Elias Ashmole and the Dee Tradition:

Whilst the early Royal Society appeared to be carefully excluding dangerous topics, concentrating on safe Baconianism, avoiding all mention of Rosicrucian manifestos (unless indirectly in a frontispiece), and certainly avoiding all mention of John Dee, now made notorious by Casaubon's publication, its membership included at least one scholar in whom the Dee tradition was very much alive. For Elias Ashmole, Dee was an immensely revered magus whose writings he collected and whose alchemical and magical teachings he endeavoured to put into practice. Ashmole's presence in the Royal Society as a foundation member ¹ is a significant indication that ‘Rosicrucianism’, if this should be identified with influences from Dee, still found a place within the Society, if only as a private interest of one of its members.