THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.pagan.magick
From: DngulSkarmaTathagatgarbha 
Subject: education, methods in magic
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 23:01:31 -0700

Joseph Littleshoes wrote:
> catherine yronwode wrote:
> 
> 
>>Alexander Mulligan wrote:
>>
>>>So far, [...] these Enochians won't answer a simple,
>>>straightforward question with a simple, straightforward answer, and
>>>can't find anything themselves on these wonderful websites to paste
>>>into a usenet post [...]
>>>
>>>[...] there aren't any simple,
>>>straightforward answers on those websites either.
>>>
>>>If you can't describe Enochian Magick in a hundred-words or less,
>>>and in plain English that is comprehensible to anyone that has a
>>>rudimentary understanding of magick, then what you have there is
>>>another introverted,self-referential mini-paradigm that has to be
>>>elaborately set up [...]
>>
>>>See what I mean, folks? Another entire post that reveals not one
>>>[...]  *thing* about Enochian Magick.
>>
>>Bruce, i do understand your point, but not the heat with
>>which you presented it. You sound absolutely ticked off that
>>no one will post a simple explanation of Enochian magic for
>>you. Personally, after all the vacuous talk about it here, i
>>am trying to approach Enochian magic by reading a book that
>>David R. Jones recommened. Since i have other things going
>>on now too, this is a bit of a back-burner project, but i am
>>going to make it a personal goal to see if i can distill
>>what i garner from my reading into 100 words or less -- and
>>then see if any of the Enochian magicians here agree with
>>it. Stay tuned! :-)
>>
>>cat yronwode
> 
> 
> Is it really all that different than Abra Melim (sp?) or Goetia.  Or
> other forms of theurgy involving communication with "entities" of
> another dimension?
> 
> Of course there are specific names and languages, certain implements,
> tools, and times of day and other details that vary from one system to
> the other but in general they are or purport to be methods for a type of
> "religious" communication.
angel magic


>  The goal being an apotheosis of the
> practitioner.
>  And i think it is generally accepted that the intense
> forms of prayer and devotions required of these systems can induce an
> altered state of consciousness.
no doubt. it's like african drums or other well-known trance inducing 
adjuvants (staring in a pool of ink, &c).

> 
> Certainly the machinations Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly went through to
> get the language and write down their system is interesting in itself.
> Some people have even suggest it was and is more cryptonomic than
> necronomic or anything else.
could be.

>  Being only a religious system of
> communication with angels and spirits & demons as a cover for a
> diplomatic code & language.


>  Which to date no one has broke.
presumably, you mean no one /who's talking/ has broke it?


>  Probly
> because the only people that are interested in it nowadays are those
> that want to see it literally as a religious system.  Rather than an
> elaborate fraud.
authentic? in the age of iron and tulips? give me a break!

>  Few if any cryptoanalysts are working on it.  Because
> even if there are coded message existent in the known manuscripts, it
> would relate to the political situation of the day,
are you sure? why?

> though of course
> some people will take this same reasoning and insist that the coded
> messages are prophetic in nature rather than political.
> 
good answer to your own suggestion (above)


> 

100 words for each of yours:
enochian and magic
->
~200 words on 'enochian magic'

here's my approximately ~666 words on the topic:

enochian is a recondite if somewhat byzantine and wide-ranging subject. 
dr. dee's main preoccupation was mathematics but as he was a renaissance 
polymath, he also dug into angel magic later in life. much in fact of 
what previously called itself <> is in fact cryptography 
(e.g. Trithemius).

codes and magic have been linked by math for some time now, so I don't 
think Dee fooled himself into thinking he was 'trailblazing' in this 
particular way, but anyway,

back to angel magic:
it's a distinctly Medieval preoccupation to the modern mind, inasmuch as 
Qabalah, Astrology, Natural Philosophy (or Magic) and other similar 
fields are also grouped together in a somewhat haphazard lump

the art of memory (f yates) is a tantalizing sketch of some of these 
strange veins of thought. her other works on Bruno et. al. (mentioned 
earlier in same thread) also provide useful ways to think about such a 
bizarre set of intertwining topics.

as far as i am concerned, enochian is as much
1) 'visual culture' (the engraving on wax (or other materials) as 
represented by the sigillvm amaeth is certainly very visually striking, 
and without labelling it 'cryptographic' or 'magic' it is at least 
visual and it has figured iconically in the culture for some time now: 
even without the crosses, letters &c. as
2) 'linguistics' or
3) 'scientific romance,'
as anything else (namely the disingenious claims of charlanatry: i find 
it improbable that there wasn't /some/ sort of purpose in the fairly 
meticulous records D and K left, if 'only' to slake their over-active 
imaginations)

the queen's conjurer (ca. 1999) touches very briefly on Dee's angel 
magic/ enochiana, slanted more in the direction of historical exposition 
than 'magic handbook.' donald laycock's dictionary is a good place to 
start and has some really respectable comments on Enochiana. Dee's 
diaries also good, if rare, sources. The British Museum holds most of 
the Enochiana as far as I know.

the sigillvm amaeth was one of the first things that really caught my 
attention when i visited the various museums in England.
this same pantacle has some interesting relatives/ precedents/ primos if 
you look hard enough (S. Singh's The Code Book has some interesting 
materials). cryptography and cryptanalysis generally have very 
interesting histories, at least as interesting as enochian. i'd venture 
a guess that these acrostics and magic squares are often performing some 
mathematical algorithm about as often as they are accomplishing less 
functional and more aesthetic goals  such as being 'merely' symbolic 
artifacts of active imaginations. certainly the enochian language (as 
relected in the 48 keys) reported construction/ creation or genesis 
followed a particularly rigorous, if labyrinthine process to suggest as 
much!

enochian is angel magic:
is a narrative, parole, la langue:
is tied up with the actions (praxis- method) of a mage/ scholar/ 
mathematician (JD) and a rogue/ thief/ mountebank/ alchemist/ seer (EK) 
in the early seventeenth century.

somewhere wife-swapping gets proposed (shades of PBR?) and the two 
eccentrics go their own way. much of the material Dee and Kelly scribe 
is burned or drowned or otherwise destroyed. much of what survives is 
more or less well-known among those interested in the topic, though 
getting to see it is the hard part unless you have a good search engine 
or a grant from a research university or whatnot.

if i had to guess what enochians looked like, i think sally glassman has 
it right
or dali, salvador.
they sound like aphex twin or kiln.
they smell like abramelin and sex.
they taste like wine and cinnamon.
they feel like a swan or a milky river.

can be gleaned by ordinary earth dwellers by gazing at a bowl of 
hematite with a pool of ink or a similar skrying device and intoning 
their names/ language.

don't ask them to do your laundry though, you'll be disappointed (see 
the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia)- if i want to contact enochians, 
it's because i suspect i may have some truck with /powerful/ or 
invisible forces, not trivial matters to get done. keep a diary, and the 
more common mistakes can be avoided.

418,
DST