Who was John Dee—the Tudor polymath who advised Elizabeth I, mapped the heavens, spoke (he believed) with angels, and penned a landmark preface to Euclid? Historian and writer Rachel Morris joins to unpack Dee’s strange, brilliant world at the fault line between Renaissance “natural magic” and the birth of modern science. We explore why astrology was respectable, what “as above, so below” meant to learned magi, how printing turned libraries into engines of ideas, the hazards of practicing magic in an age of heresy trials, and why Dee still feels uncannily modern. We also touch on his years in Prague, his uneasy return to England, and the beautiful—if perilous—idea that the cosmos is alive with meaning.

Rachel’s new book The Years of the Wizard: The Strange History and Home Life of Renaissance Magicians (Duckworth) is out now. Please support independent bookshops or buy direct from the publisher.

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