ball and the black obsidian mirror) upon the elaborately engraved Sigillum Aemeth (still preserved in the British Museum) which was in turn placed upon a special table inscribed with a hexagram, enclosed within a frame of Enochian letters, and supporting seven specially designed talismans, the whole insulated from the floor by a further four wax tablets, miniature versions of the larger Sigillum Aemeth. The early communications set down in Dee's Libri Mysteriorum deal with communications from Annael and Uriel, who dictated exact instructions for the engraving of the table, lamen, ring and sigils required. The third book opens with the designs for the seven talismans to be used on the skrying table, and concludes with the Tabula Collecta of the 49 angels whose invocatory modus operandi is explained in the fourth book. Dee and Kelley pressed on, skrying now as often as several times a day till the complete outline of a self-contained system of magic was obtained and set down in Dee's manuscript, De Heptarchia Mystica, so named because of the 7x7 ar^gels, whose invocations, hours, seals and sigils are described therein. Dee's description of two of these creatures will suffice to show their variety:
'He appeared in his red apparell: & he opened his Clothes & there did issue, mighty & most terrible gastly Flames of Fire out of his sides: which no mortall Eye could abide to looke upon any long while. And in the marvelous raging Fire, the word BRORGES did appeare tossed to and fro of the very flames. His Seale or Character is this. . . And by way of contrast: 'Therefore he appeared in a long purple Gowne, & on his head a triple Crowne of Gold, with a measuring Rod of gold in his hand, divided into three equall parts: in the fbrme of a very well proportioned man.'
The wax Sigillum Emeth used to support the skrying stone. (Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum).
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T'he signilicancc of these descriptions is the light they throw on l)ee's collcction ol'49 'Angclorum Bonorum', adding a Goetic
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