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The Complete Enochian Dictionary

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The Complete Enochian Dictionary BOOK NOTICES 523 of childrenwith languageproblems could be in- Adgt upaah zong om faaip said 'Can the wings terpretedas casting doubt on it. of the windsunderstand your voices of wonder'). An interestingand unusualfeature of B's ap- In his 49-page introduction,L traces the his- proach is her emphasis on the importanceof tory of Dee's linguistic corpus, obtained by prosodic abilities. She offers arguments,which means of his 'skryer' or medium, EdwardKel- all special language teachers should consider, ley. He also describes the writingsystem, illus- that attentionshould be focused on the melody tratedwith facsimiles from manuscripts, and the and rhythmof speech from the very beginning. ways in which Enochian resembles (or differs Over-all,this is a fine book, superiorto most from) languagesrelevant to Dee's experience: of its competitors. [DALE E. ELLIOTT,Califor- 'The21 lettersof Enochianare ... almostexactly nia State University, Dominguez Hills.] the minimumrequired to write Englishwithout any ambiguity'(47), and in both its phonology and grammarEnochian is 'thoroughlyEnglish' (41). There is a minimumof critical in the The Enochian A analysis complete dictionary: book, apparentlybecause it is not aimed at a dictionary of the Angelic language scholarly market [althoughL is an Australian as revealed to Dr. John Dee and linguist,specializing in languagesof PapuaNew Edward Kelley. By DONALD C. Guinea-Ed.] L's chapter, in fact, is entitled LAYCOCK.London: Askin, 1978. 'Enochian: Angelic language or mortal folly?' His conclusion is that 'we still do not know 272. Pp. whether it is a naturallanguage or an invented Dee (1527-1608) was 'mathematicianand language'(19), and that no one can be dogmatic AstrologerRoyal to Queen Elizabeth I, author about the matter (63). People involved in the of the main introductorytextbook on mathe- occult-e.g. members of the Churchof Satan matics of his age, and innovatorof many of the (62), among whom Enochian has long been navigationalaids which enabledthe Elizabethan used-will undoubtedlyfind this book helpful. explorers to discover the New World'(7), who It is, however, not withoutinterest to linguists. 'exercised a powerful intellectualinfluence on I was, for example, pleased but not surprised the greatest minds of the time' (19), and whose to find some data that mightbe glossolalic (33). collection of over 2500 books and manuscripts Of widerinterest is the fact that Dee's activities on 'mathematics,magic, alchemy, philosophy, are clearlyrelated to intellectualconcerns of his cryptography,classical literature, geography, day with Primitive,Universal, and NaturalLan- and the qabalah'(17) was one of the most im- guage(for which see PaulCornelius, Languages portant of the day. His obsessive search for in 17th and early 18th century imaginary voy- knowledge utilized magical as well as rational ages, Geneva: Droz, 1965). It was widely be- means: 'His avowed aim was to establish con- lieved, for example, that Enoch, the antedilu- tact with the angels, to discover that knowledge vian Biblical characterof Genesis, had written which was not to be had either from books or many importantbooks. There are interesting from experiment' (11). Communicationsfrom things here for those studyingthe ethnography the angels were naturallyexotic. of writing, language and religion, calligraphy, This book represents the results of analysis and cryptology. of Enochian, a set of angelic communications Althoughthis book may have been meantfor which is amenable to study because Dee pro- the serious studentof the occult, it undoubtedly vided explanationsof pronunciationalong with representsa great deal of serious work. L ap- free translations.Most of the book (175 pages) parentlyeven submittedthe EnochianCalls and consists of an 'Angelic-English'dictionary (e.g. some Latin, Hebrew, and English texts to a abraasa, abraassa, aberaasasa, abra 'provide, computer analysis of letter frequencies per provided') preparedby Laycock, followed by thousand (58). [WILLIAMJ. SAMARIN, University an edited version of the Enochian Calls (e.g., of Toronto.] This content downloaded from 142.150.192.8 on Thu, 26 Mar 2015 16:19:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions.
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