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Enochian Magic / Esoteric Traditions on Enoch

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Overview

Hermeticism is an ancient philosophical system first developed in Hellenistic times and based on the idea they all religions (and knowledges) derive from a single primeval wisdom and religion (or prisca theologia) given by God to humankind. The Corpus Hermeticum, collected in the 11th century by Michael Psellos, was seen as a compendium of the most ancient human wisdom and was attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; it was believed to come from prehistoric times, or at least to preserve traces of that primeval wisdom and religion. Hermetism played a central role in the development of modern science, as well as in the development of magical and esoteric practices.

The connection between Enoch and Hermeticism goes back to the beginnings of the movement in Hellenistic times and was instrumental to the preservation and transmission of Enochic traditions, from late antiquity to modern times. As a pre-deluge patriarch Enoch was seen as a witness and representative of the primeval religion and wisdom of humankind.

According to the Pseudo-Eupolemos, Enoch had to to be identified was the Titan Atlas who was said by the Greeks to "have discovered astrology" (the fragment is recorded in Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica 9.17.9: "The Greeks say that Atlas discovered astrology. Enoch and Atlas are the same")

In the 3rd-4th century, Hermetic author Zosimos of Panopolis presented the art of alchemy as the core of ancient pre-deluge science. It was one of the secret knowledges taught by the fallen angels and inscribed after the Flood in the Book of Chemes, who some identified with Cam, the son of Noah and descendent of Enoch.

Both in the Christian tradition (Roger Bacon) and in the Muslim tradition, Enoch was often associated (or even identified) with Hermes Trimegistus. According to a popular understanding of the title "Trismegistus", Hermes was the third in a line of wise men called "Hermes", after Enoch and Noah.

Not accidentally, the scholarly interest in Enochic Studies first developed in 15th-century Italy in esoteric circles during the Renaissance. In 1460 Cosimo de' Medici acquired the mss of the Corpus Hermeticum and in 1463 Marsilio Ficino completed its first translation. The study of the Corpus Hermeticum remained at the center of the interests of the members of the Florentine Platonic Academy in their meeting at the Villa di Careggi in Florence and during the Summer, at the Monastery of Camaldoli. Among the participants were Marsilio Ficino, Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Agnolo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Leon Battista Alberti, Bartolomeo Scala, and others.

The "Christian Cabalists" (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in Italy and Johannes Reuchlin in Germany) were the first ones who actively tried to recover the wisdom of Enoch and his "lost" book(s). They saw in the Jewish Kabbalah and in Classical Hermetic texts a source of primeval wisdom. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola claimed that he had the book of Enoch as he possessed the "seventy secret books of Ezra." Pico's "Book of Enoch" was actually a copy of Menahem Recanati's cabalistic commentary, Perush 'al ha-Torah (פירוש על התורה, early 14th century), which contained numerous references to the character of Enoch and the Fallen Angels; see Enoch in Judaism.

While the Christian Cabalists were more scholarly-oriented toward the continuous search for manuscript evidence (Hermetic and Cabalistic), other intellectuals were more engaged in magical and visionary experiences. In the 1480s, humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli, also a translator of the Corpus Hermeticum, endorsed Giovanni "Mercurio" da Correggio as a prophet and messiah. Like Lazzarelli, other humanists of the time, such as Carlo Sosenna and the Jewish scholar Abraham Farissol, report that Giovanni da Correggio claimed to be the "Young Hermes," the son of Hermes Trismegistus, Methuselah and Enoch. On Palm Sunday, 11 April 1484 Correggio entered the city of Rome, riding on a white donkey in imitation of Jesus, surrounded by his family and disciples, claiming to be "the angel of wisdom," "Poimandres" (or Pimander, a Hermetic manifestation of the mind of God), and "the most perfect manifestation of Jesus Christ." ("Ego Joannes Mercurius de Corigio, sapientiae angelus Pimanderque in summo ac maximo spiritus Jesu Chrisi excessu, hanc aquam regni pro paucis, sic super omnes magna voce evangelizo"). Acting as a sort of Enoch redivivus, Lazzarelli published in 1490 an Epistula Enoch in support of his messiah and spiritual "son", Giovanni da Correggio.

The idea that magic and alchemy could provide a shortcut to Enochian wisdom continued to fascinate European intellectual circles. In 1530 the Venetian alchemist Giovanni Agostino Panteo published 26 charachters purporting to be the pre-Flood "Enochian" alphabet. The "rediscovery" of this alphabet was not the result of philological studies but of magical knowledge. In his Introductio in divinam Chemiae artem (Basel 1572) Petrus Bonus repeated Roger Bacon's remarks that Henoch was the great Hermogenes.

Recent 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 and Petrus Bonus. 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 1614 Isaac Casaubon dated the Corpus Hermeticum to the early centuries of the Christian era, debunking the widespread Renaissance conception that the texts came from prehistoric times. In 1659 Isaac Casaubon's son Méric Casaubon dismissed John Dee's magic treatise as a work of sorcery. Yet Enoch remained a popular figure in esoteric and literary circles, as the model (and the object) of mystical revelations, and continued to be associated (or even identified) with other mythical figures of ancient wisdom. Kircher (Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 1652-54) viewed him as the founder of Egyptian Wisdom and once again, identified him with Hermes Trismegistus. At the end of the 17th century, the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet (1656–1732), a leader of the Figurist movement of Jesuit missionaries in China, claimed that Enoch and Fu Xi, the supposed author of the I Ching (or Classic of Changes), as well as Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus, were really the same person.

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 his Histoire de la philosophie hermétique (1742) Nicolas Lenglet Du Fresnoy repeated the claim that the secret knowledge given by the fallen angels survived the Flood through the teachings of Noah. In his view Hermes Trismegistus was the the son of Mezraim, son of Ham, son of Noah, therefore a direct descendent of Enoch.

When in 1773 the explorer James Bruce finally reached Ethiopia and brought back three copies of the Ethiopic version of the whole 1 Enoch, it seemed that the search for Enochic wisdom could now focus on solid scholarly ground. 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 however could stop esoteric speculations. In Great Britain Edward Vaughan Kenealy took up the ancient identification of Enoch with Atlas and associated the biblical patriarch with the myth of Atlantis. "This ancient lost people were the people of the great island-continent Atlantis, which was destroyed by a deluge ; and in which the pontifical empire of Enoch, the second Messenger of God, and the first and greatest of astronomers, was established, and where it long flourished. From them came all the ancient astronomical knowledge" (The Book of God, 1867, p. 122). In 1872 Kenealy published "Enoch, the Second Messenger of God", entirely devoted to the Enochic revelation. He saw Enoch as the priest of the primeval religion of humankind, called by different people with different names, either Hermes, or Mercurius, Zoroaster, Idis, Osiris, Buddha... In Kenealy's view, the Ethiopic book of Enoch was nothing more than a corrupted, forged and censored copy of the "true" wisdom of Enoch. The idea of the existence of a primeval religion of humankind was widespread in the scholarship of the period; see Anacalypsis (1833) by Godfrey Higgins.

In 1861 French occultist Alphonse Louis Constant (Eliphas Lévi) revived a neo-Christian-Kabbalist tradition, based on the works of Panteo and John Dee. Constant and Kenaely'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.