kaos

“the Garden of Felicity”, and do not rush to the conclusion that Coronzon is necessarily
to be identified with the serpent of the Garden of Eden, Satan, or Lucifer—themselves
conflated—we are left on reading the passage in isolation with “the true name of that
mighty Devil” who appears to have been responsible for the loss of the Angelic language,
the “tongue of power”, to humanity. The serpent in Genesis 3 is neither named as Satan
there nor said to be Satan’s instrument, this is an interpretation. The serpent in Gen 3:1
is described as “more subtil than any beast of the field”. The “beasts of the field” is a
phrase that occurs in the 19 th Key represented by the Enochian word Levithmong
(LEVITHMONG) and also appears in the “Daughter of Fortitude” passage. I point
this out only to emphasise the resonances of the language used. Even in the New
Testament the identification of the serpent of the Garden of Eden as Satan is not decisive:
in 2 Corinthians 11:3 it is said that “the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty” but
still does not name the serpent as Satan and Revelation 12:9 mentions “…that old
serpent, called the Devil, and Satan…”, a sentiment repeated in Rev 20:2, but the serpent
is not mentioned explicitly in the context of the Garden of Eden, although presumably
this is the implication. Matthew 10:16 even advocates that one should take after the
serpent: “be ye therefore wise as serpents”. The Gnostic text The Testimony of Truth
discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945 is particularly interesting here in that it tells the
story of the Garden of Eden from the point of view of the wise serpent who denounces
God as a “malicious grudger” for refusing Adam gnosis, and also mocks God as lacking
in omniscience since he had to ask where Adam was when he hid from him (Genesis
3:8–9). The text also equates the bronze serpent made by Moses in Numbers 21:9 with
Christ. (The papyrus of the Nag Hammadi texts date to about ad 350–400, although
the texts themselves may date to ad 120–150.) The conception of the Serpent as the
True Redeemer is nothing new to occultists, and was touched on in Martin Scorsese’s
1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ (the number 358 has a few occultists overly
excited, because mshich or mâshîyach [xy$m], “Messiah”, and nchsh or nâchâsh [$xn],
the “Serpent” of Genesis, both add up to 358 by gematria). Given that the Bible itself is
hardly definitive in establishing the serpent of the Garden as Satan, how much more so
should we be wary of blithely associating Coronzon as revealed to Dee and Kelly with
Satan or Lucifer. Although Dee and Kelly undoubtedly brought their own assumptions
and dogmas to the Work, it is probably better to regard the Enochian revelations as a
direct angelic communication aimed at establishing a fresh picture of the Fall of Man
and as far as possible avoid contaminating it by previously held ideas.
Most people who have looked at this passage in Casaubon have indeed too readily
identified Dee’s Coronzon as Lucifer/Satan, and also as the Stooping Dragon given
that the Great Red Dragon of Revelation 12 is there said to be the Devil, Satan, and
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