John Dee and the Monas hieroglyphica: One Symbol for the Whole Cosmos

In January 1564, in Antwerp, the Englishman John Dee composed within a few days a small treatise destined to become one of the most enigmatic texts of the Renaissance: the Monas hieroglyphica. Dee, born in London in 1527, had studied at Cambridge and Louvain and was already known as a mathematician, geographer and astrologer. The book, printed that same year by Willem Silvius and dedicated to Emperor Maximilian II, condensed his vision of the cosmos into a single sign.

A Hieroglyph in Twenty-Four Theorems

Dee's monad is a composite symbol. At the top is the crescent of the Moon, beneath it the circle with a dot at its centre, the sign of the Sun. Lower down is a cross, which Dee associates with the four elements, and at the base a double sign recalling the constellation of Aries and fire. Taken together, these parts contain, according to the author, the signs of all the planets and the keys to the alchemical work.

The treatise unfolds in twenty-four theorems, in the manner of geometrical texts, and each theorem breaks down and recomposes the figure to reveal new meanings. Dee interweaves geometry, astronomy, alchemy, Kabbalah and the symbolism of letters. The result is an extremely difficult text, which he himself considered meant for a few prepared readers, and which scholars still interpret in different ways today.

The Queen's Mathematician

Dee enjoyed the trust of Elizabeth I. According to tradition, it was he who chose on astrological grounds the date of her coronation, 15 January 1559. In 1570 he wrote an extensive mathematical preface to the first English translation of Euclid's Elements, edited by Henry Billingsley, defending the usefulness of the mathematical sciences for navigation, architecture and mechanics. He also supported English voyages of exploration and the kingdom's plans for maritime expansion.

In his house at Mortlake, on the Thames, he assembled one of the largest private libraries in England, with thousands of printed books and manuscripts. Among those volumes were the works of Agrippa, Trithemius, Reuchlin and Paracelsus, which Dee studied and annotated with care. Many of those books, dispersed after his death, are now in English libraries and still bear his marginal notes.

The Angelic Conversations

From 1582 Dee began seeking direct contact with angels through a medium, Edward Kelley, who claimed to see apparitions in a stone or a mirror. For years Dee transcribed these sessions in his diaries, including long tables of letters and a language the angels were said to have revealed, today called Enochian. The two travelled together to Poland and Bohemia, to the court of Rudolf II and the Rožmberk residence at Třeboň.

During his long absence, between 1583 and 1589, the Mortlake library was partly plundered. Dee returned to England impoverished, obtained in 1595 the wardenship of Christ's College in Manchester and died at Mortlake in 1608 or 1609. In 1659 Meric Casaubon published part of the angelic diaries, intending to discredit their author.

The figure of John Dee sums up the tensions of his time. A rigorous mathematician and a seeker of revelations, a courtier and a visionary, he read Agrippa's Occult Philosophy as a programme to be realised. The Monas hieroglyphica remains his most personal work, an attempt to enclose the unity of the world in a single sign.