The Rest Is History - 174. Merlin, Magic and the British

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Richard II, Prince Charles, and Tony Blair. From Merlin, to the middle ages, to the modern day, the mysterious world of magic, necromancy and the occult has had a notable presence in the lives of British monarchs, politicians and members of high society.  Tom and Dominic are joined by Francis Young, author of 'Magic in Merlin's Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain' to discuss this infinitely interesting and entertaining topic. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishist the heavens and demons of the underworld. I call upon you to bring ruin and destruction onto Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, war maker, murderer and despot, so that the wickedness, pain and death he unleashes shall return to him tenfold. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, you are cursed.

You are bound. Though you choke on the seeds of sunflowers, may your soldiers refuse to fight. May your people rise up against you, break your bones and cast you down into dust and ashes. Gurry, gurry, gurry. So Tom Holland. Wow.

That was a spell. So that was our first ever spell, I think. That was a hex that is being placed every Saturday night at 7.33pm Eastern Daylight Time in the United States on Vladimirladimir putin by the witches of the world so if you if you want to join in tom just follow or maybe the listeners could just follow the hashtag hex putin okay and you can hex him too what what is it with the um getting him to choke on sunflower seeds so sunflower seeds is a big thing. So if you may have seen a clip in one of those sort of clips that was doing the rounds on social media of an elderly woman

offering sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers, and she says to them, put them in your pockets, because then when you're dead, something will grow in the land where your blood waters the soil or something like that. So sunflower seeds are quite a big deal. And maybe if we had a decent guest, he would be able to tell us whether sunflower seeds carried great occult meaning.

Well, Dominic, as it happens, we do have a great guest. We have the great Dr. Francis Young, who I would say, of all the people I follow on Twitter, is the most Magus-like. Magus-like, wow. His Twitter feed is like... Well, i think merlin would really enjoy it he's neck he's necromantic well he's he he talks about um medieval saints so that you'd like that um lithuanian grammar um i'd like that more roman mosaics i mean there is there is almost no topic of interest that he doesn't discuss and i commend

his twitter account massively to you. But I also commend massively to you a book that's just come out that I read last year in manuscript. And it's called Magic in Merlin's Realm, a history of occult politics in Britain. So the theme of the book is very much the occult use that rulers in Britain have made. It's completely fascinating. In fact, do you know what I said about it? Do you want to know what I said about it? I think, did you say it was sacral?

No, I didn't. I said it was learned, judicious, and rich in entertaining detail. And I haven't enjoyed a history book this much in ages. Probably not since you read my last book, Tom. Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. It's up there with yours.

Francis, thanks so much for joining us. You call your book, well, book well no actually first of all in in reply to dominic sing do you know about sunflower seeds is this a thing well i know the political significance of sunflower seeds i'm not aware of any occult or magical significance to them although it seems that magical practitioners are giving them their own new significance as we speak and i guess that that's how magic works, isn't it? That you kind of adopt things and then weave it into your spells or whatever.

Oh, absolutely. It's kind of chaotic, but it also has its own internal logic, which may not seem very logical to anyone who's from a sort of Western scientific rational background. But certainly, yeah, magic makes use of things for a reason always. If we roll back the years, you've called your book Merlin's Realm. And Merlin is

probably, not just in Britain, I mean, globally, perhaps the most famous magician to have advised the king. Where do these traditions about Merlin as King Arthur's advisor, where do they come from? Well, they go back really to one key figure, who's Geoffrey of Monmouth. And Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century elaborates all sorts of extraordinary legends about fictitious or semi-fictitious British kings. And the one who's really stuck and stood the test of time is, of course, King Arthur, and accompanying him, his magical advisor, Merlin. Although it's interesting that Geoffrey never actually uses words to describe Merlin that are specifically about magic. He never calls him a wizard or a magus or anything like that. He's more presented as a cunning artificer, as an advisor, as a craftsman, as somebody who's a master of technology and secret wisdom

uh but he brings stonehenge doesn't he over indeed yeah absolutely so that's his signature achievement is managing to move stonehenge from ireland to bring it to uh to bring it to britain um but yes i mean the the figure of merlin is older. He does go before, we do find him in earlier sources before Geoffrey of Monmouth. But what Geoffrey does is he brings together these two different characters, one of whom is Merthyn Wycht, who is this kind of wild man of the woods figure, who is the bard of King Gwenvolu. And at a battle in the 6th century, the Battle of Arthuret, Merthyn goes mad and he hides in the woods.

And he becomes a wild man, a bit like King Nebuchadnezzar. He sort of lives as an animal. And by living as an animal, he acquires wisdom, acquires occult knowledge and becomes a great wizard as a result of this. And then the other figure is Merlin Ambrosius, who is originally from the Historia Britannica of Nennius, which is a sort of early medieval Welsh narrative. And Ambrosius is a boy who manages to solve King Vortigern's problem where his castle in Carmarthen is being undermined by these two dragons, one red and one white, who are fighting each other. And Ambrosius gives the interpretation and says, well, one of these dragons, the red one represents the Britons and the white one represents the Saxons. And essentially, this is a parable about the state of Britain at this point. And so what Geoffrey does is he says, well, actually, these are both the same person. But essentially, he invents Merlin as a new figure. Merlin is a confection, if not necessarily a complete creation

of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Going into sort of moving slightly forward, sort of medieval period, the idea of the king having a sort of wise counsellor, an artificer, somebody who had secret knowledge, was that something do you think that by and large, I mean, because obviously when I think about some of the characters we've talked about in this podcast over the sort of the span of the centuries,

I don't know, Charlemagne had, you know, learned people, scholars at his court, Alcuin of York, very famously. Was that a sort of part of the formula, would you say, of kind of medieval kingship, that you had to have your own Merlin figure? Yes, I think it was. I mean, certainly every medieval monarch, Christian medieval monarch, or indeed Muslim medieval monarch, would have consciously modelled himself, had to consciously model himself on that most splendid of all biblical kings, Solomon. And while Solomon was renowned for his splendour, for his building projects, for his wealth, he was also renowned for his mastery of, for his building projects, for his wealth. He was also renowned for his mastery of occult wisdom and his command over spirits. And you find lots of apocryphal works, both Christian, Jewish, and Islamic, that talk about Solomon's mastery of the occult.

So as soon as you're going into the realms of royal splendor, fantasy royal splendor, the kind of things that kings long for, they will immediately fix on that figure of Solomon. And therefore, magic is not far behind. But Francis, there's a difference, isn't there, between learned churchmen who are schooled in the wisdom of the Bible and the church fathers and so on, and a figure like Merlin, who is invoking occult powers, looking at the future. Yeah, he's darker and more dangerous, isn't he? I mean, in some traditions, he's the son of the devil, isn't he?

Yeah, Merlin is a very interesting figure, and in some ways a unique figure, because unlike a normal human magician, as understood in the Middle Ages, Merlin doesn't actually need to invoke anyone, because Merlin is, as you say, the son of an incubus. So in other words, he's the result of a plan to create the Antichrist gone wrong. So according to Geoffrey… So a useful guy to have around. Yeah, absolutely. How could that plan go right?

Yeah, essentially, the devil wanted to create the Antichrist and wanted to father the Antichrist on the nun who was Merlin's mother. But it so happens that Merlin grew up to not be the Antichrist. And so he's got all the powers that the Antichrist ought to have, but he's actually not evil. So he is this absolutely unique figure. Massive disappointment to his father. Great shame. And he can look into the future as well i mean that's the other key thing right oh absolutely i mean he's kind of like a you know a think tank

or something telling the government prophecy is absolutely key to um yeah to medieval politics uh you know prophecy both popular prophecy that you know things that are rallying rebellions and inspiring popular revolts, but also prophecies that kings and queens themselves are listening to. And so Merlin has this reputation very much as a prophet to the point that I would say in the Middle Ages, Merlin is more renowned as a prophet. He's more of a kind of Nostradamus type figure than he is a wizard, a kind of Harry Potter type figure. The prophecy aspect is very much to the fore. And Francis, so let's say Plantagenet England. Do people think Merlin was a genuine historical figure, that he genuinely absolutely existed?

Or do they approach the sort of Geoffrey of Monmouth stuff and the sort of legends that are circulating a bit more? Well, I mean, are they approaching them critically or literally? Well, it's not until the 17th century that Merlin's historical existence is actually questioned by historians. So, yes, I mean, he is essentially accepted as being a historical character, whilst at the same time, he was also a literary character. So I suppose he's a figure who has multiple different existences in different genres. But certainly the idea that Merlin was King Arthur's advisor, that he had foretold and made accurate prophecies, was something that people would have taken literally as historically true in Plantagenet England.

And so why is Merlin appearing in the form that he takes when he does? So in your book, you say that as far as you know, the first example of a king using occult powers for political ends is William the the conqueror trying to take down herald the wake who is holed up on on in the marshes around ely uh and he gets you don't call her a witch but she's someone who can invoke kind of powers and that all goes wrong for you i've got a brilliant fact for you um herald the wakes descendant is a listener to this podcast oh well that's brilliant yeah that's brilliant well because herald the wake defeats this occult practice practitioner so he or she will be very happy to hear that yeah why is william the conqueror and his heirs kind of buying into this stuff in in what seems to be a new way well the reason why merlin comes along at the moment that he does, I've argued, is because in the 12th century, so a little bit

after William the Conqueror, you've got this sudden influx of new knowledge that's coming into Western Europe and coming into Britain. And this is new knowledge from the Islamic world. So you've got astrology, alchemy, various different forms of divination, these forms of knowledge that have huge potential to expand our ability to predict the future, so people believe, but they also contain within them tremendous danger. And so it's almost like these are disruptive spiritual technologies, I suppose you could think of them as being, that are coming in there and potentially upending everything that people thought they were certain of with regard to politics. I mean, when you look at the Anglo-Saxon period, the only form of political prophecy really took place through brontology.

And that was attempting to predict the future through the sound of thunder. There wasn't a practice of astrology. There wasn't, practice of alchemy. But these new techniques coming from the Greek world, from the Islamic world, from the East, from the South, they come into Britain and they need a figure who somehow makes sense of them. Is that because they can't be nakedly, say, Islamic or from Byzantium? Because then they would just seem weird and foreign. But if you can repackage them as kind of primordially British. But also, surely, Tom, they're a threat to the, if you say these brilliant ideas coming from the Islamic world,

isn't that a threat to the sort of implicit monopoly of the Christian church in Britain? Do you not think to acknowledge that there's a, you know, a civilization with a really, as Francis says, a technologically sophisticated set of skills, a very particular set of skills, Tom, as you know from your Liam Neeson impersonation, a very particular set of skills that they don't have, the Archbishop of Canterbury doesn't have. So they have to package it in Merlin. Is that basically it, Francis? It's a little bit of both, really, because on

the one hand, there is this belief that if something is new and if something is powerful, then an exotic connection with the Islamic world, with the Jewish world is desirable because that kind of gives it that feeling that it's something different, new and powerful. But on the other hand, as you say, there is this feeling of pride that, you know, we don't want to admit that there's another civilization better than us. And so you get stories being elaborated, like the idea that Merlin actually learned alchemy, went to Toledo and learned alchemy from the masters of Toledo, or indeed that Merlin invented alchemy in Britain and actually exported alchemy to the Islamic world and taught it to them, which is a bit like, you know, the idea that King Arthur conquered Rome and all these, you know, wild stories that appear in medieval literature. So Francis, in that case, Merlin becomes a very popular figure, not just in Britain, but across Europe. And so does his fame then serve to cast Britain as a natural home of magic? And the English kings, I guess, particularly,

do they come to see themselves as the heirs of this tradition and therefore this gives them a license to explore this alchemical occult stuff? Oh, very much so, yes. I would say that Merlin's status as British is quite critical, even though, as you say, his fame spreads well beyond Britain. Bear in mind that when we talk about Merlin as a British figure, we mean that in the broadest possible sense, not just that he is connected with the island of Britain, but he's also connected with the British people who are more widely dispersed than that as a result of the migration in late antiquity of British people to Brittany, and indeed to parts

of northern Spain. And so you've got this permeation of British culture into French courtly culture at a very early era. And so from a very early period, Merlin becomes a crucial character in that French courtly literature. And yes, he is always connected to Britain. And that connection between Britain and magic goes way back. I mean, we find Pliny the Elder writing about how Britain excels the Persians in its magic goes way back. I mean, we find, you know, Pliny the Elder writing about how, you know, Britain excels the Persians in its magic. So proud. I hope Ali Ansari is listening to this.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you yourself, Tom, will know about the megaliths and the importance that they hold, you know, as a source of this impression of magic about Britain, these mysterious buildings. And, you know, even the Romans were aware, even the Greeks, perhaps, were aware that Britain contained these strange monuments in Wiltshire, you know, that were the work of giants or the work of magicians. And therefore, that's something which Britain very much from an early date, gets this reputation as a shadowy island, you know, shaded in mist, which, you know, is home to druids and wizards and so forth.

So Merlin very much ties into that classical tradition of Britain as a mystical place. Before Tom starts talking about Wiltshire, which we absolutely must avoid, Francis, at all costs, I think we should move the story on a tiny bit. And definitely we don't want to get into Pliny the Elder, Tom. So harsh. It's tough loving this podcast today.

It really is. So let's talk about sort of real, as it were, people. I'm not dissing Merlin. But who would you say is – You absolutely are. I'm saying he's got multiple selves, Tom. Let's talk about people who are mono-selfed. So who's the first, as it were, occult figure who you think really matters in terms of, let's say, English royal politics?

Well, I think the first real world person that we encounter who is willing to kind of take on this mantle of Merlin and become a Merlin to a real king is Roger Bacon, the great Franciscan scientist of the 13th century. And he begins to advise Henry III, begins to write treatises on occult topics that are dedicated to Henry. Michael Scott is another figure, although in his case, he leaves Scotland, his land of his birth, and ends up working for the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Sicily. But again, you know, he's somebody who has a tremendous magical reputation. Although in both cases, their magical reputation is rather exaggerated and elaborated after their deaths. So you have to be quite careful in separating truth from fiction when it comes to a lot of these characters. And so Roger Bacon is working with Henry III principally. Is that right? Yes, that's right. Yeah. quite careful in separating truth from fiction when it comes to a lot of these characters.

And so Roger Bacon is working with Henry III principally, is that right? Yes, that's right, yeah. And so Henry III is obviously very interested in this, and you talk about how there's a weird sacral tiling in Westminster Abbey designed to invoke the legacy of Solomon and all that kind of stuff, which is still there, right? I mean, so when the coronation of Charles III, he'll be sitting on a Solomonic occult piece of tiling dating back to the time of Roger Bacon. Would that be right? Absolutely. And in fact, it's recently been restored in the last decade or so. And for Elizabeth II's coronation, it was covered up by a carpet as it had been for

a long time because it had got, you know, really within a state. But it's a cosmati pavement. So using that wonderful technique that's popular in medieval Italy, where it's a little bit like mosaic, but you use marble and glass and all sorts of bits and pieces of different sizes to create these extraordinary patterns. And the one in Westminster Abbey was created by the monks. And quite explicitly, it represents a microcosm of the world. And this idea of as above, so below, we find in the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, the idea that the world that we inhabit is a microcosmos, is a smaller version of the great world, the spiritual world, the macrocosm of the planets, the universe, and God and the angels. And so if we create the right images that mirror that macrocosm of the spiritual world, then we can draw down those spiritual powers and rays from the cosmos. And that's essentially what this is.

It's a kind of machine of empowerment. When the king sits on top of this cosmology pavement at the right moment, because coronations were almost always scheduled astrologically to ensure that they took place at the most propitious time, then those rays will enter the body of the king and will empower the king to be this semi-divine figure. So, yes, it is quite literally a magical process. Prince Charles is going to love that. I mean, I thought he was really, really into that kind of stuff. And so then after Henry III, the medieval English king who really is into the occult is Richard II.

Absolutely. He's a bit too into it. Yeah. So in what sense is he too into it? Well, Richard II, as I'm sure any of your listeners who are into medieval history will know, was not a wildly successful king. He ends up being deposed and dying horribly

by his relative, Henry Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV. And really, his reign unwinds as a result of his over-reliance on his occult beliefs. So he comes to believe his own propaganda, if you like, about himself as this kind of mystical world emperor who will bring world peace and bring an end to all strife. He's John Lennon. Well, yes. But the trouble is, something I talk about in the book is the danger of magical quietism.

So if you're a ruler who really believes this stuff, if you become almost addicted to prophecy or divination, then you will stop acting in the real world. You'll actually stop taking the measures that you need to actually preserve your power. And you will become divorced from the real world, shed your pragmatism and sort of live in a land of fantasy, which perhaps we could see in certain world leaders today, that they're more preoccupied with the legends that they themselves have spun than they are with real world problems and um yeah essentially his reign unwinds because he spends more time with the soothsayers and the astrologers and the diviners than he does with his council actually plotting how he's going to stay on the throne but that's a bit like rudolph ii

isn't it in um in prague or whatever that he i mean this is a common i mean i know they're centuries apart but is this is this uh do you think francis i get the impression you think this is a common, I mean, I know they're centuries apart, but is this, do you think, Francis, I get the impression you think this is a common hazard, that if you're surrounded by conjurers and stuff, then it's a sort of repeating formula, is it? That monarchs start thinking too much about the alignment of the planets and not enough about, you know, bread and taxes and stuff? Yes, it is a danger that, uh yeah more than one monarch has fallen into perhaps the the most famous example in modern times would be nicholas ii uh and the sway that rasputin managed to gain over him friend of the you know even in the 20th century yeah uh so yes there are plenty of examples uh from throughout the world of monarchs who've fallen into this trap and also there's the the classic story of the um misinterpreting a sign because Richard II is told to beware of toads, isn't he? That toads

will overthrow him. So what does he do? Go around killing all the toads? I can't remember. And then he sees Bolingbroke wearing robes with toads on them. Is that story actually true? Please tell me it is. Yes, that's right. Yeah. he he has this fear of toads uh which of course he interprets as being the animal uh which is fair enough because toads have this strong association in medieval myth with poison and the belief that toads are poisonous and that you know poison can be made from the toad uh there was a belief that king john for example had been killed by the poison of a toad but what uh richard does is he sends Henry Bolingbroke into exile. And on the day that Bolingbroke comes back from exile,

he comes into the court wearing this robe that's richly embroidered with green toads. But of course, by that time, it's too late. Bolingbroke has re-established his power base. He's come back from exile. And yeah, Richard has misinterpreted the sign. It's very Macbeth, kind of being given prophecies that then yeah trip you up um francis we should i think we should take a break when we come to the end of the middle ages so in the reformation but before we do just looking at the fifth the history of the 15th century where we so we did an episode on um the princess in the

tower and we looked at how richard iii uses accusations of sorcery and necromancy to trip up his enemies. And that does seem to be a particular theme through the 15th century. And I guess the most famous example of that happening is in the trial of Joan of Arc. Yes, that's right. So when Joan is captured by the Burgundians and taken to the English, one of the questions is what charge should be used to discredit her, and what charge should be used to justify the death penalty against her. Now, in the end, it turns out that the main charge is heresy. But in the process, in the trial, there are those who push for the idea that she is in fact guilty of witchcraft. And not only is she guilty of witchcraft, but has been using her witchcraft in order to defeat the English in battle,

when it should be impossible for her to do so. So the fact that she's this extraordinarily unlikely figure, a teenage girl leading an army, is turned against her and used as evidence that she must be a witch who has invoked these powers, that these voices that spoke to her, these saints who appeared to her in Dom Remy, they are in fact devils, they are demonic familiars that she has brought into her service. And examples are used, for example, she managed to escape when she was captured at one point from a window by leaping from the window and ended up not being injured. And so that was taken as evidence that she must be protected by witchcraft. Now, in the end, the witchcraft accusation doesn't end up being used to secure the conviction. it's embarrassing for the English army, because if it can be shown that the English army was so

weak or so ungodly that it could be defeated by the wiles of a witch, it might look bad. And so in the end, it comes down to the accusation of heresy and cross-dressing. Right. Well, yes. So I think we should take a break here. And when we come back, we will get on to the Reformation. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History and we are looking at occult influences on the movers and shakers of English and British history. And we've covered the Middle Ages, and now we reach the 16th century. In Francis, the Reformation represents an absolute sea change, doesn't it, in the use that accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are put to? Because essentially, Protestants accuse Catholics that this is all mumbo jumbo and mummery and sorcery. And that must kind of change the

terms of the debate very, very profoundly. Yes, that's right. It really is a sea change, because in the 15th century, and indeed in Henry VIII's early reign, we find accusations of witchcraft being used against the king's enemies and against political opponents of all kinds. But the idea that you could actually use this accusation in order to turn around a millennium of loyalty to the Catholic Church and the rights of the Catholic Church and convince people that their ancestral religion of Catholicism was in fact no better than a bunch of hocus pocus is an extraordinary propaganda coup. And it's pulled off by Thomas Cromwell, essentially,

in the 1530s, with the help of propagandists like John Bale, for example, who goes to great lengths to argue that, you know, the mass is a form of sorcery, and that Catholicism is witchcraft. So the mass is the key to that, isn't it? The idea, the Catholics believing in transubstantiation, Protestants say that's pure necromancy and sorcery, don't they? Yes, that's right. So it's something which happens as early as the 14th century among the Lollards, you know, that dissenting group of English people who want a simpler stripped down Christianity. That's very much against the backdrop of Richard II as well, isn't it? So is there a kind of link there, perhaps? Or is it coincidence? Yes, I mean, indirectly, perhaps. I mean, I think there have been lots of attempts by historians to

try and see the conflict between Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke in religious terms. And it's true that Henry IV did have some Lollard servants, but on the whole, Henry himself is an anti-Lollard and in fact, burns Lollards. So it doesn't really quite map on exactly, but certainly there's a background of turbulence in the religious sphere that is relevant. But the Lollards had criticized transubstantiation in these terms, and they'd said transubstantiation is a doctrine of witchcraft. So we should just say that this is the idea that the body and blood of bread and wine can literally become the body and blood of Christ. Yes. So the idea that every single time a priest celebrates mass, he is performing a miracle because the miracle is that the bread and wine are turning literally into the body and blood of Jesus.

But at the same time, they are retaining the appearance to outward sense of bread and wine. And so that's the official doctrine of the Catholic Church, but it's something which can be quite easily twisted in such a way that it seems like a magical doctrine. Right. So Protestantism beds down, and yet it seems odd that perhaps the single most famous figure in English history of a kind of a new Merlin, an advisor to an English king, is at the end of the 16th century to the Protestant monarch Elizabeth I, and that is Dr. John Dee. So can you tell us about him and how and why is it that in a Protestant country he is able to have the kind of reputation that he gets? Well, Dee is certainly the person that I'd pick out who's the most self-conscious Merlin, if you like, somebody who sees himself as being the successor to Merlin. And I think part of that comes from the fact that the Tudor and the fact that they're a Welsh family who claim descent from Welsh princes and therefore from Arthur. Henry, of course, calls his eldest son Arthur.

Arthur then marries Catherine of Aragon, but doesn't live to become king as a result of which Henry VIII succeeds. And Henry VIII has a round table constructed because he is so convinced that he is the successor of King Arthur. And when Elizabeth comes to the throne, through so many adversities, you know, so many chances there'd been for her to be executed or taken out of the line of succession, but she gets there in this, you know, almost miraculous way, you know, when she's told that she's going to be queen, she responds by saying, you know, it is the Lord's doing and marvelous in our eyes. The implication being that it's a miracle that she ever got to that point of becoming queen. And she was already at that point friends with Dee. She's friends with Dee as advice. But I think that Dee himself actually exaggerates in his diaries, in his self-presentation, the extent to which he really had an influence on her.

But even without Dee, Elizabeth is obsessed with the occult. She practices alchemy in her own free time. Can we just talk about Dee a little bit? Because he's such a fascinating figure. So he is from, he's born in, I so he is from he's born in i think london mortlake i think um he's he's sort of 16th century uh but what's so interesting about him you know he's a fellow trinity college cambridge he's the rector at upton on seven um he's got this fantastic library he's really interested in maths. He tries to redesign the calendar.

He coins the phrase British Empire. Well, I was about to say, we should maybe come on back to the British Empire in just a second. But just on all that sort of stuff. So does that imply that the occult and astrology and all of the sort of stuff that seems to our sort of modern secular eyes more zany does that imply that that was part of a kind of continuum of learning and scholarship generally in the 16th century or did people at the time and i'm not asking this as a kind of rhetorical question i genuinely don't know the answer did people at the time look at d and say well he knows a lot about maths but that other stuff is completely bonkers i mean how did they how, how was he perceived at the time?

Well, Dee is very much a Renaissance figure, perhaps in some ways the most Renaissance figure that England ever produced, insofar as he is somebody proficient in sort of legitimate sciences that are regarded as lawful. So mathematics, for example. And he would have seen himself as being a learned astrologer, a learned mathematical astrologer. And astrology in and of itself is not something that was regarded as a black art or an occult pursuit in a forbidden way. But yes, certainly when somebody gained that level of learning, then in the minds of others, especially in the minds of the less learned and the unlearned, then that would blend into the idea that this person was a sorcerer, probably a sorcerer. Because if you had access to that kind of secret knowledge, then you were probably going

to be a sorcerer and you're going to use it to your own personal advantage. Now, Dee, ironically, spends his life defending himself against the charge that he is in any way a sorcerer and that he is not a conjurer. And it wasn't until years after his death that it emerges that he most definitely was a conjurer and was engaged in this practice of speaking to angels in a crystal through mediums. But Francis, so he doesn't think of himself as just, to use an anachronistic term, a scientist. I mean, deep down, he knows he's a conjurer, does he? Yes.

I mean, he wouldn't have used the term scientist to describe himself, but he might well have used the term science to describe what he was gaining from these angels through mediums. The science of necromancy, as it's often described in medieval and early modern sources. The word science then, of course, having a much broader meaning than it does now. But yes, he saw himself as an adventurer in knowledge, I think it's fair to say, and someone who was open to the possibility that knowledge might come through any avenue or almost any avenue. And I think that's what sets him apart as this Renaissance figure. Well, Dominic, earlier mentioned rudolph ii the um the emperor in prague at the end of the 16th century and john d goes to prague and kind of mixes in that very very kind of rich brew the kind of jewish traditions as well as christian

traditions and hermetic traditions but francis am i right that um i mean john d is also obviously he he persuades people that he has these incredible powers. But he himself is convinced. He goes with a partner, doesn't he, who may have slightly been stringing Dee along? Yes, this is Edward Kelly, who's just as fascinating a figure as Dee, if a slightly darker figure. And yeah, Kelly is the long-term medium of Dee. So he's the one who actually sees the angels in the crystal and reports to Dee what's going on. And the most notorious incident that takes place is when Kelly basically says, the angels have commanded us that we should swap wives. So I should sleep with your wife, you should sleep with mine. And Dee really struggles with this and thinks, well, you know, I know these angels, you know, they must be right because they've been right before. And, you know, they must be sent by God because they've convinced me of that. But could this be that, you know, Kelly's actually just

trying to sleep with my wife and he agonizes and agonizes over it. And in the end, he convinces himself that, yes, this is a new kind of commandment from God, that God is abrogating the commandment against adultery, especially for him, and kind of convinces himself of this. But in a way, it kind of breaks him, because he's almost tortured his conscience so much that he can no longer believe in himself. And he's a sort of a shell of a man after that. What about the thing that Tom raised, I i think which is fascinating about the british empire because he is the first person to use the phrase the british empire and as you said in the first half there's always been this sense of britain as exceptional because it's exceptionally magical and a place of wreathed in mystery and all this stuff so that phrase the

british empire does it i mean maybe this is stretching it too far, but does it have a kind of occult meaning? It does for Dee, absolutely. When he talks about the British Empire, he's looking back rather than forward. So he's looking back to an imagined empire that King Arthur and other British princes established in the New World. So he becomes convinced, partly as a result of tales that are coming back from Spanish explorers, that they've met fair-skinned, fair-haired Native Americans. Speaking Welsh.

Yes, exactly. And so these kinds of things, these traveller's tales, if you like, inspire Dee to suggest, well, maybe there was this empire that King Arthur extended into the New World. And of course, you've got the voyage of St. Brendan, which makes this plausible. So the voyage of St. Brendan, this legend that there's an Irish saint who gets in a coracle with his disciples and heads over to what appears to be the New World, these mysterious Western lands. And so it's not, for a 16th century observer, the idea that people might in the distant past have gone to the new world is by no means implausible. And so yeah, the British Empire has this occult significance, because it is through Merlin's extraordinary genius, that Arthur is able to

do things like design ships that are able to reach the new world or exploit the mineral resources that he finds there. And Francis, presumably this is part of the kind of the swirl of influences that impacts on Shakespeare's play The Tempest, where you have Prospero, who is a magician, a conjurer on an island. There are all kinds of echoes of English imperial projects in the Atlantic going on. Would that be a reasonable conclusion? Oh, absolutely. And I think that in Prospero, we can see Merlin, we can see John Dee, we can see James I, you know, who fancies himself as this kind of magus-like figure. Yeah, I think it's all there. And those sort of, you know, some of those abortive missions in the new world,

many of which didn't work and left these stranded communities and stranded people in the same way that Prospero finds himself stranded on an island. But also the contrast between Prospero's magic and the darker magic that Caliban represents because he's the son of a witch. And she, you know, has ruled the island with her dark magic. And now Prospero has come in with his

good magic, which is very much the way that Dee would have thought of himself. Yeah, yeah. And I guess that, I mean, if you look at now in the war in Ukraine, the sense that people want to know what is happening, the sense that people want to know what will happen is kind of almost overpowering, really, really kind of urgent sense on both sides. And so I guess that that would be a reason why during the course of the civil wars in the 1640s

into Cromwell's protectorate, that really seems to amplify the role that particularly kind of prophets are playing, fortune tellers, people looking into the future. Is that right? And actually, friend of the show, we're very keen on our dogs on this show. And of course, one of the most famous dogs in English history is Boy, the poodle owned by Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Cromwell's adversary at Marston Moor. And Boy is supposed to be a medium. Isn't that right? Kind of letting Prince Rupert know all kinds of evil, dark things.

Yes, that's right. So Boy is, according to Puritan pamphleteers, Prince Rupert's witch is familiar. And in fact, according to one pamphlet, Boy was in fact a witch from Lapland who had transformed herself into canine shape and would run along at Prince Rupert's side, giving him advanced intelligence in the movements of parliamentarian troops and so forth. But, you know, this seems ridiculous. And yet this had deadly consequences. Could Prince Rupert interpret... Did he really do it? Could Prince Rupert interpret barks? Or did Boy speak...

I don't think it's real, Dominic. I don't think... Yeah, but they must have thought about it. I mean, could Prince Rupert understand dog? Or did Boy speak English? I don't think... Yeah, but they must have thought about it. I mean, could Prince Rupert understand dog? Or did boys speak English? I think some of the pamphlets claim that, yeah, that the dog would speak in a man's voice or a woman's voice to Rupert. But I mean, if it's a witch from Lapland, they don't speak English there. Is Prince Philip...

Sorry, Prince Rupert. Is he well-travelled? Speaking Lapland? Is he well-travelled in Finland? I mean, come on. The whole idea is laughable. Is it laughable? It is.

Is it really? Goodness. It is. You really should be writing books on it. A top historian. A top historian. Analysis of the Civil War is there. Because also, Francis, am I not right that just as parliamentarians are accusing Rupert,

Prince Rupert, of being a witch um royalists are accusing oliver cromwell of having sold his soul to the devil and they advance as kind of evidence for that the fact that the third of september he wins the battle of dunbar he wins the battle of worcester and then he dies on that day amid a terrible storm i mean conclusive proof maybe even enough for dominic with his skeptical Yeah, he's portrayed as having sold his soul to the devil. I mean, I think with that, it's partly rhetorical hyperbole. I think when it comes to the Puritans, they really do believe that their opponents are aided by witchcraft. When it comes to the royalists, you get the impression reading their stuff that it's more like they're using this as an allegory for the betrayal of the king. You know, rebellion is the sin of witchcraft,

as it says in the first book of Samuel. It's this idea that you are as bad as a witch because you have betrayed your king, that you have no sense of loyalty and so forth. And so when Cromwell is dug up at the restoration and hanged, there is this sense in which his effigy is tormented. So you get people making models of Cromwell and beating them with sticks and so forth. And it's as if he's a witch. He's somebody who has sold his soul to the devil. But yeah, whether it's to be taken as literally or whether it's to be taken as rhetorical as a matter of interpretation. But I suppose Puritans, it would have come naturally to them to think of their opponents as in legal witchcraft if they already believe that Catholicism is a kind of witchcraft.

And they, of course, think that the Royalists are crypto-Catholics. And so they almost already think, even before Boyer started his barking in Lap, before all that, they already think that Prince Rupert and co., even just by being sort of high church Arminian Christians, Protestants, they think they're kind of tantamount to necromancers, don't they? Yes, absolutely. I mean, William Lord is accused of being in league with the devil and you know when he brings in changes to the liturgy to make it a little bit more ritualistic you know things like you know bowing at the name of jesus or the use of incense this is interpreted as um yeah um open worship of satan as far as the puritans are concerned you know in vile capoloft would say about that he would yeah he wouldn't approve of that. And so all of this implies that moving into the

second half of the 17th century, that there is a kind of gathering mood of scepticism, perhaps, about whether witches and prophets and fortune tellers and so on can actually have an impact. And when would you say is the last period in British history when the occult has a kind of measurable impact on kings or politicians or people who are governing the fate of the nation? I think it's the reign of James II, so 1685 to 1688. And when James comes to the throne as the Catholic brother of Charles II, he's very controversial and he is opposed by Charles's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. And Monmouth's rebellion, when Monmouth comes into the West Country and starts moving up the country,

that's when you get this idea that James is employing papist conjurers or Catholic priests to raise devils to attack Monmouth's army and so forth. So these stories begin in Monmouth's rebellion. And then in 1688, when James is ultimately overthrown in what's come to be known as the Glorious Revolution, you get the idea that James is raising a wind that will prevent the Prince of Orange, William of Orange, from coming and landing. Now, of course, eventually there is a favorable wind, the so-called Protestant wind, that blows William of Orange to British shores and allows James to be overthrown because he flees to France. But there is this idea in the pamphlets at the time that James might be using dark magic to try and oppose this

and stop it happening. And in fact, that he has a magical hat. And when he wears his magical hat, then he is able to listen to his enemies and find out what his opponents are saying about him. That's not real either, Dominic. It's not real. What's the hat look like? Do we have a picture of the hat? How does it work? Yes, we do. We have a picture of James does it work yes we do we have a picture of james wearing his big hat dressed in military uniform which presumably is the same one that uh that he wore on salisbury plain and allowed him to hear what his enemies are talking about i like to think it's like one

of those massive hats that people wear on st patrick's day or something yes do you know i think yeah well seems quite you know popular in ire Like the cat in the hat. Yes. Okay. Well, I would love to see that. I mean, Francis, if you could send us a picture of that, that would be great. We could put it up on Twitter or the Discord. I'd love a hat like that. So from that point on, basically, necromancy and the occult starts to fade from the corridors of power. But Francis, before we finish, just one last episode.

The Second World War. There's quite a lot of kind of folklore around that. So I was fascinated to learn from your book, for instance, that the story that Britain will stand as long as there are ravens at the Tower of London, that this is entirely a product of the Second World War. I hadn't realized it was that later tradition. But there is this fascinating story about a medium who does get kind of brought up on an official charge, doesn't she? So you just round things off by telling us about her. Yes, this is the extraordinary case of Helen Duncan, who was an established medium

in Portsmouth. And she, in 1943, claims during a seance to materialize the shape of a sailor who has just drowned in a ship that sunk. And in this materialization, because she, by whatever means she had at her disposal, she makes these apparent apparitions of people. He's wearing a hat, which has on it, of course, the name of the ship. And the name of the ship is HMS Barham. And in fact, HMS Barham had only just sunk. And the news had only just reached Portsmouth at that point. And an MI5 officer happened to be in the seance, not because he was monitoring the seance, but because he was interested in spiritualism.

And he was shocked that this happened. How did she have access to this classified information? And he became very concerned. He became concerned that she was a security threat. And from then on, Helen Duncan was a marked woman in the sense that the powers that be were determined to prevent her from any further seances. And this ended in 1944 with Helen Duncan actually being handed down a sentence at the High Court in London under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Now, that was unusual because normally at this point, if you wanted to stop someone from fortune telling or seances, you would use the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which had in that respect largely superseded the old Witchcraft Act. But the Old Witchcraft Act made it a criminal offence to pretend to powers of witchcraft,

and it carried a custodial sentence. And the belief among several historians is that Helen Duncan was locked up over D-Day so that there was no possibility, if she had these powers, that she could possibly betray the secrets of D-Day. And that seems to have been the main security concern. That's amazing. That's an incredible... So that...

Are you genuinely... Well, not you. I mean, did they genuinely think that Helen Duncan had these powers? Or did they think that the powers were a blind and that actually she was a German spy or something? It's difficult to say exactly what they thought. I mean, my own view would be that they probably took the view that you couldn't be too careful. And that since she already had this reputation for revealing secrets, even if whatever she said was rubbish, people might believe it because of

her prominence. And so there's always an element in wartime that careless talk costs lives, even if that careless talk is groundless, because it demoralizes and causes panic and confusion and so forth. So whether they really believed that she had these powers, I don't know. But certainly they believed that she was a potentially dangerous person, and that seances could be a form of careless talk that might imperil the country. Francis, if they did think that she genuinely was able to see this in her seances and acted on it, would that rank as the last time that, let's call it the establishment, the political powers, the legal powers, whatever, have concerned themselves with the interface of the occult and government policy and practice?

It would be the last public case that we know of. Right. Didn't Cherie Blair, and she had a kind of a woman who did chanting and stuff with Tony, didn't she? Carol Kaplan? Were the powers involved with that? Yes, indeed so that there were certainly mediums in 10 downing street uh during the blair years um and you know there have been various members of the royal family who have been connected to occult practitioners um so yeah these these ones have not entirely vanished yeah maybe tom's fan prince edward i'd see him as a casting spell he's definitely so francis which which members of the royal family oh well mainly princess diana but also

uh prince charles has been connected to union mysticism and there was a union mystic that he became close to a sort of eco mysticism is something that he has apparently been interested in. Tom, we did the podcast series, didn't we, the other week about the Falklands? We did, yeah. And if you go through the archives, Mrs. Thatcher's kind of file, there's a document just before the British landed on the Falklands, which was forwarded to her from an astrologer who had sort of done the charts and stuff and it said you know don't do the landings i remember reading that you you use that rather than just kind of tossing it aside she went through it and corrected the grammar yeah that's right that's right so basically i know the prime

minister mrs satcher anecdote exactly any of the prime minister would have ignored it but she clearly had read it and made my little marks in the margin. Split infinity. Yeah. Well, Francis, that's been an absolute tool to force. Your book, Magic in Merlin's Realm, A History of Occult Politics in Britain, is just fabulously, fabulously entertaining and just full of incredible detail. It's a wonderful book. Thanks so much.

And thank you, everyone, for listening. And don't forget, 7.33, Saturdays. You can find the spell online yeah if everybody does it who knows what could happen there'll be some choking on sunflower seeds we'll see you soon bye-bye bye-bye thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community,

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