VMs: kelly

["Barbara Barrett" <barbarabarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barbara Babbles;
Personally I'm dismissive of the "Kelly Hoax" idea because there's no
evidence to support it. Kelly made up languages and scripts - Kelly and Dee
had an audience with Rudolph (who purportedly purchased the vms). This is a
bit like saying that any 1960s Texan who could shoot is a suspect in the JFK
assassination!

Anyways, there's much suggestion that it couldn't have been them. Kelly's
(or was it Dee's: I forget) diaries and accounts of their life report that
their "adventures" in Rudolph's court were a dismal failure from every
perspective.

Going to Rudolph's court was unpremeditated, and an emergency measure after
they were dismissed by their previous patron Count Polonian Albertus Laski -
furthermore going to Rudolph's court was Laski's idea, not theirs, and he
provided them with letters of introduction. Laski's intention was to rid
himself quickly of the drain on his finances that Kelly, Dee, and their
entourage had proved to be after their promise of turning base metals into
gold failed again and again.

They only got one audience with Rudolph, at which they demonstrated angelic
conversations, and Rudolph's unimpressed reaction was basically "don't call
us, we'll call you". They failed to get further audiences and eventually
left Prague almost in poverty.

Kelly and Dee had *very* little time to prepare a hoax to extort money from
Rudolph (and if they'd created it while in the employ of Laski it's a puzzle
why it wasn't offered to him). If Kelly or Dee had created the vms it is
also quite odd that it didn't get mentioned in their writings as what they
intended, or did, present to Rudolph. And certainly if they'd gotten the
princely sum of 600 ducats they'd not have left Prague in desperate need of
finances.

None of this constitutes "evidence" one way or the other, but the balance of
circumstance suggests that Kelly wasn't responsible for the vms.

Charles Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"
covers Kelly and Dee in some detail in the "Alchemists" chapter and I'd
recommend this classic work to all vms students

Barbara
.

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