reli- gious revelation."26 French here echoes the view of Yates that "for Bruno [and by implication other Hermetic philosophers of the period] the Copernican diagram is a hieroglyph, a Hermetic seal hiding potent divine mysteries of which he has penetrated the secret."27

Dee, like Ficino and Fludd, as well as Bruno, did regard cosmological diagrams as hieroglyphs of a kind. Indeed, he regarded the pattern of the heavens itself in this way, as is evident throughout the Monas and also in the "Mathematicall Preface," in

24Ibid., p. 155. 25"Mathematicall Preface," sig. *iv: "Number Numbryng therefore, is the discretion discerning, and

distincting of thinges. But in God the Creator, This discretion, in the beginnyng, produced orderly and distinctly all thinges. For his Numbryng, then, was his Creatyng of all thinges."

26French, John Dee, p. 103. 27Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, p. 241.

JOHN DEE'S CELESTIAL EGG 391

which he scolded those who merely "looke upon the Heaven, Sterres, and Planets, as an Oxe and an Asse doth." The heavens are instead a cryptic message to man from God, who "made the Sonne, Mone, and Sterres, to be to us, for Signes.... I wish every man should way this word, Signes."28 But neither Dee's view that the heavens are a cosmic hieroglyph nor the reverence for the sun that, to some degree at least, is evident in the Monas is in any way proof of heliocentric convictions on his part. Dee may have had a spiritual affinity with the sun, but that does not mean, as French argues, that he had "a spiritual affinity with heliocentricity."29 Both Ficino and Fludd, for example, while singing eulogies to the sun, were perfectly content with its traditional place in the middle of the heavens, which they regarded as special.30 This seems to have been Dee's position, although he gave a unique rationale for the traditional ordering of the planets and made the sun's place in the center of the heavens an even more special one.

Dee's cosmological diagram in the Monas is a curious celestial egg (Fig. 2).31 The egg, which represented the primordial chaos out of which the ordered world had emerged, was a favorite symbol of alchemists. In the Monas the egg in which Dee places the planets serves as a reminder t to the reader that knowledge of the heavens must precede ... ..... knowledge of alchemical mysteries-that, as Dee teaches, "celestial astronomy is like a parent and teacher to Astro- ;' nomia inferior [sc. alchemy]."32 It is more than a reminder, however. It is this diagram of the heavens that supposedly will reveal alchemical truths to those who can decipher it, * / and therefore the cosmology expressed in it cannot be re- garded as merely conventional. Indeed, the diagram, al- though geocentric, has unique features.

In Dee's figure the sun, moon, and planets circle the earth, Figure 2. Dee's celestial as clearly indicated by the dotted lines depicting their orbits. egg.

The cosmology revealed is geocentric and consistent with the first three theorems of the work. The sun is in the middle of the egg, in the center of the yolk. This, and not the center of the universe, is its special place. Planets most subject to a lunar influence-as indicated by the (D ) in their symbols-are placed in the white of the egg with the moon; those most subject to a solar influence-as indicated by the (0) in their symbols-are placed in the yolk of the egg with the sun. After presenting his di- agram, Dee addresses other alchemists. "May those very inexperienced imposters, in their desperation, hereby understand what is the water of the white of eggs, what the oil from the yolks, [and] what the chalk of eggs [sc. egg-shell], and many more things like these."33 He explains that the white of the egg is the "aqueous moisture of the Moon" and that the yolk is the "fiery liquid of the Sun," both of which "infuse their corporeal virtues into all inferior bodies."34 The rationale for the order of the planets within the white and the yolk, as explained above, is clear, and their order from moon outward to Saturn is the usual one, needing no explanation. Only the eggshell or "chalk" is left unexplained, although Dee does hint at an interpretation.

28"Mathematicall Preface," sig. biiv. 29John Dee, p. 103. 30See Westman, "Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform," pp. 15-18 (Ficino) and pp. 59-68

(Fludd). 3IMonas, p. 174. 32Ibid., p. 175. 33Ibid., p. 177. 34Ibid., p. 181.

392 J. PETER ZETTERBERG

"They [the alchemists] have called this secret 'the Egg' but all of them [really] mean 'Mercury"'-so wrote the Greek alchemist Zasimo, and in alchemical texts the egg symbol is indeed often associated with the element mercury.35 In the Monas, also, I would suggest that Mercury is associated in a special way with an egg symbol. For I believe that the "chalk" of Dee's celestial egg is meant to depict Mercury's sun- centered deferent. Dee writes:

Raising toward heaven our cabbalistic eyes (that have been illuminated by speculation on these mysteries) we shall behold an anatomy precisely corresponding to that of our monad, which, in the light of Nature and of life, will at all times reveal itself to us as is here shown, and will, by its pleasures, quite openly discover the most secret mysteries of this analysis of the physical world.36

The anatomy to which Dee refers is his celestial egg (Fig. 2). Where in the heavens could one observe it? Dee suggests an answer.

While we were once contemplating the motions, in theory and in the heavens, of the celestial messenger [sc. Mercury], we were taught that the figure of an egg adds [pertinent information] to this scheme. For it is well known to astronomers that he [sc. Mercury] on his course in the ether performs an oval orbit. And this, [once] said, should be enough to the wise.37

A number of astronomers had attributed an oval deferent to Mercury, including Reinhold, whose work Dee knew.38 From the passage above it seems clear that he adopted this novel view, which is further indication that the geocentric framework of the Monas is far from conventional.

In the preface to the Monas Dee singles out Mercury as a special planet, which "may rightly be styled by us the rebuilder and restorer of all astronomy [and] an astronomical messenger."39 The special importance of Mercury in Dee's scheme of things is evident in the hieroglyphic monad itself (Fig. 1), which is nothing more than the common symbol for Mercury with the sign of Aries affixed to its base. The title page of the Monas contains the inscription "Mercury becomes the parent and the King of all planets when made perfect by a stable pointed hook"-that is, when the sign of Aries is placed on the base of the sign of Mercury.40 The unique feature of Mercury's symbol is that it alone of all the planetary signs contains both the sign of lunar influence (I)) and the sign of solar influence (0). It would be fitting, then, that Mercury (in refined form the philosopher's stone) has as the center of its deferent the sun (the gold of the heavens), for this would then make Mercury subject in a special way to solar influence and not only lunar influence, which is all that its place in the white of the egg would otherwise suggest. Certainly such a cosmic design, reflecting as it does the mercury-gold relationship of the alchemy of the terrestrial world, would have appealed to Dee, who believed so strongly in the correspondence between

35Quoted in H. J. Sheppard, "Egg Symbolism in Alchemy," Ambix, 1958, 6:143. In alchemical texts Mercury, the "hermaphrodite," is often shown encapsuled in the hermetically sealed, egg-shaped vase (or aludel) in which the alchemical work is completed.

36Monas, pp. 175-177. 37Ibid., p. 177. 38 Theoricae novae planetarum Georgii Purbachii Germani ab Erasmo Reinholdo Salveldensipluribus

figuris auctae (1542), fol. P7v. The oval deferent of Mercury is discussed in J. L. E. Dreyer, A History of the Planetary Systems from Thales to Kepler (1906; reprint New York: Dover, 1953), pp. 273-274, and also, in far greater detail, in Willy Hartner, Oriens-Occidens (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968), pp. 463-495.

39Monas, p. 123. 40Ibid., p. 113; the emphasis is mine.

JOHN DEE'S CELESTIAL EGG 393

celestial and terrestrial realms. Such a geocentric cosmology, unique in its features, and not heliocentricity, is, I contend, the revelation of the Monas hieroglyphica, a revelation from the ancient magi who, according to Dee, devised the planetary signs to be cryptic messengers of such truths.41

In a prefatory letter to the Monas, Dee ridiculed the strenuous labors of the common astronomer, writing of the geocentric cosmology he was to reveal:

And will not the astronomer be very sorry for the cold he suffered under the open sky, for [all his] vigils and labours, when here, with no discomfort to be suffered from the air, he may most exactly observe with his eyes the orbits of the heavenly bodies under [his own] roof, with windows and doors shut on all sides, at any given time, and without any mechanical instruments made of wood or brass?42

It was in ancient signs and symbols, not in the naked heavens, that Dee, the Hermetic magus, searched for cosmological truths. And I would argue, in conclusion, that the geocentric cosmology he claimed to have discovered by deciphering the planetary signs-a Hermetic activity-was the one which he believed in throughout his life. For the Monas hieroglyphica was the work Dee was most proud of. He seems never to have lost faith in the truths he claimed to have revealed in this work. In the "Compendious Rehearsall" (1592), a rambling autobiographical account of his achievements, Dee singled out the Monas as the most significant product of his active and diverse career, even though it was never appreciated by his countrymen, includ- ing, he lamented, "University graduates of high degree, and other Gentlemen who ... dispraysed it because they understood it not."43

As Robert Westman has argued, there is no indication that Hermetic philosophers, with the exception of Bruno, accepted a heliocentric cosmology, although some like Dee did appreciate the work of Copernicus and did welcome the derivative Prutenic Tables of Reinhold.44 In Dee's case, at least, Hermetic interests seem on the contrary to have reinforced a belief in geocentric cosmology. And, importantly, Dee's ex- pressed reverence for the sun, even granting it to have been deep and Hermetically inspired, was in no way incompatible with this geocentric cosmology. For the sun, the center of the yolk of Dee's celestial egg, was not denied its very special place.

41Dee's views regarding the planet Mercury are deserving of further study. The interpretation I have given, which Dee certainly suggests, is complicated by one fact. Throughout the Monas, Dee refers to two Mercuries. One of these, which Dee represents with the usual planetary sign ( ), is the "hieroglyphic messenger"; the other, which Dee represents with an obscure sign (Y ), is the "uterine brother" of the first (p. 165-on the latter sign see Josten's remarks, p. 1 10n). With regard to alchemy the presence of two Mercuries (or forms of mercury) is readily explainable. The "uterine brother" is common mercury; the "hieroglyphic messenger" is philosophical mercury or the "stone." With regard to astronomy, the presence of two Mercuries is problematic. Dee may have dealt with these matters in his Mercurius caelestis (see above, n. 7).

42Monas, p. 131. 43"Compendious Rehearsall," p. 10. Dee also speaks highly of the Monas in "A Letter, Containing a

most briefe Discourse Apologeticall" (1595), pp. 77-78. As Josten notes, this letter demonstrates that "some thirty years after the first publication of the Monas Hieroglyphica, to Dee the message of that work had lost none of its importance" (Monas, p. 97).

44"Magical Reform and Astronomical Reform." Westman, who does not consider the Monas hierogly- phica in his brief discussion of Dee (pp. 45-47), concludes: "It seems that Elizabethan England's greatest magus [Dee] had no need of a heliocentric system, whether magical or astronomical" (p. 47).