Are the Ninety-One Enochian Governors Angels or Parts of Earth?

The document and the later label

The British Library identifies Liber Scientiae Auxilii et Victoriae Terrestris within Sloane MS 3191, an autograph volume in Dee’s hand. Its first part occupies folios 14r–31r and its continuation folios 52r–80v. Dee’s heading dates his collection of the work to 2 May 1585 at Kraków. The intervening folios hold De heptarchia mystica. The same bound volume therefore contains the Keys, this book, and the sevenfold work in distinct sections.

“Ninety-one governors” is now a common discovery phrase for this material. It can make every seven-letter string sound like a named angel with an independently documented office. The older title speaks of earthly knowledge, aid, and victory; the scheme also involves divisions of earth and figures said to rule them. Transcriptions, translations, and modern handbooks may label the columns differently, so the popular phrase can obscure which kind of name a table actually records.

Three things a modern table may merge

First is the name assigned to an earthly part in a specific textual witness. Second is the governing relationship the document proposes, including higher figures and groupings. Third is a later occult author’s way of extracting a name or making a sigil from a lettered table. They are related topics, but a printed “governor” roster may combine them into one line without showing what came from Dee’s book and what came from later interpretation.

Christopher Whitby describes thirty Aethyrs and ninety-one earthly parts, with the first twenty-nine groups holding three parts each and the last four. That account supports a count and grouping. It does not settle a disputed spelling, make a drawn character authentic, or prove that every named part corresponds to a present-day political boundary. The ninety-one display names reproduce the 1912 printed table, while the comparison forms come from a 2010 reconstruction. Neither column is a diplomatic transcription of Dee’s autograph.

Worked comparison: LIL’s three governors and TEX’s four make ninety-one parts

The first and last rows expose the arithmetic behind the familiar total. In the 1912 Liber Chanokh table, LIL heads OCCODON, PASCOMB, and VALGARS, the first three names in the printed sequence. Every group from LIL through RII follows that three-name shape. Twenty-nine groups of three account for eighty-seven positions. TEX then breaks the pattern with TAOAGLA, GEMNIMB, ADVORPT, and DOZINAL at positions 88–91. The exceptional fourth name under TEX is therefore necessary to the total: 29 × 3 + 4 = 91. It is not an extra spirit accidentally appended by a modern list.

That worked count also shows why “ninety-one governors” is only a convenient label. LIL and TEX are order names in the thirty-part framework; the seven-letter strings sit beneath them in a later printed column headed “Names of Governors.” Whitby’s account describes ninety-one earthly parts grouped beneath thirty Aethyrs. A compact modern table can place order, part, and governor on one line, but the categories still answer different questions. OCCODON is first in the 1912 governor column; “part 1” is its ordinal position in the larger arrangement; LIL is the name of the group above it.

The final group is the useful control case. If a reconstruction gives TEX only three rows, it has either omitted DOZINAL or changed the ninety-one-part structure. If it moves DOZINAL into a new thirty-first group, it has altered the thirty-Aethyr scheme. If it presents all four names but assigns each a modern country, the count remains traceable while the geography adds a separate interpretive layer. Checking LIL and TEX together therefore tests the whole roster more effectively than recognizing one famous name in isolation.

Why the same governor may have different names

A seven-letter name can differ in spelling or order between Dee’s autograph, a later copy, and a modern table. A column may identify an earthly part, a ruling figure, or a character derived from letters; those are not interchangeable descriptions. Modern lists sometimes smooth these differences into one standardized roster, obscuring what the earlier book actually contains.

Elias Ashmole made a later copy, now Sloane MS 3678, and later books reshaped the material again. That copy is a separate witness to the names and their arrangement. Neither the manuscript nor a later table establishes that a named entity exists outside the text or that invoking one has a predictable result.

Records to consult

1. British Library · Sloane MS 3191 ↗Dee autograph, date, and the two separated Liber Scientiae folio ranges.
2. British Library · Sloane MS 3678 ↗Elias Ashmole’s later copy of Sloane MS 3191.
3. Christopher L. Whitby · John Dee’s Actions with Spirits, vol. 1, pp. 141–142 ↗University of Birmingham thesis describing the thirty-Aethyr, ninety-one-part scheme and its uneven final group.
4. The Equinox I:7 (1912) · Liber Chanokh, pp. 239–243 and Plate X ↗Public-domain printed witness for all ninety-one governor names, their Aethyr groups, and the illustrated Great Table paths.
5. The Equinox I:8 (1912), p. 125 ↗The printed thirty-name order used for the locator, a later witness rather than the autograph.
6. Teresa Burns and J. Alan Moore · 91 Enochian Governors appendix (2010) ↗Modern Great Table reconstruction used only for the explicitly labeled alternate spellings in the concordance.

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