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Liber XXVIII · Solomonic Magic

Liber XXVIII · Solomonic Magic · Chapter II: Demonology

The Book of Enoch: 1 Enoch, the Watchers and Fallen Angels

The Book of Enoch explained: how 1 Enoch was composed, the Book of the Watchers and its fallen angels, forbidden arts, giants, and its legacy in magic.

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The Book of Enoch, known to scholars as 1 Enoch, is an ancient Jewish collection of five apocalyptic works attributed to Enoch, the antediluvian patriarch who "walked with God" in Genesis. Its earliest sections, the Astronomical Book and the Book of the Watchers, were probably composed in Aramaic in the third century BCE, and the Book of the Watchers tells how rebellious angels descended to earth and taught humanity sorcery, metallurgy and astrology, a myth that shaped Jewish and Christian ideas of demons and later traditions of angel magic.

Who Was Enoch?§

In Genesis 5, Enoch is the seventh generation from Adam, the father of Methuselah and great-grandfather of Noah. Unlike the other patriarchs in the list, he is not said to have died: he "walked with God: and he was not; for God took him" (Genesis 5:24, King James Version). This brief, enigmatic notice, combined with his unusual lifespan of 365 years, a solar number, made Enoch an ideal figure to whom secret knowledge could be attributed. Some scholars also see him as a Jewish counterpart to the Mesopotamian antediluvian sages and kings who received heavenly wisdom before the Flood.

By the Hellenistic period Enoch had become the archetypal scribe and seer: a righteous man taken up to heaven, shown the structure of the cosmos and the secrets of judgement, and charged with writing them down for future generations. The books written in his name belong to the wider body of Jewish literature outside the Hebrew Bible described in the Hebrew Bible and its canon.

The Five Books of 1 Enoch and Their Dates§

1 Enoch as it now exists is an anthology. Scholars usually divide it into five main parts:

  • The Book of the Watchers (chapters 1–36), the story of the fallen angels and Enoch's heavenly journeys, generally dated to the third century BCE, with some parts perhaps older.
  • The Similitudes or Parables of Enoch (chapters 37–71), visions of a heavenly figure called the Son of Man or the Chosen One, usually dated to the late first century BCE or the first century CE.
  • The Astronomical Book or Book of the Luminaries (chapters 72–82), a revelation by the angel Uriel about the movements of the sun, moon and stars and a 364-day calendar, probably among the oldest Enochic writings.
  • The Book of Dreams (chapters 83–90), including the "Animal Apocalypse", which retells history from Adam to the Maccabean period with animals representing people, and so dates to the 160s BCE.
  • The Epistle of Enoch (chapters 91–108), moral exhortations and the "Apocalypse of Weeks", with appendices on the miraculous birth of Noah.

The decisive evidence for dating came from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4, published by J. T. Milik in 1976, are Aramaic fragments of every part of 1 Enoch except the Similitudes. The oldest copies of the Astronomical Book and the Book of the Watchers are dated on the basis of their handwriting to the early second century BCE, which means the works themselves are older still. The Qumran fragments also include a related Book of Giants, later adopted and adapted by the Manichaean religion, as noted in Manichaeism and Mandaeism.

The Book of the Watchers: Angels Who Descended§

The Book of the Watchers expands a short and puzzling passage in Genesis 6:1–4, which tells that the "sons of God" took wives from the "daughters of men" and that there were giants, the Nephilim, on the earth in those days. In the Enochic retelling, the "sons of God" are angels of a class called Watchers, from an Aramaic word for those who stay awake. Two hundred of them, led by Shemihazah, bind themselves by an oath and descend upon Mount Hermon in the days of Jared, Enoch's father. They take human wives, and their children are giants who devour the produce of the earth, then animals, then human beings, until the earth itself cries out.

Four archangels, usually named Michael, Sariel or Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel, bring the complaint before God. Judgement follows: Raphael is commanded to bind Asael (often identified with Azazel) and cast him into darkness in a desert place called Dudael, the giants are set against one another, and Michael is ordered to bind Shemihazah and his companions beneath the earth until the final judgement. The Flood is announced to Noah. Enoch himself is drawn into the story as a scribe who carries the Watchers' petition for mercy to heaven, only to be told to announce that it has been refused.

The second half of the book describes Enoch's journeys, guided by angels, to the ends of the earth: the storehouses of winds and stars, the mountains of the dead, the prison of the fallen stars and angels, the tree of life and the place of final judgement. These visionary tours anticipate the heavenly ascents of the later Merkavah and Hekhalot mystics.

Forbidden Knowledge: Charms, Metals and the Signs of Heaven§

Interwoven with the Shemihazah story is a second strand, centred on Asael, which presents the angels' sin not as lust but as the betrayal of heavenly secrets. The Watchers teach their wives charms and incantations, the cutting of roots and the use of plants. Asael teaches the working of metals: swords, shields and breastplates, and also bracelets, ornaments, eye cosmetics and precious stones and dyes. Other named Watchers teach the observation of the stars, the signs of the sun and moon, and divination from lightning and the earth.

This list matters for the history of magic. It places sorcery, herbal knowledge, astrology and the crafts of war and adornment together as illicit revelations, brought down from heaven without God's permission and leading to violence and corruption. Several later attitudes grow from it: the suspicion that magic and astrology depend on fallen spirits, the association of metallurgy and cosmetics with seduction, and the notion that some knowledge is dangerous in itself. At the same time the Astronomical Book shows that Enochic circles valued correct knowledge of the heavens, revealed by a faithful angel. The question was not whether celestial knowledge was good, but who revealed it and how it was used, a theme developed in the history of Satan and the Devil.

Giants, Evil Spirits and the Origin of Demons§

One of the Book of the Watchers' most influential ideas appears in chapters 15–16. When the giants die, their spirits come out of their bodies. Because they were born from spirits and flesh, they belong neither wholly to heaven nor to earth, and they remain in the world as evil spirits that afflict, oppress and lead people astray until the end. This is one of the earliest Jewish explanations of where demons came from.

The theme recurs in the Book of Jubilees, which describes Noah praying for protection from these spirits and being taught healing remedies by angels, and in Qumran texts that contain prayers against demons. It also contributed to the demonology of early Christianity and of later Jewish magic, including the Testament of Solomon, where demons describe their origins and the angels who can thwart them. A broader account of these developments appears in the guide to demonology.

From Qumran to Ethiopia: Survival and Rediscovery§

1 Enoch was widely read in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. The Letter of Jude in the New Testament quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 as a prophecy of Enoch, and 2 Peter alludes to angels cast into Tartarus. Early Christian writers including Tertullian treated the book with respect, but it gradually fell out of favour; Augustine, in The City of God, regarded it as of uncertain authority, and it was not included in the Jewish or most Christian canons. In Greek it survived only in fragments, notably in a codex found at Akhmim in Upper Egypt in 1886–87 and in excerpts preserved by the Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus.

In Ethiopia, however, the whole book was translated into Ge'ez, probably from Greek in late antiquity, and it became part of the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, where it remains canonical today. The Scottish traveller James Bruce brought Ethiopic manuscripts to Europe in 1773, Richard Laurence published the first English translation in 1821, and August Dillmann edited the Ethiopic text in 1851. R. H. Charles's translation (1912) dominated the twentieth century, and the commentary by George Nickelsburg and James VanderKam is now the standard scholarly treatment.

Enoch in Later Angel Magic and Occultism§

Enoch's reputation as the possessor of heavenly secrets made him a natural patron for magicians. In Jewish tradition he was identified with the angel Metatron in the Hebrew 3 Enoch or Sefer Hekhalot, and medieval and Renaissance writers associated him with the invention of writing, astronomy and sacred letters. When John Dee and Edward Kelley recorded their angelic conversations in the 1580s, they believed the angels were restoring a language and a book once given to Enoch; this is why their system is called Enochian magic, although it has no textual connection with 1 Enoch, which Dee could not read.

After the 1821 translation, the Watchers entered modern occultism directly. Eliphas Lévi borrowed the Greek term for Watchers, egrēgoroi, as "egregores", and in twentieth-century occultism the word was reinterpreted to mean a collective spiritual entity formed by the shared will of a group. Modern Luciferian and left-hand-path writers sometimes reinterpret the Watchers as bringers of civilisation rather than corrupters, while popular literature has linked them with speculative theories of ancient giants. Historians, by contrast, read the Book of the Watchers as a Hellenistic Jewish response to its own world: to the violence of the successors of Alexander, to the prestige of Babylonian and Greek science, and to the problem of where evil comes from.

Frequently asked questions§

Why is the Book of Enoch not in the Bible?§

It is not part of the Jewish canon or most Christian Bibles, partly because it was composed late, survived mainly outside the mainstream manuscript traditions and contains teachings some authorities found doubtful. It is, however, canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eritrean Orthodox Church.

Who are the Watchers in the Book of Enoch?§

The Watchers are angels who, according to the Book of the Watchers, swore an oath on Mount Hermon, descended to earth, took human wives and taught forbidden arts. Their leaders are named Shemihazah and Asael, and their children are the giants of Genesis 6.

How old is the Book of Enoch?§

Its oldest parts, the Astronomical Book and the Book of the Watchers, are generally dated to the third century BCE, since Aramaic copies from Qumran go back to the early second century BCE. Other parts were added later, with the Similitudes usually dated around the turn of the era.

Is Enochian magic based on the Book of Enoch?§

No. John Dee's Enochian system was named after Enoch because Dee believed his angels were revealing knowledge once given to the patriarch. Its language, tables and calls come from Dee and Kelley's sessions, not from 1 Enoch.

Sources and further reading§