Enochian Language
The angels dictated much of the Enochian system in a language of their own called "Enochian". This language is quite a peculiar one, since it has connections to some existing languages, but seems to be fairly self standing as well.
Firstly, the language itself has a script all of it's own. This script was given to Dee in a seance on 26th of March 1583, and contains 21 letters. Each letter has its own name and pronunciation, which seemingly have no real relation to each other. They also appear multiple times in the manuscripts regarding the Enochian system, in a few forms. The characters were finally settled on, and are given in their final form below:
Their names and phonetic pronunciations, as written-right to left, are: Pa (B), Veh (C/K), Ged (G/J), Gal (D), Or (F), Un (A), Graph (E), Tal (M), Gon (I/Y), Na (H), Ur (L), Mals (P), Ger (Q), Drux (N), Pal (X), Med (O), Don (R), Ceph (Z), Van (U/V), Fam (S), Gisg (T). As you can see, only the names Ged and Van have a relation to the actual phonetic pronunciation. Also, you can see that the script has little closeness to other language's scripts. The similarities being the Romanesque terminations to strokes- similar to the 'times new roman' font on computers. Also, the characters E (a stylised Hebrew resh), H (an upturned non-capital Greek omega), P (a capital Greek omega), X (capital Greek Gamma), R (an Arabic ain), Z (capital P in all Latin-based scripts, and capital R in Russian) and U/V (by a stretch- an upturned Hebrew ain/oyin) are all similar to other languages. With the exception of the Arabic, and possibly Russian, Dee was familiar with these language, and could quite well have borrowed the figures with the little twists. Dee also obtained a copy of Trithemius' Stenographia, which could have contained these or other characters. What is striking about this series of characters, is that their sounds form the basis from which all English sounds can be formed without any ambiguity. In doing this, as is common with such things as Latin, some letters double up in similar sounds to lessen the number of characters needed. For example Latin has no separate characters for I,J and Y- nor does Enochian, or U and V- again, nor does Enochian, and W is simply 'double u' or UU.
As said before, Enochian was written right to left. This caused some problems for Dee and Kelley, since everything needed to be dictated in an unfamiliar fashion to the English speaking pair. This method of writing was, however, common to many of the Middle-Eastern languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic.
Pronunciation proves a problem for the scholar of Enochian. Since the language was only ever really used by Dee and Kelley in its true and correct form, we have only a vague idea of how it was actually spoken. Aleister Crowley of the Golden Dawn fame, proposed a system of pronunciation which took each individual letter as a single sound. This is explained by Sapere Aude (William Wynn Wescott- also of the Golden dawn):
'In pronouncing the Names, take each letter separately. M is pronounced Em; N is pronounced En (also Nu, since in Hebrew the vowel following the equivalent letter Nun is 'u'); A is Ah; P is Peh; S is Ess; D is Deh.
'NRFM is pronounced En-Ra-Ef-Em or En-Ar-Ef-Em. ZIZA is pronounced Zod-ee-zod-ah. ADRE is Ah-deh-reh or Ah-deh-er-reh. TAAASD is Teh-ah-ah-ah-ess-deh. AIAOAI is Ah-ee-ah-oh-ah-ee. BDOPA is Beh-deh-oh-peh-ah. BANAA is Beh-ah-en-ah-ah. BITOM is Beh-ee-to-em or Beh-ee-teh-oo-em. NANTA is En-ah-en-tah. HCOMA is Heh-co-em-ah. EXARP is Eh-ex-ar-peh.'
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers also proposed a system of pronunciation which took the first of two consecutive consonants and placed the equivalent Hebrew vowel in between. This was a far less cumbersome method of pronunciation, but still managed to drag out the speaking of the tongue. It was this method which Crowley used in his pronunciation of the calls, which were thankfully recorded on to a wax cylinder. Copies of this cylinder can be obtained through some bootleggers- and are fairly hard to come by. The copy which I have is one of a 500 copy run from a fly-by-night recording label. It contains both (Golden Dawn) Enochian and English versions of the Call of the first and Second Aethyr as well as Crowley's poetry, and except from the Gnostic Mass and even him singing the 'Viva La French Republic'. This is pretty well the only decent recorded version of the Enochian language by a very astute scholar of not only the Enochian System, but the Occult in general.
The actual words in Enochian are not fully translated, but very much of it has become available in
Enochian Dictionaries. If the characters and phonetics of the language bear some resemblance to English and other languages, the words themselves are a far cry. Multiple strings of vowels and consonants appear boundlessly, which is bound to cause trouble for any student attempting to speak the language. This would explain the Golden Dawn's insertions of vowels and letter-by letter pronunciations. What is seemingly a stretch for the language, in fact simplifies the words for an easier pronunciation.Enochian numbers have posed a great problem to many students of the language, and will continue to. The problem with the numeric system in Enochian is that there is no complete set of numbers, and what has been patched together has very little systemic value! Here are the numbers which can be taken from the Enochian Calls, and some other sources:
0- T 12- OS 1636- QUAR
1- L, EL, L-O, ELO, LA, LI, LIL 19- AF 3663- MIAN
2- V, VI-I-V, VI-VI 22- OP 5678- DAOX
3- D, R 24- OL 6332- ERAN
4- S, ES 26- OX 6739- DARG
5- O 28- OB, NI 7336- TAXS
6- N, NORZ 31- GA 7699- ACAM
7- Q 33- PD 8763- EMOD
8- P 42- VX 9639- MAPM
9- M, EM 456- CLA 9996- CIAL
10-X 1000- MATB 69636- PEOAL
The only system that can be seen is that for each digit in the number, a letter is placed in the Enochian, with the exceptions of the more elaborate single digits.
The language was dictated to Dee and Kelley during their seances, mainly through the angel Nalvage. The method of dictation was at best tiresome, with every individual letter being given, one at a time. To compound the problem, they were given backwards in order of letters, i.e. the last letter of the last word of the first call was the first letter, then the second to last, finishing with the first letter of the first word. As each word was given, i.e. at the end of the first letter of the word, the pronunciation was given. At the end of each call, the angel would show the English translation of the call, word by word, on it's fingers, and so a table could be drawn up by reversing the order of the letters to form words, and the words to form the call, then the translation could be placed next to it. The method, however, was even more elaborate, with the letters being dictated from the 49 49x49 tables of the Liber Logaeth. To do this, in the seacnce, the letter, a number, the table number and a direction were given. This has caused some great troubles in the revision of this process for scholars today. Elaborate systems have been devised in order to decode the Liber Logaeth using these notes, but none come up with satisfactory results, because the numbers seemingly have no correspondence to the tables. The numbers go up to 312004, yet there are only 49x49 letters per table (=2401) and 49 tables (2401x49=117649 letters). These numbers are not just for show though. Nalvage at points asks Dee to sum the numbers given, and then revises the text accordingly, stating the importance of sum numbers being the square and root of certain things. Also compounding the problem is the fact that the first table (really the last) is the image of the son of God, and hence "the soul of man has no portion in this table", yet the numbers will land within this table on many occasions, whether it be first or last. I will give here a sample of the first of the Calls' dictations from Meric Casaubon's John Dee: A True and Faithful Revelation... to demonstarate what I have mentioned above:
Fri April 13, 1584, 8:30am
Nal- The soul of man has no portion in this the first table. It is the image of the son of God (Iesus)
A (2014, in the 6th Table, is) D
86. 7003. In the 13th Table, is I
A In the 21st Table 11406 downward
I In the last Table, one less then number
Call it; IAIDA
85. H 49. Ascending T 49. Descending, A 909. Directly, O simply
H 2029 directly, call it HOATH
225 From the low angle on the right side. Continuing in the same and next square,
D 225 [the same number repeated]
A in the 13th Table, 740, ascending in his square
M The 30th Table 13025. From the low angle in the left side
84. ... . ... in the same ascending
Call it MAD
O the 7th Table, 99 ascending
C The 19th descending 409.
O The ...I from the upper right angle crossing to the nether left and so ascending 1003
83. N The 31st from the Centre to the upper right angle and so descending 5009
Call it NOCO
This continues, getting increasingly less detailed (possibly Dee and Kelley found it less important to have the notes of creation, and more important to hurry the dictation, since there was a time limit placed on the dictation of all the Enochian System information). An explanation for the numbers could be a Gematric one (and not a tabular one), similar to that used in Hebrew, but far more difficult, with each letter of each table having a number, and some numbers doubling up across different letters. This would mean that any two words using the same letters, but from different tables, would have different meanings or powers, and hence an intricate knowledge of the entire Liber Logaeth, and the dictation of the Calls would be needed in order to have any understanding of the Angelic work being done. Certainly a high and mighty task for an average human being!
The only way to truly get a taste for the language now is to begin to read some of the samples. I have provided a direct Enochian transliteration of the
Calls here, in English script, and an English translation of them too. If you are able to obtain an Enochian font- available somewhere on the Web, since I had one once!- feel free to copy and paste into any text editor and change the font to see the original versions as Dee and Kelley would have dealt with.