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What Enochian Magick Is

Technically, the term “Enochian magick” can indicate any system of occultism that draws upon the writings or mythos of Enoch. By far the world’s most famous system of Enochian occultism is that recorded by John Dee and Edward Kelley.

John Dee was introduced to Edward Kelley in late 1582. Dee had already employed a skryer (Barnabas Saul) to speak with angels but was unsatisfied with the man’s results. Kelley, it turned out, was an excellent medium—not to mention a fellow student of alchemy—and the two men quickly became partners in their spiritual pursuits. Over the next six or seven years, Kelley would spend hours each day gazing into a crystal ball while Dee recited prayers and invocations to call down angelic entities. Once Kelley reported seeing visions in the stone, Dee would question the angels and record what they revealed.

What the angels revealed is what we usually call Enochian magick today. This new system was given to Dee and Kelley in three phases: the Heptarchia, Gebofal, and the Parts of the Earth and the Great Table of the Earth (Watchtowers).

1: The Heptarchia (“Sevenfold Rulership”)

Figure 1: The Round Table of the
Forty-Nine Heptarchic Royal Angels

The Heptarchia is a system of planetary magick that calls upon the angels of the seven biblical days of Creation. There are forty-nine of these angels—seven for each of the days of the week (or the seven classical planets). There is no reference to Enoch in this phase of the system, and it largely resembles other systems of Renaissance angel magick (such as found in the Arbatel of Magic, the Heptameron, the Pauline Arts, the Almadel of Solomon, etc.).

Most importantly, this phase is where the tools and furniture necessary for all three phases of Dee’s magickal system are revealed. They include a skrying table with wax seals and purified tin talismans, a magickal lamen, and a golden ring of Solomon to be worn by the conjurer.

2: Gebofal (The Book of Loagaeth and the Forty-Eight Angelical Callings)

Figure 2: The Book of Life with Enochian Seals

The Book of Loagaeth (“speech from God”) is supposed to be one and the same with the Book of Life described in the legends of Enoch, the Old Testament, the book of Jubilees, and elsewhere. As such, it should also be one and the same with the famous Book of Seven Seals described in the Revelation of St. John:

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon (Revelation 5:1–4).

As the angels explained to Dee, the Book of Loagaeth embodies the seven days (or we might say the seven ages) of creation outlined in chapter one of Genesis. This includes our modern age, which is mystically interpreted as the seventh age (day) of the universe, during which God rests from the Creation. Taken all together, the holy book represents the entire span of history from creation to destruction. It includes all wisdom and knowledge from the past, of the present, and into the future. In short, it is the ultimate tome of universal knowledge.

However, the text of Loagaeth is written in a mysterious language with which God is supposed to have spoken the universe into existence. (Consider the many instances of “And God said...” in the first chapter of Genesis.) The angels never offered a translation of the text, and it continues to elude attempts to translate or decipher it to this very day.3

The holy book appeared to Kelley in the skrying stone as a collection of forty-nine leaves 4—each with a 49 ✕ 49 table that has a front and a back side (thus taking up both sides of each leaf), filled with the letters of the mysterious Language of Creation.5 Each leaf’s table represents a mystical gateway into one of the twelve kingdoms of heaven, which likely indicates the twelve zodiacal houses or their signs (Aries, Taurus, etc.). These gates swing both ways, allowing the aspirant either to call angelic teachers through them or to enter and (like Enoch) explore the celestial cities beyond them.

In order to access the wisdom of the holy book or gain entrance to the gates of heaven, the aspirant must invoke the aid of the angels who guard each gate. The system given for achieving this was called Gebofal by Dee’s angels, though they never offered a translation of the name. Gebofal is a lengthy forty-nine-day ritual that uses a series of forty-eight invocations designed to attract the attention of the necessary angels. The invocations are described as “callings” as well as “keys” (because they are the keys to the gates of heaven), and they are written entirely in the Angelical language.

The Angelical Language

Graph	Un	Or	Gal	Ged	Veh	Pa

E	A	F	D	G/J	C/Ch/K	B

Drux	Ger	Mals	Ur	Na	Gon	Tal

N	Q/Qu	P/Ph	L	H	I/Y	M

Gisg	Fam	Van	Ceph	Don	Med	Pal

T	S	U/V	Z	R	O	X

Figure 3: Letters of the Angelical Alphabet

The forty-eight Angelical Callings are written in another version (or dialect) of the Loagaeth tongue, which modern students and practitioners often refer to as Enochian. Dee himself referred to it variously as “Angelical,” the “celestial speech,” the “first language of God-Christ,” or “Adamical.” That last name—Adamical—was used by Dee (briefly) after the angels told him that Adam had spoken the language fluently in Eden and had even used it to apply “true names” to all things in creation. (In my own work, I have chosen to stick with “Angelical.”)

According to the legend revealed by the angels, Adam lost the language when he fell from paradise (Genesis 3); he then attempted to reconstruct it from memory. This reconstruction was the first primordial version of Hebrew, though it’s not a Hebrew we would recognize today. Some time later, the confusion of tongues took place at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), and the primordial Hebrew was similarly lost. After that, biblical Hebrew—the language of the Old Testament—came into existence, and the rest is linguistic history.

After Adam’s fall, only one human was deemed worthy to read the original tongue of Eden, and that was Enoch. It is possible to interpret the Enochian legend as a failed attempt to reseed the language into humanity. It failed, of course, due to the events that led up to the great flood (Genesis 6–8), during which all of Enoch’s wisdom was lost.

Fortunately, the Angelical Calls revealed to Dee were given loose translations, and there have been several efforts over the years to create workable dictionaries of the words. I have made my own contribution, which I published as The Angelical Language, Volume I: The Complete History and Mythos of the Tongue of Angels and The Angelical Language, Volume II: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the Tongue of Angels. Those projects were fairly massive, taking ten years and over nine hundred pages to complete. Because I cover the subject in such exhaustive detail there, I will save space here and refer the reader to those books to learn more about the tongue of the angels.

As I stated previously, Loagaeth is the central linchpin of Dee’s entire system of magick. The angels of the Heptarchia are associated directly with the book—they are mentioned in the text and were also involved in transmitting it to Dee and Kelley. Also, the practice of Gebofal requires the same skrying tools and furniture used in the Heptarchic system.

Finally, Loagaeth appears to be the primary source of the third phase of the Enochian system, the Parts of the Earth and the Great Table of the Earth (Watchtowers).

3: The Parts of the Earth and the
Great Table of the Earth (Watchtowers)

Figure 4: The Original Great Table

The Parts of the Earth

The final phase of the magick came in two pieces. The first is called the Parts of the Earth, wherein the world is divided into ninety-two regions of geopolitical influence (kingdoms, nations, and even cultures) governed by the signs—and the ruling angels—of the zodiac.6 These zodiacal kings govern their areas (or “parts”) of the world with the help of large numbers of servient angels. All of these entities have direct influence over their own Part of the Earth, and thus apparently over the nation(s) that reside there. By summoning these angels, Dee likely hoped to exert his own influence over foreign nations, or at the very least spy upon them via remote viewing.

The Parts and the Thirty Aethyrs

There are ninety-two Parts of the Earth listed in Dee’s journals, though one of them is hidden; therefore, Dee often referred to them as the “ninety-one Parts of the Earth.”7 Those ninety-one parts are divided amongst the final thirty tables of Loagaeth, which represent the thirty circles of heaven called the Aethyrs (or Ethers or Aires). During Dee’s lifetime (and, in fact, until fairly recently in scientific history), the word aethyr/ether meant “the upper regions of space, the clear sky, the heavens.”8 Thus, the thirty Aethyrs of the Enochian system are actually thirty heavens that extend from the earth all the way to God’s throne.

Each of these Aethyrs (along with their Parts of the Earth) can be accessed by reciting the Angelical Call for the appropriate Loagaeth table. The mage then has the choice of viewing that nation through the crystal stone or even spiritually visiting the nation directly via a form of etheric (or aethyric) projection.

Though these aethyric heavens are described as stacked one atop the other, this is only for illustration. The ninety-one (or ninety-two) parts are better envisioned as stretched out horizontally across the earth. The thirty Aethyrs represent the visible firmament (sky) where the stars (angels) dwell, while the parts represent the areas of the world governed by those stars.

The Great Table of the Earth (Watchtowers)

Once Dee had received the Parts of the Earth, he was given the second piece of phase three: the Great Table of the Earth. This is a large magickal table (or word-square) formed by taking all of the names of the ninety-two parts and arranging them upon a massive 25 ✕ 27 grid. The resulting table can then be broken down into four separate 12 ✕ 13 tablets bound together by a large central cross containing a few letters and several blank squares. Dee would refer to this central cross as the “Black Cross” (likely an alchemical reference) and the “Cross of Union.” The four surrounding tablets are called “Watchtowers,” based upon biblical imagery such as the following:

I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night (Isaiah 62:6).

Compare that to the following statement about the Great Table made by one of Dee’s angels, Ave:

The four houses are the Four Angels of the Earth, which are the Four Overseers, and Watchtowers, that...God...hath placed against the...Great Enemy, the Devil.

These four angelic overseers are likely the four kherubic archangels (lion, eagle, man, and ox) found in the vision of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1) and in St. John’s apocalypse (Revelation 4). They would also have close relations to the four archangels—Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel—who were the primary angelic contacts for Dee and Kelley throughout their work. However, Dee never explored this aspect of the Great Table in his journals, so I will reserve my findings on them for another publication.9

According to Dee’s journals, the four Watchtower tablets are supposed to represent the quarters of the earth. Note that this does not necessarily mean they represent the four philosophical elements (Fire, Water, Air, and Earth). Today, it is traditional in many Western systems of occultism to assign the elements to the four points of the compass, and this has led many to assume the four Watchtowers at those compass points should also represent the four elements. However, this is not how Dee recorded the system. In his journals, the primary focus was upon the direction associated with each Watchtower, and they were never described as “elemental” tablets at all.10

Whereas the Parts of the Earth system grants one influence over individual nations, the Great Table covers entire quarters of the world at once. When Dee asked exactly how the four quarters of the map were to be divided amongst the Watchtowers, the angels gave the cryptic and unhelpful answer, “In respect of your poles.” That’s all well and good for north and south, but where exactly are the eastern and western “poles” of the earth? We have the prime meridian today; however, that is an arbitrary point that has changed many times throughout history. (Our modern prime meridian was set in 1884, long after Dee’s lifetime.) There is no indication in Dee’s journals where the eastern and western quarters of the earth should be divided.

I feel the quarters covered by the Watchtowers are intended to be geopolitical rather than geographical—that is, much like the Parts of the Earth, they don’t represent specific tracts of land as much as they represent communities of people. Whereas the parts focus upon individual nations, the quarters represent the four “civilizations” of the world. You hear about these more often than you might think, in terms like “Western nations” or “Eastern culture.” Below is a list of the four world civilizations and a few examples of countries or regions that traditionally fall into each category:11

Western Civilization: Western Europe and North America. Britain, USA, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, etc.

Eastern Civilization: Eastern Europe and Asia. Russia, India, Mongolia, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc. (Also including the Middle Eastern nations such as Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, etc.)

Northern Civilization: Northern Europe. Norway, Sweden, Greenland, Iceland, the Inuit and Siberian peoples, etc.

Southern Civilization: Nations south of the equator: southern Africa, South America, Australia, countless inhabited islands, etc.

These four classifications likely developed in ancient times—perhaps when Rome ruled the Western world, or maybe even Greece before it. Therefore, the area of Greece and Italy became the center point of the known world for geographers and mapmakers. Dee likely felt that his beloved England should be the center of the world—and the four classifications would later be preserved once England indeed became the ruling world empire. These are the same classifications we use to this very day.

The letters of each Watchtower—taken from the Parts of the Earth but rearranged into the form of the Great Table—create the names of dozens (maybe hundreds) of angels and spirits who govern their particular quarter of the earth. There are angels of medicine and alchemy, transportation, transformation, and the revelation of secrets (to name just a few) associated with each civilization. Thus, if one desires to influence the Western nations, one would call the angels of the Western Watchtower; if one desires to influence the nations of Asia, then one would call upon the angels of the Eastern Watchtower. As Dee’s angels instructed, “But when thou wilt work in the East, thou must take such as bear rule there; so must thou do of the rest.”12

The Reformed Great Table of Raphael

You might be surprised to learn that there were two versions of the Great Table of the Earth recorded in Dee’s journals: the original and one called the Reformed Great Table of Raphael. The reformed version is largely the same as the original except the four Watchtower tablets have been rearranged and some of the lettering has been changed.

I suspect that nothing in the Enochian system has caused more controversy than the debate over which version of the Great Table is the “proper” version. In fact, this single conflict is at the center of a major split within the Enochian tradition—where two entirely different magickal systems (called “Dee purist” and “neo-Enochian”) have developed around the opposing tables.

Even Dee himself seems to have been unsure on the matter. He received the original Great Table at the same time as the rest of the Enochian material. At first, he placed the Watchtowers in the wrong order within the Great Table,13 but the angels quickly corrected him. Nothing further was said about the arrangement of the Watchtowers until years later, long after the Enochian transmissions had run their course.

When the Reformed Table was later revealed by the archangel Raphael, it was presented not as a major correction to the system of angel magick but merely as a method of decrypting a mysterious message for Dee, Kelley, and their wives. Nonetheless, Dee felt it was important enough to record the Reformed Great Table in his personal grimoire alongside the original, though the rest of the magick in his grimoire is based strictly upon the original version. It would appear that he never made up his mind or that he felt either version had its uses.

In order to give you the complete picture, I will briefly explain the origin of the Reformed Great Table. Later we will explore the two schools of Enochian magick that have developed over the centuries and how the two Great Tables are at the heart of the schism:

Figure 5: The Reformed Great Table of Raphael

Dee and Kelley received the original Great Table from the angels in mid-1584.14 This remained the one and only Great Table throughout the transmission of the Enochian magickal system(s). The events that led to the Reformed Great Table took place in April of 1587 15—when we learn that Kelley has asked the angels to relieve him of his skrying duties.

The angels appear angry at Kelley’s request but agree to grant it if, after fourteen days, he still wishes to quit. Dee spent those two weeks attempting to train his son Arthur to skry in Kelley’s place, but he did not have great success. On the day before the deadline, Kelley returned with every intention of ending his employment with Dee. The angels appeared in the stone but were dressed in the most filthy and disordered manner—quite the opposite of the splendid royal clothing they normally wore. It was then the angels gave Dee and Kelley their most infamous commandment: to bond together as one by sharing all things in common between them. Kelley understood at once that the angels meant even their wives must be shared.

At first, Dee did not accept Kelley’s interpretation. He instead took the commandment to mean a kind of Christian brotherhood and communal living. However, Kelley would later tell Dee that he had received a vision of Raphael, who confirmed the sharing of wives and gave Kelley a message from God to prove it. The message was encrypted—nothing more than a collection of numbers. The angels explained the key to decrypting the message was to number all the squares of the Great Table of the Earth from 1 to 624, then replace the numbers from the message with the letters found in each numbered square.

Sadly, when Dee wrote out the resulting message, it was nothing but gibberish. So the men set to summoning the angels once more and demanded to know the correct method of decrypting the secret message from God. The answer, they were told, was to rearrange the Watchtowers within the Great Table, then number the squares as previously instructed. Dee did this, decrypted the message, and this time obtained a letter written in Latin. It contained a statement of divine permission for Dee and Kelley to share their wives in common.

That was the one and only time the Reformed Great Table of Raphael was used in Dee’s journals. Dee wrote out this new table in his entry for April 18, 1587. Above it, he included a note explaining that he had originally been unsure about the correct placement of the Watchtowers. Beneath it, he explained how Kelley had received this new version of the Great Table from the archangel Raphael and that it made him “greatly rejoice in spirit.” This makes it appear that Dee rejoiced at getting a correction to his ordering of the Watchtowers, and it has led many to believe the Reformed Great Table should overrule the original version. However, Dee had long since received the correction to his ordering of the Watchtowers. His great rejoicing was because this new Reformed Great Table allowed him to decrypt the message from God.

Yet, as I said before, it would appear that Dee did suspect the Reformed Great Table had practical uses. At least, he felt there was some reason worth including it alongside the original Great Table in his personal Enochian grimoire.

Those who oppose the use of the Reformed Great Table point out that Kelley received it alone in his bedchamber, while the rest of the Enochian material was received strictly when both men were present. A more cynical segment of Dee and Kelley scholars insist that the commandment to share wives in and of itself is proof that either they were no longer talking to angels (if, indeed, they had ever been speaking with true angels) or that Kelley was merely lying to get into bed with Jane Dee.

Personally, I can’t accept either of these simplistic conclusions. First, I find it odd that people generally accept angels who dictate such things as war and famine but become suspicious if angels suggest that humans should share love. In my opinion, a suggestion of polyamory (multiple loves) would have been quite ahead of its time in Dee’s day, but it’s hardly proof that the entities were demonic.

Second, it is entirely possible that Dee and Kelley were influenced by certain social experiments that were, indeed, centuries ahead of their time. One of these social experiments was called the “Family of Love”—which practiced communal living and group marriage. Dee and Kelley seem to have known several members of that group and thus could have been introduced to their philosophies. While that subject is a bit beyond this book, the above should be enough to illustrate that the polyamorous episode between the Dees and the Kelleys should not be written off with short-sighted moral judgments (against either the angels or the humans involved) nor without further historical study into the matter. In any case, it does not automatically invalidate the Reformed Great Table of Raphael.

Of course, there is nothing that ultimately proves its validity either, so the issue remains unresolved. In a later chapter we will discuss the historical development of the Enochian tradition, and we will see what role the Reformed Great Table has come to play in its own right.