Occult & Esoterica
[DEE, John; CAMPBELL, Colin S.] The Magic Seal of John Dee, The Sigillum Dei Aemeth (2025, Society of Esoteric Endeavour)
[DEE, John; CAMPBELL, Colin S.] The Magic Seal of John Dee, The Sigillum Dei Aemeth (2025, Society of Esoteric Endeavour)
Chicago, The Teitan Press (Specially bound and additional components designed by the Society of Esoteric Endeavor, [UK}). 2016, 2025. xix + 155pp. This is considered to be the standard version from the SOEE, though there is really nothing standard about it. This beautiful edition of the Sigillum Dei Æmeth publication is in a large format at 29cm x 36cm, and 10cm thick (11.5 inches x 14.2 inches, 3.9 inches thick). It’s a beast! The outer housing is thick wooden boards in full leather binding, The front cover blocked with the Sigillum Dei Æmeth design and the back cover blocked with the sigil from the reverse of the wax disc. Thus the publication dealing with the Seal of God is in the form of the Seal of God. As was often the case with elaborately decorated books from John Dee's time, the covers are protected with metal bosses which lift the covers clear from a flat surface when the book is laid down. The spine is rounded with raised bands that show the contours of the cords underneath and a gilt blocked title. The Society of Esoteric Endeavour device is subtly present as blind blocking (that is indented but with no gilt).
Though it looks and feels just like any other book from John Dee's period, it is not as it seems. One can feel the edges of the pages, but one cannot open the book! Its secret is revealed by pulling the top right corner down and to the right. The entire book block pivots to reveal a cavity holding the Campbell book with full leather binding with blind stamped decoration surrounding the Monas Hieroglphica blocked in pure real gold. The inside surfaces of the front and back covers and spine of the outer box are all fully covered in leather. The endpapers of the book and the surfaces of the inner box are covered in paste paper which has been sealed with beeswax. Paste paper was a form of decorated paper that was most used in Europe prior to the introduction of marbled paper from the Ottoman Empire. It uses various techniques to generate a pattern that is influenced but not entirely controlled by the creator, the pattern deriving from the process.
The endpapers of the book has the same paste paper as recessed section that holds the book. As small black silk tab at the base of the recess holding the book can be used to pull up the base of the recess to reveal another layer in which sits a facsimile of the original wax disc the same size as the original that is now held by the British Museum. Care has been taken to ensure that the engraved facsimile is crisp and entirely legible. It follows the typeset version published in A True and Faithful Relation. Campbell’s book is SIGNED by him on the title page. Some natural imperfections in the leather of the outer box (as received) but all components in fine condition. Please note that this is a large and heavy item, weighing in at over 13 pounds when packaged for shipping.
Sigillum Dei is Latin for "Seal of God". Æmeth is the transliteration of a Hebrew word of which Cornelius Agrippa writes "… is interpreted Truth, and is the Seal of God" (Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 1533). John Dee was aware of the seal from manuscript copies of the Sworn Book of Honorius but then, in consultation with the angels, he developed and perfected it. This then was inscribed upon a disc of beeswax complimented with the required design on the reverse to form a crucial part of the Enochian system of angelic evocation.
Campbell’s book 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 an early form of the Sigillum Dei. The author has written that from the perspective of a practicing magician, the work has two principal 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 Rennaissance 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."