Digital Scans of John Dee’s Enochian Manuscripts
Those interested in Enochian magic have often had to wade through books of dubious scholarship. Because the books were in (now archaic) English, Latin and some passages were written in the “Angelic” language Dee communed with the spirits in hack authors were attracted to the material because few would be able to critique their shoddy work. Viewing the originals was of course out of the question for most people.
I do not practice any sort of Enochian rituals and frankly have not met anyone who seriously pursued this practice so I can make no endorsements of any particular authors or translations. I have heard good things about Joseph Peterson’s John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery but the book is fairly expensive even in it’s Kindle edition which runs almost $40.
If you’re Latin and “Celestial Speech” is good enough some of Dee’s original writings are available to be viewed online courtesy of The Magickal Review. The serious student will enjoy pouring over these scans trying to make heads or tails of them. The average practitioner these days will shoot off some poorly worded emails demanding someone re-write the entire collection in text-speak, I’m sure.
h/t Grimoires
May 20th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
Good luck to all with Dee’s magic system. It is my understanding in reading his biography that he only ever saw the spirit Uriel, and from that point on had to rely upon Kelley to ‘see’ the spirits and report what they had said. Kelley, on the otherhand, was a known conman and charleton, and was jailed for being such. If Dee’s spirits were real, why did they allow him to die a pauper, neglected by friends and family? A sad turn of events, truly. His ventures in experimental magics are to be commended, but it is Kelley’s character, or lack thereof that comes into question. If Dee based what he wrote on what Kelley reported to him, then there is much to be concerned with.
FCT