In addition to the scheme of the angels and divine names of the four Watchtowers, Dee's "Table of the Earth" contains another set of names, read not on horizontal or vertical straight lines (well, one of them is) but according to a set of angular sigils or Characteres Symmetrici. These are tabulated in Dee's Liber Scientiæ, Auxillii et Victoriæ Terrestris (book of earthly knowledge, aid and victory), in Sloane MS. 3191 fol. 14r-31r, with the arrangement of characters on the table appearing on 55v-56r.
The seven-letter names thus read are variously characterised as being the names of "Ninety-one Princes and spiritual Governers, to whom the earth is delivered as a portion" (T&FR, p. 139) or "names of the parts of the earth, divinely imposed" (Partium Terræ Nomina, Divinitus imposita) as contrasted with "names of the parts of the earth, imposed by men" (Partium Terræ Nomina, ab Hominibus imposita) (column headings in Liber Scientiæ). These 91 names are split up into 30 Bonorum Principum Aëreorum Ordines Sphærici with 3-letter names such as LIL, ARN, ZOM, &c.
In Dee's 48 Claves Angelicæ MS. (Sloane 3191, fol. 12ro), immediately prior to the "Key of the 30 Ayres" for invoking these orders, is a diagram showing the orders of "Aërial Princes" as concentric circles with TEX, the 30th, as the innermost and LIL, the first as the outermost, each divided into 3 (or four for TEX) corresponding to the parts of the earth comprehended therein. This seems to have suggested to some later commentators that the Ayres are something like the Aeons or layers of Heaven of certain Gnostic traditions, which eventually was elaborated into a conception of the scheme (on which, for example Crowley's entire "The Vision and the Voice" working was founded) that managed to completely disregard everything else said about it in the Spirit Actions including the words of the Key and the title of the book in which the whole thing was tabulated.
For example, in the Action of 1584.05.21, Nalvage declared:
There are 30 calls yet to come. These 30 are the calls of Ni[nety-one] Princes and spiritual Governors unto whom the earth is delivered as a portion. These bring in and again disp[ose] Kings and all the Governments upon the Earth, and vary the Nature of things …… with the variation of every moment. Unto whom, the providence of the eternal judgment is already opened. These are generally governed by the twelve Angels of the 12 Tribes: which are also governed by the 7 which stand before the presence of God. Let him that can see, look up: and let him that can hear, attend, for this is wisdom. They are all spirits of the Air, not rejected, but dignified; and they dwell and have their habitation in the air, diversely and in sundry places, for their mansions are not alike, nor are their powers equal. Understand, therefore, that from the fire to the earth, there are 30 places or abidings: one above and beneath another, wherein these Creatures have their abode, for a time.
(T&FR p. 139-40; spelling modernised; as Turner (Elizabethan Magic, p. 83-4) points out, the entire scheme of Ayres belongs to the "Aërial" realm of the geocentric mediæval / Renaissance magical cosmology, and hence in the sublunary sphere of things subject to change.)
This is doubtless the source of Crowley and others referring to the 7-letter names as being those of "governors" of the Ayres; however, a passage in Latin immediately following appears to suggest that it is the Angels of the 12 tribes who are the governors of the 91 parts, some having many, some fewer, under their rule:
Per tota terra distributa sub 12 Principibus Angelis, 12 Tribuum Israel: quorum 12 aliqui plures, aliqui pauciores partes habent sub sua regimine ex 91 partibus in quas tota terra hic demonstratur esse divisa. Apocalypsi Johannis Testimonium, de 12 Angelis 12 Tribuum, Cap. 21.
Quando dividebat Altissimus gentes, quando separabat filios Adam, constituit terminos populorum, juxta numerum filiorum Israel [Deut. xxxii: 8]: Hoc igitur hinc egergiè patere.
suggesting that the seven-letter names are the names of the Parts of the Earth themselves and not those of angels associated with but distinct from the Parts. In the subsequent pages of T&FR where the seven-letters names are given, on two occasions they are explicitly said to be names of parts of the earth, or parts of the world on earth, each governed by one or another of the 12 angels of the 12 tribes.
In Ave’s “expounding” of the vision of the Watchtowers (T&FR p. 170) we are told of
… the Angels of all the Aires, which perfectly give obedience to the will of men, when they see them. Hereby you may subvert whole countries without Armies […] By these you shall get the favour of all the Princes […] Hereby you shall know the secret Treasures of the waters, and unknown Caves of the Earth.
Compare the Call:
… ye are mighty in the parts of the Earth, and execute the Judgement of the Highest […] your God […] provided you for the government of the Earth and her unspeakable variety, furnishing your with a power understanding to dispose all things […] govern those that govern, cast down such as fall …
The implication being that the twelve Angelic Kings, or, if we continue to insist on them, the “Governors,” are set over the various parts of the surface of the Earth (“The earth, let her be governed by her parts…”). The 7 before the presence of God are the angels on the outer heptagon of the seal of Æmeth. The Aires themselves serve mainly as containers for the 91 parts. Egil Asprem (Arguing with Angels, pp. 24-25) remarks of this:
The intention of this system seems to be that by ‘calling’ the right Aires […] the magician can gain the authority over the geographical entities and presumably the power to control great geopolitical events (thus indicated by the title of the book, “terrestrial victory”). In other words, this was a form of magic most desirable for Dee, being the occasional counsellor to the Imperial Elizabethan throne.
As regarding the specific attributions to the world's surface -- Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and other places taken from Ptolomey's Geography via Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia (lib. I cap. xxxi), as well as place-names unknown prior to the Spirit Actions such as "Tolpam," "Onigap" and "Coxlant": prior to the delivery those names (T&FR pp. 153 sqq.), Nalvage attempted to point them out on “a great thing like a Globe, turning on two axell-trees.”
Dee, finding this insufficiently precise, objected:
We beseech you to bound or determine the Countries or Portions of the Earth, by their uttermost Longitudes and Latitudes, or by some other certain manner.”
Nalvage responded:
Our manner is, not as it is of worldlings: We determine not places after the forms of legs, or as leaves are: neither we can imagine any thing after the fashion of an horn: as those that are Cosmographers do. Notwithstanding the Angel of the Lord appeared unto Ptolomie, and opened unto him the parts of the Earth: but some he was commanded to secret: and those are Northward under your Pole. But unto you, the very true names of the world in her Creation are delivered.
At the conclusion of this Action (p. 158), Dee queried regarding several lands known to him that were apparently not included in the 91 mentioned; some, he was told, were to be reckoned under “Sauromatia” (#46) and “Brytania” (#61), “and so it is of the rest.” On being pressed about “Atlantis and the annexed places, under the King of Spain called the West Indies?” (referring, by context, to the North American continent and adjacent islands), Nalvage retorted “When these 30 appear, they can tell you what they own. Prepare for tomorrow’s Action.”
No Action took place the next day. Kelly and Dee quarrelled, Kelly pointing out that the names of the provinces and countries appeared in “one Volume of Cornelius Agrippa his works,” from which “he inferred, that our spiritual Instructors were Coseners to give us a description of the World, taken out of other Books: and therefore he would have no more to do with them.” After some argument, Kelly refused to undertake another skrying session, and the next Action, on the 28th, treated of other subjects entirely; Nalvage drops out of the record for a while, reappearing in July for the completion of the Claves Angelicæ.
While one commentator (Robin E. Cousins, in the geographical appendix to Turner et al., Elizabethan Magic), suggested that “those 30” indicated the existence of another 30 Parts corresponding to areas unknown or vaguely known in Dee’s time, this would raise all kinds of problems with the system; considered rather in the context that the reeling off of the Ptolemaic names followed Dee’s rejection of the initial attempt to indicate the terrestrial locations, and Nalvage’s refusal to use human measurements, the instruction could rather have been to call up the 30 Ayres in turn to find out.
It might further be considered from the earlier statement of Nalvage already quoted, that the terrestrial governance of the 91 parts is subject to change over time, and so the list given, even if valid in 1584, is not necessarily still applicable today.
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