Sloane MS 3188 contains the early conferences that Dee recorded between late 1581 and May 1583. The third book is identified in a modern edited contents list as the account of the seven Ensigns of Creation. Its three consecutive actions on 28–29 April 1582 make the sequence possible to verify without pretending that every figure in later books was already fixed in the first session.
- 28 April 1582
- First sign, then six more in a later action
- 29 April 1582
- Seven Heptarchic tables and related names
- Witness type
- Early conference manuscript
Two actions on 28 April
The twelfth action lists Michael as appearing and the first of seven signs as revealed. The thirteenth action is also dated 28 April, later that day, and introduces the other six. The two entries describe successive events rather than a single finished picture. Their sequence shows when the seven first enter this record; it does not settle how a later artist rendered every line or letter.
Peterson’s edited contents place these actions within the third book of the early conferences. The British Library catalogue identifies the surviving volume as Sloane MS 3188 and gives its broader date span. Neither the volume description nor a modern redraw resolves every mark in the original folios. Small differences in spelling or line shape can matter when comparing later copies.
What changes on 29 April?
The fourteenth action, dated 29 April, reports seven tables of the mystical Heptarchy, describes offices, and offers a list of forty-nine angelic names extracted from the tables. This creates a common trap in short online summaries: “seven signs,” “seven tables,” and “forty-nine angels” are made to sound like synonyms. The early contents instead shows a developing sequence in which a sevenfold emblem group and a set of named Heptarchic tables are related but distinguishable.
The nearby material helps explain why later works combine the objects. Dee did not stop at a single picture: his record moves through diagrams, names, offices, and questions about use. Yet the date of one action is not proof that the complete Holy Table engraving, printed in 1659, was present in precisely that later form on 28 April 1582. The Holy Table placement guide deals with the later assembly.
Worked reading: the first Ensign changes jobs between the 28 and 29 April actions
Read the three action summaries as a sequence. In the twelfth action on 28 April, the first sign is presented before any complete set is visible in the record. Its immediate job is to open a disclosure: one talisman establishes that a series exists. The thirteenth action later that day supplies the other six, changing the first image from a singular revelation into member one of seven. Nothing has to be redrawn for its textual function to change. The surrounding entries now ask the reader to compare it with six peers rather than treat it as a complete system by itself.
On 29 April, the fourteenth action moves from the seven Ensigns to seven tables of the mystical Heptarchy, named offices, forty-nine extracted names, and a circular arrangement of those names. The first Ensign now sits behind an expanding sevenfold program: emblem, table, office, and name extraction appear in adjacent actions. That does not mean the first talisman literally becomes one of the governor tables. It means the diary changes the question it answers. On 28 April it records the arrival of a sign; by 29 April it places sevenfold signs beside an administrative structure of tables and offices.
The distinction matters when reading later composites. A finished Holy Table can make the seven small signs look as though they were designed at once as permanent furniture. The dated record preserves a more provisional logic: one, then six, then a related set of seven tables and forty-nine names. Dee’s later Heptarchic compilation gives the material a handbook form and calls the seven tables “like arms” Ensigns of Creation. That later wording consolidates the sequence, but the diary still reveals the steps by which a lone figure acquired a place in a larger sevenfold machine.
From dated notes to a later handbook
Dee’s De Heptarchia Mystica in Sloane MS 3191 is a later manuscript compilation. The British Library assigns that work to folios 32r–51r in a volume that also contains the Angelical Keys and Liber Scientiae in other folio ranges. A passage in the related Compendium asks what the seven tables “like arms” are and receives the answer that they are ensigns of creation. This is evidence for Dee’s later arrangement and terminology, not a reason to erase the sequence in MS 3188.
The early book and later handbook answer different questions. The first shows a report unfolding by action and date; the second shows how Dee organized material for reference. Their sequence helps explain why later seven-sign illustrations can resemble one another yet differ in details. The manuscript and print comparison follows those changes into later images.
Sources and witness limits
- British Library · Sloane MS 3188 ↗The catalogue identifies Dee’s early conference books, 1581–83. It does not authenticate a modern reconstruction of an individual ensign.
- Mysteriorum Libri Quinque · contents and dated actions ↗Joseph H. Peterson’s copyrighted edition identifies Liber III and the actions of 28–29 April 1582. Its edited prose and diagrams are not reproduced.
- British Library · Sloane MS 3191 ↗The later Dee-hand volume includes De Heptarchia Mystica at ff. 32r–51r, distinct from the earlier Sloane MS 3188 conferences.
- Dee · Compendium Heptarchiae Mysticae, edited text ↗A later Dee compendium calls the seven small tables ensigns of creation and distinguishes their role from the central Sigillum. Consult folio markers in the edition.
Reported angelic speech is treated as a historical claim in Dee’s record, not as a verified account of an external event.