So I haven’t been posting as much of late because I decided to take the plunge and start copying Liber Loagaeth, the holy book of God’s speech (“Loagaeth” being the Enochian word for God’s speech). This is intricate and deliberate work, in which the supplicant/aspirant slowly copies tables of letters to paper. Moreover, the letters must be transliterated from English to Enochian, and furthermore must be reversed from left-to-right to right-to-left (Enochian being the mythical forerunner to Hebrew).
This is a very time-consuming task, for the tables are 49×49, meaning each side of the page has 2,401 letters. Poor John Dee & Edward Kelley were to get the whole thing done in a few months, and they missed their deadline. I started August 11th (but began studying this in early July, when Mars had barely been in my ninth house) and have only completed two of the 49 “leaves” (front and back) of the book.
This was the third of the major components of the Enochian system (the other two being the heptarchical & watchtower/elemental systems), and “the measure” of the other two (i.e., the other two were not as vast). The task of gebofal (or at least of copying Liber Loagaeth) preceded the revelation of the Enochian calls, and for that reason I have decided to take it on. I suspect, though I cannot yet prove, that this part of the system opens one up to revelations like the calls, and moreover that this revelation is unique to each individual. I haven’t quizzed another who has done this task, so if it’s something you’ve already done, let me know. Regardless, it would be of interest to have multiple means of contacting the divine, so that if the Aethyrs or the calls do not resonate, another means can become available. Perhaps I’m too naive on the subject to say for sure.
A couple of further notes. This task is reminiscent of the paradigm of medieval scholars, who took the view that the ancient knowledge has become corrupted and that we humans must try to recover it as best we can. Surely this is the case when I am working off of old copies of difficult-to-read scans! I have found three and am trying to reconcile them. Two come from Ceremonial Magick Musings: Dee’s original (Sloane MS 3188–though Ashmole’s copy, Sloane 3189, is also there), a third copy (Sloane 2599). The fourth is a PDF version from AOM. The full tables are easier to read in 2599, but there are still smudges in there (though not as bad as the frequent fading in the Dee/Kelley copy). Having started, I keep on finding errors, including the handwritten first leaf taken down by Dee not quite matching the individual letters he’s previously recorded (Dee himself notes this and I literally only had to read the previous page and take down the letters individually pronounced by the angel—oops!). Even my copy will have mistakes, I’m sure. So, I decided to use white-out along the way because, hey, I’m human, and this will be a human product, even if originating from the divine.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that I’m having internal subtle body unlockings; the energy flows more freely and blissfully: a divine feeling indeed. This task reminds me of The Magicians; SPOILER:
Penny loses his hands and is given a new pair, but can’t cast with them, so he turns to a professor, who agrees to fix them in exchange for Penny doing manual tasks, including untying a massive knot of ropes the go to the ceiling, and turning a huge table into sawdust using only a simple file. On the show, the goal was to unlock magic stored within those objects; in this case, I believe there is subtle energy unlocked by A) humbling oneself to do what seems to be a tedious task, and B) there is magick in the words that make up Loagaeth itself. To that end, I try to pronounce the words mentally as I go, and when I come to the 49-day task, I intend to recite/vibrate the text book aloud. Leitch has instructions on his website, which I’m not linking to because I suspect it’s going into a second edition of his Enochian Grimoire.
I’ll keep you posted; in the meantime, here are the half-leaves I’ve finished (1A still needs correction). Note that 1A and most of 1B are actually several pages of just handwritten text (not actually a table), so they don’t conform to the single-page format.
Enochian Today 
One thought on “Starting Gebofal: copying Liber Loagaeth”