Enoch and John Dee, Magister of the Court of Queen Elizabeth the First

First, John Dee was a real historical figure, who served as a diviner and an oracle - a magister - for the court of Queen Elizabeth the First. Before we sit up and laugh, consider Nancy Reagan and her pricy astrologer! There are indeed many lies of the, "liberal media," but that particular news-segment wasn't a lie. She was spending some 10 thousand dollars a year on professional astrology. QE1 had a similar sort of system going with John Dee.

John Dee was incredibly prolific, and wrote nearly all of his texts in what is - apparently - very good ecclesiastical Latin. At one time there was a massive archive of John Dee texts on the 'Net that had been fairly well translated into four or five major languages. A google/search or a category search should turn it up fairly quickly.

He wrote mostly treatises on alchemy. He also composed a translations of Arabic grimoires, some treatises on that Book of Enoch I already mentioned, and so on and on into maybe 3 or 400 texts, some of fairly large size, but most about 20 pages or so in length. The texts regarding the system of Enochian Magic(k) do not even actually number among the texts that we are fairly sure that he wrote, and that deserves a story.

It goes like this. You have a man of lower-middle class, a scribner really, named Elias Ashmole, in England just around or just before the Industrial Revolution. The name itself is likely a pseudonym, although it is a possible name in England at that time. We've already gotten pretty sketchy and we're not even near started with the story.

The man had peculiar interests, and he purchased an antique chest, to discover these Enochian documents at the base of the chest. There are five texts to this particular set of documents, named merely by a Latin ordinal: The primus, the secundus, the tertius, the tetras, and the pentus. The texts are mathematically encoded, show some pretty heavy math knowledge, and are written in both ecclesiastical Latin and Attic Greek.

Mimeographs of the first four are available online, and we arrive at our next problem. These texts would be considered more than unimportant to the general scholar, but they would be housed at a museum - simply because of the age of the texts. So how do we arrive at a pdf of these documents? The pentus I have never seen, but it may float onto a google/search on my computer one of these days.

My knowledge of Latin and Greek is not smashing, but the texts look like whoever wrote them knew their Greek and Latin pretty durned well. I'm not sure I know enough Latin and Greek to spot a total forgery, but it looks about right. The mathematical knowledge required to encode the texts would also have been huge, psuedo-scientific documents or not. That is what I see in these mimeographed pdfs.

Contemporary origin? Well, another issue is that what is marketed today as Enochian Magic(k) has no relationship to these texts, and you'd be better off with a cotton-candy-fluff Scott Cunningham book than one of these popularized Enochian Magic(k) books. I've had people try to roll up on me like they knew history and textual study better than me - ah the wonderful swindler - I smell the naphtha this evening - and I've pointed them to these texts. Have a nice day spending years on specialized Latin lessons and auditing Attic Greek classes! You might want to try some advanced combinatorics at a good University and lessons on Hebrew gematria with a private tutor - just to polish it off!

Further, there is another figure in these documents named Edward Kelly. Kelly was a native of the lower-class in England, who made his money through seances and charms and herbs and minerals - and you might guess what else! It is well-known that John Dee got himself into some trouble for associating with Edward Kelly, as Kelly was a notorious, "demonist," at the time.

Kelly fled to Spain and pulled "alchemical hoaxes," but hadn't regarded that there was an Inquisition going full-swing in Spain. The result of his forgetfulness was that he was burned rather quickly at the stake. I think he lived in Spain for no more than a year.

So the Enochian documents set up like this. Dee has found a very good sulfur-quartz skrying crystal, and puts Kelly to work at the crystal and takes notes as to Kelly's skrying at the crystal. As each session comes to a close, a new development is introduced, to culminate in the as-yet-unearthed, "pentus," document. The skrying sessions are dated as having lasted for almost 6 years of intermittent activity.

The goal of the text is first, to understand the esoteric meanings of the Book of Enoch - the popular one. Second, the goal is to understand the mysteries of the Angels of Heaven - as the original (erm... original being a bit of a loose term in this case) Book of Enoch was intended to explicate. So there you have it.

Now, just a couple of words to close. I have a pretty unusual way of viewing the world, a real bizarre Optik - if you will - and if you want to pray or worship angels, or even try to understand the mysteries of angels - more power to you! As I stated, I believe in El, and that he'll judge me just the way he prefers - no need for you mere mortal to intercede! - and so you need to pave your own yellow brick road.

The thing is that in every case - even though there was such a court magister - just such an Edward Kelly - and even texts similar in character attributed to John Dee - we need to look for an obfuscation. In particular if you are interested in esoteric mysticism, you need to refine your BS-detector finer than any scalpel made today. It is this subject that is subject to obfuscation more than any other. Further, think of what I said of history - I see it that we've obfuscated history - from ourselves! - to the point where 50 years ago is a bin of spam treats!

Alright, well yours truly may have more to say this evening. I ate a light dinner earlier, and maybe the Big Al article, or - maybe a new inspiration might strike. A short break, another cup of coffee - where the breath mints, baby? - more cigarettes, and then we'll see where to go on the old blogger/blogspot-freebie blog. Hang in there people. The world is pretty fouled up, but it is pretty rational and sane and won't end with any great immediacy. Time enough for one more cup of joe, one more marlboro - and time enough to love.