Blisdon

Blisdon is the prince paired with King Bnaspol in John Dee's De Heptarchia Mystica, one of the seven king and prince pairs recorded from the angelic sessions Dee held with the scryer Edward Kelley across 1582 and 1583 and preserved today as Sloane MS 3191. Blisdon shares Bnaspol's assignment to Wednesday and, by the system's day and planet correspondence, to Mercury.

In the Heptarchia's structure, each day's prince serves under its king rather than ruling independently: the pairing is not a partnership of equals but a fixed subordination recorded consistently across all seven days. This is a separate stratum of Dee's angelic material from the forty eight Calls that Casaubon printed in 1659 or the ninety one Governors of the thirty Aethyrs that most twentieth century Enochian practice draws on. Those later systems organize the angelic hierarchy by elemental Watchtower and aethyric grade; the Heptarchia organizes it by the week and its planetary rulers instead.

Because the Heptarchia was never printed in Dee's lifetime, Blisdon survived only in manuscript until Joseph H. Peterson's modern edition and transcription of Sloane MS 3191 made the text broadly available, which is part of why the princes of the Heptarchia remain far less familiar today than the angelic ranks named in the later, published Calls.

Sources De Heptarchia Mystica (Sloane MS 3191), Joseph H. Peterson's editionJohn Dee, edited by Joseph H. Peterson with Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern OccultureEgil Asprem

Blisdon's role in De Heptarchia Mystica is defined entirely by subordination: every prince in the system serves under the king who shares his day, and Blisdon serves under Bnaspol, ruling Wednesday under Mercury in the scheme's own day and planet correspondence. The manuscript, Sloane MS 3191, records the pairing from angelic sessions Dee conducted with Edward Kelley in 1582 and 1583, and Joseph H. Peterson's modern edition is the basis for what is known of the office today.

The Heptarchia's seven king and prince pairs form a complete week, each pair distinct from the next by day and planet alone, since the underlying office of 'prince' repeats identically across all seven: subordinate to the day's king, without the independent standing the Kings themselves are given in the text. That repetition is a feature of the source rather than a gap in the record: Dee's own material treats the office, not the individual, as the constant, and Blisdon's identity within it is carried almost entirely by the pairing with Bnaspol and by Wednesday's place in the week.

Because the Golden Dawn and the Enochian revival that followed it worked mainly from the Calls and the Aethyr Governors rather than from the Heptarchia, Blisdon has had a modest afterlife compared to those later figures, read chiefly by scholars of Dee's diaries and by the modern editions, Peterson's foremost among them, that finally brought Sloane MS 3191 out of manuscript.

Sources De Heptarchia Mystica (Sloane MS 3191), Joseph H. Peterson's editionJohn Dee, edited by Joseph H. Peterson with Arguing with Angels: Enochian Magic and Modern OccultureEgil Asprem