False Prophets Series – Part 6: John Dee

History is littered with individuals and sacred texts that make the momentous claim of being able to see into the future. In this series of articles, we are going to examine the prophetic credentials of those in whom millions of people have put their trust. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we will utilise a number of different tools in order to put the most popular of those in history to the test.

John Dee

Doctor John Dee (1527 – 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and philosopher. During his lifetime he was considered one of the most learned men in Europe. He possessed the largest library in England – his private collection of manuscripts was much more substantial than that of Oxford and Cambridge [1]. He was a man who mixed science and the occult and claimed he spoke to angels. His reputation as an occultist was so great that he was picked by the royal court to cast a horoscope for the coronation date of Queen Elizabeth I [2]. Dee went on to become the Queen’s close confidant. There is a famous incident recorded in Dee’s personal diary that the Queen was so alarmed by Dee’s absence from court one day that she travelled to his home, riding by coach and appearing in his garden. Dee wrote, “She beckoned her hand for me. I came to her coach side: she very speedily pulled off her glove and gave me her hand to kiss: and to be short, willed me to resort to her Court” [3].

To this day Dee remains one of England’s most intriguing historical figures. Yet very few people have heard of him, and even fewer are aware of his great influence on history. It was through his close contact with Queen Elizabeth I that he was able to shape the British Empire itself, setting into place the technology and ideological framework necessary for British dominance of the globe. After Columbus’s discovery of the New World, Pope Alexander VI had divided the Americas between Portugal and Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas, handing them dominion over the Atlantic. In November 1577, Dee presented a new imperial plan to the Queen, suggesting that England should wrestle control of the New World from Spain. Dee’s knowledge of optics, geography, and cartography made him invaluable in not only conceptualising but actualising this plan [4]. He developed systems of navigation and optics that would help establish England’s naval superiority. Queen Elizabeth I would soon implement Dee’s work in naval strategy to transition England into an empire. England would develop great naval might, take the New World, triumph over the Spanish, and establish a British Empire.

If John Dee had died in 1580 he would be remembered as a leading light of Renaissance science. What was to occur during the remaining decades of his life, however, would overshadow his scientific contributions. His long-running interests in the occult were now to come to the forefront, and for the remainder of his life the focus of his research was concerned entirely with the occult. Despite Dee’s own technical occult learning, he lamented his inability to make contact with the spirit world. He began a more focused exploration, deciding to make up for his own shortcomings by using scryers, individuals who gaze into reflective surfaces such as crystal balls and claim to be able to communicate with spirits. Dee met a scryer by the name of Edward Kelly and the pair began regular scrying sessions. Between 1582 and 1589, Dee and Kelly claimed that they held conversations with angels, and even developed a special language, known as Enochian, which they claim was taught to them by the angels themselves. The pair travelled through Europe and acquired a considerable reputation for the occult.

Dee soon claimed that he was being given divine revelation by the angels, including numerous prophecies which he meticulously recorded in his diaries. If Dee really did have access to divine inspiration, then we should see evidence of this in the angelic knowledge that he claimed was transmitted to him. What we find, however, is that many of the prophecies that he made were false. In the following example, Dee wrote that the angels promised him great wealth:

A study of Dee’s life after he received this prediction will confirm that the exact opposite happened. Far from becoming wealthy, he lived much of the remainder of his life in poverty [6]. Dee’s household consisted of himself, his wife, seven children, and eight servants, making seventeen in all. He was thus desperately in need of remedy to pay his debts, so that he would not be remembered “to the posterity of true students for a warning not to follow my steps” [7]. Things only got worse for him in 1603 when Queen Elizabeth I died and the witchcraft-conscious monarch James I succeeded the throne. The new monarch became so obsessed with the threat posed by “witches” that he had anyone accused of sorcery arrested and tortured. Dee’s knowledge and practice of the occult was once admired and celebrated during Elizabethan times, but under the rule of James I there was a new climate of fear against magicians. For the remainder of his years Dee was viewed with suspicion by the public and reviled by his fellow countrymen. While Dee’s contribution to the establishment of the British Empire early on in his career was immense, history itself would soon forget his role, passing over his legacy in favour of explorers such as Francis Drake. This is despite the fact that Dee was far more central to planning [8]. His scientific achievements were all but forgotten, being overshadowed by his occult activities. Dee’s magical partner Edward Kelly also failed to see a fulfilment of the angels’ promise of wealth. After Dee and Kelly separated, Kelly continued his travels throughout Europe. He was arrested in Germany by order of the emperor and imprisoned. Kelly was later released and wandered throughout Germany, telling fortunes and propagating magic. He was again arrested as a heretic and sorcerer. In a desperate attempt to avoid imprisonment he tried to escape, but fell from the dungeon wall and broke two ribs and both his legs. He died of his injuries in February 1593 [9].

In the following prophecy, Dee informed the Polish nobleman Albertus Laski that he would one day become a great king and revolutionise the world:

In 1583, Albertus Laski visited England in what appeared to be an act of courtesy and admiration for Queen Elizabeth I. When Laski returned to his home country of Poland he did so in the company of John Dee and Edward Kelly, whom he met through a shared interest in the occult [11]. Although Albertus Laski had lofty ambitions and contended for the Polish throne, he never became king as Dee claimed and ended up dying in obscurity.

In another prophecy, the angels brought Dee news of the imminent end of the world and the arrival of the Antichrist:

This prophecy implies that the world was coming to an end. The planets and elements are said to be sick unto death and ready to give up; even hell itself is weary of Earth. The Antichrist, referred to as “the son of darkness” in the above prophecy, was now prepared to establish his kingdom upon earth. Just how imminent was this end of the world? In October, 1583 an angel gave a timeline for the end times, which were to occur over the next five years:

Not only did this foretold Armageddon never occur, but the exact opposite happened in Dee’s country of birth. England went from strength to strength. Not only did she stop an attempted invasion by one of her bitterest rivals in 1588, a Spanish invasion by armada, but she would go on to dominate the world, one of the greatest empires the world had ever seen. Following World War I, the British Empire, known as “the Empire on which the sun never sets”, claimed over 458 million subjects, somewhere between one-fourth and one-fifth of the world’s population.

In January, 1584 the date of the appearance of the Antichrist was outlined, it was to happen within three years:

The above prophecy claimed that the Antichrist would soon make himself known to the entire world, with a specific timeline, that of three years, provided. It has been centuries since this prophecy was made and no such event has taken place.

In conclusion, we have seen that John Dee made a number of false prophecies during his lifetime. While he achieved great things in the sciences and left his mark on history by helping to pave the way for the British Empire, such accomplishments are to be attributed to his vast learning and influence on the English monarchy; they do not require divine inspiration. The true test for his claim of heavenly inspiration lies in the predictions that he made, of which many failed to come true.

Muhammad ﷺ A Genuinely Inspired Prophet

The purpose of spending some time looking at examples of false prophets and false systems of prophesy was to establish a benchmark to help us distinguish truth from falsehood. One can only make accurate predictions about the future and get it right every time when one is inspired by God, Who has perfect knowledge of the future. Muhammad ﷺ demonstrated this unique quality of possessing an insight into the unseen throughout his Prophethood. He not only made numerous detailed predictions about the future which came true, as shown in this article here, but he also rejected the baseless superstitious beliefs and practices of his day, as shown in this article here. These facts should leave us in no doubt that he was inspired by God Almighty.

References

1 – Peter French, John Dee, pp. 43 – 45.

2 – Casaubon, Dr. John Dee’s Spiritual Diaries, p. 43; Parry, The Arch-Conjuror of England, pp. 48 – 49.

3 – Edward Fenton, The Diaries of John Dee, p. 10.

4 – Glyn Parry, The Arch-Conjuror of England, pp. 94 – 96.

5 – Charlotte Fell Smith, The Life of Dr. John Dee (1527 – 1608), pp. 91 – 92.

6 – Peter J. French, John Dee: The World of the Elizabethan Magus, p. 9.

7 – Gerald Suster, John Dee, pp. 109 – 110.

8 – William Sherman, Putting the British Seas on the Map, p. 2.

9 – Lewis Spence, An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, p. 117.

10 – Meric Casaubon, Dr. John Dee’s Spiritual Diaries, p. 134.

11 – Jan Kasprzak, A RIDDLE OF HISTORY: QUEEN ELIZABETH I and THE ALBERTUS LASKI AFFAIR, The Polish Review, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1969), p. 53.

12 – Meric Casaubon, Dr. John Dee’s Spiritual Diaries, p. 132.

13 – Ibid., p. 189.

14 – Ibid., p. 210.