Enochian Vision Magick: An Introduction and Practical Guide to the Magick of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley, by Lon Milo DuQuette
Weiser Books, 9781578633821, 261 pp. (incl. appendices, notes, bibliography and index), 2008
Lon Milo DuQUette is the author of more than a dozen books on esoteric subjects, and has served as the OTO’s United States Deputy Grand Master since 1994 This is his second book on Enochian magick, his first being Enochian World of Aleister Crowley: Enochian Sex Magick, co-written with the late Christopher Hyatt.
Enochian Vision Magick opens with an introduction by Clay Holden founder of the John Dee Publication Project, an online archive whose “major purpose of this site is to distribute primary-source materials relevant to the “Enochian” work of John Dee and Edward Kelly”,1. Two prologues follow by DuQuette outlining his interest in and involvement with Enochian magick for the past thirty years.
He stresses the importance of obtaining a comprehensive understanding of any new system or study undertaken, writing “no matter what system the magician chooses, in order to make it work most effectively he or she must first become attuned to that system’s particular way of viewing the universe.”2
To further promote this, DuQuette offers step-by-step instructions for the creation of a Ring of Solomon, lamen, Holy Table, Ensigns of Creation and the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, supplemented with thorough analyses of their component parts, detailing how and where they link. Where the original materials used are expensive or otherwise difficult to acquire he recommends their construction in paper. While this is certain to irritate purists, as DuQuette observes, “if you can’t make a real magick Ring out of paper, then you’ll not be able to make one out of gold”.3 It’s a fair point.
Throughout the text DuQuette is careful to make clear distinctions between what was originally present in the Dee and Kelly material, and what was assumed, added or modified by later practitioners. Remarking that “in magick it is eminently possible for many contradictory ideas to be simultaneously true”,4 he notes inconsistencies in the source material, and between the otherwise internally consistent innovations put forth by the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley.
Various links have been forged between aspects of Enochiana and other, previously disparate, systems of magick which, while useful to some extent, rarely match up perfectly.5 He writes:
As we myopically focus on the fascinating intricacies of different magical systems, we often forget the big picture and the fact that we have only one universe to play with. There is no such thing as a separate qabalistic magick universe, or a separate Solomonic magick universe, or a separate Enochian magick universe. These various systems simply oblige us to view the same universe from different angles. Granted, when we look from differing points of view, we see certain similarities. After all, it’s the same universe. There are certain to be recognizable landmarks. But we can’t expect the structure of one system’s point of view to neatly match or define the other.6
In identifying these differences, DuQuette has written a book that will prove imminently useful to Dee purists and those who add inspiration from other sources or devise new ways to work with the material, which he indeed encourages.
The appendices contain a “Ceremony of Preparation” complete with temple set up, and a list of the Enochian Calls and a sensible note on pronunciation – or lack thereof. As DuQuette points out “[i]f a mouse hopped up on your shoe squeaked, you’d just shoo it away. But if it hopped up on your shoe and started to talk to you in your native tongue, you’d be impressed. You wouldn’t even care if it spoke with a thick accent!” Quite!
An essay by Robin E. Cousins titled “The Geographical Location of the Ninety-one Parts of the Earth Named by Man, as Detailed in John Dee’s Liber Scientiae Auxilii Et Victoriae Terrestris comprises the third and final appendix. It represents a breakdown of the locations described in a conversation between Dee, Kelly, and the angel Nalvage.
There is a lot of material, and all of it is aimed at practitioners. Alongside source texts, new students will find Enochian Vision Magick an invaluable guide to Enochiana, and experienced practitioners will find additional insight in the detailed analyses presented. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in practicing Enochian magick.
- From the main page of the John Dee Publication Project. [↩]
- DuQuette, Enochian Vision Magick, p. 18 [↩]
- p. 37 [↩]
- p. 137 [↩]
- Even a cursory study of occult tarot readily demonstrates this. [↩]
- p. 176 [↩]
