The Enochian Great Table - Babalon Rising 2026

This year I offered four presentations at the Babalon Rising Festival in Springville, Indiana. I have decided to post those presentation here on the blog for the general public and anyone who attended the festival but was unable to make it to my talks due to scheduling issues. If you are interested in seeing presentations like this in a festival setting, I highly recommend the Babalon Rising Festival. It happens every year during the second weekend in June. This presentation is an updated version of this earlier presentation that I gave at Leaping Laughter Lodge in 2014. It covers material from my book Mastering the Great Table and walks through how I do evocations of the various Great Table spirits.

The Enochian magical system of Dr. John Dee and scryer Edward Kelley has inspired ritual magicians for centuries. Dee’s spirit diaries were first published in 1659 by Meric Causaubon, a clergyman who sought to discredit personal spiritual revelations by making the case that even John Dee, one of the most intelligent men of his age, was nonetheless taken in by evil spirits. Causaubon’s sixty-page preface to this effect was mostly ignored, but his edition of the diaries, A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits (normally abbreviated TFR by modern magicians) made Dee’s work available to an audience for the first time.

By 1700 the first attempt to integrate the Dee material into the canon of Western magick was published as the Treatise on Angel Magic, attributed to one "Dr. Rudd." In this volume we find some curious attributions that were passed on by early Enochian authors, such as attempts to mix Goetic and Enochian spirits. While there is some overlap between Enochian and Goetic practitioners, the two systems in fact have nothing to do with each other. That did not stop Rudd, though, from creating his own versions of implements such as the seven Ensigns of Creation that added Goetic spirit names to Dee’s designs. His Table of Art is also an odd synthesis of Dee’s Holy Table and other magical containment structures of the period.

The most famous system of Enochian magick was developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century. The Golden Dawn system was influential enough that for much of the twentieth century it was what everyone thought of as Enochian magick. Aleister Crowley’s version was derived from the Golden Dawn version and similar enough that it was essentially a dialect of the system. But in the 1970’s and 1980’s Enochian magicians started going back to the original sources, most of which were maintained by the British Museum. Today these documents are available as online scans, making Dee’s original work more widely available than ever before.

What I am going to be discussing today is the original system of Great Table attributions as revealed to Dee and Kelley. The Great Table should not be confused with the Holy Table. The Holy Table is the term for Dee’s altar table that held the seven Ensigns of Creation, tin talismans representing the seven ancient planets, and the Sigillum Dei Aemeth, a wax disk engraved with names and lineal figures on which a scrying device called the shewstone was placed. The Great Table, on the other hand, consists of four quadrants also called the Watchtowers, grids of 12 x 13 squares formed from the letters of the Angelic language. The four quadrants are bound together by a “black cross” of additional letters, creating a single large 25 x 27 grid. This image can be found on the cover of Mastering the Great Table (and at the top of this post --SMS--).

This rendering has some key differences from the Golden Dawn version of the Great Table. First, the most obvious difference is that the Golden Dawn broke the Great Table up into four tablets, each representing one of the four quadrants. Dee’s diagram does not show this sort of division, as in the diaries the Great Table is rendered in full as a single diagram. In the Golden Dawn system, each of these tablets is divided into four sub-quadrants, so that the Air angle would be divided up into Air of Air, Fire of Air, Water of Air, and Earth of Air. This is nowhere to be found in the Dee material. The original function of the sub-quadrants is to encode the names of angels and demons with various powers, but those powers do not fall along clear elemental lines.

Next, the original color scheme used by Dee was as shown here on the cover of my book – red, white, green, and black rather than the Golden Dawn elemental colors of yellow, red, blue, and black. More importantly, the concept of “elemental sub-angles” is not represented at all. This particular innovation was made by the aforementioned Dr. Rudd, who tried to equate the sub-quadrants to the sixteen signs of Geomancy – which do follow the element-of-element pattern) – in the Treastise on Angel Magic. From the standpoint of the original Dee diaries, the element-of-element arrangement by sub-quadrant is completely spurious.

Finally, there is a difference in the relative position of the four quadrants with respect to the four directions. I use the Tabula Recensa arrangement from 1587 in my own work, which is the final version of the Great Table that appears in the diaries and the arrangement shown above. There is some controversy about it, however. In 1587 Dee and Kelley were trying to work out the various inconsistencies in their version of the Great Table, a painstaking and frustrating process. Kelley finally went off to scry on his own and finished the work, resulting in the 1587 version. Some magicians contend that this final version should not be used because it was completed by Kelley on his own rather than in Dee’s presence. While I can see the point of that argument, to some extent it hinges on the notion that the Enochian system was a sort of con job perpetrated upon Dee by Kelley. Were that the case, it would be one of the most magically effective cons in history.

The reason that the Enochian system remains popular today is simply that it is quite powerful compared to most other magical systems. I have a hard time seeing how Kelley could have made up all the material given the degree of consistency the diaries show unless he was cribbing from and memorizing pieces of some other grimoire source that has since been lost. No evidence of such a text has ever been found and I doubt that it ever existed. Furthermore, even if it did, my contention would still be that Recensa is the best version of the Great Table to use – if we posit for the sake of argument that Kelley had a source from which he was memorizing, since once on his own he would have referred back to the text and corrected his memorization errors.

Taken as a whole, the Great Table encodes the names of the following classes of spirits:

The Four Kings

• Rulership of the Four Elements

The Twenty-Four Seniors

• Knowledge and Judgment in Human Affairs

The "Kerubic" Angels

• Mechanical Arts

• Transportation

• Natural Substances

• Secret Discovery

The "Lesser" Angels

• Medicine

• Gold and Precious Stones

• Transformation

• Living Creatures

The Cacodemons

• Medicine

• Gold and Precious Stones

• Transformation

• Living Creatures

Each quadrant of the Great Table is ruled over by a King and six Seniors. The Seniors are conjured to obtain “knowledge and judgment in human affairs,” and while Dee’s diaries assign no particular powers to the Kings I have found them quite effective for practical elemental operations. Each of the sixteen sub-quadrants is divided by two controlling names that appear in the shape of a cross. The four letters that appear above the horizontal arms of this cross represent a class of four angels that the Golden Dawn system refers to as the Kerubic Angels. The sixteen letters that appear below the horizontal arms form the names of a class of four angels that that Golden Dawn system refers to as the Lesser Angels. Combined with letters from the Black Cross they also form the names of a class of eight demons that Dee called the Cacodemons.

In general, the powers of the Cacodemons correspond to those of the Lesser Angels but in negative or destructive terms. For example, the Cacodemons corresponding to the Lesser Angels of Medicine are conjured to cause diseases. The Cacodemons of Gold and Precious Stones are a bit of an oddity here, in that the Angels of Gold and Precious Stones are conjured to find ores and natural resources in the ground, while the Cacocodemons “bring you the money, coined.” I will be presenting an evocation ritual for these cacodemons at EnochiaCon in November, which probably will ruffle a few feathers. But the truth is that I have had great success with these entities in terms of, for example, increasing the value of investments.

In addition to the elemental attributions of the four quadrants, the spirits of the sub-quadrants also do have sub-elemental attributions, but in the Dee system these are figured quite differently than in the Golden Dawn system. Reading the names below the horizontal arms of the cross from top to bottom for each sub-quadrant, the first row is attributed to Air, the second row to Water, the third row to Earth, and the fourth row to Fire. Therefore, the individual Lesser Angels and Cacodemons have elemental attributions above and beyond those of the quadrant in which their names appear – but not according to the element-of-element sub-quadrant arrangement.

These attributions have many practical applications – for example, if you wanted to cast a healing spell for mental illness, you might want to summon only those Angels of Medicine corresponding to Air (mental activity), Water (emotional activity), or perhaps both depending upon the nature of the illness. It is not clear from the Dee diaries that the same sub-elemental relationship holds for the Kerubic Angels, but it is logical to think that it might as those angels are conjured in groups of four in a specific order.

Even though the Golden Dawn terms “Kerubic” and “Lesser” imply some sort of hierarchical arrangement, it is not clear that such a distinction exists within Dee’s Enochian spiritual hierarchy. Both groups have four-letter names, implying that they exhibit approximately the same degree of intelligence and coherence. The Cacodemons, on the other hand, have three-letter names, implying that they are beings of less complexity with less innate intelligence. I have found this to be the case when working with them; while the more coherent angels are better at discerning the intent of a particular charge and more adept at navigating obstacles to the manifestation of a spell, the Cacodemons are far less so. They can bring a great deal of power to bear, but they also are extremely literal-minded and have only a limited ability to navigate changing circumstances.

Few authors discuss working with the cacodemons. This is in part because Dee left no conjurations for them, in part because the Golden Dawn magicians and Aleister Crowley ignored them, and in part because they represent negative aspects of a system that already has a reputation for being both powerful and dangerous. My suspicion is that Mathers and Wescott of the Golden Dawn, just like John Dee himself, most likely avoided the cacodemons on the grounds of trying to distance themselves from anything resembling “black magick.” The angels did tell Dee not to work with them, but I do not see that as a general prohibition. Dee was a very pious Christian, and I suspect his psychology was not up to working with anything "evil."

Crowley was more adventurous in his magical practice, but as he received his Golden Dawn training directly from Mathers he was likely taught little about them. They merit only a brief mention in Liber Chanokh and the full method for constructing their names is not even included in the text. On the other hand, I have personally found that working with them is no more dangerous than working with the other Enochian entities. Last year I gave a talk on “The Enochian Apocalypse” – the idea that Enochian magick will literally end the world – and treated it as the ridiculous assertion that it indubitably is. Over the years various superstitions have circulated in the magical community regarding working with the Great Table and Enochian magick in general.

Supposedly working with Enochian magick is particularly dangerous to one’s psyche, such that a higher percentage of people working it encounter mental health issues than do individuals working with other systems. It should be kept in mind that nearly one person in four will encounter mental health issues and that about one person in twenty (~4.7%) will be diagnosed with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, considered the two most serious mental illnesses, at some point in their lives. Even given these statistics, though, verifiable “Enochian meltdown” stories are quite rare. This suggests that these tales are little more than urban myths, and that most people will never encounter anything of the sort.

For the practice of Great Table evocations I use the same temple setup and tools as I do for Heptarchial magick. Some modern authors have argued that none of the tools are required for working with the Watchtower angels, but I have found that they behave just like the Heptarchial entities in that regard – you can evoke them with a minimal temple setup, but the more you have the better it works. The general Enochian temple setup involves the Holy Table, rendered here and laminated, the Sigillum Dei Aemeth which is placed in the center, and a changeable red/green silk cloth to cover it. You can also add four smaller Sigillums under each leg of the table if you have the right kind of table and twelve banners bearing the Enochian names of God forming a circle. A more minimal setup, such as what I am using today will work fine. An important tip I like to give is that you can go ahead and start Enochian work with a makeshift temple setup, even if it does not include everything made to spec as laid out in Dee’s diaries. As you improve your setup you will generally get better results, but it is a mistake to put off experimenting until you have everything perfect.

When working with the Great Table the angels are generally summoned in four groups, one from each direction. Dee’s conjurations seem to include the assumption that rather than summoning individual angels, the magician instead should conjure all the Angels of a particular class to accomplish a magical goal within their sphere of influence. So, for example, each quadrant of the Great Table has four Angels of medicine allocated to it, and to cast a healing spell you conjure all sixteen of them and then deliver your charge. This another difference from the Golden Dawn Enochian system, which often works with individual entities.

The most effective position from which to conjure one of these groups is to stand across the Holy Table from and facing the direction to which the group is attributed. So, to conjure the Angels of medicine of the east you stand west of the Holy Table and face east, to conjure those of the south you stand north of the Holy Table and face south, and so forth. This sets up a line of magical attention that crosses the center of the Sigillum Dei Aemeth and then reaches out to the angels being summoned. By moving in a clockwise direction as you conjure each group, a sort of magical vortex is set up in the center of the Sigillum that serves as a manifestation point for the angels.

This method of working requires some preparation if you plan on using Great Table talismans with your temple setup. You should stand upon the appropriate talisman when reciting a particular conjuration, and since in a standard Great Table operation you need to summon angels from all four directions, you will need to have four talismans for each operation and they will need to be laid out on the floor of your temple such that you can step onto each of them in turn as you go around your Holy Table.

0. Preparation

Set up the Enochian temple to the best of your ability. Wear the Enochian ring, robe, and lamen, and set up the banners around your working space if you have them available. Stand to the west of the Holy Table facing east. If you choose to use them, the talismans for the angels you will be summoning should be placed on the floor at each of the four directions.

1. Opening the Temple

Open with the Star Ruby and continue with the Star Sapphire. The final Qabalistic Cross for the Star Ruby is omitted and the Star Sapphire is performed up through the four hexagrams to encapsulate the rite. Use the signs of LVX with the Star Sapphire for practical work and the signs of NOX for mystical work.

2. The Preliminary Invocation

For Great Table operations a new preliminary invocation replaces the Oration to God that is used in Heptarchial workings. Dee called this new invocation the “Fundamental Obeisance.” It calls upon the twelve names of God that rule over the four quadrants of the Great Table. These are the same godnames you would draw on the banners if they are part of your temple setup.

3. The Angelic Keys

The Angelic Keys appropriate to your operation follow. You always begin with the First Key for an evocation and the Second Key for an invocation. Alternately, if you and a partner are acting as Magus and Scryer, Magus intones the First Key and Scryer intones the Second. For the Kings and Seniors this is sufficient. Otherwise, the Magus intones four additional Keys depending upon the type of operation, each to the appropriate direction.

Angels of the Mechanical Arts, Angels of Medicine, Cacodemons of Medicine	3rd Key East, 4th Key South, 5th Key West, 6th Key North
Angels of Transportation, Angels of Gold and Precious Stones, Cacodemons of Gold and Precious Stones	7th Key East, 8th Key South, 9th Key West, 10th Key North
Angels of Natural Substances, Angels of Transformation, Cacodemons of Transformation	11th Key East, 12th Key South, 13th Key West, 14th Key North
Angels of Secret Discovery, Angels of Living Creatures, Cacodemons of Living Creatures	15th Key East, 16th Key South, 17th Key West, 18th Key North

These attributions for the Keys are completely different than the Golden Dawn order and are based on the structure of the Great Table as outlined in the Dee’s diaries and the process by which the Keys were received. I have experimented with this order for many years and have found that it works the best of every version that I’ve used. Further discussion of the rationale behind this arrangement can be found in Mastering the Great Table.

For the four Kings, who we will be conjuring, only the First Angelic Key is necessary. This is because they are “top-level” entities that are not attributed to any of the sub-quadrants within their relative domains.

4. The Conjurations

Beginning in the west facing east, step onto the talisman and recite the conjuration for the eastern angels of the class you are summoning. These can all be found in my book. Move to the north facing south, and repeat the conjuration for the southern angels. Move to the east facing west, and repeat the conjuration for the western angels. Move to the south facing north, and repeat the conjuration for the northern angels. Then return to the west facing east to deliver the charge.

5. The Charge

Deliver the Charge to the angels or cacodemons that you have personally composed, remembering that they can be quite literal. This is especially true of cacodemons, whether due to their hostility or simply their general stupidity. You should always write up your charge ahead of time. Include a set of injunctions – what you want the spirit to do – and limitations – what you want the spirit not to do. If you want five thousand dollars within one month, your charge should be something like this:

I call on you to bring me the sum of five thousand dollars within one month (injunction), without causing harm or damage to myself, my loved ones, or my property (limitation).

This rules out certain courses of action to avoid “monkey’s paw” type situations in which you get what you asked for, but with some terrible downside. Even when working with angels a little caution still goes a long way. You should always use a time limitation as well so that the spirits know not to pursue courses of action that will lead to the end you want, but over too long a span to be useful.

6. Closing the Temple

Perform the License to Depart. As with the Heptarchial Kings and Princes, Dee does not include a formal license to depart for the Great Table angels, so I use my own.

7. Finish with Star Ruby Qabalistic Cross.

This completes the operation and closes the temple. Now I’m going to go ahead and do it.

1. Star Ruby omitting final QC

2. Star Sapphire to “Filia et Pater…”

3. Fundamental Obeisance

O Almighty and Omnipotent MAD, Lord and Creator of the universe, I, [Your Magical Name], devoted worshipper of the Highest, most earnestly invoke and call upon your divine power, wisdom, and goodness. I humbly and faithfully seek your favor and assistance to me in all my deeds, words, and thoughts, and in the promotion, procuring, and mingling of your praise, honour, and glory. Through these, your twelve mystical Names: ORO, IBAH, AOZPI, MPH, ARSL, GAIOL, OIP, TEAA, PDOCE, MOR, DIAL, HCTGA, I conjure and pray most zealously to your divine and omnipotent majesty, that all your Angelic spirits might be called from any and all parts of the universe through the special domination and controlling power of your holy Names. Let them come most quickly to me. Let them appear visibly, friendily, and peacefully to me. Let them remain visible according to my will. Let them vanish from me and from my sight when I so request. Let them give reverence and obedience before you and your twelve mystical Names. I command that they happily satisfy me in all things by accomplishing each and every one of my petitions, if not by one means, then by another, goodly, virtuously, and perfectly, with an excellent and thorough completeness, according to their virtues and powers, both general and unique, and by your united ministry and office, O God, Amen. So mote it be.

4. First Angelic Key

OL SONF VORSG, GOHO IAD BALT LANSH CALZ VONPHO, SOBRA Z-OL ROR I TA NAZPSAD GRAA TA MALPRG. DS HOL-Q QAA NOTHOA ZIMZ OD COMMAH TA NOBLOH ZIEN: SOBA THIL GNONP PRGE ALDI DS VRBS OBOLEH GRSAM: CASARM OHORELA CABA PIR DS ZONRENSG CAB ERM JADNAH: PILAH FARZM ZURZA ADNA GONO IADPIL DS HOM TOH SOBA IPAM LU IPAMIS DS LOHOLO VEP ZOMD POAMAL OD BOGPA AAI TA PIAP PIAMOL OD VAOAN*. ZACARE CA OD ZAMRAN ODO CICLE QAA ZORGE, LAP ZIRDO NOCO MAD HOATH JAIDA.

I reign over you, sayeth the God of Justice in power exalted above the firmaments of wrath, in whose hands the Sun is as a sword, and the Moon as a through-thrusting fire which measureth your garments in the midst of my vestures, and trussed you together as the palms of my hands: whose seats I garnished with the fire of gathering, and beautified your garments with admiration to whom I made a law to govern the Holy Ones and delivered you a rod with the Ark of Knowledge. Moreover you lifted up your voices and swore obedience and faith to him that liveth and triumpheth whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be which shineth as a flame in the midst of your palace and reigneth among you as the balance of righteousness, and truth: move, therefore, and show yourselves: open the mysteries of your creation: be friendly unto me: for I am the servant of the same your God: the true worshipper of the highest.

5. Conjuration of the Kings

O you great and mighty King of the [Direction], powerful and faithful to the omnipotent God of our ministry, in the name of the same God, one in three, I say to you, [King], through the divine Names by which you are particularly bound, the Holy Names of God [Name of God 1], [Name of God 2], and [Name of God 3], I, [Your Magical Name], a faithful servant of the our omnipotent God, amicably, earnestly, and confidently demand and beseech you that you appear within this Table of Art and Sigil of God, and thereafter attend to my commands. I command you to appear, to perform, and to complete, goodly, plainly, intelligibly, and perfectly, according to your Virtue, Power, and Office, and according to the capacity of your Ministry, entrusted and committed to you by the almighty God, by these Holy Names [Name of God 1], [Name of God 2], and [Name of God 3]. Through these sacred Names of God [Name of God 1], [Name of God 2], and [Name of God 3], Amen.

The King of the East is BATAIVAH, conjured by the names ORO IBAH AOZPI. The King of the South is RAAGIOSL, conjured by the names MPH ARSL GAIOL. The King of the West is EDLPRNAA, conjured by the nam,es OIP TEAA PDOCE. The King of the North is ICZHIHAL, conjured by the names MOR DIAL HCTGA.

6. Charge

BATAIVAH, RAAGIOSL, EDLPRNAA, ICZHIHAL, I hereby charge you to act through the medium of these stones held throughout this room. You will open the minds of all holding these stones to the comprehension, understanding, and fundamental beauty of the Enochian system of magick and enable them to wield this magick with natural proficiency. You will accomplish this without causing any injury particularly to their minds but also their bodies, and without causing any misfortune to befall them or any of their loved ones. I charge this by the names ORO IBAH AOZPI, MPH ARSL GAIOL, OIP TEAA PDOCE, and MOR DIAL HCTGA. So mote it be.

The stones mentioned are small pieces of glass obtain from a craft store. Everyone in attendance was given one of these stones at the conclusion of the presentation.

7. ARARITA ARARITA ARARITA with Rosy Cross, then sign of I.R.

8. License to Depart

You Angels of Light, I, [Your Magical Name], by the power of the True, Almighty, and Living God, I hereby bid you to depart and accomplish your appointed tasks, in the service of my True Will and to the Glory and Honour of our aforementioned True God to whom you owe loyalty and obedience. I, [Your Magical Name], hereby free the forces constrained, focused, and directed during this operation, that they may go forth and work their various powers upon the manifest universe, for thus is all True Magick and Perfect Power born. By the power of my True Will here embodied by the Magical Name [Your Magical Name], AMEN. So mote it be.

9. Star Sapphire from Mulier with “Omni in duo…”

10. Final Star Ruby Qabalistic Cross, then "APO PANTOZ..."

The angels and cacodemons of the Great Table augment the Kings and Princes of the Heptarchia Mystica with a whole set of additional powers to expand the scope of your magical operations. This basic outline of the practice should allow you to begin working with it right away, without much of the complexity introduced by the “Neo-Enochian” systems such as those of the Golden Dawn, Aurum Solis, and others have been inspired by Dee’s diaries and the remarkable magical system contained within. This process is covered in much greater detail in my book Mastering the Great Table, which is available from Pendraig Publishing and at my vending table for the rest of the weekend. The Great Table entities are powerful and effective for both practical operations and theurgic work, and as such can transform and improve all aspects of your life.