The Great Table: Enochian Elemental Tablets

The Enochian Great Table is the combined diagram showing all four elemental Watchtower tablets arranged together with the Black Cross connecting them, forming a comprehensive map of the angelic-elemental cosmos of the Dee-Kelley system. Each of the four Watchtowers occupies one quadrant of the Great Table, corresponding to its elemental association: Air in the east, Water in the west, Fire in the south, and Earth in the north in the Golden Dawn arrangement, though Dee’s original assignments differ. The Black Cross that divides the table into its four quadrants yields the names of the twenty-four seniors who govern the complete elemental creation.

The Great Table presents the entire Enochian elemental cosmos at a single glance: the four elemental realms, their governing angelic hierarchies, and the central cross through which the divine unifying principle interpenetrates the creation. It is one of the most striking visual symbols in Western ceremonial magick, and working versions of it have been constructed and consecrated by practitioners from the Golden Dawn’s founding in the 1880s to the present day.

Symbolism and structure

The four Watchtowers of the Great Table each contain a twelve-by-thirteen grid of Enochian letters, giving the complete table a complex letter-matrix from which many hundreds of angelic names can be read. The Black Cross separating the quadrants is not merely a dividing line but a structural element that yields its own class of names: reading across the horizontal bar and down the vertical bar of the cross, according to specified procedures, gives the names of the six seniors of each Watchtower and, at a higher level, the twenty-four seniors taken collectively.

The seniors occupy a privileged position in the Enochian hierarchy: they are the angels most directly concerned with the governance of time and the created order, and their names carry the most general authority in working with the elemental forces of the particular Watchtower. The twenty-four seniors of the Great Table as a whole correspond to the twenty-four elders of the Book of Revelation, a connection that Dee and Kelley noted and that the angels explicitly confirmed.

The Golden Dawn added further structure to the Great Table, assigning colours to the letters of each quadrant and introducing the Tablet of Union as a fifth element placed at the crossing of the Black Cross to represent Spirit. These additions create a complete five-element system in which the Great Table and the Tablet of Union together cover all elemental conditions.

How to work with it

The Great Table is most often encountered as a diagrammatic reference rather than as a physical ritual object, though elaborately painted working versions have been made by serious Enochian practitioners. Understanding its layout is essential preparation for working with any of the individual Watchtower tablets, since the Great Table shows how the quadrants of each Watchtower relate to those of the others and how the senior angels span the whole.

For practitioners beginning Enochian study, the Great Table provides an immediate overview of the system’s scope. Spending time with the diagram as a whole, locating the individual elements, tracing the Black Cross, and identifying the seniors’ names, builds the spatial and symbolic fluency that makes active working with the calls and tablets more coherent.

In larger group Enochian ceremonies, the Great Table may be displayed centrally to represent the complete elemental cosmos, with the individual Watchtower tablets or banners at their respective quarters. The practitioner working at the centre of the space works, in this arrangement, from within the complete elemental creation as the Great Table maps it.

In myth and popular culture

The Great Table as a visual object, a large grid of letters divided by a central cross into four elemental kingdoms, is one of the more striking symbolic diagrams in Western ceremonial magick and has attracted both serious practitioners and curious observers since the Golden Dawn began working with Dee’s manuscripts in the 1880s. Painted working versions, in the Golden Dawn’s distinctive color attributions, are among the most elaborate artifacts produced by serious ceremonial magicians and have been photographed and reproduced in occult literature since Israel Regardie published his comprehensive account of the Golden Dawn system in The Golden Dawn (1937).

The Book of Revelation’s twenty-four elders, whom Dee explicitly identified with the twenty-four seniors derived from the Great Table’s Black Cross, give the diagram a scriptural resonance that Dee and Kelley took seriously and that subsequent Christian-influenced practitioners have found meaningful. The connection between Enochian cosmology and Revelation’s heavenly imagery was not incidental to Dee; he understood himself as receiving a revelation continuous with the scriptural tradition.

In popular culture, the Great Table and the Watchtowers have been adapted loosely in fantasy literature and role-playing games as models for elemental guardian cosmologies. The concept of four great elemental tablets guarded by angelic powers has proven particularly portable across different genre contexts.

Myths and facts

A few recurring misunderstandings apply to the Great Table specifically.

• A common belief holds that the Great Table as used in Golden Dawn practice is the same as Dee’s original reception. The Golden Dawn made significant changes to the elemental assignments, color attributions, and structural relationships that are not present in the Dee-Kelley manuscripts; both versions have sincere practitioners, but they are not identical.
• Many practitioners assume that “Great Table” and “Watchtowers” refer to different things entirely. The Great Table is the combined diagram of all four Watchtower tablets arranged together with the Black Cross; the Watchtowers are the individual elemental tablets that compose it. The terms describe different levels of the same structure.
• The twenty-four seniors derived from the Great Table’s Black Cross are sometimes confused with the seniors of the individual Watchtower tablets. The individual tablets each have six seniors; the Great Table collectively yields twenty-four, corresponding to the four tablets’ six seniors each, but read through the Black Cross in a specific manner.
• The arrangement of elements in the Great Table is sometimes assumed to be fixed and universal. Dee’s original assignments of elements to the four quadrants differ from the Golden Dawn arrangement, and both are encountered in practice. Knowing which system a source is using is essential to reading its instructions correctly.
• The Black Cross is sometimes described as a feature added by the Golden Dawn. The Black Cross is present in the original Dee-Kelley material; what the Golden Dawn added was its color attribution and its integration into a Qabalistic framework.