Who's The Original 007

[Abhishek]

It Wasn't James Bond

Who was the original 007 and dashing British secret agent to her Majesty's secret service? Nope! If you guessed James Bond or Sean Connery, the actor first portraying James Bond on the movie screen - then you're not even in the right "ball park."

To find the original 007 secret agent, you must travel all the way back in time to 16th century England and to John Dee, a scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge. John Dee (1527-1608) was an English mathematician, professor, and astronomer who gave it all up for the (at that time) more lucrative occupation of being an astrologer.

Cardan
In 1552, the famous Italian astrologer and physician Jerome Cardan briefly visited England. In Cardan's role as both astrologer and physician, he was invited to cast an astrological chart and prescribe for the young and deathly ill King Edward VI. Court circles, in the know, felt sure the king was dying from consumption. During the period of time Cardan remained in England, the younger John Dee - already no stranger to the royal circles - briefly came under the older Cardan's tutelage, instruction, and inspiration.

When performing the young King Edward VI's "geniture" (birth chart interpretation), Cardan had forecasted an average length of life and marriage for the young king. However, shortly before the soon-to-be death of Edward VI, Jerome Cardan wisely chose to depart England and return to his native Italy. In later writings, Cardan protested that his forecast for the young king was incorrect due to a mistake on his part (a calculation he had failed to perform). According to Cardan, his leaving was not a matter of "getting out of town while the getting was good."

The Royal Sisters
According to one version of the story, shortly following the death of Edward VI - the newly crowned Queen Mary invited John Dee to her court for purposes of drawing up her horoscope. However, it soon became apparent to everyone in court that the young Dee was much more interested in the Queen Mary's younger sister, Elizabeth, who was at the time being held in semi-captivity. The young Dee drew up Elizabeth's chart and reportedly made the grave error in judgment of sharing with Elizabeth the differences between the two sister's charts. Soon after, Dee was arrested on charges of treason and suspected "enchantments" against Queen Mary's life. He was eventually acquitted of these charges - and in the short biography, "John Dee - Elizabethan Mystic and Astrologer," G.M. Hort reports that "the rest of Queen Mary's troubled reign, passed for him peacefully enough." According to Benjamin Woolley's "The Queen's Conjurer," during this period of time Dee became part of Queen Mary's entourage - but he (Dee) may have been secretly in the service of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth
After Queen Mary's death in 1558, the younger Elizabeth remembered John Dee and brought him back to court in order to calculate a favorable day for her crowning. After that, Dee was reported to be "continually busied about one thing and another at the fancy of the Queen." To make a very long story short, John Dee eventually got a wee bit too caught up the politics and intrigue of the day and reportedly briefly became a secret double-agent for Queen Elizabeth I in England's bid to thwart Spain.

In Dee's private communications with the Queen, the secret name identifying him to Queen Elizabeth is believed to have been none other than that of 007. In Hort's biography of Dee, it mentions only a "journey on some unnamed business of the Queen's." Perhaps, just as interesting, it has also been contended that the character Prospero from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" was Shakespeare's idealized portrait of John Dee.

Final Note
Here's one final interesting gem of information passed onto me by astrologer Rick Levine at StarIQ. One possibility, according to astrologer Rob Hand, is that - rather than signing his letters to the Queen with the numbers 007 - John Dee's secret signature may have instead been a glyph word picture depicting a pair of handheld eyeglasses that looked like the numbers 007. As such, Dee would have been slyly passing on the message that he was "the Queen's eyes."

Not having access to any original documents, here's an imaginative guess as to what Dee's secret signature may have looked like.

007 or a pair of handheld eyeglasses... one can't help but wonder that if subsequent historians hadn't had such blurry vision; then. perhaps, the dashing secret agent James Bond would have been known as "four-eyes." Call me a sentimental old fool, but it just doesn't seem to have the same sense of panache and/or verve...

John Dee
Sun in Cancer
Moon in Aquarius
Ascendant in Sagittarius
July 23, 1527 New Style (July 13, 1527 Old Style)
4:02 pm LMT
Latitude 51N32, no Longitude given
Near London, England
Based on Dee's birth data found among his personal papers.

Signature graphic created by Anthony Pena
Birth Chart Graphic created with SolarFire 5.