[York Beach]: The Teitan Press, 2009. First Edition. Limited to 777 numbered copies. This is copy #358. Hardcover, issued without dust jacket. Tall octavo. Black cloth with gilt designs to front and back, gilt titles to spine. Color frontispiece. xix + 155pp. 2 plates, one color, one in black and white. Additional black and white illustrations in text.

A fine copy.

The Magic Seal of Dr. John Dee comprises a detailed examination of the history and structure of the Sigillum Dei Aemeth of the Elizabethan scholar and Magus, Dr. John Dee, as well as a study of its use in the practice of ritual magic. The appendixes include a new transcription and translation of Dee’s Liber Mysteriorum Secundus, and an important new translation of the section of the famous grimoire, The Sworn Book of Honorius, that gives details of what is clearly a precursor of the Sigillum Dei. From the standpoint of a practicing magician, the work has two clear aims: to demonstrate the importance of the pattern established by Dee’s Sigillum Dei as opposed to its implementation, and to bring the Sigillum Dei out of the limited confines of the Enochian temple and into its role as a powerful magickal system in its own right. The recognition of the patterns established in the construction of the Sigillum Dei allow us to view the seal in a new light, not as a static framework decided once and for all hundreds of years ago in the study of a Renaissance magician, but as one that can be reconstituted in the light of modern interpretation. Furthermore, the seal is, in essence, a system of evocation – the very same method of communication used by Dee & Kelley in its reception. This book explains the nature and method of this approach and how the practicing magician is able to use the Sigillum Dei in the manner in which it was truly intended – as a powerful system of planetary magick.