Product Code Database
Enochian chess is a four-player chess variant, similar to chaturaji, associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The name comes from the Enochian magic of Dr. John Dee (magus and astrologer to Elizabeth I), which was later adapted by Victorian members of the Golden Dawn into "a complete system of training and initiation".
The chess board itself was also varicolored, and divided into four sub-boards in which each of one of the four elemental colors predominated.Regardie et al., p. 684. The rules of the game were partially derived from shatranj and other historical forms of chess; the queen is played like an alfil, with a two square diagonal leaping move.Regardie et al., p. 691 The four players would form pairs of two, with each player having a partner. MacGregor Mathers, who finalised the game's rules, was known to play with an invisible partner he claimed was a spirit. Joseph Hone, biographer of William Butler Yeats, claimed, "Mathers would shade his eyes with his hands and gaze at the empty chair at the opposite corner of the board before moving his partner's piece".Joseph Hone, W.B. Yeats, 1865-1939, p. 106
The game, while complex, was in actual use; Georgie Yeats, wife of poet William Butler Yeats, relates actually playing the game as a part of her occult training in Golden Dawn circles.Ann Saddlemyer, Becoming George: The Life of Mrs. W. B. Yeats, p. 71 (Oxford University Press, 2004; ). Her husband took part in some of these games, as did MacGregor Mathers.
|
|
