Tuesday 4 December 2012

Occult Texts 1

The Books of Enoch & the Enochian Tradition

Books of Magic
These entries will be focussing upon a selection of books which deal with esoteric and occult subjects. Many of them are academic, attempting to explain or describe various anthropological systems of belief, especially the ‘hands-on’ kind of belief which is commonly referred to as ‘magic’. Some of these texts are deliberately abstruse and difficult to understand; for some authors there was an over-arching necessity to be obscure in order to avoid criminal or political repercussions. Other works are ironic, spoofs intended to poke fun at various social issues, but still sufficiently cloaked in mystery to pass muster. Others are deliberate frauds meant to fool the gullible and unwary. Finally, some of these works are religious in nature, expounding an exoteric approach to religious dogma which is often felt to be at odds with accepted material, or even schismatic, compared to the orthodox pronouncements of canon religious lore.

It is wholly appropriate for adventurers to stumble across any of these works in investigating the actions of the Mythos and their minions in the course of an adventure. Many individuals interested in the occult will obtain and prowl through an endless stream of published material before finding the essential kernels of truth that they seek. Having a handful of these texts cluttering up a suspect’s bookshelf can deflect an investigation, give hints as to the true nature of the mystery surrounding various events (due to the presence of harmless books which warn against or describe other, more abominable, works for instance) or reveal the potential suspect to be a mere dabbler rather than a ‘hardcore’ Mythos villain.

Many of the books in these sections - however bizarre they may seem - are real and obtainable through local libraries, bookstores, or from online publishers, booksellers and websites; others are fictional, only appearing in the fanciful tales of various writers...and not only those penning Mythos stories. Where a work is fictional, I have noted the source after the description in order to avoid confusion.

Grimoires

The grimoire is a workbook of occult lore and practises. It represents the accumulated knowledge of an occult worker over their mystical career and can include recipes, ritual instructions, tables of lore pertaining to magical creatures, herbal lore, or astronomical knowledge (to name only a few areas). Some authors’ works gain notoriety for their potency and are passed on, mainly in hand-copied, manuscript form, before ever seeing print. These authors amass a ‘grimoire tradition’ wherein their works are added to by later commentators, or spliced together with other material to form a long, ongoing line of literary attribution, more often spurious than not. Some of the earliest magical writings have, in this way, survived and remain in circulation to this day, often in very surprising places...

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The Biblical patriarch and prophet Enoch was controversial from the word ‘go’. His comments in Old Testament times – mainly to do with codifying the actions of angels before the Flood – relegated his history inevitably to the Apocrypha, although a redacted version did finally make it to the Bible. In later times, his books were uncovered by archaeologists digging in Qumran, as part of The Dead Sea Scrolls cache, but before this, his supposed writings appeared in the First- and Second Centuries AD and formed the basis of what would become known as ‘goetic lore’, or mystical knowledge concerned with the summoning of angelic and demonic entities. In Islamic texts he is referred to as ‘Idris’ and the creation of books is credited to him. The standard texts of Enoch are as follows:

The Book of the Watchers;

The Book of Parables of Enoch (aka. The Similitudes of Enoch);

The Astronomical Book (aka. The Book of the Heavenly Luminaries);

The Book of Dream Visions (aka. The Book of Dreams); and

The Epistle of Enoch.

A sixth book - The Book of Giants – was discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls and some feel that it belongs with Enoch’s works, between the Book of Watchers and the Book of Parables; however the jury is still out concerning its applicability.

Enoch’s other claim to fame was that he was Noah’s great-grandfather, and a large body of lore has arisen based on the assumption that Enoch gave his Books to Noah for safekeeping during the Flood. Some retailers of this knowledge assume that the Archangel Raphael brought medical knowledge from Enoch’s Books to Noah, whilst others claim that the angel Raziel etched the astrological and astronomical gist of the Books onto a sapphire (why not?) and handed this to Noah who kept it in a gold box in the Ark. According to others, the Books of Enoch contained the very plans that Noah used to build the Ark itself. Of course, the fore-thinking Enoch obviously did not anticipate Noah’s sons, which is where his best-laid plans swiftly came unravelled.

Legend has it that Ham (or ‘Cham’, as he was known to the Romans) spent some time alone with Enoch’s Books unbeknownst to Noah, and etched their knowledge onto stone and metal plates, which he then buried, returning for them after the Flood waters subsided. The lore in which he was particularly interested was that which taught divination through the summoning of angels and demons. In the aftermath of the Flood, Noah’s sons were supposed to have given rise to the ‘families of Man’: Japhet gave rise to the Europeans; Shem gave rise to the Africans and, tellingly, Ham was the father of the pagan Asian peoples, including the sorcerous Egyptians.

The Treatise of Shem

After the Flood, Noah’s son Shem, like his brother Ham before him, apparently dabbled in a little bit of textual transcription. Inheriting the etched sapphire containing the writings of Enoch, given to Noah by the angel Raziel, he supposedly wrote down all of the astrological and astronomical information which it contained. This notion gave rise to a text entitled the Treatise of Shem which had great currency in the First Century BC and into the First Century AD.

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