Aug. 31/2004

This is my own translation of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) into the Enochian language. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the LBRP, most books on ceremonial magic will have instructions. I highly recommend Donald Michael Kraig's workbook, "Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts". When I was just starting out learning ritual magic, it was like my bible. If you are able to work through all of the exercises in this book, you will be way further along than most so-called ritualists.

I have included the literal translation of the Enochian back into English for convenience. I didn't include pronunciation of the Enochian because everyone seems to have a different method. My suggestion is to investigate at least two different ways to pronounce the words and then come to some sort of working system that you find useful in your own workings.

You can work this ritual without knowledge of any other type of Enochian magic, however there are several excellent books out there on the topic. Donald Tyson, while somewhat unorthodox, gives a very readable introduction to Enochian in his book, "Enochian Magic For Beginners". There are some source books which are a must read for anyone who wants to delve deeply into this almost alien system of magic. A recomended book list can be found by clicking the appropriate link in the navigation sidebar. Further notes on this translation and an alternate "Kabalistic Cross" are included at the bottom of this page.

Kabalistic Cross:

Formulation of the Pentagrams:

Evocation of the Archangels:

Kabalistic Cross:

Notes:

For convenience, I will use the notation in Geoffrey James' "The Enochian Evocation of Dr. John Dee." to refer to specific words found in the Keys. It starts with the number of the call, a period and then the word number(s). For example, 1.60 refers to the 60th word in the first Key.

In making this translation, I tried to find each variant in the Keys of each word, and chose the most appropriate form of the word for what I needed.

The Kabalistic Cross was written using only words from the Keys. There is no word found in the Keys to denote anything similar to the Hebrew "Le Olam", so I took a section from the first Key (1.60-65) Alternatively, I created another version which isn't quite as poetic and uses a word not found in the Keys but is perhaps more practical and closer to the original Hebraic Kabalistic Cross:

Alternative Kabalistic Cross:

For the Formulation of the Pentagrams, I didn't want to simply translate the literal meaning of the Hebrew God-names into Enochian. I wanted to use actual Enochian God-names that were appropriate to the task. I didn't want to use EXARP, NANTA, BITOM and HCOMA because, as I understand it, these are simply spirits of the elements and not Godnames as such. The original LBRP called upon the highest Kabalistic world (Atziluth) for this section and I wanted to retain that aspect of the formula. That is why I used the names from the Linea Spiritus Sancti of each Elemental Tablet, also known as the "Banner Names." Dee also invokes these names in his "Fundamental Obeisance" to gain the authority to call, petition and send away all of God's angelic spirits.

For the Evocation of the Archangels, I utilized a formula often repeated throughout the Keys themselves: Address the entities, call them and then tell them why they should listen to you. The "Arise, Move and Appear" section came directly from the Key of the Ayres (30.164-167) The final part of this section was quite difficult as there isn't a word for "pentagram", and Enochian for "six-rayed-star" is somewhat cumbersome too. I decided to use more poetic terms to describe them. "Living lamps" seemed to be a good description of charged pentagrams, and also brings to mind (my mind at least) the lamps and stars in the opening of St. John's Revelation, which certainly ties into the symbology of the Keys. For the six-rayed star, since it represents the Macrocosm, I simply decided to use "the brightness of the heavens." Bringing the Archangel's attention to the pentagrams charged with the 12 divine names and the brightness of the heavens within the pillar of the magus forms the reason why they should heed the magus' call, which is why I included the word "For" in there, which is also used in this manner at the end of several keys. I decided to use the original Hebraic Archangels because they play such an important role in the original communications with Dee and Kelly.