One of the members of our group blogged about the series online and got a response from a reader repeating the old "Enochian Meltdown" story - you know, that Enochian magick wrecks your health, finances, relationships and so forth. I've been using the Enochian system for years and I know that this isn't true for me, but I am curious if anyone reading this blog has had bad experiences with the Enochian entities. Frater BH and MY GAL recently did a series of Enochian work and aside from an urge to clean house they appear to be doing just fine.
In addition, in Enochian Vision Magick Lon DuQuette claims that he has never come across a documented case of the "Enochian Meltdown" phenomenon. I find that kind of interesting because he's been an OTO initiate since the mid-seventies in California, and Thelema seems to attract a disproportionate number of Enochian magicians due to Aleister Crowley's interest in the system and the significance of The Vision and the Voice in the Thelemic canon. If Lon really has never come across a case, I'm tempted to dismiss the whole thing as spurious. If the system was really all that dangerous, you would think he would know at least a couple of folks who had trouble with it.
My current working hypothesis is this: Enochian is totally safe as long as you use the proper temple equipment. Frater BH and MY GAL did; their setup is nicer than mine and the pictures are worth a look. I have always worked with the ring, lamen, Holy Table, Sigillum Dei Aemeth, and Ensigns of Creation and am convinced that this is the right way to approach the system. Lon DuQuette uses simpler materials like tagboard and so forth, but he still uses the equipment. All of us are just fine, thank you very much, with no meltdowns to report.
However, there are some authors out there who contend that you don't need any of the furniture and implements for various reasons. The Golden Dawn and Crowley didn't emphasize them and The Vision and the Voice was produced using only a circle in the desert and Crowley's scrying stone. Benjamin Rowe used to argue that the furniture is only for use with the Heptarchial entities. And the list goes on. Somebody did once start to tell me the story of a friend of a friend who supposedly had some problems, but not only did it sound like an urban legend, when I asked if this supposed individual used any of the equipment I was told "of course not."
So here are my questions for anyone out there. Do you know of someone who worked with the Enochian system and had problems that seemed to be related to their Enochian work? If so, what sort of problems did they encounter and did they use any temple furniture or implements? If they used some but not all of the implements, which ones did they use?
Your contributions to the science of magick are much appreciated.
UPDATE (2/16/2009): I've left this post at the top of the page for longer than usual in the hopes that more people will see it. So far boleskine93 has posted a story that he heard about one practitioner that I'm pretty sure I hadn't heard before, but there certainly is not the influx of stories that I would expect if the rumors about the dangers of Enochian magick were true. I'll leave this as the top posting for another day or two and I encourage anyone with a story to add it to the comments, but so far the "Enochian Meltdown" phenomenon remains elusive.
