I finished reading "John Dee and the Empire of Angels" by Jason Louv, and wow. This book took me in a direction I did not expect, and contextualized Western occultism in a really coherent and important way.
There are actually three books within this volume. The first examines the life of John Dee and his political contributions to England in the early 1500s, as well as the overall cultural and political context within which he existed. The second examines and summarizes the angelic conversations themselves, and provides some analysis that links them to the overall apocalyptic eschatology that was described in the introduction and first book. The third book examines Dee's contemporaries and influences, including the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and Crowley & Parsons, and analyzes especially the latter two's relative roles within this overall cosmology and influence in Western occultism.
Overall, this creates an historical narrative that deeply contextualizes a significant amount of modern Wicca, witchcraft, neopaganism, and Western occultism. It doesn't aim to define these, of course, but it explains the steps through which our modern view of spirituality and its practice were shaped. While at first I thought I might be reading an interesting and yet somewhat distant and irrelevant historical narrative of this interesting occultist from the Rennaisance, I found myself instead reading of the events and people that shaped the "modern" esoteric schools, as well as dominant Christian eschatology in America and how that influences our politics.
Louv does a great job of playing fair with historical figures: contextualizing them in a nuanced way, outlining their faults and being critical of the cults of personality they've built over the decades while not disregarding their important role or influence over history.
I would dare say (and I wouldn't say this about many things) that most neopagans or self-proclaimed occultists should absolutely add this to their reading list and try to read and comprehend the entire tome.
Phew. Yeah! I'd love to. First, I'm going to preface this by saying that this is something I'm still processing since I just wrapped up the book in its entirety. There are multiple theories about Dee & Kelly's (his scryer) angel contacts, not all of which are mutually exclusive with one another. I won't get into these too much here, Louv provides a pretty good overview, but in my personal belief Kelly wasn't a total con man and the two did contact somethings. I do believe that it's nearly impossible (perhaps someone much more spiritually practiced than myself would say otherwise, but this is just my take) to fully extricate ones own... filters, I guess, from the communications. The communications did seem to vary based on Kelly's unstable and changing emotional state, and the language with which the angels spoke to Dee and Kelly is somewhat different than the language the supposedly same angelic beings used to speak to Crowley when he scryed the thirty Aethyrs, for example. But, in both cases, some kind of clear communication is happening with supernal beings. Now, I personally don't subscribe to the Abrahamic idea of "angels" versus "evil spirits", "devils" or "demons". Supernal beings, I believe, are complex and manifest in ways that are perhaps beyond our moral understanding, and I think to say they all contain "good" and "evil" within them is probably an oversimplification. With that being said, whether the beings Dee and Kelly were communicating with were "angels" or not seems a little unclear. I think perhaps the manifestation as Biblical beings in both Dee&Kelly as well as Crowley's case is due to the fact that that was a manifestation and iconography/language that spoke to these parties.
With regards to the sessions themselves, they're all over the place. Dee and Kelly consistently receive seemingly contradictory doctrines and instructions, and the beings seem almost bipolar at times in their feelings about Dee and Kelly as beings. This leads me to believe that maybe the handful of named angels that were manifesting were actually a significant amount more supernal beings, manifesting as the same angels in an effort to all get their agendas heard and/or acted upon. This is purely one of my interpretations and probably has no scholastic basis.
Let me know if that's enough, too much, or if I touched on what you were looking for me to touch on!
And we do 100% paper books. There are a good amount of illustrations, as well as a small photo section in the middle (that could be probably omitted in an e-book without too much disruption of the experience, but some of the visuals of the Golden Dawn versions of the tables transmitted to Dee and Kelly are useful). Many of the illustrations are Albrecht Duhrer (I think I spelled that wrong, sorry!) woodcuts and other Renaissance/ish historical religious art depicting various apocalyptic scenes and/or biblical creatures.
With regards to what I said about Dee and Kelly receiving seemingly contradictory instructions/messaging: while one of my interpretations is that perhaps they were being contacted by various beings or deluded by imposters at times, there is also a significant amount of theory related to resolving dualities in the lower spheres of Sephiroth that do not exist in the higher planes. Put another way by Crowley: dualities that exist before the Abyss do not exist within it. If this theory is to be applied to these conversations one could argue that either the communication is contradictory simply because A) Dee and Kelly don't have the language, capacity, or understanding to reconcile self-contained dualities within pieces of communication or B) the angels or spiritual beings are intentionally creating contradictions as some kind of test, riddle, or other initiatory or vetting device.
Both of these also seem like valid possibilities, and quite frankly all three could have been occurring at different points throughout the angelic conversations. There are also other possibilities that aren't considered here, because this is probably a theoretical analysis beyond the scope of a Mastodon post 😅
Second addition:
I was raised Catholic and so while I don't currently believe in the dichotomy of "pure, good" supernal beings (i.e: what most Christians and even neopagans or magicians call "angels") and evil supernal beings, I most definitely have the contextual basis for relating to this idea. Various members of my family (despite that this is contrary to the orthodox Catholic belief that individuals who are not theologically trained cannot experience divine inspiration or contact firsthand) believe in guardian angels or that they've been contacted or guided by angels at some point in their lives.
Again, I think that if supernal beings are engaged in human affairs (and I have a lot of experience to suggest that this is at least somewhat true if not a reductive statement) some of them perhaps have the good sense to manifest as something that the people they're appearing to will welcome, understand, and listen to. With that being said, perhaps that makes these pure angelic beings real enough, there's an entire kind of paranormal conversation that could be had here but I'm not sure I'm even well equipped to have it fully.
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