ABSTRACT
The modalities used to transmit the Enochian language correspond to Dee's cultural background and expectations. The celestial tongue is communicated starting from the alphabet, in the fashion languages like Latin, Greek or Hebrew were taught and in a theatrical form that reminds popular magical performances. The difficulty in classifying it comes from its combination of purpose and arbitrariness that invariably disrupts the identification of logical-linguistic patterns. Linguists are not convinced of the celestial quality of Enochian, nor are scholars of perennial philosophy. As long as Kelly conveyed angelic messages that confirmed Dee's knowledge, he had the support of the philosopher's books, supposedly always at hand. The invention of the Angelic language opens a discourse on analogous phenomena of word creativity. Word play and invention of idioms imply reifying language, treating it as an object of manipulation, a culturally significant phenomenon in Shakespeare's time, and so popular that in the Merchant of Venice Lorenzo ironically.
