The Watchers and Their Ways

So why is Enoch so special? Well, biblically speaking, it is not clear. All we know is that he was righteous in God's eyes, and he was taken up to Heaven. There is no explanation at all. As it is customary in Judaism and the western biblical tradition in general, when there is a high level of uncertainty and mystery as to what happened to a person or an unexplainable event, the void MUST be filled. The mind abhors a vacuum as they say. So, to explain some of these more enigmatic events, other books that are not in the accepted canon tend to appear to fill in the gap.

One example from the NT is Jesus' childhood; we don't know much about it from the Gospels and then suddenly, viola; infancy gospels sprout up. These are valuable texts, and I don't mean to imply they are not authentic, but they certainly do appear quite conveniently, and convincingly I might add. Many of these documents were written around the time the canonical gospels were; this leads me to believe there is some authenticity there. This same concept applies to Enoch; we know so little about him from the bible. The fact that he disappears from earth and into the heavens intact is very mysterious. We must know why this happened and more importantly; we need to know who Enoch was. The book of Enoch fills in these details and much more.

Many magickal texts have been written around the watchers, and I am hoping to add my two cents to the discussion. Several decades ago, I worked with the Watchers, so I hope to be able to add to this topic. In this book, I have resurrected my notes and will bring some elements forward to reflect current information. For example, any ritual suggestion will still include old elements I have used in the 80s, but I will bring it forward to reflect our latest advances, such as the ease of obtaining incense and the like. This book will be extremely heavy in historical and textual analysis. I feel the Watchers are very interesting, and I have not yet found a comprehensive text on them. There are texts that deal with them, but they are very general OR they seem to focus on one narrative element. I will try to make my analysis of them as comprehensive as possible. The information is scattered around, I like to bring ideas together and that is what I will do here in this book. I know many just want the magick but I would be doing many and myself an injustice without at least giving the history behind things. I am also a historian so that might be part of it. This is fun for me.

Here is a glimpse of what will be covered in this book. Aside from the rituals of course, we will be covering the basics of the Watchers' story as it is understood in Genesis since it is there that the first inkling of the story emerges in the scriptural tradition. I emphasis scriptural because there is evidence that some texts exist that predate Genesis that contain a Proto-Watchers narrative. Some of these early stories have some connection to Ancient Mesopotamia; we will discuss that as well. We will, of course, cover the Watcher tradition in the various books of Enoch, that, I suppose, is a given. We will also discuss the Watcher tradition as it relates to texts outside the accepted canon. We will in addition, briefly cover some Watcher material in the Jewish traditions found in the Midrash and the Targumim, and so much more.

We have a lot to cover, so let's get started.