A closer look
John Dee served as Queen Elizabeth I’s personal astrologer and spent his later years trying to chat with angels using a shiny piece of black stone. This mystical artifact was actually a polished obsidian mirror looted from the Aztec empire, but Dee and his sketchy medium Edward Kelley were convinced it was a high-tech spiritual radio. Kelley would stare into the rock and dictate supposed angelic languages, which conveniently often instructed Dee to share all his possessions, including his wife. It is wildly impressive that one of the smartest mathematicians in Renaissance England was successfully conned into a polyamorous roommate situation by a guy staring really hard at a stolen piece of volcanic glass
