The Four Watchtowers

The 48 Gates of the astral cities - The Great Table

The center-piece of enochian angel-magic is the big letter-square, named the Great Table. The 48 gates of the cities are graphical abstracted in this table. It is divided by the so called Black Cross into four divisions. These four squares are labeled watchtowers. Each of this watchtowers allows access to twelve of those cities, in which various angels reside. Before these angels can reach into our physical world, the watchtowers have to be opened first. Looking at the Great Table you cannot deny a striking similarity to the New Jerusalem, which is being divided by four rivers. The New Jerusalem is described in Revelation, Chapter 21:

11: Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;
12: And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel:
13: On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
14: And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
15: And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof.
16: And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal.
17: And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel.
18: And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass.
19: And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald;
20: The fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst.
21: And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.
22: And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
23: And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
24: And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.
25: And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.

In SL 3919 you can find two diagrams, drawn by John Dee, showing his ideas and thoughts to this idea of a city.

The left diagram shows the arrangement of the twelve tribes, as they are being described in Numbers. The right diagram shows the arrangement of the tribes as the angels dictated it. The names of the angels are those of the guardian angels of the various hebrew tribes. Also there are numbers in the diagram, that are implying the circular movement around the diagram, beginning in the eastern direction. John Dee commented on this diagram that it would show the modern arrangement of the tribes, after the diaspora took place. Tyson compares the Great Table with a city-map of the New Jerusalem. There are 42 roads (the dividing lines that are forming crosses) - in each subquadrant are ten and two of the Black Cross sums up to twelve for each quadrant. At the ends of each of this lines are the gates to a total of 84 gates. There are 28 outer gates, which is the number of the moon's houses. It is interesting to note that on Mondays the seances were much more efficient then on any other day. The Monday is holy to enochian angel-magic. The Great Table is self-similar in its layout, because in each quadrant of the Great Table you can see the overall layout in small of the Great Table repeatet.

This diagram shows the Great Table in the middle, circular surrounded by the twelve divine names of the quadrants (or the elemental tables). Here the Great Table symbolizes the terrestrial plane, which is located nearby the lunar sphere. The ring stands for the physical universe, visible and invisible, in its glorious manifestation. This squared circle appears several times in enochian angel-magic. In Kelleys Vision of the Round House it appears, as well as in the great vision of the watchtowers, where it appears as a kind of mandala and as an illustration to the thirty Æthyrs. In the qabalah the fall of Adam and Eve is a metaphoric analogy and far from being anything historical or to be understand literally. At the moment when they were expelled from paradise the flow of time began, the experience of the time-space illusion within a physical body took place. Since that time the human being of light is at least partially affected by the law of cause and effect, being incarnated in the human-time-space-illusion (HTSI). Before that they were without a body, pure energetic beings, not knowing anything about time and space. In kurdic tradition the corporeal existence appeared late in the creation process and evolution of beings. The watchtowers - which are angels themselves in fact - thus keep the universe in its place and are the guardians (watchers) of the HTSI. Opening them offers non-corporeal beings from beyond the HTSI to enter the time-space continuum - and, of course, to leave it, too. Within the HTSI and in particular on Earth guardian angels are distributed over the whole planet that have a special guarding function for the region, they are watching over. These 92 spirits of air you can find on the Great Table, too. Nalvage comments on those spirits:

"There are 30 Calls yet to come. Those 30 are the Calls of Ninety-one Princes and spiritual Governours, unto whom the Earth is delivered as a portion. These bring in and again dispose Kings and all the Governments upon the Earth, and vary the Natures of things with the variation of every moment; Unto whom, the providence of the eternal Judgement, is already opened. These are generally governed by the twelve Angels of the 12 Tribes: which are also governed by the 7 which stand before the presence of God. (Meric Casaubon: "True and Faithful ...", Pg. 139f.)

The original Great Table, according to the angel Ave

The Great Table was transmitted on a Monday, the 25th June in the year 1584. Three years later the angel Raphael gave a corrected version of the Great Table, in which the watchtowers are arranged different and some letters are corrected. It is a matter of taste which version you are using in your work. Because Kelley mixed up some things in 1587, Tyson thinks that none of these two tables are the actual table. His version of the Great Table is remarkable, and I share Tyson's opinion on this. Here I show you the original table. The green letters are inverted in the original manuscript, the bold black ones belong to the Black Cross, blue and red ones mark the various crosses in the subquadrants.

The reformed version of the Great Table, according to the angel Raphael

Maybe you know this version better then the original one of Ave. It is the version which is utilized since the Golden Dawn magicians discovered it and developed their advanced system of enochian elemental-magic. It was dictated on the 20th April of 1587 by the angel Raphael. Kelley already had his aversions against the angels growing because of the angelic doctrin they transmitted and the never ending exhausting sessions that brought him to his limits. Rapheal corrected many letters in the reformed table. In modern versions of the Great Table you sometimes can see more then one letter in a square, showing all known possibilities. In the original documents this usually is not the case, with one exception in Dr. Rudd's manuscript - but this version did not have influence on the Golden Dawn because it was unknown in their time and only recently discovered.

The cover of Sloane 307 shows another version of the reformed table with some changes in the letters, too. The watchtowers are arranged as in the reformed table. Some variations of the letters are quite interesting, as well as two specialities of this table. It has two double-letters: "yl", "Æ" and a singular Q. It is not possible to determine whether these variations are errors or changes dictated in later times by the angels. The beginning letters of the gouverneurs are quite different to the other tables, too.

On 20th. June in 1584 Kelley received the most beautiful vision, regarding the Great Table. According to this vision John Dee issued a golden talisman to be manufactured, which is still preserved today and can be seen in the British Museum. The four watchtowers are shown there as towers with one window and a semicircular gate. Besides the watchtowers the talisman shows the most important angels, represented by their ranks and numbers, arranged circular in the talisman similar to a mandala. An angel of the eastern quadrant can only operate in this particular quadrant, an angel belonging to the northern quadrant only operates in the northern quadrant and so forth. This inevitably lead to a problem in relating the cardinal points to the various quadrants. Dee asked the angel Ave how this relation to the cardinal points should be done in practical terms. The angels brief and cryptic reply was: "The East and West, in respect of your poles." — So we have more then one possible solution to achieve this. The first one requires a longitudinal meridian, which defines an eastern and a western hemisphere. Maybe this meridian was located at Jerusalem. The Great Table resembles the New Jerusalem, so it could be a not too far fetched assumption to locate the meridian there in Jerusalem. Much more practicable is the second solution, which uses the magician himself as center-point of relation, an elegant and consequent idea. The talisman and Casaubons representation of it are side-inverted to the visions datas. I do not think that this was an misinterpretation or mistake of the gold-smith or Casaubon, but the correct orientation.

The angels also transmitted sigills, representing each quadrant of the Great Table. Ave the angel drew four clothes, that symbolized the directions. A black one for the north, a green cloth for the west, a white and a red for the south and east. The revealed table was made of raw clay. Two legs of the table rested on earth and two ended in the air, not touching any ground. On the upper left side a big "T" appeared, with four rays of light on the horizontal line, which is symbolizing the eastern quadrant. The second sigill on the upper right side is showing a isosceles cross which is the symbol of the southern quadrant. From Kelleys perspective at the lower right side the third sigill showed up. It was taken from the banner of creation of the planet mercury, from the lowest row in the second column. It symbolized the western quadrant. The last sigill appeared as a little round smoke, as small as a pin-head. It symbolizes the northern quadrant. These four symbols the angel Ave called "The sigills of the Table of the Earth".

As an other part of the Great Table the letters of the Black Cross, arranged as the Table of Unification, were dictated. The Table of Unification is made from the letters of the three gouvernours of the tenth Æthyr Zax: Lexarph, Comanan and Tabitom. The beginning L of the first name is being omitted, thus the Table of Unification looks like this:

e	x	a	r	p
h	c	o	m	a
n	a	n	t	a
b	i	t	o	m