The Sixth Enochian Call: Nine Spirits and the Fire Tablet

Nine spirits in a watery setting

On printed page 114, the English rendering describes nine spirits of a fourth angle, powerful within a firmament of waters. It contrasts their roles toward the wicked and the righteous, then associates them with fiery darts, workmen, courses, and comfort visiting the earth. The sequence carries both judgment and consolation. A brief search-result gloss like “Fire Call” misses the conspicuous watery setting with which the text itself begins.

The conclusion calls on the addressed spirits to hear, appear, and let their works become praise. This is the voice of the source text, not a modern claim about what a visitor can accomplish by reciting it. The numbers in the English paragraph are details of this textual witness; they do not by themselves identify a practical count of angels or a procedure. The document is best read as one entry in a numbered corpus with a distinctive internal scene.

The end of the four principal tablets

The 1912 Equinox article prints a bracketed assignment beneath the Sixth: the whole Fire tablet and Fire of Fire. With the Third through Fifth assigned Air, Water, and Earth, the Sixth completes the four primary elemental positions in that 1912 scheme. The next Call starts a different pattern: it is assigned a subsidiary angle rather than another whole tablet. That transition in the printed sequence is why six is a useful boundary for the collection’s group guide.

The Fire attribution is evidence about later reception. Its presence does not turn every image in the English text into fire imagery. In particular, the watery firmament cannot be silently removed to make the text fit a clean four-element grid. A robust reference page lets both facts stand: the English passage contains mixed imagery, and the 1912 ceremonial table gives it a definite Fire position.

Manuscript, diary, and printing

Dee’s autograph book is catalogued as Sloane MS 3191, with the forty-eight Keys at folios 1r–13r. The catalogue dates the set between 13 April and 13 July 1584; it does not assign this Sixth Call a separate date in the public summary. Casaubon published Dee’s conferences in 1659, and Wellcome provides a digitized copy of that early print. Those materials frame the recording history, while the particular English words and Fire label discussed here come from the later Equinox publication.

The edition distinction matters especially for names, numbers, and pronunciation. A claimed sixteenth-century spelling requires the autograph or a scholarly collation; the Fire of Fire assignment comes from the later printed system. The British Library manuscript record, Casaubon’s early diary edition, and the numbered 1912 Equinox comparison preserve different stages of the tradition.

Sources and witness notes

1. British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗Autograph volume, forty-eight Keys at folios 1r–13r, dated 13 April–13 July 1584.
2. The Equinox, volume I, number 8 (1912), The Forty-Eight Calls or Keys ↗Original-issue article on printed pages 99–127; the Calls begin on page 103 and the Aethyr Call ends on page 127. Its English renderings and later elemental assignments supply the summary table.
3. 100th Monkey Press, The Equinox I:8 original-issue scan and bibliography ↗Bibliographic record links a scan of the original September 1912 issue. Calls 1–18 span printed pages 103–124; the Aethyr Call spans 125–127. These printed numbers differ from PDF page indexes.
4. Wellcome Collection, digitized 1659 True & Faithful Relation ↗Public-domain early print of Casaubon’s edition of Dee’s conferences; contextual diary witness, not Dee’s separate autograph Keys book.
5. Christopher L. Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1 ↗Scholarly analysis of the manuscript books, Calls, thirty Aethyrs, and ninety-one earthly parts.

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