A reader searching for “Nalvage angel” may find a diagram of the Great Table, a list of Enochian Calls, and a portrait-like description treated as though all came from one page. Dee’s record has a more useful chronology. Nalvage names himself in a conference printed on page 63 of Meric Casaubon’s 1659 Relation. In the printed April 1584 sequence he appears again with a round table marked by letters and becomes a speaker in the reception of a Call. Those are related episodes, but neither is a portrait of a historical person or proof that a visionary object survived.
- Printed witness
- Casaubon, 1659, pp. 63 and 73 onward
- Record setting
- Łask and Kraków, 1584
- Related object
- The circular Table of Nalvage
Where the name appears
The published account says Kelley saw an unknown figure clothed in a red-purple robe, standing on a white round table. The speaker identified himself by the name Nalvage. That naming occurs in the later Dee diary tradition catalogued as Cotton MS Appendix XLVI and made widely available through Casaubon’s print. The red-purple robe belongs to that reported encounter. A later session in Kraków, printed at page 73, describes white clothing and a golden rod. Treating the two descriptions as a single fixed costume erases the date and page that make each report checkable.
In a February 1584 exchange, Dee questions the apparition about the timing and scope of the coming instruction. Madimi is also recorded nearby in the printed sequence, and Dee asks her about the name Nalvage. These are statements and questions within the diary. Casaubon’s book is an edited publication of the Cotton material, while a modern online transcription is another editorial layer. Spelling and punctuation vary among the manuscript, printed page, and undated summaries; none of those variants establishes a supernatural identity. The February episode belongs to the later diary sequence, while the April material places the reported exchange in Kraków and connects it to the Calls.
Nalvage and the Calls
The April 1584 sequence gives Nalvage a teaching role. The diary describes him pointing to letters and Dee and Kelley trying to record what was indicated. It also records discussion of a Call received backward and used forward. This helps explain why later Enochian guides connect his name with the Angelical Keys. It does not mean that every modern pronunciation, color assignment, or Watchtower ritual was spoken by the figure in the sixteenth-century record.
At one point the published account shows uncertainty about a letter before it is settled in the session. A modern string can conceal that uncertainty when its manuscript, print, or transcription layer is left unstated. The episode records Dee and Kelley negotiating a specific letter inside the reported exchange, which is part of the text’s composition history. The separate Calls guide explains the counting of forty-eight Keys and the later grouping into nineteen Calls; Nalvage’s role is one documented strand of their reception story.
What Nalvage is not
Nalvage is not one of the seventy-two spirits catalogued in the Ars Goetia. He is also not a country on a modern map of the ninety-one parts of Earth. These belong to different texts and systems. He is a named interlocutor in Dee’s account, associated with a circular table of letters. His table is not the four-quadrant Great Table or Dee’s separate Holy Table. The similar word “table” has encouraged later illustrations to merge objects that the sources describe differently.
The British Library catalogue identifies the Cotton diary, and Wellcome identifies Casaubon’s 1659 printing as a distinct historical artifact. These records support the existence and date of documentary witnesses, not the truth of a reported apparition. The named session and table account keep Nalvage’s narrative role distinct from later instruction manuals.
These records document a reported experience and its later printing. They do not independently verify a supernatural being or ritual effect.
Sources and records
- British Library: Cotton MS Appendix XLVI ↗Catalogue identity for the later conference diary behind Casaubon’s printed Relation.
- Casaubon, Relation, pp. 63–69: Nalvage and Madimi ↗Printed report of Nalvage’s named appearance, the round table, and Madimi’s subsequent exchange.
- Casaubon, Relation, pp. 73–90: April 1584 sessions ↗Printed witness to Nalvage’s later appearance, the circular table, and the reception of letters for a Call.
- Wellcome Collection: A True and Faithful Relation (1659) ↗Digitized copy and bibliographic record of Casaubon’s edited printing.