Essential Information
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National Maritime Museum
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10 Aug 2010
The monas hieroglyphica, Dr. John Dee's own personal symbol, appears in an Intelligence Book, kept by the spy William Lytlestone, 1582 (REC/40, a previous item of the month). The esoteric symbol represents the moon, the sun and the elements, visually in the form of astronomical signs. Dee, a famous bibliophile, inscribed works from his library with his own mark, hence it is believed that this volume once belonged to his collection.
This 'glyph' is a combination of the seven days of the week. To illustrate this, we can refer to examples of astrological symbols taken from lieutenant logbooks kept at the NMM. 
In the image shown we have a weekly entry for the KINGSTON kept by Captain Eaton, 1721. For each day we have an image of the moon for Monday 'moonday', followed by the astrological sign for Mars or the anglo-saxon 'Tiw' variation of the god for Tuesday, is the masculine symbol.
Mercury or 'Woden' for Wednesday is depicted with horns, Jupiter or Thor for Thursday, Venus or Freya for Friday, depicted as the feminine symbol. Saturn is for Saturday and an image of the sun for Sunday.
Interestingly, each of these symbols can be combined to form the 'monas hieroglyphica'. Even though this version is not a perfect example, we can clearly see the horns of Woden along with the other features. One slight difference is that Tiw is represented in the glyph as the symbol for Aries (the greek equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon) with rams horns at the base.
Mike (Assistant Archivist)