User:Debeo Morium/Enochian Angelic Language


 * This article is about the Angelical Language recorded in the journals of Dr. John Dee. For Dee's overall system of Angel Magic, see Enochian Magic. For other examples of divine or angelic languages, see Divine language.

Enochian is a name often applied to an occult or angelic language recorded in the private journals of Dr. John Dee and his seer Edward Kelley in the late 16th century. The men claimed that it was revealed to them by angels, while some contemporary scholars of magick consider it a constructed language.

Applying the term "Enochian" to the language is a modern convention—not found in Dee's journals. Dee referred to the language as "Angelical", the "Celestial Speech", the "Language of Angels", the "First Language of God-Christ" and the "Holy Language". He sometimes referred to its alphabet as "Adamical" because (according to Dee's Angels) it was used by Adam in Paradise to name all things. Dee also recorded that the Patriarch Enoch had been the last human (before Dee and Kelley) to know the language—thus prompting later scholars to refer to the language and Dee's entire magickal system as "Enochian".

Dee's Angelical
Dee began to allude to his search for knowledge through the angels in 1581 when he mentioned in his personal journals that God had sent "good angels" to communicate directly with his prophets. Therefore, with the help of the seer Edward Kelley, Dee set out to establish contact with his own angels.

According to Dee's journals (later published as The Five Books of Mystery and A True and Faithful Relation...), Angelical was supposed to have been the language God used to create the world, and then used by Adam to speak with God and Angels and to name all things in existence. Adam then lost the language upon his Fall from Paradise, and constructed a form of proto-Hebrew based upon his vague memory of Angelical. This proto-Hebrew, then, was the universal human language until the time of the Confusion of Tongues at the Tower of Babel. After this, all the various human languages were developed, including an even more modified Hebrew (which we know as "Biblical Hebrew"). From the time of Adam to the time of Dee and Kelley, Angelical was hidden from humans with the single exception of the patriarch Enoch—who recorded the "Book of Loagaeth" (Speech From God) for humanity, but the book was lost in the Deluge of Noah.

Most of the vocabulary is found in nineteen symbolic poems, called "Keys" or Angelical "Callings". Dee was intended to use these Keys to open the "49 Gates of Wisdom/Understanding" represented by the 49 Tables (magickal word-squares) in the Book of Loagaeth:


 * "I am therefore to instruct and inform you, according to your Doctrine delivered, which is contained in 49 Tables. In 49 voices, or callings: which are the Natural Keys 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…"  —The Angel Nalvage, A True and Faithful Relation…, p. 77


 * "But you shall understand that these 19 Calls are the Calls, or entrances into the knowledge of the mystical Tables. Every Table containing one whole leaf, whereunto you need no other circumstances." —The Angel Illemese, A True and Faithful Relation…, p. 199

Dozens of further words are found hidden throughout Dee's journals, and thousands of undefined words are contained in the Book of Loagaeth itself. Due to some stylistic differences, the words in Loagaeth and those in the Keys may represent two different "dialects" of the language.

According to Tobias Churton in his book The Golden Builders, the concept of an Angelic or pre-deluge language was common during Dee's time. The importance of it was connected with the idea that if the language of angels could be known then it would be possible to directly interact with them and with the universe through it. However, the pursuit of the Angelic language by esotericists was done mainly through rational construction of "perfect" languages that could contain numerological significance via the transformation of letters to number values through the process of Gematria. There is a good possibility that Dee was working within this tradition when he created the Enochian language.

Leo Vince
In 1976, Leo Vince published a book entitled GMICALZOMA: An Enochian Dictionary.

Enochian in Popular Culture
The language has been associated with the Hymn of One, a fictional cult in the popular lonelygirl15 web series.

The title of the track "Faaip de Oiad" on the Tool album Lateralus is Enochian. Tool intended for it to translate to "the voice of God."

Books and articles

 * Brooks, Lester. Civilizations of Ancient Africa.  New York: Four Winds Press, 1972.
 * Harkness, Deborah. John Dee's Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
 * Mandeville, John. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.  Translated by C. W. R. D. Mosley.  Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1983.
 * Phillipson, David. Ancient Ethiopia. London: British Museum Press, 1998.
 * Schmidt, Nathaniel. "Traces of Early Acquaintance in Europe with the Book of Enoch."  Journal of the American Oriental Society 42 (1922): 44-52.