Text source: Reading the Book of Nature: The Other Side of the Scientific Revolution edited by Allen G. Debus and Michael T. Walton, 1998, Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers Inc.

From the Preface

The topic [of this paper] is a significant one because although Dee did not publish on any Paracelsian topics, he had close to one hundred editions of works by Paracelsus in his library plus many other works by contemporary Paracelsians. It was Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564) that was looked upon as an alchemical text, and continental authors, including Libavius, rejected this work of Dee’s along with that of avowed Paracelsians.

Clulee points out that Gerhard Dorn’s Chymisticum Artificium Naturae (1568) includes Dee’s symbol of the monas on its title page, surely an indication of the interest of an important Paracelsian in Dee’s work. But there is ample evidence that Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica was of interest to other authors who may be classed as Paracelsians. And if today we are most likely to turn to Dee’s ‘Mathematical Praeface’ to the English translation of Euclid (1570), his interest in navigation, or to any number of his other interests, there is little doubt that in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries he was most widely known for his alchemical work expressed in the Monas Hieroglyphica.