Monas Hieroglyphica, the hieroglyphic monad on the title
The Sun and the Moon as the central motif, with Fire and the Heavens in a secondary part. From Monas Hieroglyphica.
What is happening
John Dee, 1564 “Qui non intelligit, aut taceat, aut discat.”
Symbolica, 2026 Dee's Latin, put into English here: Who does not understand, let him be silent or learn. And beneath: Of the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth, may God give to you, Genesis 27. The four words at the corners of the frame are Ignis, Aer, Terra, Aqua, fire, air, earth and water. The glyph itself is the moon's crescent over the sun's circle and point, standing on the cross of the elements, with the sign of Aries beneath, and the twenty four theorems that follow take it apart piece by piece. The sun and the moon at the two upper corners have faces; the earth and the water at the two lower corners are drawn as roundels, a landscape and a sea with a swimmer in it.
Key · 3 motifs
Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.
- Primary motif
- Secondary motifs · 2
The picture
The monad in an oval frame, a sun and a moon with faces at its two upper corners, Ignis and Aer lettered there, Terra and Aqua at the lower corners over roundels of a landscape and a sea with a siren in it, and the motto running round the frame. By eye
The reading
The picture read whole, in the archive's words, from the sources quoted on the marks. Read on, and the picture follows: the motif under discussion keeps its colour.
‘Qui non intelligit, aut taceat, aut discat’, who does not understand, let him be silent or learn: the motto runs round the frame of the title, and the frame holds the one sign the whole book explains. Dee's Monas is a glyph, not a picture, and it was made to be taken apart.
It reads from the top. A crescent, horns upward, sits on a circle with a point at its centre: the moon over the sun. In the eleventh theorem Dee writes that ‘Monadis istius, Luna et Sol, sua separari volunt elementa, in quibus denaria vigebit proportio; idque ignis fieri ministerio’, the Moon and the Sun of this Monad wish their elements to be separated, in which the tenfold proportion will prevail, and that this be done by the ministry of fire. The engraver put the same two in the sky at the top corners of the frame, a sun and a moon with faces, so that nobody could miss that the glyph is drawn out of the heavens.
Under the sun the circle grows a stem, and the stem is crossed: the cross of the four elements, whose arms Dee will measure in later theorems.
At the foot, two half-circles meeting at a point: ‘Arietis nota mystica, ex duobus semicirculis, in communi puncto connexis, constituta’, the mystical sign of Aries, made of two semicircles joined at a common point. Aries is the fire sign, and the fire is under everything, which is where the work's fire goes.
The frame is the world the sign lives in. ‘Ignis. Aer. Terra. Aqua.’ are lettered at its four corners, fire and air above with the sun and moon, earth and water below as two roundels, a landscape and a sea. The figure in the water is not a swimmer: it rises from the waves bare to the waist, hair down one shoulder, both arms raised and holding a curved finned form in each hand, and below the waist it tapers into a tail. It is a siren, drawn at the size of a fingernail. The archive cannot resolve at this scale whether the forms in its hands are two tails of its own or fish beside it, and does not guess. Dee prints nothing about any of the four roundels; whatever the figure is, its work on this plate is to be the water. Beneath the frame, ‘De rore caeli, et pinguedine terrae, det tibi Deus. Genes. cap. 27’, of the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth may God give to you, Isaac's blessing on Jacob, the two halves of the world the frame has just drawn.
The book that follows is twenty four theorems taking the sign to pieces: point, circle, crescent, cross and Aries, then the planets, then the numbers. The archive holds four of those theorems as their own works, and this glyph is what they are about.
Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The reading above is the archive's own, made from those sources and no others.
Gold, the perfected metal, and the illuminated intellect. The most overloaded symbol in the tradition.
In plain words The glyph begins with the moon and the sun: a crescent whose horns hold a circle with a point at its centre. Dee's eleventh theorem says the Moon and the Sun of this Monad wish their elements to be separated, by the ministry of fire. At the top corners of the frame the same two are drawn again as the sun and moon of the sky, with faces, to say that the glyph is an astronomy.
John Dee, 1564 “Monadis istius, Luna et Sol, sua separari volunt elementa, in quibus denaria vigebit proportio; idque ignis fieri ministerio.”
Symbolica Dee's Latin, put into English here: Of this Monad, the Moon and the Sun wish their elements to be separated, in which the tenfold proportion will prevail; and that this be done by the ministry of fire.
A count, a catastrophe, or the visible part of something that has no body. Note whether the flames are arranged in a number, breaking something, or standing where a figure would be.
In plain words The glyph stands on the sign of Aries, two half-circles joined at a point, which Dee reads as fire: the first sign of the zodiac and the fiery one, the heat under the work. The word Ignis at the corner of the frame names the same element in the sky.
John Dee, 1564 “Arietis nota mystica, ex duobus semicirculis, in communi puncto connexis, constituta.”
Symbolica Dee's Latin, put into English here: the mystical sign of Aries, made of two semicircles joined at a common point.
John Dee, 1564 “Ignis. Aer. Terra. Aqua.”
Symbolica Ignis, Aer, Terra, Aqua: fire, air, earth, water.
A diagram of everything, drawn so that a person can be found inside it. Note where the human figure stands in the scheme.
In plain words The frame is a small world. Fire and air are named at the top corners, where the sun and moon are, earth and water at the bottom, where a landscape and a sea are drawn in roundels; the glyph hangs in the middle of the four. The line under the frame asks for the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth, the two halves of that world.
John Dee, 1564 “De rore caeli, et pinguedine terrae, det tibi Deus. Genes. cap. 27.”
Symbolica Dee's Latin, put into English here: of the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth, may God give to you; Genesis, chapter 27, which is Isaac's blessing on Jacob.
Also carrying the Sun and the Moon
59 works carry it. The 6 where it is the central motif are here. The symbol.
Where the detail is the subject
Each of these is in the picture without being what it is about. Below, one work that is about each.
In the same series
Record
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