Digital Scans of the Enochian Manuscripts

Dr. John Dee was considered the greatest scholar of his age; and his associate, Sir Edward Kelley, remains the most greatly slandered man of that, the Elizabethan, age.  During some five years, spanning 1582–7, were conducted a series of “Angelic Conferences”, over the course of which the angels (mainly recognizable as being of the Judaic family) dictated through the medium of the skryer, Edward Kelley, a complete system of classification of the universe based upon mathematical and linguistic principles.  The revolutionary nature of the mathematics involved (which foreshadowed the system of point-sphere numeration which is discussed in The Book of the Law) is today but little understood.  The same may be said of the corresponding linguistic aspect of these conferences, with its unique and original “Angelic” or “Enochian” language; and although this language has been studied in greater depth, and has been found to possess its own grammar and syntax, further work on this inflected language (along the lines of Chomskyan structural analysis) is the subject of continuing interest.

Whilst describing a system of classification of the universe, these Angelic Conferences also provide a system of magickal attainment which was most famously employed in The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and by Aleister Crowley, whose Liber 418: The Vision and the Voice describes a successful experiment with the Calls or Keys of the Thirty Ayres.  However, the Golden Dawn re-working of the Enochian system loses much of the intent and meaning of the diaries, whilst suffering also from some rather severe errors introduced in (amongst others) Meric Casaubon's 1659 edition of part of these diaries (Cotton Appendix MS. XLVI), entitled A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits.

With this in mind, and given the importance of this system – being arguably the single most respected magickal system around today – a modern approach to the diaries is long overdue; and so, in conjunction with a new edition of the complete Spirit Actions (to be published as The Angelic Conferences of Dr. John Dee and Sir Edward Kelley), digital scans of the original manuscripts in John Dee's hand are here available for scholars and magicians alike to assess for themselves.

Unfortunately, MS. Ashmole 1790 (20ff.) is not available here, due to the excessive cost of reproduction rights at The Bodleian Library.

• For details of the manuscripts reproduced here, see The British Library Manuscripts Catalogue.