Grounding the Angels: An Attempt to Harmonise Science and Spiritism in the Celestial Conferences of John Dee

Abstract

The retrospective catechisation of largely bygone beliefs is a naturally difficult assignment. An even more slavish task attends those philosophies which are not merely antiquated but which belonged, during their time of eminence, to a tradition of deliberate secrecy. An attempt to crack the ‘orphic’ codes of any such occult tradition will rely on a well-formed understanding of its position on the wider esoteric map as well as an appreciation of the clandestine nature of esoteric movements in general. Indeed, the seasoned esoteric historian will be closely familiar with the sentiment of Trithemius’s seventeenth-century caution to Agrippa: “... communicate vulgar secrets to vulgar friends, but higher and secret to higher, and secret friends only”. The would-be decrypter must therefore accept as inflexible the possibility that his or her quest might yield at best fragmentary fruits, for, as French warns in his biography of John Dee, the knotty complexity of old esoteric manuscripts “must necessarily elude modern readers”