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Post by merlin on Jan 20, 2020 21:12:24 GMT
I was wondering, considering the importance that Enochian Magic had, and still has, in Western Occultism - from the Golden Dawn to Crowley, etc. - If is it to be considered an important practice in Kenneth Grant's occultism, and if is it mentioned in the Trilogies, and, if so, to what degree. I am asking because I haven't read the Trilogies in their entirety.
PS: I just noticed there is another discussion about Enochian Magic in this section, but I'd like to keep this one, too, if anyone is interested in further exploring this subject, in particular regarding Mr. Grant's relationship with Enochian.
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Post by The Double-wanded One on Dec 30, 2020 3:04:25 GMT
I was wondering, considering the importance that Enochian Magic had, and still has, in Western Occultism - from the Golden Dawn to Crowley, etc. - If is it to be considered an important practice in Kenneth Grant's occultism, and if is it mentioned in the Trilogies, and, if so, to what degree. I am asking because I haven't read the Trilogies in their entirety. PS: I just noticed there is another discussion about Enochian Magic in this section, but I'd like to keep this one, too, if anyone is interested in further exploring this subject, in particular regarding Mr. Grant's relationship with Enochian. Good question, and it'd be interesting if someone here would give some insight into it. Synchronistically enough, as of late (past few months) I've gotten increasingly more and more interested in Enochian magic itself specifically and in it's various iterations (from the Watchtowers, to the Aethyrs etc). The Enochian system is very unique in that it is suspended across time as an unfolding process, Dee and Kelley started it, The Golden Dawn expanded it (despite making some erroneous errors with it), Crowley pierced the veil entirely into uncharted territory. Jack Parsons showed, albeit not successfully, it's truly immense possibilities. Other occultists like Benjamin Rowe have also displayed the sublime beauty and intricacy that is still, as of the 21st century, untapped in the Enochian system. I think though, that Enochian magic is far more inconvenient than other forms of magic, because of it's complexity and it's physicality (aka buying or constructing all of that furniture). Of course Chaos Magicians would disagree with me but if you're going to do it, you have to do it correctly.
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Post by The Double-wanded One on Jan 1, 2021 2:04:27 GMT
I'm still looking around Grant's work to find specific mentions of Dee and Enochian magic. He does talk for several chapters about Parson's Babalon Working in Hecate's Fountain though - which is related to Enochian magic as derived from Liber 418 and the Golden Dawn material, but not itself Enochian per se. John Dee and Enochian magic are mentioned only briefly in The Magickal Revival, and of course in reference to Liber 418. Argh!
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Post by stephen on Jan 1, 2021 21:08:26 GMT
Hi Double-wanded One,
What do you mean "Argh!" ? That account of John Dee and Enochian Magic in the "Barbarous Names of Evocation" chapter is quite comprehensive in a concise sort of way, as Grant says: the system is "far too complex to describe here".
(Actually, I begin to go Argh! after looking at your flashy new icon for sometime. Any chance of enlightening us with regard to the Arabic versicle?).
In Nightside of Eden we find: Enoch was the source of the Calls or Keys used by Dee and Kelly in their traffic with extraterrestrial entities. It is in fact to Dee that we owe the first account of Choronzon, the Guardian of the Abyss". Page 48 Muller, footnote 37 gives a description of Choronzon which appears to be attributed to Dee - however, it is not Dee. Dee and Kelly were warned about Choronzon by the angel Gabriel in a passage discussing the Enochian language:
Man in his Creation, being made an Innocent, was also authorised and made partaker of the Power and Spirit of God: whereby he not onely did know all things under his Creation and spoke of them properly, naming them as they were: but also was partaker of our presence and society, yea a speaker of the mysteries of God; yea, with God himself: so that in innocency the power of his partakers with God, and us his good Angels, was exalted, and so became holy in the sight of God until that Coronzon (for so is the true name of that mighty Devil) envying his felicity, and perceiving that the substance of his lesser part was frail and unperfect in respect of his pure Esse, began to assail him, and so prevailed: that offending so became accursed in the sight of God; and so lost the Garden of felicity, the judgement of his understanding: but not utterly the favour of God, and was driven forth (as your Scriptures record) unto the Earth which was covered with brambles: where being as dumb, and not able to speak, he began to learn of necessity the Language which thou, E. K. callest Hebrew... Saturday, Aprilis 21. A Meridie, [Anno 1584. Cracoviae]
And this is the one and only mention of Coronzon (possibly Coronzom) in the entire Angelic Conversations. Dee and Kelly certainly had no traffic with him. And the point is this, potently magical as the system may be. it was performed and constructed in an entirely Christian ethos. Dee concludes this sitting with the words: Laudetur, magnificetur et extollatur nomen Jesu Christi in omne evum. Amen.
As Peter J. French noted in John Dee, The World of an Elizabethan Magus (RKP, 1972), page 116:
" The importance of prayer as the means of effecting religious magic cannot be over-emphasised. Dee stresses constantly, 'The key of Prayer openeth all things'; and one is struck by the immense piety and the almost continuous state of prayer that inform the spiritual conferences."
The source of that fascinating footnote in Nightside of Eden does not appear to be LIBER 418, I would be very interested to know its origin.
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Post by stephen on Jan 3, 2021 20:21:28 GMT
OK, I may be obsessive about the detail of things and I have always taken Kenneth Grant's references to John Dee's traffick with Choronzon with a certain pinch of salt, but that footnote 37 in Nightside of Eden has gotten me intrigued. Here it is in full:
Dr. John Dee, 1527-1608: 'There is a Mightye Daemon, The Mightye Choronzon, who serveth to guard the Great Doors of the Unknown Universe. Know Him Well And Be Ware.'
The implication is that this is a quotation by Dee, but it frankly reads more like H.P. Lovecraft. It does not tally with the information about Coronzon given in the Angelic Conversations. The nearest thing in LIBER 418 is a reference to Choronzon as "the mighty devil that inhabiteth the outermost Abyss." In the 11th Aethyr of IKH.
And there the matter quite probably rests.
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