The alphabet
Twenty-one letters, each with a name of its own. Select a letter; write a word beneath and see it in the angelic characters.
Drawn by the letter table: I stands for J and Y, C for K, U for V and W; anything that is not a letter is left out. A transliteration of the characters, not a translation.
About the alphabet
Dee wrote the tables in Latin letters and in the angelic characters side by side; the characters here are drawn as outlines, the Latin values are those of Liber Chanokh and the names those of Casaubon's table as the Golden Dawn used them. I and Y share the letter Gon, C and K the letter Veh, U, V and W the letter Van. Every square of the Great Table carries one of these letters, every name is read from them, and the Calls are written in them.
The alphabet is taken from Liber Chanokh (The Equinox I:7–8, 1912), Plate IX; the glyphs from the site's own outlines. How the words are sounded, with the witnesses set side by side, is in the reference.
The Great Table
Four Watchtowers of twelve columns and thirteen rows. Choose a tablet, select any square, point to a name to see its path through the letters.
About the Great Table
In each Watchtower the row and the two columns that meet in the middle form the Great Cross: the middle row holds the Three Secret Holy Names of God, the centre of the cross gives the name of the King, and the arms of the cross, read outward from the centre, give the six Seniors. The cross divides the tablet into four lesser angles, one for each element within the element of the tablet; in each, a Calvary Cross carries two divine names, the four squares above its arm are the Kerubic squares, and the sixteen below are the Servient squares.
Colour on the table is a reading aid. In the Element map each lesser angle is tinted with this site's colour for its element and the Great Cross with the colour of Spirit; these are interface colours, chosen for legibility, and not a claim of tradition. Pyramid faces shows the four sides of each square as Liber Chanokh attributes them and marks as unknown the sides whose rule Chanokh withholds. Structure is the plain table. The characters, Latin or angelic, are chosen separately, and a name shows its path through the squares, with the order in which the letters are read, when it is pointed to or selected. Arrow keys move about the table; Escape returns to the controls.
The Great Table is taken from Liber Chanokh (The Equinox I:7–8, 1912); every name is derived from the letters of the tablets by the rules Chanokh gives, and the derivation can be read off the highlighted squares. The plate corrections and the recorded variants are among the notes on the transcription, and the print of 1659 is collated square by square under Specifics.
The Tablet of Union
Twenty letters in five columns and four rows, one row for each Watchtower. Select a letter.
About the Tablet of Union
The first column is Spirit; the remaining four are Air, Water, Earth and Fire, and the letter in each column governs the lesser angle of that element in the tablet of its row. The four rows read as the names EXARP, HCOMA, NANTA and BITOM. The First Key opens the tablet as a whole and the Second its line of Spirit; neither is used with the four Watchtowers.
The Tablet of Union as Liber Chanokh gives it; the rule of the Keys in the same text.
The names
Every name the tradition reads from the squares of the chosen tablet. Point to a name to see its path on the Great Table; select it to keep the path.
How the names are read
The Three Secret Holy Names of God are the twelve letters of the middle row, read as three, four and five. The King is read in a whirl about the centre of the Great Cross, and the six Seniors outward along its arms. In each lesser angle the Calvary Cross carries a name of six letters down its shaft and a name of five along its arm; the four Kerubic squares above the arm read as a name that is also read in its rotations; and each of the four servient rows beneath reads as a name of four letters, which the letter of the Tablet of Union above the angle makes five. Where a name has more than one recorded spelling the difference is recorded under Specifics and never chosen silently.
The rules are those of Liber Chanokh; the offices Dee attached to the angels of each angle are on Specifics and in the panel of every square.
The thirty Aethyrs
From LIL, the innermost, to TEX, the outermost, each with its Governors. Open one for Crowley's record of it, the Governors' parts of the earth and the Call of the Thirty Aethyrs written out for it.
About the Aethyrs
Beyond the Watchtowers lie thirty Aethyrs, or Aires. Each has three Governors, four for the thirtieth, ninety-one in all, and each Governor a number of servient spirits. Crowley skryed the thirty in order in Mexico in 1900 and in the Algerian desert in 1909, and The Vision and the Voice is the record. In Dee's own book of the Aethyrs, Liber Scientiae Auxilii et Victoriae Terrestris, each Governor is set against a part of the earth as the geography of 1585 named it, under one of twelve Kings. The nineteenth Call serves all thirty; only the name of the Aethyr changes.
The Aethyrs and the Governors after Liber Chanokh; the visions in The Vision and the Voice; the twelve Kings, the parts of the earth and the collation with Casaubon's print under Specifics.
The nineteen Calls
The Keys in the angelic language, each with what it opens. Open one to read it whole, in the letters and as it is spoken.
The order of their use
Liber Chanokh gives the order. The First Key governs the Tablet of Union as a whole and is used first in every working of that tablet; the Second, which invokes its line of Spirit, follows in the second place; neither is used with the four Watchtowers. The Third to the Sixth open the four Watchtowers as wholes, each with the angle of the tablet's own element; the remaining twelve open the other angles, in the order Air, Water, Earth, Fire; the nineteenth is the Call of the Thirty Aethyrs. The Golden Dawn and Thelema perform the Calls in their own ways; the Opening by the Watchtower is on the Rituals page.
The text of the Calls is Dee's record as Casaubon printed it in 1659, in the archive as The Calls of Enoch; the rule and the pointed spelling are Liber Chanokh's.
Further in
Each Call as the archive prints it, in the Enochian letters at a touch, the spoken form as Liber Chanokh points it with a read-along, and the English at the side.
SpecificsThe deeper matterWhat the sources say the system is for, the offices of the angels, the Aethyrs and their Governors, the Heptarchy, the collations with the print of 1659 and the notes on the transcription.
ReferenceThe system in parallel tablesThe pronunciation witnesses, the anatomy of a Watchtower, the derived names, the Calls, the Aethyrs and the Heptarchy, with Dee's records, the Golden Dawn and Thelema side by side.
FinderWhat the sources attach to a stated needThe offices, the Kings of the Heptarchy, the names of a tablet and angle, and the Keys, every line marked; a concordance that promises nothing.
Notes written in the retired workbook can still be downloaded from Saved notes.
Sigillum Dei Aemeth
The seal of God that Dee received in March 1582, drawn letter by letter from his record.
About the seal
The angels Michael and Uriel dictated the seal to John Dee and Edward Kelley over eight days, from 14 to 21 March 1582, and Dee drew it at the end of the second of his books of mysteries. It was to be made of perfect wax, nine inches across and an inch and a half thick, with a cross on its back, and it was to lie on the Holy Table beneath the stone. Three wax discs of this pattern survive in the British Museum.
Everything on it is read out of everything else. The forty letters of the outer ring, each with a number above or below it, give seven names by a rule of counting: Galas, Gethog, Thaoth, Horlwn, Innon, Aaoth and Galethog, the last written again large in the seven segments. The forty-nine letters within them, read down in columns, give the angels Zaphkiel, Zadkiel, Cumael, Raphael, Haniel, Michael and Gabriel. The seven names along the heptagon are names of God said to be unknown to the angels; read across and on the diagonals they give the Daughters of Light in the points of the star, the Sons of Light along its arms, and the seven angels of the planets, whose names fill the innermost heptagon, the pentagram and the centre. A number standing among the letters is a letter fetched back from the outer ring.
The figure follows Dee's drawing. His written record differs from it in a few places, and the drawing is kept: under the y at the foot of the ring the text gives 15 where the drawing has 14, and under the great H it gives 22 where the drawing has 12. The first of the planetary angels is Zabathiel in Dee's hand and drawing, though the reading rule as the angel states it begins with an S. Dee's heading names the figure Aemath; the name has come down as Aemeth.