Dee’s diaries covering the period of 1582-1587 were published in 1659 by Meric Casaubon under the tide A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits in London (see illustration of title page) This work has lately been digitized and is available on the World Wide Web. There is also a considerable amount of other material about Dee (including the book quoted above) and his work available on the internet (see
bibliography)
The system of Enochian magick – if indeed it can be called such - is complex and uneven. The body of the work developed over time and grows more complex as it the sessions go on. It also becomes more
“original” as the early work recorded by Dee is obviously influenced by a derivative of the work of occult writers before, most notably Agrippa and Trithemius.
Tyson describes the magick as an initiatory formula designed to open the locked gates of the four great watchtowers that stand guard against chaos at the extremities of our universe44 Tyson quotes some key exchanges between Dee and the angels to his thesis and they are worth looking at in detail:
The 4 houses, are the 4 Angels of the Earth, which are the 4
Overseers, and Watchtowers, that the eternal God in his providence hath placed, against the usurping blasphemy, misuse, and stealth of the wicked and great enemy, the Devil. To the intent that being put out to the Earth, his envious will might be bridled, the determinations of God fulfilled, and his creatures kept and preserved, within the compass and measure of order."
These Watchtowers… bar the chaotic legions of Coronzon from sweeping across the face of the world. Coronzon, the angels reveal, is the true heavenly name for Satan. He is also known by the Enochian title of Death-Dragon or Him-That-Is-Fallen (Telocvovim)45.
44 Tyson, ibid.
45 Tyson, ibid.
Choronzon will be discussed in his context as the ruler of the Abyss46 and here is a slightly different perspective. It is interesting to note that the Demon, who we will seen is equivalent to the Gnostic Demiurge Ialdaboath and the Kabalistic Demon Samael, is identified in the Enochian system as TELOCH-VOVIN, the “Death Dragon47” as will be seen (in much more detail in chapter 9, Choronzon) is mythically the remnant or persona of the Dragon Typhon.
A description of the tablets and “gates” shows that, regardless of the issues of unity and consistency, were remarkably complex and
interdependent; The original set of calls given to Dee and Kelley were described as opening 49 gates and connected tablets. These tablets would seem to be those given in Liber Loagaeth, though the details are not clear yet. The calls open gates through which energy is transmitted and invoke the things mentioned in the calls including the I Ged
spirits. The beings invoked do not seem to be intrinsically connected with the gates, as the connected tablets are. Rather, they seem to represent one way of employing the energy. The calls have a 7-fold pattern that seems to derive from the gates. This does not fit neatly with the structures found through the calls, in particular that of the aethers. It can be described roughly as follows: 0: These calls (0,7,14,etc.) seem to have a sense of reaching a sense of unity to complete the preceeding calls and then returning to form to begin the next set. 1-3: These relate to some barrier to be reached through, with the first being outside projecting in, the second inside obeying the first, and the third giving a passage through connecting these two. 4: These have a quality of brightness and peace that make receptivity possible.
They connect to the Worldsoul who lives at the center of the Earth. 5:
These have an extraterrestrial connection admitted by means of the preceding. 6: These have a quality of earthly manifestation of higher plans. The calls involve a structure referred to in the 4th-6th calls as angles and in the 8th call as heavens48. etc.
46 See Chronzon, Chapter 9
47 The Enochian “language” which forms, for instance, the Calls, has, it is claimed, its own peculiar grammer and syntax
48 http://www.hermetic.com/enochia/essay-enochiana.html
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According to Tyson, The angel Raphael declares the expressed purpose the Keys to Dee:
In 49 voyces, or callings: which are the Natural Keyes, to open those, not 49, but 48. (for One is not to be opened) Gates of understanding, whereby you shall have knowledge to move every Gate, and to call out as many as you please, or shall be thought necessary, which can very well, righteously, and wisely, open unto you the secrets of their Cities, and make you understand perfectly the [mysteries] contained in the Tables.49 (my emphasis)
With this (admittedly sketchy) outline of the system, Tyson now turns toward the main point:
Dee’s blindness to the true function of the Keys is curious, because clues about their nature are everywhere for those with eyes to see them. The Enochian communications are filled with apocalyptic pronouncements and imagery. Again and again the angels warn of the coming destruction of the world by the wrath of God and the advent of the Antichrist. This apocalyptic imagery is also found throughout the Keys themselves.50 Tyson is surly on solid ground to this point, insofar as he is supported by Dee’s diaries and notes. As mentioned above, the watchtowers are described as barriers by which the Death Dragon Himself, Choronzon, and his host are held back from invading and, one would assume, destroying the Universe.
Tyson questions Dee’s incomprehension of the obvious, which is that, if the watchtowers are the “fortress walls” that keep out the Demon, then the keys, which are explicitly for opening these very gates, are also the means by which the Demon Host can (and if the “Apocalypse”
is a description of this very event, prophesized to) allow the ingress of these beings to herald the End of all things. He says, in this vein, Perhaps Dee believed, as the angels deceitfully encouraged him to believe, that the gates could be opened a crack for specific human purposes and then slammed shut before anything too horrible slipped through to our dimension of awareness. Dee would have assumed that the harrowing of the goddess Earth and her children by the demons of Coronzon would not occur until the preordained time of the
49 Tyson, ibid.
50 Tyson, ibid.
apocalypse, an event initiated by God and presumably beyond Dee’s control.51
This is certainly plausible. Dee after all was a Christian, no matter how heterodox his ideas may seem (and how much more so they would have in his day, which was a time when which trials, religious wars and the burning alive of heretics was, if not an everyday occurrence, certainly a reality) and he would have been comfortable with the apocalyptic imagery that the Calls, as translated into English, were simply saturated with. Now, however, Tyson leaves the road for wilder environs and we shall follow as best we can.
The description of the Apocalyptic idea as it would have been held by a man of Dee’s time and education is preceded by the following exclamation: What (Dee) failed to understand is that the date of the initiation of the apocalypse is (in the intention of the angels) the same date as the successful completion of the full ritual working of the 48 Keys. This date is not predetermined, but will be determined by the free will and actions of a single human being who in the Revelation of St. John is called the Antichrist52
51 Tyson, ibid. The idea that the Angels may have been “deceitful” shall come up again when we attempt to decipher Jack Parsons’ Babalon Working.
52 Tyson, ibid.
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