ZEN is the eighteenth of the thirty Aethyrs, or Airs, of the Enochian system, the thirty spiritual regions delivered to the mathematician John Dee and the scryer Edward Kelley in 1584, and named in the record Dee compiled from those sessions. Its three-letter name, ZEN, was received letter by letter through Kelley's scrying.
Place in the system
Each Aethyr is said to contain three Governors among whom the ninety-one Parts of the Earth are divided.
The thirty Aethyrs are the raw gift of the Dee-Kelley sessions; the elaborate visionary content attached to them in modern practice belongs to a later layer, above all Aleister Crowley's The Vision and the Voice, his record of scrying all thirty Aethyrs in 1900 and 1909. The Aethyr is described here as an element of that documented historical tradition, studied as such, its entities not reified.
The three Governors
ZEN's three Parts are Nabaomi, ruling Carthago, Carthage, under King Gebabal of the tribe of Asher; Zafasai, ruling a Part called Coxlant with no known referent, under King Alpudus of the tribe of Issachar; and Yalpamb, ruling Adumea, Idumea, the land of Edom, under King Arfaolg of the tribe of Ephraim. A name closely resembling Carthago, Carcedoma, appears two Aethyrs later, one of several near-duplicate pairs scattered across the ninety-one that the table never explains, and Idumea appears in scripture as well as in the classical geographers, a blending of biblical and classical sources that runs through the whole list.