The Mystery of the Book of Soyga: John Dee’s Cryptic Magical Grimoire
In the 16th century, Dr. John Dee—the brilliant mathematician, astronomer, and court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I—amassed one of the greatest libraries in Europe. Among his most prized possessions was a mysterious grimoire known as the Book of Soyga (or Aldaraia ). The manuscript contained treatises on magic, astrology, and angelology, but its most baffling feature was a series of 36 large tables filled with over 40,000 seemingly random letters. Dee was obsessed with deciphering the tables. During his famous angelic scrying sessions with the medium Edward Kelley, Dee supposedly asked the archangel Uriel about the book. The angel replied that the book was revealed to Adam in Paradise, but that the tables were so powerful and dangerous that only the Archangel Michael held the key to their translation. After Dee's death, the manuscript vanished for nearly 400 years. The Algorithmic Angels In 1994, two copies of the Book of Soyga were rediscovered in European libraries. Mode...