The Enochian Apocalypse

Sub-Figu­ra vel Liber Caeruleus

The Enochi­an Apoc­a­lypse

by Don­ald Tyson

[from Gno­sis Mag­a­zine, Sum­mer 1996]

[Russ­ian trans­la­tion]

Were John Dee’s Enochi­an Keys of mag­ic intend­ed to unleash vio­lent occult forces that would hurl us into anoth­er age?

Between the years 1582 and 1589 the Eng­lish schol­ar John Dee (1527–1608) con­duct­ed a series of rit­u­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions with a set of dis­in­car­nate enti­ties who even­tu­al­ly came to be known as the Enochi­an angels. It was Dee’s plan to use the com­plex sys­tem of mag­ic com­mu­ni­cat­ed by the angels to advance the expan­sion­ist poli­cies of his sov­er­eign, Queen Eliz­a­beth I. At the time Eng­land lay under the loom­ing shad­ow of inva­sion from Spain. Dee hoped to con­trol the hos­tile poten­tates of Europe by com­mand­ing the tute­lary spir­its of their var­i­ous nations.

Dee was a thor­ough­ly remark­able man. Not only was he a skilled math­e­mati­cian, astronomer, and car­tog­ra­ph­er, but he was also the pri­vate astrologer, coun­selor, and (some believe) con­fi­den­tial espi­onage agent of Queen Elizabeth.(1) His father had been a gen­tle­man sew­er (a kind of stew­ard) at the table of Hen­ry VIII. When Eliz­a­beth ascend­ed to the throne in 1558, Dee was asked to set an aus­pi­cious date for her coro­na­tion. Always intense­ly loy­al to the Protes­tant Eliz­a­beth, he had ear­li­er been false­ly accused of try­ing to kill her pre­de­ces­sor, the Catholic Queen Mary, with sor­cery. His intel­lec­tu­al bril­liance and skill as a magi­cian were famous, and infa­mous, through­out Europe.

In his occult work he was aid­ed by an equal­ly extra­or­di­nary per­son, Edward Kel­ley (also spelled «Kel­ly»; 1555–1597), the son of a Worces­ter apothe­cary, who dreamed of dis­cov­er­ing the secret of the philosopher’s stone and dab­bled in the black art of necro­man­cy. Flee­ing Lan­cast­er in 1580 on charges of forg­ing title deeds, Kel­ley found it pru­dent to set out on a walk­ing tour of Wales. Some­where near Glas­ton­bury (so the sto­ry goes) he pur­chased a por­tion of the fabled red pow­der that could turn base met­als into gold; the source of the pow­der was an innkeep­er who had received it from tomb robbers.(2)

For the remain­der of his col­or­ful life Kel­ley labored to unlock the secret of the red pow­der so that he could man­u­fac­ture more of it him­self. It was on this quest for alchem­i­cal knowl­edge that he sought out the library of John Dee in 1582, and it was pri­mar­i­ly for this rea­son that he agreed to serve as Dee’s seer.

Dee was a saint, Kel­ley a rogue, but they were bound togeth­er by their com­mon fas­ci­na­tion with cer­e­mo­ni­al mag­ic and the won­ders it promised. Dee pos­sessed lit­tle tal­ent for medi­umship. He tried to over­come this lim­i­ta­tion by hir­ing a moun­te­bank named Barn­abas Saul as his pro­fes­sion­al scry­er but had poor results. When Dee learned of Kelley’s con­sid­er­able psy­chic abil­i­ties, he eager­ly employed Kel­ley as his seer for the sum of 50 pounds per annum.

Dee invoked the Enochi­an angels to vis­i­ble appear­ance with­in a scry­ing crys­tal or a black mir­ror of obsid­i­an by means of prayers and cer­tain mag­i­cal seals. After Kel­ley had alert­ed Dee to the pres­ence of the spir­its, Dee ques­tioned them. Kel­ley report­ed their say­ings and doings back to Dee, who record­ed them in his mag­i­cal diaries.

The most impor­tant por­tion of Dee’s tran­scrip­tion of the Enochi­an com­mu­ni­ca­tions, cov­er­ing the years 1582–1587, was pub­lished in Lon­don in 1659 by Mer­ic Casaubon under the tide A True and Faith­ful Rela­tion of What Passed for Many Years between Dr. John Dee …and Some Spir­its. This fas­ci­nat­ing work has been reprint­ed sev­er­al times in recent decades and is read­i­ly avail­able.

The Enochi­an spir­its got their name from the nature of the mag­i­cal sys­tem they described. It was, they claimed, the very mag­ic that the bib­li­cal patri­arch Enoch had learned from the angels of heav­en. The angel Ave told Dee, «Now hath it pleased God to deliv­er this Doc­trine again out of dark­nesse: and to ful­fill his promise with thee, for the books of Enoch.»(3) I Com­pared to it, all oth­er forms of mag­ic were mere play­things.

Although Dee faith­ful­ly record­ed all the details of Enochi­an mag­ic in his diaries, he nev­er tried to work this sys­tem in any seri­ous way. We can­not know the rea­son with cer­tain­ty. In 1589 he broke with Kel­ley, who stayed on in Bohemia to man­u­fac­ture gold for the Holy Roman Emper­or Rudolph II while Dee returned to Eng­land at the request of Eliz­a­beth, a cir­cum­stance that may have incon­ve­nienced his plans. But it is my con­tention that Dee was await­ing per­mis­sion from the angels to employ their mag­ic, and this per­mis­sion was not giv­en in his life­time.

It is nec­es­sary to state unequiv­o­cal­ly for those unfa­mil­iar with Enochi­an mag­ic that nei­ther Dee nor Kel­ley fab­ri­cat­ed the spir­it com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Both believed com­plete­ly in the real­i­ty of the angels, although they dif­fered about the motives of these beings. Dee believed them to be obe­di­ent agents of God who sub­mit­ted to the author­i­ty of Christ. Kel­ley mis­trust­ed them and sus­pect­ed them of delib­er­ate decep­tion. The dis­like was mutu­al. The angels always treat­ed Kel­ley with amused con­tempt. Kel­ley hoped the angels would com­mu­ni­cate the secret of the red pow­der, which was the only rea­son he endured their insults for so many years.

There is no space here to enter into the ques­tion of the nature and objec­tive real­i­ty of spir­its, nor is it like­ly that any con­clu­sions could be reached on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject. What­ev­er their essen­tial nature, the Enochi­an angels act­ed as inde­pen­dent, intel­li­gent beings with their own dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ties and pur­pos­es. This is how Dee and Kel­ley regard­ed them, and this is how I shall regard them in this essay. Using this assump­tion, I will present what I believe to be the angels’ secret agen­da, which they con­cealed from Dee: to plant among mankind the rit­u­al work­ing that would ini­ti­ate the peri­od of vio­lent trans­for­ma­tion between the present aeon and the next, com­mon­ly known as the apoc­a­lypse.

The Gates and the Keys

What the Enochi­an angels con­veyed to Dee was not mere­ly a potent form of mag­ic to rule the tute­lary spir­its of the nations. It was an ini­tia­to­ry for­mu­la designed to open the locked gates of the four great watch­tow­ers that stand guard against chaos at the extrem­i­ties of our uni­verse. The Watch­tow­ers are described by the angel Ave:

«The 4 hous­es, are the 4 Angels of the Earth, which are the 4 Over­seers, and Watch­tow­ers, that the eter­nal God in his prov­i­dence hath placed, against the usurp­ing blas­phe­my, mis­use, and stealth of the wicked and great ene­my, the Dev­il. To the intent that being put out to the Earth, his envi­ous will might be bri­dled, the deter­mi­na­tions of God ful­filled, and his crea­tures kept and pre­served, with­in the com­pass and mea­sure of order.»(4)

These Watch­tow­ers, rep­re­sent­ed in Enochi­an mag­ic by alpha­bet­i­cal squares, are equiv­a­lent to the four mys­ti­cal pil­lars of Egypt­ian mythol­o­gy that hold up the sky and keep it from crash­ing into the earth. They bar the chaot­ic legions of Coron­zon from sweep­ing across the face of the world. Coron­zon, the angels reveal, is the true heav­en­ly name for Satan.(5) He is also known by the Enochi­an title of Death-Drag­on or Him-That-Is-Fall­en (Telocvovim).(6)

The Enochi­an Calls or Keys (the angels refer to them by both titles) are 48 spir­it evo­ca­tions deliv­ered to Dee and Kel­ley in the Enochi­an lan­guage and then trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish word for word by the angels. The overt pur­pose of the Keys, the angels declared, was to enable Dee to estab­lish rit­u­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the spir­its of the 30 Aethers or Airs who rule over the tute­lary spir­its of the nations of the earth. There are actu­al­ly 49 Keys, but the first, the angels said, is too sacred and mys­te­ri­ous to be voiced. The first eigh­teen explic­it Keys are com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent in their word­ing; the last 30 are sim­i­lar save for the name of the Aether insert­ed in the first line. The angel Raphael declares the expressed pur­pose the Keys to Dee:

«In 49 voyces, or call­ings: which are the Nat­ur­al Keyes, to open those, not 49, but 48. (for One is not to be opened) Gates of under­stand­ing, where­by you shall have knowl­edge to move every Gate, and to call out as many as you please, or shall be thought nec­es­sary, which can very well, right­eous­ly, and wise­ly, open unto you the secrets of their Cities, and make you under­stand per­fect­ly the [mys­ter­ies] con­tained in the Tables.»(7)

The tables referred to are the 49 alpha­bet­i­cal tables from which the Keys were gen­er­at­ed, one let­ter at a time, by the Enochi­an angels. The Keys are relat­ed in sets to the four Watch­tow­ers, which con­tain the names of var­i­ous hier­ar­chies of spir­its.

Dee’s blind­ness to the true func­tion of the Keys is curi­ous, because clues about their nature are every­where for those with eyes to see them. The Enochi­an com­mu­ni­ca­tions are filled with apoc­a­lyp­tic pro­nounce­ments and imagery. Again and again the angels warn of the com­ing destruc­tion of the world by the wrath of God and the advent of the Antichrist. This apoc­a­lyp­tic imagery is also found through­out the Keys them­selves.

The very name of these evo­ca­tions should have been clue enough. Sure­ly if the Watch­tow­ers stand guard at the four cor­ners of our dimen­sion of real­i­ty, keep­ing back the hordes of Coron­zon from descend­ing like «stoop­ing drag­ons,» as the Eighth Key puts it, and if the evo­ca­tions known as the Keys are designed to open the gates of these watch­tow­ers, we might sus­pect that it would be a bad idea to unlock the gates.

Per­haps Dee believed, as the angels deceit­ful­ly encour­aged him to believe, that the gates could be opened a crack for spe­cif­ic human pur­pos­es and then slammed shut before any­thing too hor­ri­ble slipped through to our dimen­sion of aware­ness. Dee would have assumed that the har­row­ing of the god­dess Earth and her chil­dren by the demons of Coron­zon would not occur until the pre­or­dained time of the apoc­a­lypse, an event ini­ti­at­ed by God and pre­sum­ably beyond Dee’s con­trol.

What he failed to under­stand is that the date of the ini­ti­a­tion of the apoc­a­lypse is (in the inten­tion of the angels) the same date as the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the full rit­u­al work­ing of the 48 Keys. This date is not pre­de­ter­mined, but will be deter­mined by the free will and actions of a sin­gle human being who in the Rev­e­la­tion of St. John is called the Antichrist.

The Nature of the Apoc­a­lypse

It has always been gen­er­al­ly assumed that the apoc­a­lypse is in the hands of the angels of wrath, to be vis­it­ed upon the world at the plea­sure of God, at a moment pre­or­dained from the begin­ning of cre­ation. In the veiled teach­ings of the Enochi­an angels this is not true. The gates of the Watch­tow­ers can only be unlocked from the inside. The angels of wrath can­not ini­ti­ate the apoc­a­lypse even if they wish to do so. This is sug­gest­ed by an exchange between Dee and the angel Ave:

Dee – As for the form of our Peti­tion or Invi­ta­tion of the good Angels, what sort should it be of?

Ave – A short and brief speech.

Dee – We beseech you to give us an exam­ple: we would have a con­fi­dence, it should be of more effect.

Ave – I may not do so.

Kel­ley – And why?

Ave – Invo­ca­tion pro­ceedeth of the good will of man, and of the heat and fer­ven­cy of the spir­it: And there­fore is prayer of such effect with God.

Dee – We beseech you, shall we use one form to all?

Ave – Every one, after a divers form.

Dee – If the minde do dic­tate or prompt a divers form, you mean.

Ave – I know not: for I dwell not in the soul of man. (8)

Spir­i­tu­al beings must be evoked into our real­i­ty by human beings. We must open the gates and admit the ser­vants of Coron­zon our­selves. Evo­ca­tion and invo­ca­tion are not a part of the busi­ness of angels, but of humans. That is why the angels need­ed to go through the elab­o­rate ruse of con­vey­ing the sys­tem of Enochi­an mag­ic, with the Keys and the Great Table of the Watch­tow­ers, to Dee. If the apoc­a­lypse is to take place, and if it is nec­es­sary for human beings to open the gates of the Watch­tow­ers before it can take place, the angels first had to instruct a man in the cor­rect method for open­ing the gates.

It is evi­dent that Dee was to be restrained from open­ing the gates of the Watch­tow­ers until it pleased the angels. The angel Gabriel, who pur­ports to be speak­ing with the author­i­ty of God, tells him:

«I have cho­sen you, to enter into my barns: And have com­mand­ed you to open the Corn, that the scat­tered may appear, and that which remaineth in the sheaf may stand. And have entered into the first, and so into the sev­enth. And have deliv­ered unto you the Tes­ti­mo­ny of my spir­it to come.

«For, my Barn hath been long with­out Thresh­ers. And I have kept my flayles for a long time hid in unknown places: Which flayle is the Doc­trine that I deliv­er unto you: Which is the Instru­ment of thrash­ing, where­with you shall beat the shears, that the Corn which is scat­tered, and the rest may be all one.

«(But a word in the mean sea­son.)

«If I be Mas­ter of the Barn, own­er of the Corn, and deliv­er­er of my flayle: If all be mine (And unto you, there is noth­ing: for you are hirelings, whose reward is in heav­en.)

«Then see, that you nei­ther thresh, nor unbinde, until I bid you, let it be suf­fi­cient unto you: that you know my house, that you know the labour I will put you to: That I favour you so much as to enter­tain you the labour­ers with­in my Barn: For with­in it thresheth none with­out my consent.»(9)

Sure­ly noth­ing could be clear­er. Through­out the Enochi­an com­mun- ica­tions the angels euphemisti­cal­ly refer to the apoc­a­lypse as «the Har­vest.» Here Enochi­an mag­ic is specif­i­cal­ly described as the «Instru­ment of thrash­ing.» Yet Dee did not com­pre­hend the awe­some sig­nif­i­cance of the bur­den that had been laid upon his shoul­ders. Else­where in the record the angel Map­sama is just as explic­it about the need for Dee to await per­mis­sion before attempt­ing to use the Keys:

Map­sama – These Calls are the keyes into the Gates and Cities of wis­dom. Which [Gates] are not able to be opened, but with vis­i­ble appari­tion.

Dee – And how shall that be come unto?

Map­sama – Which is accord­ing to the for­mer instruc­tions: and to be had, by call­ing of every Table. You called for wis­dom, God hath opened unto you, his judge­ment: He hath deliv­ered unto you the keyes, that you may enter; But be hum­ble. Enter not of pre­sump­tion, but of per­mis­sion. Go not in rash­ly; But be brought in will­ing­ly: For, many have ascend­ed, but few have entered. By Sun­day you shall have all things that are nec­es­sary to be taught, then (as occa­sion serveth) you may prac­tice at all times. But you being called by God, and to a good pur­pose.

Dee – How shall we under­stand this Call­ing by God?

Map­sama – God stop­peth my mouth, I will answer thee no more.(10)

Despite these hints and many oth­ers, the angels nev­er actu­al­ly came out and told Dee that he was to be the instru­ment where­by the rit­u­al for­mu­la for ini­ti­at­ing the apoc­a­lypse would be plant­ed in the midst of human­i­ty. Here it would sit like a tick­ing occult time bomb, wait­ing for some clever magi­cian, per­haps guid­ed by the angels, to work it. Dee evi­dent­ly nev­er received the sig­nal to con­duct the Apoc­a­lypse Work­ing in his life­time. It was to be reserved for anoth­er cen­tu­ry and anoth­er man. That man was Aleis­ter Crow­ley (1875–1947).

Enter the Great Beast

Even as a child, Crow­ley became con­vinced that he was the Great Beast men­tioned in the bib­li­cal book of Rev­e­la­tion. He stud­ied mag­ic with the Her­met­ic Order of the Gold­en Dawn, then went on to con­struct his own occult sys­tem using an amal­ga­ma­tion of the rit­u­al work­ing of Abramelin the Mage, the Goe­tia, and the Tantric sex­u­al tech­niques of the Ger­man Ordo Tem­pli Ori­en­tis, among oth­er sources.

He firm­ly believed that he was the her­ald for a new age of strife and destruc­tion that would sweep across the world. He called this the Aeon of Horus, after the Egypt­ian god of war. In Cairo in 1904, he received the bible of this apoc­a­lyp­tic peri­od, Lib­er­AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law), in the form of a psy­chic dic­ta­tion from his guardian angel, Aiwass. The book sets forth some of the con­di­tions that will pre­vail in the Aeon of Horus. It also con­tains Crowley’s famous dic­tum «Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.»(11)

It is high­ly sig­nif­i­cant that Crow­ley nev­er con­sid­ered him­self to be the Antichrist. He is not the cen­tral char­ac­ter in the dra­ma of the apoc­a­lypse, but the her­ald who ush­ers in the age of chaos. In a very real sense he was the gate­keep­er of the apoc­a­lypse. The text of The Book of the Law clear­ly states:

«This book shall be trans­lat­ed into all tongues: but always with the orig­i­nal in the writ­ing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the let­ters and their posi­tion to one anoth­er: in these are mys­ter­ies that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall dis­cov­er the key of it all.»(12)

Crow­ley stud­ied and prac­ticed Enochi­an mag­ic more often and deeply than any oth­er magi­cian of the Gold­en Dawn, indeed prob­a­bly more deeply than any oth­er human being who has ever lived. About the angel­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions of Dee and Kel­ley he writes:

«Much of their work still defies expla­na­tion, though I and Frater Sem­per Pararus [Thomas Win­dram], an Adep­tus Major of the A[rgenteum] A[strum] have spent much time and research upon it and cleared up many obscure points.»(13)

The record of Crowley’s work­ing of the Enochi­an Aethers in 1909 in the desert of North Africa is pre­served in the doc­u­ment titled The Vision and the Voice. He pos­sessed a pro­found and broad under­stand­ing of rit­u­al mag­ic, an under­stand­ing that was not mere­ly the­o­ret­i­cal but prac­ti­cal. No oth­er man of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry was bet­ter suit­ed to ini­ti­ate the Apoc­a­lypse Work­ing, even as there had been no man in the six­teenth cen­tu­ry bet­ter suit­ed than Dee to receive it from the Enochi­an angels. Inter­est­ing­ly, Crow­ley believed him­self to be the rein­car­na­tion of Edward Kel­ley.

I doubt that Crow­ley ever suc­ceed­ed in cor­rect­ly com­plet­ing the entire Enochi­an Apoc­a­lypse Work­ing – that is, the pri­mal occult Key which is nowhere record­ed, the eigh­teen man­i­fest Keys, and the Key of the 30 Aethers in their cor­rect cor­re­spon­dence with the parts of the Great Table of the Watch­tow­ers. But he may have suc­ceed­ed in par­tial­ly open­ing the gates of the Watch­tow­ers. It is sig­nif­i­cant that he states con­cern­ing the African work­ing with his dis­ci­ple Vic­tor Neu­berg: «As a rule, we did one Aethyr every day.»(15) About the method for invok­ing the spir­its of the Watch­tow­ers, the angel Ave tells Dee:

«Four days …must you only call upon those names of God [on the Great Table of the Watch­tow­ers], or on the God of Hosts, in those names:

«And 14 days after you shall (in this, or in some con­ve­nient place) Call the Angels by Peti­tion and by the name of God, unto the which they are obe­di­ent.

«The 15 day you shall Cloath your­selves, in ves­tures made of linen, white: and so have the appari­tion, use, and prac­tice of the Crea­tures. For, it is not a labour of years, nor many dayes.»(16)

It seems clear to me that the com­plete Apoc­a­lypse Work­ing must be con­duct­ed on con­sec­u­tive days, one Key per day. I would guess that the unex­pressed pri­mor­dial Key of the Great Moth­er is the miss­ing ingre­di­ent that will com­plete the Work­ing, but this is a mat­ter of prac­ti­cal mag­ic and there is no space to inves­ti­gate the details of the Apoc­a­lypse Work­ing in this brief essay.

Crow­ley remained firm­ly con­vinced until his death in 1947 that the Aeon of Horus had begun in 1904, pre­cise­ly at the time he received The Book of the Law. He may have been right. The Aeon of Horus is the dura­tion of the apoc­a­lypse, that peri­od when Coron­zon shall rule over the cos­mos and vis­it destruc­tion upon mankind. And the apoc­a­lypse is a men­tal trans­for­ma­tion that will occur, or is present­ly occur­ring, with­in the col­lec­tive uncon­scious of the human race.

A Men­tal Armaged­don

Fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tians com­mon­ly believe that the end of the world will be a com­plete­ly phys­i­cal event and will be sparked by some hor­ri­fy­ing mate­r­i­al agent – glob­al ther­monu­clear war, or the impact of a large aster­oid, or a dead­ly plague.

This sup­po­si­tion is nat­ur­al in view of the con­crete imagery of the book of Rev­e­la­tion. It is in keep­ing with the mate­ri­al­is­tic world view of mod­ern soci­ety. But nobody stops to con­sid­er that this destruc­tion is described by angels, or that angels are spir­i­tu­al, not phys­i­cal, beings.

In my opin­ion the apoc­a­lypse pre­pared by the Enochi­an angels must be pri­mar­i­ly an inter­nal, spir­i­tu­al event, and only in a sec­ondary way an exter­nal, phys­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe. The gates of the Watch­tow­ers that stand guard at the four cor­ners of our dimen­sion of real­i­ty are men­tal con­struc­tions. When they are opened, they will admit the demons of Coron­zon, not into the phys­i­cal world, but into our sub­con­scious minds.

Spir­its are men­tal, not mate­r­i­al. They dwell in the depths of mind and com­mu­ni­cate with us through our dreams, uncon­scious impuls­es, and more rarely in wak­ing visions. They affect our feel­ings and our thoughts beneath the lev­el of our con­scious aware­ness. Some­times they are able to con­trol our actions, either par­tial­ly, as in the case of irra­tional and obses­sive behav­ior pat­terns, or com­plete­ly, as in the case of full pos­ses­sion. Through us, and only through us, are they able to influ­ence phys­i­cal things.

The Enochi­an com­mu­ni­ca­tions teach not only that human­i­ty itself must ini­ti­ate the apoc­a­lypse through the mag­i­cal for­mu­la deliv­ered to Dee and Kel­ly, but that humans must be the phys­i­cal agents that bring about the plagues, wars, and famines described with such chill­ing elo­quence in the vision of St. John. It is we who will let the demons of Coron­zon into our minds by means of a spe­cif­ic rit­u­al work­ing. They will not find a wel­come place there all at once, but will worm their way into our sub­con­scious and make their homes there slow­ly over time. In the minds of indi­vid­u­als that resist this inva­sion they will find it dif­fi­cult to gain a foothold, but in the more pli­able minds of those who wel­come their influ­ence they will estab­lish them­selves read­i­ly.

Once the demons have tak­en up res­i­dence, we will be pow­er­less to pre­vent them from turn­ing our thoughts and actions toward chaot­ic and destruc­tive ends. These apoc­a­lyp­tic spir­its will set per­son against per­son and nation against nation, grad­u­al­ly increas­ing the mad­ness and chaos in human soci­ety until at last the full hor­ror of Rev­e­la­tion has been real­ized upon the stage of the world. The cor­rup­tion of human thoughts and feel­ings may require gen­er­a­tions to bring to full fruition. Only after the wast­ing and burn­ing of souls is well advanced will the full hor­ror of the apoc­a­lypse achieve its final ful­fill­ment in the mate­r­i­al realm.

Let us sup­pose for the sake of argu­ment that the sig­nal for the ini­ti­a­tion of this psy­chic inva­sion occurred in 1904 when Crow­ley received the Book of the Law, as he him­self believed. Crowley’s Enochi­an evo­ca­tions of 1909 then pried the doors of the Watch­tow­ers open a crack enough to allow a foul wind to blow through the com­mon mind of the human race. This would explain the sense­less slaugh­ter of the First World War and the unspeak­able hor­ror of the Nazi Holo­caust dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. It would explain the decline of orga­nized reli­gions and why the soul­less cult of sci­ence has gained suprema­cy. It would explain the moral and eth­i­cal bank­rupt­cy of mod­ern times and the increase in sense­less vio­lence.

We may not have long to wait before the indi­vid­ual known in the vision of St. John as the Antichrist, the one fore­told in Crowley’s Book of the Law to fol­low after the Beast, will suc­ceed in com­plet­ing the Apoc­a­lypse Work­ing. Then the gates of the Watch­tow­ers will tru­ly gape wide, and the chil­dren of Coron­zon will sweep into our minds as crowned con­querors. If this chill­ing sce­nario ever comes to pass, the wars of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry will seem bucol­ic to those who sur­vive the slaugh­ter.

[Russ­ian trans­la­tion]

NOTES

1. See Richard Dea­con, John Dee: Sci­en­tist, Geo­g­ra­ph­er, Astrologer and Secret Agent (Lon­don: Fred­er­ick Muller, 1968). See also Cher­ry Gilchrist, «Dr. Dee and the Spir­its,» in GNOSIS #36.

2. See the intro­duc­tion to The Alchem­i­cal Writ­ings of Edward Kel­ley, ed. A.E. Waite (New York: Samuel Weis­er, 1970 [1893]).

3. Mer­ic Casaubon, ed., A True & Faith­ful Rela­tion Of What Passed for many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee (A Math­e­mati­cian of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. and King James their Reignes) and Some Spir­its (Glas­gow: Anto­nine Pub­lish­ing Co., 1974 [16591), p. 174.

4. Ibid., p. 170.

5. Ibid., p. 92.

6. Ibid., p. 207.

7. Ibid., p. 77.

8. Ibid., p. 188.

9. Ibid. p. 161.

10. Ibid. pp. 145–46.

11. Aleis­ter Crow­ley, The Book of the Law, ms. pp. 10–11.

12. Ibid., ch. 3, para. 47.

13. Aleis­ter Crow­ley, The Con­fes­sions of Aleis­ter Crow­ley, ed. John Symonds and Ken­neth Grant (Lon­don: Arkana, 1989), p. 611.

14. Aleis­ter Crow­ley, «Liber XXX AERUM vel Sae­culi sub figu­ra CCCCXVIII being of the Angels of the Thir­ty Aethyrs, the Vision and the Voice:» in The Equinox, vol. 1, no. 5, sup­ple­ment, 1911. Reprint­ed as The vision and the Voice, ed. Israel Regardie (Dal­las, Texas: San­gre­al Foun­da­tion, 1972). See also Crow­ley, Con­fes­sions, ch. 66.

15. Crow­ley, Con­fes­sions, p. 618.

16. Casaubon, p. 184.