
The Domestic Life of Alchemists (2011) - benbreen
http://resobscura.blogspot.com/2011/01/alchemists-at-home.html
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deepnet
Adam McClean's site provides many historical alchemical texts, some digitised
no-where else.
[http://www.alchemywebsite.com/texts.html](http://www.alchemywebsite.com/texts.html)

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benbreen
Yep, it's a fantastic resource. It seems that he recently started improving
the resolutions of the images in his alchemical emblem collection too, which
was my biggest problem with the site in the past.

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cfcef
If "Managing an Experimental Household: the Dees of Mortlake and the Practice
of Natural Philosophy" sounded interesting to you too, you don't need JSTOR
access:
[http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic472431.files/WK11...](http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic472431.files/WK11Harkness.pdf)

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benbreen
Thanks for that, I'll change the link. It's a fantastic paper and Harkness's
book length study of John Dee is even better. I was actually planning on doing
my PhD work on Dee until I read it and realized that the book I wanted to
write pretty much already existed:

[http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/histor...](http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/history-
science-and-technology/john-dees-conversations-angels-cabala-alchemy-and-end-
nature)

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hackercomplex
I'm curious, what causes you to be interested in John Dee's work as opposed to
say the output of any modern 'spirit channeler' or 'UFO contactee' ?

Is Dee's work academically interesting to you simply because of how it's
embedded historically with the British empire or is there some other factor ?

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benbreen
One of the things I find so fascinating about him is that he was also one of
the leading English mathematicians of his generation (his "Mathematical
Preface" to the first English edition of Euclid would've made him important
even without any of the magic/occult stuff) and according to one book
historian he also had one of the largest private libraries in all of Europe.
So he's important as a Renaissance polymath and not just as someone who
thought they were channelling sprits. Which in turn sheds light on why someone
like Newton would have a similar range of interests. The British imperial
stuff was going to be my focus though, because of the fact that he was an
original partner with Sir Walter Raleigh in his attempts to settle colonies in
the New World. Plus (along with Merlin) he's essentially the archetype of the
wizard in pop culture!

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hackercomplex
oh yea I almost forgot about pop culture. There's the Bond connection to boot.

Hell sometimes I theorize that maybe somehow almost the entire artifice of
western pop culture was conjured up by Dee and associates in some kind of..

well I dare not speculate too far.

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desireco42
Thank you for posting this. I am fan of alchemy and really enjoy it's view on
the world.

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hackercomplex
Dee conjuring spirits on Hackernews ? hella creepy bro.

