THE LAST MAGICIAN

Peter Stockinger and Sue Ward, William Lilly: The Last Magician - Astrologer and Adept, Mandrake, 2014.

The esoteric world of the early Enlightenment threw up some wonderfully cool characters who continue to inspire not just fascination but even devotion. Not least among them is William Lilly (1602-81); even the normally staid Westminster City Council felt moved to commemorate him, uniquely, as a ‘Master Astrologer’ by placing a plaque on the site of his house in the Strand.
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SEEING THE LIGHT

Paul Kléber Monod, Solomon’s Secret Arts: The Occult in the Age of Enlightenment, Yale University Press, 2013.

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John V. Fleming, The Dark Side of the Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason, W.W. Norton & Co., 2013

Since the 1970s there has been a gradual, if grudging, acknowledgement by academic historians that occult ideas and beliefs played a much more influential role in the Renaissance than previous generations would admit. Now, the same seems to be happening for the era to which the Renaissance gave way, the Enlightenment or Age of Reason.
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JOHN DEE - CONJURING AT COURT

Glyn Parry. The Arch-Conjurer of England: John Dee. Yale University Press, 2012.

Glyn Parry's new life of John Dee overturns many of the conventionally held views about this unique character. Living just across the road from the site of his house, laboratory and library in Mortlake my image of him was always as a white-bearded sage, living in a then-remote country village
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