Dr. John Dee was the son of minor Welsh nobleman who served in the household King Henry VIII. Dee showed his genius for mathematics at an early age, becoming a student at St. John's College, Cambridge at the tender age of fifteen. In 1546, at the age of nineteen, he received his Bachelor's degree and became a fellow of Henry's newly endowed Trinity College, from which he later received his Master's degree. It is not known when or even if he ever received an earned doctoral degree. He did lecture on the Contenent, at both Paris and Louvaine, where the pursuit of doctoral degrees was more common than in England. His doctorate could well have been for "honorius causus".

During the reign of Mary Tudor, Dee remained loyal to Elizabeth, a fact that when combined with his studies in astrology, alchemy and things metaphysical, got him into trouble. He was arrested on charges of treason and sorcery for having cast a horoscope of Mary. He was acquitted of the charges, and rose in Elizabeth's sight. When Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1559, she selected Dee to astrologically determine the proper date for her coronation.

There is considerable evidence that Dee engaged in some form or other of intelligence work for Queen 'Bess and, curiously enough, signed his correspondences to her with the moniker "007"!

The Fates themselves could not have selected a more contrasting personality to throw together with Dee than the person of Sir Edward Kelley. Kelley was much the junior of the two, 1555, the year of his birth, being the same year in which Dee was under trial for treason. Many of the details of Kelley's life are uncertain at best. He may have been born at Worcester and to have apprenticed under an apothecary, perhaps his own father. His parentage is uncertain and his real family name may have been Talbot. He may have attended a college at Oxford for a time and may have been sent down at the age of seventeen. There were rumours that he had been pilloried in Lancaster for either forgery or counterfeiting. It was also said that he had one or both ears cut off as punishment for one of these or another crime, such as necromancy. There is no proof to any of this, but there is none to the contrary either. We are also less than certain regarding the circumstances of Kelley's supposed knighthood. After leaving Dee in 1589 Kelley gained some considerable fame on the Continent as an alchemist and claimed the title "eques auratus" from Emperor Rudolph II of Bohemia. Kelley died in 1597 from a fall suffered while attempting to escape from imprisonment in a castle belonging to this same Emperor Rudolph.

Dee's encounters with the Enochian Angels may have begun some time before May 25, 1581 when he wrote of attempting to scry in a crystal to communicate with spirits who had been manifesting nocturnal "spirit knocks" in his house for many months. While very adept at many subjects, Dee readily acknowledged that he was not a good scryer and on December 21, 1581 he began employing one Barnabas Saul as his scryer. The association was not long lived. Sometime in February of the next year Saul was brought up on charges at Westminister. The exact nature of the charge is not known, but it may have been sorcery. Whatever abilities Saul may have had as a scryer, seem to have evaporated along with the indictment. On March 6th of 1582, Dee records that Saul told him he could no longer see spirits in the scrying stone. On the 9th of the same month Kelley was introduced to Dee; the association would last, through good times and bad until 1589.

Enochian is a complex language, believed to be the language of the angels, spoken before the universe and time began. It derives its name from the biblical patriarch Enoch, who is thought to be the only man to ascend to the domain of God whilst still alive, and who was taught the language by the angels themselves.

Enochian magick is seen to have two parts: theurgy and goety, the magick of angels and of demons. This series of articles will primarily deal with theurgy.

Most of the knowledge we have of Enochian comes from the research of two men in the time of Elizabeth I: John Dee and Edward Kelley (Talbot). It’s interesting to note that Aleister Crowley, a prominent later practitioner of Enochian magick, believed himself to be a reincarnation of Kelley.

John Dee was an accomplished young man, respected throughout Europe for his abilities in mathematics, astronomy, language, science, philosophy, medicine, politics and history. He gave lectures in both English and French universities, wrote various books and was Queen Elizabeth’s lifelong advisor; it is probable that he also acted as her spy whilst travelling in Europe. Dee had been labelled a magician since studying at Trinity College in Cambridge and was fully supported in his occult experiments by the Queen. He was also known to be a very pious and devout man.

His partner for the duration of his investigation of Enochian magick could not have been more different. Edward Kelley had a much less promising personal history; he is believed to have been kicked out of Oxford University at 17 and gone on to indulge in forgery, necromancy and coining. His lifelong interest was in alchemy, and this is thought to have been his primary motivation for working with Dee. His one gift was as a Seer, a practice in which he was exceedingly talented.

The two men joined in partnership from 1552-1589, directed by spiritual beings that they believed to be angels. The angels instructed them to construct a table of practice and seals that they were to use when learning the magick the angels wished to transmit. Kelley received information during daily scrying sessions where Dee recorded it word for word and deciphered it.

The main content of the magick was with regard to the Watchtowers and the method of opening them using the 48 Keys or Calls. Alongside magick, the beings also transmitted religious doctrine which shocked both Dee and Kelley, including the knowledge that the Earth is a Goddess who gives part of Her own body to house human souls, and uses the rest to feed and shelter them. The angels stated that the Earth Goddess was in error to have done this and would be punished, this is believed to be a reference to the apocalypse.

When John Dee died in 1608 his manuscripts came into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton along with the table of practice, scrying crystal and the seals, many of which finally ended their journey in the British Museum where they can still be seen today. Causabon published various sections of the Liber Mysteriorum manuscript, under the title “A True and Faithful Relation”, but this is only believed to contain a third of the total documentation and it is thought that Dee’s son, Arthur, retained some of the remaining manuscripts until his death in 1651. The earliest sections of the manuscripts were discovered by a warder at the Tower of London, hidden in a secret drawer of a chest owned by his wife, along with “De Heptarchia Mystica”, “Liber Scientiae Auxiliis et Victoriae Terrestris” and “48 Claves Angelicae”. He sold them to Elias Ashmole, an antiquarian, who spent much of his later life studying the transcripts and experimenting unsuccessfully with Enochian magick.

The magicks were then mostly ignored until the establishment of the Golden Dawn in 1888. Samuel Mathers, one of the founding members, studied the manuscripts present in the British Library. He and his associates related colours, the signs of the zodiac and the four directions and elements with the Watchtowers, and created the method by which intoning a specific key evokes a specific spirit or angel.