History edit
Origins edit
Dee and Kelley claim they received these instructions from angels and wrote them down. This account is taken at face value by most Enochian occultists. However, some of them have pointed out remarkable similarities to earlier grimoiric texts such as the Heptameron known to Dee.[citation needed] Doubts surrounding Kelley in particular have led many non-occultists to the assumption the whole system was originally a fraud devised by Kelley in order to receive more financial support from Dee. The system claims to relate to secrets contained within the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
Rediscovery edit
It is not quite clear how much of Enochian magic was put to use by Dee and Kelley. However, rediscovery of Enochian magic by the Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn has sparked remarkable publicity for it in modern occultism. Enochian as an operative system is difficult to reconstruct based upon the Sloane manuscripts, but contemporary occult organizations have attempted to make it usable. The Golden Dawn was the first, but their knowledge was based upon only one of Dee's diaries and their planetary, elemental, or zodiacal attributions are unfounded.
One facet of the rediscovery is Enochian chess, a four handed variant of the game played in the Golden Dawn in Mather's time and revived by New Zealand Golden Dawn members and chess players in the late Twentieth Century.
Aleister Crowley, who worked with, and wrote about, Enochian magic extensively, has contributed much to its comparatively widespread use today. His first work on the topic was his Liber Chanokh, a walkthrough to decipher some elements of this system, but his attention was particularly focused upon the Calls of the Aethyrs. His visions from these calls formed a document called The Vision and the Voice, also known as Liber 418.
Enochian magic today edit
Compared to other theories of magic, Enochian magic is strikingly more complex and difficult to understand. Also, parts of the original manuscripts written by Dee have been lost, mainly due to a fire in his house after his death, and thusly, key parts of the system are missing. This has allowed numerous interpretations to arise, some of which have solidified into schools of thought with individual bodies of interpretative literature. Almost all schools agree, however, in that Enochian magic is a particularly powerful and dangerous form of magic.[citation needed]
Some practitioners hold that Enochian magic is inherently destructive to the magician. In particular, its use is forbidden for members of the Builders of the Adytum and Servants of the Light.[citation needed]
In 1969, Anton LaVey published The Satanic Bible, which included a section consisting of dark reinterpretations of the 19 Enochian Keys, presented in both English and Enochian transliterated to Latin characters.