Hitchhiker's Guide to Religion
Esoteric

Edward Kelley

The Scryer

Esoteric Scrying, the reception of Enochian, alchemical performance, social manipulation
Attribute Value
Combat
ATK 50
DEF 40
SPR 70
SPD 80
INT 75
Rank Spirit Medium / Alchemist / Possible Fraud
Domain Scrying, the reception of Enochian, alchemical performance, social manipulation
Alignment Ambiguous / Esoteric
Weakness Almost certainly a charlatan in his alchemical claims; mutilated ears (probably from a fraud conviction in his youth); dies imprisoned in Bohemia, ~1597, possibly while attempting escape
Key Act Scryed for John Dee from 1582 to 1589, receiving the Enochian language, the Calls, the Watchtowers, and the Aethyrs. Whether by genuine spirit communication, deliberate invention, or some mixture, his transmissions are the entire foundation of Enochian magic
Source Dee's diaries; Casaubon, *A True & Faithful Relation* (1659)

Edward Kelley is the puzzle at the center of Enochian magic. Dee was a deeply learned man and a careful researcher; Kelley was, by every external account, a con artist who had previously been convicted of forgery (the explanation for his cropped ears). Yet what Kelley produced through the obsidian mirror — delivered in real time, often backwards letter-by-letter through a complex grid system — has an internal coherence that is exceptionally hard to fake. He may have been a genuine medium, a brilliant fraud, or a man caught in something he himself did not understand. Modern scholars and modern occultists disagree. The 1587 episode in which “the angels” demanded the two men share wives — and which Dee tearfully complied with for one night — has been read as everything from a deliberate manipulation by Kelley to break the partnership, to a crisis of authentic but corrupting contact. After that incident the partnership effectively ended. Kelley died in Bohemia in disgrace; Dee returned to England to find his library plundered and his life in ruins.


1 min read

Combat Radar

ATK DEF SPR SPD INT
← Back to Esoteric