Now therefore all has been settled and the arrangements have gone ahead in secret; we have kept our baggage to the minimum so that the journey may be done as cheaply as possible. Everything that I leave behind here in Mortlake, as well as the unknown future that lies ahead of us, I commit into the hands of the all-merciful power of heaven. – – –
Today, the 21 September, 1583, the day of departure has arrived. A carriage has been ordered so that we can leave the house quietly before sunrise and we hope to reach Gravesend before dark. – – –
Last night a mob of peasants and vagrants were rioting outside the castle walls and a burning torch was thrown into the closed courtyard, but my old servant stamped it out. During our flight we managed with great difficulty to evade another rabble of troublemakers in the early morning mist. – – –
O my God, it is as I have described it here in my diary: flight! Behind me lies everything that was mine and that linked our family name with England: Mortlake is abandoned to the attacks of the mob, perhaps will fall even before I have left the inhospitable shores of my native land. – – –
My eyes, dim with age, have seen the burning of Mortlake! Black clouds hang on the horizon over the place where the castle lies hidden behind the hills. Black clouds of billowing smoke – the inhabitation of demons puffed up with their own venom! – swirl in a witches’ sabbath around the former abode of peace. The evil spirits of the past have descended like vultures – let them eat their fill. May they gorge themselves with the sacrifice and forget me in their orgy of desecration! – There is only one thing for which I deeply grieve: my beautiful library, my books which were so dear to my heart. The avenging demons will spare them just as little as the rabble in its ignorance. There were amongst those books many that were unique, the last of their kind on earth. A burnt offering of profound wisdom! True instruction going up in smoke! Dissolve back into the fire whence you came: noble words are wasted on beasts. Better to burn with an eternal flame and be borne up home to the source of the everlasting fire!
For a whole hour I have been sitting at my desk with the last page of John Dee’s Private Diary in my hand. I have seen the castle in Mortlake burn as if I were standing there outside it myself. It was more alive than anything you see in your mind whilst reading.
Several times, on a sudden impulse, I have stretched my hand out to the drawer where the papers from my cousin’s legacy are kept, but each time I do so my arm seems to go limp and I cannot bring myself to take out another document that might provide more details. More details? What on earth for? To stir up more clouds of mouldy dust? To dig up the past? When everything has taken on an immediacy so brilliant it is almost dazzling? It would be much better if I could make use of the intense peacefulness that cocoons me at this moment. Sitting here in my study, I feel as if I am cut off from the world and yet not alone – as if I were somewhere in empty space, outside human time. –
I am no longer in any doubt at all: John Dee, my ancestor, lives! He is present, he is here, here in this room, here by my chair, by me – perhaps within me! – I will put it down in plain, unambiguous words: it is probable that – that I am John Dee ... perhaps always have been ... have been from the very beginning, without knowing it! What do I care how that can be?! Is it not sufficient that I feel it with indescribable clarity and precision? There are, anyway, many theories and examples from all sorts of areas of modern science which back up, explain, categorise what I have experienced and give it a learned name-tag: there is schizophrenia, split personality, dual consciousness, not to mention various parapsychological phenomena. What is ridiculous is that it is the lunatic doctors who concentrate on such matters – and in their ignorance they label anything as mad which doesn’t fit into their neat little pigeon-holes.
I have examined myself and declare that I am completely sound of mind. But enough of such protestations: I do not need them and the psychiatrists, those know-all moles of the human psyche, can go to hell, for all I care!
So: John Dee is not dead; he is a – let’s call it a transcendental personality, which expresses and tries to realise itself through clear desires and goals. It may well be that this life force has been transmitted through the secret channels of the blood, but that is a minor matter. If we imagine the immortal part of John Dee as pulsing through these channels like an electric current through a wire, then I am at the end of the wire and the electrical impulse that is John Dee is building up within me with all his awareness of the world beyond. But that is of no interest! A thousand explanations are possible, but none can replace the terrible intensity of the experience. Mine is the mission; mine is the goal and the crown and Baphomet realised! If ... if I am worthy! If I am steadfast! If I am prepared. Eternal triumph or disaster – it all depends on me, the last of the line!
I can feel the promise burning down on
