LIN’s forty-nine-square table repeatedly defeats the decipherment it invites. Crowley’s 1911 image belongs to the twenty-second Aethyr, not the Angelical count of the Calls.
- Aethyr number
- 22 of 30
- Earthly-part positions
- 64–66
- Crowley’s 1911 chapter
- Printed pp. 32–37
Dee’s Liber Scientiae is the earlier manuscript setting. The Equinox I:8 (1912) supplies the spelling and number used here. Crowley’s Vision and the Voice (1911) supplies the much later vision described below.
Where LIN belongs
The Equinox I:8 lists LIN as number twenty-two. The grouped earthly-part scheme described by Whitby places ordinal positions 64–66 beneath that number. These positions help readers locate LIN within a thirty-name structure; they do not identify the table seen by Crowley as a diagram copied from Sloane MS 3191.
The British Library’s Sloane MS 3191 catalogue distinguishes Dee’s Claves Angelicae from Liber Scientiae by folio ranges. That distinction matters here because the chapter’s spectacular table and its statements about Calls occur in a twentieth-century vision, not in a simple statement of Dee’s manuscript inventory.
Sources: The Equinox I:8 (1912), p. 125 ↗ · Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1, pp. 141–142 ↗ · British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗
LIN governor names: ordinals 64–66
The Equinox I:7 (1912) groups three names under LIN on printed page 242. These are the spellings in that later table; the comparison labels below identify only forms that differ in a modern Great Table reconstruction.
- 64 OZIDAIASame spelling in the 2010 comparison appendix
- 65 PARAOAN2010 comparison forms: PAROAN, LAXDIZI
- 66 CALZIRGSame spelling in the 2010 comparison appendix
A table that resists being read
The chapter opens with a tablet of forty-nine squares encircled by many kinds of angels. The seer says each letter seems to contain another forty-nine letters, yet any letter he focuses on becomes indistinct. An angel hides the tablet with a wing and plays a pipe made of seven metals; multicoloured light and large luminous drops follow.
A speaker within the vision describes nested sets of forty-nine and says that the Calls are forty-nine. Later, after an episode called samadhi in the printed text, the seer again confronts the table and says its apparent letters are wrong or merely shadows. This is a narrative of unstable access to a symbol, not a reproducible transcription of a forty-nine-by-forty-nine Angelical manuscript.
Sources: The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 32–37 ↗
The “forty-nine Calls” problem
The claim that there are forty-nine Calls is voiced inside Crowley’s LIN vision. Whitby’s account of the earlier Angelical material instead describes eighteen fixed invocations and a further form applied to each of thirty Aethyrs. Count that repeated form once and the familiar total is nineteen; count its thirty applications separately and the total is forty-eight. The page’s source labels preserve that difference.
LIN closes after the table draws the seer toward itself and then sends him back, with a Bou Saâda date line of November 28, 1909. The return and the admitted inability to read are central features of the printed chapter. Readers researching the Calls should use the separate Keys and Calls guide rather than converting the voice’s visionary arithmetic into a manuscript fact.
Sources: The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 32–37 ↗ · Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1, pp. 141–142 ↗
Source editions and page locators
- The Equinox I:8 (1912), p. 125 ↗
- Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1, pp. 141–142 ↗
- British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗
- The Equinox I:5 supplement (1911), printed pp. 32–37 ↗
The 1911 link opens a scan of the original supplement at PDF page 34, corresponding to printed page 32. The 1912 issue link is a modern reconstruction. This page paraphrases the original printing and does not treat the visionary report as independently verified.
Continue reading the Aethyrs
- 21. ASP The older name and earthly-part position beside a later report of wind, a throne, and speech that the seer cannot reliably hear.
- 23. TOR A changing sequence of figures in Crowley’s vision, kept separate from Dee’s name and earthly-part structure.
- 24. NIA A warrior becomes a blue rose; a later visionary speech and a lettered wheel belong to Crowley’s account.
- 25. VTI A visionary lion and its strange tail, followed by a printed note about the difference between heard speech and perceived meaning.
- 10. ZAX How the famous Choronzon episode entered the later literature of the tenth Aethyr.
- 2. ARN A long vision with false starts, biblical speculation, a white rose, and a late burst of images.
