The British Museum holds one large engraved wax disc and two smaller companions associated with John Dee’s conferences. Sloane MS 3188 does more than supply a similar finished design: it records the proposed furniture on 10 March 1582, the forty-part circumference and corrections later that month, and the extraction of names from numbered letters. Reading that sequence beside the wax shows what the objects were meant to do and where the witnesses disagree.
- Evidence type
- Surviving object
- Date
- Catalogued as late sixteenth century
- Anchor record
- British Museum · 1838,1232.90.a–c
The manuscript builds the seal in stages
The edited sequence of Sloane MS 3188 separates several kinds of work that a clean modern diagram collapses. On 10 March a reported speaker specifies a square table, a principal disc of clean wax, four smaller supports, and an AGLA cross on the reverse. On 19 March forty figures supply letter-and-number compartments around the circumference; the record then corrects omitted figures, number positions, and order. On 20 March seven names are traced through that ring, and a separate forty-nine-letter table supplies seven more names for the interior. The finished drawing at the end of Liber II is therefore the end state of questions, additions, and repairs. The outer numerals are instructions for moving among compartments, while the nested sevenfold geometry distributes names obtained by different procedures. This internal structure makes the Sigillum an addressable diagram inside the conference record, rather than a decorative emblem delivered whole.
Wax turns the diagram into ritual furniture
The 10 March record asks for a principal wax disc about nine inches across, roughly 22.9 centimetres, and a little more than an inch thick. British Museum 1838,1232.90.a measures 23.2 centimetres in diameter and 3.4 centimetres deep. That close dimensional agreement makes comparison useful without proving a manufacture date. The proposed large disc sits centrally on the table beneath the viewing stone, so it supports and separates the stone from the tabletop. Four smaller versions are assigned to the table’s feet, extending the same sign through the structure that carries the action. Only two small discs survive with the large one, which means the three museum objects are not the complete five-disc arrangement described in the record. Their thickness, reverse engraving, and different sizes preserve a spatial job that a flat reproduction cannot show: principal support above, repeated supports below, and a marked surface between the scryer’s stone and the room.
Worked comparison: the disputed y/14–y/15 perimeter square from transcript to wax
Near the bottom of the circumference, the March transcript records three consecutive compartments as joined letters “og,” then a small y with 15 beneath it, then t with 11 beneath it. The order is itself corrected during the action: t/11 appears too soon, Michael tells Dee to keep it for the second place, and y/15 is put before it. Dee’s completed manuscript drawing instead appears to place 14 beneath the y, and the surviving large wax disc follows that y/14 state. One numeral changes the evidence because a lower number is not a caption. The same record explains that a number below a letter directs a count to the left around the ring, while a number above directs a count to the right; the destination supplies the next letter in a derived name. A transcript-led reconstruction that prints y/15 preserves the dictated-and-corrected action. A facsimile of the final drawing or wax that prints y/14 preserves the visible object state. Later writers connect the two totals with “Aemeth” and “meth,” but that is a later interpretation. The secure comparison is that transcript, completed drawing, and wax preserve two materially different instructions.
Agreement among witnesses does not close the date gap
The museum first traces the discs securely to a visitor’s description of the Cotton Library in 1692 and says it cannot establish with complete certainty that the surviving wax was made during Dee’s lifetime. Three claims must remain separate. Sloane MS 3188 records how the design was assembled; the large disc closely follows the completed drawing in scale and details such as y/14; and the extant wax was carved at a particular time by a particular maker. The first two have direct textual or physical support, while the third remains limited by provenance. The 1659 print, the lost wooden Holy Table, Oxford’s later marble copy, and the wax group are also distinct witnesses rather than a single surviving altar. Finally, “seal” does not make this object an Ars Goetia spirit seal. The Dee disc belongs to an angelic-conference furnishing with numbered reading paths and supports; the seventy-two Goetic seals arise in another textual family and serve a different organization of named spirits.
Compare the manuscript drawing with all three surviving wax discs →
Sources and records
- British Library: Sloane MS 3188 catalogue ↗
- John Dee Publication Project: Mysteriorum Liber Primus ↗
- John Dee Publication Project: Mysteriorum Liber Secundus ↗
- British Museum: large magical disc 1838,1232.90.a ↗
- British Museum: small magical disc 1838,1232.90.c ↗
- Ackermann and Devoy: objects associated with John Dee ↗
- Burns and Moore: the y/14–y/15 witness problem ↗