John Dee & the

Magical Origins
of the British Empire
By Glyn Parry the dreadful schisms in Europe. Many believed that alchemy

A
would produce this end, for the Last World Emperor would
t last, the true purpose of John Dees inven- wield the philosophers stone to reform all of decaying Na-
tion of the British Empire, previously hidden, ture, including human beings.
can now be revealed. Conventional wisdom Dee was persuaded by these ideas, which had been
holds that he was responsible for naming repeated by European intellectuals and seers for many cen-
that empire, which became identified with a turies. The prophecy had originated in an apocalyptic text
progressive Protestant mission to bring enlightenment to a known as Pseudo-Methodius, after a semi-legendary bishop.
benighted world. However, that picture is the complacent Written c.674-8 CE in remote Syrian Mesopotamia, recently
result of intervening centuries of imperial history. From conquered by Islamic invaders, the prophecy was influenced
neglected manuscripts and hints within Dees writings, we by Jewish messianic expectations of an earthly ruler over a
now discover that, for Dee, the real purpose of the British period of peace and plenty. It promised a mighty Last World
Empire was to fulfil its prophetic
and apocalyptic destiny. He drew
upon ancient prophecies of a Last Dee was persuaded by these ideas,
World Empire under an Emperor (or
Empress) who would reform global
which had been repeated by European
religion, society, and politics before intellectuals and seers for many centuries.
the return of Christ to rule the world
for a millennium. The prophecy had originated in an
In fact, Dee was not a Protestant
of the kind assumed by later cen-
apocalyptic text known as Pseudo-
turies. He was born into a Catholic Methodius, after a semi-legendary bishop.
London family in 1527, baptised in
a ritual which the Church taught
exorcised demons from the infant, and brought up to believe Emperor who would destroy Islam, recover Jerusalem, and
in the magical powers of the priesthood and its rituals. His rule benevolently until Gog and Magog appeared. Pseudo-
patrons at St Johns College Cambridge, where he studied Methodius prophesied that the Emperor would defeat them
as an undergraduate, and Trinity College, where he became and rule in Jerusalem for ten and a half years until Anti-
a Fellow in 1547, were all conservative Catholics. Dee also christ appeared, when the Emperor would resign his pow-
studied at Louvain, when that university had become a ers into Gods hands and die. The short, troubled reign of
bastion of Catholic orthodoxy. Therefore it is no surprise Antichrist would end with his destruction by Christ, and the
that Dee finally became a Catholic priest in February 1554, end of time.
partly to please his master, the Earl of Pembroke, who Translated from Syriac into Greek, this prophecy of
needed to ingratiate himself with Queen Mary, and partly to a great imperial destiny rapidly proliferated in the Byz-
escape suspicion through his familys connections with the antine Empire. Already by 800 CE it had been translated
Wyatt Rebellion, which had just been bloodily suppressed. into Latin, as the expansion of Muslim power increasingly
Dee served Bloody Bonner, Bishop of London, as chaplain, threatened western and southern Europe. Together with the
making rather ineffectual attempts to convert the Protestants biblical books of Daniel and Revelations it became the most
whom Bonner persecuted. Dee was not a very doctrinaire widely-read of medieval apocalyptic texts and exercised a
Catholic; he belonged to an ecumenical generation of Eu- powerful fascination over the Western imagination for the
ropean intellectuals who hoped for a ruler who would heal next thousand years. Printed broadsheet excerpts describing

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NEW DAWN 67
Gods apocalyptic Emperor were distributed to stiffen the
Christian defence of Vienna against the Ottomans in 1683.
The complex text known as the Tiburtine Sibyl eventu-
ally incorporated another variant of this story. Its Greek
original was written in response to the disastrous defeat
suffered by Byzantium at Adrianople in 378 CE, but the
Latin text was often rewritten to keep it relevant. Originally the hot, desert East. In Genesis, Cain, the first follower of
it retrospectively prophesied Constantine the Great, who
would rule for 30 years, advance true religion, fulfil the law whence came the east wind that blasted crops and dried up
and do justice. Later it prophesied an Emperor Constans
would reign for 112 years in peace and plenty over all the
Christians, destroy pagan lands, baptise them and convert
their temples to churches. After 120 years the Jews would be
The Last World Emperor prophecy enormously wind
enhanced the apocalyptic aura of eleventh-
century Jerusalem and helped stimulate the
first four Crusades.
converted. Gog and Magog would appear and be defeated by
the Emperor, who would surrender his rule over all Chris-
tians to God at Jerusalem before Antichrist appeared to
battle Elijah and Enoch.
The Last World Emperor prophecy enormously en-
hanced the apocalyptic aura of eleventh-century Jerusalem
and helped stimulate the first four Crusades. However,
because Augustine of Hippo insisted that Christs Kingdom
would not be a millennial or chiliastic earthly kingdom,
even in the fullest version by Godfrey of Viterbo in the late
twelfth century, the Emperors triumph is almost immedi-
ately followed by the appearance of Antichrist.
Within a few years a twelfth-century Cistercian Abbot,
the Calabrian Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202), revolutionised
Augustines teaching that Christs Kingdom would only
be established outside history. The enormously influential
Joachim predicted hu-
man renewal in the third
status within history.
After the status of the
Father and of the Son
these ages would com-
bine their natures in a
long Sabbath Age within
history. This spiritual and IV, who as Last Emperor sets out from Byzantium to defeat
charismatic prediction
added a powerful aura of
apocalyptic expectation
to both Joachims own
prophecies and those
that his later followers
fathered upon him.
Furthermore, as
Joachims ideas went
viral amongst a host
Joachim of Fiora, depicted in a of medieval followers,
15th century woodcut. the Joachimist tradition
68 NEW DAWN
July-August 2012
absorbed texts that adapted Byzantine apocalyptic ideas to
Western imperial needs. Later redactors blended prophe-
cies about the Last World Emperor into pseudo-Joachimist
prophecies. In the process they altered Joachims prophe-
cies of apocalyptic troubles from the North, by looking to
another scriptural tradition, in which threats originated in
Satan, dwelt in the land of Nod east of Eden (Gen. 4:16),
the waters (Gen. 41:6, Ezekiel passim), and in Exodus 10:13
brought plagues of locusts. Throughout the Old Testa-
ment story the children of the east, the descendants of
Abrahams concubines, persecuted Israel (Gen. 24:6). The
Old Testament used the east
as a metaphor for vain
knowledge such as divination
(Isaiah 2:6), and in Revelation
16:12 the vial poured out by
the sixth angel prepared the
way for the apocalyptic kings
of the east by drying up the
Euphrates.
Therefore, the first apocalyptic text explicitly award-
ing the western emperors an apocalyptic role, the Frankish
Abbot Adsos Letter on the Origin and Life of the Antichrist
(950 CE), drew on this pre-existing tradition. Adso not only
became the most influential propagandist for the translation
of empire from East to West, but also implicitly stigmatised
the East by turning the Last Emperor from a King of the
Romans and Greeks to the King of the Franks who would
restore a chaotic world.
The Joachimist tradition also took up and publicised
a text of Ps Methodius from which three quarters of the
original text had been removed, in order to fit it to the rise of
emperors in the West. The redactors added further referenc-
es that envisaged a western power, rather than the Byzantine
Empire, conquering Islam, now identified as the threat from
the East.
The Tiburtine Sibyl was also shortened, to make room
for new prophecies that German rulers would face threats
from a king from Babylonia, meeting place of Satan, who
would bring great calamities. Traditionally, Antichrist was
to be born in Babylon from the tribe of Dan deported to
Babylonia. This may refer to the sultans of the Seljuk Turks.
In this way the East became the source of threats, countered
by the rulers of the West, such as a descendant of Henry
the Muslims, and to establish the universal kingdom of the
Christians for an indeterminate but long period until the
End.
Imperialists were particularly attracted to another
apocalyptic text, the Erithrean Sibyl, which first appeared
in the 800s but became so popular that its predictions were
frequently revised to keep abreast of political developments.
The most influential version was created c. 1195 by Eugenius
of Palermo (d. 1203), Admiral to the King of Sicily. Written,
therefore, at the front-line of the long struggle against the
Saracens in the Mediterranean, this version of the prophecy
describes Mohammed as a horrible beast coming from the
www.newdawnmagazine.com
 increasingly fulfilled ancient western assumptions about the
rise of the Whore of Babylon, the Antichrist, in the East.
The vision of the Last World Emperor enabled the Re-
naissance to hold in tension expectations of imminent Anti-
christian calamities with the positive prospect of a returning
classical Golden Age and a Joachimist hope of a renovated
world after Antichrists defeat. The prophetically-charged
imperial election of Charles V in 1519 seemed to bring these
hopes towards final fulfilment, because Charles united the
French and German royal bloodlines. His early victories
over both the Turks and Protestant heretics also seemed to
fulfil a multitude of Sibylline prophecies, now clearly point-
ing to his destiny in the East. Ever since Virgils Iliad, impe-
rial aspirants had appropriated the solar god Apollo, guaran-
tor of the migration of sovereignty from East to West. This
thousand-year-old tradition fed into prophecies of the Last
World Emperor taken up by Charles grandfather, Maximil-
ian I, and vigorously exploited by his son, Philip II, whose
astrologers emphasised how his solar emblem prophesied the
conquest of the East, conversion of the infidel, and perpetual
establishment of universal peace.

The Mysterious & Enigmatic

Dr. John Dee
Dee encountered Habsburg claims to the role of Last
World Emperor at Maximilian of Habsburgs coronation as
King of Hungary at Bratislava in September 1563. In early
1564 Dee wrote his Monas Hieroglyphica to advise the soon
to be Emperor Maximilian II. His contribution to Maximil-
ians prophetic destiny, of uniting the world by defeating the
Statue of Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II,
Royal Palace in Naples, Italy.

East confronted by a most mighty lion from the West

who would rule for 500 years.
The Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II sponsored
interpretations of biblical prophecies that awarded him a
messianic role, and adapted Joachimist prophecies for his
own ends. The Erithrean Sibyl, revised about 1249-54, now
served western powers, threatening the Greeks with the
power of a Hohenstaufen as the Last World Emperor.
Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries the Kings of
France contended with German emperors in claiming the
inheritance of Charlemagnes empire in the West and the
prophetic status of the future Last World Emperor, espe-
cially because the weak fifteenth-century German emperors
inspired few messianic hopes. However, with the accession
of Maximilian I (1493-1519), Habsburg fortunes began to
recover, and the emperors patronage of propaganda increas-
ingly identifying the House of Habsburg with the role of
messianic emperor began to drown out French claims in
the sixteenth century. Skilful manipulation of printed texts
and images by Habsburg publicists helped revive west-
ern Europes apocalyptic conception of the East, a revival
exacerbated by the House of Habsburgs struggle against
the inexorable expansion of the Ottoman Empire. By the Maximilian I, House of Habsburg.
early sixteenth century, this cosmic conflict abundantly and Portrait painted by Albrecht Durer, 1518.

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NEW DAWN 69
Antichristian East, took the form of promising the
philosophers stone. His Monas applied kabbalis-
tic techniques, and ideas borrowed from Joachim
of Fiore, to construct and then deconstruct a
symbol he entitled his hieroglyphical Monad
(right), which secreted the stone within it. This
combined the astrological symbols for the Sun,
Moon and Aries with the Cross. By now all these
had become identified with Habsburg universal
ambitions, and Charles V had elevated the Cross
to a particular symbol of Habsburg veneration.
When Dee returned to Elizabeth
Is Court in the summer of 1564, he
tutored the Queen in the arcane mys-
teries of his symbol. Some of his les-
sons probably concerned the alchemi-
cal mystery of the philosophers stone,
which fascinated Elizabeth. Other
lessons may have concerned the solar,
Arian and cruciform symbolism sup-
porting universal Empire. The decline
in political relations between Eliza-
bethan England and Habsburg Spain
over the following decades created
an ideological rivalry over ancient
imperial iconography and prophecy,
particularly about the destiny waiting
the western empire in the East. The
Tudors stole the Habsburgs imperial
clothes.
In Elizabethan England such ideas
became entangled in wider struggles
between radical and conservative
Protestants for influence over policy.
Ancient imperial ideologies included
Virgils prophecy in his Fourth Ec-
logue, addressed to Augustus Caesar,
which celebrated the return of the
Golden Age of peace and plenty under
the virgin goddess of justice, Astraea.
From her accession Elizabeth had
claimed an imperial authority over both State and Church
that reached back to Constantine. By the mid-1570s events
enabled some of her courtiers to promote her as the imperial
virgin, and to exploit a previously overlooked English strand
of Joachimite expectation, in order to advance the aggressive
anti-Catholic, anti-Habsburg foreign policy which they made
synonymous with the Protestant Cause.
The collapse of Spanish Habsburg control in the Neth-
erlands in 1576 persuaded the Earl of Leicester and his
followers that Elizabeth could usurp the Habsburg role of
Last World Emperor, and with it advance her ambitions in
the East. They encouraged her to accept the proffered sover-
eignty of Holland and Zealand in 1576. John Dee supported
these ambitions in a series of writings sponsored by Leices-
ter and circulating at Court, which urged Elizabeth to re-
cover her British Empire. This name did not look forward,
but backward, to the empire of Arthur, King of the Britons.
Part of this certainly included North America, where, Dee
70 NEW DAWN
July-August 2012
believed for a time, remnant Arthurian colonies
controlled the fabled North West Passage to the
Indies. But Dees writings placed more emphasis
on the vast European empire of Elizabeths ances-
tor, Arthur, to the south, and east of the British
Isles. Despite his association with Britain, Arthur
had been a favoured Habsburg imperial hero, so
here again the Tudors challenged the Habsburgs.
Dees General and Rare Memorials, published in
September 1577, included iconography connecting
Elizabeth with Constantine, at a time when, Dee
later recalled, great hope was con-
ceived, (of some no simple politicians),
that her Majesty might, then, have
become the Chief Commander, and
in manner Imperial Governor of all
Christian kings, princes, and states.
In 1576 Elizabeth also imagined
herself bringing peace to the whole of
Christendom.
As Dee well knew, a long tradition
of astrological calculations added to
the excited atmosphere surrounding
the British Empire in the 1570s. A
flurry of apocalyptic prophecies had
surrounded the election of Charles
V as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519,
predicting that he would restore unity
to Christendom, shattered by the
Reformation, and would prove the
divinely chosen instrument against
the Antichristian Turks in the East.
One of the most influential prophecies
for the later Habsburgs was the 1564
book On the Greatest Conjunction
by the Bohemian Astrologer Cyprian
Leowitz, which predicted apocalyptic
consequences from the conjunction
of the superior planets Jupiter and
Saturn in the zodiacal sign of Aries in
April 1584. Leowitz pointed out that
such conjunctions occurred in Aries only every 800 years,
that one foreshadowed the beginning of the Roman Empire
and the birth of Christ, the next the transfer of the empire
to Charlemagne. This must be the final conjunction, for the
world could not last more than 6,000 years.
Leowitz knew that the zodiacal sign of Aries the Ram
had particular significance for the Habsburgs. Ancient
theories considered it first amongst zodiacal epochs, for
the world had been created with the sun in Aries, meaning
that the sign immortalised the first Age of Gold, mystically
transfigured into the Rams Golden Fleece. The Habsburgs
inherited the sovereignty of the Order of the Golden Fleece,
whose members considered themselves Gods Elect, chosen
to prepare the way for the return of Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God signified by the Golden Fleece, who would rule his
earthly kingdom from Jerusalem. Leowitz argued that the
imminent return of the heavenly bodies to their positions at
the Creation pointed to cosmic struggles for the Habsburgs
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in Eastern Europe, from
Bohemia to Constantinople,
where they would battle the
Antichristian power of the
Ottomans in the Last Days,
before planting their banners
in Jerusalem and ushering in
the second coming of Christ.
Dees copy of Leowitzs
book survives, with his en-
thusiastic marginal annota-
tions about the final battles
against Antichrist and the
foundation of an apocalyptic
empire in the East.
In 1576 Dees associate
in magical learning James
Sandford, another Leicester
client, dedicated his Houres
of Recreation to Elizabeths
favourite, Christopher Hat-
ton. Sandford put Elizabeths
universal pretensions into
the cosmic apocalyptic John Dee (left), the English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer,
context previously reserved occultist, navigator, and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I (right).
for the Habsburgs. Citing
Leowitzs predictions about
astrological influence on earthly events, and with a profound
the great 1583 conjunction, and prophetic visions seen in
belief in the ability of alchemists to create the philosophers
Poland, Sandford added for good measure the widespread
stone, through which the Last World Empress would rule.
expectation that either the world would end in 1588, or at
Elizabeth certainly believed in alchemys transformatory
leaste governementes of kingdomes shall be turned upside
powers, for she employed male and female alchemists in
downe. Elizabeth, in whom there must needes be some
distilling houses at her palaces of Hampton Court and
diviner thing... than in the Kings and Queens of other coun-
Whitehall, and in her Privy Chamber. She also believed in
tries would play a leading role in the End Times. During
the power of astrological forces, on which Dee advised her
the Royal Progress at Norwich in August 1578, court poets
many times. In the mid-1570s she found the prospect of
introduced a new theme into their masques and declama-
becoming the universal ruler over a pacified globe deeply
tions, celebrating Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen for the
attractive.
first time. A few years later

Sandford applied Joachims
prophecies of the End when
Elizabeth certainly believed in alchemys
he dedicated to Leicester his transformatory powers, for she employed male
translation of Giacopo Bro-
cardos The Revelation of St and female alchemists in distilling houses...
John Reveled (London, 1582).
This thoroughly Joachimite
She also believed in the power of astrological
Protestant prophecy imagined forces, on which Dee advised her many times.
Christs Kingdom soon cover-
ing the whole worlde. No
other religion, no other lawe,
and rule to heare then that of the Gosple. By now the idea
Why then has Dees magical vision of the British Empire
that Elizabeth would prepare the way for Christ by triumph-
been condemned to historical obscurity? The answer lies in
ing over the East had permeated the excitable underworld of
the reactions of political conservatives at Elizabeths Court,
popular prophecy, and manuscripts circulated declaring that
particularly her long-time favourite, Sir Christopher Hat-
Elizabeth now Queen of England is ordained of God to be
ton, of more obscure figures who supported his rise, and
Queen of Jerusalem.
of Hattons protg, John Whitgift. From the mid-1570s
The British Empire John Dee envisaged for Elizabeth I
these men became influential at Court, and Whitgift be-
was profoundly different from that which actually emerged
came Archbishop of Canterbury in 1583. From then on he
in later centuries. It drew upon an ancient prophetic tradi-
and Hatton worked hard to drive prophetic expectations
tion that had become interwoven with widely-held beliefs in

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NEW DAWN 71
of a magical Empire out of politics, because they believed
such ideas stirred up the mob, whom they feared above
all, to follow radical, popular politics. Once the Earl of
Leicester died in 1588, Hatton and Whitgift became even
more influential over the ageing Elizabeth. Throughout the
1590s they and their many followers used all the govern-
ment propaganda machinery at their disposal to suppress the
kind of magical British Empire Dee had envisaged. They
had already forced Dees students, the brothers Richard and
John Harvey, to recant their beliefs in Leowitzs astrological
predictions of the Apocalypse. They now sponsored attacks
on astrological prediction altogether, and others that deni-
grated alchemists as deluded fools. Whitgift made sure that
Dee was blocked from the promotions and appointments he
sought, and his career declined in consequence.
During the reign of James, the first English settlements
in Virginia helped to switch attention away from the apoca-
lyptic British Empire in Europe to its real development in
North America. The chaotic events of the Civil War sealed
the fate of the magical Empire. The collapse of royal author-
ity meant that press censorship also disappeared, and in
the 1640s and 1650s there was a wild explosion of excited
apocalyptic prophecies by obscure writers, again calling
upon astrological and alchemical proofs that their envis-
aged empire would come to pass. The restored monarchy of
Charles II set out to suppress such ideas once and for all. It
imposed a rigorous press censorship and made it clear that
magical, prophetic thinking would disqualify anyone with
pretensions to social or political advancement. As a result,
magical ideas were driven underground, and members of
polite society, such as the Fellows of the Royal Society,
felt constrained from discussing them in public, though
they continued to do so in private letters. The success of the
Establishments reaction can be measured by how forgotten
magical ideas of empire remain today. Thus the utopian
British Empire Dee imagined survived only in popular
culture, amongst the powerless and marginalised.
At the end of the day, if we still seek such ideas, we
should perhaps look at what motivated migrants to leave
Britain for its empire in recent centuries. Perhaps we will
find a distant echo of John Dees belief in his magical Brit-
ish Empire in their belief that Australia or New Zealand
would prove a better world.
s Glyn Parry is author of the new book The Arch-Conjuror
of England (Yale University Press, 2012), the first full-length
biography of John Dee based on primary historical sources. The
book is available from all good bookstores or online book outlets.
Further Reading
Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle
Ages. A Study in Joachimism, Oxford, 1969
Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future,
London, 1976
Glyn Parry, The Arch-Conjuror of England: John Dee, New Haven
and London, 2011
Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in
the Middle Ages, New York, 1979
Ann Williams, ed., Prophecy and Millenarianism. Essays in Hon-
our of Marjorie Reeves, London, 1980
N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, London, 1957
Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas, New Haven and
London, 1993
Frances A. Yates, Astraea. The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth
Century, London and Boston, 1975
Margaret Aston, The Fiery Trigon Conjunction: An Elizabethan
Astrological Prediction, Isis, Vol. 61, No. 2 (Summer, 1970), 159-
187

Glyn Parry was an undergraduate at St Johns College Cambridge,

where he also took his PhD. He is currently Senior Lecturer in History
at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. From January 2013
he will be Professor of History at Northumbria University in Newcastle,
UK. His biography of John Dee, The Arch-Conjuror of England, has just
been published by Yale University Press, both in print and as an e-
book, and is available from all good bookstores or www.amazon.com.

72 NEW DAWN
July-August 2012 www.newdawnmagazine.com