John Dee’s Enochian Magick

Language Of The Angels or Encrypted Spy Talk?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 [Open in app]( or [online]() [John Dee’s Enochian Magick]( Language Of The Angels or Encrypted Spy Talk? Jun 4   [Share](   [John Dee demonstrating an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I (Wellcome Images/ CC BY-SA 4.0)]( Enochian Magick is a complex system of occult practices and rituals that have their roots in the 16th-century writings of the Elizabethan scholar John Dee (1527 – 1608) and his associate, Edward Kelley (1555-1597). Dee and Kelley claimed to have received messages from angels who imparted to them a language and a system of magic that they called ‘[Enochian](. The Enochian language is said to have been spoken by angels and was believed to be a language of power that could be used to communicate with Otherworldly beings. According to Dee and Kelley, the Enochian language was composed of 21 letters and had complex grammar and syntax that was difficult to master. According to Charlotte Fell Smith, this portrait was painted when Dee was 67. It belonged to his grandson Rowland Dee and later to Elias Ashmole, who left it to Oxford University. [(Public Domain]( Dee and Kelly’s Partnership John Dee was a prominent Elizabethan mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, known for his wide-ranging interests in science, mathematics, and the occult. He served as an advisor to Queen Elizabeth I and was a prominent member of the court. Dee's work in mathematics and navigation was instrumental in the development of English colonial expansion, and he was also known for his work on alchemy and the occult. Dee practiced scrying, which is the practice of using a [crystal ball]( or another reflective surface, like a mirror, to gain insight into the past, present, or future. Dee also worked with scryers, notably Edward Kelley and Francis Nicholls, who helped him to interpret the visions that he saw in his crystal ball. Edward Kelly prophet or seer to Dr Dee. National Library of Wales ([Public Domain]( Edward Kelley (1555-1597) was a controversial figure who claimed to have the ability to communicate with angels. He first met Dee in 1582, and the two men quickly formed a partnership, with Kelley acting as Dee's scryer. According to Kelley, he was able to see and communicate with angels, who provided him with a wealth of knowledge and insight. Together, [Dee and Kelley travelled throughout Europe]( performing scrying experiments and seeking the patronage of various rulers. The ‘Cross-matching episode’ marked the end of Dee's relationship with his "scryer" Kelley, and is hard to justify on any biblical basis. During one seance in Bohemia in 1587, Kelley claimed the angel Madimi insisted the two men share everything they had including their wives. According to Dee's diary, when his wife Jane was told of this ‘Cross-matching arrangement’, she fell weeping and trembling for a quarter of an hour. However, both Jane and Kelley's wife, Joanna, reluctantly submitted. Nine months later Jane gave birth to Theodore Dee, who may have been sired by Kelley, and whose name, means ‘gift of god’, or should that be the "gift of Madimi"? - [The Seal of Solomon Controlling the Demonic Armies]( - [Irish Poets Uncover the Kabbalah in Celtic Creation Myths]( - [John Dee: Scholar, Astrologer, and Occult Practitioner that Captivated the Royal Court of 16th Century England]( Kelley's credibility was called into question when he was caught faking a vision. He eventually fell out of favor with Dee and returned to England, where he was imprisoned for fraud. He died in prison in 1597. Dee's glyph, whose meaning he explained in Monas Hieroglyphica ([Kwamikagami]( BY-SA 4.0]( The Rituals of Enochian Magick One of the central features of Enochian Magick is the use of complex diagrams and symbols, known as sigils, which are believed to represent the forces that the magician seeks to harness. These sigils are often inscribed on talismans or other objects that are used in rituals. Enochian Magick also makes use of elaborate rituals that are designed to invoke or summon specific entities from the Otherworldly realm. These rituals often involve the use of incense, candles, and other materials, as well as the recitation of specific chants or ‘Calls’.  John Dee’s manuscript diary for 6 May 1583 with the 21 symbols. British Library ([Public Domain]( Enochian Magick is also closely associated with the concept of the Aethyrs. The Aethyrs are said to be planes of existence beyond the physical realm, each with its own unique properties and inhabitants. The magician may travel to these Aethyrs in order to gain knowledge or insight into the nature of the universe and the forces that govern it. Enochian Magick has been the subject of much controversy and debate over the years. Medieval concept of the cosmos. The innermost spheres are the terrestrial spheres, while the outer are made of aether and contain the celestial bodies. ([Public Domain]( Dee’s Library and Paraphernalia John Dee was an antiquarian had a large personal library, and may have been familiar with early emblematic texts concerning Egypt; notably Hieroglyphica by Horapollo (first published 1505). Could hieratic Egyptian glyphs be the inspiration for Dee's "Angelic language"? Dee turned down not just one but two mathematical professorships. John Dee's Enochian 'spiritist' library and paraphernalia included the following:  The Sigillum Dei Aemeth or The Seal of Truth, a pure and uncoloured wax pentacle, nine inches in diameter showing a complex magical design. Four sigils and four names can be derived from this Seal to channel the power of the Elemental Tablets. The sigils link to the higher worlds of Briah and Yetsirah. The Sigillum Dei Aemeth "Seal of Truth", British Museum [(CC BY-SA 4.0)]( The Sigillum Dei Aemeth was placed under the Holy Shew-stone (a scrying mirror or crystal ball) when Kelly carried out his crystal gazing. It works as a stabilizing and enhancing influence during magickal operations rather than as a central focus for a ceremony.  The Tabula Sancta was a wooden table, two cubits high by two cubits square, which contained seven talismans, and had Enochian writing in the center and around the edge. The Seal and Table are the first two Enochian "documents" (created in March 1582) and the angel Uriel instructed Dee that the Seal was to be placed on the Holy Table during use. Liber Scientia Auxilii Et Victoria Terrestris, the 'Book of Science, Help and Victory,' is the key to the extraction of the names of 91 Angelic Princes who rule in the Thirty Aethyrs. The book also shows how the sigils of these Princes may be drawn. The forces described in the Book pertain to the world of Atziluth (Fire).  John Dee's Heptarchic Lamen in Enochian (left) and English (right) ([Public Domain]( De Heptarchia Mystica contains the names, sigils, and methods of invocations for the 49 Angels of Light (of the Bonorum), and Lesser Spirits of the seven Ptolemaic planets. The Heptarchia relates to the Heavens of Assiah and does not reach as high a spiritual level as does the Sigillum. Objects used by Dee in his magic, now in the British Museum ([CC BY-SA 4.0)](  The Round Tablet Of Nalvage, revealed to Dee and Kelly by the angelic entity, Nalvage, seems to have been a tool for attributing the angelic hierarchies under their proper functions. The Tablet of Nalvage contains eight rows and eight columns of letters. Frontispiece of the ‘Monas Hieroglyphica’ by John Dee, printed by Willem Silvius in Antwerp, (1564) ([Public Domain]( John Dee's Liber Enoch (Liber Logeath or Logaeth) comprehends the Four Elemental Tablets (Watchtowers) of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth. The squares of these Tablets may contain one or more letters, either capital or lowercase. The Enochian Tablets are connected by a large central cross of squares, the Black Cross of the Watchtowers. The letters from this are combined to form the Tablet of Union, which represents the binding and lofty "element" of Spirit (if Spirit can be properly considered an element). A great number of important sigils and names can be drawn from these Tablets. (The Enochian Chess Boards consist of the Lesser Servient Squares of the Sub-Quadrants, which are beneath (and divided by) the Names of the Angels of the Sixteen Sephirotic Crosses).  The Claves Angelicae (the 48 Enochian Calls), together with the Liber Enoch, are chronicled by the Golden Dawn amongst the Zelator Adeptus Minor documents. These include the Book of the Concourse of the Forces, and the Ritual "T" or The Book of the 48 Angelic Keys or Calls. The first 18 Keys are in reality 19, since there is a prior Key without a number (similar to the 0 of the Fool in Tarot) that has only celestial form. The First audible Key alludes to the Tablet of Union as a whole, the God-Head. There are five further Calls belonging to the Tablet of Union. The Second Key being used as an invocation of the Angel of the letters EHNB, specially represents the governance of Spirit in the Tablet of Union. The four archangels, mosaics at St John's Church, Warminster ([Public Domain](  The next four Calls relate to the Angels of the Four Terrestrial Elements on the Tablet of Union and also represent each of the Four Elemental Tablets as a whole. Thus, the Third Key is used for the invocation of the Angels of the letters of the Tablet of Union line EXARP, and for the Lesser Angel of this Tablet, which is Air of Air - the Element itself. The Fourth Key invokes HCOMA - Water, the Fifth line NANTA refers to the Tablet of Earth as a whole. The Sixth Key connects with letters of the line BITOM, and the Fire Tablet, Fire of Fire. Allegory of the Classical element Fires, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, a contemporary of John Dee. The allegory of Fire combines objects that are related to fire. ([Public Domain](  The remaining Twelve Calls are distributed between the Four Tablets of the Elements in a logical fashion. Hence the Seventh Key is for Water of Air, the Eighth for Earth of Air, and the Ninth Key is for Fire of Air, the line OAVRRZ through to the Eighteenth Key, Earth of Fire, UVOLBXDO. Along with these 18 (19) Keys are the Calls Of The Aires or Thirty Aethyrs, which although belonging to the single Call of the Thirty Aethyrs in substance, are varied by the NAME belonging to each. The Thirty Aethyrs are situated beyond the physical world and can be compared to the Sephiroth and [Tarot]( Paths on the Tree of Life. John Dee, who was of ancient Welsh descent, took considerable interest in early British mythology, especially in the Glastonbury Zodiac. It is pertinent to ask to what extent Celtic and ancient British material influenced the development of his Enochian system and therefore his magical child, Enochian Chess. He named a son "Arthur" after the eponymous King Arthur. John Dee memorial plaque installed in 2013 inside the church of St Mary the Virgin, Mortlake ([Robert Smith]( [CC BY-SA 3.0)]( John Dee’s Fall from Favor John Dee several times ran close to execution. In 1555 Dee was arrested and charged with the crime of "calculating" because he had cast the horoscope of Princess Elizabeth, and he faced the Star Chamber charged with treason for his horoscope of Queen Mary. Dee managed to swerve the charges, and subsequently became close to Elizabeth, even divining the most auspicious date for her coronation. There is strong evidence he helped spy for Cecil, Walsingham and Elizabeth, and he certainly helped to plot the subsequent rise of the British Empire. Dee's manuscript Brytannicae reipublicae synopsis (1570) examined the Elizabethan Realm and was concerned with trade and national interests. His 1576-book General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation advocated the establishment of English colonies. In Title Royal published in 1580, Dee claimed that Madog ab Owain Gwynedd had discovered America, prioritizing England's claim to the New World over Spain and Columbus. Suspected witches kneeling before King James; Daemonologie (1597) ([Public Domain]( John Dee fell out of favor when James VI of Scotland/ James I of England ascended the throne in 1603. James abhorred all things related to witchcraft, and he refused to clear Dee's name when he was accused of being a Conjurer, or Caller, or ‘Invocator of Divels’, or ‘damned Spirites’.  Despite a letter from John Dee to James I (printed in 1604), pleading with James I to withdraw the accusation that he was a conjurer, there is evidence to the contrary. Although Dee defends himself against charges of witchcraft, the King ignored Dee's pleading and he never regained acceptance at Court, dying in poverty circa March 1609. Francis Nicholls (c. 1550-1616) was one of Dee's long-term scryers. Unlike Kelley, Nicholls did not claim to communicate directly with angels, but instead acted as a medium, helping Dee to interpret the visions that he saw in his crystal ball. Nicholls was a skilled linguist and was able to translate the messages that Dee received from his scrying sessions. He was also a physician and a scholar, and he continued to work with Dee until the end of Dee's life. John Dee's life was a fascinating blend of science, mathematics, and the occult. John Dee's work in scrying and his partnerships with Edward Kelley and Francis Nicholls, and paradoxically a critical biography by Meric Casaubon, have ensured that Dee remains a figure of interest to scholars and historians to this day. Line Engraving of Meric Casaubon by Pieter Stevens van Gunst, after Adriaen van der Werff, published 1709 ([CC BY-SA 3.0]( Critics and Literary Links to Dee Meric Casaubon, a French-English scholar and translator, first published in 1659 A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Queen Elizabeth and King James their Reignes) and some spirits. His introduction is highly critical of Dee. Casaubon truly believed in the reality of spirits and argued in his introduction that Dee was the dupe of evil spirits although he believed he was communicating with angels. Perhaps Dee did not really believe literally in demons, angels, and the Bible at all. Dee did not altogether swallow Christianity despite his occasional pious platitudes. One must take into account, in those chaotic times of religious wars and Protestant versus Catholic mania, it was dangerous to voice any opinion other than the current orthodoxy. Many believe ‘Prospero’ from William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611) was modelled on John Dee. Both were wizards, both had large libraries, and both endured difficult times. Dee was already famous by the time Shakespeare wrote about Prospero, but there is no direct evidence. Ian Fleming never commented on his inspiration for 007 but allowed rumors to circulate that this designation was Elizabeth's pet name for Dee because of the shape of the spectacles resting on his nose. Some believe Dee's Enochiana is a powerful system of magick that can bring about profound spiritual transformation, while others view it as little more than a fanciful creation of Dee and Kelley's fertile imaginations, or as deception, Dee's cover story for espionage and passing secret messages. Despite the controversy surrounding it, Enochian Magick continues to be practiced by a small but dedicated group of occultists and magicians. Enochian Chess The Hermetic Order of the [Golden Dawn]( (Latin: Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae), more commonly the Golden Dawn (Aurora Aurea), was a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Liddell Mathers, were all Freemasons.   William Wynn Westcott depicted in the ceremonial garment of the Rosicrucians (1897) ([Public Domain)]( In 1888 Wynn Westcott saw a possible parallel between Dee’s diagrams to the chessboard and thus was born Enochian Chess, which had various iterations, including a Celtic variation used widely by one of its first members, the Irish Nationalist poet, [WB Yeats](. Westcott incorporated Egyptian deities as known in Victorian England, to the mix, something not evident in the original communication but it seemed to work.  Modern-era practitioners such as Aleister Crowley and WB Yeats have also contributed to the Enochian corpus. The aim of Enochian Magick is to harness the hidden forces of the universe and use them for personal gain or to achieve spiritual enlightenment. The four cardinal points of the compass (North, South, East, and West) are called Enochian Watchtowers by the Golden Dawn. Each Watchtower can be represented as an Enochian Chessboard and has correspondences with specific powers and abilities, and the magician will often invoke the appropriate Watchtower when seeking to harness these powers. It is noted that the SRIA’s (Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia) - the immediate predecessor of the 1988 Golden Dawn - prototype colour scheme for early Enochian Chess boards may have been based on the ‘Vision of Four Castles’, and might have used a combination of black, green, red and white. John Dee's golden talisman, with the Vision of the Four Castles. British Museum. ([CC0]( On June 20, 1584, Edward Kelley reported a vision referred to as ‘Four Castles Watchtowers’. The famous golden talisman on which this design is etched (though probably made subsequently by Dee) is currently housed in British Museum. Michael Howard (British historian in 1922) draws attention to similarities between Dee and Kelly's "Vision of the Four Castles", or "vision of the ground plan of the universe or Enochian cosmos", and the Celtic myths of ‘the Castles of the Four Winds guarded by the goddess Arianrhod, whose name translates to "Silver Wheel", referring to the Milky Way constellation.  "East and West, North and South, stand four sumptuous and belligerent Castles, out of which sound Trumpets thrice. From every Castle, a Cloth, the sign of Majesty, is cast. In the East it is red, like new-smitten blood. In the South, lily-white. In the West, green, garlick-bladed like the skins of many dragons. In the North, hair-coloured, black like bilberry juice. Four trumpeters issue from the Castles, with trumpets pyramidal, of six cones, wreathed. Three Ensign bearers, with the names of God on their banners, follow them. Seniors, Kings, Princes as train bearers, Angels in four phalanxes like crosses, all in their order, march to the central Court, and range themselves about the ensigns." (Vision of the Four Castles reported by Ave in 1584, in John Dee (1527-1608), by Charlotte Fell- 1909.)  This diagram appears in Dee's Tabula bonorum angelorum invocations: ORO IBAH AOZPI – ORIENS (Latin for "East") MOR DIAL HCTGA – MERIDIE (Latin for noon; logically "South?") OIP TEAA PODCE- OCCIDENS (Latin for "West") MPH ARSL GAIOL – SEPTENTRIO (Latin for the seven stars near the North Pole; "North.")  It does seem to match the Oriens-Meridie-Occidens-Sepentrio layout of the Four-Castles Golden Talisman. Why should Dee's diagram have anything to do with the 19th century Ordo Rosae Rubeae et Aureae Crucis / Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn system? Or indeed with any aspect of Ceremonial Magic at all? It could equally be a table of information, perhaps a directional game-plan or seating arrangement. Or maybe banners around a battlement with a courtyard below, or the flagstones of a spiral staircase? It might be a cross-section of one Ave's circular castellated towers, indicative of sub-elemental divisions particularized to one of the four gigantic Castles. The "banners" then represent the Castellations of a turret rather than spiral stairs or banners on flagpoles. Other commentators have different theories, but one could experiment symbolically using the four Golden Dawn lashing tablet Enochian Chessboards, even employing WB Yeats' later additional 16 sub-elemental Enochian Chessboards. Enochian chess set (Image: © Steve Nichols) Enochian Chess thus, has four boards, one for each element, but only one tarot deck. There are four different pieces sets for the different worlds. If the Sigillum Dei Aemeth "Seal of Truth", is placed under the table or board used for Enochian Chess divination it should produce a local void within the Portal that helps to protect and intensify the game objects being worked with. No separate Opening Ritual is necessary to accompany this Seal when used with Enochian Chess after this fashion. Yeats and Moina McGregor were keen players of Enochian chess, using a spirit or automatism to move one set of pieces. The randomness of the dice represents the role of the Goddesses and Gods, and symbolises fate or uncontrollable events in life.  Unlike passive astrology (one has no say in where and when one is born) and Tarot (open to cheating to stack the deck or swap out cards one dislikes) the players in Enochian Chess can determine how their piece moves, but are constrained by dice selecting which type of piece. Win or lose determines the Yes or No answer to question posed at outset of play. The catalytic Ptah piece plays no active role but marks the key square that closest approximates the question. By reaching this square unchecked with their Osiris (King) the first mover (questioned) wins the game. The odyssey and events in the game can be interpreted as forces operative in the world. Enochian Chess supports the principle that humans are active participants in determining the future rather than passive pawns. It takes some effort though and sometimes is an emotional see-saw as fortunes switch back and forth during play. [Steve Nichols](  is a psychotherapist, musician, with a MSc in Neural Computation CCCN Stirling and is currently serving as Vice Chancellor of the Posthuman University. He is the author of the trilogy: Rosicrucian Chess of The Golden Dawn;   Khemetic Enochian Chess  and [W.B. Yeats’s Celtic Enochian Chess](.   Top Image: John Dee demonstrating an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I ([Wellcome Images]( [CC BY-SA 4.0]( By: [Steve Nichols](   [Like]( [Comment]( [Restack](   © 2023 Ancient Origins 6 Abbey Business Park, Baldoyle Industrial Estate, Baldoyle, Dublin 13, D13N738, Ireland [Unsubscribe]() [Start writing]()