The Third Call imagines rule as a circle bearing twelve kingdoms. The precise later Air-tablet placement cannot contain the text’s larger vision of time and government.
- Number
- Third of eighteen fixed forms
- 1912 text
- The Equinox I:8, pp. 106–107
- 1912 assignment
- Air tablet and Air of Air
Twelve kingdoms and successive time
In the printed English Third Key, the speaking voice describes itself as a circle whose hands bear twelve kingdoms. Six are linked to living breath, while the other six receive sharper images of death. The text then describes creatures sleeping and rising, stewards placed in twelve seats, and a span of 456 ages over which power is exercised successively. The number twelve organizes the passage’s kingdoms, seats, and succession of rule.
A hasty astrology reading might turn the twelve kingdoms into the twelve zodiac signs. The 1912 passage itself does not name those signs, and this page does not infer an astrological equivalence from the shared number. The twelve seats, sequence of ages, and alternating life and death images belong to the language of this English rendering. Its concluding appeal joins justice, truth, and the possibility of disclosed wisdom. The Call’s circle, kingdoms, ages, and judgments should be read on their own terms before assigning them a zodiacal correspondence.
Air of Air in the later arrangement
The original issue places the Third Key’s Angelical text on printed page 106 and its English rendering and bracketed attribution on page 107. The bracket names the Air tablet as a whole and its Air-of-Air angle. An Air-related spirit root also appears on the same page. This is the first of four principal tablet placements in the 1912 scheme: Water, Earth, and Fire follow with the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Calls.
Calls three through six each receive a like-with-like elemental position in the printed scheme; Calls seven through eighteen then fill the twelve remaining subangles. The Third therefore acts as both an individual text and the opening of that sixteen-position chart. This explanation reports the 1912 author’s organization. The British Library’s manuscript catalogue establishes the earlier Keys as a collection but does not supply this exact elemental table for Dee’s autograph pages.
Why the page break matters
A later ceremony separates the Second from the Third in the issue’s running order. The Third’s Angelical paragraph begins after that material on page 106, while the English rendering and attribution occupy page 107. The composite layout can make adjacent ritual prose look like part of Dee’s Key when the issue is read out of order. The Call’s beginning and end are marked by the printed headings.
The British Library assigns the forty-eight Angelical Keys to Sloane MS 3191, folios 1r–13r, and dates the group to 1584. It does not give an individual Third-Call folio in the public catalogue. The 1912 article is therefore the cited basis for the circle, kingdoms, ages, and Air-of-Air association in this guide. The editor warns that variants survive, so the 1912 Angelical typography cannot stand as a final reading.
Sources and witness notes
- British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗Autograph volume, forty-eight Keys at folios 1r–13r, dated 13 April–13 July 1584.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.