Monas Hieroglyphica: John Dee's Hieroglyphic Monad Explained

The Monas Hieroglyphica ("The Hieroglyphic Monad") is a short Latin treatise by the Elizabethan mathematician and magus John Dee, published at Antwerp in 1564, and also the name of the single symbol it explains. Dee's monad combines the signs of the Moon, the Sun, the four elements and the zodiac sign Aries into one figure from which, he claimed, the signs of all the planets and a whole philosophy of nature could be derived. Obscure even to its first readers, the monad became a lasting emblem of Renaissance occult philosophy and was taken up by the Rosicrucian writers of the early seventeenth century.

What the Monas Hieroglyphica Is§

John Dee (1527–1608/9) was one of the most learned Englishmen of his age: a mathematician, geographer, astrologer and collector of one of the largest private libraries in England. He is best known today for his later conversations with angels through the scryer Edward Kelley, the origin of Enochian magic. The Monas Hieroglyphica belongs to an earlier phase of his career, when he hoped to reform knowledge through mathematics and a new kind of symbolic writing.

The book is short: a dedication, a letter to the printer and twenty-four numbered "theorems", each commenting on an aspect of a single figure, accompanied by diagrams. Its subject is the monad, a glyph of Dee's own design. Dee presents it as a "hieroglyph" in the Renaissance sense, an image whose form directly expresses the nature of what it signifies, as humanists believed Egyptian hieroglyphs did. The title page carries a warning that whoever does not understand should either keep silent or learn. A full description of the treatise is given in the catalogue entry for The Hieroglyphic Monad.

The Anatomy of Dee's Monad§

The monad is built from familiar astrological and alchemical signs, stacked vertically:

• At the top, a crescent, the sign of the Moon, its horns turned upward.
• Below it, a circle with a point at its centre, the sign of the Sun.
• Beneath the circle, a cross, which Dee explains as the four elements and also as a figure of the numbers that make up the ternary and quaternary.
• At the base, two half-circles joined to the foot of the cross, forming the sign of Aries, the first sign of the zodiac and a fire sign, which Dee connects with the fire needed in alchemical work.

The resulting figure strongly resembles the planetary sign of Mercury, enlarged by the Aries sign at its foot. This is not accidental: Mercury, both the planet and the alchemical "philosophical mercury", was the mediating principle that united opposites. Dee shows that by taking the monad apart and recombining its elements one can obtain the signs of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury as well as the Sun and Moon, so that all seven planets, and their seven metals, are contained in one figure. The central point of the solar circle, he argues, represents the earth and also the source from which everything unfolds, in the way that geometry begins from a point.

In Neoplatonic language a monad is the first unity from which all multiplicity proceeds. Dee's choice of the word signals his ambition: a single sign that, rightly understood, contains the whole order of the cosmos in condensed form.

Writing the Book: Antwerp, 1564, and the Emperor§

Dee composed the Monas while travelling on the Continent, where he was buying books and visiting scholars. He later said that he wrote it in twelve days at Antwerp in January 1564, in a state of intense concentration, and the book was printed there in the same year by Willem Silvius. An early form of the monad had already appeared in his astrological treatise Propaedeumata aphoristica (1558), so the symbol had been in his mind for several years.

The dedication to the King of the Romans and future Emperor Maximilian II was an appeal for patronage at one of the most learned courts in Europe. Dee presented his monad as a discovery of great consequence for grammar, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, optics, mechanics, medicine and the "cabala", promising that grammarians, mathematicians and alchemists alike would find hidden riches in it. In a separate letter to Silvius he insisted that the deeper meaning was intended only for a few and urged that the book be kept from the unprepared.

The book did not make Dee's fortune. Back in England he claimed that Queen Elizabeth had studied the work with him and assured him of her favour against those who thought it nonsense, but contemporaries generally found it baffling. Dee's own defence of his reputation, the Discourse Apologeticall of 1599, can be read in the reading room.

Reading the Twenty-Four Theorems§

The theorems proceed in the manner of a geometrical treatise, moving from the simplest elements to complex interpretations. Dee begins with the point, the straight line and the circle, the first principles of Euclid, and shows that the monad is generated by them. He then examines each component in turn, treating the cross both as the four elements and as numbers that sum to significant totals, and explores how the parts can be rearranged.

Several themes run through the theorems:

• Number: Dee plays with the ternary, quaternary, septenary and denary, in the Pythagorean tradition surveyed in number symbolism. The cross, for instance, can be read as two lines meeting at a point (three) or as four right angles, and seven and ten are derived from its parts.
• Astronomy: the relationships of Sun, Moon and planets, and the place of Aries at the beginning of the zodiac.
• Alchemy: the purification of matter by fire and the joining of solar and lunar principles, described in dense allegory, including an egg diagram in which the parts of the monad appear as the yolk, white and shell.
• Letters and language: Dee treats his figures as letters of a universal script, comparable to Hebrew in its sacred power.

The argument is compressed, allusive and often deliberately incomplete. Modern translators, notably C. H. Josten, whose annotated English version appeared in 1964, have shown that much of it can be followed with knowledge of Renaissance mathematics, alchemy and Neoplatonism, but its ultimate purpose remains debated.

Alchemy, Kabbalah and the "Real Cabala"§

Dee claimed that his monad belonged to a new "real cabala", a Kabbalah of real things rather than of letters only. Traditional Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, as he knew it from writers such as Johannes Reuchlin and Pico della Mirandola, sought divine mysteries in the letters, numbers and names of Hebrew scripture (see gematria). Dee proposed that geometrical figures could do the same for nature itself, revealing the structure of creation through a symbolic alphabet. The idea recalls the combinatory art of Ramon Llull and anticipates seventeenth-century projects for a universal philosophical language.

Historians have offered several readings of what Dee intended. Nicholas Clulee, in John Dee's Natural Philosophy (1988), argued that the Monas is above all an alchemical work, describing in symbolic form a process of purifying matter and spirit. Others emphasise its mathematical Neoplatonism, its Christian Kabbalah, its connection with Dee's later angelic revelations, or its role in a bid for imperial patronage. These interpretations need not exclude one another: Renaissance occult philosophy did not separate chemistry, cosmology and theology as sharply as modern disciplines do. The monad's place among the planetary and metallic signs is discussed further in Alchemical Symbols.

The Monad's Afterlife: Rosicrucians, Scholars and Modern Esotericism§

The monad's most famous reappearance came half a century after its publication. In The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (1616), the third of the Rosicrucian manifestos, the hero receives an invitation to a royal wedding, and the monad symbol is printed beside the text of the letter. The appearance of Dee's sign in this text has prompted much speculation about links between Dee and the German Rosicrucian circle. Frances Yates, in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972), argued that Dee's continental travels in the 1580s left a lasting influence in Bohemia and Germany, a thesis that later historians have treated with more caution. See The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Rosicrucianism.

The Monas was reprinted in the alchemical anthology Theatrum chemicum in 1602 and translated into English by J. W. Hamilton-Jones in 1947, before Josten's scholarly edition. In twentieth-century occultism the monad became a recognised emblem of Hermetic learning, used in the iconography of esoteric orders, on book covers and in art, and Dee himself became a figure of fascination for novelists and historians alike. Dee's other great symbol, the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, belongs to his later angelic work. The wider family of such emblems is surveyed in Occult Symbols.

Frequently asked questions§

What does John Dee's monad symbol mean?§

It combines the signs of the Moon, Sun, the four elements and Aries into one figure. Dee taught that it contained the signs of all seven planets and metals and expressed, in condensed form, the unity of creation and the stages of alchemical transformation.

Why is it called a "hieroglyphic" monad?§

Renaissance scholars believed Egyptian hieroglyphs expressed ideas directly through images rather than sounds. Dee called his figure a hieroglyph because he believed its shape embodied the truths it signified, and "monad" because it was a single unity from which all else unfolds.

Is the Monas Hieroglyphica connected to the Rosicrucians?§

Indirectly. Dee wrote it decades before the Rosicrucian manifestos, but his symbol appears in the Chymical Wedding (1616). Whether this reflects a real connection with Dee or simply admiration for his book is debated.

Sources and further reading§

• Monas Hieroglyphica — John Dee, 1564
• John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion — Nicholas H. Clulee, 1988
• Seeing the Word: John Dee and Renaissance Occultism — Håkan Håkansson, 2001
• John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus — Peter J. French, 1972
• The Rosicrucian Enlightenment — Frances A. Yates, 1972
• John Dee's Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs — György E. Szőnyi, 2004
• The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz — Johann Valentin Andreae, 1616