The Angelic Conferences of John Dee and Edward Kelley - A Case Study of Elizabethan Magic

Introduction

The European Renaissance was a time of great intellectual activity, and a part of this activity was the study of intellectual magic.[1] Such magic had existed since the late Classical period[2], and in Rennaisance times was the preserve of a highly educated elite[3] (Clark 2002). The Renaissance came to Britain relatively late but when it did it hit with full force, and the study of intellectual magic was part and parcel of this. John Dee is probably the best known example of a Renaissance Magus in Elizabethan England, and this essay will examine the Enochian material which he produced with the aid of his collaborator Edward Kelley.

The Enochian material consists of the records of Dee and Kelley's scrying sessions along with the theoretical material which Dee extracted from them. The manuscripts are kept in the British Library and form part of the Sloane and Cotton collections (Sloane 3191 & 3188, Cotton Appendix XLVI, parts 1 & 2).

In this essay I will examine the material contained in Sloane 3191 and 3188. For Sloane 3191 I have used the edition by Geoffrey James published in 1994, entitled "The Enochian Magick of Dr. John Dee", and for Sloane 3188 I have used the edition by Joseph H. Peterson published in 2003 as "John Dee's Five Books of Mystery". I will first look at how the material was generated and what meaning, if any, it held for Dee and Kelley. I will next look at the content of the material and examine its similarities to and differences from other magical material from the Medieval and Renaissance period.

How the Enochian material was generated.

John Dee and Edward Kelley came from radically different backgrounds. Dee was a scholar and a member of Elizabeth's court, highly respected and widely regarded as one of the best minds of his or any other age (French, 1972). Kelley on the other hand had the reputation of a scoundrel and was anything but respectable (French, op cit). They met when Kelley knocked on Dee's door looking for employment. He ingratiated himself by seeing visions in a crystal ball and Dee hired him as a scryer.

Dee was very interested in communicating with angels, and almost at once Kelley started seeing angelic visions [4]. The angels gave instructions for how to proceed. A table and a seal were made, on which the scrying stone was placed. Then Kelley would gaze into the stone and inform Dee of what he saw and heard. Dee would often interrogate the angels through Kelley:

"I demanded of him what his name was and he answered..." (Peterson, 2003)

Dee wrote everything down and later on produced neat copies of the important material.

A number of different entities manifested to Kelley, including the Cabalistic Archangels Annael, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel and entities unique to the Conferences, e.g. Salamian, Nalvage and Madimi. Two types of material were generated during the Angelic Conferences: apocalyptic prophecies and esoteric wisdom. Most of the prophetic material was of dubious quality, while the esoteric material is similar to much Medieval and Renaissance magic (Clulee, 1988).

The origin of this material has been hotly debated by scholars ever since Casaubon first studied it. There seem to be three possibilities:

1. Dee and Kelley actually did communicate with angels.
2. Dee and Kelley produced the material from their own subconscious minds.
3. At least one, or perhaps both, of them were frauds.

I will now examine each of these possibilities.

Did Dee and Kelley communicate with angels?

They certainly seemed to think that they did. Dee's sincerity in this work is surely beyond doubt - his piety and modesty shine throughout the record, as does his rigour. He was constantly trying to validate everything the angels told him (Deacon, 1968). Kelley also seems to be sincere; at times he was genuinely disturbed by the material he was receiving (Clulee, 1988).

Did Dee and Kelley produce this material from their subconcious minds?

This is certainly the modern view. It is known from psychological studies that certain people can enter a hypnotic state in which they see visions (Walter, 1960). Combined with auto-suggestion from Dee, this would be enough to induce the visions which Kelley saw. Clulee (1988) remarks that "...the revelations are very likely the joint product of Kelley's imagination...and what he knew of Dee's thinking."

Did Kelley defraud Dee?

Meric Casaubon, who produced the first study of the Angelic conferences, certainly thought so. He regarded Kelley as an unscrupulous rogue who set out to con Dee for his own financial gain. After all, Dee himself saw little and was dependent on Kelley (Casaubon, 1659). Modern scholarship tends to regard Kelley in a more favourable light. It is clear from the record that Kelley experienced great emotional stress during the sessions, that he argued with the spirits, and that he was often reluctant to continue, with Dee constantly having to reassure him and persuade him to continue with the work (Clulee, 1988).

But the best evidence against the fraud hypothesis is the sheer complexity of the material which was produced. Over a number of years a logically consistent and coherent system of magic was revealed in an extremely convoluted fashion (Deacon, 1968). To take just one example, the Enochian Calls were dictated from 98 separate tables of random letters, each of which contained 2401 separate cells. Kelley would see the Archangel Gabriel choose one of these tables at random and point to letters within it. Kelley would then tell Dee the grid references and Dee would copy the letters from his own set of tables. The result was a set of invocations which were dictated backwards! This is a feat akin to playing 98 games of blindfold chess simultaneously, something which even chess Grand Masters find difficult. If Kelley was a fraud, he was also a genius.

On balance, I think the fraud hypothesis can be discounted. That leaves two possibilities: genuine contact with angels or subconscious manipulation of Kelley's mind by Dee. From a magical viewpoint these are not mutually contradictory statements - high magic is concerned with entering altered states of consciousness to contact apparently spiritual entities which may also be regarded as parts of the human psyche. As Crowley famously puts it when discussing the Goetia,

"The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain." (Crowley, 1904)

The Angelic Conferences can therefore be regarded as genuine examples of Inner Plane contact, however this concept is interpreted.

The purpose of the Enochian material.

The question of the purpose of the Enochian material has been rather neglected by scholars, but is of great interest to magicians. Dee and Kelley never seemed to do anything with the material other than record it. Tyson (1997) regards the apocalyptic nature of much of the material as the key to the whole. His hypothesis is that the angels were attempting to use Dee and Kelley to bring about an apocalypse by encouraging them to evoke demons. I do not believe that the material bears this interpretation: Dee constantly emphasised the divine nature of the entities contacted.

The motivations of the Enochian entities, whatever they were, are impossible to determine from the evidence available. Dee's motivation is clear, however. In his own words he desired,

"...help in my philosophical studies through the company and information of the blessed angels of God" (Peterson, 2003)

In this he succeeded beyond expectation.

I will now turn to the theoretical material generated by the Angelic conferences.

De Heptarchia Mystica

This is a system of planetary magic, with angelic hierarchies and invocations for the days of the week. This document includes a diagram called the Sigillum Dei Aemeth[5], which is a variant of seals which appear in Kircher's "Oedipus Aegyptiacus" (1562) and Liber Juratus (Peterson, 1999).

48 Claves Angelicae

This is a series of 19 invocations[6] designed to induce visions of various kinds, along with a diagram of the Ayres which are the central feature of Enochian cosmology. The most interesting feature of this material is that it was dictated to Kelley in an otherwise unknown language. Dee and Kelley believed this to be the original language of Creation, spoken by angels. Laycock has performed a thorough linguistic analysis of this material and concludes that it is not gibberish but a genuine language with traces of syntax and grammar (Laycock, 2001). My own opinion is that Enochian functions in the same way as a programming language and that the Calls can be used to re-program the human brain in quite fundamental ways. In other words, it is a language designed specifically for magical use.

Liber Scientiae, Auxili et Victoriae Terrestris

This document lists the countries of the world as known in Dee's time together with the angelic rulers who govern each country and the Ayres that they also govern.[7] Dee was politically active for much of his career, and the potential political uses of such a document are obvious.

A Book of Supplications and Invocations

This is a grimoire of results magic based on a table of names which contains a series of angelic hierarchies corresponding to the four directions. All of the names are unique to this system.

The Enochian material in context

This material is similar in nature to other Medieval and Renaissance magical texts, particularly in the description of angelic hierarchies and the strong bias towards results magic in much of it. The Enochian material was certainly a product of the Renaissance cultural milieu. It's most unique feature is the Enochian language itself, which has no precedent in magical texts.[8] The only element of the system which could be derived from earlier grimoires is the Sigillum dei Aemeth, as discussed above.

The Legacy of the Angelic Conferences

The immediate impact of this material was zero. Dee died penniless in 1608, while Kelley died trying to escape from prison in Bohemia in 1595 (French, 1972). Casaubon had nothing but contempt for Dee's magical activities (Casaubon, 1659). It was only in the late nineteenth century that the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn revived Enochian and turned it into a viable magical system (Regardie, 1989). Since then scholarly interest in the Enochian material has steadily increased.

The Angelic Conferences remain a unique record of the practice of intellectual magic during the Renaissance, and the results that the Renaissance magi hoped to achieve. No other magician of this period has left behind such detailed records of his activities. Dee's legacy remains secure, and he would surely have been content with that.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

James, G. : The Enochian Magick of Dr. John Dee (second edition, 1994)

Peterson, J. H. : John Dee's Five Books of Mystery (2003)

Secondary Sources

Agrippa, H. C. : Three Books of Occult Philosophy (edited by D. Tyson, 2003)

Casaubon, M. (ed) : A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee... and Some Spirits (1659)

Clark, S. : Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Culture (in Vol 3 of The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, edited by B. Ankarloo and S. Clark, 2002)

Clulee, N. H. : John Dee's Natural Philosophy (1988)

Crowley, A. : The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic (in The Goetia, edited by Crowley, 1904)

Deacon, R. : John Dee (1968)

French, P. : John Dee (1972)

Iamblichus : Theurgia, or The Egyptian Mysteries (translated by A. Wilder, 1911)

Kircher, A. : Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652 - 1654)

Laycock, D. C. : The Complete Enochian Dictionary (second edition, 2001)

Peterson, J. H. (ed) : Liber Juratus (1999)

Regardie, I. (ed) : The Golden Dawn (sixth edition, 1989)

Tyson, D. : Enochian Magic for Beginners (1997)

Walter, W. G. : The Neurophysiological Aspects of Hallucinations and Illusory Experience (1960)

Footnotes

[1] e.g. Agrippa's "Three Books of Occult Philosophy".

[2] e.g. Iamblichus' "Theurgia, or The Egyptian Mysteries".

[3] It is important to remember that most magic exists at a folk level, and that intellectual magic is therefore representative of an elitist world view.

[4] Edward Kelley's original name seems to have been Edward Talbot, and he is referred to by this name during the early Angelic Conferences. Why he changed his name is unknown.

[5] Seal of Divine Truth

[6] The 19th call can be used with each of the 30 Ayres, changing the name of the Ayre each time, to give 30 seperate calls. When added to the previous 18 we have 48 calls in total.

[7] This is a good example of how Macrocosmic forces (the Ayres) are thought to influence Microcosmic forces (countries) in Hermetics.

[8] The so-called Enochian alphabet is a cipher which Dee found in Trithemius' "Stenagraphia", but does not appear in the Angelic Conferences themselves.