Publishing John Dee's Angelic Diaries

Casaubon's most consequential single act of publication was A True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Years Between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits, which appeared in 1659, more than fifty years after Dee's death and drawing on manuscripts that had survived by chance. The book made public, for the first time, the detailed record of Dee and Edward Kelley's angelic scrying sessions and the Enochian material they claimed to have received, material that would otherwise likely have remained unknown or lost. Casaubon supplied a lengthy preface framing the diaries not as a guide to genuine angel communication but as a cautionary case study in how a serious and learned man could be deceived by demonic delusion presenting itself as angelic.

That framing reflects the same concern that runs through his other major work, Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, Civil and Divine (1668), a sustained defense of the reality of spirits and witchcraft against contemporary skepticism. Casaubon's editorial decision to publish rather than suppress Dee's manuscripts, despite his own disapproving reading of them, is the reason the Enochian system exists today as a documented historical record rather than a lost curiosity, an outcome later occultists who took the material seriously owe entirely to a scholar who did not share their conclusions.