HOW TO WORK ENOCHIAN MAGIK

How to work the Enochian magic system

I mean how to really work it. While just standing there in the magical circle and vibrating their various names does bring about some presence, it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what is possible with this deep and powerful system of magic. Dee and Kelly were gracious enough to do much of the groundwork for us, and we can take this even further. We have been left with a system which contains planetary magic, astrological magic, evocational magic, an initiatory working, aethyric travel, and much much more. All we have to do is figure out how to not only use what we have available, but also to logically dig deeper into the system to explore further, as well as progress Enochian magic.

First of all I recommend obtaining a few books, most especially Enochian evocation by James and The Five Books of Mystery by Peterson. A True and Faithful Relation is also quite useful. The reason I recommend these books in particular is that they are transcriptions, as well in some places translations, of the original manuscripts. Of course also obtaining the actual diary notes is highly recommended, but in the meantime it is really nice to have something which is quite easily read to start off with. A few different Enochian dictionaries will also help any practicing Enochian magician greatly. Leitch, Laycock and Vinci have all done much groundwork in this department.

Now that you have poured over Dee’s diaries with a magnifying glass, wondering if that is an f or an s, for many months, you are good to go. Or perhaps you just obtained James’ book to get you started. First we will look at how Dee and Kelly went about things. Many prayers, and many more prayers. Also 4-12 hours per day of calling and actually talking with the Enochian entities themselves. Unfortunately I have run into many an Enochian magician who skips this very important step. Yes, you have to talk and work with the Enochian entities themselves to make the system work. By work with, I mean to call upon, ask questions of, and work together with. The more this is done, the better your Enochian magic will go. This particular system is all about the entities which comprise it. They also had a very elaborate temple setup; I have found this to enhance the practice greatly. Not only are the making of the tools in essence an initiation, but each one not only holds great power, but also builds in power bit by bit each time one uses the temple.

Each of the temple accoutrements should be made as close to the original as feasibly possible. To build all of the temple tools takes approximately 200-300 hours. This may seem like quite a bit of time, but if done over time, it is more than worthwhile. I recommend the Sigil Dei Aemeth to be built first, then the table of practice and altar cloths, next the Enochian ring, then the great table of 4 elemental tablets (depending on your personal preference), the skrying mirror or ball, and next the banners, then the ensigns of creation. I have found that this is a good order if you are working with the Enochian entities already as you build or obtain each item. Depending on your skills some of the items may need to be purchased, but at least do take a stab at it. I have not seen the EEs complain about imperfect art before. You can always obtain my Enochian grimoire for complete step by step instructions of how to make each tool.

Now that you have accidentally melted a few SDA’s, thrown the ensigns of creation across the room several times since you got one letter wrong, and wondered which direction the darn letters on the table of practice go, you are ready to start calling upon the Enochian entities. Oh who am I kidding, most of us started working with them while we were still trying to figure out how to get our SDA round. Each of these tools is also something one can work with solely with some amazing impressions and results. I recommend looking further into this. The Enochian entities are naturally drawn to this temple setup, and the tools with their names painted or engraved into them. To call upon the EEs the magician will recite the conjurations, er I mean prayers of course, of calling. These can be easily found in James’ handy book. If you would prefer to use the original Latin however you are going to have to obtain copies of Dee’s diary notes. Conveniently, there are different prayers and calls for each set of Enochian entities, organized by rank and specialty. Now you may notice by these particular prayers and callings that Dee was most definitely a holy man, more specifically a holy man of a religion which most people reading this article do not follow. No problem, the EEs instructed Dee to write his own prayers. There is no reason we cannot write our own as well, as long as we base them on the template of Dee’s prayers. The reason I say to base them around his is that they contain intricacies of magic and calling which many may not quite yet understand fully (until more work with the EEs of course).

Now that the EEs know you on a first name basis and you talk with them more often than you do your family, you are ready to take things a step further. On the otherhand, you may still be wondering why you can’t perceive their presence, nor see, feel or hear them after spending more time trying to call them than on facebook even. This is not a problem, and often means that you just have not been attempting to spea with them and skry them for enough months, and/or you need to open up more. You may wish to sign up for a local class on psychism, or ask your magic teacher to help you in this department. Once you are able to perceive what they are trying to get across to you, you can ask them how you in particular can best work with them and the Enochian system in general. They can be amazing teachers, who can really bring you further into magic in general, and obviously they are experts in the Enochian system. I do recommend having the tools around you to help make sure you have gotten the correct entities, as well as using prayers similar to Dee’s to call them by name. You may also wish to use the Enochian calls to both start your working and set the space, but also as a way to attract the Enochian entities to your area. Further I recommend a working which involves reciting each of the calls three times per day, each day, for 19 days, until you have completed each call. Then on the 19th day you would travel into TEX, the bottommost eathyre, if you desire. Alternately you can perform an 18 day version of this working if you aren’t quite sure how to travel into the aethyres yet.

Speaking of aethyre travel, it is not something that Dee and Kelly did, that we know of. Nor was it mentioned in the diaries (best as I can recall). However it became quite popular in more recent times, and is most definitely an extremely good method of getting to know the Enochian system much better. It is also a good method for merging with the system, if this is how you like to work things. However, I recommend that you don’t rush through them, or go too quickly. Keep in mind you really do have an entire lifetime to explore and get to know these aethyres. Well that and Crowley was a good enough sport to take one for the team in this case, to let us know that perhaps 30 in one working isn’t the best approach always. Actually most of my personal Enochian practice did involve wandering around the aethyres and getting to know the inhabitants within them. These sorts of workings definitely do help to expand one’s view of “entity”, “possible” and “sentient”!

When you do go wandering into the aethyres it is extremely important to have one of the Enochian entities which you work with regularly, have gotten to know, and trust, to go wih you. It is definitely a good idea to have a tour guide in these realms. They are filled with far more than peaceful filled with divine love only, think humans are awesome, sorts of entities. Also there are just some areas within the aethyres which really aren’t meant to be traveled by us, or at least not at first, nor too often. Some areas are also far more useful than others, and teach us much more. The EE which you roped into being your tour guide can also help to make sure that you don’t get bamboozled by some bored EE which means you harm. Remember this is their world and not ours, so they most definitely have the advantage. The aethyres are traveled by reciting the call of the 30 aethyres, with the appropriate aethyre name included, then to leave your body and go. The Enochian entity which you have asked to help protect you in your travels will also be able to aid this process. Personally I start from TEX and work my way up each week or month (at first anyways), though some magic do prefer the top down approach.

If you really wish to delve much more deeply into the system, and feel as though you would like a few hundred (or at least dozen) new roomates, I highly recommend the 19 day working. James outlines how he feels it should be worked, I also add my interpretation in my Enochian grimoire, and Tyson goes into great detail about how to bring about the apocalypse with such a working. Having performed this working about 7 years ago, I feel I should perhaps ask Donald where I went wrong, or perhaps there is a lag on apocoli. Anyways, from this you can tell that the EEs were less than perfectly clear about how to perform this particular working. It’s all good though, pick a source and go with it. It is basically a working to introduce yourself to the Enochian entities and the system in general. You will most definitely feel more connected with both the EEs and the system as a whole after performing this rite. I personally made a set of seals for the Heptarchy when I did this working, and found them to really add to things.

Enochian has a couple of approaches regarding planetary magic. There is the Heptarchy and Bonorum, complete with seals, as well as grimoire like descriptions for each. They also have a handy hierarchy which can be worked with according to the days of the week, which would be days of the week which don’t necessarily line up with the planets in the ways most magicians are used to. To work with these fellas, I find it best to wait until their planet is above the horizon, or, it is their particular hour as listed in the diaries (and other easier to read sources) to work with them. One should first call the King, then the Prince, then the appropriate Ministers, to work with them. A Bonorum table can also be constructed to help this process along; by this I mean simply painting their names in Enochian letters onto a circular table, just like the Bonorum diagram.

After you have acquired quite the headache trying to figure out which time of day to call each of the Bonorum and how that related to planetary hours (it doesn’t) as well as the more common days of the week (again for most of them no relation) you can look into astrological magic. For Enochian astrological magic, one simply looks more deeply into the governors of the 30 aethyres, as well as the tribes of Isreal and their corresponding astrological sign, to make sense of this. Being as I have not seen this particular method listed elsewhere, I am assuming that “simplly” and “sense” are not obtained with a first look-through. I have written about this more extensively elsewhere, but even after over 20 years of working with Enochian magic, I have not written anything nearly as in depth as I could, nor worked with this aspect of the system nearly as much as is possible! The tables in the back of James’ book show the list of the aethyres with the governors, their seals, and the tribe of Israel listed. This is not just a table which James made up, this is a copy from Dee’s original diary notes. It is really unfortunate that he did not go into more detail on this. I also recommend the works of David R. Jones, which gave me some insight into this (though whether he was heading that particular direction with his essays I have no idea). I also of course recommend a good astrologer to help with such workings.

Now that your temple looks like something like the temples in ancient Egypt with star charts everywhere, I recommend checking out the various magic squares found within the Enochian system. These would include the smaller squares within the gargantuan Great Table, the 49X49 tables, the ensigns of creation, the Bonorum squares, the healing talisman table made of the 49 Bonorum names, the tablet of God, and perhaps a couple which have slipped my mind. My favorite magic squares within this system are the ones made from the Bonorum round table which include such purposes as: wit and wisdom, the exaltation and government of Princes, prevailing in counsel, and over nobility, gain and trade of merchandise, the qualities of earth, and of water, knowledge of the air and those that move within it, and the government of fire. I like these in particular as it is abundantly clear that they are used for practical magic matters. Of course one can be pointed towards other such methods by the EEs themselves, but it it is always good to start with what is already there. I have made them on parchment with magical ink, engrave into metal and of course just drawn on paper. I recommend experimenting with the system to see what comes up. Be sure to wrap each of these in silk when you are not using them.

Now that you have had to call your engineering friend over to help figure out the entire Bonorum system just to make some simple talismanic squares, you may wish to try your hand at figuring out which colours and order to create your great table or Enochian tablets in. This is the largest debate in Enochian magic, since not only were the EEs more than a bit vague on this, they also kept changing stuff up! I do mean more than the original and reformed layout as well. Personally I prefer the original great table layout, with the original colours as were shown to Dee in a vision (red/white/black/green) and the directions based on East, South, North, West as opposed to elements. If you wish to base your great table on elements instead of just directions, I recommend looking through the back part of James book where he has transcribed Dee’s notes on this. I used the logic of the elemental EEs and which direction each element went into, then expanded that out to reflect my entire great table/tablets. The Golden Dawn, which many are used to, have instead chosen the reformed table layout, as well as the colours and elements to reflect their particular system. I would definitely say just ask the EEs on this, ask them which layout is more correct for you. Also you can experiment a bit, print each table out at first, and arrange them around the room in each possible combination to see which works the best and feels most right.

My prefered layout can be found at the very bottom of the page on my website at www.enochian.org However this may not be the layout which works best for you. Enochian is the only system I have found which seems to customize itself for each magician. Of course magic, and us as magicians can do that with many different systems, however I have noticed that Enochian really does go the extra mile in this regard. I have also found in Enochian more than other systems, if one thing works really well for one person, it may not work at all for another! I feel the EEs customize it for each of us.

As a final note on how to work with Enochian, I recommend daily work if you can. Even if all you do is sit and meditate on the great table, or perhaps hop into a square on the great table and have a look around, daily work is extremely important. I find that this opens up the system far more than working even twice daily. Also with the tools, and all the confusing aspects of the system, just do what you can, and figure out what you can, and start. Don’t wait for ever to start, until you have finished all the tools and figured out every aspect; instead just jump in and get going and see what this wonderful and powerful system brings you. I wish everyone the best of luck and great accomplishments with Enochian magic.