Ormond House - The Bones of Avalon

Thanks also to:

From the British Society of Dowsers: Graham Gardner, Helen Lamb, Ced Jackson, John Moss, Richard Bartholomew.

In Glastonbury: Geoffrey Ashe, Jackie Edwards, Sig Lonegren, John Mason, Simon Small, Francis Thyer.

The tireless Mairead Reidy supplied me with more background information and commentary on Dee than I even knew existed.

Prof. Bernard Knight on matters of decomposition and crucial forensic details.

Caitlin Sagan, curiously, on the Bible.

Sir Richard Heygate, co-author with Philip Carr-Gomm of The Book of English Magic and his, um, friend from Mortlake for personal information not available in the biographies.

Grant Privett for astronomical lore.

Geraldine Richards for early French.

The Tudor oracle David Starkey directed me to the fascinating work of James P. Carley, author of Glastonbury Abbey, the Holy House at the Head of the Moors Adventurous. Starkey’s own works on Elizabeth and Henry VIII were hugely valuable, even if he doesn’t seem to have much regard for Dee – but, then, he wouldn’t, would he?

Tracy Thursfield’s informed esoteric advice was as perceptive and valuable as ever.

Adrian Vine and Brian Morgan at Nant-y-groes (both of them) showed us the Dee family’s Welsh roots.

Frances Yates’s book The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age still stands alone. From it comes the explanation of John Dee as a Christian cabalist. Ruth Elizabeth Richardson’s Mistress Blanche, the Queen’s Confidante, collects virtually all that’s known about Dee’s cousin, Blanche Parry. And The Ends of Life by Keith Thomas is a wonderful guide to the psychology of the sixteenth century.

Thanks to my paranormally laid-back editor, Nic Cheetham, who’s been pushing me at Dee for well over two years. To my agents Andrew Hewson and Ed Wilson for encouraging noises throughout. As for my brilliant wife Carol, devious plot-doctor, assiduous researcher, ruthless editor… words like chestnuts… fire… yet again… come to mind.

For the record, John Dee was never a sorcerer and there’s no evidence that he was psychic (much as he would have loved to be).

The Monas Hieroglyphica, Dee’s first significant book, was finally published in 1564, four years after the events related here. It’s JD at his most impenetrable, a meditation on a symbol which connects astrology with the creation theories in the Cabala and a supporting element of Christianity. The circle is the sun, the semi-circle the moon, below which we have the cross and, at the foot, the symbol of Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, the very base of creation.

The dot in the middle says,

You are here.