it, because he asked the archbishop to send him a description of the pope’s horoscope, temperament, and state of health, and he promised to prepare a beneficial medication.
Discovering Dr. Dee
In England, John Dee (1527–1608) also knew people in high places. He was a mathematician, a magician, a mapmaker, a master of stage craft, a philosopher, a bibliophile who compiled the best private library in England, a collector of astronomical and mathematical instruments, an astronomer who supported the radical theory that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe, and an astrologer who was accused of treason for casting charts for Queen Mary, her husband, and her half-sister Elizabeth, a charge he was somehow able to dodge.
When Elizabeth became queen, he became her advisor, the role for which he is best known. Dee tutored her in astrology, chose the time for her coronation in 1559, advised her regarding foreign policy, calmed her fears about a large comet, and received her more than once at his home, although he never received quite the recognition he wanted from her, or the money.
In 1582, Dee became embroiled with a charismatic medium, alchemist, and convicted forger named Edward Kelley. An aficionado of the occult, Dee had long tried to see images in crystals and to communicate with angels, skills he longed to possess. Kelley, a flamboyant Leo with an eighth house Sun, assured him that he had those gifts. And so began a drama-filled association that developed in England, migrated for several years to eastern Europe, and was dominated by angelic communiqués. Once, for instance, Kelley had visions — a message on a scroll, a scantily clad angel — which he understood to mean that Kelley and Dee must share their wives. This was a spiritual crisis for Dee, but he went along, and nine months later his wife Jane gave birth to a child they named Theodore: gift of God. When Dee returned to England shortly thereafter, he discovered that his famous library had been vandalized: a crushing blow. He never saw Kelley again but he learned that his former compatriot had been knighted by Emperor Rudolf II in Prague and later, when his alchemical skills proved inadequate, imprisoned. Dee returned to casting horoscopes. He never ceased trying to communicate with the angels.
A note about Nostradamus
John Dee was far from the only Renaissance astrologer to serve royalty. Another such seer was Michel de Nostradame (1503–1566), astrologer to Catherine de Medici, queen of France. Nostradamus was the author of a collection of 942 inscrutable prophesies in verse form. Although making predictions using these ambiguous verses has proven to be a formidable task, applying them to events that have already occurred is another story, the opacity of the verses being easily pierced with wild interpretative leaps, anagrams, numerology, and mistranslations. The prophecies are also easily imitated. Despite multiple hoaxes perpetrated in his name, including a quatrain invented by a college student that supposedly predicted the events of 9/11, Nostradamus continues to mystify and intrigue.
DR. DEE AND 007
With the Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter in the eighth house of mysteries and Mars in Scorpio in the twelfth house of hidden things, John Dee could not resist the lure of anything arcane. He loved crystals, magic mirrors, and secret symbols, a few of which he invented. Among them:
A capital letter E with a crown on top that he used to represent Queen Elizabeth.
Two symbols that he used to represent himself: a Greek delta (∆) and a complicated design that combined symbols for the Sun, the Moon, the elements, and fire. It looks something like the glyph of Mercury and also resembles the image invented by the musician Prince (who also had an eighth-house Sun and plenty of Scorpio).
A symbol he used in correspondence with Queen Elizabeth that looked like a numeral seven with two zeroes tucked beneath its extended roof, signifying that this letter was for her eyes only. Centuries after Dee’s death, that symbol caught the attention of the novelist Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, and 007 was reborn.
Was he at least a good astrologer? Catherine de Medici didn’t seem to think so; she preferred someone else. But certainly he knew something about astrology, for his prophecies are filled with specific planetary references. One such prophecy inspired Orson Welles to predict a 1988 earthquake in Southern California. You could argue that it’s not that hard to predict an earthquake in California. And this one didn’t even happen. But there was an earthquake in Northern California the following year, so if you want to believe…
Wandering through Shakespeare’s star-crossed world
In the Renaissance, astrology saturated everyday life, so it’s no surprise that the plays of Williams Shakespeare (1564–1616) are pumped full of comets, eclipses, Suns, Moons, planets, and stars, few of which arrive without an adjective. In addition to being constant, blazing, shining, shooting, sparkling, wandering, fixed, and Earth-treading, Shakespeare’s stars are auspicious, charitable, chaste, comfortable, fair, favorable, glorious, good, happy, jovial, and lucky — or angry, bad, revolting, base, mortal, thwarting, homely, inauspicious, malignant and ill-boding. But astrology’s primary influence on Shakespeare is more than a matter of description. He thinks astrologically. His plays are shaped by signs (Scorpio and Macbeth; Cancer and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Gemini and Romeo and Juliet). His characters are molded in the light of the four elements or modeled after planets such as quick-witted Mercury (Romeo’s friend Mercutio) or melancholy Saturn (King Lear). Even his plots are shaped by astrology. In Shakespeare’s plays, portents are never false alarms. When a prediction is uttered, it comes true. And while several characters speak against astrology and in favor of free will, those characters are not the ones we generally like. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves,” states Cassius in an oft-quoted remark. But Cassius is the one who has a lean and hungry look, the one who engineers the assassination of Caesar, and the one who — in a work of literature from another era — ends up in Dante’s ninth circle of hell along with Brutus, his fellow assassin, and Judas Iscariot: betrayers all.
Whether Shakespeare believed in astrology personally is probably unknowable. That he knew astrology is without question. In All’s Well That Ends Well, two characters even josh about the effect of retrograde Mars. Shakespeare found in astrology an organizing principle — and an opportunity for humor. “Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction!” says Prince Hal in Henry IV Part II as he watches an aging Falstaff romance a saucy wench. As Priscilla Costello points out in Shakespeare and the Stars, everyone would have caught the planetary references and laughed; it was a bit of a dirty joke. Shakespeare was a man of his times.
Foreseeing disaster with William Lilly
Another man of his times was William Lilly (1602–1680), the most influential astrologer of the seventeenth century. His book, Christian Astrology — a misleading title, nothing in it being especially Christian — is full of advice for the studious astrologer on topics such as how to calculate the length of life (it’s dauntingly complex) and how to answer run-of-the-mill questions about finding lost objects, renting a house, identifying a thief, predicting the course of an illness, or determining whether you will be repaid money you are owed. These problems were assessed through horary astrology, according to which the astrologer casts a chart for the moment the client asks a question, and that chart contains within it the answer.
