2

This injunction seems not to have been obeyed for some time, for Dee was now very busy inditing letters to Queen Elizabeth and to other of his friends in England. He was reminded of it later when something went wrong, and another crisis arrived with Kelly. On March 27, a Wednesday, Dee was busy in his study, when the skryer burst in, demanding unceremoniously a copy of a certain magic circle of letters which he professed to have had revealed to him by spirits at Oxford. He wished to show it to a Jesuit priest with whom he had made friends. He protested he would quit the company of the spirits with whom they had recently dealt and return to his former associates - the evil set. Dee said he had no leisure to look for the paper now, he was writing letters of importance, and in a week's time or when able, he would see it was found. This of course was irritating. Kelly stormed and raged, said the old man should not stir his foot from the room till it had been produced, and was about to lock up the door when Dee caught him by the shoulders, "calling aloud to my folks. They came in all, and my wife, and so afterwards by degrees his fury assuaged, and my folks, my wife and his, went away, and after he had sitten two or three hours with me, he saw on my head, as I sat writing, Michael stand with a sword, who willed him to speak, which he did forbear to do above a quarter of an hour."

Kelly, like a spoilt child, demanded of Michael if he should have his circle of letters. The angel addressed him then in a passage of exceeding beauty, seeming to scorch and wither the promptings of the skryer's evil nature, while wrestling at the same time with all the powers of darkness for his soul: -

"O Jehovah, whose look is more terrible to thy angels than all the fires thou hast created,...wilt thou suffer one man to be carried away, to the dishonouring and treading under foot of thee and thy light, of thee and thy truth? Can one man be dearer unto thee thanthe whole world was? Shall the heavens be thrown headlong down, and he go uncorrected?"

He intimates to the partners that their work and calling is greater than honour, money, pride and jewels. As it is great, so must their temptation be great.

"Therefore God has framed one of you as a stiffe-made Ashe, to bind up the continuance of his work, and to be free from yielding unto Satan."

As for the other, Michael promises Kelly that no evil spirit shall visibly show himself unto him any more as long as he is in the flesh.

"Whosoever therefore appeareth hereafter is of good."

Thus begins to yawn before the pair the most dangerous pitfall of all. Pride and confidence in the perfect intuition of God's will has led many a good and holy man astray. Soon even the stiff-made ash is to arrive at the pitch of believing that their teachers cannot err, and then comes a terrible downfall. Michael in an exquisite little parable bids them cleave fast together. And again it is clear why the elder man, the seeker after hidden knowledge, the pure-minded and gentle-hearted old mathematician and astrologer, though torn in pieces with his partner's wild outbursts, his notorious cupidity, impatience, and evil living, yearned over him and his rebellious youth as a mother over her child. Like Michael, he seems involved in a prolonged struggle for the rescue of his soul from the demons in whose power he devoutly believed.