The mathematician whom the sage Burleigh had valued for his correction of the vulgar calendar must have amazed that statesman by a proposal to search for a mine for the royal service! claiming for his sole remuneration a letter patent granting him all treasure trove, as, in the barbarous law-French, is termed all wealth hidden in the earth, which, no claimant appearing, becomes appropriated by the sovereign. The mysterious agency of the virgula divina, or the divining rod, was to open the undiscovered mine, and to detect, in its progress, for the use of the bearer, the unsunned gold or silver which some had been foolish enough to inter, and not extract, from the earth.[5]
The luminous genius who had illustrated the demonstrations of Euclid was penetrating into the arcane caverns of the cabbalists, and in a state of spiritual elevation fell into many a dreamy trance. The soul of the mystic would have passed into the world of spiritual existences, but he was not yet blessed with theurgic faculties, and patiently awaited for the elect. If Dee had many reveries, he had also many disciples both of rank and of name. Whatever a mind thus preoccupied and predisposed earnestly seeks, it usually finds; its own infirm imagination aids the deception of the artful. The elect spirit, long expected, was at last found in the person of Edward Kelley, a young apothecary, but an adept in the secret sciences: his services were engaged at a moderate salary. Kelley had to make his fortune.
This Kelley, who afterwards became an English alchemist, renowned among the votaries of the hermetic art, and of whom many a golden legend is recorded with which I dare not trust the reader, it appears, once lost his ears at Lancaster for coining; the judges not perhaps distinguishing the process by which the alchemist might have transmuted the baser into the precious metal. This neophyte, moreover, was a wizard—an aspirant in more supernatural arts—an incantator—a spirit-seer! Once with impious temerity he had ventured on questioning the dead! This “deed without a name” was actually perpetrated amid the powers of darkness in the park of Walton-in-the-dale, in the county of Lancaster. A recent corpse was dragged forth from the churchyard; whether the erected spectre made any sign of resuscitation is not recorded, but it probably did—for it spoke! A voice was heard delivering its short but awful responses, sufficient for the evil curiosity of the guardian of a ward, eager to learn the doomsday of that frail mortal’s existence.
For this tale our antiquary Weever has been quipped by our antiquary Anthony à Wood, for his excessive credulity, as if Anthony would infer that he himself was incredulous on all supernatural disclosures! The authority was, however, unquestionable, for it came from the agent himself in this dark work, the opener of the grave, the spectator of the grim vaticinator, the listener to the sepulchral voice. He had often related this violation of “God’s acre” to many gentlemen in Lancashire, as well as to the faithful scribe of our “Ancient Funeral Monuments.”
Many strange unexplained accounts have come down to us where Voices have been introduced, and it has been too usual at once to suppose that the attestations were nothing more than what Butler deems “solid lying.” Leibnitz, a philosopher who seems to have delighted in the wonderful, gives an account of a dog who spoke different languages; the evidence is undeniable; and certain it is that the docile animal at his master’s bidding opened his mouth—and good French or Latin was distinctly heard. When the astrologer Lilly assures us of one of the magical crystal globes or mirrors from whence the spirits absolutely gave responses, he has described their tones: “They speak, like the Irish, much in the throat.” “This, if it proves nothing else, will serve to show that the Irish was the primitive language,” sarcastically observes Gifford; but his acumen might have discovered that “it proved” something else, and that Lilly here really delivered a plain truth in this description of the voices which gave the responses of the spirits.
The art of the ventriloquist to convey his voice to the place he wills—into the gaunt jaws of a dead man’s skull—into the moveable lips of a tutored dog, or into the invisible spirits of a magical globe—may be easily recognised. Ventriloquism has been oftener practised than has been known to the listeners. Speaking much in the throat identifies that factitious voice, which, drawing the air into the lungs, proceeds out of the thorax, and not from a lower region, as the ancient etymology indicated. The Pythonesses of the oracles exercised this faculty, and it was not less skilfully practised by Edward Kelley.
In the theurgic mysteries Dee would not deviate from what he deemed “the most Christian courses;” fervent orisons and other devotional ceremonies were to hallow the cabbalistical invocations,[6] and the astrological configurations and hieroglyphical cakes of wax, and other magical furniture. Among these was “a showstone,” or an angelical mirror, placed on a pedestal.[7] By patient inspection at certain more blessed hours, the gifted seer could descry the apparitions of spirits moving within its cloudless orb; for at other times less propitious the surface was indistinct, as if a misty curtain hung over it.[8]
By what natural progress of incidents the bold inventive genius of Kelley worked this fascination on the fatuity of the visionary might be curious to develope; but he who himself probably had been a dupe was the better adapted to play the impostor. Strange as this incident may appear to us, it was not rare at that day. A communion with invisible spirits entered into the general creed throughout Europe, and crystal or beryl was the magical medium; but as the gift of seeing what was invisible to every one else was reserved for the elect, it was this circumstance which soon led to impostures. Persons even of ordinary rank in life pretended to be what they termed speculators, and sometimes women were speculatrices. Often by confederacy, and always by a vivacious fancy, these jugglers poured out their several artful revelations. We now may inscribe as an historical fact in the voluminous annals of human folly, from which, however, we have hardly yet wholly escaped, imaginary beings, and incantation of spirits, and all spectral apparitions.
Kelley was now installed into the office of Skryer; a term apparently of Dee’s invention. Listening to the revelations of angelic spirits and to the mysterious secret, the alchemist inflamed the cabbalistical faith of the visionary. It is certain that Dee now abandoned his mundane studies, and for many a year, through some thousands of pages, when Kelley was in the act of “skrying,” sate beside “the show-stone,” the eager scribe of those imagined conferences with “the spirits,” received, to use his own words, “through the eye and the ear of E. K.” Kelley was a person of considerable fancy, which sometimes approached to a poetical imagination; the masquerade of his spiritual beings is remarkable for its fanciful minuteness. Voices were at times audible to Dee; but the terrific noises of supernatural agency which sometimes accompanied the visions could only have been heard by the poetical ear of Kelley, though assuredly they shook the doctor. I will give the reader a notion of one of these scenes.