I must acknowledge the help given me by one of my email correspondents, John Worton, for bringing the following information to my attention. Many of us are familiar with Johann Bessler’s account of his visit to the city of PRAGUE, where he met a Jesuit priest and Jewish Rabbi

He claimed that he was taught some Hebrew and the “Language of Angels”. John Worton noticed that the dodecagram shown above and drawn by Johann Bessler was extremely similar to one he found in an ancient book on, among other things, the ‘Tongues of Angels’, which is an acceptable alternative to Bessler’s “Language of Angels”. I was able to find an online copy of this book, called “The Key of Solomon The King” by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers. It is currently available at www.sacred-texts.com/grim/kos/kos34.htm

From the book itself I have extracted a few brief points to show its origin, but it is worth reading in more detail than I can give here. But in short, it was “first Translated and Edited from Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum by S. Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Author of "The Kabbalah Unveiled," "The Tarot," &c.”

He goes on to say, “The Key of Solomon, save for a curtailed and incomplete copy published in France in the seventeenth century, has never yet been printed, but has for centuries remained in manuscript form inaccessible to all but the few fortunate scholars to whom the inmost recesses of the great libraries were open. I therefore consider that I am highly honored in being the individual to whose lot it has fallen to usher it into the light of day.”

These manuscripts or copies were available in Prague in Bessler’s time as the city was the centre for Kabbalistic studies and obviously of interest to both the Rabbi and the Jesuit. The book mentions the language of Angels dozens of times and it is impossible to believe that Bessler did not come across this work and study it.

Under the drawing the following is written:-

Figure 47.--The Fourth Pentacle of Mercury.--This is further proper to acquire the understanding and Knowledge of all things created, and to seek out and penetrate into hidden things; and to command those Spirits which are called Allatori to perform embassies. They obey very readily.

Editor's Note.--In the centre is the Name of God, El. The Hebrew letters inscribed about the dodecagram make the sentence, 'IHVH, fix Thou the Volatile, and let there be unto the void restriction.' The versicle is:--'Wisdom and virtue are in his house, and the Knowledge of all things remaineth with him for ever.'
 

I hesitate to make coincidental connections but I will just point out the strange ghosted number 47 repeated upside down on MT 47 - is it significant? I don’t know, but I note it anyway.

We know that Bessler went to Prague and discussed his search for the perpetual motion with the Jesuit and the Rabbi. During that visit he tells us he learned Hebrew and the 'tongues of angels, and he mentions Solomon twice in Apologia Poetica. It is reasonable, in my opinion, to suppose that he therefore saw the particular document or copies of it, 'Solomon's key', and made copies of any drawings he found interesting.

Subsequently he met and discussed musical theory with Heinichen, and was taught how to use the 'circle of fifths'.

Then he discovered the 'fact' of needing the number 5 in some way yet to be established. He knew from the 'circle of fifths' diagram, that it is divided into twelve parts in modern versions, but in 24, in Heinichen's day, (showing or hiding sharps and flats) - you pick a point on the circumference and count five place around it and draw a line bewteen the two points. This also the way to construct a dodecagram see MT 137 C

Copyright © 2011 John Collins.