


At least partially because of this veil of secrecy, authorship of this variant is unclear. 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. Enochian chess first appears to have been played by members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, who used their boards and pieces for divination as well as gameplay and considered Enochian chess to be a secret teaching. 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." MacGregor Mathers, who finalised the game's rules, was known to play with an invisible partner he claimed was a spirit. These materials will also provide less upkeep than a wooden set. If purchasing to display as a decor piece, opt for a more fashionable set made of acrylic or metal. Whichever material you opt for can affect the weight and the look of your chess set. The four players would form pairs of two, with each player having a partner. Chess sets come in a variety of materials from wood to plastic to acrylic. The rules of the game were partially derived from shatranj and other historical forms of chess the queen is played like a fers, with a two square diagonal leaping move. The chess board itself was also varicolored, and divided into four sub-boards in which each of one of the four elemental colors predominated. The main identifications of the pieces were: The four sets of pieces were variously colored, and identified with Egyptian deities or "god-forms".

The game was four-handed because each set of pieces corresponded to one of the four classical elements and their several watchtowers, and the game was used for divination as well as competition. MacGregor Mathers, who put its rules into final form. John Dee (magus and astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I), which was later adapted by Victorian members of the Golden Dawn into "a complete system of training and initiation."Įnochian Chess was created by William Wynn Westcott, one of the three founders of the Golden Dawn, but the rules of the game were probably never completed by him. The name comes from the Enochian system of magic of Dr. Has anyone ever played Enochian Chess? I’ve looked at some Enochian Chess websites, but they exist only to plug commercial versions of the game, without explaining it sufficiently.Enochian chess is a four-player chess variant, similar to Chaturanga, associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Perhaps the ancient Indian caturanga game which also used four players might be of help by analogy. All we can tell from looking at it is that there are four players. I’ve had it sitting in my closet all these years unused. Enochian Chess Trilogy - Rosicrucian Chess of the Golden Dawn (1), Khemetic Chess/ Hypermodern Magick.
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Wynn Westcott had designed Enochian Chess but never worked out how to actually do the game. sixteen board sub-elemental extension to the Golden Dawn Enochian Chess. Then we realized to our chagrin that we had no idea how to make use of the Enochian design of chess – the instructions in the book were silent on this question. Arrives by Fri, Nov 19 Buy Enochian Chess: Celtic Chess: W.B. (The colors red, blue, yellow, black, white symbolize fire, water, air, earth, spirit, respectively).Īfter Bill had finished painting the board and pieces, he made me a gift of them. Each piece is two-tone combining two of the four colors in various combinations. There are four kings, four queens, four bishops, four knights, four rooks, and four sets of four pawns each. The board is a 64-square Enochian tablet, each square divided along the diagonals into quadrants, colored various combinations of red, blue, yellow, black. He bought a couple ordinary chess sets and painted them to create the Enochan Chess Set as described in the book. Several years ago my artist friend Bill was studying The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and got interested in the description of Enochian Chess.
