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The Louvre, Paris
Haven't been able to spend much time on Flickr lately so apologies for not being able to visit your photostreams. School's started again and I'm faced with the problem of deciding what to write for my dissertation. One more week to the proposal deadline and I'm still clueless.
Dissertations of the Prophecies by Thomas Newton 1758.
Which have remarkably been fulfilled and at this time are fulfilling in the world.
Dr. Thomas Newton, Chaplain to His Majesty and Her Royal Highness the Princess Dowager of Wales.
Printed for J. And R. Tonson in the Strand, London. Half Leather on marbled boards, 443 pages.
The e-book is here: books.google.com.au/books?id=n14XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA402&am...
For those who wonder why my dissertation is taking so long to finish - it's tough to write when there's a feline tail in the way.
(We won't mention the time it took to take and post the picture of the distraction ...)
Dissertation title: Do the interactions between astronomy and religion, beginning in prehistory, form a distinct religious tradition? How much influence did astronomy possess in the prehistoric origins of religion? Was astrolatry (star worship) the first religion?
One of my favourite shots of mine. I don't know exaclty why, but I totally love it. I could (and perhaps should...) give it a better processing, but I was excited to post it. :x
I believe he was trying to sell the frames. This was an abandoned flea market in North Moscow, a sort of eerie place... it used to be an amusement park and now there are lots of rusted structures there. I didn't like the place at all, and I was a bit annoyed that my friends wanted to hang there for so long... but I took some nice shots there. This is by far my favourite one.
He stood there for a long time, in the same place, staring at the same point. I think he was sad or very bored. :(
Updates from my life: I started to write my dissertation today. I was pissed off last week that I couldn't find enough references and now I have over 80 references - so many that I can't organise myself, let alone read them all...
It's been amusing nevertheless!
My MA dissertation is due on Friday. It is Wednesday. Shit is getting real, and so is the tea consumption.
I’m so pleased to announce that I have achieved a Distinction Grade of 87 on my Master’s Dissertation covering the prehistoric origins of astronomy and religion and the introduction of my theory of an Astronic religious tradition being the oldest tradition of its kind, far preceding the Abrahamic, Dharmic and Taoic traditions. #astronomy #religion #Astronic #Cometan
If you wish to read my dissertation, you can do so here - link.medium.com/pOBc4N87D9
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tactics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
But coal is. This could be a long dissertation but it isn't going to be. I have already typed and lost the information once (blame Apple's latest upgrade) and I just want to give an overview. So let's say that the economies of Queensland and New South Wales greatly depend on coal mining. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are probably directly or indirectly dependent on coal extraction and export. Very similar to the importance of iron ore in Western Australia, but it doesn't come with quite so much controversy.
Australia is the largest exporter of coal on earth. 40% of the tonnage exported comes from these two states while the next biggest exporter is Indonesia with less than half of that share.
Coal directly and indirectly contributes to global warming from carbon dioxide (and other chemical) emissions from burning and also from less well known causes such as methane leakage from mines through soil. Coal has been a vital product in the production of electrical energy through burning at power stations (and elsewhere). Coal of a different sort is used in metallurgical processes, particularly steel making where it is converted to coke and is one of the primary ingredients. A variety of renewables are taking over production of electricity in many countries, the UK is a great example where coal mining, once a major industry has now been almost 100% phased out. Mind you, they haven't entirely stopped burning alternatives such as biomass but that is at least theoretically renewable!
The COP26 conference in Glasgow that ended over the weekend has issued a communique to "phase down" coal mining rather than "phase out" much to the sadness and disgust of many of the participating nations - hopefully you have read the news so I won't repeat what happened here. But it means inevitably that the shift from coal will continue. Alternative processes for metal production including steel are already being trialled or investigated, while renewable processes for electricity will continue unabated. And that's just the coal issues. Another outcome is that promises of job conversion for those involved in the coal and related industries will have to be delivered. We are not talking about a small cohort of people.
Meanwhile, a few brief notes on the photos which were taken from a viewing platform on the edge of one of the Moura-Kianga open cut mines. Coal mining, whether underground or open cut is not pretty. Open cut creates massive scars on the land as overburden, rock, soil, trees, farmland is laid bare and removed to the side to dig down into the earth and expose the coal seams, laid down millions of years ago.
The top shot shows a sectional overview of the vast expanse of one of the mines just outside the tow of Moura. The Moura-Kianga mines are metallurgical coal used in processes producing or refining metals like steel, lead and zinc. The coal is converted to coke which is the raw ingredient added to blast furnaces along with iron ore or scrap steel, coke, limestone etc. The second shot looks down deep into the mine where you can see the top of one of the very large dragline cranes that will most likely be removing more overburden. The coal is then dug up and transported by dump trucks so huge that entry to the cab which sits high up in the air is via a lengthy staircase. The coal is taken away and washed, graded, sized and loaded into heavy trains for the journey down to the port city of Gladstone via the new direct rail line that was opened in 1968 to shortcut the old lightly laid branch lines that went the roundabout way via Rockhampton.
You can just see the tip of the dragline in the distance in the top shot to give the whole scene some perspective.
In due course, closure of the mine will see the land remediated by the coal mining company. I doubt whether it will ever be the same again and my experience is that you can always identify remediated mining land because the contours do not look just right!
Lastly, because all the equipment and parts are so large, it usually comes in special convoys surrounded by police vehicles to shift other vehicles off the public highways as they pass. One of my other shots today (and another in the next day or so) show two such wide vehicles that required us to pull over as far as we could go to allow safe passage - even then it was a close run thing!
Hemaris thysbe on Cirsium discolor
Not the greatest but the best I can do. Thought I'd post this as I head to Austin, TX to present research on this organism.
HMF, NJ
August 2010
**********************************************************************************
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tatics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
*************************************************************************************
******************************************************************************
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No Part of this can reprinted, duplicated, or copied be without the express written permission and approval of Chatwick University.
These photos and stories are works of fiction. Any resemblance to people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.
As with any work of fiction or fantasy the purpose is for entertainment only, and should never be attempted in real life.
We accept no responsibility for any events occurring outside this website.
******************************************************************************
The study below was derived from facts uncovered while doing research for the following Doctorial dissertation:
Light to the shadows of their mind:
Criminal tatics and strategies
Criminology Department Dept.
Chatwick University
Storyline:
The idiot had fallen for the ruse, hook line and sinker. Believing Sara had been kidnapped by a loan shark, he had willingly come to rescue his damsel in distress, bringing the $40,000 he believed she owed her life for. Seeing Sara handcuffed and bound to a chair had been too much for him, and he tried to attack Shane in a vain attempt to rescue her. Shane had unwisely hit him with his pistol, forcing Sara to wait until he regained consciousness to implement the second phase of her plan. Shane had unbound Sara until that time arrived, and she busied herself with counting her money with a lovingly caressing hand, hoping the lovesick twit had not been dumb enough to pawn the family jewels to raise it.
As she was contemplating these facts, she stole an uncaring eye on her would be love- sick suitor, whom she thought of, indifferently, as a clueless naive Romeo. Then she looked up at the blank faced Shane, who still held the rod lamely in his grasp. She hissed at Shane to tie the young man up securely. He did so, roughly tying him up, and then hand cuffing him to the chair he moved next to Sara’s vacated one.
Shane was not very bright, but he listened. He also liked to drink, and Sara had dangled a whiskey bottle as added incentive, not allowing him to drink until after the house job had been carried out. For, once Romeo started stirring, Shane would again tie up Sara and handcuff her to her chair. Then he would slap awake the lovelorn Romeo, coercing him to give him the combination to his parent’s house safe, threatening with a knife, to torture the squirming Sara if necessary. Sara’s Romeo should give the combination up fairly easily, for the dolt actually believed that Sara was as madly in love with him as he was with her. While she waited, Sara allowed her mind to relieve the events that had brought the rich young fly into her web.
Sara had literally bumped into Romeo a couple of months ago while at the horse track. But, as it so happened, it was a young lady who had garnered Sara’s attention first. The pretty Miss had stood out in a black satin blouse, glossy lime green skirt, and wide floppy hat. As she moved she sent flickering with rich sparkles, the stunning collection of emerald jewelry that adorned her shapely figure. This obviously wealthy girl was making her way timidly through the crowd while stuffing a wallet she had pulled from a lime green purse with a thick wad of track winnings.
Sara had trailed her through the crowd, waiting for opportunity to present its self. It did when the purse was set down, leaving it temporarily unattended. But, as her long slender fingers had reached for it, a young suited man dropped his race form and backed into Sara cutting her off. Sara apologized, employing the British accent she had been using that day, and picked up his race form, handing it to him with a sweet mousey smile. Thwarted, she then turned and immediately retreated back into the throng, but not before noticing that she had caught his eye. Sara had not found this surprising, given how fetching she must have looked in one of the customary long silky dresses that she habitually would pour herself into when on the prow! Sara wore them mainly because the slick material of the dress usually allowed her to slip in and out of tight situations, both physically and persuasively.
It was later that evening, still at the track and with no luck outside of bad, that Sarah saw Romeo, alone and looking vulnerable . She went up and slipped up against him, starting to feel for his wallet, but for some indiscernible reason, aborted the attempt. Apologizing instead, she engaged him into conversation, more out of curiosity than anything else. She even allowed him to invite her out for a bite to eat. It was then that she learned enough about his background to stir her felonious senses. Especially once she learned that the richly jeweled young lady whose fat wallet she had attempted to acquire was the Romeos twin sister.
Sara had then turned on her not inconsiderable charm. Using the British accent and faking the role of a ragamuffin vulnerable foreigner, Sara (who had been born in the Bronx) started seeing the rich kid for a couple of months. Making Romeo keep their clandestine affair a secret from his parents and sister, Sara carefully wove her silken web until the innocently gullible horsefly was wrapped up beyond his ability to fly. She had successfully gotten him to fall head over heels in love with her. Like a prowling cat, she waited, plotting meticulously, a way to part a small fortune away from him. When she had learned his parents would be in Europe for a month, she put her plan into action. She let Romeo in on her terrible secret, a racetrack gambling addiction. This had led to her “troubles” with a loan shark. After accepting her suitor’s offer to help her in any way possible, she suddenly vanished from his life. Taking the time to hire Shane to case the isolated country house where Romeo, his parents, twin sister and two older servants lived. She also convinced Shane, for a piece of the pie, to act the part of the loan shark heavy. Sara also bought a one way Cunard White Star Liner ticket to England to make her permanent escape. Once all the pieces of her scam were in place, she then sent Romeo the note pleading for him to bring the money, and rescue her from the Loan Shark.
Sara‘s scam had gone like a Rolex’s clockwork, and she now was forty thousand dollars richer. Now all she needed was that combination to set her up for life. She licked her lips, savoring the thoughts about what would conspire a once the combination was hers. Shane would again render Romeo unconsciousness, unbind Sara, and the pair would leave their victim incapacitated in the apartment, a living insurance policy, while they paid a nighttime visit to his parent’s isolated country manor.
********************** Postscript **********
It was early afternoon the next day when an ocean liner set sail from Boston Harbor, bound for a British Port. The majestic ships’ railed deck was lined with passengers watching the departure. Many more were lined up on the dock waving to the departing ocean bound liner. Several of those on the docks, mainly men, may have noticed a lady, with loose long raven hair, clad in a black satin blouse and a lime green skirt, with jewelry set with opulent emeralds sparkling merrily in the bright sun. No one would believe what the pretty faced girl with the satisfied look on her face had been up to the last 24 hours.
Sara was very satisfied and pleased with herself as her liner left the port towards its destination: a port in merry olde England. She put a hand down to hold onto her flapping lime green skirt as it caught in the breeze. Her eyes once again admiring the emerald bracelet and rings she was so brazenly wearing.
She allowed her mind to travel back to the early hours of that very morning, as her and Shane had entered the mansion, wearing Halloween masks and carrying small black satchels.
Romeo had accurately given Shane the combination to the mansions house safe located in the den. It had contained a bonanza of old bundled bills and several cases of amazingly bright sets of jewelry. Then came the part Sara had been waiting for, the girl’s room! Romeo’s twin sister’s boudoir where she insisted on keeping her jewels, rather than locking the expensive things in the house safe.
Sara could see that Shane became aroused as he had slapped a hand to the mouth of the sleeping Girl, jarring her awake. The look of terror in the girl’s eyes had made him drool with excitement. He made her get up, helpless and vulnerable in a long loose fitting purple satin night gown. Shane than tied her squirming figure securely to a chair, gagged her, and let her watch as Sara began to rob her blind. Shane, standing by the wide-eyed girl holding his knife to her heaving chest, did not understand why Sara was taking some of the captive’s long gowns and shiny clothes, but then he wasn’t meant too.
Sara saved the jewel case for last. Making sure their captive was watching, She pulled opened and meticulously picked clean the drawers of the massive oak jewel chest on a bedside stand next to their captive’s chair. The last drawer seemed to contain nothing but sets of satin gloves, which Sara happily added to the pile in the small black satchel. Underneath she found hidden a set of diamonds (ring, bracelet, cascading earrings and matching necklace) that put anything they had taken of her Mothers jewels to shame! Sara picked up the sets necklace and placed it around the frightened girl’s throat, admiring its fiery radiance. Sara went back to the bottom drawer and scooped up the rest of the set. After she placed it inside the now bulging satchel she turned and looked Romeos’ twin dead in the eye, commanding Shane to search her. He did, removing the necklace, and sucking off a solid gold pinky ring. He handed the loot to Sara, who had come over to take it; she looked at the struggling girl and said in a sultry voice, you will never wear these pretty toys again! They had then left her room; the girl forlornly slumped down, a sad little portrait in a limp purple satin bundle.
Sara had left Shane off at the apartment to deal with Romeo. She had previously doctored Shane’s promised bottle of whiskey with knock out drops. Whatever the pair’s fate would be, she did not possess the slightest worry or care.
After leaving Shane off, the rest of her plan had gone smooth as silk. Sara had gone to her recently rented hotel suit, placed the satchels in a steam trunk, changed into one of her newly acquired outfits and jewelry, then left the hotel in a rented (under an assumed name) chauffeured Limo for Boston, all before the sun rose. She boarded the liner as soon as it began to admit its passengers.
Sara’s mind came back to the present as the ocean line’s steam horn gave an explosively loud whoop as it sailed from the harbor. Watching the docks filled with spectators grow ever smaller, Sarah envisioned herself arriving in a similar set of London docks on the other side of the ocean. There, she would assume the life of a wealthy debutante, living the good life from the riches of her ill-gotten gains. She may even adopt the first name of Romeos twin sister for a self-amusing ruse; after all, she would be wearing the poor wretches’ gowns and jewels to all the best affairs!
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Me talking about the "Management of big data on Alzheimer's disease" during the dissertation of yesterday.
24th June 2013
The Dissertation
Well, last night I was proof reading Simon Brooke's dissertation for him & happened to have Gorm sitting on the table next to me after photographing him yesterday & it got me to thinking. What would a dinosaur write their dissertation on? The answer seemed fairly obvious really
(c) Sarah Brooke 2013
Our Daily Challenge....THEN AND/OR NOW
I spent most of the day pondering what I could do for today's challenge. Then I opened my notebook to the first page which has written along the top with Dissertation Plan! Clearly I never got round to actually writing a plan but I have managed eight full chapters comprised of 16,000 words =)
The end is nigh!
Abstract
This dissertation seeks to define the importance of John Dee’s interpretation of mediaeval and Renaissance esoterica regarding the contacting of daemons and its evolution into a body of astrological and terrestrial correspondences and intelligences that included a Biblical primordial language, or a lingua adamica. The intention and transmission of John Dee’s angel magic is linked to the philosophy outlined in his earlier works, most notably the Monas Hieroglyphica, and so this dissertation also provides a philosophical background to Dee’s angel magic. The aim of this dissertation is to establish Dee’s conversations with angels as a magic system that is a direct descendant of Solomonic and Ficinian magic with unique Kabbalistic elements. It is primarily by the Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and alchemical philosophy presented in the Monas Hieroglyphica that interest in Dee’s angel magic was transmitted through the Rosicrucian movement. Through Johann Valentin Andreae’s Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459, the emphasis on a spiritual, inner alchemy became attached to Dee’s philosophy. Figures such as Elias Ashmole, Ebenezer Sibley, Francis Barret, and Frederick Hockley were crucial in the transmission of interest in Dee’s practical angel magic and Hermetic philosophy to the founders of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The rituals of the Golden Dawn utilized Dee’s angel magic, in addition to creative Kabbalistic elements, to form a singular practice that has influenced Western esoterica of the modern age. This study utilizes a careful analysis of primary sources including the original manuscripts of the Sloane archives, the most recent scholarly editions of Dee’s works, authoritative editions of original documents linked to Rosicrucianism, and Israel Regardie’s texts on Golden Dawn practices.
Introduction
John Dee’s (1527-1609) conversations with angels have been the subject of scrutiny of various parties since their inception. Nobles were divided in their opinions of the supernatural. Dee and his notorious scryer, Edward Kelly, were praised, supported, threatened, or betrayed for their experiments in super-celestial magic; a kind of magic especially noted amongst detractors for its risk in contacting chthonic spirits. The traditional Christian perspective regarding the summoning of angels has been suspect since the Middle Ages due to the biblical assertion that, whatever the entity’s own claims, a ‘demon’ may appear in the guise of an ‘angel’, especially those bearing non-traditional names (II Corinthians 11. 13-14). What made Dee capable of accepting this risk while expecting positive results?
Prior to his conversations with angels, Dee’s reputation was that of a learned man of the highest caliber. He had been offered the position of Court Mathematician by the kings and emperors of various countries after his lectures on Euclid at the University of Paris in 1550.2 His personal library’s vastness was well marked as the largest in all of England. 3 His comprehensive mastery of its contents and its ramshackle organization made his presence necessary in order to even navigate it.4 The quality of the library and its learned archivist were such that it was frequented by the leading lights of the day, including Queen Elizabeth herself.5 Why would such a man of such great erudition seemingly eschew reason, turn his back on his higher learning, instead attempting to receive the answers to his life’s scholarly inquiries from a crystal ball? In Dee’s final years and those following his death, the dangerous reputation of a magus dealing in super-celestial magic caught up with him. Despite Dee’s low reputation after his death, Johann Valentin Andreae (1586-1654) published his Rosicrucian work, Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (or the Chemical Wedding; 1616),6 which featured Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica on the invitation to an allegorical wedding that described the process of the inner alchemy of the human spirit (which will be further discussed later in this dissertation).7 Elias Ashmole (1617-1692) also made it his mission to collect Dee’s writings and corresponded with his son, Arthur Dee (1579-1651), with the intention of writing a biography on Arthur’s father, which was never completed. Méric Casaubon (1599-1671) used Dee’s journals to write the True & Faithful Relation (1659) that, at the time, seemed to seal Dee’s fate (despite Casaubon’s noting of and respect for his pious and fervent Christianity) as a deluded diabolist who had clearly overstepped the station of man in the spiritual hierarchy by attempting to directly contact and hold conversation with angels.
Frederick Hockley is thought to have been a member of the possibly spurious Society of Eight and possessed a great interest in Dee’s use of crystals to contact angels.10 Hockley and MacKenzie’s works and reputations were highly regarded by William Wynn Westcott who, alongside Samuel Liddel MacGregor Mathers and Robert Woodman, founded the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888.11 The Golden Dawn’s Second Order introduced its members to Dee’s Enochian tables and angel magic in the form of Book H12 and Enochian Chess.13
This dissertation shall attempt to treat the following questions: How did Dee’s philosophy and angel magic prove resilient enough to survive Casaubon’s damning persecution and persist into the modern era? What was the importance of Enochian angel magic to the Western esoteric traditions?
The first chapter, in two sections, will examine the sources of influence on John Dee’s angel magic. The first section will present the sources of Dee’s Hermetic philosophy that served as his rationale for his capability to perform theological magic; namely Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and the Corpus Hermeticum and their reflections in Dee’s works. The second section will investigate the sources of practical magic that Dee used as inspiration for his own practice (directly or indirectly); namely Peter de Abano, Johannes Trithemius, Heinrich Agrippa Cornelius von Nettesheim, and the various pseudoepigraphic or authorless grimoires such as the Liber Juratus Honorii, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel, Ars Notoria, and Arbatel de Magia Veterum, and others. The second chapter, in two sections, will examine the transmission of John Dee’s Hermetic philosophy after his death. The first section will present John Dee’s Hermetic and Apocalyptic philosophies as transmitted through the Rosicrucian writings of the Fama Fraternitatis, Confessio Fraternitatis, and the Chemical Wedding. The second section will investigate the transmission and revival of Dee’s practical magic through the fringe-Masonic societies; especially through Frederick Hockley. The third chapter will examine the transmission of Enochian angel magic within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and its direct descendent order, the Stella Matutina. The examination will include Book H, Enochian Chess, the connection of Enochian angel magic to spiritual alchemy, Robert Felkin’s usage of Dee’s angel magic within the Stella Matutina, and the reformation of the Stella Matutina into the Order of Smaragdum Thalasses; the Order of Smaragdum Thalasses being the last known Golden Dawn organization to have made use of Enochian angel magic.
Overall, this dissertation intends to illustrate the resilience and importance of John Dee’s philosophy and its transmission from his angelic conversations to the highly influential Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and thus to the modern era.
Chapter 1: The Philosophy and Practice of John Dee’s Angel Magic
It might be so if madness were simply an evil; but there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men. For prophecy is a madness, and the prophetess at Delphi and the priestesses at Dodona when out of their senses have conferred great benefits on Hellas, both in public and private life, but when in their senses few or none.1
In his outline of the history of magic and exaltation to the divine, Szönyi highlights the furies of Plato’s Phaedrus.2 In Phaedrus, Socrates praised the madness that comes as a gift from the Muses, which Szönyi equates to an occult knowledge only available to the ‘hypersensitive elect’. As mentioned before, Méric Casaubon praised John Dee’s Christian piety and goodness (though he also regarded Dee as deluded and a bit gullible) throughout the preface to his True & Faithful Relation.4 French neatly illustrated the fall of Dee’s reputation in the centuries after his death and illustrated how Casaubon’s perception of pious delusion was further degraded into ‘execrable insanity’ by Thomas Smith in his Vita Joannis Dee (1707).5 By the nineteenth century, the character of Dee had devolved from Casaubon’s misled, pious scholar to an immoral conjuror of spirits6 and a necromancer fit for sensationalist fiction.7 Calder aptly noted that the nineteenth century likely viewed all sixteenth century science as ‘devil-ridden superstition’ and quoted a treatment of Dee by an anonymous writer in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (1842): The majority of them were in all probability half mad and those who were whole mad of course set the fashion and were followed as the shining lights of the day. Regarding Dee in comparison to his assistant, Kelly, the article stated, ‘Dee was more respectable, because he was only half a rogue; the other half was made up of craziness.’9 Dee seemed to be possessed by this Platonic, divine madness and eschewed the orthodox Aristotelian assertion that science was to be the deduction of causal demonstrations on the basis of self-evident principles that could only be intuited and not demonstrated within a given discipline.11 The undercurrents of Neoplatonism that accepted magical practice within Arabic Aristotelianism provided a framework through which Neoplatonic philosophy, and thus Hermetic philosophy, could be combined to form a perspective that allowed the practice of magic to be considered a viable applied science. John Dee’s angelic conversations were not the casting off of his high learning, but the very application of it in a context of divine madness. The next section will examine the Hermetic background of Dee’s angel magic. Ficino and Pico: The Hermetic Roots of Dee
This dissertation cannot effectively present Dee’s Hermetic philosophy without addressing Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the translator of the Corpus Hermeticum, and the author of De religione Christiana, De Triplici Vita, Libri Tres, Theologica Platonica, and Epistolae,13 and a densely annotated Omni Divini Platonis opera (1532), all of whose books sat on Dee’s shelves.14 In a time when the age of a work lent it greater authority,15 Ficino, and all other scholars of the Renaissance, believed Hermes Trismegistus to have been a very real figure and a pre-cursor to all Greek wisdom: Of the sources for his magic to which Ficino himself refers the most are the Asclepius and, of course, Plotinus. The Asclepius, like the Orphica, had great authority for Ficino because it was a work of Hermes Trismegistus, a priscus theologus even more ancient than Orpheus, indeed contemporary with Moses; Plotinus was merely a late interpreter of this antique Egyptian wisdom. Ficino applied the Hermetic writings as the basis of Neoplatonic philosophy. He believed the Plotinian lemma ‘De Favore Coelitus Hauriendo’ to be an expansion on the ability of man to create gods in the making of statues as described by Hermes in Asclepius 24 and 37.17 The similarities to Christianity present in Platonic and Neoplatonic texts assisted in their assimilation into Ficino’s theology18 and provided a fine vehicle for his Hermetic Christianity.19 While this section deals with the philosophy behind Dee’s angel magic, Ficino’s own theological magic is deeply rooted in his theological philosophy and must be examined. Ficino’s Hermetic-Christian magic was transmitted through the Stoic and Aristotelian elements of the stellar influences on man,20 a philosophical framing of magic that Dee shared.21 Like the Greek sources it drew on, Ficino’s Christian super-
celestial magic was ‘daemonic’ (not to be confused with the Christian invective ‘demonic’). As Ficino states: [...] every person has at birth one certain daemon, the guardian of his life, assigned by his own personal star which helps him to that very task to which the celestials summoned him when he was born. Therefore anyone having thoroughly scrutinized his own natural bent [...] by the aforesaid indicators will so discover his natural work as to discover at the same time his own star and daemon. Following the beginnings laid down by them, he will act successfully, he will live prosperously; if not, he will find fortune adverse and will sense that the heavens are his enemy.23
Furthermore: Now remember that you receive daemons or, if you will, angels, more and more worthy by degrees in accordance with the dignity of the professions, and still worthier ones in public government; but even if you proceed to these more excellent [levels], you can receive from your Genius and natural bent an art and a course of life neither contrary to, nor very unlike, themselves. Ficino’s cosmos are composed of a hierarchy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ daemons assigned to the planets and the houses of the zodiac whom are responsible for communicating the will of the Anima Mundi to the inferior spheres. Ficino believed that through astrological interaction with nature, ‘celestial goods’ can descend to the pious magus’ ‘rightly prepared spirit’ to receive fuller gifts from beneficial daemons.26 Interestingly, Ficino outlines a talismanic imagery in order to connect with his astral daemons that is clearly influenced by the Picatrix.27 We shall use the planet Mercury as our example: For example, if anyone looks for a special benefit from Mercury, he ought to locate him in Virgo, or at least locate the Moon there in an aspect with Mercury, and then make an image out of tin or silver; he should put on it the whole sign of Virgo and its character and the character of Mercury. [...] The form of Mercury: a man sitting on a throne in a crested cap, with eagle's feet, holding a cock or fire with his left hand, winged, sometimes on a peacock, holding a reed with his right hand, in a multicolored garment. The Picatrix states the following of the stones proper to each planet and the formation of figures:
Of the metals, Mercury has quicksilver and part of tin and glass, and of stones it has emerald and all stones of this type has part of azumbedich. [...] The image of Mercury according to Hermes is the image of a man with a rooster on his head, sitting in a throne; his feet look like those of an eagle and in the palm of his left hand he has fire and under his feet are the signs stated before. This is its form. Dee’s magical practice likewise exhibited angels that corresponded to the planets through the metals associated with them30 and the respective days of the week.31 However, Dee owes much of the structure of his seals and talismans to Giovanni Pico, discussed later in this section.
Supplied with the basis of ancient, newly unearthed lore anterior to the Neoplatonists and Arabic astrological magic, Ficino’s theology was drawn from this long-forgotten, secret wisdom worthy of the title prisca theologia (Ficino’s idea of a primordial faith from which all faiths stem).32 33 The next section of this chapter will address in detail just how influential the quest for a singular, united faith was to Dee. In 1614, a mere six years after Dee’s death, a long debate on the authenticity of Corpus Hermeticum’s antiquity came to an end. Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), Méric Casaubon’s father, correctly identified the Corpus Hermeticum as having been written in the second and third centuries C.E.34 Still the Hermetic (and intrinsically Platonic and Neoplatonic)35 influences on the culture and science of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment —while controversial36— are arguably visible. The importance of the blend of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy that amalgamated the Great Chain of Being as represented by Ficino (further supported by
Johannes Trithemius and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, discussed later) cannot be overlooked. The Great Chain of Being as a concept predates Greek thought and was vitally important in the forging of cosmologies. As Lovejoy and Szönyi both
pointed out, Proclus used Cicero to succinctly summarize the idea and metaphor of the Great Chain of Being connecting all things to God: Since, from the Supreme God Mind arises, and from Mind, Soul, and since this in turn creates all subsequent things and fills them all with life, and since this single radiance illumines all and is reflected in each, as a single face might be reflected in many mirrors placed in a series; and since all things follow in continuous succession, degenerating in sequence to the very bottom of the series, the attentive observer will discover a connection of parts, from the Supreme God down to the last dregs of things, mutually linked together without a break. And this is Homer’s golden chain, which God, he says, bade hang down from heaven to earth. The Hermetica alone supplies no means through which to interact with the entities above Man in this Great Chain, and so Ficino developed his methods from Arabic and mediaeval medicine, matter theory, physics, and metaphysics all based upon his studies in Neoplatonism.43 Copenhaver gives special attention to Proclus in the formation of Ficino’s magic, an idea and further acknowledged and corroborated by Clulee and Szönyi.The most significant connection in regards to the connection of Neoplatonism
to the Hermetica is Proclus’ statement Thus all things are full of gods [...]. The authorities on the priestly art have thus discovered how to gain the favor of powers above, mixing some things together and setting others apart in due order. Ficino thought this to be Hermes Trismegistus’ understanding of the cosmos as relayed by Proclus, as exemplified in Asclepius in Hermes’ discourse on the ensouled gods created by man in the forms of statues. Thus, man can form a way to interact with intermediary entities by creating the images of gods. Proclus suggested the practice of a ceremonial magic in mentioning that through consecrations and divine services practitioners could achieve ‘association with the [daemons], from whom they returned forthwith to actual works of the gods’. Ficino derived the natural ingredients of his magic from Proclus’ De Sacrificio,50
which he included in his De Vita:
Under the Solar star, that is Sirius, they set the Sun first of all, and then Phoebean daemons, which sometimes have encountered people under the form of lions or cocks, as Proclus testifies, then similar men and Solar beasts, Phoebean plants then, similarly metals and gems and vapor and hot air. By a similar system they think a chain of beings descends by levels from any star of the firmament through any planet under its dominion. If, therefore, as I said, you combine at the right time all the Solar things through any level of that order, i.e., men of Solar nature or something belonging to such a man, likewise animals, plants, metals, gems, and whatever pertains to these, you will drink in unconditionally the power of the Sun and to some extent the natural power of the Solar daemons.51
Ficino clearly felt the weight of what he perceived as a monumental discovery of a tradition of theology and philosophy that had remained unbroken from Hermes to Plato.52 The assertions of a world full of gods by Hermes, the Stoics,53 Plato, and the Neoplatonists clearly impressed themselves on Ficino, but, with the further connection of Arabic medicine and Hermes’ fortunate student being none other than Asclepius (the Greek god of medicine of healing), it seems a matter of course that so pious and learned a theologian would craft a magical system when it was so neatly assembled before him. One question remained: how does one make this daemonic, astrological magic compliant with Christianity? Dee faced a similar question in his conversations with angels, though Ficino chose a much different solution.
Where Ficino drew on nature to connect with the planetary daemons, Dee drew on the planetary daemons to connect with nature.54 All of Dee’s sigils, talismans, and orations came from the angels themselves in compliance, rather than reliance, with esoteric literature available to him.55 It seemed Dee believed he had found a path that reconciled celestial magic with Christianity more aptly than Ficino’s daemonic astrology; a path less ‘daemonic’ and more ‘angelic’.
Ficino relied on the ancient Christian authority of Lactantius (c. 240-320). Lactantius, a Christian apologist, utilized Hermes Trismegistus’ Asclepius in reconciliation with Christianity as the ‘original faith of mankind’ in his work Divinae Institutiones (304-313).56 While this text is not a directly supportive work of Hermeticism,57 it shows a precedent for Hermetic philosophy to be used as a method of reconciling differing patterns of belief. Ficino found this argument a viable counter- balance to St. Augustine of Hippo’s (354-430) objection to Asclepius in Book VIII of De civitate Dei (415-417).58 Ficino also found Lactantius’ argument in support of his idea of the prisca theologia.59 These arguments linking Christianity to Hermeticism are certainly felt in Dee’s reworking of grimoire magic into a profoundly Christian, prayer- based practice at its inception.60
Plato’s key role in Ficino’s cosmology also necessitated a Christian sanitization. Here again, we find Plato’s four furies, the ‘divine madnesses’, but combined with the theology of the Christian Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, wherein each madness (prophetic, religious-mystical, poetical, and love) brings the aspirant closer to unity with God.61
In the Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558), Dee seems to have agreed with Ficino on the stars indeed having powers that mankind can benefit from, but through the use of mirrors rather than the agency of daemons.62 Clulee compares the Propaedeumata to Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) stating that where the Propaedeumata presents man’s interaction with the cosmos as a mechanically physical fact, the Monas sought to illustrate the power of symbols over that which the symbols represent.63
Thus, Dee more clearly illustrates his acceptance of Ficino’s Neoplatonic-
Hermetic theological philosophy within the Monas.64 In the Neoplatonic paradigm,
Calder underlines Proclus (and ancient mathematicians such as Theon and Nicomachus)
as a figure of important influence on Dee’s philosophy in the Monas Hieroglyphica in
terms of the notion of One, or Unity.65 Proclus posed a problem wherein the One, or
God, can only be approached by analogy or negation and supplies the analogy that
‘[t]he One is like the sun’s light which illuminates the world and radiates far and wide
while it remains undiminished at its source’.66 Dee seems supremely confident of his
attempt to communicate the One in a single symbol rife with countless analogies:
Though I call it hieroglyphic. he who has examined its inner structure will grant that all the same there is [in it] an underlying clarity and strength almost mathematical, such as is rarely applied in [writings on] matters so rare. Or is it not rare, I ask, that the common astronomical symbols of the planets (instead of being dead, dumb, or, up to the present hour at least, quasi-barbaric signs) should have become characters imbued with immortal life and should now be able to express their especial meanings most eloquently in any tongue and to any nation?67
The recent scholarly opinion regarding the Hermetic element of Dee’s philosophy
as illustrated in the Monas is unified and agreed upon by Walton, Clulee, Szönyi, and
Harkness68 in the following:
Since the Creator made the whole cosmos, not with hands but by the Word, understand that he is present and always is, creating all things, being one alone, and by his will producing all beings.69
Ficino’s reconciliation of his philosophy, magic, and Christianity were highly formative to Dee’s justifications for his questionably heretical angelic conversations. However, Dee also incorporated Kabbalistic elements Ficino eschewed. Ficino’s friend, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, artfully reconciled Kabbalah with Platonic and Hermetic philosophy, as well as Christianity.70 The connection of the divinity of the cosmos and man’s ability to connect with them through images is granted new depths when combined with the power of names presented in practical Kabbalah, as written by Johannes Reuchlin (1455-1522), and further linked with Hermeticism and Christianity through Pico. Pico’s contribution to the Hermetic-Kabbalistic philosophy most certainly piqued Dee’s interests, as exemplified in his Hermetic-Christian definition of the ‘real Cabbala’ in his Monas Hieroglyphica.
It is fascinating and highly relevant to this essay that Pico proclaimed Ramon Llull’s works, or the Ars Raymundi, to be Kabbalistic.72 Ramón Llull (1232/3-1316) channeled the idea of the Great Chain of Being in his assertion of the capacity of man to ascend the scala naturae, or the ladder of nature, through intellectual contemplation.73 Llull used the combination of a series of nine letters (B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and K) representing ‘absolute attributes’, to which nine relations, nine questions, nine subjects, nine virtues, and nine vices were added.74 75 The resulting number of binary combinations was calculated to be 17,804,320,388,674,561, which Llull explored with the use of geometrical figures meant to enumerate the terms and generate combinatorial pairings of the aspects of reality.76 The acceptance of pseudo-Llullian alchemical and Kabbalistic works as authentic in conjunction with his mystic, mathematical diagrams only served to make the Ars Raymundi all the more appealing to Dee.77 Pico argues that Llull’s usage of combining letters of the Hebrew alphabet was not unlike Kabbalistic techniques78 and relied on Llull’s Ars Combinatoria for his own system.79
Regarding Pico’s own system, in his Nine Hundred Theses (1486), he succinctly states his thoughts on Kabbalah and Platonism: That which among the Cabalists is called <[...] Metatron> is without doubt that which is called Pallas by Orpheus, the paternal mind by Zoroaster, the son of God by Mercury, wisdom by Pythagoras, the intelligible sphere by Parmenides.80
He then addresses Kabbalah and Christianity:
11>7. No Hebrew Cabalist can deny that the name Jesus, if we interpret it following the method and principles of the Cabala, signifies precisely all this and nothing else, that is: God the Son of God and the Wisdom of the Father, united to human nature in the unity of assumption through the third Person of God, who is the most ardent fire of love.81
Pico’s clear devotion to Hermetic philosophy was illustrated in the dedication of ten theses to ‘Mercury Trismegistus’ that explicated man’s connection to a living nature, and thus to a God who is present in that life.82 Pico clearly believed in not merely the syncretism of faiths, but the reconciliation of seemingly disparate religious, philosophical, and cultural paradigms.
Johannes Reuchlin boldly deepened the connections between Kabbalah and Christianity in a time when Judaism was defined as a form of Satanism, perhaps even if unwitting.83 Pico’s Theses inspired Reuchlin to write De Verbo Mirifico (1494) in defense of Pico, and the central work on Christian Kabbalah, De Arte Cabalistica (1517).84 In De Verbo Mirifico, Reuchlin presented what he believed to be the reality and name of the Christian God made known through the Son in the pentagrammaton, the five lettered name he believed to signify Jesus Christ.85 De Verbo Mirifico was listed in Dee’s catalogue and it is quite likely Dee was familiar with its material based on the tone of his magical practices86 and some of the aphorisms in the Propaedeumata Aphoristica.87 Through Pico and Reuchlin, the idea that the presence of God existed in images was expanded to include names of power.88 This presentation of the Kabbalah in a Christian, magical context was a crucial element to Dee’s practice.89
The encoding of the Sigillum Dei Aemeth,90 the Kings and Princes of the Heptarchia Mystica, and the divine names of the nations of the world and the angels overseeing them in the Liber Scientiae Auxilii all go to great lengths to identify the names of the angels.91 Dee presumably considered the use of these names crucial to contacting the angels in order to achieve divine understanding related to their offices, though there are no existing records of Dee ever using the names and orations described in the aforementioned books in such a way.
The significant link between Pico and Dee was the transmission of the combined Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and Platonic ideas through Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres (1533), especially in regards to the threefold world (elementary, celestial, and intellectual/supercelestial)92 93 that Dee presents in his Mathematicall Praeface to the Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara (1570). Dee utilized this threefold world as the basis of his supercelestial magic dealing with ‘intelligences’ or angels.94 His
treatment of the threefold world in the Mathematical Preface follows:
All thinges which are, & haue beyng, are found vnder a triple diuersitie generall. For, either, they are demed Supernaturall, Naturall, or, of a third being [...] which, by a peculier name also, are called Thynges Mathematicall.95
The linkage between the emanations of God in Neoplatonism influencing
Kabbalistic works has been conjectured, but regardless of such a connection,96 the
theological philosophies seemed to have been more separated by the cultures that
espoused them rather than the actual contents of their literature.97 The inclusion of
Kabbalah into the Neoplatonic and Hermetic philosophy under the auspices of a deeper
Christianity influenced Dee’s thought, and eventually his magical practice. This will be
evidenced and examined in greater depth in the following section treating his angelic
conversations.
www.academia.edu/921740/Enochian_Angel_Magic_From_John_De...
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An ordinary picture of an ordinary day of an almost graduated girl, writing her final dissertation
This is my main typing desk while I'm doing my final year dissertation. I've cleared everything off it, and from around it, until it is just the stuff I need to do the work! That means my G4 Cube has been put in a box for the moment, along with the extra Apple keyboard I keep around for FB chat on my iPad. At least it gets rid of some of the distractions! No doubt that will change as soon as I have some free time again!
Most of this stuff I've generally accumulated from eBay in keeping with my student budget, the Harmon Kardon Soundsticks, iMac 21.5" i3, iPad and its dock.
Thanks for reading!
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Coming soon, the design of my dissertation. It's all about how magazines are being affected by the increasing online activity and the affect that this is having on existing printed magazines.
I have been working on my dissertation for over a year and I have gotten to where I hate it. I made myself take it outside with me when I took pictures today so I would work on it when there were no birds around. I actually got a lot done... but I also made it a part of my shots :)
Don't worry about invites.. I just did this to amuse myself :)