What the sources say it is for
About what the sources say it is for
The question has three answers, and they are given here in their sources' words. Dee's are quoted from Casaubon's print of 1659, each with its page in the archive's copy; the Golden Dawn's from Liber Chanokh, with Regardie cited and not reproduced; Thelema's from The Vision and the Voice and Liber Chanokh. None is preferred.
Dee and Kelley, 1582 to 1589
Dee and Kelley, 1582 to 1589
The angels present the Keys as keys of gates, and the gates as the way to knowledge. On 14 April 1584: every Table hath his key: every key openeth his gate, and every gate being opened, giveth knowledge of himself of entrance, and of the mysteries of those things whereof he is an inclosure
(p. 88). Earlier the same month the Keys are called 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
(p. 77). The four Watchtowers are the 4 Angels of the Earth, which are the 4 Overseers, and Watch-towers, that the eternal God in his providence hath placed, against the usurping blasphemy, misuse, and stealth of the wicked and great enemy, the Devil
, and through them the angel offers the secret knowledge of the Earth, that you may deal with her, by such as govern her, at your pleasure
(p. 170). What the table contains is listed in nine heads: all human knowledge, physic, the elemental creatures and for what use they were created
, metals and stones, the conjoining of natures, moving from place to place, the crafts mechanical, transmutatio formalis, and the secrets of men (p. 179). Dee himself names his three books: Enoch his Book
, The 48 Claves Angelicae
, and the Book of my gathering of the thirty Aires, and entitled Liber Scientia terrestris auxilii & victoriae
, the book of earthly help and victory (p. 418). Casaubon's own end in printing the record, in his Preface, was not to satisfie curiosity, but to do good, and promote Religion
.
A True & Faithful Relation (1659), in the archive; each quotation links to its page. Casaubon's Preface is on its own page.
The Golden Dawn
The Golden Dawn
Liber Chanokh abstracts the Order's use of the material: the four tablets as the elemental universe, each divided by its cross into names; the three sets of names of the Great Cross that rule the whole tablet, and must be invoked before specializing in the lesser angles of the sub-elements
; the Calvary Cross whose vertical name calls forth the powers of the lesser angle
and whose horizontal name compels the evoked force to obedience
; the squares read as pyramids whose sides are attributed to the Sephiroth, Planets, Elements, and Zodiacal signs
; and the rule of the Keys, which opens the Tablet of Union, the tablets and the angles in a fixed order. The Order's ceremonies that use the names, the Watchtower opening and the Supreme Pentagram, are Regardie's to print; this site describes them on the Rituals page and does not reproduce them.
Liber Chanokh (1912), the archive copy; the Opening by the Watchtower and the Supreme Pentagram on the Rituals page, after Regardie.
Thelema
Thelema
The Vision and the Voice is the record of the thirty Aethyrs skryed with the nineteenth Key, from the thirtieth inward to the first, in 1900 and 1909; the Cries are what was seen and heard, and the Syllabus of the Official Instructions names the book as Being of the Angels of the thirty AETHYRS, the Vision and the Voice
. In that use the Aethyrs are a way inward, and this site keeps to it: no Aethyr is assigned to an outward end. Liber Chanokh, the same year, tabulates the Aethyrs and their Governors after Dee.
The Vision and the Voice (1911); Liber Chanokh, the Aethyrs; the Syllabus (Liber CCVII, 1919).
The work, act by act
What each tradition requires before beginning, how it opens, which names and which Call it uses in which order, what it says follows, and how it closes: one row for each act, one column for each tradition. The elements of the system are compared the same way in the reference.
The offices of the angels
About the offices of the angels
Dee's own book of invocations, the Tabula bonorum angelorum invocationes of 1584, names the angels of the sixteen lesser angles and states what each company is for. The sixteen servient squares of each angle carry one office and the four Kerubic squares above them another; the two divine names of the angle's Calvary Cross are the names by which they are called, after the King and the six Seniors of the tablet. The Seniors themselves are "to impart to men knowledge and judgement of human affairs". Dee's names are set here by tablet; on the Great Table page each square's panel shows them beside the name derived from the squares. Where the two differ, the difference is recorded in the notes on the transcription under Sources, and the letters of the table are not altered.
Source: John Dee, Tabula bonorum angelorum invocationes (Sloane MS 3191). Each office is given in the table in Dee's Latin, with this site's English rendering beside it.
Compare all eight offices and the six Seniors
The thirty Aethyrs
About the thirty Aethyrs
Beyond the Watchtowers lie thirty Aethyrs, or Aires, from TEX, the outermost, to LIL. 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; every Aethyr below opens his record of it. In Dee's own book of the Aethyrs, Liber Scientiae Auxilii et Victoriae Terrestris, each Governor is set against a part of the earth, named as the geography of 1585 named it, and under one of twelve Kings who preside over the orders and over the tribes of Israel in their dispersion; those parts are written beside the Governors here, in Dee's spelling.
The twelve Kings of the parts of the earth
Dee's table sets each Governor under one of twelve angelic Kings, each King over a tribe of Israel and a quarter of the world. The diagram on the last leaf, "the order of Israel dispersed, in this age 1585", arranges them round a square, three to each quarter.
The Call of the Thirty Aethyrs
One Call serves all thirty: only the name of the Aethyr changes, and its number in Dee's English. Choose an Aethyr and the Call is written out for it, in the angelic tongue with Dee's English beside it, phrase by phrase, as the archive gives it.
| Enochian | English |
|---|
Collation with Casaubon's print (1659)
Casaubon's A True and Faithful Relation printed the actions of May 1584 in which the ninety-one Governors were dictated, each name set in capitals and again divided into syllables, and the vision in which the parts of the earth were named, in the same order as Dee's table. Those readings are set against the autograph here. The page keeps the autograph; where the print reads otherwise the difference is shown and nothing is adjudicated.
The Great Table of 1584 in Casaubon's print (1659)
On Monday 25 June 1584 at Cracow the four parts of the Table were delivered, and Casaubon's print sets them on pp. 176 to 177 as five tables of twelve columns, with the binding cross as a table of five columns on p. 179. They are shown here letter for letter as the keyed text of the print has them, against the arrangement this page uses, Chanokh's plate of 1912; every square that reads otherwise is marked in the tables and listed beneath with the names of this page that pass through it, in both spellings. The page keeps its letters; the print's readings are recorded, not adopted.
The Keys as Casaubon's print delivers them (1584)
The print keys the Keys twice. In April 1584 the first four were delivered backwards, and the print sets them in tables of numbered rows: the number of the word, the word as it was delivered, its English, and the word read forwards with the angel's sounding and notes. In May the fifth to the eighteenth were given again forwards, each word in capitals beside a sounding set out in syllables; and in July the Call of the thirty Aires, the word, its English and its syllables. Every such table is read here cell by cell and set against the archive's Calls of Enoch word by word: a word agrees, reads otherwise, is divided otherwise, or stands only in the print or only on the page. The page's text is the measure and is not altered; the print's soundings are kept as its witness of pronunciation.
The print's own word on its faults, from Casaubon's Addendum and Errata: MAny will be found in the Book: a good part proceeding (besides ordinary typographical mistakes, even where best care is used:) from the uncorrectednesse of the Copy: which might happen, partly through the illegiblenesse of the Original it self, in many places: and partly from mistakes in the said Original, where most legible.
The corrections he then lists are for pp. 403 to 404, the Preface and the Table of the actions; none touches the pages of the Great Table, the Governors or the Keys that the collations above cite, so those pages stand as printed, faults and all, and the collations record what they read.
The Heptarchy
About the Heptarchy
Before the Watchtowers and the Aethyrs, in 1582 and 1583, the angels gave Dee a first system: seven Kings and seven Princes, a pair for each day of the week, each with forty-two ministers, under a King over the whole, CARMARA, and a Prince over the princes, HAGONEL. Dee gathered their offices into a small book of his own compiling, De Heptarchia Mystica, whose seventh chapter recites what each King and Prince is for, in the words the angels had used. Those sentences are set here in Dee's spelling; each is an excerpt, and the full recital of each is longer. The Finder draws on them for the Kings it names.
Sources
The witnesses and their editions
The Great Table, the Tablet of Union, the alphabet and the Aethyrs with their Governors are taken from Liber Chanokh (The Equinox I:7–8, 1912). The Calls are from Dee's record as printed by Casaubon (1659), in the archive as The Calls of Enoch. The visions of the Aethyrs are The Vision and the Voice (Liber 418). The offices of the angels are from Dee's Tabula bonorum angelorum invocationes (Sloane MS 3191), and what each Call opens from the notes of Liber Chanokh. Every name on the Great Table page is derived from the letters of the tablets by the rules Liber Chanokh gives, and the derivation can be read off the highlighted squares there.