The Hieroglyphic Monad

In 1564, John Dee — the brilliant mathematician and hidden philosopher at the heart of Elizabethan England — published a book unlike any other. At its centre is a single mysterious symbol: a circle, a cross, a crescent, and a point. Dee unfolds this glyph through twenty-four theorems into a complete vision of the cosmos: the four elements, the seven planets, the metals of the alchemists, the mysteries of numbers, and the resurrection of the dead. Written for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, The Hieroglyphic Monad is one of the great documents of the Western mystical tradition, a place where careful mathematics becomes reverence and geometry becomes a ladder toward the divine. This faithful modern-English edition renders Dee's dense, beautiful Latin into clear, flowing prose, keeping the wonder of the original intact and making its vision inviting for today's readers. Part of The World Scriptures Library.