Category:Enochian Magic (subject)

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Enochian Magic

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Overview

The interest in Enochian Magic first developed in Hermetic circles during the Renaissance. Magic and alchemy were considered legitimate means of knowledge, capable of offering a shortcut to the recovery of primeval wisdom.

In 1530 the Venetian alchemist Giovanni Agostino Panteo published 26 characters purporting to be the pre-Flood "Enochian" alphabet. The "rediscovery" of this alphabet was not the result of philological studies but of magical knowledge.

News from Postel and Bale about the existence of the Book of Enoch in Ethiopia (and the frustration about the lack of progress in its recovery) inspired British alchemist John Dee to follow the same path as Panteo. In May 1581 some promising yet inconclusive experiments with the crystal ball convinced Dee that he needed the services of a professional scryer to communicate with the spirits. From 1582 to 1589 Dee formed a partnership with visionary Edward Kelley in the search for the lost wisdom of Enoch. The result was the "discovery" of a mysterious alphabet they claimed to have received from the archangel Michael, and portions of the Book of Enoch written in the "Enochian language" they believed Enoch himself used to communicate with the angels.

In 1659 Méric Casaubon dismissed John Dee's magic treatise as a work of sorcery. Yet Enoch remained a popular figure in esoteric circles, as the model (and the object) of mystical revelations.

Dee's Enochian magic resurfaced in the Treatise on Angel Magic, which in 1699 Peter Smart claimed to have copied from the works of mathematician and military engineer Thomas Rudd (1583-1658).

In the age of Enlightenment Enochian Magic was no longer condemned as sorcery but as irrational superstition; see Lives of Necromancers (1834 Godwin), book. Not even the recovery of the Book of Enochic in 1773 and its publication in 1821, however, could stop esoteric speculations. In 1861 French occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (Eliphas Lévi) revived a neo-Christian-Kabbalist tradition, based on the works of Panteo and John Dee. The Ethiopic book of Enoch was seen as nothing more than a corrupted, forged and censored copy of the "true" wisdom of Enoch. Constant's work directly influenced the development in England of the system of Enochian Magic and the birth of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The first initiations into the new Order took place at Mark Mason's Hall, London in March 1888. The Order dissolved in 1903 due to internal conflicts. Its legacy was carried out mainly by the personal experience of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and his disciple and secretary Israel Regardie (1907-1985).

The 1960s counterculture and the popular occult explosion prompted a revival of Enochian Magic, but it was the advent of the Internet that since mid-1990s has moved the Enochian discourse from esoteric groups to online forums, giving unprecedented visibility and popularity to the phenomenon.

Biblio

Vinci, Leo. Gmicalzoma!: An Enochian Dictionary (1976 Vinci), magic.\ London, New York: Regency Press, 1976.

McLean, Adam. “Dr. Rudd’s Treatise—Some New Insights into the Enochian System.” The Hermetic Journal 16 (1982).

James, Geoffrey (b.1953). The Enochian Evocation of Dr. John Dee (1984 James), magic Gillette: Heptangle Books, 1984.
James, Geoffrey. The Enochian Magick of Dr. John Dee: The Most Powerful System of Magick in Its Original Unexpurgated Form. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1994.[This is the 2nd ed. of the 1984 work]]