Making the Enochian Tools: A Course in Building What You Work With

Why Enochian work asks for tools made by hand

Enochian magick is unusual among magical systems in how much it asks of its tools. Many systems can be worked with a few general implements, and the rest can be improvised. Enochian work, as it was received by John Dee and Edward Kelly and as it has been practised since, calls for a specific set of implements, each with its own form, its own markings, and its own place in the working. A magician who tries to work the system without them soon finds that the workings refer to tools that are not in the room, and the work stalls at the point where a tool should be.

That is why a course in making the tools is not a craft extra, added to Enochian study for those who happen to like making things. It is part of the study itself. Making a tool teaches you what the tool is for, in a way that buying it or reading about it cannot. You learn its proportions by measuring them. You learn its markings by drawing them, slowly, and correcting them when they are wrong. You learn its place in the working by building it in the order the system gives, and by seeing how each piece relates to the pieces around it.

This article is about that making: what the tools are, why each one matters, and what a magician gains by building them rather than acquiring them ready-made. It is written for a practitioner who is already drawn to Enochian work and who wants to understand the tool-making course before deciding whether to take it.

The tools, one by one

The course explains how to make each of the Enochian tools, and the list it gives is the spine of this article, because it is also the spine of the system. First, the Great Table, or Tablets: the great tablet that holds the elemental tablets together, and that gives the whole system its map. Making it is an exercise in order itself. The tablets must be laid out correctly, letter by letter, and a single misplaced letter is not a small error. It is a wrong map, and a wrong map will mislead every working that uses it.

Next, the Table of Practice: the smaller table on which the working itself is done, the surface that holds the tools of the operation in their places. Then the Enochian ring, worn by the magician in the working, and the Enochian banners, which mark the space and the powers invoked in it. Then the wax Sigil Dei Aemeth, and four small Sigil Dei Aemeth seals: the great seal, made in wax, with its smaller counterparts for particular uses. Then the Golden Talisman, the Kings' and Princes' seals, and the Ensigns of Creation, each with its own form and its own function in the system.

That list is long, and it should be. Enochian work is a system, not a single rite, and its tools form a set, not a collection of unrelated objects. Learning to make them one by one, in order, is learning the system one piece at a time, with your hands, rather than trying to hold the whole of it in your head at once and hoping it stays there.

Making as study

There is a difference between knowing about a tool and knowing a tool, and making is what bridges it. When you make the Great Table, you learn the arrangement of the tablets because you have laid them out yourself, and you have corrected your own errors. When you make a seal, you learn its characters because you have drawn them, and you have noticed where your hand wants to simplify a character that must not be simplified. When you make the ring or the banners, you learn their proportions because you have measured them, not because you have read a measurement in a book.

Making also teaches patience, which Enochian work requires in large amounts. A tool made in a hurry will show the hurry in its lines, its measurements, and its finish, and a magician who cannot slow down enough to make a tool properly will struggle to slow down enough to work the system properly either. The making is therefore a test as well as a lesson. If you can make the tools with care, you have already learned something essential about the work they belong to.

That is also why making your own tools changes the workings that follow. A tool you made yourself is not a stranger in the room. You know how it was made, you know where its imperfections are, and you know what it is for, because you learned its purpose while you were building it. A bought tool can be excellent, and there is nothing wrong with buying tools, but a made tool carries a different kind of familiarity, and familiarity is part of what makes a working steady.

Materials, measurements, and the discipline of getting them right

Enochian tools are particular about materials and measurements, and the course, by teaching how to make each tool, must necessarily teach that particularity. Wax for the Sigil Dei Aemeth is not interchangeable with any other material, because the seal's form and its making belong together. The tablets must be correct in their letters, because the letters are the system, not decoration on it. The ring, the banners, the talisman, and the seals each have their own requirements, and learning those requirements is part of learning the system.

A useful habit, when making any of these tools, is to work slowly, to check each stage before moving to the next, and to keep a record of what you did: the material used, the measurements taken, the errors found and corrected. That record is not bureaucratic. It is the same record-keeping discipline that serves every other part of magical work, and it is what lets you make a second tool better than the first, or repair a tool that has been damaged, without starting from nothing.

Do not rush the making in order to get to the workings sooner. The workings will wait, and they will be better for the waiting, because they will be done with tools you understand. A magician who skips the making in order to work faster has not saved time. They have borrowed it, and the debt will be paid in workings that stall for want of a tool that is not in the room, or that is in the room but is wrong.

Where the tools belong in the working

Each tool has a place, and learning the places is part of learning the system. The Great Table gives the map. The Table of Practice gives the working surface. The ring marks the magician. The banners mark the space. The Sigil Dei Aemeth, the Golden Talisman, the Kings' and Princes' seals, and the Ensigns of Creation each take their part in the operation, in the order the system gives. A course that teaches making, tool by tool, teaches those places naturally, because you cannot make a tool properly without learning where it goes and what it does there.

That is why the course is best taken as a sequence, not as a set of separate craft projects to be picked from at random. Make the tools in order, learn each one's place as you make it, and by the end you will have not only a set of tools, but a working understanding of how they fit together. That understanding is the real product of the course. The tools themselves, fine as they are, are the evidence of it, not a substitute for it.

Keeping a record, and knowing when to stop

Keep a short record for each tool you make: date, tool, material, measurements, errors found and corrected, and what you learned about the tool's place in the system. That record will serve you later, when a tool needs repair, when a second set is needed, or when a working refers to a tool whose purpose you have half-forgotten. A record written at the time of making is worth far more than a memory reconstructed months later.

Do not try to make every tool in a single sitting, or in a single weekend, in the hope of finishing quickly. Make them one at a time, properly, and let each one settle before beginning the next. A set of tools made in haste is a set of tools that will need remaking, and remaking is slower than making properly the first time.

How to make the Enochian tools course

This course explains how to make each of the Enochian tools, including the Great Table and Tablets, the Table of Practice, the Enochian ring, the Enochian banners, the wax Sigil Dei Aemeth and four small Sigil Dei Aemeth seals, the Golden Talisman, the Kings' and Princes' seals, and the Ensigns of Creation.

If you want to learn to make the Enochian tools in this way, this is the course I offer: How to make the Enochian tools course, $216 CAD. View the product

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