Shakespeare's plays and poetry show knowledge of occult imagery (ghosts, witches, alchemy, etc.) One source was Rosicrucianism.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE OCCULT
A Path To Edward De Vere

By Howard Schumann and Helen H. Gordon

According to the scientific/materialist paradigm of our time, the only true reality is the one we can detect with our five senses. Believers and practitioners of the occult are usually dismissed as heretics, blasphemers aligned with the Devil, or just simply crackpots. In the Elizabethan era, however, belief in the occult was virtually universal. The Renaissance era saw the emergence of new ideas and a deep curiosity about anything mystical. It was the age of Nostradamus, and the Renaissance fusion of Christianity, Hermetic Philosophy (a set of beliefs based primarily upon the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus), and a strong belief in magic, astrology and alchemy. 1

References to the occult pervade the works of many literary writers of the time, including William Shakespeare. While it is certain that the plays are filled with occult references, there is no evidence at all that William of Stratford ever studied or was involved with any such practices or was even widely read on the subject. On the other hand, there is considerable evidence, as will be discussed later, that Edward de Vere was a patron of the well-known occultist and philosopher Dr. John Dee and was a practitioner of the occult arts.

Much of the content and story lines in Shakespeare's plays were of a supernatural theme. According to Martin Ebon in They Knew the Unknown, “Shakespeare gave dramatic form to the dreams, legends, claims and counterclaims of supernatural derring-do that abounded during his lifetime,” 2 and many of the ideas of the Rosicrucians and Freemasons are reflected in his plays and poetry. While it is clear that Shakespeare respected the supernatural, according to Ebon, “that does not stop modern critics from rationalizing Shakespeare’s beliefs as damaging to the proper appreciation of the plays.” Ebon continues, “Only by accepting the psychic content of the plays are we free to enjoy them in the spirit in which they are written.” 3

Ebon adds that Shakespeare had certainly studied the witchcraft literature, notably a book that stands out in its objective criticism of irrational witch hunters, Reginald Scot’s “Discoverie of Witchcraft.” (Edinburgh, 1584), 4 Scot's work was intended as a sensible argument disputing the existence of witches, and also as a reaction to and a protest against the rising tide of the persecution of innocents by a superstitious clergy. This book was the first major book to denounce witch-hunts and their ringleaders, and was unquestionably the first book in English to actually discuss the methods of these so-called witches

Astrology in particular fascinated many prominent Elizabethans including Queen Elizabeth I who relied on John Dee who, together with his associate Edward Kelley, was the greatest astrologer of the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare makes over one hundred references to Astrology in the plays and events surrounding his characters are said to be favored or hindered by the stars. 5
In "The Psychic World of William Shakespeare", Sherman Yellen asserts that Shakespeare “believed in prophecy, witchcraft, astrology, magic and ghosts," and adds, “In Shakespeare, England may be said to locate its first psychic researcher.” 6 Yellen says that Shakespeare “respected the supernatural in a manner unlike that of his contemporaries, so that “the dignity with which he regarded the psychic raises it above the level of superstition at all times.” He also finds that Shakespeare’s ghosts are similar to those reported to psychic research societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, those who are seen by one person only and share characteristics which cross both national and historical boundaries.7
This may be the reason, he points out, for part of the universal appreciation for Shakespeare whose work “derives from the common heritage of ghost-lore which makes the plays immediately understandable to all people at all times.” In his article in the Occult Review, “Shakespeare and the Occult”, 8 C. Sheridan Jones noted that the plays of William Shakespeare are unintelligible without insight into occult thinking. He points out that many of Shakespeare’s plays abound with excursions into the realm of the supernatural, including ghosts, witches and sprites, yet questions must be asked as to Shakespeare’s attitude toward the occult. Were the ghosts, witches, and fairies merely stage devices used to heighten the dramatic effect or did they provide a real clue to the poet’s belief? To answer that question, we must take a closer look at the plays.

The Occult in the Plays

In Shakespeare’s plays, magic is about the supernatural elements of the mythic and fairy world, but it is also a simpler, more natural force, the magic of love, the magic of the morning dew, and even the magic of poetry and art. Richard III reflects dark forces of the supernatural while A Midsummer Night’s Dream accepts them in a light comedy. Only villains or misguided men attempt to ignore the supernatural at their peril, such as Edmund in King Lear, Iago in Othello, and Cassius in Julius Caesar. In Love's Labour's Lost, (Act 5, Scene 1) a whole scene is devoted to revealing the Rosicrucian connection (to those initiates in possession of the keys).

The scene closes with a remark addressed to Goodman Dull, a representative of the unperceiving multitude, that during the entire scene he has not spoken a word. "No," comes his response, "nor understood none neither." 9 The plays also contain numerous clues to his ideas. In As You Like It, the famous phrase, “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts,” (Act 2, Scene 7) seems to be saying that the roles we play are an essential part of life but not who we really are, that life has no intrinsic meaning beyond our ability to create it.

Hamlet

In Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet’s father haunts the area. He tells Hamlet that he was poisoned by his brother Claudius as he slept in his orchard and the Ghost makes plain the demand: "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” “Though the only supernatural element in the play, the ghost plays a pivotal role in the underlying story, which leads Hamlet down an emotional road between unwavering belief in the spirit of his father, to doubt, and finally to resolve.” (Act 1, Scene 5)

Hamlet dramatizes that the assertions of the ghost are correct and that supernatural predictions are part and parcel of acceptance of one's fate. According to Martin Ebon, “Doubts of the supernatural are overcome and in the end we know that the assertions of the ghost are correct.”10 A certain dropout from that system is represented by Shakespeare as telling his best friend, still a graduate student, that "there are more things in heaven and earth … / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Act 1, Scene 5)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream uses magic to create a mysterious, mystical atmosphere. Shakespeare populates the woods outside of Athens with mischievous, but good hearted fairies who mistakenly create unnecessary conflict, then make amends. The supernatural is the essential element that runs throughout the play and Shakespeare uses magic both to confuse the characters, and then resolve their bewilderment. Each character experiences the magic differently.

Bottom finds his wondrous dreams to be magical, while the lovers, arguably the most impacted by magic, remember it only as a bad dream. Titania finds magic in her love of a little boy, and Oberon embraces the magic of the supernatural elements in the seemingly natural world. In this play, Shakespeare suggests that the world of the magical fairies is not separate from the natural world, but a part of it. Animal spirits are prevalent throughout the play. In Act 2, Scene 2, Puck delivers a charm to protect the sleeping Titania from tiny creatures common in England, all harmless, though once thought to be venomous.

"Weaving spiders, come not here;
Hence, you longlegged spinners, hence!
Beetles black approach not near;
Worm nor snail, do no offence."

The spider’s connection with creation and illusion are ancient and myriad; the Greeks associated her with the Fates, and the Indians with Maya, the weaver of illusion; the Scandinavians associated her with the Norns, the women who wove the threads of life, and Native Americans believed that the Spider wove the first alphabet. Some Native American tribes believed the spider was the weaver who created the world and saw her as a symbol of creative female energy.

The play displays his knowledge of Greek mythology by creating characters such as Theseus, the duke of Athens, the mythical founder-king of Athens, and his bride Hippolyta, in Greek mythology, an Amazonian queen who owned a waist belt that she was given by her father Ares, the god of war that signified her authority as queen of the Amazons. Additionally, two other characters, Oberon and Titania, can be viewed as characters similar to Zeus and Hera and Puck can be compared to Eros, the Greek god of sexual love and beauty and the flower that Puck puts on characters’ eyes is similar to Eros’ golden arrows.

Midsummer also owes a large debt to Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” likely used in the translation by Arthur Golding, the uncle of Edward de Vere and his companion and adviser for some time after the twelve year old peer took up his residence in the household of Sir William Cecil as a Royal Ward. As in Ovid use of a story-within-a story, Shakespeare uses the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe as a play-within-a play for entertainment at the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Professor Jeremy McNamara, PhD says the fairies are modernized gods: "Like Ovid's gods, Shakespeare's fairies are menacing and powerful, with a control over nature and men, even if here they are ultimately more benign." 11

The early 20th century delineator of classical mythology, Robert Kilburn Root says that the whole character of Shakespeare's mythology is essentially Ovidian and that "Shakespeare himself has shown that he was proud to be Ovid's successful ape." 12 Metamorphosis, a theme central to Ovid is clearly represented by Bottom's transformation into an ass. Man is but an ass if he go about t’expound this dream,” Bottom says, unable to fathom the magical happenings that have affected him as anything but the result of slumber.

Shakespeare is also interested in the actual workings of dreams, in how events occur without explanation, time loses its normal sense of flow, and the impossible occurs as a matter of course; he seeks to recreate this environment in the play through the intervention of the fairies in the magical forest. At the end of the play, Puck extends the idea of dreams to the audience members themselves, saying that, if they have been offended by the play, they should remember it as nothing more than a dream. Hippolyta’s first words in the play evidence the prevalence of dreams (“Four days will quickly steep themselves in night, / Four nights will quickly dream away the time”), and various characters mention dreams throughout (Act 1, Scene 1).

Macbeth

Professor Brian Levack of the University of Texas, has said, “Ever since classical antiquity, dramatists have used the theme of witchcraft in their literary works. The human exercise of mysterious or supernatural evil has always appealed to audiences and offers the dramatist numerous possibilities for character and plot development.” 13 Whether or not “evil witches” and witchcraft itself had any objective validity or were simply social constructs, they were part of the culture in which Shakespeare lived and his audiences were convinced of their reality.

Macbeth is filled with references to witches, visions, dreams, ghosts, sleepwalking, and possibly telepathy and imagery of the supernatural. Though earlier plays such as Richard III reflect the dark side of the supernatural, Macbeth is for the most part, the darkest of Shakespeare’s plays and may reflect the possibility that, in Macbeth, he turned from the genial acceptance of the supernatural in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to a growing recognition of the hidden evil in men. There is a contradictory element to the depiction of witchcraft in Macbeth, however. The first scene introduces the “wyrd” sisters. Though modern translations refer to them as the weird sisters meaning odd and strange, the original meaning of the word “wyrd” or weyard” was “those who control fate.”

The play opens with thunder and lighting and the mood of darkness is established, but is then lightened by what author Richard Whalen has called “a bitter burlesque of witchcraft” which alternates between a witchcraft filled with dancing and playfulness to the traditional view of witchcraft as fate and prophecy.
Some film versions of the opening scene, unfortunately, omit the playfulness and depict only ugly creatures foaming at the mouth. Although Shakespeare does not include any description of the witches, their portrayals would most likely have reflected the prevailing attitude of the time.

The witches plan their next meeting and agree to meet Macbeth upon the heath "When the battle's lost and won". They then depart and mysteriously chant "Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (Act 1, Scene 1) which is a major theme of the play. They are saying good is bad and dark is light which is part of the confusion principle they use to cause the downfall of Macbeth. The witches are gender neutral and have aspects of both male and female. Banquo says, "What are these / So withered, and so wild in their attire, / That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth / And yet are on 't?" (Act 1, Scene 3). Just like Lady Macbeth's association with the presumed male role of aggressiveness, ambition, and cruelty leads to madness, the witch’s androgyny consigns them to villains in the play, leading the manly Macbeth astray. The witches confuse anyone who chooses to listen to their words. Perhaps after meeting them, Macbeth is being unconsciously motivated by evil to follow his deepest desires; whatever they may be.

Psychiatrist and author Dr. Jan Ehrenwald posits in Macbeth published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 14 that “the witches grasped Macbeth's repressed wish by telepathy, so their prophecy is a reflection of his own secret hopes and ambitions, of his own unformulated sinister designs.” While “the answer is dressed up in the garment of prophecy.” According to Ehrenwald, this scene was “a classical instance of telepathy, such as had occurred in innumerable instances in legend and history, and such as happens over and over again in various disguises.” This interpretation, however, seems to me to be rather dubious considering the witches later prophecies in Act 4, Scene 1. In my view, despite Macbeth’s attempt to prevent the realization of the witches’ supernatural predictions, he came to accept them as fated or predestined to occur, not as wish fulfillment.

Later, at the banquet in Macbeth's castle, Macbeth is haunted by the ghost of Banquo which is invisible to all but Macbeth. Shortly following Macbeth's change and the banquet scene, Hecate 15, a Greco-Roman goddess associated with magic and evil powers appears and plans on meeting the witches again so they can deceive Macbeth further. With her great wisdom and powerful occult magic, she plans to:

"By magical sleights,
Shall raise such artificial sprites
As by the strength of their illusion
Shall draw him on to his confusion
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear
His hopes' bove wisdom, grace, and fear:
And you all know security
Is mortals' chiefest enemy"
(Act 3, Scene 5)

The most famous witch scene is, of course, the afore-mentioned Act IV, Scene 1, the “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble” scene, where the three witches obtain the approval of Hecate.
From this point on, Macbeth and his wife are stricken with insomnia and extreme paranoia. Meanwhile, the dark elements guiding Macbeth celebrate their victory. He believes the witches' prophecies and plans to fulfill the rest of their predictions even if he must influence the outcome himself. This also shows the beginning of the confusion that plagues Macbeth throughout the play. In referring to the words "mortals", it is now clear that Hecate and the other three witches are supernatural forces or demigods working under the powers of darkness.

Owl Symbolism in Macbeth

In Macbeth, the owl is a symbol of dark forces. Before Duncan's assassination, animals, such as the owl and the falcon, emerged from the night and acted “unnatural even like the deeds that's done." "It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern'st good-night." In Act 2, scene 2, Lady Macbeth waits anxiously for Macbeth to return from killing Duncan, the King of Scotland. The owl is a bellman because, according to superstition, the hoot of the owl portends death, thus, when the owls screamed and the crickets cried, it symbolized evil and ominous doings.

In Greek mythology, Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, honored the Owl by making him her favorite. Night creature, (Athene noctua). As the symbol of Athene, the Owl was a protector, accompanying Greek armies to war, and providing ornamental inspiration for their daily lives. If an Owl flew over Greek Soldiers before a battle, they took it as a sign of victory. The owl was also deeply connected with magic and shamanism in Ancient Greece.

The Tempest

The Tempest is set on a remote island, most likely in the Mediterranean between Italy and the north coast of Africa. Living on the island are Prospero, a sorcerer, the monster Caliban, Ferdinand and Miranda, a young prince and a beautiful young lady, as well as mythological deities--including Ceres, goddess of agriculture; Iris, goddess of the rainbow; and Juno, queen of the gods. In The Tempest, Ariel is a “spirit of the air” who once served a witch Sycorax but now serves Prospero who rescued him from Sycorax by using the occult powers derived from his books, and is eager to remind Ariel of the fact.
Prospero calls on Ariel to use his magic powers to protect him from plots against his life, and to create the storm in Act One. Ariel’s power allows him to change his appearance and travel instantly to any part of the island. As a result, he uses his powers to help Prospero bring the men to the island that he has harbored a grievance against for twelve years. Although he seeks revenge, Prospero’s legacy is his transformation from a flawed revenge-seeker to a healer, a man who has learned to use his power to benefit others. According to author Helen Heightsman Gordon M.A., Ed.D, “Prospero represents the possibilities that a future humanity can become more compassionate through a sort of Rosicrucian enlightenment.” 16
Author Charles Beauclerk states it this way, “Prospero/Shakespeare is the literary champion of the occult Neoplatonists, a magus transformed from a warrior prince to a seer, the personification of the idea that the cosmos is the self-expression of the soul.” 17 Sherman Yellen comes to the conclusion that The Tempest is Shakespeare’s “final reconciliation with the supernatural,” whereby “the ultimate act of magic is the renunciation of magic.” 18 Renouncing his powers, he is able to discover who he really is and connect with his true self.

The famous line, “We are such stuff that dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep” (Act IV, Scene 1) seems to be asking as Poe did many years later, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?,” 19 or is life is an illusion from which we wake up into a true r reality? “According to all mysticism, occultism and ancient authentic religions, we are gods laying on a log beside a stream in heaven, resting and dreaming this dream of life. And when we awake we’ll have realized that life was but a dream.” 20

John Dee

The English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator and consultant to Queen Elizabeth who collected the largest library in England and one of the best in Europe, John Dee,21 was a prime instigator of the Hermetic revolution in the arts.. It has been widely speculated that the character of Prospero is based on John Dee who, like Prospero, also claimed that matter is only an illusion. Dee devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy, particularly to attempt to communicate with angels to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the unity of all mankind. Beginning in the early 1580s, Dee, along with his “scryer” or clairvoyant Edward Kelley, 22 conducted a series of communications with angelic intelligenc¬es that lasted several years.

Dee’s work, particularly his Monas Hieroglyphica 23 from 1564, was a major influence on Rosicrucian philosophy, and there are echoes of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Rosicrucian text Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. 24 For her entire reign, until the very year she died, Elizabeth repeatedly sought Dee out for advice, and early on accepted him as occult teacher: he says, for instance, that he has revealed to her the sacred mysteries of his Hieroglyphic Monad. The Queen is known to have sought his advice and good “intelligence,” and January 15 1559 was chosen as the day of her coronation, based on the horoscope cast for her by John Dee. Dee’s position on the Elizabethan espionage ladder is very near the top, and appropriately, he is nearly invisible except in his own writing.

In Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, the same collection that includes Kelley’s poem “Concerning the Philosopher’s Stone”, we find an important clue. Ashmole’s commentary on Dee and Kelley’s continental adventures contains a description of Kelley’s transmu¬tation, performed to “gratifie Master Edward Garland and his Brother Francis.” Garland is a name that appears in the same collection of Danish documents that contains the original of Kelley’s “Philosopher’s Stone” poem. And both brothers turn up in Dee’s diary; indeed Dee refers to several “Garland” brothers; Francis, Edward and Robert, and a fourth, “Garland,” Henry.

None have ever been positively identified. No extant archival records show a payment to or letter from any of these men, yet they clearly are presented by Dee as acting as couriers. No civic record yet located lists their names. In fact, all of the references to a “Garland” connected to John Dee or Edward Kelley have as their source the writings of John Dee. Could Francis, Edward, and Robert refer to Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, and perhaps Robert Dudley? Could Henry be Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton?

As Vincent Bridges and Teresa Burns wrote in their article in the magazine Atlantis Rising, (May/June 2009) the consensus about Shakespeare’s esoteric knowledge is “almost unanimous.” That agreement, however, “raises the vexing question of the issue of Shake¬speare’s identity; and, while it doesn’t prove that the Bard was really someone else (Bacon, or de Vere or even Mar¬lowe), it does suggest that Shakespeare had some kind of secret life, one that brought him into contact with a mentor who could provide him with sources from Holinshead to Aggripa. If we follow the trail of Shakespeare’s esoteric themes and their sources, we come to the conclusion that only one library, one knowledgeable teacher, existed for the necessary range of subjects: that of Dr. John Dee.” 25

Dee and Oxford

One of the key arguments made by supporters of Sir Francis Bacon’s candidacy is that only he was a student of the occult. Bacon supporter Richard Dawkins says, “The worlds of Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Cabalistic and Christian philosophy are represented in the plays, and the nature and working of the gods, goddesses and spirits are based on esoteric principles taught in these various Mysteries.” What is not acknowledged, however, is that the association of Edward de Vere is equally if not more compelling.

Author Bernard M. Ward states in his book, “The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford,” “In 1570, Oxford, according to several reports, became interested in occultism, and studied magic and conjuring, having made the acquaintance of the mathematician and astrologer John Dee that winter, who he wrote “favourable letters” to. The letters have not survived, and are only known through Dee's reference to them in a book published in 1590.” 26 According to Professor Alan H. Nelson, “Dee knew Edward de Vere! It’s contained in a letter written by Dee in 1590. de Vere was also deeply involved in the occult around 1570 [when he was 20 years old].” 27 William Farina in “De Vere as Shakespeare,” describes Oxford as being a patron of John Dee. 28

Bridges and Burns also state “From the work of Joy Hancox, who concluded that Dee was the most likely channel for the sophisticated geometry of the original Elizabethan theatres, we can place Dee and Shakespeare roughly in the same milieu, that of the Bur¬bage’s and the Globe Theatre. However, even though Dee was in London during Shakespeare’s meteoric rise to fame in the early 1590s, and kept many journals and diaries of visitors and events, there is no mention of the name Shake¬speare. If Dee knew Shakespeare, then he knew him under another name and from very different circumstances.”

Shakespeare, Rosicrucian’s, and Freemasonry

Modern Rosicrucian’s claim that: “No one familiar with esoteric doctrines can have any question as to Shakespeare’s familiarity with the wisdom of the Illuminati.” 29 According to the article, “Francis Garland, William Shakespeare, and John Dee’s Green Language” by Teresa Burns, “we cannot properly understand the Shakespearean corpus without reading the works as initiatory texts whose mythical and political allusions carry automatic references to the Kabala, precessional astronomy, geomancy, and sacred geometry.” 30
According to author Helen Heightsman Gordon in The Rose+Croix Journal, 31 “Historians such as Francis Yates, Manly P. Hall, and Arthur Waite have detected in Shakespeare’s works an underlying optimism and faith revealing the influence of Rosicrucian’s and Freemasonry.”

It was author W. F. C. Wigston who called the Bard "phantom Captain Shakespeare, the Rosicrucian mask." She goes on to say that “These philosophical movements were spreading throughout Europe in the sixteenth century, although public manifestos were not issued until the eighteenth century. I believe Shakespeare participated in both groups, interacting with the finest minds in England, such as the astrologer-magician Dr. John Dee, the poet Edmund Spenser and the scientist-philosopher Francis Bacon. These stimulating contacts shaped Oxford’s humanistic views and therefore gave birth to the wisdom so apparent in Shakespeare’s works.”

As far as Shakespeare’s connection to Freemasonry, one of the lines from the printed Masonic Fellow Craft ritual states, “We are all traveling upon the level of time to that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns." 32 Compare this with Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s Soliloquy: (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1) …”that the dread of something after death, the undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will.” (Act 3, Scene 1) The similarity indicates a connection between Shakespeare and Freemasonry. Freemasonry is older by far but not all its writing is necessarily extant, at least not proven yet, because Masonry goes back beyond the 1500s, where no real records are kept.

Shakespeare used Rosicrucian and Freemason imagery in his plays and poems and that were probably intended as clues to reveal “Shakespeare’s” true identity. In Macbeth, Act One, Scene One, we are introduced to three witches who utter the words “fair is foul, foul is fair.” Author James Shelby Downward 33 has pointed out that this is a well known principle of alchemy (where) just as lead can be transformed into gold, the ostensibly noble Macbeth and his wife can be transformed into serial murderers by greed and ambition, three knocks are continually repeated until the porter allows entrance to Macduff, the future murderer of Macbeth (Act 2, Scene 3). The relevance of the number three can be compared to its continual recurrence in Masonic ritual, for example, three original Grand Masters, three assassins, and a total of thirty-three degrees of the Masonic hierarchy.

Perhaps the most blatant parallel between the death of Abiff (In Masonic ritual, Hiram Abiff is not a worker of brass as in Scripture, but rather the Grand Master at the building of Solomon’s temple who was murdered, buried, and resurrected) and Shakespeare occurs in Macbeth during the murder scene when Macbeth hires a pair of assassins to exterminate Banquo and his son Fleance. This pair mysteriously transforms into a trio. To the uninitiated this might seem like a discrepancy. However, after all the evidence presented so far, it becomes obvious that Shakespeare is purposely waving a red flag in order to attract the reader’s attention to this “irrelevant” detail.

Both the number three and the concept of alchemy play an integral role in the story of Macbeth’s downfall. The number three appears again in relation to Hecate’s appearance in Act Three, Scene Five… It’s interesting to note that in classical mythology Hecate has three roles — some of them infernal, some of them divine… she is Diana on Earth, Luna in Heaven, and Hecate in Hell… The melding of the positive and the negative are common elements of both alchemy and the Brotherhood, as Grand Commander Albert Pike has written, “Man is a free agent, though Omnipotence is above and all around him. To be free to do good, he must be free to do evil. The Light necessitates the Shadow,” 34

Other examples from the plays include (note that the Plumb, Square, and Level are working tools of a Fellow Craft Mason):

Like to the Garter’s compass, in a ring:

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V, Scene 5

Is there no young squarer that will make a Voyage with him....?

Much Ado About Nothing, Act I Scene 1

I have not kept my square, but that to come shall all be done by Rule.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act II, Scene 1

They never meet, but they do square.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene 1

I shall stay here the forehorse to a smock,

Creaking my shoes on the plain masonry,

All’s well that Ends Well, Act II, Scene 1

Doth any name particular belong
Unto the lodging where I first did swoon?
'Tis call'd Jerusalem, my noble lord.

King Henry IV, Part ii Act 4, Scene 5

And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer’s wrist,
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action,

The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

What! My old Worshipful Master!

Taming of the Shrew, Act V, Scene 1

If circumstances lead me, I will find
Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
Within the centre.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act II, Scene 2

And from the cross-row plucks the letter G.

Richard III, Act I, Scene 1

To use it for my time: I am a brother
Of gracious order, late come from the See
In special business from his holiness.

King Henry V Act 1, Scene 2

You have made good work,
You and your apron-men; you that stood so up much

Coriolanus Act IV, Scene 6

Pray you, without any more virginal fencing, will
you use him kindly? He will line your apron with gold.

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act 4, Scene 6

Flav. Speak, what trade art thou?
Carpenter. Why, sir, a carpenter.
Mar. Where is thy leather apron, and thy rule?

Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 1

That Shadow of Thine

According to author Helen Heightsman Gordon, Thomas Vavasour, a relative of Oxford’s lover Anne Vavasour, began a challenge to de Vere with these two sentences: “If thy body had been as deformed as thy mind is dishonourable, my house had yet been unspotted, and thyself remained with thy cowardice unknown. I speak this that I fear thou art so much wedded to that shadow of thine, that nothing can force to awake thy base and sleepy spirits.” 35 No one knows what the phrase “that shadow of thine” means.

There is, however, a possible and perhaps likely explanation. De Vere has been accused of dabbling in the world of alchemy, astrology, spirits, séances, communication with the dead, magic, secret societies, and the like. As Ms. Gordon continues, “In one of three famous pictures of de Vere, he wears a black robe with a lacy ruff revealing his aristocratic status. He carries a prayer book or Bible, with a red ribbon as bookmark. The skull beside him on a red cloth indicates a familiarity with Freemason rituals in which a skull is used to remind initiates of their mortality.” 36 John Lyly, who was secretary to de Vere, seems to have also been accused of “black arts” by Gabriel Harvey. And in 1582, Lyly ended a letter to Burghley with a strange postscript “Loth I am to be a prophitt, and to be a wiche (witch) I loathe. Most dutiful to command, John Lyly.” 37

All this is by way of introduction to saying that "Books of Shadows" were membership books of secret societies. We know that early in his life de Vere was moving in that direction because in 1573 a poem of his was published with the title “Labour and its Reward”, included in Thomas Bedingfield's "Englishing" of Cardanus Comforte (1573, '76). 38 It is noteworthy that the author of Hamlet reverently read Cardanus Comforte which is the basis of some of his best lines at Elsinore (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1).

The poem begins:

“The labouring man that tills the fertile soil,
And reaps the harvest fruit, hath not indeed
The gain, but pain; and if for all his toil
He gets the straw, the lord will have the seed”

After a few more metaphors, he says:

“The mason poor that builds the lordly halls,
Dwells not in them, they are for high degree;
His cottage is compact with paper walls,
And not with brick or stone, as others be.”

In these last four lines of the poem, there seems to be some remarkable references to freemasonry: halls, high degree, compact, and paper walls and the puzzling phrase linking the “mason poor” with “high degree.”. It's doubtful this could be mere coincidence, and Thomas Vavasour's reference to “that shadow of thine,” and “thy base and sleepy spirits” seems most likely to be a comment on de Vere's involvement in the world of the occult.

Another name that keeps popping up in accounts of Elizabethan occultists is Sir Edward Dyer, 39 an English courtier and poet. Interestingly enough, his first patron was Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who seems to have thought of putting him forward as a rival to Sir Christopher Hatton for the queen's favor. He is mentioned by Gabriel Harvey, along with Sir Philip Sidney, as one of the ornaments of the court. Sidney, in his will, bequeathed his books equally between Fulke Greville and Dyer. English antiquarian, Anthony Wood says that many thought Dyer to be a Rosicrucian, and that he was a firm believer in alchemy. He had a great reputation as a poet among his contemporaries, but very little of his work has survived.

George Puttenham, in the Arte of English Poesie speaks of "Maister Edward Dyar, for Elegie most sweete, solemne, and of high conceit." 40 One of the poems once universally accepted as his is "My Mynde to me a kingdome is,” 41 which Steven May considers to be possibly written by Edward de Vere, 42 indicating the strong possibility of a connection between de Vere and the Rosicrucian Dyer.

Although nothing prevented William of Stratford from taking an interest in the occult, we know for certain that Oxford was a devotee. Since the occult was popular in Elizabethan times, William of Stratford may also have been interested, but, like the claim that he may have traveled to the continent during the “lost years”, there is simply no evidence for it. In response, Stratfordians may bring up the usual, “absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence” response, a doctrine that would be thrown out of every court in the world. There is a reason why speculation and supposition are inadmissible as evidence. To the Stratfordians, I say “tell it to the judge," a phrase that is often used after someone has been caught red handed and may try to excuse their actions. These words are said to shut them up, but don’t count on it in this case.

Endnotes
1) Elizabethan Period,
2) Martin Ebon, They Knew the Unknown, Signet 1972, 30
3) ibid., 33
4) ibid., 30
5) Elizabethan Astrology,
6) Sherman Yellen, The Psychic World of William Shakespeare, International Journal of Parapsychology, (Summer 1961), quoted in Ebon, 31
7) ibid., Ebon 32
8) C. Sheridan Jones, Shakespeare and the Occult, Occult Review (London, October, 1921) quoted in Ebon, 30-31
9) Rosicrucians, The Order of the Rose and the Cross, http://www.crystalinks.com/rosicrucian.html
10) Sherman Yellen, quoted in Ebon 32
11) Jeremy McNamara, Shakespeare’s Debt to Ovid, The 1992-93 Fox Classics Lecture,
12) Robert Kilburn Root, Classical Mythology in Shakespeare, Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2006
13) Brian Levack, The Witchcraft Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2004), 319
14) Jan Ehrenwald, Macbeth, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, London (October, 1941)
15) "Hecate," Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 12 Sept. 2005 .
16) Helen Heightsman Gordon, M.A. Ed. D, How Rosicrucian Friends Concealed and Revealed Shakespeare’s Secrets with Symbols, Clues, and Ciphers, Based on a presentation at the AMORC conference, Hidden in Plain Sight,” July 22–25, 2010, The Rose+Croix Journal 2011 – Vol. 8 40, www.rosecroixjournal.org
17) Charles Beauclerk, Shakespeare’s Mystery Play (The Tempest),
18) Ebon, 32
19) Edgar Allen Poe, A Dream Within a Dream,1849
20) Supernatural Elements in Shakespeare’s Plays,
21) John Dee, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 19 Oct. 2011
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee>
22) Edward Kelley, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Kelley
23) John Dee, Monas Hieroglyphica, Kessinger Publishing Co., 2003
24) Anonymous, attributed to Johann Valentin Andrae, Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, 1459, published in 1616
25) Dee and Shakespeare: The Origins of the Hermetic Revolution in the Elizabethan Theatre,” Atlantis Rising, May/June 2009. 34
26) Bernard M. Ward, The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, John Murray; First Printing edition 1928, pp 49-50
27) Alan H. Nelson, Monstrous Adversary: The Life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003, p 58-60
28) William Farina, De Vere as Shakespeare, An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon, McFarland and Company, inc., 2006, 203 (also see p 149, 191, 198)
29) Shakespeare – The Lay Bible,
30) Teresa Burns, Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition, No. 15, Vol. 2, Autumnal Equinox 2008
31) Helen Heightsman Gordon, The Rose Croix Journal 2011—Vol. 8 50,
32) Section First, The Fellow Craft Mason Lecture, James Shelby Downward, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
33) John Shelby Downward, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
34) Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 1871, 307 at sacred-texts.com, http://www.sacred-texts.com/mas/md/md19.htm
35) Helen Heightsman Gordon, http://www.rosecroixjournal.org/issues/2011/articles/vol8 40 71 gordon.pdf
36) ibid.
37) Ron Heisler, The Impact of Freemasonry on Elizabeth Literature, The Hermetic Journal, 1990
38) Oxford's poem Labour and its Reward, included in Thomas Bedingfield's "Englishing" of Cardanus Comforte (1573, 76)
39) Edward Dyer, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Dyer
40) George Puttenham, G. D. Willcock & A. Walker, eds., The Arte of English Poesie, Cambridge: University Press, 1936, p ix-cii.
41) My Mynde to me a Kingdome is, attributed to Sir Edward Dyer, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-mind-to-me-a-kingdom-is/
42) Steven May. "The Authorship of 'My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is'". RES New Series XXVI (1975) p 385-94)