called
art; as likewise in his Crystal, of a convex form, which he alleged had
been presented to him by no less a person than the angel Uriel. Dr. Dee
believed also in the possibility of communicating with the spirits of
the invisible world, supposing that he had only by looking intently
into his Crystal to behold those who had been long dead, and to
converse with them. It is now known that this wondrous crystal was
nothing more than a polished piece of cannel coal. In a catalogue of a
well-remembered sale held by Mr. George Robins, 1842 (that of the
effects of Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill) we find the following
puff:—" One glance must be allowed at the little glass case in the
corner, which is filled with curiosities. Here is the wondrous speculum
of the renowned Dr. Dee,—the mirror which Kelly (another contemporary
magician) did all his feats upon." The same is a highly polished piece
of cannel coal, of a circular form, with a handle to it. It is a very
mysterious-looking object, and worthy of being called " the devil's
looking-glass."
As
regards the planetary symbol of the sun, previously noticed here, it is
to be said that the origin of such planetary symbols—applied to all the
nobler metals— is wrapt in obscurity ; what their primitive meaning
signified is by no means clear. Obviously the moon— which denotes the
metal silver,—was designated by the crescent, as a representation of
herself. The alchemists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who
were all more or less astrologers, thought out an explanation of these
planetary metallic symbols, which briefly was this: Gold, as we have
told, was represented by a circle, with a dot in the centre, id est, the character signifying the sun; the circle being always taken as the
