Seven Ensigns of Creation: Manuscripts, Print, and Image History

A compact witness chain

Sloane MS 3188 locates the early actions of 28–29 April 1582. A later Dee-hand compilation, De Heptarchia Mystica in Sloane MS 3191, returns to the sevenfold material and its relation to a table. Ashmole’s copying and descriptions are later again. The 1659 Relation is an edited printed book. These layers belong to a connected tradition, but their dates, forms, and purposes differ. Casaubon’s engraving presents a whole tabletop scheme that the first diary actions do not show as one finished object.

The Great Table belongs to another later part of Dee’s angelic archive. It can appear in the same modern “Enochian” image search as the Ensigns, but it is not a variant spelling of the seven signs. The Great Table sources guide names that separate sequence. Likewise, the seven weekday kings and princes have their own Heptarchic table; an image of one name list is not automatically an image of all seven Ensigns.

The 1659 engraved table

The Holy Table image shown in this collection comes from Casaubon’s 1659 Relation. It is a seventeenth-century engraved presentation of a sixteenth-century design, not a photograph of Sloane MS 3188 or Dee’s lost painted table. Its borders, central seal, and seven smaller signs appear together in one composed picture. That arrangement made the design easier for later readers to reproduce, but the engraving does not reveal the original paint or material surface.

The later Oxford marble table follows the printed engraving, according to the History of Science Museum. It shows the continuing life of the design after Dee rather than the survival of Dee’s furniture. The early manuscript, printed plate, and marble copy therefore document different stages: reported instructions, published visual synthesis, and a later material reconstruction.

Worked comparison: the first Ensign in the 1582 record and the 1659 table

In the twelfth action of 28 April 1582, the first Ensign is meaningful because it arrives first. The record then gives the other six in a separate action later that day. Its position is chronological: sign one begins a sequence whose full sevenfold form is not yet on the page. The early record can establish the order of disclosure while leaving open how a finished tabletop eventually placed every sign.

Casaubon’s 1659 engraving gives the first Ensign a different kind of position. It belongs to a simultaneous composition of outer lettering, central Sigillum, and seven smaller signs. A reader sees the whole arrangement before reading any one element. Sequence has become space: the sign that led a dated series is now one component around a center. The engraving’s strength is precisely this synthesis, but that strength also makes it poor evidence for the pauses and revisions visible in the earlier actions.

The comparison changes how the image is interpreted. The print assembles several instructed parts into one table, whereas the diary preserves their reported sequence. Neither witness is simply an incomplete or cleaner version of the other. Reading both witnesses keeps two real facts in view: the first Ensign had priority in the narrative, while the seven Ensigns later circulated as a coordinated visual assembly. A single label cannot preserve both kinds of order.

Why seven-sign pictures vary

A close view may show only the seven small Ensigns, while another image includes the central Sigillum and the outer tabletop letters. Those are different parts of the Holy Table, not seven alternate versions of a single seal. Copies can also disagree on spelling, color, spacing, and measurement. Ashmole’s account of red letters and blue lines describes a painted arrangement that cannot be read directly from the monochrome 1659 plate.

A modern reconstruction may combine details from several witnesses into one convincing object. The resulting image can teach the overall arrangement, but it is a new interpretation. The dated 1582 actions show how the signs entered Dee’s record. The Holy Table placement guide explains how the smaller signs relate to the central seal, the table, and the stone.

Sources and witness limits

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. John Dee’s Holy Table and Lamen · witness comparison ↗Peterson compares MS 3188, Dee’s compendium, Ashmole’s description, and the 1659 engraving. The page is an edited comparison, not Dee’s autograph.
6. Bodleian · Ashmole MS 1790, ff. 55r–56r, edited transcription ↗A later witness describes measurements and identifies the first ensign’s placement. Variations are reported against MS 3188.
7. Wellcome Collection · A True and Faithful Relation (1659) ↗Public-domain seventeenth-century print, used here as a later visual witness rather than a facsimile of the 1582 notebook.
8. History of Science Museum · marble copy of the Holy Table ↗Museum object history for a later copy of the lost wooden table; it cannot verify the exact form of Dee’s original plates.
9. Wikimedia Commons · 1659 Holy Table engraving ↗The already-held site image has a Public Domain Mark. Its caption identifies the printed edition, not a manuscript photograph.

Reported angelic speech is treated as a historical claim in Dee’s record, not as a verified account of an external event.