Radio Liberty - Programs - Time Difference

Author and presenter Vladimir Tolts

Agent 007 - interlocutor of angels

Vladimir Tolts:

The secrets of the internal mechanism of scientific discoveries are one of the most complex and fascinating topics not only for historians of science and those who study the psychology of creativity, but also for everyone who reads and thinks, for everyone who is interested in the flow of the past into the present. Today we will touch on this topic using the example of one of the most mysterious figures in the history of science - the British translator of Euclid, mathematician and astronomer, architect and navigator John Dee.

Stephen Skinner:

"When a man like Dee claims that he speaks to angels, it makes sense to check if this is true?"

Dmitry Volchek:

The story of John Dee became one of my favorites, and I constantly discovered new reflections of it: you perceive Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” differently when you find out that Dee was the prototype of the wizard Prospero...

Vladimir Tolts:

Dmitry Volchek and historians of science in his program "Agent 007 - Interlocutor of Angels."

-Are you breathing? Are you living? Aren't you a ghost?
- I am the firstborn of the green void.
- I hear my heart beating, my blood is warming...
- Those who love calls are not dead...
- Cheeks become rosy, decay disappears...
- A mysterious exchange is taking place...
- What will the renewed look find first? -
- Trout, I see, is breaking the ice. -
- Lean on your hand... Try... stand up...
- The weathered fabric is getting denser...
- Are you too lazy to forget the green one?
- I’m ascending to the next step! -
- And can your spirit glow again?
- Fire will melt copper into gold.
- And the angel of transformation is here again?
- Yes, the angel of transformation is here again.

(M. Kuzmin, "The Eleventh Strike")

Dmitry Volchek:

The first time I saw the shadow of John Dee was when I was reading “Trout Breaks the Ice” by Mikhail Kuzmin, the best Russian poetry book of the past century. This was back in the Soviet years, Kuzmin was not republished then, and I read “Trout” almost in a typewritten copy - of course, without any comments. “ His face was covered with a slight tremor, as if there was a vivisector next to him ,” “ A man of about twenty with green eyes came out of the front room, shook my hand and said: let’s smoke .” “ And the retribution of a heavy diver gurgles from the bottom in bubbles .”... Seductive, underdeveloped poems, like a ciphergram from the other world. Only many years later did I learn about the source of this poisonous charm - Gustav Meyrink's novel The Angel of the West Window, which inspired Trout. And on the pages of this book, the Prague visionary finally met Sir John Dee and his companion, the medium Edward Kelly.

The story of John Dee has since become one of my favorites, and I constantly discovered new reflections of it: you perceive Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” differently when you find out that Dee was the prototype of the wizard Prospero; It’s worth watching Derek Jarman’s film “Angel Conversation” more than once, an interweaving of Shakespeare’s love sonnets and the music of the band Coil, and unraveling its secret code, suggested by Dee’s magical experiments. And, of course, excellent modern novels: “The House of Doctor Dee” by Peter Ackroyd (well known in Russia) and “Egypt” by the American fantasy master John Crowley, unfortunately not yet translated into Russian; it is not even possible to list everyone who has been inspired by this plot over the course of four centuries; the list is full of surprises, and in it, next to the names of Shakespeare and his contemporary Ben Jonson, the creator of the drama "The Alchemist", Genesis P-Orridge and his now defunct cult group "Psychic TV" and simpler musicians - electronic musicians "Ministry", who deftly mixed the Enochian key performed by Israel Regardie himself, can take their rightful place.

But about the Enochian keys a little later, and first about Doctor Dee himself.

Confidant of Elizabeth the First, court astrologer, Dee was the owner of the largest library in the British Empire of the 16th century - more than four thousand volumes. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, translated the works of Euclid, and wrote the famous Mathematical Preface to the first edition of Euclid in English. Cartographer, astronomer, Kabbalist, architect, navigator and secret agent of the British crown (Dee signed his reports to the Queen as 007, the witty Ian Fleming entrusted this code to his James Bond), one of the titans of the Renaissance, Dee was interested in the unknown in all its manifestations: from the exploration of North America and the study of the Quadrivium of sciences - arithmetic, geometry, chemistry and astronomy, to alchemical experiments, turning base metals into gold. Dee's talents were recognized in European capitals - Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich offered him the position of court physician, he was patronized by Stefan Batory in Krakow, Maximilian the Second in Presburg and Rudolph the Second, who was called the “king of the alchemists” - Dee spent three years in Prague, 1581-83.

Dee's union with the medium Edward Kelly marked the beginning of unique experiments, which were called Enochian, named after Enoch, the only prophet who, according to the book of Genesis, was ascended to heaven during his lifetime. Dee's task was to come into contact with the "Spiritual Beings" that is, the angels with whom - as the non-canonical Book of Enoch claims - its creator spoke. Dee’s writings and diary entries that have survived to this day represent a conglomerate of scientific research, everyday records and actual “transcripts” of conversations with angels, who entrusted him with intimate knowledge about the coming of a new eon. The first session, during which success was achieved, took place in 1581. In the <magic crystal> the medium saw the angel Uriel, who explained how to create a wax talisman (now this Seal of Emet is kept in the British Museum). During subsequent sessions, Dee and Kelly's interlocutors explained to them the method of communication with them - and conveyed the alphabet of the angelic, that is, Enochian language; Pointing to the letters outlined in the tables, the angels dictated 19 poetic texts, the “Enochian keys,” to Dee and Kelly. But communication was not limited to a purely spiritual level - according to the records that have reached us, the angels gave Dee and Kelly practical advice - what to say to the monarchs, how to plan travel, they predicted political events, such as the naval conflict between Great Britain and Spain, gave various kinds of everyday instructions, sometimes even got angry and accused their earthly interlocutors of disobedience.

The debate between skeptics and supporters of the literal interpretation of the Enochian experiments is the subject of several monographs that have appeared in recent years. Donald Tyson, a Canadian scholar of John Dee's legacy, believes that his hero perceived his relationship with the angels as a form of civil service.

Donald Tyson:

Why did the angels trust their secrets to John Dee? This question, apparently, was not asked by any of the researchers who studied his manuscripts. It is customary to either consider the words of the angels to be a conscious hoax of Edward Kelly or fantasies generated by Kelly’s subconscious during the sessions. Dee himself, as a practical person, considered his contact with angels as a reward for faithful service. He believed that higher powers rewarded him for good work and condemned him for incorrect execution of orders. God, through his messengers, gave instructions to Dee so that he would bring them to the attention of the monarchs. When Dee and Kelly turned to the angels with personal requests, they got off with empty promises or said that they did not care about the affairs of mere mortals. Dee considered himself God's chosen one, and never thought about why the choice fell on him. Kelly, on the other hand, believed that the angels were deceiving and using him.

Dmitry Volchek:

In the 70s, the English linguist Professor Donald Laycock became interested in the phenomenon of the Enochian language and prepared the first English-Enochian dictionary for publication. The author of the preface to the dictionary, British scientist Stephen Skinner, talks about this work.

Stephen Skinner:

I was friends with Dr. Donald Laycock in London in 1973-74. We were very fascinated by the story of John Dee's communication with angels. Laycock was a linguist and lecturer at the Australian National University, he specialized in the languages ​​of the peoples of Papua New Guinea and Polynesia and other real-life languages. As a result of his research, he became interested in glossolalia, a phenomenon mentioned in the Bible when prophets begin to speak in strange, previously unknown languages. So he came to the topic of Dee and Kelly, who not only spoke the angelic language, but also wrote in it and transcribed it in detail. Laycock approached Dee's work very rationally. He extracted all the words of the Enochian language from the manuscripts, and, returning to Canberra, carried out computer analysis, trying to detect syntactic coherence in them. As a result, he came to the conclusion that this language has its own syntax and grammar. Laycock believed that the fragments at his disposal were part of a larger and more structured language with its own internal logic.

Dmitry Volchek:

Can a sane scientist seriously study such a seemingly absolutely fantastic topic: “the language of angels”?

Stephen Skinner:

Dee was a man of extensive knowledge - he studied geometry, mathematics, he improved navigation equipment, and was an outstanding astronomer. He determined by the stars the most favorable day for the coronation of Elizabeth the First; many courtiers ordered horoscopes from him. When a man like Dee claims that he speaks to angels, it makes sense to check if this is true. Donald Laycock set out to determine whether the Enochian language has an internal logic, because if it exists, therefore, this language came from somewhere, there cannot be a “false language”. The ability to spontaneously invent a new language is clearly beyond human capabilities. As a result of two years of work, Donald created a complete English-Oenochian dictionary, which was published by Askin in the late 70s. Unfortunately, Don died shortly thereafter.

Dmitry Volchek:

Dee's manuscripts also contain all the rules of pronunciation. This is what Enochian sounds like, as reconstructed by Donald Laycock:

" Zacare, ca, od Zamran! Odo cicle qaa; zorge, lap zirdo noco Mad, hoath Iaida. "

“Show yourself, reveal the secrets of creation, come down to me, for I am a servant of the same God as you, truly I worship the Almighty.”

Vladimir Tolts:

Time Difference program. In today's episode, my colleague Dmitry Volchek talks about one of the mysteries of the work of the British mathematician and astrologer John Dee, who claimed that his scientific and technical discoveries, his political forecasts and everyday actions were dictated by angels.

Dmitry Volchek:

The Complete Enochian Dictionary has gone through several editions in Europe and the United States. It is used by researchers working with Dee's manuscripts at the British Museum. Does studying the Enochian language bring any benefit to linguistics, or is it nothing more than a scientific curiosity?

Stephen Skinner:

The study of any language enriches comparative linguistics - be it glossolalia or Enochian. Many researchers are also interested in the question: what information can be gleaned from the so-called “angel conversations”. For example, biographers of John Dee note that the angels predicted the appearance of the Spanish Great Armada a year before it was sent to the shores of England, they even told Dee its direction. As a result, Sir Walter Raleigh was able to prepare at Plymouth to repel the Armada. Moreover, for modern researchers, Enochian is a milestone in the study of Elizabethan English or its older variants.

Dmitry Volchek:

Can the study of the Enochian language be called simply a philological game, closed within the framework of comparative linguistics?

Stephen Skinner:

Can this be called a game? Yes, this is a kind of game within the framework of comparative linguistics. On the other hand, this is a very important and interesting part of the story. If we keep in mind the content of texts in this language, then this, rather, belongs to the field not of philology, but of theology. This raises an interesting question as to whether Edward Kelly misled John Dee by making it all up. In my opinion, this is unlikely, because Kelly simply would not have the intelligence to do it. The fact is that the angels spoke words backwards, pronouncing letter by letter from the end of the phrase. There is a version that this is a product of Kelly's subconscious. It is possible that this is true. And finally, it may actually be information entrusted by an extraterrestrial being - be it a spirit or an angel. And this is a purely theological problem.

Dmitry Volchek:

I was pleased to learn that my colleague, Radio Liberty columnist Giovanni Bensi, is interested in the theological aspects of this problem.

Giovanni Bensi:

Angel - this word sounds very tender, but we say to our loved one: “you are my angel.” In fact, this word is very prosaic; in Greek it simply means “messenger, messenger.” This is the term used by the compilers of the Greek text of the Bible, the so-called Septuagimta, in the second century BC to translate the Hebrew word "malak". Angels are messengers of God, these are those spiritual, incorporeal creatures through whom God sends his orders and instructions to people, primarily prophets. Angels do not have a body, but they have free will and can sin. The angels who sinned were cast down by God into the underworld, where they became devils and from there they lead people into temptation. This topic is practically absent in the Old Testament, but is widely treated in the New, especially in the Apocalypse (Revelation of John). But it does not specify what exactly the fallen angels sinned with. The Catechism somehow vaguely says that they indulged in pride and thereby deserved punishment. But the theme of fallen angels is widely covered in the Hebrew religious but non-canonical work, the Book of Enoch, which was lost at the end of the third century AD and rediscovered when the English scholar James Bruce discovered in the late 18th century that it was included in the canon of the Ethiopian Bible, which is why people still speak of the "Ethiopian Enoch" today. It very much says that those angels fell who fell in love with the daughters of men, that is, with women and entered into marriage relations with them. And in the canonical Old Testament there remains only a vague echo of this story, namely in the Book of Genesis, chapter six, verses one to six, this is immediately before the story of the Flood. Another pale echo of these beliefs in the Apostle Paul is the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 10, where women are recommended to cover their heads in church for the angels, that is, as if in order not to tempt them. There are dreamers who claim that in those distant times people mistook some aliens who descended to earth in their fiery rockets for angels. I don't believe it. But there is a mysterious place in the Bible - this is in Ezekiel, his entire first chapter. The prophet describes a vision: he was present at the descent to earth of something terrible and mysterious. If you read his story, then you get the impression that a person of a pre-technical civilization is describing the landing of a helicopter or, in any case, some complex aircraft using the linguistic means of his time. Whether this is true or not is difficult to say, but curiosity remains.

Dmitry Volchek:

University of Delaware professor Mario Pazzollini, a psychiatrist and neurosurgeon, became interested in the Enochian language after observing patients who claimed to have made contact with aliens from other worlds. Some of them said that they communicated with aliens in unknown dialects. Mario Pazzolini spoke about the phenomenon of inexplicable transmission of languages ​​over a distance in one of his last interviews - he died in December last year. An excerpt from the Time/Warner television show “Infinity Factory.” The questions are asked by the hosts, Genesis P-Orridge and Richard Metzger.

Question:

There is enough evidence that people see, hear, experience things that are in no way consistent with everyday reality. And the basic question is: does the brain construct these things, is it connected to neurological caches, memories, information embedded in DNA, ancestral memories, perhaps even related to pre-human living species? Or, perhaps, what is even more fascinating - the brain itself can penetrate into other times and spaces that we, it would seem, are not aware of?

Mario Pazzolini:

The main question is: can the brain construct incredible stories on its own, without external influence? And the answer to this question is, without a doubt: yes. The second question: can he receive similar stories from the outside without knowing where they come from? I think the answer will also be yes. And finally, I think there are intermediate states when different people share the same plot. In other words, can you and I get the same sensation coming from somewhere unknown - say, from outer space? And the answer we both know is the same: yes, it is possible.

Question:

Perhaps in the recesses of our consciousness we have identical memories that we are not even aware of. I remember Terence McKenna writing about the brain of a reptile that has access to psychedelic drugs. I also once had a vision that I was a lizard sitting on a stone. What does this mean from a physiological point of view?

Mario Pazzolini:

Perhaps it was a memory of a race of reptiles who were the ancient ancestors of man. Neurophysiologists have a saying that the patient lying in front of you on the couch is simultaneously a person, a horse and a lizard, and this lizard is in the lymphatic system.

Question:

Do your clinical studies of people in a state of psychosis or suffering from hallucinations give reason to talk about some penetration into other dimensions that are unknown to us?

Mario Pazzolini:

One case I find particularly remarkable. I had a patient, a 16-year-old teenager, who suffered from acute psychosis. He spoke like Schopenhauer. Then, with medications, we managed to reduce this state to the usual paranoia, which I have observed many times in other patients - the main storyline is approximately the same. But at first this boy, who had never read a book, who came from a very poor peasant family, suddenly began to speak excellent literary German - a language he did not know.

Question:

How do you explain this? Is there any clear theory about this?

Mario Pazzolini:

I don’t know, I can only say that such cases happen - people suddenly begin to speak languages ​​that they did not speak.

Question:

Thus, we cannot exclude that humans are capable of speaking extraterrestrial languages. After all, everything is interconnected, albeit at different levels. It's like particles in physics that move back and forth in time.

Mario Pazzolini:

Absolutely right. All paired particles in some sense share the same fate; they move together, even if separated by kilometers or light years. They constantly reflect each other, and these are things that simply do not fit into the system of three-dimensional space and one time.

Dmitry Volchek:

Professor Pazzolini's work is commented on by Stephen Skinner.

Stephen Skinner:

I find very interesting the opinion of Professor Pazzolini, who compared the language of the creatures recorded by John Dee, whom he called angels, with the languages ​​of aliens from other worlds. The fact is that those whom people of the Elizabethan era considered angels, modern people would rather call aliens. There was nothing actually angelic about the creatures that appeared to Dee, for example Madimi. They deceived Dee and changed their minds. I think that the parallel between aliens from other worlds and the spirits or angels with whom John Dee communicated is quite legitimate.

Dmitry Volchek:

At the end of the seventeenth century, when Dee's manuscripts were found, the experiments were reproduced. Detailed reports are kept in the British Museum.

Stephen Skinner:

Very few researchers who have studied the topics of human communication with spirits or angels use a scientific approach. Apart from Dee, few people left a detailed scientific description of their spiritual experiences. It took me about nine months to read all of his entries. The description of these sessions leaves the impression that they were conducted by highly intelligent, educated people with scientific knowledge. This makes us take them seriously. The result of the experiments, which were carried out in the 80s of the 17th century, after Dee's death, was unexpected. Immediately, what is now called the poltergeist phenomenon occurred: tapping, moaning, and furniture began to move. In our century, experiments have been carried out several times, and in the Sahara Desert they took place with extraordinary results. The experiment that was carried out in the 20s is well known. The man who reproduced the Enochian keys dreamed that a huge tree fell into the room, breaking the window. The next morning it turned out that there was no wood, but the floor in the room inexplicably turned out to be strewn with shards of glass. I believe that the records of a man of such high intelligence as Dee should be taken very seriously. There is a high probability that his experiments can be repeated with similar results.

Dmitry Volchek:

Dee actively experimented with Enochian springs in 1581-83, when he lived in Krakow and then in Prague. Czech historian, professor at Charles University Ondzej Polishensky, who studied the manuscripts of Dee and Kelly stored in the Prague archives, speaks of Prague during the time of Rudolf II, who was called the “king of the alchemists.”

Ondrzej Polishenski:

At that time, white, black and pink magic flourished in Prague. Rudolf II recognized rose magic, based on the works of the Italian scientist Giovanni de la Porta. The main task of rose magic was the development of natural resources, the transformation of base metals into noble ones and the transmutation of elements. Today, the transmutation of metals from a theoretical point of view is not a problem, but the process is so expensive that there is simply no point in doing it. But then alchemy flourished in Prague. In addition, Laterna Magica, the magic lantern, the forerunner of cinema, had already been invented, and the royal court was looking at the pictures on the wall.

Rudolf II received Dee and Kelly very cordially, and this aroused the ire of the papal nuncios, whom the king did not favor. Dee presented Rudolf with his project, in which he proposed reforming the education and upbringing system. However, Rudolf needed help of a different kind; he was looking for allies for his idea of ​​​​creating an anti-Turkish coalition, which would include Spain, Central Europe, Muscovite Rus' and Persia. Wanting to appease the influential stranger, Rudolph awarded John Dee the title of Doctor of Medical Sciences. However, Dee and Kelly did not want to fulfill the king's wishes and predict the future for him and his empire.

Dmitry Volchek:

Professor Polishensky, what do you think about Dee’s Enochian experiments - after all, they were especially intense during the Prague period?

Ondrzej Polishenski:

You see, different people have different registers of sensitivity. And hypersensitive people have visions and hallucinations. John Dee combined Christian humanism with transcendence. But I'm a historian. It is not important to me whether the Maid of Orleans saw angels; what is more important to me is that she was firmly convinced that she had to bring the king to Reims and give her life for it.

From John Crowley's novel Egypt:

The ball they were looking into was made of gray quartz, the size of a fist, and the medium peered into it so intently that he almost touched it with his nose, and his eyes slid down to the bridge of his nose: he raised his hands to the ball, protecting it - in the same way that they cover the precious flame of a candle so that it does not go out.

They labored for less than a quarter of an hour before the first creature appeared in the stone; their passionate prayers and appeals died down, and sometimes the only sound was the rustling of muslin, disturbed by the violent March wind that ruled the night. When the younger one, bending over the stone, began to tremble as if from cold, the other hugged him by the shoulders, but he could not stop trembling, and then he got up to make a fire, and at that very moment the spirit seer cried out: “Look, here is One. And here is Another.”

Doctor Dee - the elder, the owner of the stone - turned away from the fire. He felt an instant trembling, the hairs stood up on his neck, a warmth spread in his chest. He stood up, peering at where the candle flame flickered dimly, reflected from the surface of the stone and in its depths. He felt the breath of wind in the room, heard it hum softly in the chimney.

But he saw nothing, there was no one in the gray glass. “Tell me,” he said quietly, “I will write down your words.” He put down the poker, took out an old quill, and dipped it into the ink. On the sheet of paper he wrote the date - March 8, 1582."

Dmitry Volchek:

The fate of John Dee's manuscripts deserves a separate story. Dee himself, in moments of doubt, tried to burn three volumes of his notes, but, as he himself wrote in his diary, the books were mysteriously discovered unharmed in the garden under a pear tree. Dee died in 1608. He hid the handwritten books in a cedar chest, which had a second bottom. They remained undiscovered for several decades, until a certain Mr. Jones, who bought the chest for his wife, discovered them. More than half of the sheets were burned when Jones's maid decided to line the baking trays with them for baking pies. Then, when Mrs Jones was forced to flee London during the Great Fire, the chest disappeared. However, among the rescued belongings, its owner discovered the remaining manuscripts. then they fell into the hands of Elios Ashmal, a naturalist and mystic, he also managed to collect part of Dee’s diaries scattered around the world. In the 17th century, Dee's diaries were published by Meric Cosobon in a book entitled, in the fashion of those times, ornately: "The true and faithful relations that for many years remained between the great mathematician of the era of Elizabeth the First and King James, John Dee, and certain spirits." The fashion for John Dee began with the rise of esoteric societies at the end of the last century. However, it was only in 1998 that the John Dee Society, which is patronized by a group of American and English scientists (Dee’s name, by the way, is one of the languages ​​of mathematical linguistics), released a complete edition of his surviving notes. However, much remains uncollected to this day. My interlocutor, Professor Polishensky, for example, recently discovered and published part of the extensive correspondence between Dee and Kelly from their time in the Czech Republic.

The Enochian practice seems unthinkable and extravagant these days. I was, admittedly, amazed when, wandering around the Internet, I came across a lively Enochian conference. (The World Wide Web, by the way, in itself is a phenomenon no less fantastic than communication with the world of spirits). The subjects of the letters that I began to receive, having subscribed to this conference, at first seemed to me like fragments of some esoteric game - dozens of people from different countries of the world claimed that they were successfully repeating the experiments of Dee and Kelly, talking with angels. However, I soon became convinced that my correspondents were quite serious and not prone to practical jokes. A materialist, of course, will consider them dreamers, but we should not forget that Dee made many scientific discoveries based on theories that seem absurd from a rational point of view. Do his modern followers come to conclusions that can decipher the secrets of the universe? It seems that they are content only with the very fact of their penetration into the unreal world, often wishful thinking. But be that as it may, this online correspondence seems to me to be a perfect postmodern text created by a collective author; it seems that after a little literary processing, a unique work of art can be obtained, as harmonious as the music of the Coil group from the Derek Jarman film “Angel Conversation”, sounding in our program...

We would not dare to say, of course, that John Dee actually communicated with angels. But, if we transfer the Enochian plot into the cozy space of metaphor, doesn’t each of us sometimes talk with our heavenly guardian, albeit not in such a formidable language as the one that was revealed to the hero of our program?

- And can your spirit glow again?
- Fire will melt copper into gold.
- And the angel of transformation is here again?
- Yes, the angel of transformation is here again.

Vladimir Tolts:

Unlike the poet and writer, the author of today's program and my colleague on Radio Dmitry Volchek, historians of science, researchers of the psychology of creativity and other scientists whose subject of research is the subtle mechanism of discoveries and scientific insights, usually do not transfer their analysis into the cozy field of metaphor. But remaining in the usual plane of facts, their logical analysis, comparison of the intention of scientific research with its stages and final result, such attempts to comprehend the mechanism of a particular scientific revelation in many cases (the story of John Dee here is by no means unique) run into an insoluble mystery.

While Dmitry Volchek was preparing his program about the famous alchemist and mathematician Dee, I talked with different scientists in Prague and Dresden: a mathematician from Moscow and a physicist from Stuttgart, a psychologist and a philologist. We recalled a lot of scientific discoveries, their circumstances and interpretations. They also remembered Archimedes in the bath, shouting “Eureka!”, all sorts of jokes about Newton and the apple falling on him; and Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, who saw his future table in a dream; and Louis De Broglie, erroneously, as some of his colleagues believed, interpreted his own discoveries. Everyone seems to agree that discoveries are most often preceded by enormous intellectual effort and absolute concentration on thinking about a particular phenomenon. And the fact is that the forms of scientific insight are often dictated to a large extent by the realities, (including everyday ones), of the time in which this or that scientist lives. But there is no universal key here; the secret of the discovery phenomenon still remains a mystery. So John Dee’s epigones, trying to use his Enochian dictionary as a master key, seem doomed to remain unanswered. And if, like my colleague, we turn to metaphors, we can conclude that the angels of discovery talk only with the elect, marked at least by scientific grace.