Donald Tyson:
In his (Dee's) occult work he was aided by an equally extraordinary
person, Edward Kelley (also spelled "Kelly"; 1555-1597), the son
of a Worcester apothecary, who dreamed of discovering the secret
of the philosopher's stone and dabbled in the black art of
necromancy. Fleeing Lancaster in 1580 on charges of forging title
deeds, Kelley found it prudent to set out on a walking tour of
Wales. Somewhere near Glastonbury (so the story goes) he
purchased a portion of the fabled red powder that could turn base
metals into gold; the source of the powder was an innkeeper who
had received it from tomb robbers.
For the remainder of his colorful life Kelley labored to unlock
the secret of the red powder so that he could manufacture more of
it himself. It was on this quest for alchemical knowledge that he
sought out the library of John Dee in 1582, and it was primarily
for this reason that he agreed to serve as Dee's seer.
Dee was a saint, Kelley a rogue, but they were bound together by
their common fascination with ceremonial magic and the wonders it
promised. Dee possessed little talent for mediumship. He tried to
overcome this limitation by hiring a mountebank named Barnabas
Saul as his professional scryer but had poor results. When Dee
learned of Kelley's considerable psychic abilities, he eagerly
employed Kelley as his seer for the sum of 50 pounds per annum.
Dee invoked the Enochian angels to visible appearance within a
scrying crystal or a black mirror of obsidian by means of prayers
and certain magical seals. After Kelley had alerted Dee to the
presence of the spirits, Dee questioned them. Kelley reported
their sayings and doings back to Dee, who recorded them in his
magical diaries.
The most important portion of Dee's transcription of the Enochian
communications, covering the years 1582-1587, was published in
London 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. This fascinating work has been reprinted
several times in recent decades and is readily available.
The Enochian spirits got their name from the nature of the
magical system they described. It was, they claimed, the very
magic that the biblical patriarch Enoch had learned from the
angels of heaven. The angel Ave told Dee, "Now hath it pleased
God to deliver this Doctrine again out of darknesse: and to
fulfill his promise with thee, for the books of Enoch." I
Compared to it, all other forms of magic were mere playthings.
Although Dee faithfully recorded all the details of Enochian
magic in his diaries, he never tried to work this system in any
serious way. We cannot know the reason with certainty. In 1589 he
broke with Kelley, who stayed on in Bohemia to manufacture gold
for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II while Dee returned to
England at the request of Elizabeth, a circumstance that may have
inconvenienced his plans. But it is my contention that Dee was
awaiting permission from the angels to employ their magic, and
this permission was not given in his lifetime.
It is necessary to state unequivocally for those unfamiliar with
Enochian magic that neither Dee nor Kelley fabricated the spirit
communications. Both believed completely in the reality of the
angels, although they differed about the motives of these beings.
Dee believed them to be obedient agents of God who submitted to
the authority of Christ. Kelley mistrusted them and suspected
them of deliberate deception. The dislike was mutual. The angels
always treated Kelley with amused contempt. Kelley hoped the
angels would communicate the secret of the red powder, which was
the only reason he endured their insults for so many years.
There is no space here to enter into the question of the nature
and objective reality of spirits, nor is it likely that any
conclusions could be reached on this difficult subject. Whatever
their essential nature, the Enochian angels acted as independent,
intelligent beings with their own distinct personalities and
purposes. This is how Dee and Kelley regarded them, and this is
how I shall regard them in this essay. Using this assumption, I
will present what I believe to be the angels' secret agenda,
which they concealed from Dee: to plant among mankind the ritual
working that would initiate the period of violent transformation
between the present aeon and the next, commonly known as the
apocalypse.
The Gates and the Keys
What the Enochian angels conveyed to Dee was not merely a potent
form of magic to rule the tutelary spirits of the nations. It was
an initiatory formula designed to open the locked gates of the
four great watchtowers that stand guard against chaos at the
extremities of our universe. The Watchtowers are described by the
angel Ave:
"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 compasse and
measure of order."
These Watchtowers, represented in Enochian magic by alphabetical
squares, are equivalent to the four mystical pillars of Egyptian
mythology that hold up the sky and keep it from crashing into the
earth. They 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).
The Enochian Calls or Keys (the angels refer to them by both
titles) are 48 spirit evocations delivered to Dee and Kelley in
the Enochian language and then translated into English word for
word by the angels. The overt purpose of the Keys, the angels
declared, was to enable Dee to establish ritual communication
with the spirits of the 30 Aethers or Airs who rule over the
tutelary spirits of the nations of the earth. There are actually
49 Keys, but the first, the angels said, is too sacred and
mysterious to be voiced. The first eighteen explicit Keys are
completely different in their wording; the last 30 are similar
save for the name of the Aether inserted in the first line. 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."
The tables referred to are the 49 alphabetical tables from which
the Keys were generated, one letter at a time, by the Enochian
angels. The Keys are related in sets to the four Watchtowers,
which contain the names of various hierarchies of spirits.
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.
The very name of these evocations should have been clue enough.
Surely if the Watchtowers stand guard at the four corners of our
dimension of reality, keeping back the hordes of Coronzon from
descending like "stooping dragons," as the Eighth Key puts it,
and if the evocations known as the Keys are designed to open the
gates of these watchtowers, we might suspect that it would be a
bad idea to unlock the gates.
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 apocalypse, an event initiated by God and presumably
beyond Dee's control.
What he 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 Antichrist.
The Nature of the Apocalypse
It has always been generally assumed that the apocaIypse is in
the hands of the angels of wrath, to be visited upon the world at
the pleasure of God, at a moment preordained from the beginning
of creation. In the veiled teachings of the Enochian angels this
is not true. The gates of the Watchtowers can only be unlocked
from the inside. The angels of wrath cannot initiate the
apocalypse even if they wish to do so. This is suggested by an
exchange between Dee and the angel Ave:
Dee - As for the form of our Petition or Invitation of the
good Angels, what sort should it be of?
Ave - A short and brief speech.
Dee - We beseech you to give us an example: we would have a
confidence, it should be of more effect.
Ave - I may not do so.
Kelley - And why?
Ave - Invocation proceedeth of the good will of man, and of
the heat and fervency of the spirit: And therefore is prayer
of such effect with God.
Dee - We beseech you, shall we use one form to all?
Ave - Every one, after a divers form.
Dee - If the minde do dictate or prompt a divers form, you
mean.
Ave - I know not: for I dwell not in the soul of man.
Spiritual beings must be evoked into our reality by human beings.
We must open the gates and admit the servants of Coronzon
ourselves. Evocation and invocation are not a part of the
business of angels, but of humans. That is why the angels needed
to go through the elaborate ruse of conveying the system of
Enochian magic, with the Keys and the Great Table of the
Watchtowers, to Dee. If the apocalypse is to take place, and if
it is necessary for human beings to open the gates of the
Watchtowers before it can take place, the angels first had to
instruct a man in the correct method for opening the gates.
It is evident that Dee was to be restrained from opening the
gates of the Watchtowers until it pleased the angels. The angel
Gabriel, who purports to be speaking with the authority of God,
tells him:
"I have chosen you, to enter into my barns: And have commanded
you to open the Corn, that the scattered may appear, and that
which remaineth in the sheaf may stand. And have entered into
the first, and so into the seventh. And have delivered unto
you the Testimony of my spirit to come.
"For, my Barn hath been long without Threshers. And I have
kept my flayles for a long time hid in unknown places: Which
flayle is the Doctrine that I deliver unto you: Which is the
Instrument of thrashing, wherewith you shall beat the shears,
that the Corn which is scattered, and the rest may be all one.
"(But a word in the mean season.)
"If I be Master of the Barn, owner of the Corn, and deliverer
of my flayle: If all be mine (And unto you, there is nothing:
for you are hirelings, whose reward is in heaven.)
"Then see, that you neither thresh, nor unbinde, until I bid
you, let it be sufficient unto you: that you know my house,
that you know the labour I will put you to: That I favour you
so much as to entertain you the labourers within my Barn: For
within it thresheth none without my consent."
Surely nothing could be clearer. Throughout the Enochian commun-
ications the angels euphemistically refer to the apocalypse as
"the Harvest." Here Enochian magic is specifically described as
the "Instrument of thrashing." Yet Dee did not comprehend the
awesome significance of the burden that had been laid upon his
shoulders. Elsewhere in the record the angel Mapsama is just as
explicit about the need for Dee to await permission before
attempting to use the Keys:
Mapsama - These Calls are the keyes into the Gates and Cities
of wisdom. Which [Gates] are not able to be opened, but with
visible apparition.
Dee - And how shall that be come unto?
Mapsama - Which is according to the former instructions: and
to be had, by calling of every Table. You called for wisdom,
God hath opened unto you, his judgement: He hath delivered
unto you the keyes, that you may enter; But be humble. Enter
not of presumption, but of permission. Go not in rashly; But
be brought in willingly: For, many have ascended, but few have
entered. By Sunday you shall have all things that are
necessary to be taught, then (as occasion serveth) you may
practice at all times. But you being called by God, and to a
good purpose.
Dee - How shall we understand this Calling by God?
Mapsama - God stoppeth my mouth, I will answer thee no
more.
Despite these hints and many others, the angels never actually
came out and told Dee that he was to be the instrument whereby
the ritual formula for initiating the apocalypse would be planted
in the midst of humanity. Here it would sit like a ticking occult
time bomb, waiting for some clever magician, perhaps guided by
the angels, to work it. Dee evidently never received the signal
to conduct the Apocalypse Working in his lifetime. It was to be
reserved for another century and another man. That man was
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).
Enter the Great Beast
Even as a child, Crowley became convinced that he was the Great
Beast mentioned in the biblical book of Revelation. He studied
magic with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, then went on to
construct his own occult system using an amalgamation of the
ritual working of Abramelin the Mage, the Goetia, and the Tantric
sexual techniques of the German Ordo Templi Orientis, among other
sources.
He firmly believed that he was the herald for a new age of strife
and destruction that would sweep across the world. He called this
the Aeon of Horus, after the Egyptian god of war. In Cairo in
1904, he received the bible of this apocalyptic period, LiberAL
vel Legis (The Book of the Law), in the form of a psychic
dictation from his guardian angel, Aiwass. The book sets forth
some of the conditions that will prevail in the Aeon of Horus. It
also contains Crowley's famous dictum "Do what thou wilt shall be
the whole of the Law."
It is highly significant that Crowley never considered himself to
be the Antichrist. He is not the central character in the drama
of the apocalypse, but the herald who ushers in the age of chaos.
In a very real sense he was the gatekeeper of the apocalypse. The
text of The Book of the Law clearly states:
"This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always
with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the
chance shape of the letters and their position to one another:
in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not
seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who
shall discover the key of it all."
Crowley studied and practiced Enochian magic more often and
deeply than any other magician of the Golden Dawn, indeed
probably more deeply than any other human being who has ever
lived. About the angelic communications of Dee and Kelley he
writes: "Much of their work still defies explanation, though I
and Frater Semper Pararus [Thomas Windram], an Adeptus Major of
the A[rgenteum] A[strum] have spent much time and research upon
it and cleared up many obscure points."
The record of Crowley's working of the Enochian Aethers in 1909
in the desert of North Africa is preserved in the document titled
The Vision and the Voice. He possessed a profound and broad
understanding of ritual magic, an understanding that was not
merely theoretical but practical. No other man of the twentieth
century was better suited to initiate the Apocalypse Working,
even as there had been no man in the sixteenth century better
suited than Dee to receive it from the Enochian angels.
Interestingly, Crowley believed himself to be the reincarnation
of Edward Kelley.
I doubt that Crowley ever succeeded in correctly completing the
entire Enochian Apocalypse Working -- that is, the primal occult
Key which is nowhere recorded, the eighteen manifest Keys, and
the Key of the 30 Aethers in their correct correspondence with
the parts of the Great Table of the Watchtowers. But he may have
succeeded in partially opening the gates of the Watchtowers. It
is significant that he states concerning the African working with
his disciple Victor Neuberg: "As a rule, we did one Aethyr every
day." About the method for invoking the spirits of the
Watchtowers, the angel Ave tells Dee:
"Four days ...must you only call upon those names of God [on
the Great Table of the Watchtowers], or on the God of Hosts,
in those names:
"And 14 days after you shall (in this, or in some convenient
place) Call the Angels by Petition and by the name of God,
unto the which they are obedient.
"The 15 day you shall Cloath yourselves, in vestures made of
linen, white: and so have the apparition, use, and practice of
the Creatures. For, it is not a labour of years, nor many
dayes."
It seems clear to me that the complete Apocalypse Working must be
conducted on consecutive days, one Key per day. I would guess
that the unexpressed primordial Key of the Great Mother is the
missing ingredient that will complete the Working, but this is a
matter of practical magic and there is no space to investigate
the details of the Apocalypse Working in this brief essay.
Crowley remained firmly convinced until his death in 1947 that
the Aeon of Horus had begun in 1904, precisely at the time he
received The Book of the Law. He may have been right. The Aeon of
Horus is the duration of the apocalypse, that period when
Coronzon shall rule over the cosmos and visit destruction upon
mankind. And the apocalypse is a mental transformation that will
occur, or is presently occurring, within the collective
unconscious of the human race.
A Mental Armageddon
Fundamentalist Christians commonly believe that the end of the
world will be a completely physical event and will be sparked by
some horrifying material agent -- global thermonuclear war, or
the impact of a large asteroid, or a deadly plague.
This supposition is natural in view of the concrete imagery of
the book of Revelation. It is in keeping with the materialistic
world view of modern society. But nobody stops to consider that
this destruction is described by angels, or that angels are
spiritual, not physical, beings.
In my opinion the apocalypse prepared by the Enochian angels must
be primarily an internal, spiritual event, and only in a
secondary way an external, physical catastrophe. The gates of the
Watchtowers that stand guard at the four corners of our dimension
of reality are mental constructions. When they are opened, they
will admit the demons of Coronzon, not into the physical world,
but into our subconscious minds.
Spirits are mental, not material. They dwell in the depths of
mind and communicate with us through our dreams, unconscious
impulses, and more rarely in waking visions. They affect our
feelings and our thoughts beneath the level of our conscious
awareness. Sometimes they are able to control our actions, either
partially, as in the case of irrational and obsessive behavior
patterns, or completely, as in the case of full possession.
Through us, and only through us, are they able to influence
physical things.
The Enochian communications teach not only that humanity itself
must initiate the apocalypse through the magical formula
delivered to Dee and Kelly, but that humans must be the physical
agents that bring about the plagues, wars, and famines described
with such chilling eloquence in the vision of St. John. It is we
who will let the demons of Coronzon into our minds by means of a
specific ritual working. They will not find a welcome place there
all at once, but will worm their way into our subconscious and
make their homes there slowly over time. In the minds of
individuals that resist this invasion they will find it difficult
to gain a foothold, but in the more pliable minds of those who
welcome their influence they will establish themselves readily.
Once the demons have taken up residence, we will be powerless to
prevent them from turning our thoughts and actions toward chaotic
and destructive ends. These apocalyptic spirits will set person
against person and nation against nation, gradually increasing
the madness and chaos in human society until at last the full
horror of Revelation has been realized upon the stage of the
world. The corruption of human thoughts and feelings may require
generations to bring to full fruition. Only after the wasting and
burning of souls is well advanced will the full horror of the
apocalypse achieve its final fulfillment in the material realm.
Let us suppose for the sake of argument that the signal for the
initiation of this psychic invasion occurred in 1904 when Crowley
received the Book of the Law, as he himself believed. Crowley's
Enochian evocations of 1909 then pried the doors of the
Watchtowers open a crack enough to allow a foul wind to blow
through the common mind of the human race. This would explain the
senseless slaughter of the First World War and the unspeakable
horror of the Nazi Holocaust during the Second World War. It
would explain the decline of organized religions and why the
soulless cult of science has gained supremacy. It would explain
the moral and ethical bankruptcy of modern times and the increase
in senseless violence.
We may not have long to wait before the individual known in the
vision of St. John as the Antichrist, the one foretold in
Crowley's Book of the Law to follow after the Beast, will succeed
in completing the Apocalypse Working. Then the gates of the
Watchtowers will truly gape wide, and the children of Coronzon
will sweep into our minds as crowned conquerors. If this chilling
scenario ever comes to pass, the wars of the twentieth century
will seem bucolic to those who survive the slaughter.
