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Enochian Magic / Esoteric Traditions on Enoch

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• This page is made by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan @2014

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. Hermeticism played a central role in the development of modern science, as well as in the development of magical and esoteric practices.

Enoch & Hermes

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. The assonance with the name of Ham, the son of Noah and descendent of Enoch, betrays the Jewish-Hellenistic origin of these traditions.

Zosimus' marriage of Enochic traditions with the mythic account of the origins of alchemy prepared the path for the identification of Enoch with the Egyptian god of knowledge wisdom and writing, "the three times great" Thoth, whom the Greeks viewed as the divine equivalent of their own "thrice-great" Hermes (cf. Plato, Phaedrus 274d, and Philebus 18b-d).

In the 13th century, the Franciscan monk Roger Bacon reported thad some identified Enoch with "the great Hermogenes, whom the Greeks much commend and laud," attributing to him "all secret and celestial science" (Bacon, Secretum secretorum et notulis). In similar terms, the Syrian chronographer Bar Hebraeus recorded the ancient Greeks' belief that Henoch-Hermes "made manifest before every man the knowledge of books and the art of writing" and invented "the science of the constellations and the course of the stars" (Bar Hebraeus, Chronography).

The identification of Enoch with Hermes is present also in Muslim sources; see Enoch in Islam. According to the Arab geographer Ibn Battuta (14th cent.), Hermes was also known by the name of Khanukh [Enoch], who in turn was identified with the Qur'anic prophet Idris. It was Enoch-Hermes-Idris who introduced the science of astronomy, foretold the deluge, and built the pyramids, "in which he depicted all the practical arts and their tools, and made diagrams of the sciences."

The rediscovery of Enoch in Hermetic circles

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.

Hermeticism & Enochian Magic

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. From 1582 to 1589 Dee formed a partnership with visionary Edward Kelley in the search for the lost wisdom of Enoch, that resulted in the "rediscovery" of portions of the writings of Enoch written in the "Enochian language" they believed Enoch himself used to communicate with the angels. The system of Enochian Magic was born.

Primeval wisdom and the birth of Freemasonry

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.

The idea of the existence of a primeval wisdom played a formative role in the emergence of the Freemasonry (the first Lodge was officially established in London in 1717). In the self-understanding of the movement there was an unbroken line of continuity between the ancient Hermetic tradition and the Masonic experience and beliefs. The Freemasonic societies became the main vehicles for the spread of Hermetic traditions in Europe and in the Americas.

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. Hermes was called "Trismegistus" exactly because he was the third in a line of wise men called "Hermes", after Enoch and Noah.

The rediscovery of the Book of Enoch

When in 1773 the explorer (and Freemason) 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. Enochian Magic was now confined outside scholarly circles, in forms of Spiritualism or in the context of works of Fantastic Archaeology; see Enochian Magic. The idea of the existence of a primeval religion of humankind however remained widespread in some scholar circles of the period; see Anacalypsis (1833) by Godfrey Higgins.

In Enoch Restitutus (London, 1836) the Anglican clergyman Edward Murray suggested that the now published book of Henoch should be seen only as a corrupted version of the “original” mentioned by the Letter of Jude and other ancient authors. It was the final and failed attempt to harmonize the Hermetic tradition of the antiquity of Henoch-Hermes and his writings with the new discoveries. Murray’s book was poorly received; a tradition that for centuries had been at the center of scholarly debate suddenly appeared a worthless, fanciful theory with no legitimacy in Enochic scholarship.

Contemporary Hermeticism

Although the concept of a primeval wisdom is no longer an accepted scholarly hypothesis, Hermetic traditions still play an influential role in contemporary popular culture, especially within New Age movements. In the age of the Internet, Enochian Magic and works of Fantastic Archaeology on Enoch have also gained unprecedented fame. In today's scholarship there is also an increasing interest in the study of Hermetic traditions and their influence in the shaping of Western civilization.