(Dee's Hieroglyphic Monad flanked by his initials, from Propaedeumata aphoristica, 1558)

E-mail question from a visitor to Supernatural World --

I'm not surprised you are hazy about details of Dee and Kelley's communication with the angels. A lot of little things are only to be learned by a close study of the transcripts in Cassaubon and other source texts. And some facts must be deduced, since they are nowhere explicitly stated.

Dee's first contact with the Enochian angels occurred on March 8th, 1581, in his bedchamber, at 10 or 11 o'clock at night. He heard ten knocks, followed by a long, drawn-out cry "somewhat like the shrich of an owle, but more longly drawn, and more softly," as he recorded in his personal diary. The sound actually came from inside his bedroom -- it did not seem to him to come from outside the house.

You won't find other authorities on Enochian magic saying that this was the first contact with the angels, because so far as I am aware, no one else has recognized it. However, it seems to me of the highest significance that this communication came exactly one year to the day prior to Dee's initial meeting with Edward Kelley. Kelley arrived at Dee's family home at Mortlake to meet with Dee on March 8th, 1582.

Before Kelley's arrival, Dee made attempts to communicate with spirits, both on his own and with the hired scryer Barnabas Saul. Dee was not a good scryer. Saul apparently had some limited ability, but he was not the choice of the Enochian angels, so his efforts were confused. Saul himself was frightened out of a year's growth when he chanced to see a spirit around midnight while sleeping in the hall at Mortlake. This was probably an Enochian spirit, but it made no contact with Dee, and was not recognized as an Enochian spirit by Saul.

On December 21st, 1581, Saul and Dee did a crystal scrying, and Saul received a message from the angel Annael saying that great things would be revealed to Dee, not through his present scryer, but through "him that is assigned to the stone." This shows that the Enochian angels had a specific person in mind as Dee's scryer three months before Dee met Kelley.

In my opinion, "him that is assigned to the stone" is Edward Kelley, who was selected by the Enochian angels to be Dee's crystal scryer long before he and Dee first met -- at least a year before their first meeting (since the ten knocks and cry foreshadowed Kelley's arrival).

Dee first tried out Kelley in the role of scryer on March 10th, 1582 -- two days after his initial meeting with the alchemist. Kelley was calling himself Edward Talbot at that time -- why is unclear, but probably he wished to remain anonymous when talking to Dee about subjects that were widely regarded as heretical and criminal at the close of the 16th century.

On the first scrying session involving Dee and Kelley, Kelley made contact with the angel Uriel, who described the preliminary steps for construction of the Sigillum Aemeth (Seal of Truth). This is one of the most important transmissions of the entire seven-year communication between Dee and the angels, and it is highly interesting to note that it occurred the very first time Kelley attempted to scry for Dee.

There was no slow start, no uncertain step. When Kelley sat down at the crystal in Dee's company, the Enochian angels were fully present and ready to work. The two men were like spark and tinder. And this is not to be wondered at, since the Enochian angels had been contriving their union for at least a year prior to their first meeting.

I want to repeat this, to emphasize its importance when it comes to understanding Dee, Kelley and the angels. The very first time Kelley tried scrying in Dee's crystal, he received partial instructions from the Enochian angel Uriel for constructing the Sigillum Aemeth. The Sigillum Aemeth contains the entire fundamental structure of Enochian magic in its numbers, letters, words and symbols.

This scrying session took place at Dee's family estate at Mortlake, a little community not too far from London on the river Thames. By the time Dee and Kelley reached Europe, the Enochian communications were already far advanced. Indeed, it was the Enochian angels who ordered -- commanded would not be too strong a word -- Dee and Kelley to leave England for the Continent. Neither man wanted to leave, since they did not have the money for such a trip. The angels actually threatened Dee with prison if he did not do as they commanded.

Much of the most vital information had already been received before Dee and Kelley left England, although this portion of Dee's transcript of the communications was largely omitted from Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation.

Casaubon wasn't trying to hide anything -- he just didn't have the papers, which had been hidden by Dee in a secret drawer in one of his trunks, and remained undiscovered until more than 20 years after Dee's death.

The antiquarian Robert Cotton bought Dee's library and his magic instruments, including his scrying table and one of his crystals, shortly after Dee's death in 1608. The Enochian papers in his collection eventually found their way into Casaubon's book.

The trunk was sold at an estate auction in 1609, and was bought as a trunk, nothing more. The woman who owned it used it for two decades before discovering the secret drawer that held Dee's Enochian transcripts (the early section). She and her husband were both fairly ignorant, and it is a miracle she did not simply burn all the papers. Indeed, some of them were destroyed, but a large portion of them survived. They passed into the hands of an antiquarian, who received them in trade for a book. Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation came out in 1659. Some thirteen years after, the papers were acquired by the famous antiquarian Elias Ashmole (for whom the Ashmolean Museum is named). They remained unpublished until quite recently -- there are portions of them in James' Enochian Magick and in Turner's Heptarchia Mystica.

Donald Tyson