Loathsome, utterly loathsome! – And yet I do not even know what it is that disgusts me.
After every sitting I arise sucked dry, my legs can scarce carry me from the chamber; but Kelley, after each sitting, has an increase of robust strength, triumphant confidence and self-assurance. He is no longer the guest in my house, my pupil and assistant, it is I who am here on sufferance, the servant of his miraculous powers, the slave of his ever-growing appetites.
And that no jot of my shame shall go unrecorded: sometimes it is now Kelley who pays the household expenses from what he receives from my guests, in particular Prince Lasky, who seems to have fabulous wealth at his disposal, for the information he gives them in the name of the Green Angel. Now I and my family depend for our daily bread on the scraps from a charlatan’s table! For I well know that Kelley does not refrain from deception and trickery at these sittings: he disguises his voice and pronounces what his foolish hearers in their insatiable pride want to hear and tells them things that flatter their boundless ambition. With insolent words and a cynical laugh he confessed as much to me and told me to pawn the blankets off the beds if I would rather feed my illustrious guests in that way. But there is another question that wounds me even deeper than the humiliation of being the accomplice of a cutpurse, so to speak: how can Providence suffer such fraud to be perpetrated in the presence – and the name! – of divine messengers such as the Green Angel and the spectral child at the west window?! For they do appear when it is taking place, in physical form, tangible and visible to all; I have seen it myself a dozen times. All this has overwhelmed me, as sudden as a desert storm, and I can see the gaping maw of fate ready at any moment to devour me. If Kelley is unmasked, then I fall with him, for I am linked to him – and who will believe I am innocent when even in my own eyes I am not? The invitations to go to the Queen in London become ever more pressing; the inflated reports of the Pole, Lasky, have aroused her curiosity and she will surely not let me keep from her the newly discovered marvel of the open door to the world beyond. If that should happen, then it is a matter of life or death. But I will never permit Kelley to practise his deceit on her! – Here thou must make thy stand, John Dee, here is the limit of thy errors and betrayal of the secret of the Baphomet! – –
Would that I had never written down my dreams! – How true is the wisdom of the old adepts: do not tell your dreams, even to paper, or they will become reality. Has he not become a reality, the man that I dreamed of with his ears cut off? Now he is revealed to me in all his filthy nakedness – my house guest and companion in fortune, Edward Kelley. And again and again I find myself thinking of Bartlett Greene and Mascee, both robbers of the dead and desecrators of graves and both instruments from beyond of the vengeance of St. Dunstan. I am the victim of a strange trick of fate that sent me the ivory spheres that they should be transformed into iron balls, chained to my ankles like those a criminal has to drag after him. – – –
Now the Pole, Lasky, with a fair note from the Queen, has sent for myself and Kelley to come to the court and conjure up the Green Angel in a solemn sitting – because the Polish princeling has had an attack of the gout and we are to conjure up the immortal spirit to find a remedy for his over-indulgence in port wine!
Oh, everything is taking the course I foresaw: doubt and confusion! Deprivation and want! Dishonour and destruction!
The order of the Queen makes refusal impossible and we must hasten to London. – – – Our reception at court was most welcoming, but at what cost to my soul!
Elizabeth insisted that we hold a sitting immediately; no visible apparitions came, but two spirits spoke through the mouth of Kelley, calling themselves Jubandalace and Galbah, and they promised the Pole that he would not only soon recover his health but would also become King of the Turks. Elizabeth could hardly repress a laugh, and I could see how she was tempted to start the old game of cat and mouse with me and what fiendish pleasure it gave her to see me teetering on the brink of shame and ridicule.
What is it that drives her to such acts? – How unfathomable are the ways of Providence! – Is this the fulfilment of the mystic, spiritual union that was pledged between us? – Is this the end of my road to Baphomet, who bears the crown and the eternal radiance of the crystal? – –
The only means by which I managed put a stop to this was by beseeching my old friend Leicester to use his influence to have the sessions in London stopped. Otherwise, I am sure, the spirits would have ended up promising Lasky the crown of this island and dominion over the whole world. Then I was fortunate to find a way to tear the Queen away from her devilish pleasure in my discomfiture. At a private audience I pleaded with her to curb her impatience to consult Kelley’s spirits until I was sure of their nature. I represented to her that the world beyond might harbour diverse beings, including dissembling fiends who could take on the form of angels, so that Her Majesty’s virgin reputation would be at the mercy
