Written during his imprisonment in the Tower of London,the cynical nature of the work, and the contempt to which Raleigh holds monarchs throughout history brought the book to the attention of James I who immediately demanded copies to be seized and publication banned.
If you find a million words daunting in the age of Twitter, some selections from his work can be read here:
Selections from his Historie of the world, his Letters,
Dr. John Dee was the ‘conjuror’ associated with the fictional, atheistical ‘School of Night’ associated with Walter Raleigh (by his enemies), who allegedly cursed the Spanish Armada in 1588.
His appetite for knowledge meant he slept only four hours a night, spending his waking hours studying Greek, Latin, geometry, mathematics, astronomy, navigation, scripture, law, medicine and cryptography – the art of writing codes.
He accumulated the largest library in England at his house in Mortlake – boasting some 2,670 manuscripts, as opposed to Cambridge’s 451 and Oxford’s 379
The private diary of Dr. John Dee : and the catalogue of his library of manuscripts,
As well as being a renowned occultist, he was a gifted cartographer, mathematician, geographer and astronomer.
He used that wealth of knowledge to prepare Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh as they traveled the globe, and advised Queen Elizabeth on her imperial designs.
“Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.”
This was an obsidian Aztec cult object in the shape of a hand-mirror, brought to Europe in the late 1520s, which was subsequently owned by Horace Walpole
3 Magical Discs, made from wax & engraved with detailed inscriptions and symbols, the disks would have been used in conjunction with Dee’s magic mirror for communication and decoding purposes.
"SPIKED tells the inside story of one of humanity’s biggest & most pressing mysteries: the debate over the origins of COVID-19"
Clip 👇
2. The Making of the Documentary (20 minutes)
"Unfolding like true crime, this detective story takes us deep into clashing conspiracy theories & partisanship while exposing the dangers posed by experiments regularly taking place in the world’s biolabs"
"It’s about the future of biotech and the next pandemic. We wanted to make a contentious story really exciting, with twists and turns, that covers the science but with a strong dramatic structure"