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John Dee - 5/may/2023
🕑 Added 2023-05-10 16:45:14 +0000 UTCJOHN DEE
John Dee changed what it meant to practice magic. Occultist, Alchemist, Astronomer, Mathematician, Wife-swapper, Court Magician to Queen Elizabeth I, and quite possibly the most educated person alive at the time, John Dee represents the pinnacle of Renaissance magic and learning. He is a figure so influential, he threatens to take over an introductory text like this one.
The son of a wealthy Welsh textile merchant, young John Dee was characterized by two things: courtly ambition, and an overwhelming thirst for knowledge. He spent his early days studying, hopping from prestigious college to prestigious college where he rubbed elbows with the intellectuals of Europe.
By 1550, Dee was working as an elite tutor to the children of the nobility, eventually becoming personal tutor to a young Edward VI. Dee was a devout Protestant, and the deeply Catholic Queen Mary did not seem to like him all that much. Conflict between Protestants and Catholics was intense at this point in English history, as Henry VIII had recently disbanded every monastery, convent, priory, and friary in the country. None of this stopped Dee from proposing an ambitious plan for establishing a court library by collecting all the rare and valuable texts they could from the recently dissolved monasteries.
His proposal went unanswered, so he decided to do it himself, and promptly spent the next 30 years turning his estate at Mortlake into the most extensive private library in England, complete with an observatory and an alchemical laboratory.
When Queen Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, it represented a chance for Dee. Elizabeth, a more religiously tolerant moderate, seemed to like Dee much more, and he was given the task of astrologically determining an auspicious day for the coronation. He was able to publish his first academic text: Propaedeumata aphoristica, which provided an improved system for determining the positions of astronomical objects.
At this point in history, the distinction between astrology and astronomy had not quite formed. Whether or not astrology was a magical heresy was still a bit of a gray area. Astronomy-astrology (At the time, astronomy didn’t quite exist. What Dee did would have been called astrology.) was regarded with suspicion, but it was also quite useful for nautical navigation. England’s globe-spanning empire was built on their ability to get huge ships across the world safely and efficiently in large part due to their understanding of the heavens. Dee’s work was vital to the British Empire,a phrase Dee himself coined.
Up to this point, Dee’s interest in astrology was not necessarily magical in nature. However, Dee came to believe that they were complimented by the Neoplatonic-Hermetic beliefs of the Renaissance occultists, specifically the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Francesco Giorgi, and Paracelsus. In 1564, Dee published his first magical work: The notably hermetic Monas Hieroglyphica.
ASIDE: A QUICK GUIDE TO THE MONAS HIEROGLYPHICA
Consider the sun. If every drawing of the sun represents the same sun, those drawings are probably going to have similarities. Dee is arguing that if every depiction of the sun can be deconstructed into a few basic elements, that gives us an almost-universal sign for “The Sun.” Dee is arguing that this ur-sign is metaphysically meaningful in some important way. Dee also extends this process to written language, as the word “sun” represents the same thing as any drawing of the sun.
Dee argues that this process of deconstruction can be applied to everything, that everything can be broken down to a small handful of essential signs and symbols, and that these symbols fit together into the MH.
This process can also be reversed. Sometimes, a drawing of a sun isn't just a sun. Sometimes, a drawing of the sun represents something like, God’s love, alchemical perfection, or imminent death by dehydration. Dee argues that the essential sign of the sun also represents those things as well. And therefore, the entirety of creation can be derived from the MH.
Put yourself in Dee’s shoes for a moment. From the comfort of your writing desk at Mortlake, you can use math to make accurate maps of countries you have never been to. Without leaving your home, you can make maps that allow ships to reach their destinations faster. It follows that theoretically, you could do the same for all of natural philosophy. Theoretically, the beakers and flasks in your alchemical laboratory are unnecessary. Theoretically, you can perform alchemical experiments from your writing desk, using only a pen and paper. Theoretically, there is some sort of math underlying the entirety of creation. When Dee says he wishes to “read the book of nature” this is what he means.
Dee’s success with the idea was limited. The MH received little attention from his contemporaries, who largely found the book to be incomprehensible. Though he received little recognition for the text in his time, illustrates his overall goals for understanding creation.
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After publishing influential texts on navigation and geometry, and spending some time in what can only be described as an Elizabethan think tank to further the political aims of Elizabeth I, John entered his overtly esoteric period (Haanegraaf 303). Much ink has been spilled speculating why John became preoccupied with the occult, but it is important to remember that Dee did not “turn” towards the occult in the same way a modern scientist might. While attempting contact with angels was unorthodox, his investigations into esoteric authors were well within the bounds of a natural philosopher. Compared to now, natural philosophy and the occult were not entirely separate. What made Dee scandalous -the reason he hid his activities- were his dealings with the spiritual. For if one believes in angels, they generally believe in demons as well, and one can never truly be sure what is on the other end of a call.
John was aiming for perfect knowledge of natural philosophy. The logic seems reasonable: When you’ve read all you can, and you’re still in the dark, why not ask the angels –the beings who actually administer the universe– directly? As for how he contacted the angels, John was largely working from the Lesser Key of Solomon. John’s exact methodology is difficult to pin down, but it appears to be heavily influenced by earlier grimoire traditions like the Ars Notoria, and “Solomonic Magic.”
The rituals themselves would have resembled what we now call seances. A small, smoky room. Candles. A table covered in arcane symbols. A crystal ball, or polished mirror in which the images of the angels would appear. John makes regular use of the term “scrying” or “scrying sessions” for this activity.
While the first proper angelic conversation would take place in 1581, things really kicked into high gear when Dee met a wandering alchemist and medium named Edward Kelley. (No relation.) The pair were a dream team. Their occult work together struck some magic balance of academic rigor and dramatic ingenuity that would revolutionize western occultism.
ASIDE: MEET EDWARD KELLEY
Our modern idea of a wizard has its roots in John Dee. The image of a wise yet eccentric old man with a robe and a long white beard surrounded by books and telescopes and flasks of bubbling fluids, fits Mr. Dee perfectly. But for the vast majority of history, wizards were not seen as wise and scholarly old men. Most wizards were not like John Dee. Most wizards were like Edward Kelley.
Alchemist, medium, con-man, counterfeiter, and man of ill-repute, Edward Talbot, better known by his assumed name, Edward Kelley, was John Dee’s medium-on-retainer, the man who spoke to angels.
Scholarship around Kelley’s early life is full of phrases like “claimed to be”, or “allegedly”, or “may have”. We know for a fact that he was born at Worcester on 1 August 1555, at 4pm, and that at some point in his life he was cropped, meaning had his ears cut off as punishment for a crime. Most accounts say he was cropped as punishment for counterfeiting. This cropping was supposedly the reason for his iconic cap, which covered the sight of his mutilated ears.
Dee was in contact with a several scryers by this point, but had found them unsatisfactory. On March 8th, 1582, Dee was introduced to one Edward Kelley, a thick-set man who walked with a cane and wore a cowl. He was an angry drunk with a reputation for fighting, forgery, and necromancy. But Dee didn’t know that yet: all he knew was that Kelley was a gifted scryer.
Kelley claimed that not only could he see the various spirits and angels that populated the world, but that he could interact with them directly, and even allow them to speak through him. Dee allowed him a trial run, and was quite impressed. We don’t know what Dee saw that impressed him so much, but it was clear that Kelley knew exactly what Dee wanted. Kelley was in his element.
He was even able to detect the presence of an evil spirit within Dee’s current scryer, a man named Barnabas Saul. Kelley, out of the goodness of his heart and for no other reason, informed Dee that Saul was haunted by evil spirits! Saul was being tricked, and slandering Dee by way of these malicious spiritual interlopers. Barnabas left Mortlake quickly after this, leaving Kelley the sole recipient of Dee’s attention, and income. [Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels, 19]
Kelley was hired on a retainer of fifty pounds a year, nearly three times the yearly wages for a skilled craftsman for the time. For the next seven years, Kelley would act as Dee’s scryer, or medium, and the two would devote their lives to these “spiritual conferences” with the beings Kelley channeled.
Over the next few years, Dee and Kelley’s work would lead to some of the most influential esoteric texts ever written.
THE FIVE BOOKS OF MYSTERY
The Mysteriorum libri quinque, or Five Books of Mystery, can be thought of similar to forklift certification. It is a book of blueprints, techniques, tools, and general safety information for communicating with the angels of the lord. It is a graduated system. Angels are spiritually pure creatures, and each new set of tools and techniques requires greater and greater degrees of spiritual purification from the practitioner. These are the tools Dee would need to “read the book of nature.”
BOOK ONE: How Not To Hurt Yourself With An Angelic Conversation
The first book contains instructions for the Holy Table of Practice, what could be called a highly advanced ouija board. The instructions for producing one are highly specific, and distinctly expensive, requiring both a two yard square silk carpet, and letters written in “perfect oil” like the type used in church. On a particular day, the archangel Uriel lectures Dee and Kelley on the importance of observing the “Ritual Workplace Safety Protocols,” and makes an ominous warning that the grounds of Mortlake are haunted by a malevolent spirit named Lundrumguffa.
The very next morning, Kelley called Uriel. A being appeared with sparkling eyes, dressed in fantastic robes of purple and gold, a wreath of gold upon his head. When Dee asked if the table had been produced correctly, the being assured him that it was perfect, not a sigil out of place. When Dee asked if the spirit was indeed Uriel, another entity arrived, threw the apparition to the ground, beat him with a whip, and stole his clothes, revealing the entity to be none other than Lundrumguffa. Uriel then continued to beat the spirit, shouting “Lo, thus are the wicked scourged.” He then dragged Lundrumguffa by the legs, threw him into a pit, washed his hands with the sweat off his angelic brow, and appeared to the magicians in full radiance with his co-worker Michael. The angels blessed Dee and Kelley, encouraging them to continue the sessions.
You may be wondering what the angels get out of talking to a wizard through an earless con artist. In short: Subcontractors. As one reads the angelic conversations, it becomes increasingly clear that while the angels administer reality, they don’t actually understand humans. They don’t understand ideas like agency, desire, free will, linear time, or even physical distance. They need humans like Dee and Kelley, who have the curiosity, piety, and knowledge, to be the angels “man on the ground” for the works of Christ. If the disparate churches of the world are middle management for the angels, Dee and Kelley were Research and Development.
BOOK TWO: The Sigillum Dei Aemeth
The second book explores the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, the now-famous symbol that forms the basis of the magical temple furniture. There were several extant versions of the symbol already, but Michael appeared to teach the magicians its “perfected” form. This will be a common theme for the Five Books of Mystery. Much of the early work is based around the angels “refining” and “correcting” ideas found in earlier magical texts. [We will need a picture here]
The Sigillum is made up of sevenfold layers, one for each classical planet. As the layers progress inward, they map out the transitions from the celestial to the terrestrial world. It is here that Dee approaches something that is neither Jewish Kabbalah, nor Christian Cabbala, but a third branch, a hermetic Quabala.
From the Outermost to innermost layers:
- Seven names of God drawn from forty alphanumeric characters, and corresponding sigils
- Archangels of the planets, from a seven-by-seven magical square.
- Seven names of God, from another seven-by-seven square.
- A set of seven angels called The Daughters of Light, who appeared in green silk dresses, each carrying a blue tablet on the forehead bearing their name.
- Another set of seven angels called the The Sons of Light, these held a metal ball reminiscent of the planetary attributes, as well as a tablet of gold on the chest bearing their names.
- The Daughters of the Daughters of Light, these appeared as children in white, with white ivory tablets baring their names.
- The Sons of the Sons of Light, also children, with robes of purple silk, long sleeves and scholars hats, and green triangular tablets baring their names.
- The inner pentagram, which bears the remaining angelic names.
- The crosses, which were placed about the design after its completion.
This symbol describes the hierarchy of angels that administer the heavens. When God has a thought, this is how the angels hand down the divine marching orders. It should be said that symbols like the Sigillum Dei Aemeth don’t function like Agrippa’s planetary seals. This is not a rune to impart magical qualities onto an object. This is celestial magic, not natural magic. Think of the SDA as a combination of a phone directory, an access pass, and a conference room. Inscribing the SDA is akin to roping off an area with caution tape that says “Caution! Angels at Work!”
BOOK THREE: The Ensigns of Creation
Five weeks after being given the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, the magical table and lamen had not been made. The Archangel Michael chastised Dee and Kelley for not carrying out his instructions fast enough. Dee complained that he could not afford the gold, silver, and silk required to build the objects. Michael did not care, and responded with a vision of a mountain of gold covered in serpents, which he obliterated with a sword.
Next, Uriel revealed to Dee the seven Ensigns of Creation, a set of seven talismans, each corresponding to a different classical planet. They were to be made of purified tin, and be placed around the Sigillum on the Holy Table. [include a picture here] Uriel said that if they could understand these symbols, they would gain the ability to invoke forty-nine angels who could work to “quiet the estates”[Peterson, John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery, 170.], meaning they could pacify the quarreling crown heads of Europe.
Dee’s work is apocalyptic. At the time he was writing the Five Books, Europe was tearing itself apart. Nations and nobility were embroiled in conflicts between an increasingly corrupt Catholic church, a violently populist Protestant Reformation, and an Ottoman Empire that was getting way, way too close for comfort. The world was headed for apocalypse. An antichrist could be born at any moment, and the world would need protecting until Christ’s return. For Dee, assisting the Angels in “quieting the estates” was of not just political, but spiritual importance.
The Ensigns of Creation were Dee and Kelley’s access passes for the next stage of the Heptarchic system. They are a set of symbols that correspond to the seven angels, each corresponding to a planet, that administer the physical universe. These are, in short, the phone numbers of the angels that Dee must talk to to avoid apocalypse.
BOOK FOUR: Heptarchic Princes
So far, the angels have spoken at length of angelic hierarchies, the aims of magic, and parts of the world in need of correction. The fourth book explains how all of these things fit together.
Here, Uriel explains that each age of the world is governed by a different spirit, and that the next world would be governed by a spirit named King Camara (aka Baligon). Uriel then introduced the pair to King Camara, as well as their myriad attendants, who explained that they could be commanded, but only once their allotted age arrived. Uriel explains that the form of magic that Dee and Kelley were learning could be used to influence and command these Heptarchic Princes, thus giving Dee and Kelley significant influence over the realms of men that these spirits governed.
Crucially, Dee asked if magic could be used to influence, say, King Phillip of Spain. Michael reassured him that as long as his intentions were good and glorified God, it could. He told Dee that this was only the beginning of what could be done with the Heptarchic Princes.
A common element of Solomonic magic is the lamen. These are paper-thin sheets of some material that have been inscribed with magical symbols, and worn about the neck like an amulet. Within solomonic magic, they often function as magical hazard gear, protecting the practitioner from the spirit, or giving the practitioner a degree of power over it.
Dee and Kelley got an upgrade to the lamen they had been using to conjure the angels. The previous lamen, ones based on earlier Solomonic magic, were corrupt, given to them by evil spirits (even though the diaries say that they had been given by Uriel.) The new lamen were to be made of gold. Lamen in the Heptarchic system do function as protections from evil spirits, but they can also be conceptualized as divine access passes that show the angels that Dee and Kelley are allowed to talk to them.
They were to start with a seven-by-seven-by-seven square of 343 alphanumeric characters, and from this they could extract the names of the Heptarchic Princes. The names of these princes were assembled into the Tabula Bonorum. From the Tabula Bonorum, they would extract the characters of the new lamen. Crucially, the lamen were to be written in Enochian, not Latin. [include a picture of the second lamen, Empire 37%]
Dee and Kelley had simultaneously systemized and overhauled Solomonic Magic into a new system: The Heptarchic system. Solomonic magic was a loosely organized collection of ideas, refined and expanded over centuries by various authors from a myriad of cultures. What Dee and Kelley did was create a synthesis of Solomonic magic and Mystical Ascension Literature, and the glue holding it all together was the Enochian language.
Uriel and Michael also explained that Heptarcic magic was was only the first of a “threefold art” which would “join man with his knowledge of the world.” [Empire 37%] The remaining two parts being the Watchtowers and the Thirty Aethyrs.
BOOK FIVE: Enochian, and the Angelic Calls
Book five concerns the Enochian language. First, the angels relayed the Enochian alphabet, along with each letter's name and corresponding latin letter.
On Good Friday 1583, an angel thrust its sword from the scrying stone and pierced Kelley’s head. The scryer immediately broke into a sweat, saying he felt something “creeping within his head.” [Sic. Peterson Heptarchia 287]
Dee and Kelley had made quite a bit of progress with the angels. After receiving what I can only imagine was a positive angelic performance review, the wizards were allowed to commune with some higher-ranked beings. Angels named Me, Nalvage, and Illemese, would each give them a new element of the system.
The angel Me revealed the Liber Loageth, or “Book of the speech of God.” Transcribing the text would take Dee and Kelley several months of painstaking work. When the book was complete the following year, it spanned forty eight manuscript pages, each featuring a grid of forty nine by forty nine characters for a grand total of 115,000 squares. These were the “primal calls”, the divine marching orders given by God to the angels in the earliest moments of creation. [Skeptic Cap] The Liber Loageth remains “untranslated.” Linguistic analysis has revealed the text to largely be gibberish, with no detectable pattern.
The angel Nalvage then explained a key element of the system: Each of these 49 Primal Calls correspond to 49 “gates of understanding” that must be unlocked one by one if Dee were to gain the knowledge he would need. Nalvage explained that Dee could be given 48 keys to the 49 gates, as “one is not to be opened.”
The angel Illemese then gave the 19 Angelic Calls, short poems that, when spoken aloud in the right ritual setting, would unlock the first 19 gates. This is where the Enochian language becomes truly important to Dee’s metaphysics. The Calls were given in both latin, and Enochian, as the act of speaking aloud in Enochian was itself a magically important act. Reading the calls aloud in enochian would “cast the spell.”
Let’s say you wanted to talk to the angels, and learn about the structure of reality. Michael and Uriel are messengers, their job is to interact with humans, so it’s pretty easy to talk to them. But they’re actually pretty low on the divine ladder. They don’t know everything. If you really want to start working with the angels, you’ve got to learn how to talk to the angels that administer the physical world, the angels in charge of doing things like “making fire hot” or “making water wet.” These guys are gonna be much harder to talk to, they’re not designed to speak English like Michael and Uriel.
To these entities, we might as well be ants attempting to interact with humans by wiggling our little antennae. But if we learn Enochian, we can call up humans, and speak to them through a ritually-constructed metaphysical ant telephone.
The first 19 Gates of Understanding concerned the material world. The 19 Angelic Calls are the divine phone numbers that allowed the practitioners to speak to, and petition the angels for their knowledge.
(Crowley, Aleister; DuQuette, Lon Milo; Hyatt, Christopher S. (1991), Enochian World of Aleister Crowley: Enochian Sex Magick, Scottsdale, AZ: New Falcon Publications)
(James, Geoffrey (1983), The Enochian Evocation of Dr. John Dee, Gillette, NJ: Heptangle Books,)
WHAT IS ENOCHIAN?
Enochian is an occult language constructed by John Dee and Edward Kelley. The pair claimed that they learned it from angels, and it has since become a cornerstone of western ceremonial magic. It must be noted that Dee never calls the language “Enochian.” Dee primarily calls the language “Angelical”, but also "Celestial Speech", "First Language of God-Christ", "Holy Language", or "Language of Angels", and “Adamical.” Later writers settled on “Enochian” due to Dee’s assertion that the biblical patriarch Enoch was the last human to speak the language.
The remarkable thing about Enochian is that it is not just a set of words: it is a functioning language. This is an innovation in western occultism. There are plenty of earlier examples of occult alphabets–several are featured in Agrippa’s work–but they are largely one-to-one replacements for letters from an existing alphabet. Enochian has its own grammar, syntax, and conjugation. It is a small and incomplete language, with barely 250 words to its name, but it is a language. Even if this was not a divinely revealed angelic language, Dee and Kelley underwent the time and effort to create an entire new language from scratch, something that very few people had ever even attempted before.
Enochian represents the pinnacle of Renaissance magical thought.
It is the metaphysical, semiotic bridge between divinity and humanity. If Dee wanted to “read the book of creation” (empire of the angels), here was the language it was written in. If one can read the book of creation, it follows logically that with the right tools, one might be able to reach in and alter the story.
Dee saw himself as a bit of a prophet. His diaries are full of dire warnings from the angels, heralding a looming apocalypse that must be avoided with Dee’s help. Enochian was one of the angelic tools given to Dee for the purpose of getting creation back on track. For all his eccentricities, Dee was a devout Christian. The idea of attempting to rewrite reality in his own vision, against the will of God, would have been unthinkable. In his mind, Dee was not trying to bend the world to God’s will, but to assist in fulfilling God’s plan.
Laycock, Donald (2001). The Complete Enochian Dictionary: A Dictionary of the Angelic Language As Revealed to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley. Boston: Weiser. ISBN 1578632544.
REAL LIFE CALLS
In 1583, close to the completion of the Five Books of Mystery, John Dee was visited by a Polish nobleman named Olbracht Òaski, a bizarre man known for his interest in the mystical, who was quite interested in Dee and Kelley’s mystical dealings. Dee and Kelley trusted him enough to allow him to sit in on a few of the scrying sessions, and Òaski was impressed enough to invite Dee and Kelley to return to Poland with him, and continue their experiments there. In 1584, they obtained the permission of the Queen, and relocated their mystical dealings to the continent. England is a small, isolated island. The continent would give Dee and Kelley something crucial: access to more people who might give them money.
Łaski was a voivode, a sort of military governor, under the service of Stephen Báthory, uncle of infamous serial killer Elizabeth Báthory. His station gave him ample legroom to experiment with alchemy and magic without drawing too much ire from church officials. He was known as a generous, sweet man with expensive fashion choices, an impressively long beard, and a talent for languages.
He was also a bona fide scoundrel. In the words of Polish Historian Jan Kasprzak “ [Łaski] would do anything in order to obtain money. He squandered his wives’ dowries and ruined their lives, and at one time, he kidnapped the wife of a nobleman, whom he kept imprisoned at his estate and tortured. A contemporary historian, who recorded Łaski’s infamous deeds, complained bitterly that there was no crime which Łaski would not have committed.” [Zantuan, “Olbracht Łaski in Elizabethan England,” 10.]
Moving to the continent to do highly illegal magic with a wizard and a mad Polish aristocrat would be stressful for anyone, and Kelley had the emotional stability one would expect of an earless alchemist who talks to angels.
While serving as patron to Łaski, Kelley became incredibly angry with a servant named Alexander, and threatened to cut off the man’s head. After a momentary apology, Kelley learned that Alexander spoke ill of him, and subsequently attempted to kill Alexander in the street with a rapier. It took Dee and two other men to stop Kelley from killing the man. The stress was clearly getting to him.
This was a bad time to be a traveling wizard in Europe. The Protestant Reformation just happened. Witch burnings were at an all-time high. The Catholic Church in the 1580s was, in a word, touchy. So as the pair and their families traveled Europe, receiving patronage from Rudolph II and King Stefan I of Poland, they gradually attracted the attention of the Catholic Church. On 27 March 1587 the wizards were required to defend themselves in a hearing with the papal nuncio (a diplomatic representative of the Pope). While Dee weathered the questioning with composure, the nuncio found Kelley infuriating, and at one point considered throwing him out a window. [3]
WATCHTOWERS, AETHYRS, AND A TRUE AND FAITHFUL RELATION
True and Faithful relation, originally published by Meric Casaubon, picks up five days after the completion of the Five Books of Mystery.
The Watchtowers and the Thirty Aethyrs are another concept that threaten to overwhelm an introductory text like this. On June 20th, an angel clad in feathers woke a sleeping kelley by patting him on the head. It showed him a vision of the world with four great towers at each cardinal direction, from which ranks of angels flowed to the center. This diagram describes how angels enter and administer the physical world.
Let’s say you’re a whiz at Heptarchic magic. You can speak Enochian with the best of em, and send messages wherever you like up the angelic chain of command. Now you’re ready to meet your boss. You want to ascend to the throne of God. First problem: You’re made of meat, and that meat is made of some combination of the four elements. For you to ascend, you need to gain the permission of the angels that administer your meat.
These are the watchtowers. To over-summarize, they’re the angels in charge of the laws of physics. There are four of them (kinda), one for each element and cardinal direction. But they’re not just angels. A watchtower is a spirit, a multitude of spirits, an office of spirits, a rank a spirit can hold, a metaphysical location, and an organizing principle of the universe. Imagine if the idea of the x-axis was an entity that you could speak to, and that entity was what administered the divine gears behind mathematics. Also that entity is a physical location you can visit through astral projection.
Think of enochian angels like massive anthills. The anthill is itself an angel, made up of dozens of smaller angels whose being is contiguous to the larger whole. Additionally, an anthill is a place. You can interact with an anthill, but you can also stand inside of an anthill.
Let’s say you’ve successfully run your way through the first 18 angelic calls. You’ve successfully gained permission from the watchtowers to temporarily leave your meat, and ascend up to the Celestial Plane. Good job making it to the Celestial plane, but you’ve still got a ways to go before you hit the throne of God. It’s time for you to make the 19th, and final call. This one opens the way to the 30 Aethyrs.
The Aethyrs are the angels who administer the space between the Celestial plane, and the throne of god. In Dee’s original context, the Aethyrs administer the will of complex things like nations and peoples, they are the clockwork behind politics, fate, and history. Specifically, they were the angels who watched over the scattered tribes of Israel, who must be brought together for the world to be saved. Dee only wished to contact the Aethyrs for the purpose of averting apocalypse. Later occultists would have other ideas. The important thing, is that where Agrippa layed out a comprehensive metaphysical theory for western magic, Dee and Kelley created a practical structure for navigating it.
ASIDE: KELLY, DEE, AND CON-ARTISTRY
When Dee died, his land was purchased by an antiquarian named Robert Cotton. Among the treasures of the house and its considerable library were Dee’s personal diaries, containing his meticulously recorded conversations with angels. These were given to Meric Casaubon, who published them not out of admiration for Dee’s work, but out of spite. A devout Protestant and opponent of Queen Elizabeth while she was on the throne, he was no friend to people like Dee. In the preface he excoriated Dee, depicting him as a bumbling fool who dealt with devils and mistook them for angels.
Was Kelley a con artist? Absolutely. His past as a convicted fraudster, erratic behavior, and the fact that he abandoned Dee the moment he was financially independent are all points under the “Edward Kelley was a con artist” column.
He arrived at Mortlake as a man pretending to speak to angels with theatrical confidence in the hopes that he could charm a few pounds out of some wealthy aristocrats. A good old fashioned, salt-of-the-earth con. But one day he met John Dee, a man with money, and one of the greatest occult libraries ever assembled. Something happened to Kelley that changed him. He was still a grifter, but now he wasn’t entirely a grifter.
Many of the rituals contained in Dee’s library ask the practitioner to do things like fast for several days, or forgo sleep for significant periods of time, things that have significant physiological effects on perception. causing what are generally referred to as Altered States of Consciousness (ASC). It is entirely conceivable that Kelley started off not believing, and something happened that made him seriously question himself. I think he went from “I definitely don’t see angels” to “I’m not sure what I saw.”
THE DAUGHTER OF FORTITUDE
NOTES
Eventually, Dee and Kelley found patronage under the wealthy lord William of Rosenberg. The pair was able to settle in the town of Trebona in Bohemia. It was here, deep in a mystical trance-state, that Kelley revealed to Dee that a spirit named “Madimi” had ordered them to share everything they owned, including their wives. Dee was so incensed at the angelic order that he stopped holding seances for months. He did, however, agree to share his wife with Kelley, who did the same with Dee. In his diary, Dee records the exchange:
"May 22nd, Mistris Kelly received the sacrament, and to me and my wife gave her hand in charity; and we rushed not from her.”
The exact nature of the relationship between Dee and Kelley is a topic of debate, and one that deserves its own aside. Stay tuned.
[1] Schleiner, Louise (2004). "Kelley, Sir Edward (1555–1597/8)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Pres
[2] Apiryon, T. (24 May 1995). "Sir Edward Kelly (1555-1595 e.v.)". Red Flame (2). Retrieved 5 December 2022 – via The Invisible Basilica of Sabazius.
[3] Linden, Stanton J. (2007). Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture. New York: AMS. ISBN 978-0404623425.NOTES
The Thirty Aethyrs, Ninty-One Parts of the World, and Forty-Nine Calls
The angels also rebuked Kelly for his use of grimoire magic. Kelly argued that Moses and Daniel had been skilled in Egyptian magic, which did not stop them from being faithful servants of God. Why, then, should it stop him? Gabriel’s answer was eminently practical—that magic was only a shadow and pale imitation of the ways of God by the devil, and that even the “doings of the Egyptians, seem, and are not so.”32 What the angels had revealed was the workings of God—higher wisdom that put magic itself to shame. The devil could only seem to triumph over the world, but his works were false, and hollow, and a pale imitation of God’s natural law. This was a consistent lesson to Kelly, the slow student in the angels’ school.
LIBRI SEPTIMI APERTORII CRACOVIENSIS MYSTICI, SABBATICI. PARS 4
Nalvage replied that this was simply not how angels did things. They were now given the parts of the world, with each of the Governors corresponding to a terrestrial area of the globe.
The next day, Kelly locked himself in his room, refusing to have anything more to do with the spirit actions. When he emerged, he had in his hand a copy of Agrippa, wherein were reprinted the sections of the world taken from Ptolemy. Kelly claimed that the spirits had to be frauds, because they must have copied their material from this book.
Kelly claimed that the spirits had to be frauds, because they must have copied their material from this book. Dee thought that this only proved that the angels were giving them good information, fulfilling what previous magicians had grasped at but not fully comprehended, and that the angels had only done exactly what Dee had requested. Kelly was unconvinced.
On June 2, Gabriel prophesied apocalypse and bloodshed. He delivered Dee and Kelly a parable of a “barn”—Dee and Kelly were to enter service in God’s barn, within which grew corn, representing souls, which had long been unkempt. Dee and Kelly were to take up God’s flails, representing the angelic doctrine that had been delivered to them, the testimony of the Holy Spirit to come. With their flails, they were to thresh the corn, “wherewith you shall beat the sheafs, that the Corn which is scattered, and the rest may be all one.”36 Their reward for this would be nothing save the privilege of serving God and assurance of entrance to heaven, and they were not to begin the threshing—the harvesting of the 144,000 souls to be saved at the outset of the Apocalypse, via the use of the temple furniture and the thirty calls—until they were commanded to do so.
At this, both Kelly and Dee fell into tears. On February 18, 1584, they had been shown a vision of hell at Mortlake. How steadily the angels had worked to keep them from it. Gabriel explained to them the jealousy of God, how the house of God must be made clean and spotless, and finally why devils appeared. Kelly was so overcome by this offering of Grace, and so willing to now relinquish his evil ways and receive the blood of Christ, that he revealed to Dee many of the false doctrines that evil spirits had given him, his notes on which he was now ready to burn. In his own private experiments with wicked spirits, Kelly had been given a “manifold horrible Doctrine,” whereby demons tried to persuade him:
On June 20, Kelly was to have a vision that would reveal the next crucial part of the angels’ system—the four Watchtowers. The vision came to him while lying in bed awake in the morning, during which Kelly felt an angel, clothed in feathers, pat him on the head to make him more vigilant.
12: On a Mission from God
Rudolf II is not remembered as a successful politician. Yet because of his personal interests, Rudolf was incredibly successful as a cultural leader, establishing an atmosphere of tolerance not only of Protestantism, but of occultists, alchemists, and scientists—one that may have had a larger role in fostering a tolerant and refined European culture than any other monarch of his time.8 An introvert and depressive, he shunned politics and statecraft for his personal obsession with the occult. He was also a patron of the arts, favoring arcane and erotic subjects and collecting mechanical curios, exotic animals, and even, allegedly, a copy of the Voynich manuscript (most of his collection was looted or destroyed by the end of the Thirty Years’ War).
He also made forays into operative magic himself—after the death of his friend Tycho Brahe in 1601, Rudolf attempted a necromantic ritual to return Brahe to life; when it failed, he locked himself in his bedroom for a full week in despair
WHAT
The Magic Circle of Rudolf II,??? (Look this up)
Two days later, just prior to Dee’s meeting with Rudolf, Kelly had one of his worst blowouts. While out drinking with one of Łaski’s servants (named Alexander), Kelly (perhaps playfully) told the man that he would cut off his head, and touched the back of his neck with his walking stick. Alexander, also drunk, pulled a weapon, and the other bar patrons had to push him down before he killed Kelly.
Rudolf sat at a table, with Dee’s letters and a copy of the Monas hieroglyphica next to him, which Dee had dedicated to Maximilian II, Rudolf ’s father. The emperor thanked Dee for the book and said that he believed Dee was truly affectionate toward him; he also complimented the Monas, but he said it was too advanced for his understanding. Yet, Rudolf said, the Spanish ambassador had informed him that Dee had information that would be to his advantage.
In their prior correspondence, Dee had said that Rudolf was blessed by God, and that Theorem XX of the Monas hieroglyphica suggested that Rudolf would not only be exalted as an emperor by God’s favor, but would even become one of the twenty-four elders or seniors of Revelation after his death.1
Dee told Rudolf that he had spent four continual decades seeking the heights of knowledge available to humanity, but was unable to find teachers or books that could fulfill him, and so had turned to God, praying for true wisdom. After long attempts, God had answered, and over the last two and a half years the angels had given him “such works in my hands, to be seen, as no man’s heart could have wished for so much,” wisdom of such value that no earthly kingdom was of equal worth.
In all, Dee had been given an hour to speak with Rudolf, but had failed to impress him, instead bending his ear with apocalyptic rantings, which were received with awkward silence and, finally, the door. Though Rudolf indeed believed that he was destined to destroy the Turks, and regularly entertained “prophets” bent on convincing him of his own importance, Dee and Kelly’s visions held little interest for him. He’d heard it all before.13 Defeated, Dee returned home.
Having failed to win over Rudolf, Kelly was told that the angels were to shift their primary focus to Stephen Báthory, king of Poland, for the time being. Yet Dee and Kelly were now destitute,32 and petitions to Elizabeth for aid went ignored. Kelly was soon getting revelations suggesting he make the philosopher’s stone—called darr in Enochian—which the angels assured the pair would restore their standing with Rudolf, and presumably their finances.
Stephen Báthory, Alchemy, the Vision of the Round House, and Gebofal
Concurrent with these alchemical experiments, and following the commotion that Dee and Kelly had made in Krakow, the pair had attracted the attention of the last group they should have: the Catholic Church.
The sessions would continue with the angels counseling Dee and Kelly in practical alchemy, their aim being producing the philosopher’s stone in order to make another attempt to win Rudolf II to the side of the angels, as Uriel had planned. Alchemy had decayed just like everything else in the sublunary world, but with the angels’ help, it would be restored, and Dee would then be able to employ it in the restitution of nature.34
The angels next gave Dee and Kelly an alchemical doctrine of creating and rejoining substances, and stated their doctrine was to be opened to Dee and Kelly’s wives. The set of ritual tools the angels had spent years transmitting was to be “placed upon the altar, wherein man may see, as in a glasse, How God through his Sacraments and holy institutions, sanctifieth, regenerateth, and purifieth man unto himself.”35 After long years of transmitting this complex system, Dee and Kelly were now to be told how to use it—a holy art that the angels referred to as gebofal. This was the use of the nineteen calls to enter the forty-eight gates of Wisdom revealed in the leaves of Liber Loagaeth.36
While this process would seem purely Gnostic—similar to the ascent through the thirty aeons of Valentinian Gnosticism, or the passage through the fifty gates of Binah in Kabbalah—the angels were meanwhile pushing Dee and Kelly toward rapprochement with the much more traditional Catholic Church. There was a battle in heaven, the angels counseled, which Dee and Kelly would be wise to be mindful of. Levanael further instructed them that to inherit eternal life, they were to follow the ten commandments, as well as Christ’s new commandment to love each other—but, Levanael clarified, this only applied to the confirmed of the Church. The doctrine the angels were giving the two men was authoritarian Catholicism.
On March 14, Dee’s son Michael was born—Jane Dee and her pregnancy being saved by the angels’ medicine—and was baptized Catholic at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague.37
Catholic Complications
By March 20, 1585, the Dees were so poor that Jane Dee herself, perhaps at her wit’s end with her husband’s obsessions, decided to intervene and petition the angels herself, seeking meat and drink for her family. The angels said that they had blessed the Dees’ children, who would grow to have high social standing. The temptations the Dees had suffered were necessary, so that their faith could be strengthened.
Beginning on March 27, Kelly would be tempted by a far more immediately threatening force than evil spirits: the Jesuits.
on April 4, Kelly flinched and confessed his sins to a Jesuit priest, who, unsurprisingly, was far more interested in Kelly’s involvement with the angelic sessions than his other wrongdoings, and began grilling him for information. The Jesuit decided that Dee and Kelly had been fooled by devils masquerading as “angels of light,”40 and charged Kelly with criminal sorcery. The Jesuits had little doubt as to the veracity of Dee and Kelly’s visions—however, they were convinced that the transmissions came from evil, not good spirits; particularly given the fact that Dee was married, and it was believed that only celibate monks could be privy to visions. (Theres a citation here)
Pressed about the spirit actions, Dee stated that he was indeed in contact with angels, but made no mention of the angels’ views of the Church. A tactless Kelly, however, next erupted into a tirade about the Church’s corruption, commanding Malaspina that the Church itself repent and bow to the authority of the angels. Though Malaspina resisted the urge to execute both men immediately, by the next month the Jesuits were pushing Kelly to confess to the crime of direct conversation with angels. Kelly refused and was banned from Church services.
On April 29, 1586, “a wonderful deed that ought to be remembered forever” occurred.
The damage was already done—Dee and Kelly’s activities had angered the Church; on May 22, Pucci warned them anonymously that the pontifical legate had accused Kelly of necromancy.
13: I Am the Daughter of Fortitude, and Ravished Every Hour
In 1587, with Dee, Kelly, and their spouses still in Třeboň, the actions took a new turn—marked by a shocking eruption of eroticism.
On April 21, a wife-swapping agreement was drawn up. Kelly made a declaration that he had hated the spirits. Though they had been comforted by the godliness of the prior spirit actions, Dee and Kelly’s wives still found the new push toward polygamy disturbing, as it was against God’s prohibition of adultery. The group resolved to abstain from meat and fish, and occupy themselves with fasting and praying, until such time as a new action gave clarification or confirmation on what was to be done.
Thus fully persuaded, the foursome consummated Madimi’s plan on May 22—or at least two of them did. Kelly had intercourse with Jane Dee, but Dee himself could not carry out the deed, and instead spent the night chastely alongside Joanna Kelly.
14: Gold Is the Metal with the Broadest Shoulders
Though Dee may have died with thoughts of youthful adventures to come filling his mind, those journeys were never made. It was here, in London, that John Dee went at last to greet the angels, on March 26, 1609, at 3 a.m.
Only a year later, Shakespeare would introduce the English public to another imperial wizard, Prospero of The Tempest, a carbon copy of Dee, who spoke of the ephemeral legacy of a Magus, who may shift the orbit of the whole world with his words and deeds, but whose life is then scattered upon the winds, lost to all memory, like a Tibetan sand mandala:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yes, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.62
LIBER MYSTERIUM HEPARCHIA
Liber Primus: The Holy Table of Practice
Liber Secundus: Silgillium Aemeth
Liber Tertius: Ensigns of creation, the Tabula Bonorum
Liber Quartus: Haptarchic Kings and Princes
Liber Quintus: Liber Loageth, Enochian
- Started on Good Friday, 1583
- “On Good Friday, 1583, an angel thrust its sword from the scrying stone at Kelly’s head; the scryer broke into a sweat and protested that he felt something crawling and creeping within his brain.”
- “After this disturbing incident, the angel Me revealed the forty-nine by forty-nine tables of Liber Loagaeth, with the letters appearing to be written in fresh blood, between lines of shadow. From these, the angel used a three-part gold wand to draw angelic letters and incantations.”
- Loagaeth, the angels explained, was the true book of Enoch,*31 and its transcription was to occupy the next several months. When completed the following year, it took up forty-eight manuscript leaves, each of which featured a forty-nine by forty-nine magical square painstakingly delivered by Kelly for a total of 115,000 squares, producing forty-nine calls. These, confusingly, are not the forty-nine calls later delivered for working with the Watchtowers and Aethyrs; these were the primal calls spoken by God to create the universe. They remain untranslated.
- By April 3, Kelly was recorded as praying perfectly in the angelic language. At this point the communication between Kelly and the angels was purely in Enochian. At the beginning of these sessions, fire would jump from the scrying ball and into Kelly’s eyes, during which time he would feel a burning sensation in his brain and be taken over by the angels.
- “On April 15, while writing the eighteenth leaf, attributed to the spirits of the earth, three or four entities appeared, unbidden, that looked like laboring men carrying shovels.*34 Dee attempted to banish them, but they assaulted Kelly, biting him and breaking his left arm by the wrist, imprinting two deep, red circles in his skin. While Dee ran to grab a stick, the spirits continued to assault Kelly, who tried to ward them off with a stool while they came at him snarling, until Dee banished them with a makeshift wand in the name of Jesus.”
By April 20, Dee and Kelly were fighting bitterly. Kelly, Dee wrote, wished to “utterly discredit the whole process of our actions: as to be done by evil and illuding spirits seeking his destruction.”34 A terrified and harried Kelly complained that he was held at Mortlake like a prisoner, and threatened to quit in search of more gainful income elsewhere.
By this time, the both of them were heavily in debt. Dee was 300 pounds in debt, the equivalent of around 75,000$ in 2017 money.
Kelley is stressed, and faltering in his faith.
Making his point even plainer, Dee stated that he was willing to die now and enjoy the “bottomless fountain of all wisdom” in spirit (the same phrase he had used when he contemplated suicide in 1569),36
The angels were frustrated at the lack of progress, and wanted the Liber Loageth done in 40 days
Next, the angel Il delivered a new lamen to replace the one given in Liber primus, which was to be engraved in gold. This was derived from a table assembled from the names of the kings and princes, sans Bs.
Uriel stated that it was God’s will to perfect Dee and Kelly that they be apt vessels, and that Loagaeth would be finished imminently. Yet the angel still wondered out loud why it should be given to mortals: “This book, and holy key, which unlocketh the secrets of God his determination, as concerning the beginning, present being, and end of this world, is so reverent and holy: that I wonder (I speak in your sense) why it is delivered to those, that shall decay: So excellent and great are the mysteries therein contained.”45
The angels asked him to bring a handful of dirt from the 11 parts of the earth. Dee basically said they cant afford a horse, and asked if Uriel could like help them out. Uriel got super mad.
By May 23, Kelly had retrieved the “earths of the eleven places before specified.”
The angels had other plans for Dee. For as Michael now told him, “The earth is pregnant and struggles with the iniquities of the enemies of light. It is therefore accursed, because it is in the womb of damnation and darkness.”
“It is filthy and offensive to us,” Uriel agreed.
“It scourges itself by its own shaking,” Raphael added.62
It was time to wrap up the show.
CHAPTER 10
Łaski was a Polish senator and voivode under Stephen Báthory of Poland (Báthory was the uncle of the notorious “vampiric” serial killer Elizabeth Báthory)
He squandered his wives’ dowries and ruined their lives, and at one time, he kidnapped the wife of a nobleman, whom he kept imprisoned at his estate and tortured. A contemporary historian, who recorded Łaski’s infamous deeds, complained bitterly that there was no crime which Łaski would not have committed.”
Laski was also potentially related to Walsingham’s secret service. This is when Dee was probably super into it.
Dee got involved with Laski, hoping it would bring him higher into court life. The reverse happened. Laski ruined his reputation.
MADIMI AND LASKI
Dee dubs his next diary “The Sixth (and Sacred) Book of Mystery, a Similar New Beginning”; novalisque carrying the meaning of “a new land cultivated for the first time.”
Thus enters Madimi, the daughter of light who looks like a young girl.
On June 5, Kelly’s brother Thomas arrived at Mortlake to inform the scryer that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, and that Kelly’s wife had fled Blokley (presumably Blockley in Gloucestershire) for her mother’s house. Kelly had been accused of forgery—Dee noted at the time that he believed this to be a lie and slander against Kelly.
Kelley was almost definitely guilty.
On June 14, after dinner, a female angel named Galvah appeared—Madimi’s mother.*35 Confused that the spirits were appearing as female, Dee protested that Trithemius had written that no good angel ever appeared in female form (or in the form of an animal, but always in male form), and asked Galvah to clarify the matter.
Angelic metaphysics was revealed: angels, it was shown, may err, and so fall from the brightness of their glory. But if a man were to glorify his soul through righteousness and true wisdom, he could never lose his dignity.
After exhorting Dee and Kelly to fear God, Galvah now began to deliver the forty-nine leaves of Liber Loagaeth. (This is a point of some confusion at first, as Dee and Kelly had already been given forty-eight leaves that were also titled Liber Loagaeth. The occult scholar Aaron Leitch clarifies this befuddling transition by explaining that what was now being transmitted was the perfected version of Liber Loagaeth.28 For some reason, the angels delivered two versions of several of their designs, a crude version followed by a clearer and “perfected” version, including the lamen, the Sigillum, Liber Loagaeth, and later, the Watchtowers.)
Though the angels did work to still Kelly’s mind, on July 4 he again tried to escape Mortlake. Spirits, possibly ones Kelly had conjured himself, had told him privately that if he stayed at Mortlake he would be hanged, that if he went with Łaski he would be beheaded, and that Dee would not keep his promises. Moreover, Kelly confessed, he hated his own wife. Instead of staying, Kelly wished to forgo his salary and run. Dee counseled Kelly that these thoughts were not from God, but allowed him to go. Kelly must have had a change of heart, for he returned not three hours later, to Dee’s delight, and sat down to peruse new books that Dee had been given by Łaski. At this, Madimi appeared to Kelly, and patted the back of the book he held playfully.
In one of the most ludicrous events of the spirit actions, Kelly now requested that Madimi lend him a hundred pounds for two weeks. His request was refused. Kelly was admonished greatly, and the angels scrambled to expunge evil spirits from his body.
Yet while Łaski and Dee’s fortunes were rising in the eyes of the angels, in the real world Dee’s career was over. His association with Łaski, now considered a traitor, had broken Walsingham’s remaining trust in him; the spymaster planned to raid Dee’s house and trap Dee on treason charges as soon as Łaski left the country. Łaski lacked the funds to make the trip to the Continent, however, and had to lean on Dee to borrow £400 (about £84,000 or $106,000 in 2017 terms) from his brother-in-law so that the group could make the journey.36 Even Elizabeth was starting to distance herself from Dee.
CHAPTER 11 AETHYRS AND WATCHTOWERS
Dee’s diary entries between Liber sexti and Liber peregrinationis primae, entitled Liber tertiarius sexti: librum decimum,1 are no longer extant. Consequently, Dee’s published records pick up again two and a half months later, with Dee and his retinue departing England for the Continent. They would be gone for 175 days.
–
Dee and Kelly were instructed in the use of the heptarchic kings, princes, and ministers, an art that could achieve not only political aims but also provide understanding of all science—past, present, and future. Not only could this form of magic influence the decisions of worldly princes, it could also affect the princes of Creation itself. [Empire]
"The importance of psychic security protocol was demonstrated even more vividly the following day. After Kelly called Uriel, a being appeared dressed in fantastic robes of purple and gold, with a gold wreath on its head and sparkling eyes, who assured Dee that the characters recorded for the table were perfect. Yet no sooner had Dee asked if the spirit was indeed Uriel than another entity arrived, threw the apparition down by the shoulders, beat him with a whip, and stole his clothes—revealing the hairy and ugly form of the evil spirit Lundrumguffa himself. Uriel now appeared and continued beating the prone spirit, stating, “Lo, thus are the wicked scourged.”7 Uriel then dragged Lundrumguffa out by the legs and threw him into a pit, afterward washing his hands with the sweat of his own brow." [empire of the angels ch9]
“Next, Uriel showed Dee and Kelly the schematics for preparing what came to be called the Holy Table of Practice—a kind of ultrasophisticated Ouija board for contacting the angels.” [empire of the angels ch9]
"Uriel assured Dee that Soyga had been revealed to Adam in Paradise, and could be interpreted by Michael, whom Dee could call upon, given enough sincerity and humility, but that he should cease to call Anachor, Anilos, and Anchor, who were figments of superstitious rumor and not bound to the scrying stone."
Absolutely fascinating bit from Empire of the Angels. I love the idea that these things are figments of superstition, but still things that *can* be bound to the scrying stone. Like what exactly are they? What class of being would these be, if they qualify as beings at all?
