VEIL OF SHADOWS

"The Enochian Conundrum"

Original box design and research by Douglas Wynne

Photography by Morphious - 2002





Philip LeMarchand is known to have constructed this puzzle at the end of three sleepless weeks spent pouring over the manuscripts of the Elizabethan magician, and court astrologer, Dr. John Dee, at the library at Oxford where he took up residence for a short time in the late autumn of 1749.




Elizabethan magician John Dee




Because the box owes its origin to the work of Dr. Dee, practitioners of the dark arts have long referred to it as The Enochian Conundrum.  Woven into the mechanics of the Veil of Shadows are the sigils of the four Elemental Watchtowers of the Universe, so that when the box is placed on an altar, the tablet of Air faces east, the tablet of Fire south, the tablet of Water west and the tablet of Earth north.








The central square is inscribed with the Tablet of Union, the concourse of forces in which the angels of the Enochian system reside and in which all of the elements are synthesized and balanced.

"Yet take care lest ye be comforted by that which is spoken of angels dwelling within."

writes Lemarchand, in his journal of the year 1749:

"For these are but guardians of the gates that restrain the deeper secrets of this configuration."

And what secrets are these?

Few who have possessed the box have lived to record its revelations, but the identity of one survivor is known to be more than rumor.








The Veil of Shadows fell into the hands of Aleister Crowley in November of 1909, when the mage purchased it from a Bedouin sorcerer whom he had tracked to Algiers.

A few days later, in the desert at Bou-Saada, Crowley conjured the demon Choronzon from the lacquered depths of the infernal cube.  The echoes of this rending of the veil can be heard even today in North Africa where the tribes of that barren land say that on that day, the Aethers were shaken and the very desert sands were molten into glass beneath the dark prophet's feet.






On the boat back to London, Victor Neuburg, the Beast's traveling companion, scribe and lover stole the cube from his master's cabin and cast it overboard in a fit of terror, after which Crowley tried to strangle him.  The Veil of Shadows was lost to the sea for just over a century.





It is believed by present day scholars that LeMarchand had murdered over one-hundred citizens (from both France and the newly formed American Colonies) by the completion of The Veil Of Shadows.




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