I would be interested to these links and/or posts, thankyou.
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Book Recommendation Any good books to recommend?
- Thread starter Amur
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Seeking or giving recommendations for books.
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Here you go - these are all freely downloadable as well, but in the interests of fairness Jim's translation has been criticized by an American writer called Drs. Teresa Burns & Nancy Turner in an almost rude dismissal stating that 'Egan's knowledge of Latin is faulty' or not good in some way, but if (when) you read Jim's works you'll notice that he had a lot of help with the Latin from 4 different other translations, dating from 1691, 1946 (W.L. Hamilton-Jones' truly dreadful version, 1964 (C.H. Josten) & 2008 (Scott Barker), as Dee's Latin was, well shall we say difficult at best because he used short forms, Verb Stems and other things that were common in Ecclesiastical Latin (which is what Dee used) as opposed to medieval 'Dog Latin'. Her criticisms of some of the translations - whilst fair in places, especially the Letter to Maximillian in the Monas (which is totally ignored by a lot of editions, as are Dee's note to the printers which IMO is incredibly important) but she does give Jim a lot of credit for 'seeing' the hidden geometries. I still think she gave Jim an unfairly harsh treatment, almost mocking in places - why do people do that?
But my rambling is not what you want to read - so here are the PDF links.
All can be found at but here's the full list:
It's fair to point out that unless this is something you're interested in, you can safely ignore the Newport Tower material (I personally find it fascinating, myself) and I would recommend some other Jim Egfan books that to date I have not as yet found in PDF form, although I do own the physical books themselves:
The 2 above are well worthwhile, particularly the 'Squaring The Circle' volume (massively useful, as it firmly links Dee's thought to none other than Buckminster Fuller) and I have given Amazon US links because they are not available here in the UK any longer. In the main list, the one titled 'The Works Of John Dee' are his main mathematical masterpieces, including the famous 'Propaedeumata Aphoristica' (or 'Preparatory Aphorisms') in original Latin & modern English, his preface to Euclid's 'Elements of Geometry' in it's first ever English Language version (both the Elizabethan original & also a modernized version), 'A Certain Essence of Parallax', 'General & Rare Memorials pertainingf to The Art of Navigation', his Calendar treatise (written 150 years or so before it was actually reformed in England), his 'Compendious Rehearsal' and more.
The ones that will (probably) be of most interest are the Propaedeumata and the Euclid preface as well as the Monas itself (or, as Jim calls it, 'The Book of 100 riddles').
I love the Monas - it has taken a long time but I am beginning to see the depth of this masterpiece of misdirection - it's absolutely NOT a book about Alchemy (as claimed by Hamilton-Jones) but about Number, Geometry & Cosmology.
Please do feel free to drop me an email or a PM if anything needs clarification.
Finally, I must reiterate that I am not breaking anybody's copyrights by posting these links to the PDF where I have them, as Jim gives these away for free on the Newport Tower Museum website. He is a very serious scholar, and is massively ignored for some weird reason.
If I had to limit myself to just 2 volumes here I would pick the Mathematical Masterpieces one (the 5th in the list above, numbered 2) and the Squaring the Circle one (which as far as I am aware does not exist in PDF form, although if anyone knows different please send me a link?).
The Cuboctahedron is a truly remarkable solid.
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Spot on about the Monas. Maybe Hamilton-Jones' view is not the regnant one? I downloaded the Monas a few months ago, and I recall it being described as a work on cosmology. It would be surpassing odd for Dee to have written an alchemical work given how little of a practicing magician he was. (He transmitted his "Enochian magick"; he did not practice it, as we all know.)
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This is true - after everything had been recieved, all Dee really did (as far as we know) was made fair copies of what he thought were the important parts (The Heptarchia Mystica & the other manuscripts found in the secret drawer of his chest after his death, the names escape my memory right now) but again, we just don't know. There are hints in the diaries that he might have tried something (I will look up the reference & repost later) but we will never know for certain.
I would agree that it is indeed about Dee's cosmology in large part, and I always found it fascinating that we had a modern thinker who came tpo much the same way of thinking - Buckminster Fuller!!
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Interesting parallel I had never noticed. But then I haven't read Fuller either.