Dionysius Williams

Dionysius Williams


Dionysius Williams lived in Mayon, Sennen, during the late eighteenth century, so we are told by the author M.A Courtney. But this writer calls him a reputed astrologer, which along with the name Dionysius adds a darker ring to this figure.

In fact, if one is to check the Sennen burial records for the same period there is listed a Dionysius Williams who was buried on the 14th June 1775, and was according to the records a mathematician and fellow of the Royal Society. Whether the mathematician and the astrologer are the same figure cannot be confirmed. Although one can say that the astrologer may well be a lot older then the mathematician.

If this is the case then one can only state that Dionysius Williams could have theoretically existed and have been born anywhere between Corineus defeating Gogmagog, and the French breaking out in to revolt which lead to the napoleonic engulfment of europe. Yet there are no sources to prove this. Dionysius, may well have come a shore with Brutus and his Trojans at Totnes, the same fleet which brought Corineus. But this is pure conjecture. And is not Dionysius a greek name?

At this point it should be pointed out the effect the Trojans had on this country when they arrived at Totnes, for their influence exists in both the land and the place names that surround us today. Cornwall, for example, is named directly after Corineus. The land having been bequeathed to him by Brutus for defeating the afore mentioned giant, Gogmagog.

This combat is said to have taken place on what is now known as Plymouth Hoe. Here, Corineus wrestled the giant who was three times his height, lifted him off the ground, and threw him in to the sea where he drowned. Although to this date marine archaeologists have not found any of this creature’s bones in Plymouth Sound.

There is a mention in the records, of a turf figure of a giant existing on Plymouth Hoe in 1486, and other sources do show that payments were made for the maintenance and the re-cutting of the figure over a series of years. By 1602 there were two figures on the Hoe over looking the sound, known as Gog and Magog, however, one writer identifies the figures as Gogmagog and Corineus, which may well be more accurate. These figures are now gone, there is no mention of these figures existing after the reign of Charles II.

Dionysius as a name conjures up a myriad of possibilities, a myriad of aspects thrown out by the Greek God of the same name: a god of wine; intoxication; ecstasy; frenzy and madness as a removal from the order of society and in to chaos; the leaving behind of the self sane identity. One of the symbols of Dionysius is the mask, a symbol of changing identity.

The Homeric Hymns mention that Dionysius is also a bull god, a creature of rage. Combine this quality with ecstasy, frenzy, madness, and the removal of identity, one comes to the darker sense of the word Dionysius. This is the self beyond the rational, a movement towards chaos. Dionysius Williams not as the logical mathematician, but Dionysius Williams as astrologer.

It has already been stated that there is a darker ring to this figure. For there is the possibility that Williams may not have been wholly human, that just by his name alone he has something of the ‘other,’ about him. And yet the records point to nothing. For all we can tell Dionysius Williams may have been a member of the Fairer Race and not necessarily a Trojan. Although it is quite obvious that he had mystical abilities. M.A Courtney may well have got it wrong. The astrologer may well be a sorcerer. Most certainly he had, as the evidence suggests, the power of the darker arts.

At one point Williams was walking through the fields of his farm when he noticed that his furze stack was dwindling faster then it had in previous years. Williams had a hunch that something was amiss.

Using his ritual art, what ritual it was I have no idea, he discovered that some of the women of Sennen Cove, were in the habit of stealing away the furze during the dark of the night. Williams knew that something had to be done about this problem.

During the starlight of the next night a elderly woman came up from Sennen to collect from the stack a faggot of furze. While at the stack she made a bundle of the usual size so she could carry it home, but she found she could not lift it. Because of this she removes half of the furze from the faggot and found again that she could not lift the burden. Then she found she could not move from the spot where she was standing, and had to remain there in the cold all night.

The next morning Williams came out to meet her, and released her from the spell that he had cast upon her. Just by looking at her he realised that she was poor and took pity on her, and gave her the bundle of furze. She quickly went on her way.

Dionysius Williams’s furze stack was never touched again. And it is also at this point that the scant records of this figure go cold, leaving nothing more at this point to be said about his unusual name and nature.

Dionysius Williams: Mathematicus

In Dionysius Williams I noted that the cornish folklorist M.A Courtney had called this eighteenth century figure a 'reputed astrologer.'

Further to this I added the fact that in the Sennen burial records there is recorded a Dionysius Williams who was a mathematician and a fellow of the Royal Society. This Dionysius Williams had been buried on the 14th June 1775.

Also, I stated that the Astrologer may well be a lot older then the Mathematician. Insinuating that Courtney’s Williams was not the mathematician buried at Sennen. The astrologer coming from an older pre-scientific tradition, who may well have been a sorcerer, due to the fact that the recorded story of Dionysius Williams contains obvious magic use. One of these figures has at one stage been projected on to the other.

However, there is a possibility that I may have been wrong. For within all this mix of terminology, there was one term which was missed, bringing both astrology and mathematics together, and opening the way for the Sennen mathematician to actually be the Dionysius Williams of Courtney’s tale. For it is possible that Dionysius Williams was a ‘mathematicus.’ This, of course, will need some explaining.

Mathematicus as a word has a triple meaning. It describes a human being who practices mathematics, astrology, and astronomy, not just as a rational logical practice, but also as a spiritual discipline, an evocation of the divine, a movement from the rational physics of maths, towards a metaphysical description of human nature, and the world in which we inhabit.

The use of mathematics as a gateway to the divine is nothing new. There is historical agreement that astrology, astronomy, and mathematics grew out of the Babylonian culture of the Euphrates and the Tigris during the second millennium BC. A combination of disciplines which could open the universe.

Later, the Greek Pythagorean cult would practice ‘all is number.’ A combination of mathematics, astronomy, astrology and religious methodologies, along with vegetarianism, a doctrine of the transmigration of the soul and a form of numerology. All intoning a movement through mathematics towards metaphysics.

In our own time, pulling on greek and babylonian traditions, we can find the same movements in the work of Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler. Mathematics, astrology, astronomy, combine in figures who are normally considered in modern thought to be scientists.

Then there is John Dee, who may well be the closest model we have for Dionysius Williams. Dee himself was dubbed a magus, echoing Williams as a sorcerer, but regardless of that conation, within his work he tends to practice astrology, astronomy, alchemy, magic, numerology, and cabala, as well as mathematics which tends towards the metaphysics. Such is the nature of the mathematicus.

So here we have in babylonian, and greek culture, and in the work of Galileo, Kepler, and John Dee, the same combination of astrology, astronomy, and mathematics. All of which indicate that these three elements have always operated quite closely together.

Because of this it would then only be natural to suggest that the Astrologer of Courtney’s tale and the Mathematician buried in Sennen, may well be the same person, considering that astrology and mathematics seem in these circumstances to be inseparable. And because of this the two Dionysius Williams combine in to a single whole.


Dionysius Williams: Tracings Of A Life


In the previous article 'Dionysius Williams: Mathematicus,' it was argued that Dionysius Williams was in fact that, a 'mathematicus.' A practitioner of mathematics, astrology, and astronomy, to the point they combine to create a metaphysics of human nature.

However, the major problem with discussing Dionysius Williams is the fact that biographical materials are thin on the ground, and trying to pull together a fuller portrait of the man mentioned as a 'reputed astrologer,' in Courtney's tale, along with the mathematician and the fellow of the Royal Society buried at Sennen on the 14th June 1775 is difficult, if not sketchy at best. But what material there is does support the argument that Williams was a mathematicus.

The burial records of Sennen show a fair number of Williams listed across the 18th century who have passed out of existence, and may or may not be related to Dionysius. Yet there are three which are of note for according to the records Dionysius buried at lest three members of his family before his own death in 1775: Ann, one of his own daughters was buried on 15th September 1751; Margary, another daughter on 7th December 1767; and most telling his own wife, Ann, on the 29th March 1754. So far these are all the details that exist for Williams’s family. At the moment birth dates for these three women are not available, due to that they may have been born out side of the parish, and the birth date will be recorded in the parish of birth. This would be especially so for Dionysius’s wife, Ann.

For Dionysius him self it has already been noted many times that he was buried on the 14th June 1775, some twenty one years after the death of his wife. Further to this the records of the Royal Society mention that he was baptised at Sennen 'as of ripe years 6th January 1738, which still leaves an open date for his own birth, due to the fact that 'ripe years' could almost mean any date prior to that of the baptism, and is generally ambiguous.

But, regardless of these biographical problems with the dates, the archives of the Royal Society also allows us an insight to some of his own activities during the middle of the eighteenth century, and for the sake of the argument it is these details which are important for an understanding of this man.

Apparently in 1742 Williams wrote on the eclipse of 1742, and in the following year calculated the date of the moons eclipse. He also, may be in the late 1740's helped to survey Mount's Bay. A chart of the survey was published in 1751.

On the 8th May 1766 Dionysius Williams was voted in to the Royal Society as a fellow, based on this citation from his certificate of candidature: 'Mr Dionysius Williams of Sennen near the Lands End Cornwall. A Gentleman who has devoted much of his time to the study of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy being desirous of being Elected in to the Royal Society we whose names are underwritten from our knowledge of his person and character do recommend him in to the Society believing that he will become a useful member thereof.' The proposers on the certificate are noted as: 'T.H White; G Scott; Tho Yeoman.' Williams was admitted to the Royal Society on the 21st June 1766.

What this tells us about Dionysius Williams, is not only was he a skilled practitioner of mathematics and science in general, but also, the writing of the eclipse of 1742, and the calculation of the moon’s eclipse, shows a knowledge of astronomy, as does his surveying of Mount’s Bay. After all navigation at this point still very much relied on the positions of the sun, moon, and stars. In other words astronomical positioning.

It is obvious that Williams was more then a force to be reckoned with on these subjects, due to the fact of his entry in to the Royal Society. Entry after all could not have been easy by any means.

From this evidence it can be surmised that being Williams was skilled in mathematics and astronomy, astrologer would not have been that far behind, for it it has been shown in the previous articles that the practice of these three disciplines close together, in fact as one, is not unusual. And because of this Dionysius Williams was most certainly a ‘mathematicus,’ a practitioner of all three disciplines. There can be no doubt that the ‘reputed astrologer,’ of Courtney’s tale, and the mathematician buried at Sennen are the same person.

All of this though are only the traces of a life. These are only the barest details of this figure. We have no image of the man, and have no details of his personality or emotions, how he lived or felt. Because of this we can for now only say one thing: Dionysius Williams: Mathematicus.

December 2006.