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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.pagan.magick
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: Enochian Magick Revisited
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 10:04:23 GMT

Alexander Mulligan wrote:
> 
> Finally, after about of a week of trying and failing to get some
> straight answers in plain English from the Enochian folks, I
> have learned that their current theory and practices are based
> upon attempts to recreate the reported scrying experiences of
> one person, whose name is not Enoch.

Not so. Dr. Dee, who developed the system utilized the services of
several scryers, of whom Edward Kelly was the most successful ... and
the most notorious. 

Enoch is a person mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Jewish
Tanach who was said to communicate directly with heavenly beings. John
Dee specifically stated that his own system of holding communion with
heavenly entities was be superior to the Hebrew system. He thus
appropriated the name of Enoch and also the tripartite division of the
Hebrew alphabet for his angelic language, making him, in my opinion,
one of many magical Christians who appropriate elements of Jewish
magic and mysticism and then claim to side-step Judaism while yet
retaining its  supposed spiritual benefits. 

> Apparently, the Enochians would have us believe [...]  that elaborate
> and arcane training and study and ritual are needed, and that they have
> some kind of exclusive license to convey and train these abilities.
> 
> Is that unfair? I don't think so. 

It seems unfair to me, in that it untrue.

     1. No course of "training" is offered. John Dee, the man who
devised the Enochian magic system  was a polymath astrologer,
mathematician, scholar -- his best known scryer (Edward Kelly) was a
criminal who simply had the ability to see visions in a crystal. Dee
did not have that ability and no amount of training inculcated it in
him. He used other scryers before Kelly. None of them were "trained."
The ability to sky is therefore taken in Enochian magic to be some
sort of inherent spiritual "gift." 

     2. There is no "study" needed except for those who wish to study
Dee's methodology. Dee himself did not "study," nor did Kelly. They
merely sat down as scryer and recorder.

     3. The ritual is anything but "elaborate and arcane." The needed
materials, as Geoffrey James makes clear, are a small table, a block
of wax and a graver to inscribe it, a cloth, some wooden disks, paints
and brushes, and a 2-inch diameter crystal ball.  All the rest of the
stuff that the Golden Dawn and O.T.O. added (huge rafts of gematria,
Egyptian god forms, tables of perfume correspondences, tables of
Indian chakra equivalents, the Jewish Tree of Life diagram, et cetera
ad absurdum) have nothing whatsoever to do with Dr. Dee's Enochian
magic. 

Cordially,

cat yronwode 

Hoodoo in Theory and Practice - http://www.luckymojo.com/hoodoo.html

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Subject: Re: Enochian Magick Revisited
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Alexander Mulligan wrote:
> 
> In alt.magick, catherine yronwode wrote:
>
> > Alexander Mulligan wrote:
> >>
> >> Finally, after about of a week of trying and failing to get some
> >> straight answers in plain English from the Enochian folks, I
> >> have learned that their current theory and practices are based
> >> upon attempts to recreate the reported scrying experiences of
> >> one person, whose name is not Enoch.
> >
> > Not so. Dr. Dee, who developed the system utilized the services
> > of several scryers, of whom Edward Kelly was the most successful 
> > ... andthe most notorious.
> 
> How is that "not so"?

Because you called it "the reported scrying experiences of
one person" and more than one scryer was involved. 

> > and also the tripartite division of the
> > Hebrew alphabet for his angelic language,
> 
> Woo-woo to the max. Just who do you think is impressed by crap like
> that?

That is not woo-woo. No spiritual claims need be understood
in that statement. 

The tripartite division of the Hebrew alphabet is just a
Hebrew description of the Hebrew alphabet. By comparison, in
English orthography we have "consonants" and "vowels" and
even "diphthongs." In Hebrew the alphabet is divided into
three types of letters. 

My point was that Dee specifically called his angelic
language superior to Hebrew (then widely considered to be a
sacred language suited to the invocation and evocation of
Jewish spirit entities by Jews and Christians alike), yet
the language he devised or reported upon (as the case may
be) was based in Hebrew linguistic structure. 

As for who i think is interested? Well, that's not for me to
say. I merely reported on something that *i* found of
interest. 

> > making him, in my opinion,
> > one of many magical Christians who appropriate elements of Jewish
> > magic and mysticism and then claim to side-step Judaism while yet
> > retaining its  supposed spiritual benefits.
> 
> Okay.

My interest in Dee's use of Hebrew linguistic paradigms even
as he was claiming superiority to the Hebrew language
derives from my broader interest in how magicians belonging
to a dominant social class in a dominating culture tend to
appropriate the magic and religion of subjugated, despised,
and dominated peoples. Two further examples will suffice: 1)
Aleister Crowley, having published quite a lot of
anti-Jewish propaganda, appropriated material from the
Jewish Kabbalah. 2) Aleister Crowley, having published quite
a lot of anti-Negro and Coloured propaganda, urged his
followers to study Obeah -- a Jamaican system of magical
practice that derives from African religious and magical
principles. 

> >      1. No course of "training" is offered.
> 
> Then why are the Enochians always looking down their noses at
> people and refusing to give straight answers because "we don't have
> their intensive training and experience in the mysteries" ? 
> (paraphrased)

That has not been my experience. I have met at least three
people online who claim to practice Enochian magic -- David
R. Jones, Jason Dean Scott, and Michael McKinney. Each is a
person of quite different character -- but none has claimed
to me that "their intensive training and experience in the
mysteries" exempts them from giving "straight answers" to
questions about Enochian magic in this public venue. If you
know of such posts, please provide a link to the google
archive. I can stand to be corrected. 

> Nothing physical is necessary to do scrying, otherwise known as 
> "remote-viewing" by those of us who prefer plain English.

"Scrying" is a good old English word as well. The use of a
scrying tool such as a crystal ball, as in Enochian magic,
or a mirror, as in Paschal Beverly Randolph's system of
clairvoyance, is commonplace. Generations of mages have
found these tools useful. That you claim not to need tools
is all well and good for you, but it appears to me to be
over-reaching to make such claims on behalf of other people. 

cat yronwode 

Hoodoo and Blues Lyrics --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/blues.html