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Conspiracy file · 1582–1587 · revived in the 1880s

Enochian Magic

A system of angel magic written down in the 1580s by John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelley: an alphabet, a language, 48 calls and tables of letters, all said to be dictated by angels. The Golden Dawn revived it in the 1880s and Aleister Crowley carried it on.

Also known as Enochian · Angelical · The language of angels · Enochian magick

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Enochian Magic: Enochian (John Dee and Edward Kelley) Sticker Sheet
From Enochian (John Dee and Edward Kelley) Sticker Sheet

The story

Enochian magic is the later name for the material John Dee and Edward Kelley recorded between 1582 and 1587. Kelley looked into a crystal and reported what he saw and heard. Dee kept the record. Dee called the language "Angelical"; the name Enochian comes from his belief that the patriarch Enoch was the last human to know it.

The paper trail is unusually good. The notebooks are in the British Library: the conferences from December 1581 to May 1583, a book of letter grids that Kelley wrote out in 1583, and the 48 "angelical keys" received in Krakow between April and July 1584, with English translations. The British Museum holds the engraved wax seals from Dee's table of practice. Part of the record was printed in 1659. More surfaced in 1672 in a cedarwood chest bought by a London couple, after a maid had used some of the leaves to line pie dishes.

The system had a second life. In the 1880s Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers rebuilt the papers into a working ceremonial system for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Aleister Crowley took the calls into the Algerian desert in 1909, and Anton LaVey reworded the keys for The Satanic Bible in 1969. The linguist Donald Laycock, who compiled its dictionary, found that the language sounds like English and follows English word order.

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PseudoSyncTank: John Dee and Friends · Paranoid AmericanWatch on YouTube

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Enochian Magic

On the record

  1. Dee's first recorded session with spirits, on 22 December 1581, used Barnabas Saul as scryer; Edward Kelley, then calling himself Talbot, came to Mortlake in March 1582.
  2. British Library Sloane MS 3188 holds five books of the conferences, from 22 December 1581 to 30 May 1583.
  3. A 21-letter alphabet was recorded on 26 March 1583. The book that followed, Liber Loagaeth (Sloane MS 3189), is mostly grids of 49 rows by 49 columns, written out by Kelley.
  4. The 48 angelical keys were received in Krakow between 13 April and 13 July 1584 and survive in Dee's handwriting (Sloane MS 3191).
  5. The British Museum holds three of Dee's engraved wax discs, including the large "Seal of God"; the Science Museum holds a crystal that Dee said the angel Uriel gave him in November 1582.
  6. Méric Casaubon printed the later conferences in London in 1659 as A True & Faithful Relation. Elias Ashmole acquired the earliest volume in 1672.
  7. Linguist Donald Laycock counted about 250 different words in the Enochian texts, more than half of them used only once, with English sounds and English word order.

The theory

  • The language is the speech of the angels, last known on earth to the patriarch Enoch (Dee's own belief, set down in his journals; he also called it "Adamical").
  • The spirits were real but evil, and Dee was their unwitting tool (Méric Casaubon, in the introduction to his 1659 edition).
  • Kelley invented the language and the visions (the view of skeptics, including some cryptographers; it is left open whether Dee was his victim or his accomplice).
  • The tablets and calls are a working method for invoking the beings named on them (the Golden Dawn system built by Mathers).
  • The nineteenth call opens thirty "Aethyrs" that a magician can pass through one by one: Aleister Crowley wrote that he did so in Algeria in 1909 and evoked the demon Choronzon on the way.

Timeline

  1. 1581Dee's first recorded session with spirits, with Barnabas Saul as scryer (22 December)
  2. 1582Edward Kelley arrives at Mortlake in March and becomes the regular scryer
  3. 1583The 21-letter alphabet (26 March) and Liber Loagaeth are recorded
  4. 1584The 48 angelical keys are received in Krakow (13 April to 13 July)
  5. 1587The last conferences with Kelley, in Bohemia
  6. 1607Dee's last recorded sessions, without Kelley
  7. 1659Méric Casaubon prints A True & Faithful Relation in London
  8. 1672Elias Ashmole acquires the earliest notebooks and makes a fair copy
  9. 1753The manuscripts are bought for the nation with Hans Sloane's collection
  10. 1888The Golden Dawn opens its Isis-Urania Temple in London; Mathers builds Enochian into its Adeptus Minor grade
  11. 1909Aleister Crowley and Victor Neuburg work the thirty Aethyrs in Algeria; the record is published in 1911 as The Vision and the Voice
  12. 1969Anton LaVey prints nineteen reworded Enochian Keys in The Satanic Bible
  13. 1978Donald Laycock publishes The Complete Enochian Dictionary

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