The Hieroglyphic Monad

The Monas Hieroglyphica is a short, dense Latin treatise that John Dee wrote, by his own account, in twelve days in January 1564 and published at Antwerp the same year, with a dedication to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II. It is built around a single symbol of Dee’s invention, the ‘monad’: a composite glyph combining the signs of the Moon, Sun, the four elements in the form of a cross, and Aries as a sign of fire, which also contains the signs of the planets and metals. In twenty-four ‘theorems’ Dee derives his figure from the point, line and circle and shows how it can be dismantled and recombined to reveal relations between astronomy, alchemy, arithmetic, music, optics and divine philosophy. The book claims to offer a universal symbolic language, a ‘real cabala’ of things rather than letters, and hints at alchemical and spiritual transformation. Dee held it in high regard all his life, but its obscurity puzzled contemporaries. The Monas symbol was later adopted by Rosicrucian writers, appearing on the title of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in 1616, and it has had a lasting place in esoteric symbolism. Scholars have read it in many ways: as alchemical allegory, as a project in mathematical Neoplatonism, as a Christian Kabbalah of signs, and as a bid for imperial patronage. The archive offers the 1947 English translation by Hamilton-Jones, a French version and an excerpt from C. H. Josten’s scholarly translation.

What it contains

• Dedication to Emperor Maximilian II
• Letter to the printer Willem Silvius on the work’s scope
• Twenty-four theorems deriving the monad from point, line and circle
• Analysis of the Sun, Moon, elemental cross and Aries signs
• Planetary and metallic symbolism and number speculations
• Claims of applications in alchemy, astronomy and divine philosophy