Tag Archives: Doctor John Dee

So first of all there was this guy called Doctor John Dee (1527 – 1609) who was obsessed with acquiring knowledge. After he had received the best education that was available in Tudor England, and had built up the largest library in the country at the time – he still wanted more. So he resorted to the Occult to get it.

Round about 1582 he met Edward Kelley (1555 – 1597) who helped him “skry” i.e. Dee would make the conjurations and ask the questions, whilst Kelley reported what he saw in Dee’s crystal ball. Over the next few years they reported that Angels gave them or described to them:

• A magical seal, containing the names of Angels and planetary spirits (the “Sigillum Dei Aemeth”)
• A Holy Table, inscribed with letters from a magical language derived from the names of –
• 49 Good Angels
• Another table, the Table of Nalvage;
• More tables of letters (Liber Logaeth), from which were derived –
• A giant table of Angel names, divided into four Watchtowers; plus a “black cross” (referred to by later interpreters of Dee’s work as the Tablet of Union);
• A method of dividing the known world into 91 parts, grouped in thirty “aethyrs”;
• Forty Eight Angelic calls, i.e. eighteen calls plus thirty to invoke the thirty aethyrs (the last thirty are practically identical except the name of the aethyr is changed each time.

These represent the totality of original “Enochian Magic.” The Enochian language is the supposed language of the Forty Eight Angelic calls – and which has correspondances with the earlier 49 Good Angels as well: whilst the Enochian alphabet comprises the letter first used on the Holy Table.

Some good books to read on the subject:

John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery – details how Dee and Kelley derived everything up to the Table of Nalvage;

Dr John Dee’s Spiritual Diaries 1583 – 1608 – a modern reprint of “A True and Faithfull Relation…” which details the latter half of Dee and Kelley’s adventures; and

Enochian Vision Magick – an account by a modern occultist (Lon Milo Duquette) as to how one would go about becoming an Enochian magician.

Source: Alex Sumner’s answer to How was Enochian magic invented? – Quora