Who is the Great Mother Galvah?

Greetings Gnostics and Enochites!

One of the most obscure figures found in Dee’s diaries (speaking here of the celestial actors) is the angelic being known as Galvah (interpreted to mean “The End”). She appeared to Dee and Kelley only after most of Liber Loagaeth had been transmitted. In fact, it was specifically Her job to reveal the 49th and final Table of the Book – which itself was said to encompass the End Times and the reign of the Antichrist. Supporting this, Kelley envisions Her being swarmed by vile and dangerous animalistic demons, who fawn upon Her rather than intimidate or attack Her.

If you read only this entry in the journals, you might be forgiven for assuming Galvah is a dark and possibly evil being. Perhaps She is Lilith, or even the Whore of Babylon! This latter would associate Her quite nicely with the Book of Revelation, itself a prophecy of the End Times.

Yet… Galvah is referred to at one point, by the angel Illemese, as “Wisdom.” And another angel – named Madimi – calls Her “mother.” Well, unless you’re in the “Enochian angels are really demons” camp, this doesn’t do much to support Galvah being Babalon the Harlot. As many of you, who have read my Enochian books, are already well aware, I have long argued Galvah is in fact Sophia – Wife of God, Mother of Angels. This would be one of the Gnostic underpinnings of the Enochian system. Her name as given in Dee’s journals – “Galvah” – seems to be directly related to the Table of Loagaeth She was transmitting. The last one.

Makes sense – but doesn’t it seem a bit too “on the nose”? I mean, sure She came to deliver the last Table – and that Table deals with the End Times. So, I’ve always taken for granted that Her name here was primarily centered around Her specific task – to reveal the final Table. But, there has to be more to the name of the Mother of God here… To be fair, I did settle on something of an answer: She is, in fact, one half of the phrase “Alpha and Omega.” The Christos/Logos is the Alpha, and Sophia is the Omega. (In fact, I have written that “Galvah” means something closer to “omega” than to the simple phrase “the end”.) There you go – the deep mystery of Her name revealed!

But…. not really. Don’t get me wrong – I believe this interpretation to be correct. But it doesn’t go very far to explain WHY. It doesn’t give us insight into what Dee, or his angels, were thinking. Why is Sophia the Omega? Why was She sent to reveal the final Table of Loagaeth, instead of (for example) Abaddon/Apollyon – the actual Angel of the Apocalypse who appears in Revelation? (For that matter, why didn’t Raphael reveal it as he had the other 48 Tables?)

The answer, I believe, is found in the Book of Revelation. Above I mentioned the Whore of Babylon, but don’t forget there is another Lady with a starring role in that old pulp: the famous Woman of the Apocalypse. That’s Her pictured at the top of this post (complete with demonic creatures from the Revelation fawning at Her feet.) From Revelation 12, a Divine Woman in the heavens, crowned with the stars, clothed with the Sun, and the Moon at Her feet. She is persecuted by the Dragon but flown to safety by the Angels, where She finally gives birth to a Child. Tradition holds this to be Mary Herself, giving birth to Christ. Or that She is the celestial Mary giving birth to the Church. But Hermeticism calls her Aima Elohim, the Mother of the Gods (or Mother of Angels). She is equated with the Gnostic Sophia, the Jewish Shekinah, as well as with the Hermetic Soul of the World. In Dee’s journals, Galvah is presented in just this way – referred to as the mother of the “Family of Light” angels (Madimi and her siblings) and Kelley’s vision depicting the spirits of nature rushing toward Her and fawning upon Her. As if She were Mother Nature… because She is.

But whether we call Her Sophia, or Mary, or Shekinah, or Aima, or Wife of God, or Mother of God, or Mother of Angels, or Soul of the World, (or etc), there is one title by which She is most widely known even to common folk: the Woman of the Apocalypse. And therein, I believe, lies the key to understanding why She appears as “Galvah” in Dee’s journals. She came, very specifically, in her form of Woman of the Apocalypse in order to reveal the Loagaeth Table concerning that very Apocalypse. (Keep in mind, we are in this case using the word “apocalypse” in it’s erroneous – yet common – meaning of “the end of the world”.) In this sense, “Galvah” is almost literally a shorthand for Her title given in The Book of Revelation. And this tells us everything we need to know about with whom, exactly, Dee and Kelley believed they were speaking.

Zorge!