Rudd

The last of Dee’s “lesser” Systems which the Golden Dawn left brief notes regarding is also known
to have been used in their ceremonial magic rituals. For their purposes they took the model of Dr.
Thomas Rudd (1583 - 1656), based in turn on the seven “Ensigns of Creation” formulated by Dr.
John Dee.
Each of the seven planets was given its own “Ensign of Creation,” being a small lamen or tablet,
although the actual use of these in ritual, purportedly in skrying, remains un-revealed.
The model used by the Golden Dawn was derived from Dr. Thomas Rudd by taking the naked letters
given by Dee and replacing them with the names of demons drawn from the “Goetia” or “Lesser Key
of Solomon.” Thus, each letter, most of which are the letter “B” (or symbolic variations of it), is
assigned a name from the 72 demons of the “Goetia” that begins with the given letter. For example
“Asmodai” is written here in place of the letter “A” as given by Dr. Dee. However, because there
are more letters in Dee’s “Ensigns” than there are names of demons in Solomon’s “Goetia,” Rudd,
and thus subsequently the Golden Dawn, appears to have assigned many of the names to more than
one letter, and many different names, also, to the same letter. For example, we have here “Buer”
for Dee’s letter “B,” then again, in another place, the name “Belial” where Dee has listed a “B.”
Although it is possible the relationship between the use of capital “B” and lower-case “b” (and
their variants) may yield further insight on the ranks and files of these demonic attributes, such
remains, to my knowledge at this time, unexplored. The work of Dr. Rudd, although contemporary
to Dee, appears to be only a method of further encrypting the “Ensigns” given by Dee. Thus, in
Dee’s lettered “Ensigns” we find the mystery of a lamen without any known sigils, which is then
further obfuscated by Rudd’s mysterious application to these Lamens of names from the “Goetia.”
Again, there is the most minute possibility that the sigils of the “Goetic” demons’ given in the
“Lesser Key” are derived from these, Dee’s, “Ensigns of Creation,” and not the other way around,
however the likelihood of this is so remote as to not be further considered at this time.
The more likely methodology of derivation for Dee’s “Ensigns” is to assign one “King,” one
“Prince” or one of five “governors” for each of the letter “B”s per table from the “Bonorum” names
for each planet, such that the capitol “B”s would stand for the “Kings” and “Princes,” while the
lower-case “b”s would stand for the lesser-ranking “Governors.” This method, while possibly
more accurate to Dee’s original intent, was not applied by the Golden Dawn, in favour of the
methods of Dr. Rudd, and so we cannot go further into it here, however I would like to encourage
the arduous student of Dee’s systems to work with these “Ensigns” in the manner I have suggested,
and to disregard the method of Rudd and the Golden Dawn as based on a method of further
encryption, unless for the purpose of applying it as such.