| Enochian | |
|---|---|
.png) John Dee’s manuscript diary for 6 May 1583, showing the 21 letters of the Enochian script | |
| Created by | John Dee Edward Kelley |
| Date | 1583–1584 |
| Setting and usage | Occult journals |
| Purpose | Divine language
|
| Latin script, Enochian script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | i-enochian(deprecated)[1][2] |
Enochian (/iːˈnɒkiən/ee-NOK-ee-ən) is an occultconstructed language[3]—said by its originators to have been received from angels—recorded in the private journals ofJohn Dee and his colleagueEdward Kelley in late 16th-century England.[4] Kelley was ascryer who worked with Dee in hismagical investigations. The language is integral to the practice ofEnochian magic.
The language found in Dee's and Kelley's journals encompasses a limitedtextual corpus. LinguistDonald Laycock, anAustralian Skeptic, studied the Enochian journals, and argues against any extraordinary features. The untranslated texts of theLiber Loagaeth manuscript recall the patterns ofglossolalia rather than true language. Dee did not distinguish theLiber Loagaeth material from the translated language of theCalls, which is more like an artificial language. This language was calledAngelical by Dee and later came to be referred to as "Enochian" by subsequent writers. Thephonology andgrammar resemble English, though the translations are not sufficient to work out any regularmorphology.[5] Some Enochian words resemble words and proper names in the Bible, but most have no apparent etymology.[6]
Dee's journals also refer to this language asCelestial Speech,First Language of God-Christ,Holy Language, orLanguage of Angels. He also referred to it asAdamical because, according to Dee's angels, it was used byAdam in Paradise to name all things. The term "Enochian" comes from Dee's assertion that the Biblical patriarchEnoch had been the last human (before Dee and Kelley) to know the language.
According to Tobias Churton in his textThe Golden Builders,[7] the concept of an Angelic orantediluvian language was common during Dee's time. If one could speak the language of angels, it was believed one could directly interact with them.
In 1581, Dee mentioned in his personal journals that God had sent "good angels" to communicate directly with prophets. In 1582, Dee teamed up with theseerEdward Kelley, although Dee had used several other seers previously.[8] With Kelley's help as ascryer, Dee set out to establish lasting contact with the angels. Their work resulted, among other things, in the reception of Angelical, now more commonly known as Enochian.[9]
The reception started on March 26, 1583, when Kelley reported visions in the crystal of a 21-lettered alphabet. A few days later, Kelley started receiving what became the bookLiber Loagaeth ("Book [of] Speech from God"). The book consists of 49 great letter tables, or squares made of 49 by 49 letters. (However, each table has a front and a back side, making 98 tables of 49×49 letters altogether.)[a] Dee and Kelley said the angels never translated the texts in this book.[citation needed]
About a year later, at the court of KingStephen Báthory inKraków, where both alchemists stayed for some time, another set of texts was reportedly received through Kelley.[citation needed] These texts comprise 48 poetic verses with English translations, which in Dee's manuscripts are calledClaves Angelicae, orAngelic Keys. Dee was apparently intending to use theseKeys to open the "Gates of Understanding"[10] represented by the magic squares inLiber 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...[11]
— The angel Nalvage
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.[12]
— The angel Illemese
The phonology of Enochian is "thoroughly English", apart from difficultsequences such asbdrios,excolphabmartbh,longamphlg,lapch, etc.[13]
The language was recorded primarily inLatin script. However, individual words written in Enochian script "appear sporadically throughout the manuscripts".[14] There are 21 letters in the script; one of those 21 may appear with or without a diacritic dot. Dee mapped these letters of the "Adamical alphabet" onto 22 of the letters of the English alphabet, treating U and V as positional variants (as was common at the time) and omitting the English letters J, K, and W.[b] The Enochian script is written from right to left in John Dee's diary.[15] Different documents have slightly different forms of the script. The alphabet also shares many graphical similarities to a script, also attributed to the prophet Enoch, that appeared in theVoarchadumia Contra Alchimiam of Johannes Pantheus,[16] a copy of which Dee is known to have owned.[14]
Enochian orthography closely followsEarly ModernEnglish orthography, for example in having soft and hard⟨c⟩ and⟨g⟩, and in using digraphs⟨ch⟩,⟨ph⟩,⟨sh⟩, and⟨th⟩ for the sounds/tʃ~k/,/f/,/ʃ/, and/θ/.[17] Laycock mapped Enochian orthography to its sound system and says, "the resulting pronunciation makes it sound much more like English than it looks at first sight".[18][c] However, the difficult strings of consonants and vowels in words such asooaona,paombd,smnad andnoncf are the kind of pattern one gets by joining letters from a text together in an arbitrary pattern. As Laycock notes, "The reader can test this by taking, for example, every tenth letter on this page, and dividing the string of letters into words. The 'text' created will tend to look rather like Enochian."[19]
The Enochian letters, with their letter names and English equivalents as given by Dee, and pronunciations as reconstructed by Laycock, are as follows.[b] Modern pronunciation conventions vary, depending on the affiliations of the practitioner.[d]
| Letter | Letter name | English equivalent | Enochian phonology[20] | Golden Dawn syllabic reading[21][α] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Un | A | long[ɑː] (stressed), short[a] (unstressed) | [ɑː] |
 | Pa | B | [b]; silent afterm when before another consonant or final | [beɪ] |
 | Veh | C | [k] before a, o, u;[s] beforee,i and in consonant clusters, with many exceptions; ⟨ch⟩ as[k] in most positions but[tʃ] finally. | ? |
 | Gal | D | [d] | [deɪ] |
 | Graph | E | [eː] (stressed),[ɛ] (unstressed) | [eɪ] |
 | Or | F | [f] | [ɛf] |
 | Ged | G | [ɡ] beforea,o,u;[dʒ] beforee,i, finally, afterd, and in consonant clusters. | ? |
 | Na | H | [h] except in ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ph⟩, ⟨sh⟩, ⟨th⟩; silent after a vowel (in which case the vowel is "lengthened" – that is, has the sound it would have if stressed) | [heɪ] |
 | Gon | I | [j] word-initially before a vowel; as a vowel:[iː] (stressed),[ɪ] (unstressed), plus diphthongsai[aɪ],ei[eɪ],oi[oɪ] | [iː] |
.svg) | Y | [j] | (same as I) | |
 | Ur | L | [l] | ? |
 | Tal | M | [m] | [ɛm] |
 | Drux | N | [n] | [ɛn],[nuː] |
 | Med | O | [oː] (stressed),[ɒ] (unstressed) | [oʊ] |
 | Mals | P | [p] but for ⟨ph⟩, which is[f] | [peɪ] |
 | Ger | Q | [kw]; the wordq is[kwɑː] | ? |
 | Don | R | [r] | [ɑː(r)],[rɑː] |
 | Fam | S | [s] or[z] as would be natural in English, but for ⟨sh⟩, which is[ʃ] | [ɛs] |
 | Gisg | T | [t] but for ⟨th⟩, which is[θ] | [teɪ] |
 | Van | U/V | [uː] (stressed) or[ʊ] (unstressed);[juː] in initial position;[v] or[w] before another vowel and word-finally | ? |
 | Pal | X | [ks] | [ɛks] |
 | Ceph | Z | [z], rarely[zɒd] | [zɒd] |
A number of fonts for the Enochian script are available. They use theASCII range, with the letters assigned to the codepoints of their English equivalents.[22][23][24][25]
The grammar is for the most part without articles or prepositions.[5][26] Adjectives are quite rare.[27] Aaron Leitch identifies several affixes in Enochian, including-o (indicating 'of') and-ax (which functions like-ing in English).[28] Leitch observes that, unlike English, Enochian appears to have avocative case, citing Dee's note in the margin of the First Table ofLoagaeth[29] – "Befes the vocative case of Befafes".[30]
Compounds are frequent in the Enochian corpus. Modifiers and indicators are typically compounded with the nouns and verbs modified or indicated. These compounds can occur with demonstrative pronouns and conjunctions, as well as with various forms of the verb 'to be'. The compounding of nouns with adjectives or other verbs is less common. Compounds may exhibit variant spellings of the words combined.[31]
Conjugation can result in spelling changes which can appear to be random or haphazard. Due to this, Aaron Leitch has expressed doubt as to whether Enochian actually has conjugations.[32] The very scant evidence of Enochianverb conjugation seems quite reminiscent of English, including the verb 'to be' which is highly irregular.[5]
Laycock reports that the largest number of forms are recorded for 'be' and forgoh- 'say':[5]
| 'to be' | |
|---|---|
| zir, zirdo | I am |
| geh | thou art |
| i | he/she/it is |
| chiis, chis, chiso | they are |
| as, zirop | was |
| zirom | were |
| trian | shall be |
| christeos | let there be |
| bolp | be thou! |
| ipam | is not |
| ipamis | cannot be |
| 'to say' | |
|---|---|
| gohus | I say |
| gohe, goho | he says |
| gohia | we say |
| gohol | saying |
| gohon | they have spoken |
| gohulim | it is said |
Note thatchristeos 'let there be' might be from 'Christ', and if so is not part of a conjugation.[6]
For negation of verbs, two constructions are attested: e.g.chis ge 'are not' (chis 'they are') andip uran 'not see' (uran 'see').[5]
While Enochian does have personal pronouns, they are rare and used in ways that can be difficult to understand. Relative possessive pronouns do exist but are used sparingly.[27]
Attested personal pronouns (Dee's material only):[33]
| ol | I, me, my, myself |
| il, ils, yls, ylsi | thou, thee |
| q ([kwɑ]) | thy |
| tia | his |
| tox | of him, his |
| pi | she |
| tlb =tilb,tbl ([tibl]) | her, of her |
| tiobl | in her |
| t ([ti]) | it |
| zylna | itself |
| ge | we, us, our (soft 'g') |
| helech | in ours (?) |
| g =gi | you, your (soft 'g') |
| nonci | you (soft 'c') |
| nonca, noncf, noncp | to you (soft 'c') |
| amiran | yourselves |
| z ([zə]) | they |
| par | they, them |
Demonstrative pronouns:oi 'this',unal 'these, those',priaz(i) 'those'.[34]
Word order closely follows English, except for the dearth of articles and prepositions.[5] Adjectives, although rare, typically precede the noun as in English.[27]
Laycock notes that there are about 250 different words in thecorpus of Enochian texts, more than half of whichoccur only once. A few resemble words in the Bible – mostly proper names – in both sound and meaning. For example,luciftias "brightness" resemblesLucifer "the light-bearer";babalond "wicked, harlot" resemblesBabylon.[6] Leitch notes a number of root words in Enochian. He listsDoh,I,Ia,Iad,[clarification needed] among others, as likely root words.[35][what do they mean?] While theAngelic Keys contain most of the known vocabulary of Enochian, dozens of further words are found throughout Dee's journals.
Thousands of additional, undefined words are contained in theLiber Loagaeth. Laycock notes that the material inLiber Loagaeth appears to be different from the language of the 'Calls' found in theAngelic Keys, which appear to have been generated from the tables and squares of theLoagaeth.[5] According to Laycock:
The texts in theLoagaeth show patterning "characteristically found in certain types of meaningless language (such asglossolalia), which is often produced under conditions similar totrance. In other words, Kelley may have been 'speaking in tongues'. [...] there is no evidence that these early invocations are any form of 'language' [...] at all.[36]
There have been several compilations of Enochian words made to form Enochian dictionaries. A scholarly study isDonald Laycock'sThe Complete Enochian Dictionary.[37] Also useful is Vinci'sGmicalzoma: An Enochian Dictionary.[38]
The number system is inexplicable. It seems possible to identify thenumerals from 0 to 10:[39]
However, Enochian texts contain larger numbers written in alphabetical form, and there is no discernible system behind them:[39]
|
|
As Laycock put it, "the test of any future spirit-revelation of the Enochian language will be the explanation of this numerical system."[39]
Dee believed Enochian to be theAdamic languageuniversally spoken before theconfusion of tongues. However, modern analysis shows Enochian to be an English-likeconstructed language.[3] Word order closely follows English, except for the dearth of articles and prepositions.[5] The very scant evidence of Enochianverb conjugation is likewise reminiscent of English, more so than withSemitic languages such as Hebrew, which Dee said were debased versions of the Enochian language.[5]
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