John Dee's angel conversations have been a facet of Elizabethan England's natural philosopher's life and work. Professor Harkness looks at Dee's angel conversations within the philosophical, religious and social contexts of his time. The conversations include discussions of the natural world, the practice of natural philosophy, and the apocalypse.

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations and conventions; Introduction; Part I. Genesis: 1. The colloquium of angels: Prague, 1586; 2. Building Jacob's ladder: the genesis of the angel conversations; 3. Climbing Jacob's ladder: angelology as natural philosophy; Part II. Revelations: 4. 'Then commeth the ende': apocalypse, natural philosophy, and the angel conversations; 5. 'The true cabala': reading the book of nature; 6. Adam's alchemy: the medicine of God and the restitution of nature; Epilogue; Select bibliography; Index.

" John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature, marks an important addition to Dee scholarship. For the first time, it places Dee's conversations with angels into a comprehensible framework. Harkness elegantly demonstrates that Dee's angel conversations were at the center of his mission to reform nature and the world in the midst of intellectual and religious tumult when the end of human history was imminently expected. This book brilliantly brings out the place of the angel conversations as exegetical aids in a natural philosophy that was meant to restore a corrupted and decaying Book of Nature. Natural philosophy was to provide a bridge between this world and the next, but only with the help of angels could faulty human perception and intelligence be remedied and the real significance of the things of nature be made clear." Pamela Smith, Pomona College