“Hear what I say. God is the unity of all things. Love is the unity of every Congregation (I mean true and perfect love). The world was made in the love of the Father.” And so on and so forth.
Kelley then decided to try necromancy. In the graveyard of Walton Le Dale in Lancashire, he went with his assistant, a fellow named Waring, to elicit information from a freshly buried corpse. But his luck wasn’t much better. There, he drew a magic circle and inscribed its border with the names of several helpful angels—Raphael, Rael, Miraton, Tarmiel, and Rex. Standing inside the sacred space and reading by torchlight from a book of incantations, Kelley was purportedly successful in coaxing the corpse, still in its burial cloth, to rise from the grave and speak to him, though no record exists of what they talked about.
Interestingly, there was one subject on which the spirit Madimi’s instructions were quite clear and explicit. According to Kelley, he was consulting her one day when she advised him that he and the good doctor should “share all things in common, including their wives.” Jane Dee had seen this one coming and flew into a rage. Mrs. Kelley’s reaction has gone unrecorded, but it’s safe to say she wasn’t too pleased about it either.
Encountering such strong opposition, Kelley quit his post. And even though Dee himself had been no less appalled by the immoral instruction, he soon found himself missing the best scryer he’d ever had. Later, when Kelley came back, once again consulted the magic glass, and this time said that Uriel, too, was advocating the wife-swapping scheme, Dee gave in: “There is no other remedy,” Dee wrote, “but as hath been said of our cross-matching, so it must needs be done.” According to Dee’s diary entry on Sunday, May 3, 1587, the two husbands and their wives “covenanted with God, and subscribed the same for indissolubleand inviolable unities, charity, and friendship keeping, between us four, and all things between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.”
The new peace didn’t last long. The wives fought bitterly, the husbands ran short of cash, and Dee decided the partnership wasn’t working, after all. Kelley packed up his old kit bag, filled with magic powders and trinkets, and traveled through Bohemia and Germany, telling fortunes and selling his wares. He was arrested twice as a heretic; the second time, afraid that he might actually wind up with a sentence of death, he tried to climb over the dungeon wall, lost his grip, and fell. He broke both legs and two of his ribs, and in February 1593, he died of his injuries.
As for Dee, he set up shop in his ancestral home in Mortlake, where gradually he slipped into penury. A couple of new scryers he employed proved to be incompetent, and his pursuit of the philosophers’ stone was fruitless. He wrote voluminously, but with little effect or public acclaim. The queen came to his rescue with a small appointment, but when she died and was replaced by James I, no friend to men with a reputation for sorcery, Dee knew that he’d run out of luck. A lonely and impoverished old sorcerer (his second wife, too, had died), he passed away at his home in 1608, surrounded by arcane texts and the strange instruments of his trade.
THE LODGE OF THE MYSTERIES
On October 29, 1768, Johann Georg Schropfer opened a small café in the town of Leipzig. But Schropfer’s café offered something not seen on the menu in most such establishments—initiation into the mysteries of magic and the occult. Schropfer, who joined Cagliostro as one of the most renowned sorcerers of his day, served up a magic punch made from his own secret recipe, along with lessons in the summoning of the dead, for anyone brave enough to undertake them.
Unlike many other necromancers, however, Schropfer disdained the use of corpses. He was something of a purist in thatregard. When Schropfer went about conjuring the dead, he began by fasting and
Kelley then decided to try necromancy. In the graveyard of Walton Le Dale in Lancashire, he went with his assistant, a fellow named Waring, to elicit information from a freshly buried corpse. But his luck wasn’t much better. There, he drew a magic circle and inscribed its border with the names of several helpful angels—Raphael, Rael, Miraton, Tarmiel, and Rex. Standing inside the sacred space and reading by torchlight from a book of incantations, Kelley was purportedly successful in coaxing the corpse, still in its burial cloth, to rise from the grave and speak to him, though no record exists of what they talked about.
Interestingly, there was one subject on which the spirit Madimi’s instructions were quite clear and explicit. According to Kelley, he was consulting her one day when she advised him that he and the good doctor should “share all things in common, including their wives.” Jane Dee had seen this one coming and flew into a rage. Mrs. Kelley’s reaction has gone unrecorded, but it’s safe to say she wasn’t too pleased about it either.
Encountering such strong opposition, Kelley quit his post. And even though Dee himself had been no less appalled by the immoral instruction, he soon found himself missing the best scryer he’d ever had. Later, when Kelley came back, once again consulted the magic glass, and this time said that Uriel, too, was advocating the wife-swapping scheme, Dee gave in: “There is no other remedy,” Dee wrote, “but as hath been said of our cross-matching, so it must needs be done.” According to Dee’s diary entry on Sunday, May 3, 1587, the two husbands and their wives “covenanted with God, and subscribed the same for indissolubleand inviolable unities, charity, and friendship keeping, between us four, and all things between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.”
The new peace didn’t last long. The wives fought bitterly, the husbands ran short of cash, and Dee decided the partnership wasn’t working, after all. Kelley packed up his old kit bag, filled with magic powders and trinkets, and traveled through Bohemia and Germany, telling fortunes and selling his wares. He was arrested twice as a heretic; the second time, afraid that he might actually wind up with a sentence of death, he tried to climb over the dungeon wall, lost his grip, and fell. He broke both legs and two of his ribs, and in February 1593, he died of his injuries.
As for Dee, he set up shop in his ancestral home in Mortlake, where gradually he slipped into penury. A couple of new scryers he employed proved to be incompetent, and his pursuit of the philosophers’ stone was fruitless. He wrote voluminously, but with little effect or public acclaim. The queen came to his rescue with a small appointment, but when she died and was replaced by James I, no friend to men with a reputation for sorcery, Dee knew that he’d run out of luck. A lonely and impoverished old sorcerer (his second wife, too, had died), he passed away at his home in 1608, surrounded by arcane texts and the strange instruments of his trade.
THE LODGE OF THE MYSTERIES
On October 29, 1768, Johann Georg Schropfer opened a small café in the town of Leipzig. But Schropfer’s café offered something not seen on the menu in most such establishments—initiation into the mysteries of magic and the occult. Schropfer, who joined Cagliostro as one of the most renowned sorcerers of his day, served up a magic punch made from his own secret recipe, along with lessons in the summoning of the dead, for anyone brave enough to undertake them.
Unlike many other necromancers, however, Schropfer disdained the use of corpses. He was something of a purist in thatregard. When Schropfer went about conjuring the dead, he began by fasting and
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