The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Attributed to John Dee Translated by Teresa Burns and Nancy Turner Supplemental material written by Vincent Bridges, Teresa Burns, & Phil Legard Illustrated by DARLENE & Jeffrey S. Kupperman Waning Moon Publications, Ltd. Cot Spina, New YorkAll Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2007 by respective contributors (see below). No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, induding photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author(s). Waning Moon Publications, Ltd. hexp:/ Avww.waningmoonpublications.com First Edition: December 2007. Limited to 256 copies. Waning Moon Publications, Ltd., PO Box 79, Cold Spring, NY 10516, USA ‘Translators: Teresa Burns Nancy Turner Authors: Vincent Bridges Teresa Burns Phil Legard Artists: Darlene, ww.darlenetheartist.com (Color frontispiece and illustrations for chapter three.) Jeflzey s. Kupperman, www. jwmtorg (lustrations for the translation as well as chapters one and two.) Book designed and bound by John J. Coughlin, WaningMoon.com First hand-bound editon limited to 256 copies. This being number __| 'Contents A Note from the Translators .. Acknowledgements sss sossscseseseeee ii Translation: Libellus Veneri Nigro Sacer Attributed to John Dee, translated by Teresa Burns and Nancy Turner .» Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery By Teresa Burns Chapter 2: Tuba Veneris and the Occult Traditi By Phil Legard.. Chapter 3: Olympic Spirits, the Cult of the Dark Goddess, & the Seal of Ameth By Vincent Bridges and Teresa Burns... Notes/References «+... BibliographyCHAPTER ONE Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery By Teresa Burns I, INTRODUCTION, he Consecrated Little Book of Black, Venus, attributed to John Dee, presents us with a curious puzzle in the history of magical manuscripts. It instructs the reader how to perform the “Horn of Venus,” which at first seems a lengthy but straightforward Rite in the tradition of Henry Cornelius Agrippa. “Dee” tells us that this “Horn” ight be used for “lifting hidden treasures, for Navigating, Trade, war, and other ways likewise where the Spirit can be of service to you;” and instructs the reader, repeatedly, to make all preparations on the day and hours of Venus, and to perform the Rite itself only during these hours.”* Yet the date given on the manuscript, June 4, 1580, falls not on Venusian 39The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Friday, but on a Saturday.” Many of the allusions and Seals suggest some sort of hieros gamos, literal or metaphoric, as part of the Rite. Pseudoepigraphy is rather common in Solomonic grimoires, if indeed that is what this “Horn” is, and many who have studied different versions of the manuscript think it was not written by Dee at all. The only are printed analysis prior to those presented here, Jorg M. Meier’s 1990 Biichlein der Venus ("Libellus Veneris Nigro Sacer") conclude that (onseerated Little Book, of Black, Venus was not by John Dee himself, but someone familiar with his angelic ic, and that the earliest version of it was probably composed in the mid-1580s in a German-speaking country, during the same time period as John Dee and Edward Kelly's travels on the European continent.” Certainly, Black Venus sounds nothing like Dee's other known works and lacks his usual heavy Christian tone. It lacks the stern valuing of scholarship we see when we read the frontispiece of the Hieroghphic “Monad: ig I NON INTELLIGIT, AUT TACEAT, ADT DISCAT (“He who does not understand, should either be silent or learn.") Instead, in the eight lines that follow “John Dee's” greeting, we're told not to worry about understanding magic at all, because it’s too hard, so “we sound a Hom for you, Beloved Reader!” Is this “John Dee” telling us to not worry, just follow directions? The stated uses of the “Horn of Venus” do match Dee’s interests and of course we know Dee knew Agrippa's work well. Yet he also knew English law, so we may be puzzled by the Rite’s final section, which advises the reader to make sure that any treasure or coins brought back by 40Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery |] the Spirits should be emptied into a new, perfumed, consecrated container. This may be almost recipe-like Agrippan magick, yet in England after 1563, a person caught sending gpetic spirits out to fetch coins would face life- threatening consequences, because using magic to discover hidden treasure was against the law. A first conviction got the treasure hunter a year’s imprisonment and four trips to the pillory, and a second one meant death. In the late 15708, Dee had already asked the Lord Treasurer, William Cecil, for an exemption to this rule, and was turned down.” One might be tempted to stop right now and dismiss the book as nothing more than an opportunistic forgery which tells us little about John Dee or his magic cirde. Wet the name Tabs Veners, the “Hora” or “Trumpet of Venus, seems echoed in a work mentioned by none other than Edward Kelly, “The Sounding of the Trumpet.” Kelly makes repeated reference to “The Sounding of the Trumpet” in his treatise “The Stone of the Philosophers," which Kelly reportedly wrote for the Holy Roman Emperor while in fii, yo after Dee had returned to England. Furthermore, John Dee's Five Books of Mystery contain repeated references to the Archangel Anael, who Dee considered the ruling Archangel of the Age,” and to whom the “Horn of Venus” calls upon in its closing, While Nancy Turner and I mainly relied on the Warburg manuscript for our translation, it is worth noting that while this earliest copy is in England, all of the others we are aware of appear on the European continent, from the early 16008 until as late as 1794.” It is very possible, even likely, that the different manuscripts influence later works in different 41 ILThe Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus ways, the English manuscript perhaps connected to the writers influencing what Dame Frances Yates called the “Rosicrucian Enlightenment,” and the continental versions perhaps more connected to writers like Joseph Anton Herpentil and Johann Scheible, whose other interests indude the Doctor Faustus legends and the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.” Figures from the Seal and Horn of Venus and Later “Rosicrucian” Publications Several of the Venus Seals found on the Horn of Venus appear in a 1614. manuscript by Johann Baptista Grofchedel, and are Cae in 1620 by Johannes Theodorus de Bry and retitled Magical Calendar. De Bry, the “Palatine publisher” whose house also put out the beautifully illustrated works of Robert Fludd and Michael Maier, is made much of in Yates’ dlassic The Rosicrucian Enlightenment,® and, as we'll explore later in the final part of this chapter, his publishing house has also been connected by some to the so-called “Family of Love.” Yates saw Fudd, Maier, and “Rosicrucianism” itself drawing directly upon the works of John Dee.* ‘The Magical Calendar, with its Seals similar to those in Black Venus, comes out in 1620, just after Fludd and Maier. Other images from this (onsecrated Little ticularly the glyphs on the Seal of Venus, appear in the pone Jaca ace aed to Peter de Abano (1250-1316) and translated into English by Robert Turner in 1655. The same glyphs appear in “Dr. Rudd's” “Nine Great Celestial Keys or Angelical Invocations” as part of the Seal of Anael, two 42(Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery others with the discussion of the Olympic Spirit of Venus agaith) and a third with the discussion of the Olympic Spirit of Mercury (Ophiel). It pe with a group of ae that Adam McLean refers to as “The reatises of Dr. Rudd,” likely Thomas Rudd, who published an edition of Dee's Preface to Eudid in 1651 This group of manuscripts copied by Peter Smart in 1714 was bundled with another work attributed to Dee, the Rosie Grucian Secrets, which Vincent Bridges links to the recently published manuscripts rediscovered in Manchester, the Byrom Collection, which had been in the possession of a family related to Dee by marriage” Thus we have several possible connections between the images and Dee’s magickal system, though all are indirect, and could still indicate a pelosi writer using names and images that the writer knew were associated with the kind of magic done by John Dee. Let's look again at the Seal of Venus, with some parts highlighted: —— BLL $ Y B‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus The upper glyph in each hexagon likely refers to the two Zodiacal signs ruled by Venus: Taurus on the left and Libra on the right. Some infer gcomantic attributions for three of the remaining figures on the right: in the center, (onjuncts, associated with Mercury, Earth, and Virgo; to its left, eAmissi, associated with Venus, Earth, and Taurus; and Puella, associated with Venus, Air, and Libra. This matches Phil Legard’s analysis in the next chapter, and the attributions in Dr. Rudd’s "Nine Great Celestial Keys,” though Rudd calls the glyphs for Venus Kedemel Heasmodel and Kedemel Zuriel instead of eAmissio and Puella.” If we look at the Seas of Anael from Turner's 1654 translation of the Heptamern, which are the same ones reproduced by Dr. Rudd in his “Nine Great Celestial Keys of Angelic Invocation’: Anal 9 &% =m % Sy) Sagum 44‘Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery And compare them again to the Seal of Venus with similar glyphs highlighte: 0) ZS GL $ Y We see that all of the glyphs from de Abano as translated by Turner and reproduced by Rudd are in our Seal except for the long drawing in the Jower center. These glyphs also have alchemical correspondences, while the finaly onthe right hexagon may refer to conection between diferent parts of the kamea or magic square of Venus. The lower middle Anael abr from de Abano - Turner - Rudd matches one of the eons on Horn. In fact, if we take that drawing from the “Horn of Venus” and put it next to one of the drawings from the Sea, it matches almost exactly to of the Seals of Anael from another of the works mentioned above, Grofchedel’s 1614 Magical (alendar. 45‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus From the Horn and Seal in the Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus: ee? & From Magical Calendar: B = It takes little imagination to see direct sexual reference in these sigils - one of the glyphs for Anael actually looks similar to the Egyptian hieroglyph for fo f course, within the Rosicrucian alchemical tradition, hiero, image a metaphors and symbols are extremely common, though rarely this Parts of each of the glyphs on the Horn also ppear in the “Horn of Venus” as parts of the six Spirit Seals, but beyond making this simple observation, it is harder to track where those Calls and their Seals may have come from, and how or if they appear in later works. Chapters two and three will look at this in greater detail. The Rosicrucian oat ts mentioned above could all arguably show the influence of John Dee. The connection between Dee and the later German 46Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery documents which show magickal elements from the “Horn of Venus,” as elaborated upon in chapter two, is much more problematic. “Black” Venus? Yet if those aren't enough tantalizing connections to fragmented traditions, the mystery in the manuscript itself swirls around the Black Venus to whom it is consecrated. Trying to trace connections here takes us backwards in time rather than forwards, and perhaps into folk rather than aristocratic tradition. Could the Black Venus at the center of the manuscript be something different than it seems? Most obviously, why is this Venus called “Black,” when in all known manuscripts, she is never drawn as dark and is usually as ivory-white as the statue carved by Pygmalion in Ovid's Metamorphoses? We could attribute this simply to the style of Venusian representation in Renaissance art, though none of the famous Renaissance representations of Venus use the adjective “dark,” or “black,” then Dae an image which is not. In any case, our “Black Venus” is supposed to be a talismanic image, not a painting. Talismanic images actually have a folk history closer to that of medieval sculpture and engraving than to Renaissance high art, and we can easily find many “dark” statues, especially “Black Madonna” statues, created and revered in many places throughout Europe before the Renaissance. One 47‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus wonders if the (onsecrsted Little Book of Black Venus could in some way be drawing on the same tradition catalogued by Ean Begg in The (ult of the Black Virgin.” Begg argues that the Black Virgin cult “seems to point in the direction of two alternatives in particular. One, the alternative church of Mary Magdalene, James, Zacchaeus, Gnosticism, Cathars, Templars, and alchemists . . . [which] contains much of the wisdom of the old religions as well as certain new phenomena that reached consciousness in the twelfth century, such as the Holy Grail and courtly love.” Secondly, he thinks that the dark Mary may stand for a “heretical Judaism” where Christian and Jew are one.?” In The Hebrew Goddess, Rafael Patai notes that the Matronit, the fourth being of the Kabbalistic tetrad which corresponds to some extent with the Gnostic aeons, in popular terms shares many characteristics with ancient love and war goddesses from Inanna and Ishtar to Venus, Diana, and Aphrodite. In Gnostic writings, she also parallels many of the medieval representations of Mary: “Mary, like the Matronit, was considered to have taken over the royal, governing, and controlling functions of God to the extent that her sovereignty actually eclipsed that of God."** But while the ‘Virgin Mary's purity and chastity are interwoven, the Matronit, as she becomes the “Matronit-Shekhina, the medieval Kabbalistic Goddess figure,” remains, like the ancient love goddesses, both pure and sexualized. She is the reflection of the “dark” energies of Binah giving form to the universe, expressed as the reflection of the Sephira Binah in the path of Tan, uniting Yesod to Malkuth. To non-Kabbalists, She is most easily conceptualized as a dark Goddess. 48— The most intense concentration of Black Madonnas are in the south of France, springing from the same cultural well as the first Arthurian stories of the Magic Hom in the Old French Lai Car, as well as the primary text of the Kabbalah, the Babir.** Could our Black Venus be a survival of that 12" century syncretic tradition? If so, finding texts will be even more difficult than piecing together the later Rosicrucian stream, since the last likely public surfacing, among the 1th century Cathar Perfecti, was very literally burned out of existence. If this tradition existed at all in Dee's time, its members survived by appearing to be something else. Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery As noted, the “Black Venus” on the different frontispieces of the Little Book certainly appears to be something else. Yet we also need to at least try to take the manuscript on the Solomonic terms it seems garbed in, and try to understand it within that tradition, before leaping to other readings. At the same time, we must recognize how easily a balist and a Solomonic magician could conflate the two, remembering especially the bride of Solomon in “Song of Song” 15, who even in the ing James version is “black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon?” We also must notice that all early versions of the manuscript refer to "Negromancia,” the dark art, which is often a reference to alchemy. (The work of Dee's favorite philosopher, Roger Bacon, and his alchemical di Nicromancia spring to mind.) In the work of John Dee perhaps more than in any other Renaissance magician, the overlap between magic and alchemy seems nearly total. Writers have had much more success seeing possible 49The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus connections between Dee and later works, especially to alchemical Rosicrucian works, than seeing possible connections to an earlier folk tradition few view as alchemic Yet in this writer's opinion, the main significance of The (omsecrated Little Book, of Black Venus may be in how it suggests a bridge between medieval folk magic and later written works. Black Venus's Connection to the Magickal System of Foln Dee Tf we want to speculate about the Black Venus's connection to John Dee, and suspect it could connect Dee to a more feminized and sexualized “dark goddess” tradition, we need to analyze it in terms of Dee's own magick and see if that makes sense. If John Dee were teaching students “Negromanci (as this manuscript implies) in the Solomonic tradition (as this Rite is), in 1580 (the date given on the manuscript), then that means we should be able to explain all of the above elements in terms of Dee's work up to that time. For that reason, we might pay particular attention to Dee's Hiereghphic Monad and the conceptions of alchemy, precessional astronomy, hieros gamos, and sacred geometry contained therein, rather than jumping ahead to his more famous angelic conversations. . . or, if we ju ahead, we should have a reason for doing so. Jorg M. Meier's suggeste date and place of the earliest manuscript (mid-1580's, on the European continent) might be just such a reason. But then, why would the author give the date as June 4, 1580, or is this date totally without significance?‘Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery On the other hand, if we decide this manuscript was not by Dee nor even by one familiar with his work, we can try to place by context and style where, when, and perhaps by whom it was written. Why was the manuscript copied multiple times; why did it influence later works, or did it? It still presents a mystery, though a relatively less important one. In fact, if the whole Rite is explicable and works well as a self-contained albeit pseudoepigraphic Solomonic grimoire, perhaps nothing more need be written, The problem with this approach, as Vincent Bridges and I argue in chapter three, is that the doser one studies it as a Solomonic grimoire, the less sense it makes. The more one tries to connect it to John Dee by followin, the trail of Dee’s manuscript acquisition and publication, and then Dee ant Kelly's angelic conversations, the more the different Black Venus manuscripts start to seem significant in terms of what they point towards, rather than what they on the surface appear to be. In this writer’s opinion, if the (ansecrated Little Book of Black Venus connects to John Dee and his circle even indirectly, the implications are extremely significant: it would mean we have at last found a manuscript that fuses the “high magic” of male Renaissance scholars, artists, magicians, and proto- Rosicrucians like Dee with the so-called “witch cult,” described by Margaret Murray in her controversial 1921 classic The Witch (jult in Western Europe, researched more thoroughly by Carlo Ginzburg in his breakthrough history Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, and described by still others as an amalgamation of indigenous followers of the “old religion,” 5The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus heretical Christians, Jews, Moslems, gypsies, and mystics of various spiritual traditions for whom hiding and passing as whatever was the naling religious faith had become a way of life.” It is hard to know what to these men and women, because they usually call themselves “Christians, while court records call them “witches” or “atheists.” Many writers, Ginzburg included, have noted the almost total disconnect between folk and aristocratic culture, and for that reason do not explore or speculate about any connection between folk ritual and Renaissance magick or achemy. Yet, if the “dark art” practiced by some of these “cultists” was indeed alchemy, of a “school” typified by the writings of Maria the Jewess, Comarius, Hermes, and Cleopatra,** then the iconography of their “dark goddess” — be She Mary, Venus, Diana, Aphrodite, Hecate, or a myriad of others — connects almost seamlessly to that of Isis and the absorption of those Isean symbols into “heretical” traditions that existed for hundreds of years under the thinnest of Christian veneers before being forced underground.’ If that is the tradition “Dee” is drawing upon, then the “bad Latin” of the title (“LIBELLUS VENERI NIGRO SACER,” which grammatically should be nigra instead of nigra) is indeed an inside nod to the tradition where “Nigromancia” or “Negromancia,” the dark art, does not use “dark” pejoratively but as a reference to the art of the black land (Egypt, Al'Khem), or alchemy. 52‘Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Il, PREVIOUS ANALYSES OF THE (CONSECRATED LITTLE BOOK OF BLACK VENCOS Most works on John Dee never mention this work at all. One of the first references is a footnote in Gerald Suster’s book ‘fohn Dee, where Suster considers this one of Dee's later writings but mistranscribes the title as "Juba Veneris (c. 1600) Libellus Veneri nigro Dee.” Until recently, the one and only analysis of (onsecrated Little Book of Black Venus was Jorg M. Meier’s excellent Das Biichlein der Venus (“Libellus Veneris Nigro Sacer”): eine magische Handschrift des 16. brs, which Nancy Turner and | found almost indispensable in making our own translation. Meier compares several versions, the earliest being London's Warburg Institute Ms. FBH 51, then provides a detailed commentary on the text and drawings. He also locates two versions of a text by Joseph Anton Herpentil, Inbegriff der iikernatilichen magie”, that use many “barbarous names” similar to those in the fourth chapter of “Horn of Venus;” and another, der Magia Ordinis Kornreutheri, that uses one of them. Finally, Meier analyzes the ritual structure of the “Horn of Venus” compared to that of five other manuscripts (including the three just mentioned), and finds some similarities.” Meier, like this writer, doubts that the writer was John Dee and that the date of eompoation was 1580. Yet as _Bscudoepigraphy goes, he finds it a very unusual case: the oldest copy, the Warburg manuscript, seems written in Dee's lifetime, and enough of the details match those of John Dee's life and work that the author may well have known Dee. Meier notes that a 3B‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus “counterfeiter” rarely ties himself to a name for no reason, and speculates that Dee could have had some type of invocation similar to this one.” The motives for writing this ritual and putting Dee’s name on it, Meier argues, will more likely be found on the continent from 1583 - 1589 rather than in England. Meier thinks the best hypothesis is that the (onsecrated Little Book, of Black Venus originated on the European continent, specifically ina cece tere country, and was perhaps written by someone who knew Dee well and wished to take advantage of his reputation.” When “Dee” tells his readers that “all evil Daemons still have the names and Signs that were given to them by the Great Creator, and therefore it is necessary to call and force them by using the same means by which we can also call the good eAngels, as I have shown and taught in other places,” it seems to allude to his famous angelic workings with Edward Kelly and perhaps to teaching those who witnessed similar workings, even though these were supposed to be strictly angelic rather than goetic workings. The types of s used seem to come from 1585 or 1586. Meier also believes that Dee’s “Actions with Spirits” were fundamentally incompatible with the type of magi used in (onsecrated Little Book, of Black, Venus, despite the writer’s knowledge of much of Dee’s magi induding the special role played by Anael in Dee's cosmology. Rather than trying to hurt Dee, Meier suggests the writer may have just wanted to make a profit. In any case, while Meier does not want to say the manuscript absolutely had to be written during Dee’s six-year stay on the continent, that seems to him the most likely hypothesis.** 54(Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery According to the artist and calligrapher DARLENE, the handwriting of the Warburg manuscript almost certainly isn’t Dee's, and, based on the style of pene ceed, its very unpolished penmanship appears to be poor German calligraphy rather than poor English clip» Yet somehow this pesca made its way back to England. The carliest copy of the Magical Calendar, whose sigils for Anael appear almost identical to some of the images on the Seal of Venus, also appears first in England, though it is published on the continent. Several writers, Meier among them, have tried to analyze the (onsecrated Little Book of Black Venus as a piece of cryptography, but to no avail The only other analysis this writer is aware of was one started by Phil Legard back in 2001 and posted as a newsgroup discussion question. When I contacted him in 2006, I learned he’d expanded that analysis quite a bit, and he graciously offered to let me indude it as an appendix to my first artide on this subject,* then here as a chapter. Like Meier, Legard places the work within the tradition of the Key of Solomon and Agrippa, but notes the uniqueness of the Black Venus image. Ill. A CLOSE LOOK AT THE TEXT: BAD LATIN, OR MULTIPLE ALLUSIONS? Let's start by looking at the opening four lines in their Latin original: 5SThe Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Est VENUS a Superis mihi datum nomen in Astris Incola mox Stygius dum TUBA cantat adest Subditus En Damon SIGNI virtute gemiscit Euge! animi mactus victor ab hoste redis. Readers who enjoy scanning Latin poetry may agree that this sounds a bit strained, the word choice awkward, and pronoun references ambiguous. It includes a key word (mox, English “soon”) whose placement depends totally upon understanding the esoteric context. In the final line, which we translated as “Well done! As the victor, infused with glory, you return from the enemy,” the “you” can refer to either the reader, or Venus, or both. Let’s stop a moment and think about why “John Dee” puts these lines into the working, and for that matter, why the working itself is in Latin. Of course Latin is the language of most alchemical texts, but beyond that, it seems to afford this writer a way of safely conveying very “packed” concepts impossible to communicate in English, because, by pun and allusion ‘one could, in Latin, convey ideas that had become heretical. Latin demon, for instance, could retain the meaning brought in from ancient Greek mythology, of a divinity, genius, or tutelary deity; or of a supernatural being which serves as an intermediary between gods and humans. In Renaissance English, “demon” already meant mainly an evil spirit, and by extension the gods and goddesses of the older “demonic” religions. If one still believes in those old religions, or sees no conflict between those “pagan” beliefs and being “Christian,” one might prefer the word demon. 56‘Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Nowhere is the poet's ability to convey complex ideas via what seems awkward word choice more evident than in the title of the Rite itself, Tuba Venerit, which can only imperfectly be translated as “Horn of Venus.” First, consider the choice of twba instead of commu. Tuba usually refers to the straight bronze war-trumpet of the ancient Romans, while a curved horn, like that shown in the Rite, would be a commu, Here’s how the tuba or “trumpet” appears in a French version of the Key of Solomon: ” “Elohim Gibor, Diew des eArmées” (Elohim Gibor, Lord of Armies) reminds us of the familiar Kabbalistic associations with the Sephira Geburah or Severity, induding its attribution to Mars. The energies associated with the reflection of the sphere of Mars onto the path of Peh — often called Victory (Netzach) over Splendor (Hod) — might give one pause if we consider what a large-scale working involving the Kabbalistic path of Peh might entail. In Tarot decks then and now this path is usually shown as the “Blasted Tower.” The path of Peh, the lowest of the reciprocal paths on the Tree, is often described as “Victory over Splendor,” the alchemical transformation where the energies of Mercury (Hod), propelled by those of Mars (the path of Peh) act upon Venus (the Sephira Netzach). That seems alluded to in the straight Roman war trumpet pictured above. 57‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Now, let’s look at our curved “Horn of Venus:” This Horn looks more like a cornu, the curved horn of the “cornucopia” or horn of plenty. The engravings on the left Horn are similar to some of those on the Seal of Venus, except for the second long glyph, which as we'll see later is a glyph for Anael. The right Horn has the Seals of the six spirits. If we count one for the symbols associated with Venus (on the left) ie the six spirits, we have seven, the number usually associated with Venus and the number of planets in Renaissance astrology. In contrast to 58Chapter 3: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery the blast up the tree announced by the French Trumpet, the energy seems to run through our “Horn of Venus” the other way, as a lightning flash bringing “above” to “below”: Venus (Netzach) gives motive or force through Mars (path of Peh) to Mercury (Hod.)~ Imagine an influx of artistic inspiration and knowledge of what form to put it in, and you'll have the idea. The last line of the poem also implies that after we have sounded the Horn and brought down the energy, we'll be able to again connect “below” with “above:” “Well done! As the victor, infused with glory, you {Venuss or the magician/alchemist, having invoked the energies of Venus; or both, the magician/alchemist while evoking Venus) return [ascend] from the enemy.” So why doesn’t “Dee” just say cornu? “Dee” likely muddies his Latin and uses twba rather than cornu so his Horn dearly refers to the Tree of Life in multiple traditions. Juba stressed on the first syllable sounds like tubab in the Koran, which may come from the Aramaic word for “beatitude” (tuba) or the Hebrew word for prosperity (tobab), basically img ying a state of having good things flow into one’s life and being happy. The tuba-tree, to Moslem and especially Sufi poets, refers to a tree growing in Paradise where the Simorgh bird (often translated into English as “Phoenix”) nests. In writers like Hafiz, we find the recurrent image of the soul as a bird resting on the tuba tree, descending into material existence, and then returning to the tree to find peace before descending again. By choosing tubs instead of comm, “Dee” provides a governing image instructing an informed reader to understand the “Horn of Venus” in terms of Kabbalah and suggesting that this same governing image could bring peace or grace to those using it. 59‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Language Play and the Hieroglyphic Monad Looking at all of the language play contained within the choice of this one word, Tuba, shows a writer who is exceptionally well-educated in multiple sacred traditions. John Dee was one of, though certainly not the ay Renaissance magician capable of such a range. Perhaps it is time to look at these puns in terms of Dee's most famous pre-1580 work, the Hieragbphic Monad, and see what happens. As we do, let’s speed ahead to the second word in the title, Veneris, Venus in the genitive form. In this case, it is also the expected Latin word choice and case. But if we take Juba as a nod to Kabl and the Tree of Life, and understand the related underpinnings of Dee's Hieroghphic Monad, we may be directed to the multiple puns on veneris. We find this especially in Theorem XV, where Dee not only puns on mons veneris in discussing the “most secret mysteries,” but makes up a name, gignitivus, for the genitive case so it sounds more like “generative,” then says the Greek dipthong which looks the same as a Bull, or Taurus, is almost always “generative. Whether the “Horn of Venus” is by Dee or someone claiming to be him, the sexual allusion in the Rite’s title seems obvious, especially when we look at the Venus sigils. If the author is familiar with a particular understanding of Theorem XV of the Hieraghphic Monad, we may have a much more complicated, and heretical, text than it first seems.” Tf we look back at the drawing of the Zuba/Horn, we also notice that it seems to have problems with artistic perspective. If this is two sides of the 60Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery same horn, they can’t be shown side-by-side pointing in the same dieting, 2 they are in dhe line drawings inthis manocip. Might this be a “wink” to an informed reader, to not take the rendering of Venus too literally, cither? Or just an indication of a poor copy? Our interpretation will go in two different ways here, depending on whether we decide to interpret the “Horn of Venus” in light of the Hieroglyphic Monad, or not. In this writer's opinion, if we do not, we are left with a surface analysis of the Rite’s magickal components and no real answers concerning its intent or why it was copied multiple times. If we do interpret the “Horn of Venus” in light of the Hieraghphic Monad, we have to understand the Hieroghphic Monad, which elsewhere has been described as one of the most enigmatic works in the history of western Hermeticism.®” Few have made a thorough study of it, and the fewer still who daim to understand it, like J. W. Hamilton Jones, do not re-explain it in any dear way. More conservative writers such as C.H. Josten and Peter French agree that the Monad was once accompanied by an oral teaching since lost. Most who study early Rosicrucian works like those discussed earlier in this chapter note the appearance of the Monad glyph in many key works, such as the 1616 Chrmial Wedding of Christian Rosenkgeutz, , Jacob Boehem’s 1625 Qlavis and Ananasius Kirscher’s 1650 Obeliscus Pamphlicus. Frances Yates goes so far to argue that the “more secret philosophy” behind theThe Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Rosicrucian manifestos “was the philosophy of John Dee, as summed up in his Monas Hieroghphica Hieroglyphic Maned-* Because it is within this same early 1600 “Rosicrucian” duster of documents that we find Venus Seals similar to those in The (onsecrated Little ‘Book of Black Venus, we might at the very least want to posit an author familiar with Dee’s “Monad. Also, we might note that Dee, in his dedication to are Maximillian, says that his Monad glyph will be “Mathematically, Magically, Cabalisticaly, and Anagogically Explained;” therefore, when writers such as C.H, Josten say Dee's real subject in the Hieroghphic Monad is alchemy,” they are thus implicitly defining Dee’s alchemy as a set of mathematical, magickal, and Kaballistic transformations concerning the deepest of anagogies, or mysteries. J. Alan Moore and I have argued that two of those core mysteries concerned precessional astronomy and tantric gnosis.” With this in mind, let’s return to the Horn in this Rite. As drawn, the curved Horn of Venus suggests the shofar horns of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud. The shofar, traditionally made of a ram’s horn, is sounded to announce the New Moon and feasts, and as per Leviticus 23:24, announces Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the seventh month of Tishri, traditionally the beginning of the Jewish New Year, and the Day of Atonement. If we return to the eat i opening, we see that the horn as a shofar also resonates against the odd Latin phrasing Seopusque Litelli which comes right after “John Dee's” greeting, in the line translated as “It is not our OnChapter 1: Black Venus and 2 Magickal Mystery intention or the goal of our little book to write about the different Negromantic Arts, their definitions, subdivisions, methods or even their various practices of which Views and Books many have already written about.” Weve translated “Scopusque Libelli” as “Views and Books.” English scope comes from the Latin seopus, which usually means a goal, view, or target. It comes into Latin from ancient Greek, a lan, ¢ knew well — just as he would know the ancient Greek shopus in Biblical texts carried a built-in allusion to Mount Scopus in the Holy Land, famed for its strategic view of Jerusalem, which to some Christians might also suggest Jerusalem of Revelations. How are we to reconcile these apocalyptic allusions with the tantric connotations of the title? Anagogy, revelation, and apocalyptic thought are to some thinkers different ways of expressing the same thing, inasmuch as “apocalypse” comes from the Greek apokslepsis, meaning “to uncover or disclose.” Ifa reader entertains the possibility that the core teachings of Dee’s “Monad ‘are precessional astronomy and tantric gnosis, and that an understanding of the Monad may be central to understanding Black Venus, then in this allusion to the shofar we are simply finding the same symbolism in the word-play as exists in Dee's Monad. The lels continue. Let's return to the opening verse’s last line, “Incola ius dum TOBeA cantat adest,” translated as “Soon to be a Stygian Sojourner, she appears when the Horn sounds.” Shins refers to the underworld and puns on stiga or “witch,” and suggests that Venus, or the energies associated with Venus, will go underground until this working is 6%The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus undertaken. It also directs us to an ancient astrological understanding of “night,” when the Sun was conceived as going “underground” or “through the underworld,” to be reborn the next day. In a sense, because of its smaller orbit, Venus as viewed from Earth seems to follow the Sun through the underworld: Venus appears in the sky as the evening star, then Vanishes behind the Sun, reappears as the morning star, fades as the Sun brightens, disappears as it reaches occultation, then reappears once more as the evening star. “Soon to be a Stygian Sojourner” — soon to disappear into the “underworld” behind the Sun — makes more sense than putting mox with the independent clause (“She soon appears when the Horn sounds”) because that makes it sound as if the Horn of Venus could speed the planet’s journey. Yet in terms of regular astrology, the line remains problematic even without mox: if we associate the Horn with Mars, we can't say Venus appears because of Mars. It makes no astronomical sense, then or now. If we use Dee's Hieraghphic Monad 2s a guide, we'll find associations — or transformations, really — that do make more sense. The more one understands the Hieraghphic Monad, the more one sees the geometric and other correspondences resonating against those of Black Venus. For instance, Theorems XII-XV show the geometries of different planets as peices upon the Tree of Life, and we understand that the glyphs for oth Venus and Taurus may encode ideas beyond those signified by the words, 64Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery We've already noted the puns on veneris in Theorem XV; now let’s look at what this theorem says and shows about the glyph of the Bull, Tauri: es Elements Sol Aries Exhated The Hieroglyphic Monad Theorem XV “Consequently, we suggest to philosophers that they examine the labors of the SUN and the MOON around the earth; for instance, in what way the moon, while the SOLAR radiance is focused upon Aries, receives a new, dignity of light in the nearest eign (omnely Taurus) and is EXALTED above its innate powers. The old ones explained this proximity of the LUMINARIES (the most notable of all) by creating a certain mystical character with the distinguished name of TAURUS. This is very well known, in fact, to be the EXALTATION of the MOON and has been handed down all the way from the first age of the Human Race (among the teachings of the astronomers). Yet only those understand the mystery, who have become the absolute high-priests of the mysteries. For a similar reason, TAURUS is said to be in the HOUSE 65‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus indeed the house of pure and fertile conjugal love, since “Nature rejoices in Nature,” as the great Ostanes concealed in his most, secret mysteries.“ The Hieroghphic Monad is in Latin and one could, if one had world cao yh and time, @ through the above translation almost word-by-word. eaaftietsamnaesettercil play we're seeing in Black Venus. For now, ‘hough it's enough to note how the horns of Taurus remind us of the horns of Pan, and contain the glyphs for both Sun and Moon, and so snegest a hieros gamos near the top of the Tree. If one looks at the Taurean lyph in the Monad and projects it onto the Tree of Life, centering the jot on Tiphareth, the Sua/Son’s circle encompasses all of the Sephiroth but the three Supernals and Malkuth and correlates to the Zauir eAnpin, “the Son of the concealed Father,” the Logos or Heavenly Man, eAdam Kadmon, The horns spring from the non-Sephira, Daath, and go up to efima and ofite Ein. This image, looked at, strily from the_ perspective of Kabbalah, becomes a glyph of the fall and the redemption. Taurus, an Earth sign ruled by Venus and perhaps the most sensual sign of the Zodiac, is exalted high on the Tree. epee shows the conjugal union of the Sephiroth Chockmah and Binah as efima and Abba Elohim, the Supernal Father and Mother whose horns project upwards from Da’ath. This union manifests the circle, Zauir eAnpin, the Son that encompasses all the Sephira below the Supernals except Malkuth. Via the action shown by this glyph, the conjugal union of the Supernals reflected in the Son, the Universe (Malkuth) manifests. 66Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery If we put all of this together and apply it to the Bull Horn in Black Venus, we have correspondences to manifestation on the Tree, and to both Aries, the ram whose horn makes the Jewish shofar, and the Taurean bull horn required for this working. In Latin, efries, the first of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and “ram” are the same word, both associated with Ares, the Greek God of War renamed Mars by the Romans. While the vernal equinox today falls in Pisces, during Roman times (approximately one zodiacal age ago, when the constellations and signs as designated by Hipparchus all matched up) the vernal equinox and the constellation Aries fell in the sign of Aries. Similarly, in Latin Zawri, or Taurus, the second of the twelve signs of the zodiac, and “bull” are the same word, so the horn of the Bull required for this working automatically puns on the sign or Age of Taurus. The better one understands Theorem XV of the Monad, the easier it becomes to interpret Black Venus's opening lines. This Theorem fuses the “mysteries” of tantric eee and precessional astrology in very complex ways which build upon all of the preceding theorems.“*~ Hooking back once more to our line from the pm “Soon to be a Stygian Sojourner, she [Venus] appears when the Horn sounds” makes sense if we're talking about precessional rather than yearly astrology, and how those concepts are explicated in the eMonad. . . yet because almost no one still understands the correspondences and transformations in the Hierghphic Monad, most have not noticed those same correspondences here. One of the most common, which has survived into modern esoteric lore, is the projection of the glyph of Venus onto the entire Tree of Life. Using that transformation, 7The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus “Venus” appears when the Horn sounds because she rules the “Horn” — She is the glyph encompassing the entire Tree. If we connect Black Venus to Dee or someone around him who understood his Monad, that person would know that Theorem XV stacks multiple meanings of Tauri and eAries; further, a close study of Theorem XV may even suggest an allusion back to the so-ciled “Age of Taurus,” approximately 5,000 years ago. This was the last age of the Great Goddess cultures in Europe and Mesopotamia and the rise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt.” But making that big of a leap pre-suppoes that the author of Black Venus had access to an extremely rich oral tradition and a very sophisticated understanding of the Hiereghphic Monad, and/or used the awkward Latin etry of someone who did. That may be too many assumptions for some. ‘he poetic allusions in the title and opening lines carry much more of a burden than the Rite itself, and the complex transformations, understandable mainly via references to the Hieroghphic Monad, strain inst what at first ‘ars a straightforward Agri Rite, and ees one we are told we could “iene ecliee asts It is also possible that a writer has taken a title, poem and consecration from elsewhere and copied it onto a much simpler Rite. Yet it is not only the symbolic parallels with the Hierghphic Monad that suggest one needs to look at The (onsecrated Little Book of Black Venus within the framework of precessional astrology. The governing Archangel Anadl 68Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery pushes our interpretation that way as well. In this chapter's final section, welll look at several other contexts we may want to combine with the overt Solomonic magic, in our search for dues about how to determine the possible origin of this manuscript. IV. OTHER CONTEXTS WHICH MAY INFORM THE “HORN OF VENUS” The eAge of Verus, the Obmpic Spirit Aneel, and the Platonic Great Year Precessional astrology in its broadest sense is the astrology of longer world oe measured by observing how different planets precess through the liac. It is also used by some to predict events in those Ages. To calculate where we are in a precessional cyde, one observes the position of the sun’s plane — the ecliptic — on the ee and notes where the ecliptic plane intersects the plane of the celestial equator. Each year, this location moves slightly westward, and it takes about 25,920 years to return to the same location. One precessional cyde is often called one Platonic Great Year, or one Perfect Year, alluding to a famous passage in Plato's Timaeus. In this dialog, mainly one between Socrates and Critias then Socrates and Timaeus, Timaeus describes how the world soul is composed of four elements, how the Creator formed from that soul a perfect body, and how 69‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus that “mixture” or “compound” was then divided into parts according to various ratios, then the parts bent into cirdes, so that, being composed of a perfect Creator, the harmonic intervals of these circles become the moving image of God. In section 38 of Timaeus, we're told that the Sun, Moon, and five other “wandering stars” — the planets — were made to preserve the numbers of time. Recall that Dee is often studied as a Neoplatonist® and would without doubt know this passage and its focus on the seven planets as a way of dividing time. Timaeus never mentions the zodiac, nor does he tells us that this means that one Great Sidereal or “Platonic” Year of the zodiac takes almost 26,000 years, nor that this breaks into twelve astrological ages of about 2160 years, each age corresponding to 30 degrees of precession, nor does he calculate further that it takes 72 years to precess one degree. Timacus assures us that the cycles can be calculated and at some point come into a frre conjunction, but he never says how. The assumption made by many lermeticists is that the most learned people knew, and this knowledge had been handed down from ancient Egypt; in fact, in the Zimaeus, we see the same assumption made by some speakers, though it is not dear whether Plato as a writer agrees with the speakers he has created. Plato is far from the only ancient writer to allude to what we might now call the “Great Year.” Godefroid de Callatay’s eAnnus Platonicus. of study of world oles in Greek, Latin and eArbic sources (1996) saalagnes ancient writers who seem to rely on some sort of “Great Year” doctrine. His Greek and Roman list indudes Plato, Aristotle, the cult of Pythagorus, 70Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Lucretius, Cicero, Varro, Seneca, Tacitus, Plutarch, Vitruvius, Ptolemy, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Macrobius, among others; he also describes the refinements made to these systems as they were written about by later Arab writers. Different Hermetic writers divide the precessional cycle into different ages using many different systems, not only that of the Platonic Great Year. For instance, knowing that Dee believed he lived in the “Age of Venus,” governed by the same Anael to whom Black Venus is consecrated, we might wonder where that Age fits in with Zodiacal Ages like the Ages of Aries, Taurus, or Pisces. “By the Renaissance, what may have been a very precise system to ancient Eqpptians had degenerated to the point that even the smaller solar year calendars were out of whack; we can safely assume that systems dividing the larger cycles also did not agree. While some writers, notably Robert Powell in Hermetic eAstrology (1987), argue that at least one Renaissance astronomer (Tycho Brahe) was using a system almost identical to that of ancient Egypt, most do not. Perhaps we can reverse engineer a better explanation by looking at systems of Ages roughly contemporaneous with or in circulation at the same time as this manuscript. Trithemius, whose Stegenegraphia was greatly prized by Dee, divided time into seven Angelic Ages and based on his system we'd condude that 1580 falls in the Age of the Moon, ruled by Gabriel. The Arbatel of IC ppaishes in Basel in 1575, similarly divides time into seven ages, and tells us each age is 490 years, corresponds to a particular planet, and is ruled by an Olympic Spirit associated with that planet. Much 7The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus later, Dr. Rudd’s “Nine Keys” will combine both, and its still later 3 century copyist (Peter Smart?) says: “Every Olympic Power rules 490 years... Then began Och [Olympic Spirit of the Sun) and continued until the year 1410, and thenceforth Haggith (Olympic Spirit of Venus) ruleth until the year 1900.9 We may wonder how we've gone from a cycle of about 25,920 years to one that seems only 490 x 7, or 3437 years. On a practical level, remember the manuscript comes in the midst of the Protestant Reformation and some, Luther among them, insisted humans had existed for no more than 4,000 years. Others certainly disagreed, but in the climate of the time it was wiser to veil one’s ideas than fight unnecessary battles. Seven ages seems to match Plato’s seven planets dividing time, and if one knows een ra the precession of the Zodiac or Zodiacal ages, it also seems to not cl prevailing theological arguments. The writer of Tbe (onsecrated Little of Black Venus, like Dee, seems to have substituted the more familiar Solomonic Archan for those in the eArbatel, s0 now the “Olympic Spirit” associated with the Age of Venus is Anael, who Dee considers the governing Archangel of the Age of Venus. As noted earlier, this is also the same or very similar to the “ANNAEL” who appears in Dee's first recorded angelic working, in 1581. Given the frequency of Venusian sevens and multiples of sevens in Dee’s Fieve Books of Mystery, or in magickal work generally, one might wonder where the 490 years/age calculation comes from. No one at the time 72Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery explains, but many since have observed that if we take the 25,920 year precessional Great Year and divide it by 490, we'd calculate: 25,920 (one Great Year) / 490 = approximately 52, yielding 52 490-year “weeks” in a Great Year. Curiously, if one looks at texts Dee ap osedly had no access to — Qumranic texts induding Fubilees, the Melchizedek document, the Testament of Levi, the Ethiopic Enoch, and four of the “Psendo-eMoses Texts,” — one will find a similar dating system. Roger Beckwith’s recent detailed analysis of these texts” paints that the no use of 49 year intervals in sacred Jewish historical texts, including the ritual of Jubilee years, were all based on Daniel’s prophecy (Dan 9:24-27) of 70 “weeks,” where one “week” = seven years. Within this system, which Beckwith finds consistently throughout the above texts, 70 “weeks” = 490 years = 10 Jubilees, so one Jubilee = 49 years. Such dating systems are almost always associated with the belief in a coming messith or an apocalypse or both... whether the writers are Hellenistic Jews from 2,000 years ago, like Josephus or Demetrius the Chronographer, or Renaissance physicist/alchemist/astrologer Sir Isaac Newton writing about the prophecies of Daniel. Newton, like some contemporary apocalyptic Christians, wanted to use the same formula to predict the Second Coming.The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Indeed, during the time period the manuscript purports to be written in, Europe and Britain were rife with apocalyptic astrological predictions, predictions that seem to have less to do with “apocalypse” as an unveiling of the mysteries, and more with a coming end to the world. Soln Dee and Fears of the eApocalpse From our opening discussion, we might suspect several reasons why this work was (allegedly) written on June 4, 1580, a Saturday. Recall that the cult of the “Black Virgin” may among other things express how a non- Kabbalist would conceptualize the Sey Phra Bina Binal is the Sphere of Saturn (cling Setrdey), and the reflection of the Sphere of Saturn rules the path of Tau, the path of manifestation from Yesod to Malkuth, Saturday also is the seventh day of the Jewish week, the Sabbath. Yet if we look at Dee’s life and the context of his work in the 1570's, we see he lived in a time concerned about a very different kind of Saturnian manifestation. Many apocalyptic astrological predictions turned around the 1583 Saturn/Jupiter conjunction in Pisces, and the return of the conjunctive cycle of these two planets to the so-called “Fiery Trigon,” starting in May 1584 with a mass conjunction in Aries of Saturn, Jupiter, and every visible das except for the Sun. As Aston describes in her artide, “The Fiery rigon Conjunction: an Elizabethan Astrological Prediction,” this conjunction was thought to mark the end of a very long cyde: “as the astrologers emphasized, there were only six parallels in the history of the 74Chapter 1: Black Venus and 2 Magickal Mystery world,” and only one since the birth of Christ. They assigned these conjunctions to the times of Enoch, Noah, Moses, the ten tribes of Israel, the Roman Empire at Christ's birth, and empire of Charlet Benjamin Woolley notes that many at this time believed that “Ptolemy himself had shown that each conjunction within a trigon was associated with a particular part of the world, and the occurrence within the coming sign of Aries he linked with Britain and Germany.” Recall our earlier discussion of Theorem XV of Dee's Adonad and the exalting of sensual Venus/Taurus over combative Mars/Aries. If the “Horn of Venus” is in any way connected to these larger predictions and to Dee, we start to see the outlines of how it may be an attempt to replace the manifestation of Martial energies with Venusian ones. ¢ also need to note Dee’s obsession with calendrical systems, and how the systems were implicitly connected to prophecy. Queen Elizabeth I's reliance on John Dee for advice, astrological and otherwise, is well known. He picked January 15, 1559 as an auspicious date for her coronation; in 1564 he resented her with his Hieroglyphic Monad and later said she was a “sacred witness” of its secrets; through 1580, he would certainly be the man asked to explain the appearance of a series of unknown objects in the sky, induding what we now call “Tycho's Supernova,” the 1572 supernova in Cassiopeia; and the Comet of 1577. In fact, this comet” was only the most famous of the many astronomical observations that sent many people scurrying for explanations. In one of the more famous sets of calculations, Tycho Brahe determined the comet was %‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus in the sphere of Venus and like many other astronomers, suggested it heralded “warfare, pestilence, and extremes of heat and cold,” 8 well as “changes in religion.” In April 1580, an earthquake shook London. When the Crown commissioned a report that same year on the possible uses of “mirrors and asses,” the two leading figures named were Dee and his protégée, homas Digges.” Yet Dee’s suggestions for a “British Empire” and his role as an advisor to explorers searching for a Northwest Passage seemed to collapse this same year. In 1580 then 1583, Elizabeth came to Dee for a different sort of advice: about whether or not to marry the Duke of Anjou. Dee's comments about the Duke's prospects ~ “biothanatos” — seemed to presage Anjou’s death the next year. From 1580 on, as it became more and more dear that Elizabeth would never marry (and that the zealous Protestants in England would not stand for her marrying a Catholic), the exoteric Moon/Venus Cult of the Virgin Queen takes off in earnest.” The public cult of a “white Virgin,” which portrayed the Queen as Astraca, Eliza Triunphans, Diana, or Venus- ‘Virgo, makes a major iconographic shift from years before, and some have even argued that Elizabeth’s famous 1559 speech dedaring she would never marry “except to her kingdome” was reverse engineered after 1580.” But the images of Elizabeth as Diana, Cynthia, or any of a variety of other syntheses of Moon/Venusian Goddesses of Love and War, and Protectresses of Virginity, could not dissolve the religious conflicts across the country nor calm the expectation of war. 76Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Several astrological tracts in England predicted the end of the world, most notably those of Richard Harvey and Robert Tanner. Tanner announced that the conjuction of Saturn and Jupiter “doeth marveilously agree with the famous prophesie of Elias, & many other places of scriptures, of the latter dayes of the worlds destruction to be neere at hande, & that the coming of our Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ to iudgement, will not be long.” Both in England and on the continent, 1588 was pegged as the most likely end date,” though the 1588 almanacs themselves differed by country in how they expressed it. In Amsterdam, for instance, we can still locate many, many, 1588 almanacs, most of which have an apocalyptic spin buoyed by plenty of gruesome details. In the Amsterdam almanacs, the earth opens up repeatedly, blood flows in every direction, the sky opens when the earth doesn’t, pestilence sweeps in from one way, terrible storms from another, and troops from another. But in English almanacs, the tone is very subdued, and not many details or specific predictions are given, Physical copies of the almanacs themselves, for 1588, are very hard to find. One of them which efrmada author Garrett Mattingly takes as typical is that of Walter Gray, who writes that many events will Eevpes which “purposely are omitted in good consideration,” then adds, “God almighty who, only knoweth what shall come to pass, turn all evil away from us. Amen.” While even learned astronomers like Tycho Brahe and John Dee combined. astronomy and predictive astrology, their astrology was far, far more complex than that which circulated in the popular culture of the era. As 7‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus one fairly simple example, John Dee likely looked at a solar eclipse as the union of Sun and Moon, and therefore a very auspicious Hermetic hieros gamos, His understanding of a lunar edipse would be much more difficult to try and explain, but would certainly involve understanding the myriad of other Seennaaeas and Earth transformations in the Hieroglyphic Monad. Yet most English citizens, living as they were in a country whose ruler ‘was sometimes associated with Moon Goddesses like Diana, likely saw in this same lunar phenomenon the possible “eclipse” of their Queen or country. In 1588, almanac writers noted two eclipses of the moon, the second falling in the sign of Virgo two weeks before the Queen's birthday. Mattingly notes that this “awful conjunction must have been evident to every dabbler in astrology in her kingdom.” We don’t know what John Dee's 1588 predictions were. From 1580 on, his focus shifted away from optics, mathematics, geography, and advising the Crown to searching for a stronger magical lever. December 22, 1581, via his scryer Barnabus Saul, he recorded an angelic conversation with “ANNAEL,” and writes that this is the spirit or intelligence governing the whole world. Just three months later he and Edward Kelly began their ae workings, which turn into the primary texts of “Enochian” magic. Most who study these texts are interested in them for that reason, rather than how they do or don’t prophesy the future. Dee and Kellys workings continued until the end of 1588, the date so many sages had announced was the end of the world. It was the most triumphant year of Elizabeth's reign, the defeat of Spain's “Invincible 7BChapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Armada.” The Dees and Kellys finished their ickal project and parted company in Trebona: the Dees returning to aa in poverty; Sir Edward Kelly, who reportedly had demonstrated how to turn lead into gold, becoming for a few short years the alchemical star of the continent. While his disenchantment with Kelly is well known, Dee's diary entries from 1588 suggest that he believed whatever it was they were doing had succeeded. it were they doing, and does the “Horn of Venus” connect to this in any way? Weil return to this question near the end of chapter three. English and Continental Familists, or “The Family of Love” The 1580 date may also be significant if looked at in the context of the so- called “Family of Love,” a fellowship started by Hendrik Nicaes in 1540 that by 1580 was present in the Netherlands, Germany, France, England and Spain. Many w writers have suggested Dee's likely involvement with the “Family of Love.” Frances Yates says, “we know that the Family of vel at a scser society, which undoubtedly had a real existence and ization, are wing out of the situation in the Netherlands in the late century. We know many people were members of this sect or society, which allowed its members to belong ostensibly to any religious denomination whilst secretly maintaining their affiliation with the Family.”The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Many of Dee's associates outside of England were Familists: Antwerp printer Christopher Plantin (who published the works of Nidaes), mapmaker ‘Abrcham Ortelius, the Birkmanns, booksellers from Cologne who had a store in London. Others likely were, and knew others who were or likely were. Take Johannes Theodorus de Bry as a starting point, the publisher who put out the Magical (alendar whose images dosely match some in the “Horn of Venus.” De Bry had close ties to Niclaes’s publisher Plantin, both of whom had ties to the Frankfurt printer Wechel, who reprinted Dee’s Hieroghphic Monad in 1591, fprauzied Giordano Bruno with a place to stay, and published some of Bruno's more interesting geometric drawings. Or consider the Polish prince Albert Laski, who arrived in London in 1583 at about the same time as Bruno and left with the Dees and Kellys not long after: one of his relatives, Johannes a Lasko, lived in Emden, a town which “had become the center of Familism ever since the movement's founder, Hendrik Nidaes, settled there.”** The English “Family of Love” was not nearly so cosmopolitan as its continental counterparts, and John Dee may have been one of, if not the only, English scholar who could have easily moved back and forth between Antwerp and London Familists.° We don’t know much about the actual beliefs of the “Family of Love” because they tended to dissemble when questioned, but their quest for “Perfectability” and illumination echoes that of the “Perfecti” from three centuries past, just as the name seems to hearken back to Eleanor of Aquitaine’s “Court of Love.”Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Familists believed in interpreting Biblical passages — induding the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus — mystically and allegorically rather than literally, believed in a mystical transformation of the flesh, and believed in the “mutual incorporation or implanting of God and human, to the point where an effective unity was achieved,” in effect, they believed in the practice of bieros gamos. By the 1560s, a second generation of Familists was growing up “in the Service of the Love,” and children may have been “nourished up” by being sent to live with other Familist households. Christopher Marsh, in The Family of Love in English Society 1550-1630, traces the fellowship’s practice of marrying within the group, and notes the “prominent involvement of women within the Family. There must have been difficulties finding available partners, but these were minimized by an impressive readiness on the part of members, particularly female members, to depart the valags or towns in which they had lived. . . to enter spiritually suitable relationships.” Whit seems like rather large penance between spouses to us seemed unremarkable to them. When the spouse of a Familist died, the widow or widower usually remarried as soon as possible.” John Dee's marriages followed that pattern. We know little of his first two wives, except that after each one died, it was not long before he remarried. His third wife, Jane Fromond, from Cheam, aged 22 years to Dee's 50, was from a family that appeared to be of the “old religion.” (If not, the Fromonds seemed to know an unusual amount about raising exotic plants: one of the earliest known lists of herbs “necessary for a garden,” L_ 81The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus induding a few imported from hundreds of miles away and a garnish called “Cresse of Boleyn,” was compiled for Thomas Fromond, likely Jane’s grandfather.) Especially for women of the so-called “witch cult,” or who maintained older pagan practices under the veneer of Christianity, the Family provided as safe and tolerant a society as could be found in Elizabethan England, and like Dee himself sought an all-encompassing theology. No one—except perhaps those of us reading over the (onsecrated Little Book, of Black, Verus—knows anything about what the Family of Love's secret practices were. Thomas Middleton, in his play The Family of Love (1604) satirizes the fellowship as a dosed society of free-love hypocrites busily going to “the Family” meetings for exercises and giving each other secret signs. A. 1641 satire of Family meetings described them being held in the Surrey woods and consisting of “obscene readings from Virgh exaltations of Cupid, communal meals, and, of course, sex.” By that time, the Family of Love had been effectively driven out of England. But in the first ten years of Elizabeth I’s reign, the time she appeared to rely on Dee most for advice, they lived in relative peace. In fact, Elizabeth’s court and eae her Yeoman of the Guard seemed populated by members of the Family of Love. By the end of the 15708, Herniists. at conrt may have included the Keeper of the Royal Armoury at East Greenwich, one or both of the Yeomen of the Jewel House, five of the Yeomen of the Guard, and one of the Gentlemen Pensioners. The Yeomen of the Guard, in particular, controlled access to 82Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery the Queen, and in exchange, she “fed them, dothed them, lodged them, and paid them.” To the increasing numbers of zealous Protestants, the daily dose relationship between Elizabeth and her Family of Love Yeomen must have been “galling in the extreme."?” Added to this, two of her suitors had Familist associations: Erik XIV of Sweden had chanson books for Elizabeth bound by Christopher Plantin, the Antwerp Familist printer, and when Elizabeth resumed marriage negotiations with the Duke of Anjou in 1579, she may have known, through Dee, that several members of the Duke's ntourage had close ties to the Family of Love on the continent. Many historians believe the high treason charges aginst Edmund Campion and other Jesuits in 1580- were fueled by Protestant conservatives to incite paranoia, especially in light of the Queen signing a “marriage treaty” with Anjou in 1581. Now we can add another dimension to the Consecrated Little Book of Black, Venus's alleged date of 1580. For the Family of Love in England, 1580 was. the year the crackdown began, connected however strangely to Elizabeth's ampopilar courtship of the Duke of Anjou and the easy access some men in the Family of Love had to the Queen herself. Marsh argues that “the criticism of the Family was to a certain extent something rather like displaced, even subconscious criticism of Elizabeth,” especially a fear that she might share the views of her Yeomen. What if her philosopher and advisor John Dee was also a member of the “Family of Love”? Like some of her Yeomen, he was soon to be gone. &‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus The 1580 date could have been reverse engineered to point to this crackdown, or be one date this Rite was actually practiced | by London Eumilists. If the Consecrated Little Book, of Black Venus in any way draws upon Familist rituals done through 1580, these Rites obviously were not te ing about the religious tolerance which would have been the “treasure” e Family of Love wanted. ‘\V. HYPOTHESES FOR FURTHER STUDY As Nancy Turner and I have noted in our translation, the oldest manuscript, the Warburg manuscript, likely dates to about 1600 plus or minus 20 years, so 1580 is at the very outside edge of possible dates. The calligraphy is German, not Engl While John Dee could easily have taken a still earlier version of this Rite with him when he and his family, the Kellys, and Count Laski left for Poland in 1580, someone other than Dee had to have copied it, and brought it back to England. Who? Answering this sends us to the place and time Meier argued was the most likely for Warburg manuscript’s composition: to the mid-1s80s in a German-speaking countrys in this case, Bohemia. Could it have been copied by or given to some of the other English visitors to the castle in Trebona: Edward Dyer, Thomas Kelly, or one of the Garland brothers? Could a version have remained with Edward Kelly, accounting for his references to “The Sounding of the Trumpet” in his later alchemical “Stone of the Philosophers” treastise... or at the least, could they be drawing on 84Chapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery a similar set of correspondences? That might well explain why the later versions, all of which appear on the continent, seem connected to a different tradition. Part of this ieee must be missing, just as part of the Rite itself seems missing, as if it were written as a tease for someone who already knew what he or she is looking at. If we do more than examine the Rite’s pape elements at face value, we have to fill in parts of some sort of underground tradition. Take a leap for a moment, and consider this hypothesis: what if the “Horn of Venus” embodies some remnant of a much older ritual, hearkening back to a 12" century or earlier synthesis of heretical Christianity, Kabbalah, Sufism, and indigenous Goddess religions? If such Rites still existed three centuries later, they very likely had degenerated over time. If one reads over some of the “barbarous names,” they sound like nothing so much as names filtered through a Semitic language (be it Arabic or some other) that aren't Semitic in origin. Suppose some version of a Rite like the “Horn of Venus” was received or written by Dee sometime during or after he wrote the Hieraghphic Monad but before 1580. Perhaps he might have tried to explain it to a few Family of Love friends... but many of the allusions, especially those involving the Kabbalah, Sufism, or oral teachings accompanying his own Moned, likely wouldn’t be understood by most English Familists, and those who did understand it would not need to write the explanation down, anymore 85‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus than Dee’s initiates or later Rosicrucians wrote down explanations of the Hiereghphic Monad. Their ultimate understanding of what the “Horn” and “Venus” were might connect more to ideas encoded in the Monad than to Solomonic magic. That is, the entire grimoire might be a blind for some other teaching. Let’s bring in another, somewhat complementary hypothesis. John Dee had connections to learned individuals on the European continent far beyond most of his countrymen. Suppose, as he collected old documents for his library, he came across part of this Rite — say, the six Spirit Seals and the barbarous names that none have yet explained — and did not understand its details, but saw how it could fit within his own system of correspondences? Might he not do what many Kabbalists did from the a century on, and try to i aoe the system by applying his knowled, sacred correspondences in Hebrew? We can find many, many examples oF Kabbalists correcting other writers “mistakes” in Hebrew based on their different understanding of Kabbalah. We also knew that Dee, searching as he was for an “Adamic” language, would likely not change names he did not understand. As the Dees and Kellys journeyed on the continent from 1583-1589, their main contacts likely were continental Familists. But their travels took them to cities with large Jewish populations, and it’s inconceivable that John Dee, the “Christian Kabbalist,” would not have met with them. Most who study his life assume, for instance, that Dee met with Rabbi Judah Loew, theChapter 1: Black Venus and a Magickal Mystery Kabbalist who created a Golem to defend Prague's Jewish quarter, even though there’s no record of it. Let's hypothesize a bit further, that John Dee and Edward Kelly could have encountered the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, whose practical Kabbalah was explicitly tantric and focused on the idea that a chosen few people could literally heal the world. Though conventional wisdom says that Luria’s teachings would not yet have traveled from the Galilean city of Safed, where he died in 1572 at only 38 years of age, to northern Europe, we know oral teachings can travel faster than printed ones, and in chapter three we'll suggest a possible route of transmission. The Black Venus in our working would become the Shekineh if Lurianic Kablalism is superimposed over the Rites the alchemical intent the same 28 a Lurianic Kabbalist’s focus on tiqqun, metempsychoses and redemption. If we look at The Consecrsted Little Book, of Black Venus through the added lens of Lurianic Kabbalah, as we'll do in chapter three, we'll have a pretty good iden of what bus been left ont and whye but well abo have » Rite could not have taken this form until the mid-1s80s, the years Meier mentions in his analysis. That would place the Consecrated Little Book of Black, Venus's composition right in the midst of John Dee and Edward Kelly's angelic workings. If one dates the manuscript this way, it must predate the Magical (jlendar rather than being influenced by it. If one takes the “1600 +/- 20 ycars” date of the Warburg manuscript and moves forward instead (as Phil 87‘The Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus Legard will do in chapter two, when he considers the likely composition date 1620 rather than the mid-1s80s), then the Magical (alendar influences Black Venus instead. Weill return to the mid-1s80s hypothesis in our final chapter. Before doing so, let's look at how one might place Horn of Venus’ different elements within the framework of written occult tradition.