Episode 284: Mysticism in Tudor England
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Hello, friend, and welcome back to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network and the original Tudor History Podcast, telling stories of Tudor England since 2009. I am your host, Heather, and I am delighted that you are here with me. Today, we're going to talk about something a little bit different. We are going to talk about mysticism and spirituality in Tudor England.

So picture this. A tall, bearded man sits alone in a candlelit study, ink-stained fingers hovering over a velvet journal. Before him, a polished obsidian mirror gleams in the low light, and beside it, a crystal orb catches the flicker of the flame. The man is muttering in Latin, occasionally pausing to peer into the mirror, as if expecting someone or something to answer back.

This would be Dr. John Dee, astrologer, alchemist, mathematician, sometime advisor to Queen Elizabeth I, and the owner of the largest library in Europe. He is waiting for an angel to speak to him.

Welcome to Tudor England, where magic wasn't just the stuff of village gossip or fairytale nonsense. It was woven into the very fabric of courtly life and scholarly inquiry. You could be a learned physician, a pious housewife, or even the Queen of England herself, and still consult the stars before making a decision.

So in this episode, we are going to dive into the world of Tudor mysticism, alchemy, astrology, angel summoning, and everyday folk magic. We will meet characters who straddled the line between genius and charlatan, learn how prophecies could shake the throne, and discover the wise women who offered love potions and healing charms to their neighbors.

So let's get started. It's hard for us today, living in a world of lab reports and weather apps, to imagine just how porous the line was between science, religion, and magic in the pre-modern time. That's something I think about a lot because I really kind of feel like we've lost a lot of that magic of everyday life after the Enlightenment when everything now has an answer and everything can be explained through science.

In the 16th century, it wasn't strange to believe both in angels and astronomy, to say your prayers and your incantations. The spiritual and the supernatural were not at odds. They were cousins.

A devout Christian might seek the help of a local cunning woman when a child fell ill. A well-educated scholar might study the Hermetic texts alongside the Bible. Magic was seen by many as another way to understand the divine. If God created the heavens and the earth, then why wouldn't the stars contain messages? Why wouldn't the natural world offer up secrets hidden in roots and minerals?

Importantly, belief in the mystical wasn't limited just to unlettered villagers. Elizabeth I herself is said to have relied on astrological counsel from John Dee when choosing her coronation date. Educated nobles dabbled in the occult, not in spite of their learning but because of it. They believed this arcane knowledge was part of God's grand design.

But it wasn't just courtiers and philosophers. For the average Tudor subject, magic was part of the everyday. A strange dream, a sudden sickness, an unexpected death. These might be read as omens or even the work of witches. In a 1552 sermon, Hugh Latimer lamented how people turned to sorcerers whom we call wise men rather than the church for comfort.

Let's get started talking about alchemy and the quest for the philosopher's stone. Alchemy in Tudor England wasn't just about bubbling cauldrons and secret symbols. It was a serious business of unlocking the mysteries of the universe. At its heart, alchemy aimed to do two things, transform base metals into gold and discover the elusive elixir of life.

But beyond the glitter of gold, many alchemists believed that they were on a sacred journey, one that mirrored the transformation of the soul itself. Turning lead into gold was just the surface. Real alchemy, they believed, was about purifying the self and attaining divine wisdom. It attracted all kinds, monks, scholars, nobles, and yes, more than a few opportunists.

Monarchs were some of the most enthusiastic supporters. Of course they were. If they could get gold from lead, that would be amazing, right? Even as far back as Henry VI, English kings licensed alchemists to try their luck at transmutation. By the time of Elizabeth, alchemy had found a firm place in courtly circles.

John Dee himself spent years poring over cryptic texts and conducting alchemical experiments, convinced that somewhere in all of that smoke and mercury was the divine blueprint of creation. Meanwhile, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, turned Wilton House into a kind of mystical think tank, complete with an alchemy lab and the help of Adrian Gilbert, Raleigh's half-brother. Then there's Edward Kelly, the most colorful alchemist of the lot.

He claimed to possess red powder that could produce gold, and whether by sleight of hand or sheer confidence, he convinced enough people to win an invite to the court of Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. There he was knighted and given everything he needed to turn lead into gold, except, of course, the actual ability to do it.

When the gold failed to appear, Kelly ended up imprisoned and eventually died under very murky circumstances. Kelly wasn't the only one walking the tightrope between miracle and scam. One alchemist dazzled Henry VIII with promises to multiply gold, only to vanish with a healthy advance of royal coin. The king was reportedly furious. One suspects he didn't stay swindled for long.

In Tudor England, alchemy invited equal parts reverence and skepticism, and it spoke to a world hungry for secrets, secrets that might, if decoded properly, unlock both the mysteries of matter and the soul.

What about prophecies? Prophecies in Tudor England weren't just whispered in candlelit corners. They shaped politics, stirred rebellions, and kept monarchs awake at night. Whether printed in pamphlets or muttered by mystics, predictions carried real weight. A prophecy didn't need to be true to be powerful. It only had to be believed.

Take the case of Elizabeth Barton, the so-called Holy Maid of Kent. She was a humble servant girl turned visionary nun, and she began experiencing religious trances in the 1520s and was soon delivering messages that she claimed were divinely inspired. Her fame spread rapidly. At first, her visions were innocuous enough, pious warnings and calls for repentance. But then she turned her gaze toward Henry VIII's marital plans.

Barton publicly prophesied that if the king divorced Catherine of Aragon, he would die within a month. This wasn't just religious fervor. This was political dynamite. Barton's warnings gave ammunition to those opposed to the divorce. And for a moment, her visions threatened to derail Henry's plans.

She had visitors like Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. All of these nobles from court were visiting her and asking her about her prophecies and taking her really seriously. But that didn't last long. In 1534, she was arrested, tried, and, of course, executed for treason.

Barton was buried at Greyfriars, but a very unfortunate distinction. Her head was displayed on London Bridge, and this is the only record that we have of a woman's head being displayed on London Bridge. Normally that was men having that punishment. But her crime was so serious that they thought that they needed to send this chilling message to anyone else who was tempted to predict a monarch's doom.

Further north, another prophetic figure took root in legend, Mother Shipton. Said to have been born in a Yorkshire cave in 1488, Ursula Southill became England's most famous soothsayer.

Though her prophecies weren't published until decades after her death, stories about her spread like wildfire. She published a pamphlet called Mother Shipton's Prophecy. And one of the most enduring prophecies there was that Cardinal Woolsey would see York but never reach it. Cardinal Woolsey was the Archbishop of York, but he had never actually visited York.

And this was eerily fulfilled when he wound up dying before he did ever get to York. So that was true. The line between state-sanctioned prophecy and popular superstition was always thin. Court astrologers might advise on safe travel dates, while ballads circulated predicting the downfall of kings. One could be seen as respectable science, the other treasonous poetry.

Yet the appeal was the same. In an unpredictable world, prophecy offered a glimpse of order. Whether spoken by a nun, or a village crone, or a printed almanac, it let people believe, just for a moment, that the future wasn't entirely unknown.

What about astrology in Tudor life? In Tudor England, if you wanted to know the best time to get married, start a journey, or even crown a queen, you didn't consult a calendar. Oh no, you would consult the stars. Astrology wasn't a fringe belief. It was a respected field of knowledge taught alongside mathematics and medicine.

The stars, it was believed, weren't just twinkling lights in the heavens. They were cosmic signposts placed there by God to help humanity make sense of earthly affairs.

The same charts that tracked planetary movements for astronomy were also used to predict personality traits, illnesses, and political fortunes. There wasn't a clear line between science and astrology. Both were tools for decoding divine order. Educated people might cast horoscopes for newborns, or use star charts to travel or guide their warfare, or determine the most auspicious moment to begin a major undertaking.

At the highest levels of government, astrology played a remarkably public role. Dr. John Dee, we mentioned him earlier, the ever-present figure in Tudor mysticism, was consulted by Elizabeth I herself. In fact, it was Dee who chose the date of her coronation, January 15, 1559. He believed the alignments of the planet on that day would bless her reign and ensure stability.

That decision, based not on politics but on planetary positions, tells you everything you need to know about how seriously astrology was taken.

But it wasn't just a courtly indulgence. Almanacs filled with astrological forecasts flew off the presses and into the hands of merchants, farmers, and travelers. These handy guides told you when to plant your crops, when to avoid signing contracts, which days were lucky or disastrously cursed. For ordinary people, astrology offered a way to make sense of an uncertain world.

It suggested that fate wasn't entirely random, that if you understood the heavens, you could better navigate the earth. Of course, not everyone was convinced. Some clergy warned that astrology verged on heresy or paganism, and a few scholars scoffed at its more dramatic claims. But by and large, Tudor England embraced astrology. It lived at the crossroads of faith and reason, magic and method, just like the age itself.

Have you ever tried to talk to an angel? Well, John Dee and Edward Kelly and lots of other people did. So, we've mentioned him a lot. If Tudor England had its own Merlin, it was surely Dr. John Dee. Scholar, astrologer, mathematician, philosopher, part-time angel summoner, Dee was one of the most extraordinary minds of the Elizabethan era. He studied at Cambridge, lectured in Europe, advised navigators on mapping the globe,

and built what was the largest private library in England at the time. But despite his dazzling credentials, he wasn't content with earthly knowledge. He believed there were secrets beyond books, divine truths hidden from human eyes, accessible only through the supernatural.

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And so, in the 1580s, he set out to speak with angels. Dee believed that angels could reveal the fundamental building blocks of the universe, what he called the language of creation. To reach them, he needed a spiritual intermediary, someone who could serve as a scryer or a seer.

Enter Edward Kelly, who was a man of mysterious origins, missing ears, possibly due to an earlier conviction for forgery, and no shortage of charisma. Together, the two men embarked on a series of intense ritual sessions. Kelly would gaze into a crystal ball, or more often a polished obsidian mirror, and report the visions and the voices that emerged.

D. Ever the meticulous scholar recorded every word. What they received, they believed, was angelic communication, a new language, later called Enochian, full of strange letters and complex syntax. It was, they thought, the original language spoken by Adam, pure, powerful, and sacred.

Through it, they hoped to gain not only spiritual insight but practical knowledge, how to heal the sick, uncover universal truths, perhaps even transmute metals. But the messages weren't all golden. In 1587, while in Bohemia, Kelly announced a shocking directive from the angel Uriel. The men were meant to share all of their possessions, their wives included.

Dee was horrified. He loved his wife, Jane, deeply. But believing the command to be divine and fearing the consequences of disobedience, he agreed. The two couples reportedly exchanged their partners, and nine months later, Jane Dee gave birth to a son.

Whether Kelly was manipulating Dee or had come to believe his own visions is anyone's guess, but the scandal fractured their relationship. John Dee returned to England shaken and spiritually depleted. Kelly remained abroad and managed to reinvent himself as an alchemist, which we mentioned earlier. Rudolph II welcomed Kelly into court and failed to make gold and was imprisoned and

He had a desperate escape attempt and reportedly leapt from a castle window to his death. As for Dee, he came home to a changed world. The mood in England had shifted. His home library at Mortlake had been looted. Elizabeth gave him a minor post as a warden out of Christ's College, Manchester. But it was a far cry from the royal favor he had enjoyed 30 years before. Under James I, no friend to magicians at all.

In fact, James I was obsessed with witch hunting and did not like anything supernatural. Dee faded from view, dying in poverty around 1608. And yet his legend endured. Later, writers transformed him into a kind of literary wizard. Shakespeare's Prospero, some say, owes more than a little to John Dee. In fact, there is a series of mysteries, the Agents of the Crown series, that stars John Dee

One interesting thing about John Dee is the code that he signed his name as was 007. He was the original 007. And I think that kind of speaks to just this man of mystery and who he was. And the series Agents of the Crown is actually really good and kind of highlights that side of John Dee. So if you want to dig into some fun historical fiction with John Dee, I recommend that book.

What about everyday magic? Not every tutor or mystic wore scholarly robes or corresponded with angels. Most, in fact, lived in cottages and walked on muddy roads offering their services to neighbors in need. These were the cunning folk, wise women and men who practiced practical magic. You might call them village magicians. They were also known as charmers, blessers, and sometimes just the person you went to when nothing else worked.

They didn't conjure spirits or summon planetary forces. Instead, they healed wounds with herbal poultices, found lost objects using rituals passed down orally, or whispered over sick child with protective rhymes. A farmer whose cattle fell ill might ask a cunning man whether he'd been cursed. A young woman might pay a few coins for love spell. In many villages, these people were the first resort, not a last one.

The church was not thrilled. Like I said, preachers like Hugh Latimer grumbled that too many Christians were skipping the clergy and heading straight to the local wise woman when trouble struck. But the reality was cunning folk filled a gap. They were part healer, part counselor, part spiritual advisor, long before such roles had formal titles.

At the same time, fear of maleficium, harmful witchcraft, was growing. In 1542, Henry VIII passed the Witchcraft Act that made even minor magical acts like casting a love charm or searching for treasure with incantations punishable by death. Under Elizabeth I, a revised 1563 Act made it illegal to conjure spirits or cause harm through sorcery, though first-time offenders could avoid execution unless their magic caused death.

The goal was to root out dangerous witches, not village healers. And indeed, most witch trials did not target cunning folk. Records show that communities often defended their wise neighbors, even when tensions ran high. But the line was thin. A charm that didn't work, a healing that failed, a neighbor's suspicion. It didn't take much for someone to be accused.

Consider the chilling tale of Agnes Waterhouse, hanged in 1566 and remembered as one of England's first executed witches.

She confessed to keeping a familiar spirit, a white cat named Sathan, that allegedly spoke to her in a strange voice and demanded blood. Stories like these of demon pets, wax effigies, and night-flying witches stirred real terror. In 1589, rumors even claimed that someone had cursed Queen Elizabeth with a wax doll stuck full of pins.

Still, for most tutors, magic wasn't diabolical. It was just daily life. A sprig of rue tucked behind the door, a charm whispered over a fever, a secret name etched into a spoon. All little acts of reassurance in a world where medicine was crude, death was common, and the supernatural felt very close at hand. Court magicians may have chased angels and gold, but the village cunning woman simply offered help. And for many, that was magic in

Now in our lowest plans.

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. What about any kind of modern parallels?

I dabble in woo myself. I wouldn't say I'm totally woo, but I have tarot cards and I engage in a little bit of woo from time to time. I would say I'm further than woo curious, but definitely not in the deep end of woo. But my husband is actually doing a PhD in metaphysics, so he is all in on the woo.

And we actually have on our coffee table a wonderful book that was a gift to me from one of my patrons, a facsimile of an original collection of John Dee's work. It's a very old book that was a wonderful gift from one of my patrons who knew I liked John Dee's. So that is very prominent in our house. So there's a lot of parallels to our own world, of course, today, whether you're totally into the woo or not.

Tudor England stood at a strange crossroads where science met superstition and the learned elite could consult both God and the stars without batting an eye. Magic and mysticism weren't fringe, they were integrated into daily life, royal policy, even healthcare. And though the world would shift into the so-called Age of Reason after the so-called Enlightenment, this era's fascination with the unseen never really faded. In many ways, it still lives on.

Today, many people carry crystals in their pockets and check their horoscopes on their phones. Tarot cards, astrology apps, Reiki sessions, angel numbers are all part of a spiritual resurgence that looks, oddly enough, a little bit Tudor in flavor.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in psychics and astrologers soared, just as Tudor villagers turned to wise women during plagues and crises. We may no longer seek advice from scrying stones, but we're still chasing clarity, comfort, and a little bit of mystery.

500 years after John Dee summoned angels in Candlelight, we still gaze up at the stars and wonder what they mean. We still tell stories about witches. We still cross our fingers for luck. Do you ever feel weird if you go underneath the ladder? I totally feel weird. Like, I will avoid it at all costs.

What about breaking a mirror? If you break a mirror, do you worry about that? We still whisper to the universe when we think no one's listening. So maybe the real magic is how little the human heart has changed. So we will leave it there for this episode. What do you think about all of this? Are you someone who engages in these types of activity or do you scoff at them? Do you read your horoscope?

Do you check like if you're dating somebody new, will you check to see if you're a good match with them? I would love to know. Wherever you are listening to this, leave me a comment and let me know what you think. I think it's one of those things that, you know, we think our society is so advanced and we have this age of enlightenment and age of reason and all that. We've taken so much of the magic out of everyday life. And I feel like that's really something that's missing in our lives. So I like to bring a little bit of that magic back into my life. What do you think?

Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for the time you spent with me today. I will be back again next week.

Remember, you can always hop into the Tudor Learning Circle, which is a social network just for Tudor nerds. So if you ever get tired of all of the stuff that goes on on social media, you can just go to TudorLearningCircle.com and talk about all things related to Tudor. We're having our fun spring break adventure in there right now, too. There's a special group just for that, for our spring break royal progress event.

And yeah, so if you want to go in and talk about magic and mysticism, I would love to see you in there. All right, friend. Thanks so much for being here. I will be back next week. Have an amazing magical week. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

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