The Angelic Conferences of Dr. John Dee & Sir Edward Kelley
This project, begun several years ago, was conceived with the intention of publishing a complete and accurate record of all the “Spirit Actions” of Dee & Kelley from the original manuscripts, including the extensive tables of Loagaeth. The attitude taken by the editor was that of an earnest practitioner wishing to examine in detail the angelic instructions and to reconstruct the magickal system therein contained.
Over the years, and more recently as the text was being revised from its original MS Word drafting to a rather more intricate TEI implementation, it became painfully clear that – far from being a series of heavenly visions – the Spirit Actions in fact represent a rich and imaginative work of creative writing by Edward Kelley, with direction and additional input from John Dee, based on their combined knowledge of earlier sources such as Liber Juratus, Agrippa, the Almadel, Soyga, Reuchlin, Trithemius, the Bible and others. Indeed, whilst there is much that is intriguing and worthy in the manuscripts, it is rather difficult to discover therein anything original.
Other elements, such as the unconvincing “apparition” of a crystal lens or the obvious leeway for trickery in the “burning” and subsequent “recovery” of the manuscripts, lead one seriously to doubt the sincerity of Kelley, however imaginative the conferences may have been, and however much Kelley was possessed with the gift of visualising the contents of his imagination. It is clear, nevertheless, that Dee was a willing participant in this endeavour, volunteering parts of the system such as the Sigillum Dei and the angelic alphabet in its cursive form, overriding Kelley's doubts and confessions and overlooking anything that suggested the visions were anything but genuine. A nuanced view of the material as a whole is that Dee was deceived by ambition as much as Kelley was by imagination.
The inaccuracy of the prophecies and the inconsistent, contradictory nature of the received instructions – not to mention the fact that, due to lacunæ and a lack of explanation of key points, it seems impossible to reach any clear comprehension of the system in its entirety – give the material only very limited value; and it has become increasingly clear that the project’s ultimate aim – to reconstruct the magickal system – could never be adequately realised, even if it had the value claimed for it by later magicians.
Moreover, the extremely time-consuming effort and attention to detail required to publish the manuscripts with all their code-tables verbatim et literatim, in the absence of any remaining purpose (except a vaguely academic one), and with the project dragging ever on (with at least a couple more years left before completion), turned it from being a fulfilling and entertaining endeavour to an extremely tiresome bore.
It has been decided, therefore, to cease work on the project; and it is hoped that this does not come as too much of a disappointment or inconvenience to those who were waiting on it.