And St. Patrick spake: whosoever shall descend into the chasm shall be freed from any other penance and he whose soul is of true gold shall come forth purified the next morning. And many went down into the Chasm but few returned. For the fiery furnace consumes or purifies each according to the nature of his soul.
And that is St. Patrick’s Purgatory in which any man may test the temper of his soul to see if he will pass through the Devil’s Baptism in the life to come.
To this day it is said among the common people that the chasm is still open. But it is invisible except for one who is the son of a witch or a whore and born on the First of May. And if the black disc of the new moon should stand direct above the chasm, then the curses of the damned will rise up to it from the depths of the earth like the prayers of the Black Mass and fall upon the earth beneath in drops; and wherever it touches the soil there appear black cats that shall be witches’ familiars.
Meridian – wave pattern – a Chinese symbol for eternity – my lopsided room – St. Patrick’s Purgatory – a warning from my ancestor, John Dee, to his Jack i’ the mirror if he valued his future friendship – “And many went down into the Chasm but few returned!” – black cats, witches’ familiars: my mind is awash with a meaningless jumble of images. And yet: now and then I glimpse some design, some purpose in them, suddenly shooting out in an almost painful shaft of light, like a ray of sunshine through racing clouds. But when I try to hold on to it, my mind goes numb and I have to let it go. – –
All right, yes, yes, I give in. Tomorrow I will “align my room to the meridian” if that is what I must do to get some peace.
I’ll have to waste the whole day shifting furniture – blast that Tula-ware box!
I have been rummaging around in the papers again. On the desk in front of me is a slim volume bound in bilious green morocco. The binding dates from the late seventeenth century at the earliest and the manuscript text must be by John Dee himself – the flow and shape of the letters corresponds to the diary. The tome shows signs of having been burnt, parts of the text have been destroyed.
There is an inscription in tiny letters on the fly leaf, and in a strange hand! It reads:
“To be burned if the eye of Black Isaïs should appear in the waning moon. If thou ever hope to be saved: burn it!”
Some later, unknown (!) owner of the book must have taken the warning to heart. Perhaps he sensed “Black Isaïs” was observing him from the waning moon and threw the book into the fire to be rid of it. That would explain the burnt pages. But who was he who felt it come alive in his hands? And who can have recovered it from the fire before it dissolved into ashes?
There is nothing to tell me that.
What is certain is that the warning is not in John Dee’s own hand. One of his descendants must have inserted it after some terrifying experience.
I append such portions of the morocco-bound volume as are still legible:
Notebook of John Dee, dated 1553, that is, 4 years after the
“Diary”.
The Silver Shoe of Bartlett Greene
These notes have been written down by me, Master John Dee – vain, bungling fool that I was – after many days of torment, to be a memorial and a glass wherein I may look on my soul. And may it serve as a warning to those of my blood who may come after me. They shall wear the promised crown, of that I am more certain today than ever before. But the crown will grind them into the dust – just as I have been cast down to the ground – if they let their folly and their pride blind them to the Enemy that every hour lurks in wait, that he might encompass our destruction.
The higher the Crown,
The farther the Devil can pull us down.
The following is an account of what God allowed to happen to me on the day after Easter Monday, in the year 1549:
On the evening of the day when my uncertainty and torment about my future fate had reached its peak, Captain Perkins and the armed guards of the Bloody Bishop – as people justly call that monster in human form that sits in his lair in London under the name of Bishop Bonner – forced their way into my house and arrested me in the name of the King: in the name of that consumptive child, Edward! My mocking laughter only served further to enrage the guards and it was with difficulty that I escaped physical violence.
I had managed to gather up the papers to which I had just committed all my doubts before the soldiers came crashing through the door, and I concealed them in a safe place in the wall where, fortunately, anything that might betray me was already hidden. It was fortunate, too, that I had long ago thrown Mascee’s ivory spheres out of the window, for I
