I recently sunk my teeth into John Dee's Five Books of Mystery (Joseph H. Peterson, Editor). For those who don't know, John Dee was a pretty influential figure in a few fields. One of those fields was Western magic.
So I decided to read this stuff because it was theoretically the source material for the Golden Dawn's Enochian practices and their derivatives. The basic story is that Dee had someone (he got the best results with Edward Kelley, supposedly) as a medium for his occult experiments and recorded some remarkable results; including extensive conversations with "Angels" who gave various kinds of advice, answered questions, and provided at least one new language.
The downside? Well, the "Angels" seem to have really had a tendency to tell Dee what he wanted to hear when asked about external-world issues, and Dee seemed to have taken some of their answers as as a sign that the people of the New World needed Christianity shoved down their throats. I suppose it would be unfair to judge him by modern standards here, but it nevertheless sticks out in my mind as some kind of dismal failure.
Anyway, apparently there's some debate about whether Edward Kelley was an outright con artist, and comparing the claims of the "Angels" to real-world happenings doesn't look very favorable. That is, at the very least, the idea that they were all-seeing beings there to give honest answers doesn't seem supported by fact.
Despite these things, his material remains influential, so whatever his own apparent failings and however questionable the origins of the practices he lays out, it must yield worthwhile results for a lot of people. For now, I mostly take it as a lesson about what results from wanting something to be true a little too much.
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The problem with scrying and channeling is the message, which originates in the Qaballistic work of Briah – a place of no form, has to be interpreted by a human. Humans are not perfect channels, and the message can be garbled on the way to Assiah. It’s very likely of Dee/Kelly’s thoughts and opinions made it into the scrying text.
ReplyDeleteIt seems a shame the entirely of Dee’s work is judged, based on a few entries which are personally unfavorable to you.
I recommend you work with the Enochian system for some time before dismissing it so casually.
Hey, thanks for stoppin' by! I don't know that I'd say I was trying to dismiss the Enochian system entirely. I mentioned that it seems it must yield worthwhile results for a lot of people, which I take as good reason to give it an honest try.
ReplyDeleteFor now, though, it's not terribly high on my priorities list. And that's not because of my opinion of some of Dee and Kelley's message-garbling, but just because of where my interests lie. I was maybe hoping on some level that the Enochian system would appeal to me more as a result of my readings, but the reverse seems to have been true.