Name James Justin Sledge

Title The Cabala of Being: John Dee’s Semiotic Ontology in the Monas
Hieroglyphica
Words ~ 29,365 (~36,987 with notes)
Student # 5913535
Advisors MA Thesis 2009 – Dr. C. K. M. v. Stuckrad, Dr. R.P.H. Pauls
Track Religious Studies: Mysticism and Western Esotericism
Email [email protected]
The Cabala of Being: John Dee’s Semiotic Ontology in the Monas Hieroglyphica

James Justin Sledge

MA Thesis - 2009

Qui non intelligit, aut taceat, aut discat.

- John Dee, Monas Hieroglyphica, 1564

Quis Monadem Hieroglyphicam philosophi Londini declaret?

- Andreas Libavius, Rerum Chymicarum, 1595

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 Table of Contents

Preface
1582 or the Maps of Dr. John Dee...................................................4

Introduction
Preparatory Remarks on the MH .....................................................9
The Obscurity of the MH ................................................................12
The MH in a Continuum of Dee’s Oeuvre.......................................15
Previous Scholarship of the MH......................................................17

Exploration
“Through Miraculous Appropriation” .............................................24
The Alchemy of the Monas Hieroglyphica ......................................25
The Cabala(s) of the Monas Hieroglyphica .....................................33
The Cabala of the Hebrews .............................................................34
The Pythagorean Cabala .................................................................37
“The Cabala of that which is said” ..................................................40
The Limits of “The Cabala of that which is Said” ...........................42
The Iconology of the Monas ...........................................................49
The Monas and Iconology of Renaissance Hieroglyphs...................51
Previous Semiotic Approaches to the Monas...................................56

Analysis
The Monas as a “Device”................................................................61
The Monas’ “Logic of Recursion” ..................................................62
A Rejection of Semiotic and Ontological Binarism .........................66
The Reality of the Monas’ Sign Set.................................................68
The Location of Signification..........................................................71
The Reciprocity of Sign and Being .................................................74

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 Conclusion
From Map to Trace – Dee and the Twilight of the Monas ...............81

Appendix I - A Structural Analysis of the MH ......................................84

Appendix II – Dee’s Astrology in the MH ............................................86
Appendix III - Emblematic Analysis and the Monas .............................89
Appendix IV – Imagery References ......................................................94

Issues for Further Research...................................................................98

Bibliography.........................................................................................99

I would like to express my thanks to the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica and to Joyce
Pijnenburg for her gracious assistance and thoughts during the preparation of this paper.

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1.1 1582 or The Maps of Dr. John Dee

By 1582, Dr. John Dee was concerned with at least three different kinds of maps.
One was his attempt at calendar reform, the map of the year, which would have brought
England into conformity with the Continent. Such a “popish” notion was rejected and
Dee himself oscillated in his diaries when he locates himself on the map of the year
between “new style,” “old style,” and “true style.” The British map of the year would not
change until March of 1752 when Wednesday September 2nd leaped to Thursday
September 14th. In Dee’s time even one’s location in time was wrapped around the
contours of geo-politics. The movement toward to such synchronic cartography of
Europe was part and parcel of the apocalyptic and utopian hopes which we now know
greatly propelled Dee’s “scientific” endeavors.1
A second map is one we more easily recognize:

Dee’s 1582 map of the arctic with various features2

1
For a detailed account of Dee’s relation to calendar reform see Poole: 2005.
2
This image was taken from http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/Ren/Ren1/418.html of which the parent
site http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/ is an excellent resource for early modern and medieval maps.

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 Here we see a map in Dee’s autograph depicting the Arctic Circle - Thule, the
roof of the world. Dee prepared this map in order to help find the famed Northwest
Passage which would allow easy shipping for British vessels traveling the long route to
China and India thus securing global dominion – after all, it was Dee who coined the
phrase “British Empire.” This map represents a disjunction between reality and
representation. We know that the North-West passage was locked by ice in the 16th
century – Dee’s map was a combination of reality, theory, and speculation. The passage
was a virtuality, the striated nature of the ice-sheets only needing conditions, a line of
flight, to transition to the actual, smooth space of sea. After some centuries and due to
the process of global climate change the first ships actually passed through the Passage in
the late 20th century with the first British ship, a father and son team, making the journey
in July of 2003. Dee’s map was not “unreal,” its virtuality was simply actualized 421
years later. We could say, tongue planted in cheek “The territory simply had to catch up
to the map.”3
It seems that Dee grappled at this relationship for years, this process of creating
the perfect map, of linking the represented to its representation in one unit – indeed it was
Dee who in 1570 would give the English language just that word, “unit” as a translation
for another, more powerful word – “Monas.”4 But, by 1608/9, after continuing this
project for much of his life by directly invoking heavenly beings, Dee went quietly into
the night likely searching to the very end for the link between map and territory, a
process he had begun at the age of 37 with the 1564 publication of a book as brief as it is
enigmatic – The Monas Hieroglyphica.

3
The map-territory relationship developed by Korzybski has been a favorite topic of many post-
structuralists. Some treatments include Borges' famous "On the Exactitude in Science," Baudrillard's
discussion of the problem of representation and hypereality in Simulacra and Simulation takes the same
track, J.Z. Smith has used the relation in the Religious Studies in his eponymous 1978 monograph. We
follow Deleuze and Guattari's articulation and playful exploration in A Thousand Plateaus not because it is
very novel but because of the ontological link it makes with representation as we explore later and think
through in relation to the Monas project in the conclusion.
4
The OED makes this clear in its history of the usage of the word “unit,” with the first mention, and thus
the official invention of the word, as “ DEE Math. Pref. *iij, Number, we define, to be, a certayne
Mathematicall Summe, of Vnits. And, an Vnit, is that thing Mathematicall, Indiuisible, by participation of
some likenes of whose property, any thing, which is in deede, or is counted One, may reasonably be called
One,” with Dee noting in the margin of the above, “Note the worde, Vnit, to expresse the Greke Monas, &
not Vnitie: as we haue all, commonly, till now, vsed.”

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 2009 may5 mark the 400th anniversary of Dee’s death and, despite the passing of
so many years, his life and intellectual labors remain the course of mystery and
speculation. We may even say that 400 years of speculation and research have done to
make more myths than clarify the intellectual and religious practice of this Elizabethan
figure. Recent scholarship by Clucas, Clulee, Harkness, Szőnyi, Håkansson and others
however, has begun to develop a more complex, and therefore richer and nuanced, vision
of the intellectual/religious production of a man at the cusp of what we now call
modernity – indeed, we find Dee at a fissure where representation and represented break
apart, Geberian alchemy begins gives way to atomization, and Paracelsus’ war against
Galenic medicine. 6 The difficult interplay of mathematical, astronomical/alchemic, and
apocalyptic themes has presented contemporary scholars with a uniquely difficult task of
developing a theoretical model into which Dee can be read and understood – in which he
can be intelligible to a contemporary gaze. Simply put, certain post-Enlightenment trends
towards a reductionist positivism and its polemical division of previous intellectual
disciplines have left the contemporary scholar with very little theoretical framework to
appreciate, much less, model the philosophical mélange of many 15th through early 18th
century thinkers. It is therefore not an easy matter to see the connection between the
“scientific” nature of Dee’s early work on optics or mathematics and the “occult”
collection of the angelic conferences which continued until his death because we both
lack the worldview which allowed them cohere in Dee’s time and we have developed a
habitus of speaking which also renders “science” as a-historical7. We cannot assume that
map-making has always had the same techniques, goals, or logic thus rendering
undecideable and relative exactly what a “good” map is.

5
Biographers of Dee cannot decide for certain between 1608/9. We go with 1609 here for literary
convenience.
6
Hence, we must proceed carefully – the difference of misplacing fifty or even twenty years in this study
can prove tectonic.
7
In the sense that “science” itself does not have a history in a great deal of our current thinking. The
history of science is then the codification of various activities in the past which are fitted into models of
scientific discourse developed largely in the 18th and 19th centuries. Archimedes, Galen, Versalius,
Newton, and Crick are all then thrown into one continuum with any elements which cause cognitive or
narrative dissonance marginalized or simply ignored. Such was the fate in the case of Newton’s alchemy
and occult interests.

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 Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (MH) is a text which, because sits as the uneasy edge
of a line-of-flight between so many discourses and philosophic movements,
simultaneously resist easy comprehension due to its apparent polyvalence yet collapses
readily into one domain of discourse when set under the proper gaze. If we wish to see
the text as alchemic, or cabalistic, or magical, it becomes, because of its plasticity just
what the reader wants to find. Yet, the text destabilizes those readings and further
inspection does not allow the easy priority of one reading. Thus for over 400 years, the
MH has produced a copious explanatory literature and yet remains a substantially obscure
and difficult book.
So, again, are we going to walk into the trap of Dee’s Monas8 – into its esoteric
and infinite semiosis? Not quite. While writing this paper I came across a moment of
speculation in Christopher Lehrich’s 2003 monograph on Agrippa where he writes: "…
Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica will require rethinking, as Dee claimed for this single
hieroglyphic sigil the possibility of a restitution of all knowledge and language.” Which
is linked to a footnote which continues, “…Clulee's analysis…is excitingly frustrating in
this respect: Clulee takes the analysis to the very edges of a theoretical, semiotic
understanding of the monas, then stops. A "theory-headed" re-examination will certainly
be necessary.”9 Curiously, despite throwing down the gauntlet in 2003, Lehrich’s recent
chapter on the Monas in his 2007 monograph on magic does not attempt such an analysis.
Our exploration will go in just such a direction but will not, in large part, pretend a
“reading” of what the MH “means.” That task is for what Dee would call the “adeptus”
for in the meaning of the Monas, as we will see, is the doing of the Monas.
Rather, this investigation will ask a set of philosophic and historical questions:
How does Dee employ various intellectual disciplines in order to compose the MH?
What is the process by which this appropriation occurs? How does the logic of the
Monas allow Dee to proclaim its power? What model best describes Dee’s sense of the
relationship of representation to the represented? Why did Dee abandon the Monas?
Thus this investigation will operate through a differential analysis to investigate the

8
For the sake a clarity, when we use the term “Monas” we mean the sign of the Monas itself, as an
adjective we use the term “Monadic.” If we use the term “Monad” in another sense, we try to be clear in
context as to be distinct. When we use “MH” we refer to the text of the 1564 Monas Hieroglyphica
following the Latin original or Josten’s standard translation.
9
Lehrich: 2003, 219-220, footnote 7.

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historico-philosophic currents which allowed for the development of the Monas
(alchemic theory, Renaissance philosophy of language, etc) and then build model for
rendering its operation intelligible to contemporary readers. In other words, we will cast
the project of the Monas into the light of historical research and semiotic analysis in the
hopes of alleviating some of the interpretative difficulties produce by the text. “What the
Monas Hieroglyphica means” is not a question we seek to answer lest again we find
ourselves caught in its logic of recursion and infinite semiosis. We ask a more modest
question – What are the conditions in which such a project as the MH can be intelligible?
To answer such a question this study will move largely through a process of
differential analysis in three main arcs before arriving at our model:
1. First, we will locate and discuss the MH itself, its influences, and place in Dee’s
oeuvre. This will allow us to reveal Dee’s technique of “miraculous
appropriation” by which the intellectual practices of his day were
“cartographized” into the Monas. While alchemy and cabala 10 have been the
central hermeneutical tools for understanding the MH in the past four centuries,
we will show how such a heuristic error deprioritizes the Monas itself and thus
greatly affects the comprehensibility of the text in current scholarship.
2. Second, we will explore issues in 15th century theories of language to reveal a
tension in the ontological status of the represented and representation. By
exploring some of Dee’s influences and an analysis of Renaissance appreciation
of Hieroglyphics through an iconographic analysis, we hope to show the
underlying ontological tendency in theories of representation and how Dee
navigates between naïve realism and Nominalistic conventionalism with the
development of the Monas.
3. Third, we will show the need to transition away from issues of philosophy of
language to a more robust semiotic-ontological analysis. We hope to show that
Dee’s project in the Monas cannot be modeled solely in terms of philosophy of

10
For the sake of analysis, we will use the spelling “kabbalah” to refer to pre-15th and/or exclusively Jewish
speculations while the spelling “cabala” will refer to the Christian use of such forms of thought. Of course,
much of what makes up “kabbalah/cabala” is the production of pluralistic and polemical exchanges
between various religious and intellectual communities, but we hope this division will help to provide
clarity if the division is not a little contrived.

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 language and how the transition to semiotic analysis is better suited for treating
the MH.

Finally, we will synthesize our findings by presenting (1) a technical term for the
Monas which captures its semiotic, historical, and performative character, (2) a theory of
the recursive logic by which the Monas “works” then (3) we will explore why a
Saussurean semiotic analysis cannot model the Monas, and finally we will (4) deploy a
synthetic-analytical tool in which we use the triadic semiotic system of Charles Sanders
Peirce isomorphically with the three ontological modalities of Gilles Deleuze to model
the Monas in contemporary theory but in such a way as to capture Dee’s philosophic
underpinnings.
The first objection to such a project is clear. “You are making a map of a map,
one Dee himself would find incomprehensible.” Indeed, we have received, after some
centuries, a map and told a destination in which the lines of latitude, the contours of the
land, the smooth space of the sea, even direction itself are traced and notated before us
but are in scripts, languages, and notations dim to us. Our gaze is subject to a
cartographic vertigo upon its inspection. Much in the same way that Newton’s Principia
Mathematica, couched in archaic Euclidean notation still contains its analytic truths but
must, nevertheless, be translated into the Cartesian analytic notation to be intelligible to
contemporary mathematicians (something which would have rendered it as an enigma to
Newton), we too must make a map of a map to understand just how Dee’s map was, after
all, in continuum with the territory itself.

1.2 Preparatory Remarks on the Monas Hieroglyphica

The MH was composed in Latin over the course of twelve days in January of
1564, likely while Dee lived with Willem Silvius, who would subsequently print the
work in Antwerp in March of 1564. 11 It is comprised of an introduction in the form of a
letter addressed directly to the subject of the works’ dedication, Maximilian of Habsburg
(whose coronation Dee had personally witnessed only the year before), a brief but formal

11
Josten: 1964, 87.

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letter to the printer reminding him of the importance of printing the text very carefully
(which seems to have been well followed, the 1564 text, Josten notes, is printed virtually
error free12) followed by twenty-four theorems of varying length in quasi-geometric
method with accompanying diagrams and emblematic devices. The first edition, a copy
of which I have had the privilege to review courtesy of the Bibliotheca Philosophica
Hermetica in Amsterdam13, is printed handsomely on high quality paper with a deep print
impression per page.
Dee’s Latin, while technical and crisp, is frequently punctuated by alchemical and
Neo-Pythagorean jargon and neologisms some of which appear to occur only in the MH
itself. 14 In addition, there are extensive quotations in Greek from classical authors and
two instances of unintelligible Hebrew. As fitting such an obscure text, Dee’s language
ranges from the technical, geometric description for the construction of the Monas itself
in theorem XXIII to expressing fear that he may too easily be revealing divine and secret
knowledge. The short text provides a compelling a specimen for interrogating Dee’s
intellectual process in its interdisciplinary complexity. Chronologically situated at the
hinge of his interests in both mathematics and cabala, the MH emerges after Dee’s work
on optics but before his more extravagant attempts at communication with other-worldly
entities.
It is, at a superficial glance, a densely compressed explanation for the
construction, manipulation, and exegetical power of a symbol composed of
geometric/astrological elements which oscillate between mathematical clarity and
hermetic obscurantism.
The structure of the text, the more geometrico, is not accidental and deserves a
few words. Dee had employed a similar method in the Propaedeumata Aphoristica
(1558 and 1568) and was intimately familiar with it from Euclid (in 1570 he would write
the preface for the first English edition of the Elements) but also in its application to

12
Ibid., 88.
13
Shelf mark H. This copy is also bound with a text entitled Morieni Romani, Quondam Eremitae
Hierosolymitani, De Re Metallica, Metallorum Transmutatione, et Occulta Summaq; antiquorum medicina
libellus praeter priore editionem accurate reconitus with a corresponding commentary printed in Paris
(1564) which describes conventional alchemic theory and practice. The BPH also owns a copy of the
defectively printed (the illustrations are especially flawed) Frankfurt edition of 1591. Dee did not edit the
text for the production of the 1591 edition and it was likely made without his permission.
14
e.g. “litrovinium” on 22v, “geogamia” on 14r, and “acioaedes” on 13v, among others.

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theological matters from Proclus’s commentary which he owned and read.15 Dee is likely
employing the more geometrico in order to remain as concise, clear, and as un-“occult”
as possible. However, Dee’s style moves in rapid, often non-linear succession through
various fields of 15th century inquiry – alchemy, astrology, geometry, Pythagorean
numerology, etc... A single theorem may contain alchemic, astrological, and/or
geometric elements and from theorem to theorem these currents interpenetrate each other
in various tangents. Despite the use of the more geometrico, the MH does not move in a
straightforward, deductive process. Dee rarely arrives at certain conclusions, rather he
unfolds them from axioms he never quite makes clear. His theorems are ultimately focal
orbits around central themes which, while never total, should prepare the “adept” to
employ them to miraculous effect. While the MH is often obscure we are rightly
tantalized by Dee’s use of the geometric method and should proceed carefully in
dismissing what is dark to us on those grounds alone.
Dee claimed to have developed the character of the Monas in 155716 being
“pregnant with it during the course of seven years17” noting that it first appears in print on
the title page of Dee’s work on astrological physics and optical theory, the
Propaedeumata Aphoristica (1558) and later in his marginal annotations of Pantheus’
Voarchadumia which he received in 1559.18 Through the 1560’s it seems the symbol of
the Monas became increasingly central in Dee’s hermeneutic for approaching the varied
domains of intellectual speculation which he navigated. Indeed, Clulee argues that Dee
may have developed the Monas as a method of rendering stable the polyvalent field of
alchemic discourse such that the work could proceed more efficiently. 19 Dee is effusive
about the importance of the text and even invokes divine inspiration. He claims that the
work itself has a revelatory character in theorem XXIII such that “the pen merely of
Whose Spirit, quickly writes these things through me, I wish and hope to be.”20 In his
opening letter and dedication to Maximilian of Habsburg, he writes that the work should
be subject to “intense studies and work, examining its depths” and that it was a
15
Clulee: 1988, 152.
16
Aphorism LII, Shumaker and Heilbron (PA): 1978, 148-9.
17
MH, 10r.
18
For a comprehensive analysis of the influence of the Voarchadumia on Dee see Norrgrén: 2005, 217-
245.
19
Clulee: 1988, 95-6.
20
“…cuius Spiritus celeriter haec per me Scribentis, Calamum tantum, esse me, & opto, & Spero”

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“philosophical treasure.”21 Clearly, Dee felt for the years before the beginning of his
attempts at communications with angels that the Monas was the central key to his
thinking and a powerful tool for unlocking the secrets of nature.
Despite a structure that seeks to ensure clarity, Dee’s long intellectual gestation of
the concept itself, and his surety of its importance, the work was contemporaneously
obscure and has certainly improved little since. Meric Causabon, the first editor of Dee’s
“spirit diaries,” would later capture the nature of this odd dialectic between clarity and
obscurantism in his comment that, “I can extract no sense nor reason (sound or solid) out
of it; neither yet doth it seem to me very dark or mystical.”22 Another scholar has referred
to the MH as, “possibly the most obscure work ever written by an Englishman.”23 Clulee
has conjectured that the work was meant to serve as a textbook in conjunction to which
Dee himself would explain and tutor individual readers.24 The text itself contains no
indication of such a plan although Dee notes that he did actually tutor Queen Elizabeth on
the contents of the text. It is precisely this obscurity that stands as the first hurdle to
render the MH intelligible.

1.3 The Obscurity of the Monas Hieroglyphica

The obscurity of the text likely has three reasons: (1) the semi-esoteric25 yet
technical character of the subject matter, (2) the obscurity of the internal logic by which
concepts operate, (3) an analytic tool for modeling the object of the MH, (4) and the
completeness of the text itself26.
Firstly, the subject matter is a highly technical intellectual domain with its own
semi-esoteric jargon. Dee is drawing from many intellectual systems, none of which are
characterized by their transparency or consistency. The language of alchemy, for

21
MH, 7v.
22
Casaubon: 1659, 38.
23
Vickers quoted Forshaw: 2005, 247.
24
Clulee: 1988, 96.
25
I mean this in the most common sense of the word – the language is meant to broadcast meaning at one
level and conceal it at the next. Alchemic and Kabbalistic discourses are especially dexterous in this
regard.
26
Simply put, if Dee did not finish the text, cut it short, or rushed it at some points, he may have left dark
something which, had a fuller edition existed, would have been more detailed or fleshed out. If the text is
incomplete economy of language can be the difference between encoding and enciphering.

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instance, itself is notoriously mobile in its interpretive possibilities and Dee himself uses
this polyvalence to great effect in the MH. Dee is not operating from an experimental
understanding of the inter-relationships of the systems of knowledge he employs. Indeed,
it is likely that Dee had yet to actually begin laboratory alchemy at this point in his career
while his astrological knowledge was extensive. Rather, his intellectual movements are
preformed in the space of active intellect in which the theoretical sympathies and
metaphysical relationships of the elements he manipulates interact due to their essential
natures. If such relationships were obscure even in Dee’s time (there were certainly
dozens of competing theories for such relationships) they are certainly dark to us now.
Virtually all previous attempts at making sense of the MH have proceeded by situating
these disciplines within their diachronic and synchronic matrices and then fitting the
Monas somewhere in their midst. Such attempts have greatly increased our awareness of
the source data, intellectual and cultural currents which inform the composition of the
MH. However, they have not great gotten at the underlying philosophical project which
propelled the creation of the Monas itself in addition to Dee’s understanding of its
practical application. As we will see, Dee felt that the Monas included and surpassed the
intellectual disciplines and praxis of his day (especially cabala, alchemy, and astrology)
and thus we must resist the urge to see the Monas as simply an intellectual summation,
even of those as evocative as cabala, alchemy, magic, and so on.
Secondly, the geometric method entails a high degree of compression which can
make “unpacking” its informational content difficult in that it obscures the internal logic
of the work itself. Despite what appears to us as non-linearity in his thinking, we have
the impression that Dee is being quite precise in his use of concepts and language. His
use of the geometric method, tightly worded theorems, the invention of new words, and
the more or less systematic attempt to relate the concepts internally all indicate a
precision which, although the logic and concepts are obscure, should be subject to
intelligibility. While unclear to us, the concepts seem to inhere within a philosophic
framework which was sufficiently rigorous to at least Dee himself. However, for such a
precision to be effective, it requires that Dee’s audience have a specific theoretical grasp
of his operational logic. We are unclear if such an audience ever existed and we should

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likely assume that it certainly does not now27. Despite this lacuna in our understanding,
Dee was not fool or a rambling madman and simple dismissals should be slow if at all.
Dee is not only using alchemic, astrological, and Neo-Pythagorean theoretical terms with
their accompanying philosophic baggage, but he is also setting them into motion with
each other with an operational logic which he never makes clear to the reader. The
internal logic of the MH itself seems to have a rigor which allows Dee to set the wide
range of philosophic concepts into play with each other. The geometric compression
produces a surface terseness which great obscures this underlying logic and therefore
seriously impedes an understanding of how the concepts internally relate. Much less
work has been done on this front and thus this paper will deal with this problem in detail.
Despite the linear printed flow of theorems, we will show that a “logic of recursion”
operates within the MH as a text but also within the semiotic structure of the Monas
itself.
Thirdly, a central heuristic error that has accompanied virtually all readings of the
MH is to focus on the known content of the knowledge systems which act as it proof-
texts (specially the pole between alchemy and cabala) rather than on the device of the
Monas itself. Dee’s central importance in writing and publishing the MH is to forward a
“Hieroglyph” who power and use is proven by appeals to various disciplines – the central
object of investigation should, therefore, be the “Hieroglyph” of the Monas. Only in the
past decades have analytical tools for the discussion of imagery been developed and thus
it has only recently become possible to employ such fields as iconology and semiotics to
such a mixed-format “text.” Indeed our use of the word “text” here, baring the expansive
use the term has taken on in recent years, prioritizes what Dee wrote as opposed to the
non-discursive character actually at the center of his project. Semiotician Umberto Eco
has claimed, and rightly it seems, that all major thinkers have implicitly employed some
semiotic system. 28 This, while less apparent in some writers, should be clear as Dee
participates in the rise of early modern visual culture with the publication of a book
whose central focus is a powerful sign. Previous analyses have passed over or ignored

27
Dee references several “adepts” in the MH, especially those in Paris, who he seemed to have felt would
have understood him. Dee’s Paris lectures were primarily concerned with mathematics and we may
conclude that some Neo-Pythagorean elements were discussed as well.
28
Eco 1986: 4-13. He specifically argues that semiotics has always already been at work, as a super-
structure over philosophy of language.

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this most central aspect of the MH to certain deleterious effects on rendering the MH
intelligible.
Finally, the text may be unfinished or incomplete.29 In theorem XXIII, itself a
long explanation of how to construct the Monas geometrically formulated with an
appendix-like quality, Dee seems to enumerate a four-point program in which he would
expand on many of the previous theorems either later in the MH itself or perhaps in
another, future book. Oddly, this section of the theorem ends, “We now abruptly
conclude,”30 and moves onto an explanation of the Pythagorean quartenary. It seems
possible, if not likely, that Dee envisioned a much larger work and, for reasons unknown,
ended it prematurely. These largely structural issues with the MH show, even at the
outset, the contents of the book itself are heavily resistant to either linear or complete
exegesis.

1.4 The Monas Hieroglyphica in a Continuum of Dee’s Oeuvre

To get at Dee’s philosophical thinking we should first look at the period in his life
directly before and after the MH first appeared in print, i.e. the years between c.1559 and
1564. The period of the early 1560’s has often been made out in the literature as the
“occult turn” in Dee’s thinking away from the more empirically-leaning discussion of the
theory of rays found in the Propaedeumata Aphoristica and towards Hermetic
philosophy, magic, cabala, alchemy. In many accounts this is described as the result of an
increasing frustration on the part of Dee with the inability of “science” to provide him
access to Truth itself. 31 While it is during this period that Dee begins to shift his attention
directly to alchemy and cabala and in turn the learning of Hebrew and the acquisition of
books in Hebrew, we must be careful in how we describe such a modulation (not a shift
or a breakage) in Dee’s intellectual life. Indeed, Dee was already “pregnant,”32 to use his

29
Curiously, I have not found a single commenter who has put forward such a theory although it seems
quite possible from a critical reading of the text itself.
30
MH, 25v. “haecque brevissime absolvemus.” Throughout the section mentioned Dee’s Latin is in the
future tense. It is to be noted that the custom of placing the tables of contents for a text at the end of the
book did exist in Dee’s time. I have owned a copy of Agrippa’s De Incertitudine et Vanitate printed in
1632 and just such a convention was used. In this instance such a convention does not seem to be the case.
31
Clulee: 1988, 87.
32
MH, 10r.

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language, with the notion of the MH as early as the writing of the PA. While his theory
of rays shows some leaning toward empirical demonstration, there seems to be little
evidence that he attempted such tests.33 Indeed, Dee’s interest remained largely in the
realm of speculative theorizing rather than empirical testing and it should come as little
surprise that physical observation, much less empirical testing as we understand it
currently, were explicitly jettisoned in the MH.
Firstly, we must be careful not to divide between and reify camps such as
“science” and “the occult” or even “astronomia34” and “alchemy” both in the intellectual
character of the 16th century socius and in the philosophic life of Dee himself. Simply
put, it could not be that Dee “turned” to the “occult” in that the intellectual world of his
day did not have such a taxonomy in which these pairs were set into a dichotomy. 35 Thus
to parse the registration of Dee’s intellectual expression onto 19th century lines of
positivist discussion of progress, into which science is seen to have “evolved out of
magic” or “chemistry out of alchemy,” greatly limits our ability to manage as much
historical information as possible. There is very little reason to think that Dee himself or
his contemporaries would have perceived any intellectual discontinuity in his transition
between the PA and the MH.
Secondly, Dee’s intellectual life is not so easily parsed into distinct periods. The
symbol of the Monas itself appears first in print in the earlier more “scientific” or proto-
empirical period of Dee’s speculative career. 36 As we pointed out above, the PA is not
simply a “scientizing” text on early astronomy37 and optics and the MH an “occultizing”
text on alchemy. Rather the two texts are likely complementary parts of a more or less
unified underlying philosophy. Indeed, when Dee edited the PA for its 1568 edition, he
only added minor emendations to provide harmonizing linkages between the theories of
the 1558 edition of the PA and the MH. Dee is unambiguous, he sees alchemy and

33
Clulee: 1988, 67-8.
34
See Appendix II for an analysis of the role of Dee’s astrology in the MH.
35
Such as the much later pairs easily known to us, “science vs. religion,” “alchemy vs. chemistry,”
“astrology vs. astronomy,” and “physics vs. metaphysics.”
36
Note the frontispiece of the Propaedeumata Aphoristica and also Aphorism LII Shumaker and Heilbron
(PA): 1978, 148-9.
37
A note on the use of the words “astronomia,” “astronomy,” and “astrology” – in that Dee used these
terms interchangeably we follow him and there is no nuance in the use of one word over another in our
analysis.

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astronomia as two parts of a single practice concerning the sympathetic, causative, and
transformative relationships of various ontologically viable entities. The cabalistic or
“magical” elements in the MH are part of a continuum of thought not a shift in emphasis
or break in his orientation programmatically. As a corollary to Dee’s larger intellectual
habit we may also point to Dee’s introduction to Euclid’s Elements in which Dee the
mathematician weaves smoothly between what we would label number theory and Neo-
Pythagorean numerology (which also features prominently in the MH). Dee’s interest
remains firmly grounded in mathematical rigor and clarity, indeed even in his
communication with what he perceived to be angelic beings we see him correcting the
Angels themselves when they mistake a square for a root.38
All of this points to a continuum in Dee’s intellectual habit that seems not marked
by breaks, such as Clulee’s “metaphysical revolution” which must conform to certain
anachronistic taxonomies. Nor is Dee is simply a “Hermetic Magus,” a hybrid category
that existed primarily in the mind of the Warburg school of the mid-twentieth century,
rather he appears to enjoy a sophisticated and dynamic modulation in the various fields of
inquiry open to a scholar of his age in his quest for Humanist ideal of “radicall truthes.”
Dee’s greatest intellectual strength was not novelty of concepts; rather, it was his attempt
to synthesize so many disciplines into a single domain of knowledge. Dee’s thinking in
the MH will not be unlocked solely by the reconstruction of his sources and the
genealogies of his ideas, rather we must develop some apparatus to understand how he
weaves these domains around the sign-act of the Monas itself. Such a task is not
comprehensible without a discussion of the significant gains made by scholars and
exploring the conceptual dimensions of the systems to which Dee appeals to devise the
Monas.

1.5 Previous Scholarship of the Monas Hieroglyphica

Interest in the MH has been on the steady increase through the late 20th and early
21st centuries and a brief survey of the major monographs and articles concerning the

38
Casaubon: 1659, 80, when Dee corrects the “angel” Nalvage’s confusion between a “square” and a
“roote.”

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MH is warranted before we proceed to analyze the contents of the MH itself. While a
comprehensive account of all the literature would be impossible, we will focus on the
salient features of these inquiries here while exploring relevant sections of each in depth
as we proceed through this investigation.
These studies have gone to substantial links to establish in fine detail Dee’s
sources and the genealogy of the ideas he employs. In effect, we may parse the studies
into four uneven currents39: the Renaissance Neo-Platonic, the historical-alchemical, the
discursive-cabalistic, and the analytical-semiotic. The first current was largely
developed, pursued, and declined with scholars of the Warburg school and colors the
only scholarly English translation of the MH itself. The second two currents of study far
out number the others and were synthesized by Clulee’s landmark monograph. The
analytical-semiotic, which, to date, only has three published representatives and only one
treatment of length, is the newest and poorest represented.40 We list and describe the
major arcs of study in chronological order with their position in the above taxonomy
being more or less apparent:
The contemporary study41 of the MH in English has, in many ways, been
inaugurated by the first scholarly translation (with facing facsimile) of the text by Josten
in 1964. Other translations such as those by Hamilton-Jones (1947) were largely
produced for use in occult practice and did not include the invaluable prefatory letters
printed with the 1564 edition. Indeed, only with the Josten translation was it possible for
Dee scholars to appeal to a common, trustworthy and critical text in order to build stable

39
What we leave out is also telling. There are, of course, numerous non-academic, occult, readings of the
MH which are often perplexing and imaginative – many are more enigmatic that the MH itself. A rather
recent and length occult reading can be found at: http://www.jwmt.org/v2n13/sign.html A systematic
study of the reception of the MH since the publishing of the Rosicrucian pamphlets (which seems to have
greatly increased the use of the Monas as a universal Hermetic symbol) and including the 20th centuries has
yet to be done. It seems unlikely that such a study would greatly help in our analysis – the MH has never
been clear and a diachronic analysis in this respect would not likely lift the veil.
40
Indeed, it is even sparer than it appears. Szőnyi’s relies on pre-semiotic iconographic analysis,
Szulakowska comes the closest, while Håkansson’s longer treatment focuses on situating the MH into early
modern visual culture generally with little semiotic analysis. This study will be the first lengthy semiotic
analysis which attempts to synthesize as many of the intellectual and historical dimensions as possible to
produce a gestalt of Dee’s philosophy at work in the MH as a text and the Monas as an ontological-semiotic
device.
41
I was torn as whether to include an analysis of Calder’s unpublished PhD thesis as a representative of the
Warburg school. While interesting in a certain sense, it has not played a great role in the recent analysis of
Dee’s intellectual habit. Perhaps in the future I can address this, but it would not change the drift of our
work and perhaps, for reasons of economy of space, is better left out.

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systems for its comprehension. 42 We will focus on the readings of Josten, Walton, and
Clulee closely because virtually all subsequent commentaries fall generally within the
parameters they define.
Josten reads “ the Platonist” Dee’s “magic parable” as a text primarily concerned
with the alchemic transformation (read, transmutation) of the individual magus into a
spiritually superior form.43 This process is expounded in three thematic centers in
Josten’s reading: a psychological transmutation of the magus, a bi-elemental alchemic
theory, and a symbolic expression of the unity of the cosmos. For Josten, the magus is
the subject of the MH in such that the book is a study in the process of inner, or
psychological alchemy whose aim is illumination in a vaguely Neo-Platonic sense. By a
combination of alchemic and astrological magic in which the interior Monas substitutes
for the exterior world (alchemy, astrology, optics, etc…) the illuminatory benefits of such
practices directly affects to transform the magus.44 In this reading alchemic elements are
analogized into psychological types (mercury becomes the magus, “fiery and sulphurous
fumes” become “spiritual, or psychological, dangers rather than poisonous vapours,” and
so on). This “process of spiritual transmutation” is that “which his [Dee’s] treatise is
chiefly concerned.”45 Secondarily, Josten reads Dee’s alchemic theory as slightly
unorthodox focusing on two central elements, Fire (Aries, the process of transmutation)
and Mercury (the material to be transmuted) rather than the more common tri-elemental
scheme of salt, mercury, and sulfur.46 While positing such an alchemic reading, Josten
admits stultification to some extend as to how Dee imagined such a theory’s
instrumentalization. “One would try in vain to go any further in the alchemical
interpretation of Dee’s symbol and to derive from the text and information on the
practical, or psychological, application of Dee’s hermetic doctrine.”47 Finally Josten
reads the MH as developing a symbol for the “oneness” of the “elementary world.”48
Such an oneness was shown by Dee in the form of his alchemic theory (the priority of

42
Although, as we will see later, Josten’s philosophic pre-suppositions concerning what the MH means
deform aspects of the translation attempt.
43
Josten: 1964, 100.
44
Ibid., 101-102.
45
Ibid., 102.
46
Ibid., 103-104.
47
Ibid., 104.
48
Ibid., 105-108.

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mercury) and in his Pythagorean theory of numbers which Josten traces to Trithemius.49
This reading, admittedly, while not comprehensive, represents one of the first sustained
scholarly accounts of the text.
Michael Walton’s 1976 Ambix article seems to be the first reading of the MH as a
text whose central concern is, in a broad sense, cabalistic-linguistic in nature. In this
reading, the MH is situated in the dual Kabbalistic sense of the cosmographic character of
creation and the manipulation of meaning through “alphabetic manipulation.”50 Watson
reads the MH as a cabalistic tool for teaching a purer form of astrology through the
manipulation of a parent symbol. As Watson puts it, “The grand scheme of the Monas,
then, was to reveal the real Cabala as show how its proper object, the Monad, could teach
astronomy by divine force ‘without words.’”51 He goes on to describe that Dee’s use of
techniques first developed for the manipulation of Hebrew letters (notaricon, tsiruf, and
gematria) become a “key to understanding the universal harmony” of “signs, symbols and
numbers which the astrological, alchemical, and scriptural traditions had developed up to
his [Dee’s] day.”52
Clulee’s groundbreaking 1988 monograph on Dee’s natural philosophy was the
first lengthy and sustained attempt to preset a comprehensive reading of the MH. 53
Clulee, following Walton, presents the MH as an “alphabet of nature” in which all the
symbol sets of alchemy, astrology, and numerology are captured in one symbol which
can be manipulated Kabbalistically in order to restore and improve nature.54 Clulee
focuses heavily on Dee’s prefatory letter in which Dee declares his intention for the
reform, through the MH, of all intellectual disciplines. While Walton did not attempt a
sustained reading of the alchemic elements in the MH, Clulee reads Dee’s alchemy as a
“cabala of metals,” following Pantheus, in which all elements are manipulated into their
primal states.55 Clulee understands the Monas as a sort of commentary on nature in
which it was“meant to mirror nature because it reflects the geometrical and

49
Ibid., 108-111.
50
Walton: 1976, 116.
51
Ibid., 119.
52
Ibid., 181-183.
53
Clulee: 1988, 75-115.
54
Ibid., 82-95.
55
Ibid., 101-105.

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numerological principles inherent in creation.”56 From this reading Clulee develops three
principle thematic arcs in the MH: (1) Inferior-Superior Astronomy57 (the relationship of
celestial influences on the elements and their changes (alchemy) which the Monas
restores to a more perfect harmony through, (2) Alchemical Magic58, how through the
Pythagorean balancing of the elemental conditions within a given body perfect proportion
can be achieved, finally resulting in (3) Adeptship, 59 which Clulee sees as a “new
discipline superior to the traditional sciences” which is the result (or results in) a perfect
blend of faith and reason which allows for an illuminated understanding of the cosmos,
mathematics, and mystical speculation.
Nuanced and learned studies of the MH, and Dee generally, began to appear more
frequently through the 1990’s and even more important monographs and articles have
already appeared in the first half of the 21st century. Subsequent approaches to the MH
have better situated the work in its intellectual setting and have fallen somewhere
between the poles of alchemic or cabalistic reading of the text. Håkansson’s monograph
provides a learned and systematic exploration of the Monas within the field of
Renaissance hermeneutics and symbolic exegesis to show Dee’s preoccupation with a
“universal grammar” which would ultimately restore all knowledge. 60
Szőnyi has shown the influence of Ficino’s talismanic magic61 on the MH in
addition to situating the Monas within a Renaissance notion of the exaltio or illumination
of the intellect62. Szőnyi has also attempted to situate the symbol of the Monas into the
larger field of iconography which Grombrich first developed. 63 Szulakowska has carried
such a reading even further, employing Peircean semiotic analysis to understand the
Monas as an “index” in which a continuum between sign and signified is carried through
a commonly linked sign.64

56
Ibid., 105.
57
Ibid., 106-110.
58
Ibid., 110-111.
59
Ibid., 111-115.
60
Håkansson: 2001. While his argument is diffused throughout the text key passages include 73-84, 180-
200, 332-337.
61
Szőnyi: 2001, 1-11.
62
Szőnyi: 2005, 161-174.
63
Szőnyi: 1996, 250-63.
64
Szulakowska: 2000, 2-3, 56-69

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 The November 2005 edition of Ambix was dedicated solely to exploratory issues
in Dee’s MH.65 Norrgrén’s article has shown the deep influence of Pantheus’s
Voarchadumia (Venice, 1530).66 Clulee in the same year nuanced his previous account
with a more sustained alchemic reading of the MH.67 Forshaw’s article traced the
reception of the MH in later alchemic circles and how the symbol was itself transformed
to fit various hermetic prerogatives. 68
Two further articles appeared in the 2006 volume edited by Stephen Clucas John
Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance Thought. Karen De Leon-Jones
examined in detail the Kabbalistic (and notably, the un-Kabbalistic) aspects of Dee’s
appropriation of ideas from Reuchlin (especially how both men seem to link Pythagorean
and Kabbalistic speculation).69 Cavallaro has shown the wide range of potential alchemic
sources Dee may have employed in the composition of the MH and provides a sustained
alchemic reading of the text.70
Lehrich developed an analysis in which the creation and use of the Monas is a
form of self-conscious, condensed ritual experimentation in which the Monas is
externalized and thus is both displaced and ontologically guaranteed through its writing
and through it as a process of writing in which Dee, and others, can encounter it in its
transformative sense.71 Lehrich’s analysis represents the first reading of the Monas under
the light of Post-Structuralism, especially Derridean tropes.72
It is clear that while the MH has not garnered numerous studies, those that have
appeared have been serious, nuanced, and deeply specialized. What they have produced
is an impressive body of the intellectual and culture influences to which Dee appeals to
prove the power and application for the Monas itself. While the strengths of such
approaches is clear, the gaps they produce also reveal the deep agnosticism with which

65
The dedication of an entire issue of Ambix, a journal of the history of chemistry, also shows how deeply
the alchemic priority in reading the MH has become.
66
Norrgrén: 2005, 217-245.
67
Clulee: 2005, 197-215.
68
Forshaw: 2005, 247-269.
69
De Leon-Jones: 2006, 143-158.
70
Cavallaro: 2006, 159-176.
71
Lehrich: 2007, 48-61 primarily but 48-81 in toto, including an interesting differential reading comparing
the Monas to the Japanese Nō theater.
72
This is clearest in a telling comparison of Dee creation/discovery of the Monas to Artaud’s notion that his
poetry had been stolen from him before it was written on 53-54. The Monas becomes, in this sense, a
Derridean trace.

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many historical scholars have treated the philosophical underpinnings which led Dee to
produce the MH at all. By tracing the contours of the intellectual genealogy of Dee’s
sources, it is possible to detect lacunae in comprehensibility and inconsistencies in their
explanatory power. The MH, a deeply philosophic text, reveals the limits of a purely
historical approach to its comprehension in two senses. Firstly, it brings the intellectual
practices, such as alchemy and cabala, which cohere in it, to auto-critique through its
logic of recursion. Secondly, it does this through a persistent, but implicitly semiotic
theory which is inherently mobile but ontologically viable. These two structural
mechanisms at work in the MH reveal a heuristic error in a great deal of previous
literature: They prioritize singular philosophic features in the MH which the Monas itself
recursively deconstructs in order to actualize.

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2.1 “Through Miraculous Appropriation73” – Dee’s Process of Philosophic
Assimilation

The vast majority of the readings of the MH, past and present, have been done
through alchemic and/or cabalistic lenses. Dee himself was clearly interested in the
relation of his alchemic theory to the Monas and the use alchemy had in proving the
power and viability of it. Likewise the power of cabalistic speculation was a central
aspect in establishing the interwoven power of the Monas into reality itself. These two
practices form the dual core of the vast majority of subsequent exposition and Dee’s chief
thematic centers in establishing the power of the Monas. Thus it is necessary to
investigate the topography of the alchemic and cabalistic (in the forms it takes in the MH)
theory as it is deployed in the service of the Monas. Our study will reveal that Dee’s
prioritizing of the Monas follows a set assimilative logic in relation to these practices in
which they undergo:
(1) Erasure – in which the dominant philosophic practice (alchemy, cabala, etc…)
Dee employs is shown to be lacking or deformed and is thus erased and set into a
palimpsestic ontological status which is present-at-hand but in a virtual status.
Dee is thus able to erase the power of the previous system but employ its
components as he sees fit.
(2) Intensification – in which the practices is exported (sometimes re-named) from
the previous virtual state to be used as proof and thus reinvested in power for the
validity of the Monas. Dee thus expropriates these elements to make-up and
support his development of the Monas.
(3) Actualization – in which the intensive practice is set into the recursive logic of the
Monas’ semiotic-ontological power and integrated into the other assimilated
disciplines as part of a refined, ready-to-hand, extension of the Monas. The
expropriated element is then “refined” or “reformed” and re-expressed through
the Monas itself.

73
I borrow this phrase from Pico, Thesis 11>6 where he describes how the Tetragrammaton actually
reveals the trinity “per mirabilem appropriationem.” The term seems to fit Dee’s process of philosophic
assimilation into the Monas perfectly. All references to Pico are to the Farmer: 1999 edition.

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 We argue that while Dee employs the language and theory of alchemy, cabala,
Pythagorean speculation, he does so in order to appropriate it contents through the
process describes above. Thus, as we trace the structure and influences of these systems
of thought/practice in Dee’s use of them in the MH, we should watch for this process of
appropriation to occur. This three-fold process is the stresses the hermeneutical
reprioritizing of the Monas in our reading and the situating of other systems of thought
(alchemy, cabala, etc) as subsumed, transformed and re-expressed in the context of the
larger project the MH lays out generally. 74 We provide this process first in order to see it
occur in our exploration of these systems of thought which both inform the Monas project
but are thought by Dee to be supplanted, repaired, and perfectly expressed in the practice
of the Monas itself. This process occurs doubly, we argue, in Dee’s thinking – both as a
transfer in terms of signs but also in being of the referent itself. In that alchemy and
cabala, in the various senses Dee employs it in the MH, are the primary tools used to
construct Monas device, we explore this dynamic process of “miraculous appropriation”
in them at length.

2.2 The Alchemy of the Monas Hieroglyphica

The MH has been received and interpreted as a text primarily concerned with
alchemic theory and there can be no doubt that Dee was deeply interested in alchemy by
the times of its composition.75 One of the earliest commentaries on the text, and indeed
the preface to an either lost or aborted c.1600 English translation by Thomas Tymme,
states:
His [Dee’s] whole purpose & drift is, to give unto ☿ the mastery in Alchimy, and
the α and ω in the worke, & for this cause his Monas Hierogliphicall hath the first

74
In other words, Dee deterritorializes, to use the language of Deleuze and Guattari, the previous regime of
signs in order to cartographize them, and then reterritorializes them by mapping them onto the Monas in a
reformed way, within a new, mobile plane of sign-being assemblages.
75
By 1564 it is clear that Dee owned many alchemical books but his only dated laboratory experiments
date from a later period.

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 in the top & the last in the foote, the Cross going Betweene, which signifies the
dejecting and humiliacion of ☿ before his exaltacion. 76

For subsequent generations of readers the MH was seen as a compendium of

alchemic knowledge, an example of the combined power of alchemy and cabala and a
symbol for the great work itself. 77 Like many sufficiently obscure but learned texts, the
readers would often find in the text just what they were looking for regardless of what it
was there or not.78 The literature concerning the possible sources of Dee’s alchemic
knowledge are varied and vast and there is significant division about how much practical
knowledge Dee held by the 1564 publication date of the MH. 79 Clulee has traced Dee’s
central sphere of influence to a mix of primarily Geberian alchemy and notes the clear
relationship of Trithemius’s commentary on the famed Tabula Smaragdina80 on the
Monas. 81 Another key source for Dee is the Turba Philosophorum, which he owned
several copies, the works of Roger Bacon (especially the Radix Mundi and to a lesser

76
Tymme quoted in Norrgrén: 2005, 221.
77
The MH seemed to attract negative attention for being obscure in Dee’s own lifetime. Andreas Libavius
referred to certain aspects of the text as “ineptiae” which prompted Dee to retort in his 1595 Discourse
Apologeticall that he would answer Libavius’ criticisms in a future book. As far as known, Dee never
composed the text. Libavius, as quoted in Clucas: 2007, 44, would go on to condemn the “Londinas
philosiphus” for referring to “Haec cruces varisque et ductus contulit…Ensoph literam Pythagorae et nescio
quae alia ex multis scientiis corrupta maleque adnibita.” Despite such a contemporary dismissal, Dee
would send the book far and wide as well to various monarchs and scholars. Within a generation after his
death it would be printed and reprinted. It seemed that while most disclaimed it obscurantism they
simultaneously felt it held profound mysteries. For a comprehensive account of this early reception,
especially in alchemic circles, consult Forshaw: 2005.
78
One may compare such an intellectual apophenia to the reception of perhaps the most obscure book of all
time, the Sefer Yetzirah and its countless and sundry commentaries.
79
Clulee: 1988, 96 points to a strange inconsistency in Dee’s alchemic education. “The list of fifty-six
alchemical works Dee read in July 1556 that marks the beginning of his serious interest in the subject is an
imposing body of material from which it is difficult to identity individual works of singular importance for
understanding his Monas. The lists of things he owned, however, are not rich in alchemical literature, and
there survive few alchemical books and manuscripts with inscriptions dated before 1564.” Clulee seems to
accept at face value Dee voracious 1556 reading but admits that a later date has Dee not owning many MSS
or books prior to 1564. Perhaps future studies of Dee’s marginalia, especially like the careful one of
Norrgrén: 2005 will help to clarify just what Dee was reading before 1564. Szulakowska, 1996, 10-11,
dates Dee’s earliest purchase of an alchemical text to 1551 including over 100 Paracelsian texts by 1562
including many doubles (perhaps for the use of teaching). The only surviving records of Dee’s own
practical, laboratory practice date from the 1580’s although it is certain he was working prior to this.
80
Ruska: 1926 remains a standard study of the Tabula in its long and obscure history from Greek, to
Arabic, to Latin.
81
Clulee 2001: 183-184 for Geberian tendencies, 191-197 on Trithemius’ influence on Dee.

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extent the Secretum Secretorum82) and nascent Paracelsian elements can also be
detected.83 This study will not attempt to add source data to the discussion in that our
focus is on Dee’s theory of representation as opposed to his alchemic theory of 1564.
Rather, by proceeding via disjunction we want to show that while the MH employs
alchemic theory, it is secondary and always in service to the development and
deployment of the Monas itself.
Despite the generations of insistence that the text is centrally concerned with
alchemy, the MH is not a systematic presentation of an alchemic theory nor is it a
laboratory guide for the practical application of a theory.84 Alchemic references in the
MH are unevenly distributed in the text and the alchemic theory developed or displayed
therein is anything but transparent. Despite such a muddle, certain salient features
emerge from the MH to point to his sources:
1. Dee’s theory employs a classic four elemental theory with some Paracelsian
interpolations. As Dee states in theorem VII “It will, therefore, not be absurd [to
assume] that the mystery of the four elements (into which their several
compounds can be ultimately resolved) is intimated by the four straight lines
going forth from one indivisible point and into opposite direction.” These four
elements stem from a common source, the classic materia prima of Aristotle’s
physics (and Geberian alchemy generally85), and combine to form all other
elements and so can be equivocally dissolved. Although we would like to simply
assume the classic quaternary, earth, air, fire, and water, we wonder about the

82
Bacon’s alchemical theories are quite similar to Pseudo-Geber and it seems likely to me, based on Dee’s
language that he is consulting Bacon over Pseudo-Geber although he owned both texts. For Radix Mundi
see translation in Linden: 2003, 111-122 (esp 113-115).
83
Dee employs the Egg model from the fourth dictum of the first book (discussed more below). Paracelsian
elements are explored in Szulakowska 2000: passim.
84
Cavallaro: 2005 attempts to systematize most of the oblique alchemic references in the MH although I
think he does so at the cost of reaching too far. For instance, a great deal of the significant portions of his
analysis rely on the 1617 Atalanta Fugiens which post-dates the MH by some years along with much
unreferenced alchemic theory. While it is possible that both sources draw from a common well, it is
difficult to prove influence from later to older. Similarly Cavallaro does not work closely with Dee’s
known sources and his notes do not mention the relationship between the texts he relates to the contents of
the MH to and possible books Dee could have read.
85
A significant difference is Dee’s silence on the corpuscular theory which importantly undergirds
Geberian theory (and is essential to understanding the development of quantification which gives rise to
chemistry). Dee speaks of simply the four elements and their chemical referent without the particulate
intermediaries. See Newman 1991: 153-162, and more thoroughly 2001: 291-330 for a discussion of this
corpuscular aspect of Geberian alchemic theory.

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 place of the “Aries Fire” discussed below. These elements, according to theorem
XVI, exist in equal and unequal portions which will be perfected balanced
through correct application of the Monas itself. Dee is never very clear on how
this should happen practically but it seems that, for him, due to a geometric
propensity of the relationship between lines and points, the elements too strive
toward some perfect “flowing together.”
2. The Sun and the Moon form the primal polarity in which the sun is the active
agent (it emits the influence of the “rays 86”) and the moon is the passive or
reactive agent, with the same relation of this dyad to the elemental quarternary.87
The correspondence between the sun and gold and the moon and silver is doubled
as the primal elements and the physical metals unite through the alchemical
process of purification.88 Dee is echoes Pseudo-Geber on the nature of the “lunar
silver” although in some cases he seems to have in mind a type of hermetic quick
silver (the “luna, existens viva” of theorem XXI).89 Indeed, the sun and moon for
Dee seem to have a primal existence followed by a subsequent period in which
they can be affected by other planetary objects (the increased power through the
“exaltation” of the Sun in the sign of Aries or the moon in the sign of Taurus).90
This primal sun and moon “infuse their corporeal virtues into all inferior bodies
that consist of elements in a far stronger manner than do all the other planets…”91
3. The sign of Aries represents the dynamic change of the elements through the
application of fire as Dee states it in theorem X “We have added [in the symbol of
our Monad) the astronomical sign of Aries, therefore, to signify that (in the
practice of this Monad) the aid of fire is required.”92 For Dee this fiery dynamism
fuels and transforms the Monas itself into an internal combustion and

86
Cf, PA, 188-9.
87
MH, 12v, 14r - 15v
88
Cf the role of Sun and Moon in the Tabula Smaragdina with the father as the sun, mother as moon and
womb (matrix) in which the elements are then separated. Linden (ed): 2003, 28.
89
Dee seems to want to fit these elements within the matrix Geberian Mercury theory by using the moon to
be the hypothetical Sophic Mercury in addition to the primary passive tendency of the Emerald Tablet. CF
Newman: 1991, 669-674 in Pseudo-Geber on the relationship of Sun, Moon, and Mercury.
90
This double process best represents Dee’s commitment to the notion that Alchemy and Astrology are two
parts of one discipline.
91
MH, 18v.
92
Ibid., 13v.

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 transmutation.93 Aries is connected alternatively to the sun (XV, in its
“exaltation”), the moon (XI, in its shape), and fire (X, as above).
4. These components, the four primal elements in addition to the sun and moon,
along with the fiery94 dynamism of Aries come together to form, both graphically
and alchemically, all others signs and physical compounds (XII) through a series
of “revolutions” in which Mercury is made “sophic” and united with the Sun95
5. Mercury, in the form of “his uterine brother,” is given specific priority. This
Mercury, the “sophic” mercury, is the result of the perfect combination between
solar and lunar forces (and presumably those in between) with the indivisible
center of the four-fold elemental quaternary. 96 This higher mercury is linked with
the “sun of the philosophers” the exalted and perfect alchemic “gold.”97 To show
how this process is mirrored in the astronomical realm Dee borrows the image of
the celestial Egg from the Turba Philosophorum as combined with his specific
theory of the chemical revolutions. It is to be noted that in the Turba mercury is
dually represented as the egg itself and the planet/influence within the egg – a
possible source for Dee’s mercurial doubling.98 Like Pantheus in his
Voarchadumia (discussed more below) notes “the metals of the philosophers are
six (for quicksilver [‘Arg. Vivi’] is not a metal, but the matter of metals.”99

93
Cf Newman: 1991, 727-730 on the need of the influence of Aries to accelerate the process of the
purification of Mercury in order to remove “humidity.” Dee extends this, using Astrological
correspondences, to it to mean dynamism generally. The relationship of Aries to Mercury would produce
the Sophic Mercury, devoid of humidity and thus able to be totally united with the Solar influences.
94
The role of fire, and the heating via solar and lunar influences, dung, and warm are all qualitatively
different in this period of alchemic theory. Thus the Aries fire is different from the burning of wood or the
heating in the “Lamina earth” Dee mentions later in the MH. For more on the various fires see Debus
1967.
95
Clulee 2001: 185 uses Thomas Norton’s Ordinall of Alchemy to show that the process of
“…recomposition occurs involving seven circulations of the elements presided over by the astrological
influences of the planets. The seven circulations are divided into two sequences. The first begins with (1)
fire acting on (2) earth producing (3) pure water, leading to (4) air. The second sequence begins with (5)
air and leads through (6) clean earth to return to (7) fire.” While Dee’s system does not mirror this process
exactly, the from fire to fire is the certainly mirroring the process by which Mercury is purified. Dee
illustrates this process on MH 14v.
96
Note that Dee is not appealing for the use of Sulfur at all. Pseudo-Geber allows for a “Mercury Alone”
theory as well with sulfur only being an impurity. It seems likely that Dee is adopting just such thinking.
See Newman 1991: 204-208 for an exploration.
97
This process is described at length in theorem XVIII.
98
Sheppard: 1959, 143.
99
Norrgrén: 2005, 243 notes that Dee seems to have accepted Pantheus’ analysis of quicksilver but
disagreed about the number of metals. Dee actually inserts a spare notesheet and copies a section from an

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 6. Although not without parallel in previous literature, Dee’s elemental Sun, Moon,
Aries, and Mercury all undergo a transformative process of doubling in which
they variously unite with each other100 or become transmuted into a purer form.101
This transformative doubling, while a process of purification in classical Geberian
thinking, is recursive in Dee’s thinking and is one example of the recursive logic
of the Monas we will discuss in detail during our analysis.
7. Two specifically Paracelsian references are clear in the text. The first is when the
Monas itself is referred to as a “gamaaea”. 102 It is unclear just what Dee meant
but he probably had the idea of the Monas as a type of talisman. Secondly, Dee
mentions that the Monas itself can “effect a healing of the soul and a deliverance
from all distress….” This medical application of the Monas itself has Paracelsian
echoes. 103

These features represent the larger theoretical arcs employed by Dee throughout
the MH. Dee’s use of these concepts ranges from axiomatic declarations to minute points
of application within a given discipline. While Dee’s alchemic theory of c. 1564 is
largely a version of the “Mercury Alone104” version of the Pseudo-Geberian (with some
Paracelsian interpolations), Dee’s propensity to swerve obliquely through the various
sources and disciplines he appeals to produces more parabolic digressions more than
linear exposition which has no doubt contributed to its odd, dual status of condemnation
for unintelligibility and persistent fascination. Like many aspects of Dee’s intellectual
character, the alchemic theory which emerges in the MH is marked by hybridity,

earlier work of Pantheus, his Ars Metallicae, in seven metals are required. In both cases Dee heavily
underlines six in the Voarchadumia and seven in the earlier Ars. In the MH, Dee employs the traditional
number of seven but does understand mercury in Pantheus’ dual sense.
100
This process is described with an illustration in Theorem XIII
101
This process is described in the difficult Theorem XXI in which Dee inverts the Monas.
102
The word is of Paracelsian origin but mysterious otherwise (perhaps from the Hebrew word for amulet
kami’a?). Paracelsus felt that a “gamaaea” could “trap astral influences as in a box.” See Szőnyi: 1995,
257 for a further discussion.
103
As Szulakowska: 1996, 11-12 points out, Dee was well acquainted with Paracelsian doctors and
corresponded with them although after the MH period.
104
How long Dee held this version of the Geber theory is unsure. He seems to be actively using sulfur
during his later period. Szulakowska 1996: 14, points to Dee’s practical use of large quantities of sulfur by
1581and during his continental work with Edward Kelly and if Kelly’s writings are any indication of Dee’s
later theory, sulfur is certain though to be a central part of the elemental makeup with the sulfur-mercury
version in Kelly’s Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy. The title of the work is clearly a nod to Dee’s
language of alchemia as astronomia inferior.

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innovation, with a strong carry-over from previous sources.105 Dee glides easily from
quoting late classical alchemical authors in the original Greek to creating his own
neologism to synthesize what, for him, was the very latest in high alchemic theory. What
can be compiled from the references in the MH reveal Dee’s alchemic theory to be a
nuanced structural alteration of previously alchemic theories made to fit the contours of
the theoretic primacy of the Monas itself.
Regardless of the exact character of Dee’s 1564 theory was, assuming he had just
one, a pernicious reading has seriously clouded appreciating alchemic writings, in situ,
generally – the unnecessary psychologization (or de-materializing) of alchemic theory
notably inaugurated by Jung. Indeed, we should resist readings, such as Josten’s, which
psychologize the alchemic process as primarily an elaborate allegory for the
transformation of the individual subject (the “self,” “spirit,” or “soul”) as a sort of
“spiritual alchemy.” Such a philosophic priority in Josten’s thinking results in an
unfortunate anomaly in the English translation of the MH. Likely because they do not fit
into this psychologizing tendency, the table of correspondences on 23r and the
enormously interesting cosmic map featuring the Pico inspired “Horizon Aeternitatis” on
27r are simply left untranslated with only the explanation that they are “deliberately
veiled” while the other is even “less intelligible.”106 This study will explore both
diagrams in our analysis.
Calder forwards this as a reading of the MH as part of the Warburg school of
reading Dee as a “Neo-Platonic,” or more programmatically “Hermetic Magus.” Josten’s
introduction of the MH follows suits and such a reading107, although significantly more
nuanced and constricted, occurs in Clulee as well108. Such a reading is heavily dependant
on an unfounded prioritizing of one sentence in the introduction letter Dee attaches to the
MH and a very allegorical reading of the text itself. 109 Opposed to such a reading, we

105
Mostly directly, as we have shown, the Tabula Smaragdina in Trithemius’ commentary, the Summa-
Perfectionis of Pesudo-Geber, and the Turba Philosophorum.
106
Josten: 1964, 111.
107
Ibid., 100-102.
108
Clulee: 1988, 111-113.
109
The key sentence is on MH 7-7v “…he who fed [the monad] will first himself go away into a
metamorphosis and will truly afterwards very rarely be held by mortal eyes. This, O very good King, is the
true invisibility of the magi which has so often (and without sin) been spoken of, and which (as all future
magi will own) has been granted to the theories of our monad.” Surely a striking claim but one that Dee
does not develop further in the introduction nor does he mention it in the actual theorems. While we are

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would offer that Dee is not only primarily interested in the material composition and
transformation of substances (as he understood them110) but that such an opposition
between “spiritual” and “physical” alchemy is simply anachronistic in the mid-16th
century. Based on Norrgrén’s careful analysis of Dee’s marginalia in his copy of the
Pantheus’ Voarchadumia (Venice, 1530), we can no doubt conclude that Dee takes up
Pantheus’ “anti-alchemical” stand against those that simply color metals as opposed to
being able to actually transform and alter them physically. 111 Pantheus’ “cabala of
metals,” presented Dee as early as 1559 a theoretical foundation for a quantifiable
method by which to measure and manipulate metallic substances. Indeed, Dee’s
annotations of the Voarchadumia employ the Monas symbol both on the cover and
throughout the text.112 The spiritual or psychological reading of Dee’s alchemic theory
seems more a modern attempt at normalizing the theory anachronistically than situating it
historically.
The unevenly distributed and unsystematic character of the alchemic references in
the MH leads points to the need to situate the alchemic tendency in the text within the
parameters of a larger explanatory matrix. It seems that Dee is employing a rather
nebulous alchemic theory in order to substantiate the philosophical relationship between
the sign of the Monas and physical, as opposed to a “spiritual” or “psychological,”
reality. Indeed, we would not be far remiss to understand Dee’s alchemic theory as a
physics in which composition and change can be described both in the sub-lunar
terrestrial world along with their celestial influences in relation to the or, better, through
the Monas itself. Despite being primarily read as an alchemic text, the priority is not the
centrality of alchemic theory but the central place the Monas plays in Dee’s vision of the

slow to simply dismiss it as simply marketing bombast we are certainly not going to hinge a reading of the
text itself upon such a statement.
110
We do not want to be seen as claiming that Dee is a physicalist in the modern sense. As we will show
below, Dee’s physics and metaphysics are deeply connected but precisely opposite to the bifurcated, post-
Cartesian configuration we currently inherit.
111
We conclude this based on Norrgrén’s: 2005, careful reading of Dee meticulous experimentation with
Pantheus’ “alchemy of metals.”
112
It is especially written over sections in which mercury is seen to have been “actualized” by solar forces.
Indeed, on the cover of his copy of the book, Dee’s places the Monas at the top of a triangle between the
dual bases of Mercury and the Sun. On the scroll surrounding the Monas on the cover of MH 1564 there
reads “Mercury becomes the parent and the King of all planets when made perfect by a stable pointed
hook.” The “stable pointed hook” alludes to the sign and fiery power of Aries.

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cosmos and its representation. Alchemy is meant to be proof for the power of the Monas
not vice versa.
In Dee’s prioritizing of the Monas a disjunction is created which Dee uses to draw
a wedge between his “anti-alchemy” alchemy (Monas-centered) and the alchemy
perceived as in practice around him. In employing the Monas, Dee indicates that he is
separating himself from alchemy as he perceived it practiced stating unequivocally “May
the wretched alchemists hence take admonishment and learn to recognize their various
errors.”113 This theoretical disjunction formed by Dee’s prioritizing of the Monas results
in his deployment of several neologisms to distinguish his reformed material theory of
elements such as the Pantheus’ inspired term “Voarchadumicus114” and referring to the
process as the “Arioton Art115.” While tantalizingly spare in his description of these
processes, Dee adopts this strangely anti-alchemical “alchemy” which is crystallized
around the reforming and transforming power of the Monas itself. While unrecognizably
different in appearance to most eyes, Dee suspends what he perceives as erroneous in
“alchemy” to expropriate enough of its content to simultaneously prove the validity of the
Monas and undermine the previous practice, alchemy, generally. This anti-alchemical
alchemy is then modeled on the contours of the Monas as an image-act of expression in
which the practice is made isomorphic to the image-architecture of the Monas and then
actualized in Dee’s semiotic-ontology. 116 This process of erasure, intensification, and
actualization is the central mode of argumentation Dee takes with all philosophical
systems he uses to stabilize the priority of the Monas.117 As we will show in our later
analysis, this process bears an isomorphic relationship to the semiotic-ontology at the
heart of the Monas’ logic.

2.3 The Cabala(s) of the Monas Hieroglyphica

Dee himself said that he wished to describe his Monas “mathematically,

magically, cabalistically, and anagogically…” with the most persistent of these methods

113
MH 17v.
114
Ibid., 7v.
115
Ibid.
116
This process is described in detail in our analysis below.
117
The same process is clearly applied to Astronomia on 3v-4r. and to Language on 4r-4v.

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in the interpretive history of the MH being its “cabalistic” dimension. Within a
generation of Dee’s death we find Meric Casaubon writing in the preface to True and
Faithful Relation, the first printed record of Dee’s “Angelicall Conferences,” that “Dr.
Dee, of himself, long before any apparition, was a cabalistical man, up to the ears, as I
may say; as may appear to any man by his Monas Hieroglyphica….”118 Indeed, Dee
invokes the word “cabala” and “cabalistic” multiple times in the MH and often in several
distinct senses in the theorems. We will explore these in this order: The first is the
ability for linguistic units to be decomposed into constituent parts in order to reveal
mystical or hidden meaning. As we will see below this “cabala” takes the form of alpha-
numeric manipulation of words and symbols. In the second sense, Dee seems to link, as
Reuchlin did before him, “cabala” in a general sense to (neo)-Pythagorean numerical
philosophy. This second sense, while less clearly developed in the Monas, would feature
more prominently (although less provocatively worded) in his 1570 Euclid Preface. The
third sense, Dee’s “cabala of what is said” is his understanding of the relationship of
discursive language and linguistic power explored in the next chapter. Dee’s ultimate
sense of the “cabala of the real” is developed in the preface and our discussion of what he
may have meant will be developed in depth later in the paper.

2.4 The “Cabala of the Hebrews”

Whatever Dee knew of the cabala by 1564 was likely drawn directly from
Christian sources, especially Pico, Reuchlin, Postel and Agrippa and perhaps superficial
use of primary Hebrew texts.119 It does not appear that Dee took much if any interest in
the cabala until around the year of the publication of the MH and to what extent Dee’s
knowledge of Hebrew was ever proficient is unclear. Regardless, he seems convinced
that there is a relationship between cabala and the use and understanding of the Monas
itself. Although Dee’s equation of the primitivity of geometric form and language is
clear in the preface, there is no theorem which, in simple terms, states that the creation

118
Casaubon: 1659, 38.
119
Harkness 1999: 84-5 points to Dee’s book buying to indicate a surge in the purchase of cabalistic texts
around 1560-62. Dee seems to increase his purchase of Hebrew books but in the period directly before the
composition of the MH but it is unclear how well of if at all he could read them. Prior to this period, 1556-
7, Dee seems to own only the authors mentioned above.

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and manipulation of the Monas is a linguistic enterprise. 120 However, the configuration
may be manipulated using classic methods of Kabbalistic alphanumeric permuting:
Gematria, Notarikon, Temurah, and Tsiruf. 121 It becomes clear that Dee employs
cabalistic methods to manipulate the symbol in a way previously only reserved for
language, especially Hebrew. Through this process of cabalistic permutation of the
symbol(s) of the Monas Dee wishes to both provide proof for the universal application of
the Monas symbol but also, according to the preface, in doing so to reform all previous
disciplines by a sort of proof-reading the liber naturae.122
As convincingly pointed out by Walton and developed by Clulee, Dee employs
the cabalistic techniques of Gematria, Notarikon, Temurah, and Tsiruf to deconstruct the
symbol of the Monas itself in order to display its cosmographic character exegetically.123
In this sense, Dee likely understood the Monas as a quasi-linguistic token which was
subject to the same manipulation previously preserved for biblical exegesis. For Dee, the
Monas itself is a type of fractal in which each part contains every other part and can be
extracted and rearticulated back into the feedback cycle. 124 Each section can be
decomposed into parts and refer to a larger program of central elements. This is very
similar to the cabalistic process of notarikon in which the first letter of several words are
reassembled into a new word or acronym meant to carry the linguistic content of both
simultaneously. The Monas itself contains within it a matrix of reference in which the
symbol stands as a loaded cipher for its various symbolic capacities. For Dee this fractal
like quality of the Monas means that it contains all possible combinations of symbolic
knowledge and therefore can correspond to any discrete point of data, be it a

120
Dee draws such a conclusion about language and geometry when he forms an identity between the point,
line, and circle and the “Iod & Chireck” on MH, 5r. Dee seems to be see an affinity, or co-extension,
between the linear quality of the ‫ י‬although he seems to have compounded two other vowels signs into one
word both of which are small points either below (hirik) or at a medial point in a letter (shuruk). Perhaps
Dee would have been better served by a Vav ‫ ו‬for the former. Here his knowledge of Hebrew seems
confused.
121
These techniques are attested in a wide range of sources, including Christian cabalists such as Reuclin
and Agrippa and involve, as we discuss below, making use of anagramming, the double-duty that Hebrew
(and Greek) letters can also be numbers and can thus be subject to arithmetic manipulations, and so on. For
more on these techniques see Scholem 1974: 337-343.
122
This is Clulee’s thesis, described in depth below.
123
Walton: 1976, 179-180 and Clulee 1988: 92-5. Note that Dee mentions these by name in the preface
on 6v in which he refers to the techniques as “Artis suae tres quasi praecipuas claves.”
124
This is a curious bit of logic we will explore in detail when detailing the Monas’ “logic of recursion”
below. It is also a function of the Monas’ peculiar semiotic articulation discussed below.

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mathematical number, an alchemic process, or an astrological influence. The
manipulation of the Monas in its most mobile can be seen in theorems XII (in which all
the astrological signs are derived from and combined with to form the Monas itself),
XVIII (in which the Monas is shown to perfectly mediate the celestial and sub-lunar
worlds), XX (in which mathematic linear ratios are brought to bear on elemental balances
in nature), and XXI (in which the Monas itself is decomposed and inverted to reveal more
“philosophical treasures”). These complex matrices of elements in various states of
composition potentially form the purest means of expression for the disciplines Dee is
intent on reforming.
Dee similarly employs gematric techniques125 in which decomposed elements of
the Monas are shown to be simultaneously numbers and letters. For instance, in theorem
XVI Dee decomposes the center cross of the Monas to form two “L”-shaped sections
which simultaneously represent the Roman numeral for fifty but also when turned 90
degrees are pronounced, in English, as “El” which Dee gleefully notes is the one of the
Hebrew names for God. Dee will go on to derive the number 252126 from a complicated
manipulation of the “+” and subsequently derive the formulation “LVX” from the right
angles in theorem XVII. Here Dee seems to want to prove that from the Monas alone he
can derive not only astrological and alchemic symbols but potentially all numbers and
letters which compose mathematical and discursive language.
Lastly Dee also employs tsiruf, indeed he mentions, “the tziruph or themura of the
Hebrews”127 in Theorem XXIII. This process is central for Dee in that the vast majority
of the MH is concerned with decomposing and recomposing elements of the symbol to
show how they relate to astrological entities and alchemical processes. For instance, in
theorem X and XI Dee explains how the symbol for Aries is constructed by a “firery
triplicity in the sky”128 and how the semi-circles which compose the symbols for the sun

125
The substitution of numbers and letters in various permutations and arithmetic processes to “reveal”
hidden of mystical meaning.
126
Why Dee felt this number was so important is unclear. In taxonomical breakdown of theorem XXIII
Dee seems to associate it with the philosopher’s stone. Josten: 1964, 175 points out that Dee may have
found it significant that 2² + 3² + 4² + 5² + 6² + 7² = 252. Outside of this, the number does not seem to
feature as important in other Kabbalistic literature.
127
MH, 25v. “Hac ego in Hebraeorum Tziruph (sive Thmura)
128
Itself commonly linked to the various “heats” of Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. This “nesting” is a
common feature of the logic of the MH.

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and moon can be deconstructed to create the astrological symbol itself as well as the
alchemic engine of fire which makes the Monad itself dynamic.
This “miraculous appropriation,” to borrow a phrase from Pico, of processes
normally reserved for use in Kabbalistic exegesis of Hebrew clearly shows Dee’s
propensity to place under erasure the previous practice in order to expropriate it as proof
for and for use in the power of the Monas. Dee is clearly unapologetic in this process:
And now I come to the Hebrew cabalist who, when he will see that (the three
principal keys to his art, called) Gematria, Notariacon, and Tzyruph, are used
outside the confines of the language called holy, and that, moreover, the signs and
characters of that mystical tradition (which was received from God) are brought
together from whencesoever….he will call this art holy, too; and he will own that,
without regard to person, the same most benevolent God is not only [the God] of
the Jews, but of all people, nations, and languages; also that no mortal may excuse
himself for being ignorant of our holy language…. 129

Here Dee resituates the Kabbalistic techniques within the Monas such that they
act as a syntactical logic in its permutation without which Dee cannot accomplish the
needed semiotic mobility of the sign. Again, Dee employs the same threefold process as
he did with the practice of alchemy to conform these techniques to the Monas.

2.5 The Pythagorean Cabala

Dee’s second sense of the word “cabalistic” seems to imply a conflation with a
Neo-Pythagorean speculation not fully clear by 1564 (Dee would speak a bit more in
these terms in his 1570 Euclid Preface) but only briefly expounded in the MH itself. This
is clearly visible in theorem VIII when Dee speculates “Besides, a cabbalistic expansion
of the quaternary [i.e. the elements], in accordance with the customary style (when we
say, one, two, three four, produces, in sum, the denary, as Pythagoras used to say; for 1,
2, 3, and 4, add up to ten.” In this case “cabalistic” almost could be replaced with
“Pythagorean” with no change in meaning. The conflation of cabala and Pythagorean

129
MH, 6v.

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philosophy is also found, and likely has its roots130, in Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabalistica
(1517). In the dialogue Philolaus, himself a “Pythagorean by persuasion,”131 describes
the Kabbalah as “This kind of knowledge [Kabbalah] most nearly approaches
Pythagorean teaching, or so I am given to understand by scholars when they have the
time for discussion and are in an expansive mood. They say that Pythagoras derived
most of his ideas from this source.”132 The second book itself is a long discussion of a
form of Neo-Pythagorean philosophy as dictated by Philolaus to Marranus as Simon (the
Jewish Kabbalist) has broken from the group to keep the Sabbath. Of significance to our
discussion is Philolaus’ presumed distillation of “Kabbalah” which may very well have
lined up with Dee 1564 understanding “…Kabbalah is simply (to use the Pythagorean
vocabulary) symbolic theology, where words and letters are code things, and such things
are themselves codes for other things.”133 While this does not fill in the content of Dee’
thinking it does provide some insight into his use of the word and the genealogical
conflation of the terms as he would have encountered them.
While this cabalistic sense of the MH was not as persistently employed by later
interpreters it was not forgotten. In Petrus Bungus’ 1618 Numerorum Mysteria a very
similar graphical construction of the word “OVUM” is derived from various alchemical
procedures in addition from the symbol for Aries. Various other similar relationships are
developed which are clearly influenced by the MH.134 This Cabalistic priority of the text
has actually been taken up by most modern Dee scholars in their reading the MH as a
type of symbolic language meant for various ends, ranging from developing a Hermetic
ecumenical religion, stabilizing the polyvalent discourse of alchemy itself, to reform in
the liberal arts generally. Again, and much like in Dee’s use of alchemic appropriations,
Dee seems to employ the language of the cabala and its techniques in the service of

130
Pico also links Pythagorean speculation to Cabala, e.g. Thesis 11>55, et al. but not as systematically as
Reuchlin.
131
Reuchlin: 1517, 40/41. “…disciplina Pythagoreum”
132
Ibid., 42/3. “…quae una facultas (ut sepe audivi doctissimos hominess suavi ocio & consiliis oberrimis
affluentesme praefente arbitrari) prae caeteris ess qucat philosophiae Pythagoricae cognatior tanquam nihil
similius. Nam esse Pythagoram omnia ferme dogmata istinc expifactum aiunt.”
133
Ibid., 238/240. “Cabalam aliud nihil esse nisi (ut Pythagorice loquar) sybolicam theologicam, in qua
non [the following five words are so heavily abbreviated and ligatured I cannot accurately transcribe them
fully hence I reproduce them as they were printed] << nõ mõ lřæ ac noīa >> sunt rerum signa, verum res
etiam rerum.”
134
Forshaw: 2005, 253.

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proving the priority of the Monas itself. We can point to the scattered and various
manners in which Dee uses cabalistic tropes to show his main interest in the MH is
certainly not developing a new “cabala” as a continuation or response to previous Jewish
speculations (of even much of Christian cabalist speculation) but to intensify the
cabalistic techniques he has appropriated for service within the Monas itself. What is left
out here is the most telling. As De Leon-Jones points out, Dee does not employ any of
the “classic” kabbalistic themes such as the priority of Hebrew as a divine language, the
sefirot and their place in the chain of being, mystical biblical exegesis and so on all easily
accessible to Dee through other Christian Cabalists he undoubtedly read. 135 Whatever
Dee meant by “cabala” is drastically curtailed to wrap such ideas around the contours of
the Monas and not vice-versa. Rather, he wishes to employ such techniques, at the time
thought to be highly powerful tools for unlocking mysteries, to show the priority of the
Monas itself.
There can be no question that the primary systems of thought Dee appeals to in
order to prove the validity, describe the structure, and display the function of the Monas
itself are alchemy (/astronomia) and cabala. Virtually all theorems can be read through
one of these lenses but, as we have seen, neither one seems to totally or coherently
describe the Monas nor do both theories seem to produce a conjoined theoretical
amalgamation. Dee appeals to them unsystematically, unevenly, and always at the
service of the priority of the Monas itself. In other words, the Monas cannot simply be
the ideographic summation of Dee’s alchemic and cabalistic theories.
In order to render the MH intelligible most commentators have over-expanded
either the alchemic or cabalistic readings as their central hermeneutic device. Calder,
Josten, and many modern occultists have nullified, or generously liberalized, the
materialist alchemical theory by internalizing (or pyschologizing) the transformative
processes described by Dee into a system for developing inner magical or psychic power.
For them, the Monas is a key for inner transformation and exaltation. On the other hand,
135
De Leon-Jones: 2006, 146-7. Curiously, however, she states later in her paper “Like the cosmic egg,
the Adam Kadmon represents the dimensions of the universe. In essence, the glyph of the Monas is the
Adam Kadmon, and the sefirot that compose the figure are contained in the dimensions of the text.” This
parallel seems liberal given her position stated earlier in the paper that Dee is not a Kabbalist and “In the
MH Dee is concerned with a different sort of revelation, that of a new form of numerical revelation that is
closer to Cartesian than traditional Jewish Kabbalistic thought….” Both parallels seem unwarranted and a
bit forced.

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other commentators such as Walton, Clulee and others have expanded the cabalistic
reading to understand the MH as describing a “language of nature.” This language, in
their readings, will reform the liberal arts (including alchemy), nature, or both.
As we have shown above, Dee did not write the MH to be understood from a
single hermeneutical apparatus or even a summation of various systems. Alchemy and
Cabala, as we have described above, while important thematic arcs for Dee in proving the
importance of the Monas, are not totalizing or coherent bounding systems into which the
MH can or should be read. On the other hand, Alchemy, Cabala, Pythagoreanism, etc are
but facets which Dee appeals to in order to prove the power and significance of the
Monas and its deep relation to reality itself. Thus, we argue, the prior privileging of one
discipline for framing and reading the MH is not only invalid but deeply opposed to the
central thrust of Dee’s work resulting in a serious heuristic error. In other words, in order
to get a handle on the text commentators have increasingly mistaken the handle for the
text. What is needed, therefore, is an analysis of the Monas device itself and the
philosophic conditions by which Dee understood its ontological status and its ability to
interact with reality at large. The MH cannot simply be the result of a hybritizing of
alchemy and cabala and it seems we require a more over-arcing theory to get at what Dee
means for the Monas to be the only component within his “cabala of being. For Dee the
“cabala of what is said,” while a facet of the Monas itself, faces a similar auto-
deconstruction as it is subsumed, appropriated, and replaced in the prioritizing of the
larger project set forward in the MH. Before we move on to a semiotic analysis, we must
turn to this notion of the Monas as “symbolic language” in relation to Renaissance
philosophy of language and Dee’s evaluation of it within the logic of the Monas.

2.6 “The Cabala of that which is said” – Mid-16th Century Language Issues in the
Monas Hieroglyphica

Most directly influenced by the influx of earlier cabalistic ideas, the ontological
priority of language seems present but inconspicuous in Dee’s thinking in the early

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1560’s. 136 Dee does however take part in the booming intellectual fascination with the
Hebrew language. As Harkness has pointed out, Dee likely begins to learn Hebrew and
purchase Hebrew books as early as 1560. 137 While it is unclear what degree of
proficiency Dee achieved with the language by publishing of the MH, he is certainly able
to explore the Hebrew Biblical text in the original for exegetical purposes and during the
later angelic conferences he is able to work directly with Hebrew names of God and other
key words.138 Likely, his fascination with Hebrew is also related to the greater Humanist
interest in re-discovering the perfect, pre-lapsarian language of Adam of which Hebrew
was likely to be either a good candidate or that language itself in a degenerated form.139
As we will see, for Dee, it appears, unlike Reuchlin and Postel and others before him, that
Hebrew did not hold such a central position. Such an original language must be
something different than discursive communication, even such an ancient one as Hebrew,
and must connect all realms into a coherent whole.140 We are reminded of Plotinus when
he says, “It must not be thought that in the Intelligible World the gods and the blessed see
propositions; everything expressed there is a beautiful image.”141
It is during this period between the PA and the MH that Dee also composed his
Cabbalae Hebraicae Compendiosa Tabella142 which has since either vanished or in fact

136
This tendency seems to gain considerable momentum and by the period of the spirit diaries, in the early
1580s. Dee is very taken with the angelic “languages” in their various forms.
137
See Harkness: 1999, 85-87 for a discussion of Dee’s Hebrew. We are faced with a curious fact. Dee’s
Hebrew is almost universally thought to be inferior to that of Reuchlin but his private library at Mortlake
would go on to contain more Hebrew books than any library in England during his lifetime and for some
time after. Dee’s bibliophilia likely crossed the line to become bibliomania.
138
Dee employs Hebrew only once in the theorems of the MH, most significantly on 22v, and it is a highly
cribbed text. According to Dr. James Bowley’s (Professor of Hebrew and Biblical Studies, Millsaps
College) it reads, “Line 1: the salt constantly 6 (days?) soaked/dissolved cloth/skin // Line 2: or after from
above/on top to be mixed,” matching vaguely with the previous alchemical section. Where this text, a
quotation, comes from remains a mystery to me and is being investigated. The other two examples are in
the introductory letter with Dee seeming to phonetically spell “aurum” in Hebrew letters (“‫ )” ארם‬and a
garbled transliterated phrase “Voar Beth Adumoth” which Josten renders tentatively as “the light (?) of two
red ones.” Dee’s 1564 Hebrew is so idiosyncratic or poor it approaches total incomprehensibility.
139
Harkness 1999: 79-84 discusses Dee in this context. Our discussion of Hieroglyphics below also
explores the non-discursive dimension of this context.
140
Likewise numbers, and not “those of merchants” but numbers in a much more primitive and powerful
sense, held a central place in Dee’s conception of the relationship between language and reality.
141
Quoted in Szőnyi: 1996, 258.
142
Very little is known about this book. It appears to have been addressed to “Paris Adepts” and purports
to reveal Dee’s work in the “Hermetic sciences” over the previous 20 years of his life. While commonly
assumed to be alchemy, Dee was actually lecturing on mathematics in Paris. I would lean more toward a
type of Neo-Pythagorean mysticism than an alchemic one in this case considering Dee linkage of the cabala
with such thought and the title.

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became the later MH. Here Dee claims in the preface of the MH that he developed his
distinction between the “cabala of that which is said”143 which deals with the language-
centered mystical-exegetical practice, and the more powerful “realem nominavi Cabalam,
sive του οντος” or rendered often as “the Cabala of that which is” although I prefer the
“Cabala…of Being.”144 Unlike the cabalists145 before him, Dee moves away from
discursive language (be it Hebrew or not) to a symbolic unit which forms a continuum
between sign and signifier, object of expression and object expressed. This “cabala of
being” is the central idea of our later exploration and analysis of the MH itself. First we
must explore in quick fashion, some of the linguistic theories at work in the MH itself
and Dee’s eventual rejection of the priority of “language” in its relation to the Monas.

2.7 The Monas and the Limits of “The Cabala of that which is Said”

While we have discussed how Dee employs some “cabalistic” methods in order to
manipulate the Monas we must also nuance this discussion by following Dee’s line of
thinking a bit further. Specifically in his separation between the “cabala of that which is
said” and the “cabala of the real” both of which seem to inform Dee and be the
reactionary source of the MH itself. While in the Monas we see the precursor to the
explosion in interest in the slightly later, 17th century, interest in developing either a
universal language (an idea which persists to this day) and/or the first, Adamic, language,
it is not without precedent before him, specifically in the writings of Pico, Reuchlin and
Postel. 146 Such theories represent a theoretical framework from which the “cabala of that

143
“…cabalisticam nomino GRAMMATICAM sive τω λεγοµενω”
144
MH, 7r.
145
As Wolfson: 2005, esp. 197-220 et passim, has masterfully shown, Jewish Kabbalists (and Sufi mystics)
have long held (stretching from the enigmatic Sefer Yetzirah through Zohairic literature but also nascent in
several key Talmudic narratives) a philosophic commitment to the notion that language (Hebrew or Arabic)
is ontological tied to Being itself as a link, in Hebrew for instance, between “shem (name)” and “guf (body
or essence).” The question in our study is to what degree, if any, Dee, by 1564, knew of or was influenced
by such a tradition. I am of the mind that he was not directly or his contact was minimal and he thus
arrived at a similar but critically distinct position. Dee’s rejection of the priority of Hebrew (with
discursive representation generally), the absence of so many other central aspect of Kabbalistic discourse
(the sefirot, speculative cosmological layers, theosophical language, etc) and the narrow scope of his
cabalistic erudition at this point seem to support this conservative stance.
146
Our analysis will be brief and focused narrowly on the relation of these thinkers to the Monas. For a
more lengthy view see the articles below, for a relevant overview of the ontological status of language and
these thinkers see Von Stuckrad: 2008, 430-436.

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which is said” arises. This tension between the “cabala of that which is” and “that which
is said” itself is likely the result of the semiotic-ontological tension in this extremely
volatile period in the philosophy of language in which the logical ends of Nominalism147
are ever more drawing a line between the represented and representation which may be
most overtly seen in the 900 Thesis of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
Pico’s 900 Theses are not systematic or often terribly coherent, but they are very
telling. While dense and provocative many of his pronouncements, especially in the
sections on cabala and magic, remain either wildly speculative or the product of some
reasoning lost on the modern reader. Regardless, his work in bringing Cabala, through
the copious translations of the converted Jew Flavius Mithridates, into the high
intellectual fashion of the following centuries cannot be ignored. In his work, we want to
briefly bring attention to his oscillations between a Nominalist position and one more
commonly linked with Neo-Platonism generally – that is, the ontological relation of
nomina to their objects.
As Von Stuckrad has pointed out, Pico seems to unknowingly, or uncritically, lay
Nominalist and “Realist” positions directly beside each other, such as at 3>5, 6 where
Pico writes: “Quiddities possesses their formal existence from eternity from themselves,
not from something outside themselves148” then “No definition is adequate to the thing
defined.149”150 While Pico has certainly inherited the ontologized features of languages
from the Cabala, especially in regards Hebrew, he incorporates them in a framework of
largely Nominalist positions. Indeed, this is due to the final nature of his work – magic,
as he understands it, and cabala, as he wants to employ it. As he writes in thesis 9>24 at,
“Out of the principles of the more secret philosophy it is necessary to acknowledge that
characters and figures are more powerful in magic work than any material quality.” Such
“figures and characters” are linguistic or symbolic and thus have some ontological
status151 however they would simply perish if too long in Pico’s, otherwise, Nominalist

147
We mean it here in the dual sense as to the question of the existence of universals and of the relationship
of words to objects. Both ideas can be said to flow philosophically into each other.
148
“Quiditates habent ab aeterno suum esse formale a se, no ab extrenseco.”
149
“Nulla diffinitio adaequat diffinitium.”
150
Von Stuckrad 2008: 431.
151
This is clear at 9>25 when Pico writes “Just as characters are proper to a magical work, so numbers are
proper to a work of Cabala [note the Pythagorean-Cabala connection here and in 9>23 when he mentions

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air. Pico’s aim is largely one of an appeal to secret, although world-reforming,
knowledge and magic is a central part of that program. While he attempts, often in a very
ad hoc and uncritical manner, to navigate a problem of which it is unclear he had a
conscious awareness. Here we break slightly with Farmer’s desire for a more nuanced
reading of Pico to situate such tensions as part of a larger, semi-conscious anxiety about
the ontological nature of representation generally. For Pico, and so too for Dee, the
relationship between certain representations obviously had an affect on what they
represented or corresponded to, yet, Nominalism was central to their process of
interrogation at several levels leading to a semiotic-ontological anxiety. In other words,
their analysis required a Nominalist architecture and procedure but their ends were often
“magical” and incompatible with their methodology.
As we have seen in Pico152, with Christian interest in Kabbalistic ideas came an
intense interest in the Hebrew language and long held Jewish attitudes to its ontological
status.153 Christian cabalists, especially in the northern Italian environment of religio-
cultural exchange, despite it serious power asymmetry, were able to gain substantial
insights into previously inaccessible realm of Kabbalistic ideas. In addition to this
exchange they also made use of recently converted Jews and, to varying levels of
proficiency, began to learn Hebrew themselves in order to read central Kabbalistic texts
such as the Zohar, Sefer Yetzirah, Sefer Bahir, and Joseph Gikatilla’s popular
compendium on the sefirot, Sha’are Orah.154 Two figures, one a generation before Dee

“magical arithmetic”], with a medium existing between the two, appropriable by a declination between the
extremes through the use of the letters.”
152
We should not limit ourselves to thinking that Pico alone is representative of this intellectual current.
Among others, we should add to this list the Augustinian cardinal Aegidius of Viterbo, philosopher Pietro
Colonna Galatino, bishop Domenico Grimani, Franciscan friar Francesco Giorgi, German scholar Johann
Albrecht Widmannstetter.
153
The literature on this subject is vast. We are most directly informed by Idel: 2002 and Wolfson: 2005.
154
The complex exchange of cultural information between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the early
modern period is incredibly rich, complex and only recently probed in depth. Mainly northern Italian
figures have provided key insight into, at times polemical, others fluid, exchange across religious lines in
the 15th and 16th centuries which would prove essential to the Humanist movement generally. Figures such
as the Jewish Averroist Elias del Medigo (another translator of Pico who would eventually become
disenchanted with his syncretism), Kabbalistic philosopher Yohanan Alemanno, linguist Elia Levita,
translator of the Zohar Baruch of Benevento, philosopher and rabbi Judah ben Jehiel Rofe, and others are
among key figures on the Jewish side (depending on conversion status, although even a converted Jew was
still often “other” – such as the famed Flavius Mithridates) of this exchange. Important studies are
Coudert and Shoulson’s 2004 edited volume Hebraica Veritas?, Idel’s ongoing studies of Yohanan
Alemanno, Gareth Loyd Jones’ The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England is the primary study of Hebrew
in English speaking areas, Wirszubski’s 1989 Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism

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and one his contemporary (in fact, Dee met him in Paris), feature most prominently in the
linguistic reading of the MH: Johannes Reuchlin and Guillaume Postel. It would be
impossible to describe the rich variety of their appropriation of Kabbalistic sources and
thus we will remain close to those issues for our reading of the MH.
Schmidt-Biggeman has explicated how Reuchlin links the Tetragrammaton, the
ineffable four-letter name of the biblical God, with a host of quaternaries, the most telling
of which are the four elements, the four dimensions of a body (point, line, area, volume),
and the Pythagorean quaternary. Reuchlin describes how artists and scientists had
employed the four-fold system to:
…chisel the universality of all things in a true imagery and form it in one image
so that there would be no need to pronounce the highest name again, since they
were afraid that too frequent usage would lead to its contempt. Of course they
called this image holy, and the sculptors were named as “Hieroglyphers.”155
For Reuchlin the tetragrammaton was the “wonder working word” in which all
knowledge, especially mathematics, was a condensation thereof. The Adamic language,
for Reuchlin was indeed Hebrew, but only in how the letters emanated out of the primal
“hieroglyphic” characters of the tetragrammaton. First from the primal Hebrew letter
Yod156 in which “A Monad, begetting a Monad, reflects itself in ardor157” through the
unfolding of essence and existence (Heh), the Trinitarian “copulative conjunction” of the
Vav, and finally the final Heh which broadcasts all creation in the form of the rest of the
Hebrew letters. Reuchlin borrows a classic Kabbalistic theme of the creation of the
universe through the Hebrew alphabet but also nods to the logical conclusion of such
thinking. If the Tetragrammaton is the method by which creation came into being, it
must also be a conduit for its manipulation. Such an idea would be picked up by Agrippa

show the in depth role the convert Flavius Mithridates played being both the first and one of the most
laborious translators starting around 1486, David Ruderman’s 1988 Kabbalah, Magic, and Science: The
Cultural Universe of a Sixteenth-Century Jewish Physician which studies of Italian Jewish physician and
occultist (and possible convert) Abraham Yagel.
155
Reuchlin: 1494, rpt. 1964, 68 quoted in Schmidt-Biggemann: 1999, 103.
156
Postel below, along with Dee MH 5r, both place significant importance on the priority of the Yod.
157
“Monas, monadem gignens in se unum reflectens ardorem”

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and many contemporary magicians and there can be little doubt of Dee’s familiarity with
such a method.158
The French polymath Guillaume Postel was an amazing linguistic by any
standard. He traveled widely and his knowledge of Semitic languages was unsurpassed
in his day. Kuntz159 shows that Postel consistently held that Hebrew was the language
from which all other languages emerged, the best taxonomy for accounts of created
things, and also the most pure language for mathematics and science. 160 He also accepts
the relationship between the Tetragrammaton and the Pythagorean Quaternary. For
Postel, Adamic Hebrew and creation shared a direct, non-arbitrary relationship. Like
Reuchlin, Postel would prioritize the Hebrew letter Yod as the basis for geometry, the
rest of the Hebrew alphabet, the Zodiac, and so on. All of this pointed, for Postel, to a
grand reunification of language in which Christianity and sectarian political strife would
be reconciled in a divine restauratio with Venice as the new Jerusalem.
What Dee, Reuchlin, Pico and Postel share is the notion that there exists a non-
arbitrary system of signification, likely defined by its antiquity and thus its nearness to
the divine, which can be employed by mankind in order to reform the world. It is clear,
however, that in the MH Dee breaks with previous thinking. Most significantly is Dee’s
break with (1) the priority of Hebrew as the best candidate for the Adamic language
161
and (2) the priority of the Tetragrammaton as the ontologically central device from
which creation is said to flow.162 In this sense, what remains is only the general idea that
the three share in common – the search for a primal source from which nature emerged,
which remains hidden in nature, and through which nature can be manipulated. While the
158
This discussion closely follows Schmidt-Biggemann: 1999, 102-108. Note also Reuchlin’s link of
Pythagorean philosophy and cabala.
159
For a detailed description of linguistic issues see Kuntz: 1999, 123-149.
160
Note in Postel the early shift from the ontology of language to philology. Postel, like Dee lived and
though largely in this rupture period and their writings betray this ambivalence.
161
Here we must draw a distinction. The Adamic was the first language and was considered “perfect” in its
ontological relationship to its method of representation. Such an idea certainly had currency in the 16th
century and before. The universal language was variously considered linked with the Adamic in the mid-
17th century, such in Van Helmont’s 1667 Alphabet of Nature, but also could be created ad hoc, an idea
much more linked to late 17th century in writers like Leibniz. To avoid anachronism we should resist
conflated the ideas out of hand. For more on this distinction see Coudert: 1999 & 2007.
162
Dee does, however, strongly nod to such a theory in the introduction of the MH at 5r in which the
tetragrammaton emerges out the Yod which Dee links to the straight line noting that such letters could not
have come into existence with divine aid. However, he gives the same status to Greek and Latin just above
this comment. For Dee here, they all emerge from a central point which he, of course, calls the “Monas.”
As Håkansson: 2001, 188-189 has pointed out, Dee is likely following Proclus here.

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influence, especially in Dee’s language, of Reuchlin and Postel is apparent, there is a
theoretical break which cannot be glossed over. In this sense, Dee’s Monas is a greatly
de-theologized cabalistic device. 163
While Dee places the “cabala of what is said” lower than “the cabala of being” he
stressed its linguistic application and power. In the dedication letter presented as a
preface to the MH, Dee declares that the Monas itself will, “…either establish this sacred
art of writing as the first founders of a new discipline, or by his counsel renew one that
was entirely extinct and had been wiped out from the memory of men.”164 For Dee the
“cabala of what is said” is not simply a trifle to be discarded. Firstly, Dee claims, the
Monas will “admonish them [grammarians] in a friendly way that the first and mystical
letters of the Hebrew, Greeks, and the Latins, issue from God alone and were [by him]
entrusted to mortals;” and, to mirror the Monas itself, “[also] that (whatever it may be the
custom of human arrogance to vaunt) are derived from points, straight lines, and the
circumferences of circle.”165 Secondly, the Monas will explain the reason “for the shapes
of letters, for their position, for their place in the order of the alphabet, for [their] various
[ways of] joining, for their numerical value, and for most other things (that must be
considered with regard to the primary alphabets of the three languages166).”167 Dee goes
on to link this alphabetic power to “…He, who is the only author of mysteries, has
compared himself to the first and last letter” and finally how the Monas will, much like in
Postel’s linguistic-utopian vision, unite those “…(compelled by truth, if he may
understand) he too will call this art holy, too; and he will own that, without regard to
person, the same most benevolent god is not only [the God] of the Jews but of all
peoples, nations, and languages.”168 Dee, however, given his Neo-Pythagorean
disposition, eventually “dismissed those philosophers of letters and of language” to move
toward a higher form of proof, one grasped by the dianoea169 itself – mathematics, itself

163
This is, perhaps, more radical than it first appears. In fact, Dee states on MH 4r “Mercury may rightly
be styled by us the rebuilder and restorer of all astronomy and an astronomical messenger by our
IEOVA…” In other words, this process is Hermetically mediated, likely, by the Monas itself.
164
Ibid, 4r.
165
Ibid., 5r.
166
Almost certainly Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
167
Ibid.
168
Ibid., 6v.
169
The technical Platonic mental faculty which directly “grasps” or intuits mathematical or analytical
truths.

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too being eclipsed. 170 Again, Dee is moving in the same process of erasure,
intensification, and actualization in his theory of language.
For Dee, the symbol of the Monas was grounded simultaneously in its geometric
basicality in conjunction (or, indeed, correspondence) with the chief astrological entities.
The point, the straight line, and the circle not only are the primitive elements of the
Monas itself but also the inverse insofar as, “by virtue of the point and the Monad that all
things commence to emerge in principle.”171 While Dee makes it clear that the Monas is
ostensibly composed of these primary geometric forms, his larger point is to refer us
immediately to his theory that the Monas itself is, in fact, the origin for the forms. These
basic shapes and their respective correspondences compose the elements for a new
“mystic language”172 in that the link between physical objects, especially astrological
objects, is both expressed more purely through the Monas (the objects themselves
“emerge in principle” from the Monas) and when studied through this lens the disciplines
are thereby purified.
Dee is clearly interested in how the “cabala of that which is said” proves the
Monas as relating to the deeper “cabala of being.” Dee goes on to list how his Monas
will, as Clulee has pointed out clearly, either “improve and transcend” certain disciplines
or “subsume and elucidate them.”173 This process is accomplished through a twofold
mechanism in which a reformation of language itself occurs (the shift to symbolic, non-
discursive language more directly tied to the objects of inquiry) and a hermeneutical
revolution (in which the new symbol is used to proof-read the liber naturae). The
vagaries of the “vulgar grammarians” and “vulgar cabalists” must be superceded by a
purified post-discursive semiotic system in which the objects described are intimately
linked to the objects which describe them. For Dee the idea is not simply finding the
language in which sign and signifier are minimally arbitrary but to invent/discover a new
system of representation in which they are co-continuous. The “cabala of that which is
said” points away from itself, beyond its power to simply reform the liberal arts, to the
deeper relationship between the Monas and being itself. This primal semiotic ontology is

170
Ibid., 5v.
171
MH 12v. “Puncti proinde, Monadisque ratione, Res est esse coeperut primo.” Dee is probably
employing in a double entendre here between the Pythagorean Monad and his symbol.
172
Ibid., 22r.
173
Clulee: 1988, 82-5.

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the operative philosophic notion behind Dee’s notion of the “cabala of being” which
grounds the explication of the power of the Monas. Dee can be said to side-step the
larger Renaissance project for the search for the primal language – the Ursprache - by
moving directly, we argue, into the realm of what is now called semiotics. 174

2.8 The Iconology of the Monas

Thus far we have explored various intellectual practices which inform and instruct
the structural and informational content of the MH including alchemic theory, various
“cabalistic” techniques, and finally a version of the “symbolic language” theory put
forward most recently by Clulee and others. As we have seen, the primary failure of
these systems to be a totalizing hermeneutical foil is that they all de-prioritize the Monas
itself as the central concern of the text: rendering it a summation of alchemy
theory/symbolism, cabalistic speculation, or another expression of the Renaissance desire
for a perfect or original language. For Dee, as we have stated above, the Monas itself is
the priority of the text and any theory for reading the MH must share this concern. While
the “linguistic” reading of the MH brings up closer to a comprehensive theory for
clarifying the underlying philosophic strata of Dee’s conception of the power of the
Monas itself, the tool quickly deconstructs when we consider in detail the slippage
between Renaissance and Modern concepts of the relationship between symbolic
representation and language more generally. This will provide us the necessarily
theoretical space to transition to our semiotic analysis.
Dee, as we have shown, discounts the “cabala of that which is said” as being the
chief goal in the development (or, discovery) and application of the Monas itself. For
Dee, the non-discursive 175, poly-syntactical176 quality of the Monas’ method of

174
We can nuance this with a bit of micro-history. It seems that Dee’s thinking exists somewhere directly
in-between the event horizon of Nominalism’s separation of represented and representation (what von
Stuckrad: 2008, 428-9 has provocatively called the “tragedy of Nominalism”) and the eruption of an
“esoteric” rejection of this thinking. The MH seems to have been developed in the twenty or so years in
which the semiotic-ontological anxiety was perceived (and thus viewable to us now) but not theoretically
articulated. The MH, we argue, perfectly captures this undecideable, transitory period in philosophy of
language.
175
Perhaps, “trans-discursive” is the better word here in that Dee clearly held that the Monas could and
does best communicate information.

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representation is key to its importance. The MH is unavoidably about the philosophic
primacy of a representational device and not a concern with discursion (as a syntax for
representational mediation) or simple symbology (as a sensible expression of such
mediation). In other words, while the MH is primarily concerned with the inter-
relationship between material, form, and its representation, it does not distill the method
of representation into language or by simply being a go-between for the real and its
expression. In this sense, Clulee’s notion of the Monas as “symbolic language” begins to
unravel and we must transition our discussion into the more technical field of semiotic
analysis.
Indeed the problem may be pinpointed to a lack of analysis in the “articulation” of
the Monas itself. Articulation, in theoretical linguistics and semiotics, refers to the
structural composition of a given sign. 177 A sign is said to have single articulation if it is
non-reducible to other meaningful signs. A red traffic light indicating “STOP” is only
composed of one sign, the redness of the light, and cannot be reduced to further signs. A
sign is said to have double articulation when it is composed of minimal units which do
not have meaning in themselves. English178 words, for instance, are made up of letters
which have no meaning in themselves, but serve to compose systems which do (/a/, /b/,
/t/ mean nothing as letters but serve to compose words and, importantly, differentiate
between them, e.g. /bat/) vs /tab/).179 Signs can therefore be of single articulation, double
articulation, or no articulation.180,181
This is quite tidy but in its application to the Monas, and perhaps Renaissance
semiotics generally, a slippage appears. The Monas clearly has double articulation: as a
sign it is composed of minimal elements (the point, line, and circle) and can be

176
As we will seen in the Kabbalistic transformations, and later in its ability to deconstruct and invert, the
Monas seems to express a number of syntactical paradigms – linguistic, astronomical, alchemic,
Pythagorean, etc.
177
Here we follow Nöth: 1990.
178
Hebrew words can be more playful, a polyvalence taken advantage of by Kabbalistic exegesis.
179
Note that this differential, differential relation is structurally vertical. Horizontally, a sign may be
complex (like written signs for numbers, /sixty-four/) but each part remains composed of this vertical
stratification.
180
A sign with no articulation is a series of signs with have no direct relation to each other and are not
made up of reoccurring elements. For instance, a sign system which link days of the week on which a child
was born with the disposition of that child.
181
We are simplifying a complex discussion here to make a point. While the conversation of articulation in
signs systems is more nuanced than discussed here, our point in the following paragraph is not significantly
disturbed.

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configured such as to produce a huge array of representing elements (alchemic signs,
letters, mystical truths and relations) and thus bear a similar economy to the way letters
and words relate. However, these primitive elements in Dee’s thinking also had
182
meaning and because of the recursive logic of the Monas could themselves feature
dually into the expressive features of the Monas in its various permutations. This process
of recursion produces a potentially infinite semiotic loop in which the point of expressive
articulation is undecideable in the decoding of the Monas’ representation. Thus, the
Monas shares a certain apparent relation with language in its double articulation but
because of its recursive logic the border between its articulation strata is permeable and
impossible to determine, something which would undermine the ability of a language to
operate.
This misapplication seems to have emerged from the unsystematic use of the idea
of a “symbolic language” and the fast and loose application of both components,
“symbol” and “language,” in an uncritically, equivocal manner. As we will discuss
below, “symbols,” “icons,” and “language” all have technical features which, while inter-
related, cannot be easily conflated as they have very different functional and expressive
characteristics.

2.9 The Monas and Iconology of Renaissance Hieroglyphs

The notions of “symbol” and “language” have themselves undergone significant

mutation over the centuries and without situating these terms in the theories of 16th
century representation we run the risk of fallacious anachronism. Thus to avoid this error
of equivocation, we must look differentially at the status and function of such terms in
both modern and early-modern theories of representation. To make this point clear we
can turn briefly to how Renaissance thinkers conceived of the function of Egyptian
Hieroglyphics. Marsilio Ficino most succinctly states the non-discursive theory of
Hieroglyphics in the Renaissance mind, “When the Egyptian priests wished to signify
divine mysteries, they did not use the small characters of script, but the whole images of

182
The point is referenced to the “earth,” the line is connected with the “elements,” and the circle variously
operates as the “sun” and other signs. Theorems I-IV, VI, VII treat these relations.

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plants, trees, or animals; for God has knowledge of things not by way of multiple thought
but like the pure and firm shape of the thing itself (sed tanquam simplicem firmamque rei
formam).”183 As Lehrich points out, the two salient features of Egyptian Hieroglyphics,
derived primarily from Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, were (1) secret, priestly ‘writings’184
which contained unlimited sources of information about nature, God, and the cosmos,
and, in addition, were (2) allegorically related to reality and therefore non-discursive in
nature.185 For example, a circle would represent the sun, which, in turn, would represent
eternity.186 These combinations were both apparent but also deeply nested and inter-
related, producing an infinite variety of meaning and expressability. As Lehrich
succinctly puts it, “The idea is that the hieroglyph is perfectly transparent and extremely
dense.”187 Thus, for Renaissance thinkers this allegorical method meant that rather than
passing through the “fallen” world of post-Babel languages, one could, as Dee puts it,
“speak hieroglyphically, without words.” Dee’s use of the word “hieroglyphic” is often
used to precisely capture this dialectic. In many cases, Dee uses the term to connote
something deductively obvious188, while in other places he uses it to mean something to
the effect of “allegorical,” “dense,” or better, “encoded189” but the term is always
thematically consistent with its non-discursive quality. There was, for thinkers of Dee’s
time, little connection between the spoken language of the Egyptians and the perceived
allegorical symbol-set of their Hieroglyphics. 190 They were, on the other hand, an

183
Ficino: 1576 (Opera Omnia), 1768 quoted in Gromrich: 1978, 158-9.
184
We use the ‘’ to capture the difference between our notion of writing as “graphic speech” and this
Renaissance notion discussed below.
185
Lehrich: 2003, 128-9.
186
Horapollo: 1505, 57.
187
Ibid., 129.
188
E.g. MH, 5v “good Hieroglyphical arguments (optimis argumetis hieroglyphicis)”
189
E.g. MH 4r “that all of this should be embodied in a single Hieroglyphic symbol (Et haec omnia in
Uncio …Charactere Hieroglyphico…)”
190
Dempsey: 2000, nuances this view. He separates the Renaissance understanding of hieroglyphics into
three unevenly distributed groups. The Neo-Platonic (366-372) which corresponds to our notion above, the
Discursive (372-4) which can be “read” because their meaning has been habitually stabilized, and
Paronomastic (374-376), the closest to a relationship between icon and phonemic identity, which is a sort
of rebus. In Dempsey’s analysis the Neo-Platonic understanding is by far the greatest employed – the
others mostly begin to exist in the late 16th and, especially, in the 17th centuries.

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infinitely dense repository of secrets which could be unlocked through the gaze of the
hierophant and none-else besides. 191
This goes to the heart of an understanding of the incommensurability between
Renaissance and Modern theories of language and representation. One of the central
tenets of modern linguistics operates by separating between a theoretical “natural” and
“conventional” language to conclude that all language, written and spoken, is, in fact,
arbitrated by cultural and historical factors.192 The Renaissance thinker like Dee would
have likely had a slightly more nuanced view. As we have seen in Postel’s thinking,
languages were both divinely ordained (created by God or the result of an ontological
continuity with the cosmos) and thus “arbitrary” but also connected, in the pre-Babel
period, perfectly to the objects which they represented and were thus simultaneously
“natural.” Lehrich points out precisely this thinking in Agrippa in such all languages are
“not so disposed, and formed by hap, or chance, nor by the weak judgment of man, but
from above, whereby they agree with the celestial, and divine bodies, and virtues.”193
Dee echoes this sentiment, although with the Monas in priority, when he states that the
Monas will restore current astronomical symbology, reveal the correct origin of letters in
all languages as we have pointed out above. Thus, while the Monas would certainly, in
Dee’s view, been able to incorporate and produce linguistic data, linguistic data could not
have captured and produced the Monas. The quest for the Adamic language, while
certainly known and of interest to Dee, is by-passed for a non-discursive system of
representation.
A similar critique must be made of the notion of the Monas as “symbolic.” Much
like the divide between “natural” and “arbitrary” language, many modern semiotic
systems (we are following specifically Eco on this point) also divide between an “icon
(non-arbitrary)” and a “symbol (arbitrary/conventional).” To situate ourselves in this
distinction it is useful to engage and show the limits of Panofsky’s theory of iconism
which separates between pre-iconography, iconography, and iconology.
191
This “hierophantic gaze” is mentioned explicitly by Dee at MH 17r “Raising towards heaven our
cabbalistic eyes (that have been illuminated by speculation on these mysteries [the Monas]) we shall behold
an anatomy precisely corresponding to that of our Monad…”
192
The contemporary sense in which such semiotic and linguistic features are arbitrary character data goes
back to Saussure’s Cours. Eco has continued this thinking with various attacks on Panofsky’s theory of
Iconism.
193
Agrippa quoted in Lehrich: 2003, 135-6.

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 The pre-iconographic image is creates and expresses its meaning prior to cultural
mediation.194 It is thus non-arbitrary and universal – the smiling face, a shining sun, a
pointed object, or a countryside. For many Renaissance thinkers, the hieroglyphic image
and therefore many magical images (such as those with celestial markers in Dee’s
thinking195, angelic/demonic sigils and Paracelsian “signatures”) were likely to have been
understood in this sense as well. Dee certainly felt that the mathematical character of the
Monas could be instantly grasped by the dianoea, that the structures produced “naturally”
and thus “really” by geometry were basic to the formation of the Monas and likewise the
cosmos. For Dee this basic character of the composition of the Monas affirmed its
ontological primitivity and power.
The iconograph itself was based on the previous structures but filled-in with
culturally informed, and thus arbitrary, data – the image of a crucified man, a dwarf
holding a fish, a young boy with winged feet, etc….196 These more arbitrary these
elements follow a logic of representation and can be created, memorized, reproduced, and
taught. Likely for the Renaissance thinker such elements were extensions, of greater or
lesser efficacy, of the previous, pre-iconographic structures. Rather than being learned,
however, they were “discovered” or “recalled” in anamemetic sense. 197 The logic of
correspondence webbed them back together into a coherent system of divinely ordained,
primitive unity from the distended unharmonious world of matter in a chain of
representation. In such a way the Monas is able to produce, slightly down the chain of
being, the “cabala of that which is said” in terms of specific letters, alchemic formulae,
and astrological symbols. 198
Iconology is the ability to derive meaning through the application of a theory to
the two previous structures of presentation as Panofsky states “through synthesis rather

194
Panofsky: 1982, 28-29, 33, 40.
195
In MH theorem XII Dee discusses how the primal five signs of the Zodiac are derived directly from the
point, line, and circle and thus are the most basic and thus “pure” in their transmission from the Magi.
196
Ibid., 35.
197
Note that Dee speaks in terms of “restoration” of the astrological signs, alphabets, and mathematical
transmutations. We cannot but help of the influence of the Lurianic notion of “Tikkun.”
198
It is to be noted how Dee usually describes these as in their current lower form but in the Monas they are
restored. The Astrological signs on 4v are now “quasi-barbaric” but in the Monas can become
“…characters imbued with immortal life and should now be able to express their especial meanings most
eloquently in any tongue and any nation.”

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than analysis” – thus Marxist, Feminist, or Neo-Platonic iconologies.199 For the
Renaissance interpreter it is not a simply a question of coherent comprehension of
meaning but also participating in the power dynamic of the ontological connectivity of
sign-signified sets. The ability to correctly read the “book of nature” entails the ability to
“reverse-engineer” the process of representation as well. Such a feat directly underlies
Ficino’s theory of correspondences for his creation of amulets in the chapter of De Vita
Coelitus Comparanada as he describes it “On the virtue of imagery, what power pertains
to the figures in the sky and on earth, which of the heavenly configurations were
impressed on images by the ancients, and on the use of those images.”200 While,
Grombrich situates such a thinking firmly within the scope of Renaissance Neo-
Platonism stating “Philosophically it should be clear why the Christian Platonists had to
lay such stress on this interpretation of symbolism as a code derived from God and
handed down in history: in the Platonic interpretation of symbols the symbol is the
imperfect reflection of the higher reality which arouses our longing for its perfection.”201
While likely, Grombrich may not be taking serious the importance of the appropriated
Lurianic notion of “tikkun – reparation” which significantly informs the discussion of
Christian Cabala and hermeticism.
Dee’s notion of the reparation of iconography in this sense can easily be read in
such a light of a concept like “tikkun.” The Renaissance constructor and manipulator of
icons is not at all playing a game of semiotic deference in which the play of meaning is
perpetually created by the viewer. Rather, as we will see in Dee’s MH, there is a real
attempt to provide readers with a semiotic device which closes the loop, through a
reparation in the chain of being itself, between the real, its representation, and the mental
process which unites them both in the active intellect and in reality itself. 202 Again, while
Warburg uses the term Denkraumverlust to describe, as Grombrich puts it, “this tendency
of the human mind to confuse sign with the thing signified, the name and its bearers, the
literal and metaphorical, the image and the prototype” this manner of intellection in the
form of a breech or as cognitive dissonance does not seem to occur in the thinking of

199
Panofsky: 1982, 30-32.
200
Szőnyi: 2001, explores this relationship between Ficino’s talismanic magic and the Monas in depth.
201
Grombrich: 1978, 150.
202
Indeed, this could serve as an ad hoc definition for much of Renaissance magic.

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Agrippa, Dee, and Renaissance semiotics generally. 203 The “symbolic” and the “real”
exist on a continuum rather than in dichotomy. Thus the notion of the Monas as being
simply “symbolic” in the modern sense so simplifies the complex character of
representation, both in its Renaissance and Modern expressions, that it profoundly
deforms our ability to make sense of the MH itself.
As we have seen, the MH presents the reader with a serious hermeneutical
difficulty. The Monas itself is not clearly simply a language and supercedes the “cabala
of that which is said” in that it seems to exist prior to linguistic expression, reforms post-
Babel languages, and is expressed “hieroglyphically, without words.” Secondly, it is
certainly not a transitional state between pre-iconographic and iconological expression
and does not yield itself to fitting easily into Panofsky’s iconographic taxonomy either.
The Monas, for Dee, is dialectically composed of pre-iconographic forms and the fount
from which they flow, are manipulated, and have their most “proper” meaning
iconologically. In a strange way, the Monas is then iconologically sui generis in Dee’s
thinking. This iconographic mobility most importantly occurs simultaneously on the
level of the Monas’ composition of various icons and at its polyvalent intersections with
reality. In other words, the logic of the Monas is one of semiotic and ontological
recursion with the theorems of the MH being semi-systematic and tangential points of
contact within this logic. An iconic analysis, while useful in describing many elements in
the relation of image, object, and viewer, simply cannot accommodate this logic of
recursion in its analysis or the ontological power of the Monas.

2.10 Previous Semiotic Approaches to the Monas

Despite the overwhelming amount of studies devoted to Renaissance iconology

and semiotics generally, only two such analyses of the Monas have been produced.
Szőnyi employs a taxonomy of icons largely influenced by Grombrich and Panofsky into
which he wishes to group and understand the vast field of information-bearing-
signification in the “occult sciences” of the Renaissance. 204 In the taxonomy he groups

203
Warburg: 1932, 491 in Grombrich: 1978, 125.
204
Szőnyi: 1995, 250-63.

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“Icons oriented around Tradition, 205” that is, icons which are meant to diachronically
broadcast coherent meaning to those outside of the individual who produced them. Such
icons then fall into three types:
(1). Didactic Icons – correspond to an actual thing or process. The alchemic
image of the green lion devouring the sun represents the caustic process of nitric
acid on gold. These icons are cerebral and provide smooth correspondence to
ontological entities.
(2). Revelative - correspond to “symbolic-intuitive” ideas or rarified philosophic
processes. The ouroboros, or tail-devouring snake, represents unity in difference
or the eternal process of creation and destruction. These icons provide a pictorial
link via “intuition” to a non-rational idea.
(2). Powerful – or “occult” icons carry ontological power such that their very use
can change reality. The use of a Goetic sigil can actually shape occult forces to
align with one’s will. These icons bridge the gap between image, imagination,
and reality.
Interestingly, Szőnyi points out that Dee himself calls the Monas a “gamaaea”206
or talisman which stores power but does not manipulate it therefore he places it within
the “Revelative” category of his taxonomy. 207 The Monas seems quite a bit more
sophisticated and powerful in Dee’s thinking, however. Szőnyi’s error lies in his reading
of the Monad as a compressed bank of alchemic and astrological information, prioritizing
the systems of knowledge that the Monad itself is supposed to supercede – the
iconological result of the heuristic error we have described above. As pointed, while the
Monas has alchemical application it is far more than a database of alchemic memes.
Szőnyi’s analysis of the Monas is unfortunately brief in this case and seems to fail to
capture this “magical,” or “powerful” in his language, use of the Monas to alter reality.
A more robust semiotic interpretation of the Monas is done by Szulakowska in which she
sees the icon as having an “indexical quality.”

205
As opposed to direct images in the mind or asemic expressions which carry no mimetic content.
206
The word is of Paracelsian origin but mysterious otherwise. Paracelsus felt that a “gamaaea” could “trap
astral influences as in a box.” See Ibid., 257 for a further discussion.
207
Ibid., 257.

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 Employing the Peircean taxonomy208 of symbol209, icon210, and index,
Szulakowska describes the relationship between symbol-sets and how the Monad
functions as an index rather than a simple referent.211 An Index, she describes, creates a
semiotic continuum “between the viewer’s space and the image itself.”212 A dark cloud
in the distance will not only symbolize rain but will actually mean that rain is
approaching; likewise, the symptom of a disease actually occurs in the corpus of its
expression. The index is the site of an ontologically viable metonym rather than an
arbitrary process of reference. However, pointing to a general shift in alchemic
iconography in the late 14th-16th centuries toward naturalism and especially the ability of
images to stand independent of their textual counterparts, Szulakowska claims that the
Monas is itself a “mobile cipher” in which alchemic theory and practice is perfectly
captured such that it becomes a “metonymic continuum of physical and conceptual
alchemy.”213 In other words, it takes on a quasi-ontological status in relation to alchemic
and astrological domains of semiotic structures – but only in relation to them. An index
is always dependent on the web of signs onto to which it is made and into which it
provides indexicality.
Szulakowska identifies this process as a response to the increasingly arbitrary
character of the relationship between sign and signifier in the transition between 16th
century epistemes. 214 Nominalism in its continued form as the rise of Humanistic
philology eventually leads to a powerful severing of the world of correspondence and
sympathy in which words and objects were held together by an occult force.215 This
semiotic-ontological anxiety led many toward Cabalists, such as Reuchlin, Postel, and
Agrippa, toward the prioritizing of Hebrew as the linguistic bridge while Dee, perhaps

208
However, Szulakowksa does not situate Dee’s semiotic in the more basic semiotic-triad of
Representamen, Interpretant, and Object.
209
Arbitrary and relative to context. An alchemic symbol for sulfur or salt for instance. c.f. Didactic as
above.
210
Carries even non-rational information, c.f. “Revelative” and “Powerful” as above.
211
Szulakowska: 2000, 3.
212
Ibid., 3.
213
Ibid.,6-7.
214
Ibid., 57.
215
Szulakowska is admittedly thinking of Foucault’s analysis in The Order of Things of the
Vintage/Pantheon edition 1994: 30-94.

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sensing that even sacred Hebrew would face a similar fate, opted for a more radical
solution.
To use Szulakowska’s language, the Monas becomes “a condensation of a
discursive text into a unique sign”216 in which the economics of representational identity
with reality are placed beyond encroachment by a diminishing in status for discursive
language and syllogistic logic. The metonymic relationship of the Monas with reality
itself provides a non-arbitrary cipher through which knowledge is standardized, critiqued,
and transformed. While a radical step, the hermeneutical power of the Monas is reliant
upon the deeper axiom that reality itself is not only co-continuous with, and thus
transformed by, dependant upon Monas itself. While we agree that Indexicality is at work
in the Monas we will break significantly with Szulakowska in our analysis below.
Combining elements of Szőnyi and Szulakowska’s semiotic accounts it would
seem that Dee’s notion of the Monad has both the metonymic-ontological quality of an
Index but also the ontological potency of the “Powerful” icon. As we saw above in
theorem XIII, Dee felt that the Monad has achieved perfect semiotic continuity with the
objects it represented. This ontological continuum between sign-index-object directly
allows the Monas to create a viable simulacrum in which reality itself can be altered
through the manipulation of the icon itself.
While Szulakowska’s analysis is an important start, it fails to be semiotically
robust and philosophically comprehensive. In order to produce a theoretical framework
into which we may understand the device of the Monas in its operational logic, we will
have to forward a semiotic theory217 which captures the three central aspects of the MH:
Firstly, we will need to cast the semiotic theory as a power set which captures the
elements in which the Monas coheres philosophically. It must be able to make sense of
the various approaches which Dee uses to present the Monas as coherent (cabala,
alchemy, Pythagorean philosophic speculation, etc) – it must capture the “cabala of that
which is said” and thus be able to semioticize the ontological. Secondly, it must be able
to capture and taxonomize the Monas in its various semiotic permutations. The Monas is
an incredibly mobile system which connects itself internally to various semiotic tokens,

216
Ibid. 64.
217
Especially, in this case, as opposed to a philosophy of language.

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externally to tokens it produces, and to the recursive interplay of these systems. Third, it
must be able to render the ontological connectivity and power of the Monas intelligible.
In Dee’s thinking the Monas will replace experimentation and have miraculous powers to
transform reality, this ontological power of the Monas must be explained. In other
words, to make sense of Dee’s “Cabala of Being” we will need to employ a system which
can ontologize the semiotic. Such a system much also have an isomorphic philosophic
component which sufficiently analyzes the ontological situation and power of the Monas
in addition to describing its recursive inner logic. Creating and employing this system of
analysis will form the contents of the final section of this study.218

218
As a point of methodology we are not only trying to understand the Monas in contemporary terms but
cast Dee’s understanding of it in those terms. Dee relies on a non-arbitrary semiotic continuum with signs
and being, an axiom most people reject and for good reason, however, to get at Dee’s system in a coherent
way we must allow him to “speak” through our language in order for us to understand his thinking and thus
the puzzle of the Monas generally.

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3.1 Towards a Technical Term – The Monas as a “Device”

Thus far we have employed an array of conventional and technical terms in

describing the Monas – symbol, character, icon, hieroglyph, token, etc. These terms have
been employed to suit a certain context of conversation but have not been very systematic
in their application generally. Thus, we feel the need to forward a single term which will
suffice to satisfy a maximal number of the conditions in which we seek to comprehend
the Monas itself. For the purpose of our analysis, we forward the term “device” as the
one that best captures the Monas for the following reasons:

1. The term “device” is a one generally employed in the developed and study of
early-modern English emblematics219 to indicate a combinatory, representational
system which unites a sign with a discursive unit (usually a slogan or a motto) to
produce a singular gestalt upon in the viewers’ field of perception.220 The Monas
performs a very similar function implicitly, in that as a sign it broadcasts a certain
guided intellectual prompt (to alchemy and astrology) to its viewer, and explicitly,
in that Dee situates it within the immensely popular and contemporaneous field of
emblematic designs.
2. The term “device” is etymologically linked with the notion that a thing is
“devised” or “created” by a certain craft or operational knowledge. Dee certainly
produced the Monas from a varied and sophisticated pool of intellectual programs
and practices ranging from mathematics to magic (not that Dee himself would
have seen this as a “range” in the sense we use it here). Thus the Monas has a
history, a context, and an intellectual genealogically – something, perhaps, like a
image-etymology, which can be explored and into which it can be situated.

219
See Appendix III for some exploration of the relation of the Monas to 16th century emblematics in more
detail.
220
There is, however, no totally agreed upon definition for the variety of 16th century emblems, imprese,
and allegorical systems of which explode in popularity around the time of the publication of the MH. We
follow Daly and Whitman: 2000 in their definition. Manning: 1999, xiii describes the state of confusion
in Latin and vernacular terminology for these systems even contemporaneously.

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 3. Finally, the term “device” is keen because it connotes a system which is active –
which is itself productive – even performative.221 Dee clearly imagines the
Monas to be a powerful object by which and in which intellectual systems, their
praxis and celestials objects together are manipulated in isomorphic parallel with
the device itself. The Monas is expressive in that it not only represents but in its
dramatic power to shape reality itself around its shifting contours. In short, we
may link the Monas with what Liza Bakewell has called an “image act.”222
In these three senses, we employ the term “device” in regards to the Monas.
While it certainly can be described in the terms we have used above, the need for a
technical term is certainly transparent and we feel this term, as we have outlined it, serves
maximally.

3.2 The Logic of Recursion in the Monas Hieroglyphica

We have discussed above that one of the primary hurdles in comprehending the
MH as a text and the Monas as a system of representational ontology is the underlying
logical system concurrently at work in both. As we have seen, the often confusing
layering of various speculative strata in the MH does not follow a linear progression of
deductive analysis. Rather, the ideas seem to move in various dimensions at once to
model the various intellectual currents informing the MH in their erasure and are
informed by the Monas in their reinscription. 223 Before we move forward we should
trace the outlines of this logic in some detail. In effect the logic operates within three
basic parameters: Durational Memory (formation), Nesting Feedback (causation), and
Parity of Part and Whole (relation). All three operations are at work in various intensities
in the text in the production of axiomatic theorems, the transitioning between them in the
architectural sense, and finally in the inter-relations of their contents. These operations
are not discrete and readily identifiable on their own, but penetrate beneath the sense of

221
As I have recently discovered, American copyright law also uses the term “device” for an object under
its protection because it “produces” revenue based on branding. This indirect ontological link in terms of
production is telling in how in even our time representation systems can still be thought to have ontic
impact and thus draw one into ritual behavior. We can very likely classify such a sign as an “image-act.”
222
See Bakewell: 1998, 22-32 for a more detailed explication.
223
What we have called Dee’s process of “Miraculous Appropriation” above.

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the text and its contents as a manifold of relations upon which the text, along with the
system of the Monas itself, is bounded. Simultaneously, they rely both on themselves
and each other to function in their totality to dynamize the MH and the Monas. This
recursive character, that they assume themselves and each other in their functive
operation throughout the text and within the Monas, is the unifying quality in which they
are comprehensible. While we explore each of these operations in semi-isolation, their
actual deployment in the text is much more obtuse and interpenetrative.
Durational Memory – The data which flows in the encoding and decoding process
of the semiotic (representation) and mimetic (philosophic content) of the MH and within
the Monas persists as ontologically ready-to-hand at any temporal point within that cycle.
The duration of the Monas’ memory is thus recursive: It may refer to itself in any
semiotic permutation to produce mimetic content in any temporal direction. Thus, Dee is
able to take advantage of the varying states of semiotic and mimetic polyvalence within
the MH and the Monas to advance its content and employ its explanatory power.
An example of this operation can be most clearly seen in the production and use
of the manifold character of the + device at the equatorial center of the Monas. For Dee,
it is primitively described as “lines signifying the elements are produced by the
continuous fall of [successive] drops becoming a flow (if we consider drops to be like
mathematical points)”224 which are immediately co-opted, in the following theorem, to
form the Roman numeral X, the grapheme /t/, and proof of the Pythagorean quaternary as
effectively related to the four elements.225 Thus the semiotic faculty of the + is produced
from point of singularity (“earth”), which “flows” into a binary, ternary, then a elemental
quaternary with a specific geometric configuration all of which finally results in a dense,
open semiotic repository which can be appealed to in order to produce mimetic content
(graphemes, mathemes, alchemic elemental icons, philosophic speculations about the
reparation of nature, etc…) at any state of its construction. Such a process can likewise
easily to seen in the production and appeal to various astronomical symbols, influences,
and transmutations. Thus the memory of any device produced within the Monas and any

224
13r of MH Theorem VII
225
MH Theorem VII and VIII which are the “remembered” via theorem XX

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meme produced out of the Monas is perpetually ready-to-hand to its user temporally,
semiotically, and mimetically.
Nesting Feedback – The data produced in the above process can be nested within
previously produced micro-systems to yield synthetic macro-systems. One can think of
this as if an acronym could be nested within another to carry the meaning of both.226
Thus the relationship of the produced of novel to previous data by the Monas and within
the MH is non-linear and non-mutually-exclusive. This nesting feedback is likewise
recursive in that it refers to itself to persist but may be used as feedback to produce
further novelty.
The clearest example of this process is the creation and use of various astrological
and alchemic doubles throughout the text.227 The elemental forces created in the early
theorems seem to present abstract, primal elements which, through various cosmological
influences, alchemic processes, and adaptation into the Monas are doubled into
secondarily active elemental forces. This doubling affects virtually all the major
elemental and astrological entities in the earliest forms of the Monas’ semiotic
production: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Aries. We can follow the genealogy of
Mercury within the MH to see this clearly. Mercury itself seems to be produced by a
tensive relationship between the Solar and Lunar influences by theorem XIII which, in
turn, spirals cosmologically through the super-lunar system to be rejoined with Gold (a
sort of philosophic mercury in the super-lunar world) or with the Moon (as a sub-lunar,
living mercury). These processes do not seem to be simply the final results of cosmic
influences but the creation of novel ontological entities which feature back into the
Monas’ power and within the MH itself – this is especially clear in the use of all thus far
produced elements in the dizzying analysis of the inverted Monas of theorem XXI.. Thus
the creation of this double-mercury, which both transcends the Solar and Lunar in one
sense but is directly affected by them in another, represents the non-linear progression of
the theorems in the MH and the ontologically important nesting feedback which is
necessary for the dynamic movements of the Monas itself.

226
For instance, if in a business H.R.D. = Human Resources Department which is then nested into H.H. =
Human Resources Department and Hiring. The nesting provides economy at the cost of intelligibility if
one does not know the history of the code. For Dee, this history would be somehow apparent.
227
We have discussed these doubles in more alchemical-theoretical detail above.

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 Parity of Part and Whole – Any semiotic or mimetic element produced by the
Monas and encoded within the MH maintains a relationship of equal ontological parity to
the elements which produced it. This is, of course, the classic Hermetic relationship of
“as above, so below” but applied specifically within the confines of ontological bounds of
the Monas.
Likely the easiest logical operation to detect within the MH, this is best shown by
the most general example possible. The three elements features which compose the
Monas (the Point, the Line, and the Circle) are ontic elements which not only compose
the further astrological and alchemic elements graphically but ontologically ground them
as analytic structures of being. Thus they are “latent in the folds of nature”228 in a virtual
sense and intensify themselves through their actualization into more and more discrete
elements of reality (the Sun, Moon and further on to even minute elements of grammar).
This process is schematized by Dee in the expansive theorem XXIII when he moves from
“numeral” in the vague sense of the ontological viability of quantification to the discrete
alchemical processes of “preparation, putrefaction, separation, etc” and their material
counterparts of “the lapidific and the fermentative.”229 While the eye reads this
progression left to right as a linear process it is likely that Dee and other Renaissance
thinkers would have seen such a process of wrapping around and within itself as a
circular manifold in which each part connects within the whole of the other as a recursive
matrix of causation and influence. Thus these basic elements of quantification bear in
them the full expression of all reality and each part of reality points back and is informed
by the basicality of those elements.
These logic processes are closely related and operate in relation to each other to
produce the topographical character of the Monas and the MH – one, admittedly, that
borders being a vertigo of conventional logic at times. Thus, while a more deductive
procedure would prove more “logical” and likely produce a more comprehensible text to
modern readers, these logical processes are provide Dee the necessary conditions for the
Monas to operate in the framework of Dee’s intellectual priorities. Now that we have
described the logic upon which the Monas operates, we can move onto to the final two

228
Theorem I on MH 12r.
229
26r, v.

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issues in our analysis of the Monas and its function: modality and our semiotic analysis
of Dee’s “cabala of being.”

3.3 A Methodological Rejection of Semiotic and Ontological Binarism

As we have seen, Dee, like many of his contemporaries, assumes a modal link
between sign and signifier such that a pure form of representation will itself be
ontologically affective – the MH is itself littered with such modal cues. We are not
dealing with a simple language-world-isomorphism on Dee’s part however. The
recursive logic of the Monas and the need for representational reform in his thinking
makes clear that not only is there a rupture in ontological nomenclature but that words
alone, even holy ones such as Hebrew, cannot do the task of authentic, and thus
transformatory representation. Dee however is clearly not giving up on such a task by a
retreat into naïve linguistic realism or radical skepticism. It seems that Szulakowska is
correct in following Foucault in seeing this rupture as part of a semiotic-ontological
anxiety in which the medieval Nominalism will transform into a clear distinction by the
17th century between represented and representation and the explosion in theories of
signs.230 Due to the proximity of such a shift, Dee’ thinking sits on a margin which does
not lend itself to straightforward analysis or easy taxonomy in ontological or semiotic
terms.
In Dee’s maintaining of a modal relationship in the process of signification it does
not make sense to retrofit any theory of semiosis which assumes ontological arbitraity
and thus sign-signified-binarism onto Dee’s thinking in the MH. Here we clearly have
Saussure in mind. While it is not commonly pointed out, for Saussure, the signified was
a mental construct and only potentially an object in reality. This represents not a gap in
his thinking but more likely a sense of modesty in his approach – he did not want to
overstep the bounds of being a linguist into those of being a philosopher. For Saussure,
the differential relation of signification was abstract and psychological, thus a “linguistic
sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern.

230
Szulakowska: 2000, 56-58 is admittedly thinking of Foucault’s analysis in The Order of Things of the
Vintage/Pantheon edition 1994: 30-94.

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The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound
pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound.”231 In this way the
Saussurean binary model in which sign and signifier is a wholly mental process of the
differential play of signs in forming meaning cannot prove robust enough to deal with the
ontological leakage which pervades Dee’s Monas and arguably Renaissance semiotics
generally. 232 In this sense, there is an ontological leakage which the sign-signifier-
binarism cannot wholly capture no matter how much “incessant sliding of the signified
under the signifier,” to use the famous phrase from Lacan, occurs. We therefore require
an analytic tool which makes use of a third semiotic term and thus we will employ a
modified Peircean system. 233
Similarly, the ontological properties and affects of the Monas are also not so
easily parsed into “real” and “unreal.” For Dee, the Monas itself, precisely due to its
continuum with being, is able to perfectly represent and transform material elements of
the cosmos thus being the “the real cabala, or [the cabala] of Being (…realem nominavi
Cabalam, sive του οντος)”234 The Monas persists, as we will show in more detail below,
on an ontological continuum in which it expresses itself and can be thus employed as a
device in various modalities. While the Monas exists on such a continuum,
representation is still fed through and informed by, in Dee’s thinking, the applicative
power of the Monas itself. Thus the reality, representation, and the Monas itself share a
certain ontological relationship which, through filtered through the Monas’ logic of
recursion, form an ontological circuit. Finally, because Dee seems to indicate that the
Monas operates analogically, through the registrations of intensities, rather than digitally,
through modal binarism, we will employ the ontological categories of Deleuze to
comprehend them. 235

231
Saussure: 1916, 66.
232
This does not mean that the Saussurean system is somehow then “false,” it simply means that semiotics
is largely a descriptive affair and various historical periods have employed, although implicitly of course,
varied semiotic systems. I often wonder if Saussure knew how much of his description would become a
prescription.
233
Modified in two central ways, to accommodate Dee’s semiotic non-arbitrarity and to focus on the
performative value of the sign itself. This exploration is meant to be descriptive and we feel no need to
criticize Dee philosophically only to seek an understanding of him.
234
MH, 7r.
235
Lehrich: 2003, 138-140 develops a similar notion in regards his reading of Agrippa employing the term
“analog signification.”

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 Thus we propose to use a synthetic analysis directly informed by Peirce’s three-
fold semiotic system of Representamen, Interpretant, and Object isomorphically with
Deleuze’s ontological modalities of the Virtual, Intensive, and Actual.

3.4 The Representamen and the Virtual: The Reality of the Monas’ Sign Set

C.S. Peirce was a man obsessed with triads and taxonomies and he produced
dozens of versions of his semiotic theory during his lifetime. Thus we are forced to
choose one system, in one form, and we must admittedly do so without being fully aware
of the great depth of nuance in his thinking. Thus we choose to go with the most generic
model, the often-cited triad of Representamen, Interpretant, and Object which Peirce had
more or less settled on toward the end of his career.
Peirce’s Representamen can be thought of as the genetic condition towards
signification: a virtual ‘sign’ which stands for an intense then actual one. It is both the
expressive tendency within a set of signs towards articulation and the sum of the
members of that set although in an obscure form. Peirce writes “A sign, or
Representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or
capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent
sign, or perhaps a more developed sign.”236 The Representamen is an expression out of
the differentiation within a set of signs towards a singular prompt in the process of
semiosis. Its obscure signaling will create a more specific sign, the Interpretant, which
we will discuss below.
Likewise, Deleuze’s notion of the Virtual is the differential set of obscure
conditions which becomes the Actual through Intensification. It is the “realm of
problems,” transcendental but not transcendent, universal but not general; quoting Proust
he describes it “’Real without being actual, ideal without being abstract’; and symbolic
without being fictional. Indeed, the virtual must be defined as strictly a part of the real
object.”237,238 It is the modality in which differential conditions exist and are

236
Peirce, A Fragment, CP 2.228, c. 1897. All references to Peirce are to volumes in the collected works
by Harvard University Press.
237
Deleuze developed his ontology throughout his career. We draw primarily from Difference and
Repetition, Deleuze’s most “standard” philosophical expression of the ideas rather from the more creative,

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differentiated yet obscure and become differenciated and determined as the Actual.239 As
a purely difference internally and not a unified pleroma it is nor a “coincidence of
opposites” or an overflowing emanation. Bonta and Protevi oversimplify it a bit to
describe it as the “modal status of the set of possible240 states of the system, along with
the probabilities of attaining a particular subset of those states.”241 It is the “plane of
consistency” which is populated by multiplicities or better the differential relation of all
haecceities as Deleuze borrows the language of Scotus. “The reality of the Virtual
consists of the differential elements and relations along with the singular points which
correspond to them. The reality of the Virtual is structural.”242
Most importantly for our isomorphic notion of the Virtual and the Representamen
is that both are fully real. They are not potentialities. Deleuze follows Bergson’s
argument that in thinking of the “possible” as somehow pre-existing we are actually
taking an existing thing, adding a negation of its existence to it, then projecting that into
the metaphysical past.243 Then by reversing such a process we then “add existence” to
this “possibility,” because the “real” is logically “more than the possible.” Bergson, and
in turn Deleuze, reject this notion by saying that the Virtual is fully “real” in that it is
Actualized. The undetermined states or bodies which may be individuated are not
“unreal,” they are simply awaiting actualization; likewise with the Representamen. For
instance, a blinking red light at an intersection is the condition for a more developed sign
to be developed, that of the idea that “a blinking red light at an intersection means
‘stop.’” Thus such a state cannot be imagined alone (nor can the Virtual be reified
separate from its connected ontological modalities), the blinking red light, if it cannot
create this second level sign cannot mean anything but, clearly, is both real and needs to

and at times, bewildering version in A Thousand Plateaus. Deleuze also significantly develops his notion
of the Virtual and Multiplicity in his Bergsonism. For his discussion of the Virtual see Deleuze: 1968
(1994), 207-214.
238
Deleuze: 1968 (1994), 209.
239
Ibid., 209-10.
240
The problem here is with the word “possible.” For Deleuze, the virtual is always defined by its
“hereness / thisness.”
241
Bonta and Protevi: 2004, 17. Note that Bonta and Protevi follow Delanda in their complexity theory
reading of Deleuze. Because of the non-linear and recursive manner by which the Monas works, this
language, although a bit jargon heavy, is complimentary to our discussion.
242
Deleuze, 1968 (1994), 209.
243
On this continuation of Bergson’s critique see Deleuze, 1968 (1994), 211-212.

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be actualized to be a sing. The virtuality of the sign and the virtual sign are both fully
real.
Dee declares244 the contents of the Representamen which will form the semiotic
system of the Monas very early in his project although in a non-linear order. Dee writes
that the “First and most simple manifestation and representation of things, non-existent as
well as latent in the folds of nature, happen by means of the straight line and the
circle.”245 Dee here indicates that non-existent or latent objects are both first and simply
expressed through the straight line and the circle. Dee then backtracks in the following
thesis to indicate “Yet the circle cannot be artificially produced without the straight line,
or the straight line without the point. Hence, things first begin to be by way of a point, a
monad. And things related to the periphery (however big they may be) can in no way
exist without the aid of the center point.”246 In this sense we may think of these shapes as
the semiotic Power Set, the set of all sub-sets, which through various, infinite
permutations this semiotic-ontology unfolds. For Dee, the straight line and the circle are
virtual and real conditions to those things which only have relationship to another set of
modalities, latency and non-existence.
Thus the being of other objects is determined by a differential relation to these
geometric basicalities but is also only expressed or represented through them. Things, as
we will see, do not become “realized” through these shapes but are individuated through
their various articulations. This backtracking finally has the feature of insinuating a non-
hierarchical relationship between the primitive elements and the actual articulations of
the Monas itself. While Dee indicates that they flow from each other in a logical sense,
he has no trouble speaking about their efficiency in a non-linear manner. We may say
that the non-linearity of the logic in the Monas, because it, after all is Dee’s priority,
likewise emerges in the progression of the theorems of the text of the MH.

244
Peirce would call this a “Universe of Discourse” borrowing the term from predicate logic. We have
resisted this term because we have used the term “discourse” in relation to discursive practices previously.
Thus we have borrowed from the language of set theory for a similar theoretical tool.
245
MH, Thesis I “Per lineam rectam, circulumque, prima, simplicissimaque fuit rerum, tum, no
existentium, tum in naturae latentium inuolucris, in lucem production, representatioque.”
246
Ibid, Thesis II “At nec sine recta, circulus, nec sine puncto, recta artificiose fieri potest. Puncti
Monadisque ratione, res, et esse coeperut primo: Et quae peripheria sunt affectae (quantaecumque fuerint)
centralis puncti nullo modo career possunt ministerio.”

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 In these first two theses Dee makes his two most important semiotic and
ontological relationships. First he declares the contents of his Representamen in terms of
the point, the line, and the circle. From these elements he will devise the Monas itself. It
is important to recall from above that these elements are not simply place-holders to build
up the Monas. They have already have articulation (the Monad is the “terrestrial body,”
the lines are the elements, and the circle is the Sun/Moon) and Durational Memory in
which these exchanges can be carried forward as influences within the system at a higher
level of articulation. Early on we see the extreme mobility of the Monas which makes it
both rich in its expressive capacity and its difficulty to describe in equilibrium.
Secondly, Dee links representation with being. The line and the circle first best
represent which are in turn made up of the point “by which things first began to be.”
Dee, as Håkansson has shown, is following Proclus in describing being emerging from
the point but Dee links the Monad in the Neo-Platonic sense with the representing,
geometric Monad. By Theorem III Dee links this combination of the Monas with the
representation of the Sun and Moon and thus builds the first continuum between these
primitive elements and the celestial world. It is clear that in Dee’s thinking, these
elements have ontological status (especially the Monad in which representation and
represented seem to all but collapse) and are the means by which more complex objects
have their being in a, perhaps, roughly Pythagorean, geometric sense.
This all occurs well before the Monas itself, in its full form, is developed. These
real elements, the point, line, and circle, then become the primitive semiotic set which
will create in the perceivers’ mind another, more specific sign which will prompt an
infinite cycle of ontological-semiosis.

3.5 The Interpretant and the Intensive: The Location of Signification

As we have pointed out above, the Representamen produces a secondary, more

specific sign in the perceiver which narrows the process of signification into a singularity.
As we allow Peirce to continue his thought from above “A sign, or representamen, is
something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It
addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or

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perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the
first sign. The sign stands for something , its object. It stands for that object, not in all
respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of
the Representamen.”247 The Interpretant is the more specific sign and can be understood
as similar to the Saussurean notion of the Signified. It can also be thought of as the sense
made of the Representamen or as a specific configuration of the Representamen which
conveys meaning to the perceiver. The Interpretant is the condensation of the
Representamen in as determined by its Object. In this relation it “stands for” something
definite outside the process of semiosis.
The Monas, in variously definite combinations representing certain external,
although we will complicate this relationship of inside and outside, objects or processes
forms the Interpretant in our analysis. 248 The combinatory system envisioned by Dee and
appropriated from the Cabala allows the basic three elements to be permuted into myriad
shapes and systems of shapes in various orientations to represent various Objects. Thus
when Dee begins to build the Monas out of the early elements into various Astrological,
Alchemical, and Linguistic features he does so because he expects them to link definitely
with a specific object in the viewers mind. Thus the Monas is the optimal equilibrium
state, as we discuss below, between the sign sets and their referents – indeed, for Dee, the
Monas is the focal point for a project of radical transformation in those referents. As we
have discussed before, one of Dee’s primary interests is the way in the Monas can be
employed to perfectly capture through representation astrological, astronomical,
linguistic, and numerical signs. Dee likely thought the Monas could perfectly replace
Representation itself because of the primitive nature, both as basic signs and ontological
firstness, of the Representamen set of which the Monas is primarily composed.
Deleuze’s notion of the Intensive captures this sense in which it is the “location of
assemblage” the space and tendency of the Virtual to be conditions into a specificity as a
connection between differentiating virtualities. It is the process of the actualization of the
virtual and the site of its expression. While the modalities of the Virtual come together as
Intense, they also rupture and disconnect from previous Actualities to couple to form new

247
Peirce, A Fragment, CP 2.228, c. 1897
248
See illustrations in Appendix IV bottom of p. 95 for possible Interpretants of the Monas developed by
Dee.

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modes of expression. The Intense is the place where, through its defacement (the intense
itself is always becoming-virtual or becoming-actual), ontological elements are
presented, suspended, and propelled towards actuality and disassembled into the
Virtual.249
In the composition and decomposition of the symbols of the Monas there is a
sense in which the internal elements are coupled and permuted in a sphere of the real not
yet actual but not an obscure virtuality. We may think of them as influencing or
modeling reality but not quite replacing it as we discuss below. The combination of such
elemental features of the Monas for Dee is temporary but always ontological substantial.
Perhaps this is most clear in the table of correspondences Dee builds on 23r which
he describes as “from our Hesperidian gardens so that they may be viewed as a mirror (in
speculo videndos); and yet we shall not be showing anything but our Monas (nihil extra
nostrum monadem); for the straight line appearing in Alpha is homologous to the one
[resulting] from that part of the last anatomy of the cross which is marked M. From that
anatomy it can also be seen whence everything else [in the scheme which follows] came
to this place:”250 What Dee then displays is a table of correspondences in which the
Monas is decomposed into the Interpretant elements of a miniscule alpha (α), a cross (+),
and a miniscule omega (ω)251 which are then set into correspondence with various
tripartite cycles. Likely because the table of external correspondences did not fit with
Josten’s Neo-Platonic, psychologized reading of the MH, the table itself was not
translated. We do so here:
Existing Mortal Adam,
α before the
Elements
Male and
Female
Perishing
Enshadowed,
Obscure
Born in a
Stable
The
Arrangement Genealogical
+ of the
Elements
Consummation
of the
The Cross The Cross
Sacrificed
on the Cross
Elements

249
We are following Deleuze: 1968 (1994), 222-224, 232-235.
250
MH, 22v, 23r. The Table of Correspondences is reproduced in Appendix IV,p. 96.
251
Note that Dee has also shown the derivation of these signs previously. The elemental + occurs in
Theorem VI, the derivation of the Taurus influenced alpha is found in the Annotatio of Theorem XV, with
the Aries influenced omega developed toward the end of Theorem XXI (21v)

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 Existing
ω after the
Elements
The Immortal
Adam
Resurrecting Most Clear
Ubiquitous
King

Conceived
by One
Influence
Seed of
Power
Creation of
Matter
Earthly
Marriage
Beginning
α
‫יהוה‬
Death and
Burial Virtue of the
Decad
Refining of
the Elements
Martyrdom
on the Cross
Middle
+
Risen by
Own Virtue
Triumph in
Glory
Transmutation
Divine
Marriage
End
ω
Similar tables can be found in Agrippa, however the Monas-centered arrangement
is specific to Dee. Here disagree with the previous semiotic analysis of Szulakowska in
which she describes the Monas itself as an Index. Rather, we would argue that by both
relying on what Dee felt was a certain semiotic relationship in perception of his
readership and in creating standardized links, such as the table above, of semiotic-to-
ontological reference, Dee desires for the Monas to produce Indices rather than itself be
an Index itself. Thus the individual elements which Dee creates to act as an ontological
correspondent to an given object (alchemic signs to objective elements, linguistic signs to
graphemes, numerical signs to mathemes, etc) are in fact the Indexes. The Monas itself,
as it is actualized, is a much more robust semiotic device.
The MH is the record of experimentation with the Monas in order to display its
various powers in perfectly representing Being or the Book of Nature. Because of the
ontological character of Dee’s semiosis, the boundary between the signs and their being
in the world is continuous. The Monas and its Objects of representation themselves form
assemblages which both emerge from the cabalistic interplay of the signs within the
Monas and from the determination of the objects from which it is devised.

3.6 The Object and the Actual: The Reciprocity of Sign and Being

The Object for Peirce is the exterior thing or condition which bounds the process
of representation and which is modeled by the semiotic loop between the Representamen

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and the Interpretant. Peirce writes “[A sign] must be determined to correspond,
according to some principle, and by some species of causation, with something else,
called its Object. In a word, whether physically, rationally, or otherwise directly or
indirectly, its Object, as agent, acts upon the sign, as patient.”252 In another way we read
something Dee would have likely understood his Monas as doing, “A sign is intended to
correspond to a real thing, or fact, or to something relatively real; and this object of the
sign may be the very sign itself, as when a map is precisely superposed upon that which it
maps. It is a perfection of the sign if it separately represents its object; in which case it
becomes a proposition and is true or false.”253 Peirce’s notion of the Object is likely the
easiest to comprehend yet it is one of the defining characteristics of his system as
opposed to Saussure, in which the process of signification is always psychological and
cannot philosophically discuss the relation of the conditions (or structure, which is, in
fact, Saussure’s strongsuit) of signification, its relative objects, and the process by which
this occurs.
Deleuze’s notion of the Actual as a state of equilibrium between forces as
opposed to a concrete, absolute object in itself helps us to understand the reciprocal
features of the Object within the Peircean triad and the “creations” Dee produces via the
Monas. The Actual is a conditioned determination of the Virtual and the Intensive. It is
a final, certainly not the final, state of the disjunctive process of differentiation. The
Actual is a state with discrete properties but never a final absolute form. It carries with it
its history as an intensive virtuality and thus can be subject to ever new intensities,
variations, coupling with other actualities and dissolution back into the Virtual. 254
The Monas for Dee, we argue, was specifically this state of a conditioned
equilibrium between the optimal sign configuration of his primal set of Representamen in
relation to the ontological status of the Objects upon which it was devised. Thus the
Actual for Dee was a site of being in the midst of the Monas as a powerful sign and the
Objects which were in need of metaphysical repair. In other words, we may describe the
Monas as focal point between the virtual ontological status of the Representamen and the
Actual ontological status of the Objects. However, the process, as we will describe defies

252
“The Basis of Pragmaticism,” MS 283, 1905
253
Foundations of Mathematics, MS 9:1, c. 1903?
254
We follow Deleuze: 1968 (1994), 214-221.

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the Peircean model in an important manner: the link between the Object and the
Representamen /Interpretant is much more reciprocal in Dee’s thinking.
This triad then can be said to have two opposite but interlocking processes. First,
the Object determines the conditions by which the Interpretant may be distilled from the
Representamen. Second, the Interpretant through its appeal to the Representamen’s set of
signs bounds the possibilities by which the object can be encoded as a sign, it is the only
possible conduit of the object’s representation. This dual process within the interlocking
Triad descried above is at the heart of the semiosis for Perice. However, because of the
link between the semiotic and the ontological Dee has been established in the Virtual
Representamen, and persistently reiterated in the Interpretant, the dual process of
Determination and Representation is polluted – its boundary is permeable. This
ontological permeability with Peirce’s triad of representation not only occurs in Dee’s
thinking but may be a key feature of much of Renaissance semiotics.
Because the Monas is devised from Objects (alchemical process, astrological
entities, Pythagorean correspondences) it remains bounded and can only be as powerful
as its original domain of extraction. This escape of such a bounding process by which the
Monas is devised from various objects of Dee’s intellectual and magical practice is, as
one might have guessed, the process of “miraculous appropriation” discussed earlier.
Because of the close proximity of the Representamen to the Divine or Primal Being (the
purity of the point, straight line, and circle) when an object (fallen creation) is modeled
through the Monas it is also reformed in Dee’s thinking. Thus the Monas can be thought
to proof-read the book of nature by a reforming semiotic ontologization..
Conversely, and more provocatively, because of the ontological interpenetration
between the Intense/Interpretant and the Actual/Object, it is possible for the Monas, in a
given configuration, to not only affect the Object but to replace it through the inverse
process of the ontologization of the semiotic – here we arrive at what Dee calls “The
Cabala of Being” which “teaches without words” and “was born to us by the Law of
Creation…and is a more divine since it invents new arts and explains the most abstruse
ones very faithfully….”255

255
MH, 7r. “...sine verba, ipsa docet,” “quae creationis nobis est nata lege…quoque quaedam divinior est:
cum atrium ista sit inventrix nouvarum abstrusissimarum fidelissima explicatrix ”

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 Perhaps the most striking instance of the physical manipulation of reality through
the Monas is to be found in Theorem XXII256. After a discussion of alchemic theory in
XXI, Dee “offers here for the contemplation of your Serene Highness, the vessels of the
Sacred Art which are truly and completely cabalistic”257 whereupon Dee decomposes the
Monad into various elements “representing” alchemic instruments such as retorts, a
mortar and pestle, and a “small vessel containing the mysteries.”258 These “completely
cabalistic” instruments are then immediately subject to a purely semiotic alchemic
process. The conflation of the decomposed Monadic elements with ontological objects
cannot be clearer than when Dee glides easily between the realms:

Within λ, the glass vessel, during the exercise of its particular function, all air
must be excluded or it will be extremely prejudicial. The corollary of ω is the
agreeable man, ready, active, and well disposed at all times. Who, then, is not
now able to procure the sweet and salutary fruits of this Science, which, I say,
spring from the mystery of these two letters?259

The full force of such a project is found at the end of Theorem XXII which reads in full:

In these few words, I know that I give not only the principles but the
demonstration to those who can see in them how to fortify the igneous vigour and
the celestial origin, so that they may lend a willing ear to the great Democritus,
certain that it is not mythical dogma but mystic and secret, according to which it
is the medicine of the soul, the liberator from all suffering, and is prepared for
those who wish for it and as he has taught; it is to be sought for in the Voice of the
Creator of the Universe, so that men, inspired by God, and engendered anew,
learn through the perfect disquisition of the mystical languages. 260

256
This “lab” illustration from the MH can be found in Appendix IV,p. 95.
257
MH, 22r. “Si secretiora quedam Artis Sanctae Vasa (omnio Cabalistica ill quidem) Solis initiates
Revelanda, es eiusdem Monadis….nunc exhibuerim spectanda.”
258
Ibid., v. “Denique quod cum ω notatum videtis, Vasculum est, Mysteriorum Plenissimum…”
259
Ibid.
260
Ibid., 23r.

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Here, it seems, Dee wishes to fulfill his promise in the introductory letter in which he
promises to be able to replace the various physical elements by which natural philosophy
was done with the Monas itself by building an ontological-semiotic alchemic laboratory
and placing the Monas, in very provocative way, in an ontological continuum with the
physical world itself through the performance of the Monas. Dee would end the MH
with an even grander vision.

The “Horizon Aeternitatis261” reproduced and translated by Benjamin Rowe

In his final and perhaps most grandiose gesture Dee provides a map of the cosmos
itself, with its elements, numerical relations, physical processes, temporal stages, and
celestial strata which he describes as existing “After the Monas is correctly, wholly, and
physically restored to itself and then it is indeed a most united Monad and what the Magi

261
Dee likely borrows this phrase from Pico, 9>16-18 in the Magical Conclusions. Dee after being
criticized by Andreas Libavius in 1594 threatened to write a text entitled De Horizonte Aeternitatis, Liber
Theologicus, Mathematicus, and Hierotechnicus. Joseten: 1964, 97 indicates that the book was never
written but indicates that Dee’s interest in defending the project of the Monas had not waned in the forty
years since he fist published it. What Dee meant by the neologism “Hierotechnicus” remains an intriguing
question as well.

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deem oneness….”262 This vision of a world restored to balance via the Monas, in the
Monas, and as the Monas is Dee’s final vision as the Monas Hieroglyphica comes to a
close wholly bridging the gap between the semiotic and the ontological.

Representamen / The Virtual

123...
‫א‬
+
Ω

Interpretant / The The Object / The

Intensive Actual

Diagram of the Semiotic Analysis Detailed Above with Imagery from the MH

To reiterate our analysis briefly, we have argued that an intelligible model of the
character and purpose of Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica can be rendered by employing
Peirce’s triadic semiotic system and Deleuze’s three ontological modalities. By linking
the primary sign structures of the Monas’ sign system as a set of virtual Representamen

262
Ibid., 27r. The original “map” can be found in Appendix IV, p 97. The renders we place here is
borrowed from the version of the MH by occultist Benjamin Rowe because we found his translation
suitable.

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we capture Dee’s philosophic insistence on the “realness” of the Monas. By drawing a
relationship between the Interpretant and the Intensive, it is possible to appreciate both
the mobility of the sign-play and the role played by Dee’s creation of semiotic Indexes
and their relation to the physical world and its processes. Finally, by following the
ontological rupture in the process of signification, we have show how the Dee’s
importation of objective data was thought to be restorative and conversely how the
semiotic character of the Monas itself could be thought to replace physical objects
making the Monas the site of a performance as well as a sign. This performative process,
in which the intensive overlap between the semiotic and the ontological can be
manipulated, is isomorphic, we have argued, with Dee’s notion of the “cabala of being.”

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4.1 From Map to Trace – Dee and the Twilight of the Monas

We opened our discussion of Dee in terms of maps and it should be best to end in
just such a way. Deleuze and Guattari describe their notion of a “map” as opposed to a
“tracing” in A Thousand Plateaus by linking the process of tracing as a task in
hierarchical reproduction which fundamentally lacks expression and creativity. It is the
reiteration of structures through blind repetition. They relate the “trace” to the
arborescent process of the growth of leaves on a tree. The leaves are simply copies of a
deep structure which cannot inform the mechanism of its production. The map on the
other hand is, as they write:

Make a map, not a tracing.….What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that
it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map
is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible,
susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind
of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be
drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or
as a meditation.…The map has to do with performance….263

The map for Deleuze and Guattari is fundamentally about the recursive iteration
which prompts and is prompted by difference as an actuality, an expression onto being.
The map is the rhizome which connects within and without at a multiplicity of mobile
points. We have shown that Dee’s Monas is just such a map: Dee certainly conceived of
it as “oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real,” with its performative,
image-act character, it could be cabalistically manipulated and was thus “detachable,
reversible, susceptible to constant modification.” Dee’s political gestures of using the
Monas as a utopian semiotic mesh with it “conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a
political action or as a meditation” and we cannot forget how it appreciated its aesthetic
potential when he advised the “mechanic” on how to properly add flourishes and serifs in
theorem XXIII. In this sense, Deleuze and Guattari capture elegantly the character of the

263
Deleuze and Guattari: 1980 (2005), 12-13.

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Monas as an exercise in practiced cartography. However, one key feature must be added
as the result of our study – the Monas existed for Dee in continuum with being and thus
its performance was central to its nature, its being. Through our ontological analysis we
have shown that just the Monas is a process in ontological cartography through which
Dee navigated the straits of the anxiety brought on by a rupture in the relationship
between represented and representation.
There is another map that Dee began in 1582, one much longer in the making and
by 1582 it was entering into its most dramatic and final stage. On March 10th of that
year, he met with a certain Edward “Talbot” and began conversations with what he felt
were supernatural beings of all stripes. This process too became a kind of map making.
Dee was wishing to discover “radicall truthes” one of which was to discover a language
which would unite words with being itself. The “angels” would eventually “reveal” to
Dee several “languages” in which, as the arc-angel Gabriel would eventually explain:
Every letter signifieth the member of the substance whereof it speaketh. Every
word signifieth the quiddity of the substance. The Letters are separated, and in
confusion: and therefore, are by numbers gathered together: which also gathered
signify a number: for as every greater containeth his lesser, so are the secret and
unknown forms of things knit up in their parents: Where being known in number
they are easily distinguished, so that herein we teach places to be numbered:
letters to be elected from the numbered, and proper words from the letters,
signifying substantially the thing that is spoken of in the center of his Creator,
whereby even as the mind of man is moved at an ordered speech. 264

It is often noted that Dee abandoned the theory and application of the Monas in
favor of the more radical system of direct communication with angelic beings. Certainly,
there is a transition and the Monas is simply not employed in the degree to which he
imagined – not by himself, not by his peers, and certainly not by kings and principalities.
Dee’s bombastic proclamations concerning the Monas in his introductory letter simply
did not pan out. The “magical parable” did not do what Dee claimed it could because it

264
Casaubon: 1659, 92. This section of the so-called spirit diaries is the most detailed discussion of
philosophy of language during Dee’s later career. Curiously, he, nor the “spirits,” mention the Monas.

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could not. In the end, the Monas was destined to be a symptom for the anxiety caused by
the mid-15th century ontological rupture in representation, not a cure for it. The Monas
does, for the large part, fade to the background - it cannot be denied. Dee does not solely
manipulate the Monas in place of physical alchemy, nor does forward a Monas-centered
geometry in his 1570 preface of Euclid’s Elements. The fate of the Monas is one in
which what it came to represent was precisely what Dee hoped it would replace. Indeed,
while the Monas was developed to be a map by which to re-map reality, it does, in the
end, become a trace. While for Dee the priority of the Monas does recede in its map-
being, what does not is the general project – the cartography of being. Dee’s desire to
create a map of being in which the map itself captured and transformed reality persisted
as one of his central goals – one in which the philosophic and the mystical amalgamate,
no doubt “rendering the vulgar eye dark and considerably despairing.”

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Appendix I - A Structural Analysis of the Monas Hieroglyphica

In that a structural analysis of the MH has never been produced we do so here.

As stated above the MH is composed of twenty-four theorems of greatly uneven

length which proceed without substantive deductive character. While the argumentative
procession is apparently linear (there is little internal-self reference) much of the
“deductions,” a term we must use loosely in this case, rely on a process of nesting and
recursion to function logically (we explored this logic in our analysis above). Thus many
of the theorems can be variously described as axiomatic, definitions, corollaries to others,
demonstrations, and lemmas although Dee makes no such distinctions. Such an
architectural muddle, in addition to the recursive logic operative within, only adds to
frustrating attempts by readers, past and present, to produce sense from the text in a
purely architectural approach. Despite such a condition, it is possible to provide some
analytic clarity of the structural of the text both from small logical gesticulations offered
by Dee and from the internal relationship of the contents of some theorems.
The MH can be modeled as composed by (1) three groups of theorems capped by
summarizing remarks, (2) an interpolated paraphrase from Dee’s earlier PA, and (3) four
independent explorations of the use of the Monas itself. In more detail we describe them
thus:

1. Theorems I-X form a single set with Dee arriving at “one way of hieroglyphically
considering our Monad” including a summary sentence of the theorems printed in
majuscule text at X.

2. Theorems XI-XV ends with another majuscule printed cap announcing having
arrived at the “cabalistic anatomy” via the proceeding theorems at XV. Theorem
XVIII continues this thematic arc and subsequently belongs to this group as
well. 265

265
Dee bounds the theorem as following XII and XIII.

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 3. Theorems XVI-XVII are cabalistic exploration of the quaternary + of the Monas
and should be grouped together.

4. XIX is effectively a cross-referencing paraphrase to aphorism CVI of the PA and

appears to break the flow of the MH in its placement here.266

5. Theorems XX-XXIV are disparate and longer exploratory issues which either
elucidate the Monas’ composition (XX), deconstruct it for various reasons (XXI-
XXII), describes how to draw it mechanically XXIII, and a final theorem to
correlating it to the hours of the day and other twenty-four related correlations.

Of special note is theorem XXIII, the longest of the MH, containing numerous forms of
detailed speculation on the relationship of the Monas to the cosmos itself. This internally
diverse theorem could be itself parsed into sub-sections:

A. The construction of the Monas geometrically

B. A discussion of the Pythagorean Quaternary
C. A schematic division of quantification
D. The “Horizon Aeternitatis” scheme

Dee seems to describe subsections B-D after subsection A but what follows in
XXIII does not seem to correlate. This again leads us to think that the MH was, in some
fashion, not complete when it was published. Likely Dee had a much larger project in
mind. While the XXIV conveniently caps to correspond to the hours of the day, we can
imagine Dee ending it here much like Pico expanded his cabalistic conclusions just
before printing to make a mystical correlate with the number seventy-two. Structurally,
we can conclude that the text itself, while not enjoying the deductive beauty of Spinoza’s
Ethica or even Proclus, does contain a partially continuous and partially logical
progression which we have outlined above.

266
It seems to better fit into group 2 (theorems XI-XV).

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Appendix II – Dee’s Astrology in the MH

Astrology, in its various capacities, was a fact of life for the intellectual life of the
16th century and it is universally recognized that Dee was an expert in the field.267,268 We
should look no further than the fact that he chose the proper day for the coronation of
Queen Elizabeth I to serve an indicator of these two realities. Dee’s astrological thinking
is, like much of his intellectually career, a strong carry-over and curiously revolutionary.
While this is not the place to explore that thinking in detail, we should say some words
about the relationship of the Monas to Dee’s astrological thinking. 269
Dee first laid down his dual theory in the PA in which he posits that astrological
entities, primarily the Sun270, emit both influential rays (in the Al-Kindian sense) which
wash over the surfaces of objects and a form of early magnetic theory (he compares this
second influence that of the power of the lodestone) in which another force, for lack of a
better word, can penetrate through the surfaces of things. This implied serious
complications for astrological theory, (1) since the influences are caused by rays they
would be subject to the laws of optics and thus prediction and alteration could be had in
a novel way and (2) because various elements are subject to magnetic force in various
capacities one had to know the degree-to-which this second force was acting on a given
object. In the PA Dee is trying to provide a systematic, and rigorously material basis for
the given fact of astrological influence and had such a theory been picked up it would
have had serious implications for the whole discipline of astrology.
Dee does not introduce any new astrological theory into the MH and assumes
readers will have known of his thinking in the PA (although it seems that Dee does not

267
Characteristic of Dee, obsessively at that, he meticulously noted in his diary, with specials symbols
composed of astrological signs, when his wife would start her period (also remarking on the degree of flow
in English ciphered with Greek letters), when they had sexual intercourse, even his gruesome dissection of
his own miscarried fetus, and any other astrologically significant moments.
268
Because of my inferior knowledge of astrology I closely follow Dunn’s 2006 analysis. Also important
is the meticulously analytical presentation of Dee’s theory in the introduction of Shumaker and Heilbron’s
1978 translation of the PA. For understanding Dee’s astrological milieu I would recommend Broecke 2003
study (which requires a bit of background which I admittedly lack) The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain,
and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology.
269
Especially in that for Dee, in his own words, the permutation of the celestial world (astronomia) was
directly linked to changes in the terrestrial world (astronomia inferior). They were a unified discipline.
270
Dee seems to fluctuate on this issue. At times, because of his geocentrism, he states that only the sun
gives off these rays and others simply reflect them like colored (influencing) mirrors and in other places
they seem to have their own light (and heat) as well. Aries for instance, as we have seen the MH, is a
source of its own light/heat/fire.

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carry the radical elements of the PA’s theory into the MH and we should resist thinking
of the MH as a sequel to the PA as part of a critical approach on Dee’s part). Even on
this assumption, Dee’s focus is very much, as we have discussed above, on the problem
of representation and not novel theorizing (except in Monas-izing these disciplines). In
the MH, astrology is, of course, implicit, but subject to two predictable shifts: One
representational, the other concerning ontological replacement.
The first is Dee’s stated desire to reform the astrological signs themselves (which
he says are actually “semi-barbarous”271) into more perfect, and thus more powerful,
Monas influenced objects. Dee goes on to offer a few, but not many, new forms of the
common astrological signs. Importantly, while alchemists took note of this process and
many seemed to have been influenced272, I can find no evidence that astrologers changed
their signs to be more Monas-like and we may conclude that the influence of the Monas
in this sense was minimal to non-existent.
Secondly, Dee displays the plasticity of the Monas by revealing that it can model
(and replace, as we will see, Dee felt he could create a readable cosmos much like the
onto-semiotic alchemy lab) various astrological schemes. Thus on 20r,v Dee
deconstructs the Monas to show how it can model the planet arrangement of Plato273 in
addition to the one current understood in his day. We could say, in the language of our
analysis, that the Virtual Platonic scheme is Nested within the Monas. In seeming
contradiction to his work in the PA in which, because the rays have the same nature of
optics and thus require conventional observation, Dee lampoons this early empirical
tendency in respect to both astronomia and optics (their proximity is likely telling of
Dee’s treatment of their theoretical affinity) stating on MH 6r:

And will not the astronomer (astronomus) be very sorry for the cold he suffered
under the open sky, for [all his] vigils and labours, when here, with no discomfort
suffered from the air, he may exactly observe with his eyes the orbits of the
heavenly bodies under [his own] roof, with windows and doors shut on all sides,

271
MH 4v.
272
One example is shown in Newman and Principe 2002: 194 in which Starkey, 1656, subtracted Dee’s
Monas-influenced form of Aries a symbol to indicate the absence of Iron (which is astrological sympathetic
to Mars) from his Regulus.
273
I.e., Earth, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.

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 at any given time, and without any mechanical instrument made of wood or brass?
And the optician will confound the stupidity of his art: he worked in all manner
of ways to shape a mirror into the parabolic line of a (suitably rotated) conical
section, so as to attack any matter (liable to fire) with that incredible heat [issuing]
from the Sun; yet here is a line revealed resulting from a triagonal section of the
tetrahedron after whose shape, when rendered three-dimensional, a mirror may be
formed which (even when there are clouds before the Sun) can reduce any stones
or any metal to, as it were, impalpable powers by the force of (truly the strongest)
heat.

Again, as with alchemy, Dee’s theory is that the refined form of representation
will have ontological affects and thus could/should be replaced with the Monas. Unlike
his fiery contemporary Giordano Bruno, Dee never dabbled in heliocentrism in the MH
(or at all) although we are sure he could make the Monas dance to this new rhythm as
well. As for the magnetic aspect of the theory put forward in the PA, it is silent in the
MH and only the Ray types of influences are spoken of.
As I mentioned above, it does seems that, unlike the alchemic reception upon
which it had various impacts (even if only symbolic), the Monas project had little to no
affect on astrological theory or representation. It is also apparent, as Dunn points out,
that even in Dee’s own private astrological work he himself did not incorporate this
radical approach in any sense. We can conclude that Dee’s astrological thinking, like his
intellectual life generally, is a tension of radical reform and strict observance of tradition
and that astrology, like all disciplines, were to be erased, intensified, and replaced by
their Monas-ized counterparts. We can also conclude, as with virtually all the other
disciplines, that such a change never occurred – even in Dee’s private life.

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Appendix III - Some Brief Remarks on Emblematic Analysis and the Monas

The study of emblems is a vast, technical and obscure field of research.274 It is

not because I can pretend any substantial competence on the subject that I venture some
brief presentation of the MH in this regard. Rather, it is because virtually no attention has
been paid to Dee’s contribution in this field. Indeed, even in the list of related books of
the 16th century found in Daly and Manning, there is no mention of the MH as employing
or useful to the field of the study of emblems. 275 While it is not directly related to the
subject matter of our study, nor does it present overly significant fodder to the study of
emblems generally, we would still forward some preliminary presentation such to be an
initial foray into future discussions.
The emblem, as we discussed, earlier, is usually the combination of an allegorical
image with a motto or legend intended for a range of descriptive and didactic uses.
Contemporaneously, there were known by dozens of names in the vernacular276 and
began to appear roughly in the 1540’s with full emblems books appearing by the close of
the 16th century. Dee’s Monas appears during this blossom of emblematics as a form of
condensed symbolic representation was employed later to become a symbolic referent for
Hermetic philosophy, in its sundry articulations, even until this generation.
Two distinct emblems occur in the MH itself, both at the end.277 The first occurs
directly after Theorem XXIV (over):

274
The AMS series of studies in the Emblem counts more than twenty-one densely prepared volumes
alone.
275
Daly and Manning (eds.): 1999, 256-263.
276
Manning: 1999, xiii provides an illuminating list: imprese (Italian), symbolum (Neo-Latin), sinne-
poppen (Dutch), sinne-bild (Dutch), sinnbild (German), jeroglificos (Spanish), insignia (Neo-Latin),
cognizances (English), device (English), and on.
277
Note that we are not examining the frontispiece here. The analysis of frontispieces is a more
complicated and separate field of inquiry.

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 Figure 1. Emblem after Theorem XXIV on 28r.

This primitive emblem is a geometric shape befitting the contents of the MH. It
betrays none of the elaborate artistic flair, replete with mythological and biblical symbols,
of other, and especially later, emblems. The graphic elements are a Circle, with a central
Point noted, which meets tangentially with a Line, itself equal to the circle’s diameter.
Thus we have the three central elements of the Monas (point, line, and circle) in another,
rearticulated form.
Within the circle is the legend “InTeLlectus iudicat veritatem” which Josten
renders as “The intellect examines the truth” or a possible alternative, “The intellect
judges the truth.” It is unclear why the /I/, /T/, and /L/ are printed in majuscule. Below
this the legend reads “Contra[c]tus ad Punctum” rendered by Josten as “Contact at a
point” but it seems that there is a misreading of the ligature in this case, rendering the
alternative, and perhaps improved, “Contracted to a point.” Below the equator, and likely
the main motto of the emblem, is famous expression “Vulgaris, hic, oculus, caligabit,
diffidetque, plurimum” which Josten renders as “The vulgar eye will here be blind and
most distrustful” or, alternatively, “Here the vulgar eye will be darkened and will much
despair.”

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 Josten’s analysis is that it “appears to be that the human intellect is a point of
contact between the infinite, expressed by the circle, and the finite, expressed by the
tangential straight line of limited extension….the circle may be interpreted as relating
infinity to the idea of alchemical gold, of which the point within the circle is the
conventional symbol.”278 In that emblems are so heavily reliant on culturally and
temporally grounds and reader response formed by certain intellectual habits, we cannot
disagree with Josten except to reiterate our above caveat concerning the centrality of the
subjective and individual in this interpretation. We would also add, although it is unclear
if Dee would have known it, that the differential point of contact between the circle and
the linear tangent is a limit – its point of contact is infinitely divisible. Forshaw points
out that these legends go on to have further currency in later alchemic texts in the years
after Dee’s publication of the MH. 279 Similarly, we are unsure if this emblem occurs first
in its career in the MH.
The second emblem (reproduced on following page) is both more elaborate and
contains two legends like the one above and occurs on the final page of the MH (it also
occurs in a similar form in both editions of the PA). The device is graphical here rather
than simply geometric and shares many elements with the frontispieces of both the PA
and the MH including imagery of the sun (left flanked) and moon (right flanked) and also
contains a heraldic, perhaps, helmet element. In addition to flourishes (the asemia of
which is not sure in emblematic studies), the Monas in full form is surrounded in the
alchemic egg (which also occurs on MH 17r and many other alchemic texts as well ) with
a clothed woman holding up a seven-pointed object (a star?) in her right hand. The dual
legends suspended vertically and flank the woman and read on the left “Supercaelestes
roretis aquae” and on the right “Et terra fructum dabit suum” which Josten does not
render, for reasons unknown, but can be read as “Let the (super-)Heavenly waters drip”
and the right “and the earth will give (forth) her fruit.” Notably, Dee reproduces this
emblem himself in a MS in which he himself is depicted next to a similar, less elaborate
device, flanked by his Latinate intials /I/, /D/ with the same legend in his autograph.280

278
Josten 1964: 219, note 131.
279
Forshaw: 2005, 250-2.
280
British Library, MS Cotton Charter XIV, article 1.

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This leads us to believe that Dee had some hand in designing at least this device and
perhaps the former as well.

Figure 2: Emblem at the Coda of the MH

Figure 3: Dee’s MS Version with Self-Portrait as Young Man

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 A final, but likely inconsequential note of interest, is a comparison of the woman
at the crest of Dee’s emblem here to many of the women who occur in the “celestial”
sections of the enigmatic and undeciphered Voynich MS:

Figure 4: Detail from the “Aries” page of the Voynich MS (Yale Beinecke 408, 72).
While this figure is clothed, many others are nude. The figure is holding similar 7-
pointed “star” but in her left hand, as opposed to the right in Dee’s emblem. Like many
of the Voynich figures she appears “pregnant.” The Voynich MS is replete with
hundreds of such figures the meaning of which, like the rest of the manuscript, remains a
total enigma.

We are hesitant to forward an interpretation of these emblems for the following

reasons we paraphrase from Daly:281 (1) It is unknown without in depth historical
analysis what can be considered a-priori non-emblematic, (2) the knowledge needed by
way of selective comparative analysis in which characteristic, habitually occurring
emblems may be given generic description and application, and (3) a method which,
historically grounded, describes the relationship of pictures of words in the emblematic
device. Simply put, we lack such an expertise and only add this appendix in the hopes
that a future study may be forthcoming.

281
Daly: 1979, 9.

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Appendix IV – Images References of Interest (from the first, 1564 Edition).

The Procession of the Elements, 14v. Note the dual solar-Mercurial nature of point 7.
Although obfuscated in this reproduction, the Monas appears in the center section
although shaded over.

The First Deconstruction of the Monas to Show its Astrological Interpretants, 15r.

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The Deconstruction and Inversion of the Monas, 20v.

The Semiotic-Ontological Alchemic Laboratory, 22r.

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The Table of Correspondences, not translated in Josten, 23r.

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The Geometric construction of the Monas, The Monas Hieroglyphica, 25r.
24r.

The “Horizon Aeternitatis,” not translated in Josten, 27r.

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 Issues for Further Research

Continuing this project would also include a cross comparison to Dee’s Mathematical
theory and issues in the philosophy of language in the so-called “Spirit Diaries.” Because
this paper has focused exclusively on the MH, another continuing study would likely
prove enlightening as to the relation of such ideas to Dee’s intellectual habit overall.

In general, it seems that much more scholarly work must be done on Renaissance and
“Hermetic” semiotics and visual culture generally. Future studies in this field would
prove exciting.

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