An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Dee, Dr John

One of the most famous names in English occultism is that of John Dee. He was born in London in 1527; but his family came from Wales, and claimed to be descended from Roderick the Great, one of the native princes of Wales.

Dee was educated at Cambridge, where he eventually became a Fellow of Trinity College. From his earliest years, he was devoted to occult researches, being particularly interested in alchemy. He was a notable mathematician, and a collector of books and manuscripts. One of the cruellest blows of his life was when, on a journey abroad, he learned that an ignorant, bigoted mob had broken into his house at Mortlake and pillaged his library, because they believed him to be a worker of black magic.

Most of Dee’s works have still never been published; but one, The Hieroglyphic Monad, was translated from the Latin by J. W. Hamilton Jones, and published in 1947 by John M. Watkins. This extraordinary book gives an insight into Dee’s strange and brilliant mind; as does a less accessible book, A True and Faithful Relation of what passed for many years between Dr John Dee and some Spirits, by Meric Casaubon, published in 1659.

Under the rule of the Catholic Mary Tudor, Dee came dangerously near to being burned as a heretic and “a conjurer, a caller of devils”. Somehow he managed to clear himself of this charge, though he spent some time in prison. On the accession of Elizabeth I, he was received favourably by her at Court. He was responsible for selecting by astrology the most fortunate day for her coronation.

We now know that Dee was much more than Queen Elizabeth I’s occult adviser. In his frequent journeys abroad, he acted as a secret agent for the Queen; and by a curious coincidence, his code-name was ’007’. Whether Ian Fleming, the creator of the present-day ’007’, James Bond of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was aware of this, is unknown; but some of Dee’s adventures were in stranger realms than Bond ever knew.

It has often been alleged by writers on the occult that witches have a secret language. It is true that a magical language exists; though witches are not the only occult practitioners who study and sometimes use it. This language is called Enochian; and we owe it to the researches of Dr. John Dee and his associate Edward Kelley.

The Enochian language was obtained by the clairvoyance of Edward Kelley, using a crystal or ’shew-stone’ as a scrying instrument. (See ’Scrying’.) By this means, Kelley obtained a number of large charts divided into squares, each square having a letter of the alphabet. These charts or ’tablets’ were copied out, and then Kelley would describe how he saw in his vision an ’angel’ or spirit pointing to one letter after another, to spell out a message. Dee, who acted as recorder at these seances, would note the message down from his copy of the chart. Sometimes the messages were given backwards, because the spirits said that the sacred names and invocations transmitted in this rather complicated way were so potent that their straightforward recitation could raise powers too strong to handle, and the magical operation of transmission might be upset.

Aleister Crowley, who was very interested in the Enochian language, endorses this view in his Magick in Theory and Practice. He says that use of the magical Enochian words requires prudence, because when they are used things happen—for good or ill. He notes also, as others have done, that this mysterious tongue really is a language, and not just a farrago of strange words. It definitely possesses traces of grammar and syntax. It also possesses a distinctive alphabet; though the Enochian words resemble Hebrew, in that they mainly consist of consonants, and the vowels have to be supplied by the speaker, according to certain rules.

The Enochian language is a complete philological mystery. It has been suggested that it is the remains of the speech of ancient Atlantis; perhaps because it seems to be named after the mysterious patriarch Enoch, who lived before the Flood, and who “walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis, Chapter 5, verses 21—4). There exists a strange old volume, The Book of Enoch, which purports to tell the story of those ’Sons of God’ who came down from heaven and mated with the daughters of men, and thereby gave forbidden knowledge to mankind, including the knowledge of magic. (See DEMONOLOGY.)

A memory of John Dee lingers on the borders of Wales, where between Knighton and Beguildy is a hill called Conjurer’s Pitch. According to local tradition, this is a place where Dee, when visiting Wales, used to perform magical rites.

Elizabeth’s successor, James I, looked upon Dee with less favour than had the Virgin Queen; and he ended his days in comparative poverty and obscurity, dying at Mortlake in 1608. In his time, however, John Dee had been the friend of men like Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Walter Raleigh. He was a member of the circle called ’The School of Night’, which met secretly at Sir Walter Raleigh’s house at Sherbourne in Dorset, for the purpose of discussing occult and scientific subjects. Sherbourne is not far from the area of the Glastonbury Zodiac, so it may have been here that Dee learned of this. (See ZODIAC.)