John Dee: The Original 007?

Thomas Grey, royal scribe to John Dee, Her Majesty’s astronomer, inhaled a faint scent of beeswax honey. The yellowish candle flickered in its brass holder, flame wavering, casting shadows on the chamber's stone wall and across the manuscript. Thomas yawned, blinking against the candlelight, wary now as the symbols he transcribed shifted from meaningless to something more calculated.

John Dee sat across from Thomas, repeating words whispered to him by his shadowy medium, Kelley. “The angels are singing their messages.”

Thomas let the quill slip from his fingers, smearing ink on the parchment. Thomas had transcribed treaties and royal decrees through the years, but never believed he’d transcribe angel decrees dictated by Dee, the queen’s astronomer, mathematician, teacher, astrologer, occultist, alchemist! By the Saints! Was Dee utterly lost in his illusions, or had he crafted something deceitful? This sheer absurdity of transcribing angels! What madness was this! And now, here Thomas was—forced to listen to angels, while Kelley sat beside Dee, poised like a conjurer, hands ghosting over the obsidian mirror, feeding Dee more of this absurdity.

Dee’s words continued to flow in a monotone chant. Thomas picked up the quill and smirked, thinking about Dee and Kelley traveling in Poland and Bohemia as magicians and telling fortunes throughout Europe.

Dee continued to speak in a low, steady voice as if entranced. Thomas narrowed his eyes. These symbols weren’t divine, no matter what the queen believed. They were code—deliberate, precise.

Thomas’s pulse quickened. The symbols held a structure, methodical. Were they a cipher, or was he chasing ghosts?

His eyes widened when he noticed Dee now standing in the chamber lit by the golden glow of candlelight, gaze boring into him, unblinking, watchful, as if he had penetrated Thomas’s thoughts.

Dee cleared his throat, his voice measured and focused on Kelley. “We are late.”

Thomas rose from his desk and offered a great curtsey. “My lord, I am ever grateful for your patronage.”

*********************

Long after Dee and Kelley left Thomas’s chamber, Thomas turned and twisted in his sleep, sweat dampening his skin. In the black, moonless night, he dreamed of symbols he’d transcribed and awoke with absurd thoughts concerning John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica. Wrapped in Latin wordplay, unexplained capitalization, odd spacing, and diacritics, Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica resembled the manuscripts Thomas had transcribed earlier.

He stumbled in the dark, lighting candles with trembling hands and digging through literary collections searching for Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica and his letter to Maximilian II.

He laid his hands upon both documents and rushed to his writing table, where the current manuscript lay smeared from the quill. A puff of beeswax honey oddly calmed him with its familiar scent.

Thomas placed the documents beside last evening’s manuscript, eyes scanning frantically until he found the passage in Dee’s letter to Maximilian—his breath quickened as he read:

All bodies share edges with their shadows, something mathematicians know well. Likewise, the wise understand that true works have diction, both in speech and writing, which reflect their shadows.

While philosophers embrace the substance of true knowledge, fools and presumptuous pretenders chase mere shadows—empty, worthless illusions. And so we see it happen: understanding belongs to those who grasp real bodies, not hollow shapes.

Yet, with a certain artfulness, the wise allow shadowy figures to exist within true bodies, lest the finest lettuces be wasted on asses rushing toward the Hesperian Gardens, when thistles would serve them just as well.

Thomas rose from his writing desk and paced. Shadows, illusions—but had Dee meant something more? A hidden order? A veiled reference to war? What could any of this have to do with Dee’s glyph, described and illustrated in Maximilian’s letter?

He rushed back to his desk. The realization struck him like a slap in the face. Had he been transcribing warnings all along—covert messages disguised as mysticism? His hands trembled. If this was espionage, then he was no mere scribe. He was complicit. Many have lost their heads!

At first, the glyph was only a symbol—a cross, a circle, two crescents. But under his gaze, did it shift? The angles, the spacing—subtle, deliberate. No longer philosophy. Instruction.

Had Dee been feeding intelligence into the glyph all along, updating it like a cipher hidden in plain sight?

No longer theory. No longer abstraction. The lines wove into movements, intersections aligned like formations. It was intelligence—precise, deliberate, strategic.

Dee had placed his glyph in Maximilian’s hands—a ruler steeped in religious alliances. Had it been a ploy? A deception carefully masked in philosophy? Everyone knew King Maximilian II to be deeply involved in religious matters and fostered alliances throughout Europe. Once in Maximilian’s hands, who would suspect deception hidden within the manuscript? A work of philosophy, passed through a devout ruler, no one would think to scrutinize its depths.

If the Queen’s intelligence network saw meaning where kings and scholars saw mysticism, Dee had crafted the perfect illusion. The question was—how deep did the deception go?

The Crown had its share of spies—loyalists, traitors, double agents. Messages traveled through unseen hands, but did they ever reach their true destination? Or if they did, were secret correspondences intercepted and examined before reaching the intended recipient?

Thomas began to suspect Dee was more than a mystic—an integral part of Elizabeth’s spy network, giving her intelligence on foreign schemes, political maneuvers, and religious operatives in Rome. His words, his symbols, his entire manuscripts—structured to divide fools from strategists, masking deception beneath esoteric philosophy. To all but the Queen and her inner circle, he was just another mystic.

‘Shadows cling to bodies, illusions cling to truth.’ Was that Dee’s message to the network—a signal that his work contained more than mere philosophy?

*********************

The morning was crisp, and Thomas had been awake most of the night. Dee sauntered in, slumped in a chair, breathing heavily and rubbing his eyes, a rare, unguarded sigh.

Thomas stood abruptly. “My lord.”

Dee motioned for him to sit. “A coded letter has revealed Mary, Queen of Scots’ plot to assassinate Elizabeth.”

Dee’s words hung in the air.

Thomas gripped the edges of his writing desk. What sorcery was this? If Elizabeth’s court was crawling with spies, then Dee’s writings couldn’t have been mere philosophy. They had to be coded—hidden in plain sight.

Thomas spent his life transcribing words—words that carried power, laws, and proclamations. But this? These were words that changed history. This was not mere speculation. It was war, survival, and deception at the highest level.

Dee exhaled slowly, rubbing his eyes. “Walsingham imprisoned them all—Babington, his men, the letters that sealed their fate.” He pressed his fingers to his temple.

“The Queen is safe.”

Thomas moved around the chamber, snuffing the candles flickering in the corners. “Who discovered this Babington plot? Was it Spymaster Walsingham or was it you?” Thomas immediately regretted his boldness.

Dee met Thomas’s gaze for a fleeting second, then exhaled, weary. “That’s an interpretation.”

Thomas moved back to his writing desk and studied the glyph again. Nothing had changed—yet everything had. A cross. A circle. Two crescents. Yet his hands trembled now. If the Babington Plot had been foreseen, how many other plots had passed unnoticed—buried within markings, waiting for the right eyes to see them?

Thomas had to know. He looked boldly at Dee, waving Dee's manuscript. “This is not mysticism. Not philosophy. It's something deliberate. Something veiled. A signal, unseen. A silent warning.”

Dee remained silent. Seconds stretched like an eternity. “Sometimes silence is most effective. There are things not meant to be seen.”

Thomas turned his gaze intensely towards Dee. “So, it’s true. You are the 007 the court whispers about.”

“Understanding is earned, not given,” Dee murmured, eyes dark and distant. “Some shadows should never be disturbed.”

“I understand, my lord,” Thomas whispered. Yet, as he spoke, he knew he'd crossed the line.

Author’s Note

This story is historical speculation that blends fact and fiction to explore Dr. John Dee—mathematician, astronomer, teacher, astrologer, occultist, and alchemist, and rumored spy for Queen Elizabeth I. Though he never claimed to be a spy, one might wonder.

While Dee himself was real, Thomas Grey is a fictional character.