The British Museum has a number of objects associated with the Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer and magician John Dee 1527-1608/9. After his death, some of Dee’s manuscripts passed into the hands of the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton 1571-1631, whose collection was one of the founding collections that formed the British Museum in 1753. The two smaller wax discs shown here are all that survive of the original four which are recorded in the Cotton manuscripts now in the British Library as having supported the legs of Dee’s ‘table of practice’. The larger one, the ‘Seal of God’ Sigillum Dei corresponds exactly with a drawing in Dee’s manuscripts. It was used to support one of Dee’s ‘shew-stones’, the polished translucent or reflective objects which he used as tools for his occult research. All three wax discs are engraved with magical names, symbols and signs.

via British Museum – Dr Dee’s magic.