![]() ![]() Dee had travelled the continent, lectured in Paris, owned a copy of the rare Steganographia by Trithemius, had already published his Monas Hieroglyphica and stood in close contact with Queen Elizabeth I. So during the time of our events, in 1567, he was clearly their senior (ages at the time: John Dee 40, Humphrey Gilbert 28, John Davis 17). However, Dee’s own experiments in crystallomancy only began in 1581. In particular John and Adrian seem to have discussed magical matters with Dee. The three young men have been connected to a circle of magical practitioners associated with John Dee (Klaassen, p. A third man possibly present during the magical operations is Adrian Gilbert, Humphrey’s younger brother and Davis’s lifelong associate who wrote the Excellent Booke according to Humphrey’s dictation and may also have annotated the script of the Visions. (Klaassen, p. Klaassen, Legard and Cummins agree that the ‘H.G.’ mentioned in them is none other than Humphrey Gilbert (1539-1583), and they identify his scryer as John Davis (1550-1605). In this review we aim to do three things, all intended to further the joy of reading this “excellent book” for yourself: first, we will provide a rough outline of the historic context of the manuscript, then we will reflect on the approaches taken by Legard and Cummins in their essays to unlock some of the mysteries of the texts, and finally we’ll take the liberty to chime in on this fascinating exegetical discourse by sharing our own reflections, in particular on the nature and value of the Strange Visions.īoth of the texts are explicitly datable to the three-month period between late February and April of 1567. It is this two-fold appeal indeed which marks the singularity of these manuscripts: side by side, emerging from the same cycle of operations, we hold in our hands a grimoire of ritual magic, as well as the artefact and actual outcome of these works: a series of detailed visions, carefully transcribed as they occurred in the shewstone (i.e. ![]() ![]() This long-awaited book presents an extraordinary feast for all practitioners of ritual as well as visionary magic. ![]() The photos on this page are taken from the fine edition, which is limited to 72 copies, bound in crushed black goatskin, bevelled edges, all edges black dusted with gold, marbled endpapers, ribboned and presented in a lined slipcase. They were first brought to public attention by Frank Klaassen in his excellent essay from 2012 “ Ritual Invocation and Early Modern Science: The Skrying Experiments of Humphrey Gilbert” and have now been published by Scarlet Imprint in a luxurious facsimile edition, with a modern English and an original transcription as well as rich supplementary essays by Phil Legard and Alexander Cummins. The Excellent Booke and Certain Strange Visions are two related articles from a 16th century manuscript today kept in the British Library (BL Add. ![]()
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