The more one learns about Dee and his work, the more complex the terrain becomes—and the more threads of the modern world one can trace back to this crucial historical flashpoint.

Jason Louv, The Angelic Reformation: John Dee, Enochian Magick & the Occult Roots of Empire

Consider also:

  1. “The depths of human nature and self knowledge, the hidden mysteries of the soul of man are not, as real initiates well know, probed into with impunity except by the ‘properly prepared’. The man who does so has, as it were, a cable-tow around his neck; because when once stirred by a genuine desire for the higher knowledge that real initiation is intended to confer, he can never turn back on what he learns thereof without committing moral suicide; he can never be again the same man he was before he gained a glimpse of the hidden mysteries of life. And as the Angel stood with a flaming sword at the entrance of Eden to guard the way to the Tree of Life, so will the man whose initiation is not a conventional one find himself threatened at the door of the higher knowledge by opposing invisible forces if he rashly rushes forward in a state of moral unfitness into the deep secrets of the Centre. Better remain ignorant than embark upon this unknown sea unwisely and without being properly prepared and in possession of the proper passports.”
  2. “Far too many people spend a lifetime headed in the wrong direction. They go not only from the cradle to the cubicle, but then to the casket, without uncovering their greatest talents and potential.”
  3. “the key to human development is building on who you already are”
  4. As great an actor to enact Crowley as this
  5. The Cosmic Serpent