The Practical Angel Magic of Dr. John Dee’s Enochian Tables
By Stephen Skinner & David Rankine
[N.B. An updated review, in response to David Rankine’s comments on this review, is to be found here.]
Readers may be familiar with Stephen Skinner’s incredible Tourette de force edition of Crowley’s Tunisian diaries, where quotes from The Book of the Law are spiced up with random profanities; however, this latest offering is far, far worse.
The main contention of Practical Angel Magic is that MS. Sloane 307 contains a hitherto unattributed work by Dr. John Dee: to wit, written invocations of the angels of the Great Table [of Earth], supposedly copied from Dee’s own diaries shortly before his death in 1608/9. However, neither Rankine nor Skinner noticed that the manuscript in question contains a number of errors (stemming from the Great Table) that are reproductions of errors found in Meric Casaubon’s True & Faithful Relation (TFR) of 1659, which would have led them to the obvious conclusion that Sloane 307 and its angelic invocations are not the work of John Dee, but a composition dating from at least 50 years after his death.
Even the tyro will have noted that the central “Tablet of Union” is wrongly composed inside the table (as a box rather than a cross), and that the numbers running down the right hand side are redundant. Both of those features show that the copyist was not even aware of the correctly arranged tables in Sloane 3191; but Skinner and Rankine claim without foundation that the copyist had intimate knowledge of all the manuscripts.
A charitable person might say that this monstrous, gargantuan gaffe on the part of Rankine and Skinner is simply the result of extraordinary negligence, but even aside from the Great Table there is so much in Sloane 307 that is obviously paraphrased from TFR that such an explanation is unbelievable, especially since Skinner himself published a reprint of TFR some 30 years ago, and also likes to cultivate an image of himself as an Enochian expert.
To give an example of the quality of Sloane 307, the word “Coronzom” appears thus in folio 91a of part 1 of the original manuscript (Cotton Appendix XLVI, in Dee’s hand), but morphs into “Coronzon” on p. 92 of TFR, and is finally transmogrified into the familiar “Choronzon” in Sloane 307. Even that one example should have been an obvious clue to the manuscript’s origin – obvious, that is, to anyone who has actually read the documents.1TFR, and all the Dee MSS. referred to here, are of course available in the Enochian section of this site – T.M.R. Domini Initium Sapientiæ!
Nevertheless, instead of dishing the dirt, the editors allow a strong impression to form in the mind of the reader that Practical Angel Magic is a uniquely important treasure-trove of new Enochian material. We are told that the Great Table “supersedes all other versions of these Tables”, whilst the invocations are “the correct invocations to use in conjunction with the Enochian Tablets, something that has hitherto been missing from the material published on John Dee’s magic, the Golden Dawn, or Enochian Magic.”
This all helps sales, of course; but it is pure rubbish. Practical Angel Magic contains nothing authentic and original of the Enochia, but merely a small section of what was reproduced inaccurately in TFR. Yet, as if to compound their own folly, the editors also claim to have “discovered what happened to John Dee’s most important manuscript(!), his book of personal angelic invocations which he kept in Latin [the final part of Sloane 3191]”, presumably by reading Elias Ashmole’s account of the same at the beginning of Sloane 3188, of the secret compartment in an old cedar chest which contained some Enochian MSS. The story is so familiar to anyone interested in the Enochia that it is quite extraordinary that anyone should attempt to present it as original research.
In telling the story again, however, they make a point of reproving “one commentator” for thinking that some of the manuscripts had been wasted as pie-bases by a silly housemaid, telling us instead that the word used by Ashmole should be read as “pyres”, not “pyes”. Perhaps they were thinking of Carlyle’s maid; but they are clearly, and collectively, conjuring up their own “r”s. Doubts of the accuracy of the Skinner/Rankine transcription of Sloane 307 then arise, and a cursory inspection finds the first error only twelve lines into the manuscript: “esse” falsely read as the English “ess[en]ce”.2See pages 55 and 61. As an aside, Rankine and Skinner are evidently unfamiliar with Latin (footnote 151), putting a question mark next to their atrocious translation of a simple phrase; but why not go to the trouble of getting a professional translation? For the sake of a few quid…
Overall, the editorial style is inconsistent, and the book is a slapdash mass of poor grammar and spelling.3For example, the book is dedicated to, and contains repeated references to, Alan Bennett. They meant to say “Allan”, but perhaps couldn't be bothered to check. The Introduction is really just a nauseatingly bad defence of magick with some pompous posturing put in, howling out sub-neanderthal logic, sparkling with a few invisible quasars(!) and giving us a page of mindlessly irrelevant observations on the town of Worcester. The next section of the book has a man who is “obsessed by chests”, whilst the Bibliography is a collection of inaccuracies,4Such as the listing of Cotton Appdx. MS. XLVI as Liber Mysteriorum Sextus et Sanctus. more empty swagger and yet more bogus supposition and innuendo.
Ironically, that very crapulence and ignorance is what saves the editors from a definite charge of wilful deception regarding their claims as to the origin of Sloane 307. Comments and footnotes5Not the ludicrously pedantic footnotes which can only contain the key to some horrendously cryptic gematria system, but the ones with some actual content. scattered about the place make it clear that they know little of what they are commenting upon: even that the Great Table is a table of Earth (footnote 57), or that John Dee knew to treat the “fyled” spirits differently to the good ones (p. 36 and footnote 198).
However, the charge of their deliberate obfuscation of the relevant details of the Enochian system as set out in the Dee MSS. (especially MSS. Sloane 3191 and Cotton Appendix XLVI) by means of the complete de-contextualization of Sloane 307 is hardly less serious; but how seriously will this criticism be taken by editors who are prepared to present as fact what are really their own unfounded suppositions? When they say in the blurb that the Golden Dawn Book H6A partial transcript of Sloane 307 used by some members of the Golden Dawn. was “suppresed by the chiefs of the Order”, but then lightly skip over the fact (on p. 50) that they have no evidence that it was deliberately suppressed, or even that it was suppressed at all, then what is the point of reasoned criticism? It is all beyond the pale.
As far as Sloane 307 goes – regardless of the editing job – those keen on the Golden Dawn interpretation of the Enochia will be informed on some points of interest, and the invocations may entertain with their tact and precision; but ultimately the Enochia derives from the diaries of Dee, and all invocation proceeds from the “heat and fervency” of one’s own spirit, as Ave and Abramelin advise.
– Sir Anon.
17th June 2005 a.v.
1 TFR, and all the Enochian MSS. referred to here, are of course available in the Enochian section of this site – T.M.R. Domini Initium Sapientiæ!
2 See pages 55 and 61. As an aside, Rankine and Skinner are evidently unfamiliar with Latin (footnote 151), putting a question mark next to their atrocious translation of a simple phrase; but why not go to the trouble of getting a professional translation? For the sake of a few quid…
3 For example, the book is dedicated to, and contains repeated references to, Alan Bennett. They meant to say “Allan”, but perhaps couldn't be bothered to check.
4 Such as the listing of Cotton Appdx. MS. XLVI as Liber Mysteriorum Sextus et Sanctus.
5 Not the ludicrously pedantic footnotes which can only contain the key to some horrendously cryptic gematria system, but the ones with some actual content.
6 A partial transcript of Sloane 307 used by some members of the Golden Dawn.