Semyaza

The Grigori are «those who watch». The Greek name, egrḗgoroi, translates a participle meaning exactly that: to be awake, to stand guard. The Book of Enoch calls them the Watchers and the holy ones of heaven, and their office was not to punish anyone but to look.

The Book of Jubilees adds the detail that changes the sense of everything that follows: the Watchers came down to earth on an errand, to teach men law and justice. That is, the descent was not the transgression. They were below because they had been ordered below, and teaching was their work. What went wrong was what they taught and whom they lay with.

Semyaza is the chief of the two hundred. The text says so plainly and without explaining it: he is «their leader», and being so he is the first to speak when the moment of decision comes. His name has been read as a Hebrew phrase, šem and ḥazah, «the name» and «to see», whence the two versions in circulation: «my name has seen» and «he who sees the name». Both point to the same thing, an angel defined by looking, and that fits the name of his order too well to be chance.

The sixth chapter of the Book of Enoch tells the moment with remarkable economy. Men multiplied, beautiful daughters were born to them, and the Watchers saw and desired them. So far, a desire. What happens next is what sets Semyaza apart from all the rest and what a chief's entry has to tell.

Semyaza does not say «let us do it». He says he is afraid. The text puts this sentence in his mouth: I fear you will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin. It is a confession of administrative cowardice before it is one of lust: he knows that blame is collected from the chief, and what he seeks is not permission but company in the punishment. The others answer with the solution: let us all swear an oath and bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan. And so they did.

Two hundred came down on the summit of the mountain, and the text explains the name of the place by the deed: they called it Hermon because there they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations. The mountain is called what it is because of the oath. There is no battle, no disputed throne and no heavenly army opposite: there are two hundred binding one another so that none can draw back, and a chief who arranges it because he does not want to be the only one answerable. That is Semyaza's last act as a Watcher, and with it this entry ends: what comes after is told by the other.

Semyaza is not Lucifer, and the confusion is as old as it is constant. In the Book of Enoch there is no war in heaven, no angel coveting the throne, no third of the host dragged down. That story is composed much later out of materials from Isaiah 14 and Revelation, and it is pasted onto the Watchers because it fits what the reader expects. What the texts say of Semyaza is smaller and more human: he came down because he wanted a woman, and he organised the others so as not to answer alone.

Nor did he teach what is attributed to him. The eighth chapter hands out the forbidden knowledge one by one, and Semyaza gets exactly this: enchantments and root-cuttings, that is, the magic of the word and of herbs. Metalworking, swords, breastplates and the painting of eyelids are Azazel's; astrology is Baraqel's; the constellations are Kokabel's. To credit him with the forge or the sky is to strip those three of the one thing that distinguishes them from the rest of the two hundred.

And he is not in the grimoires. The Key of Solomon does not name him, nor does he appear among the spirits of the Goetia: the title «prince of the Watchers» hung on him by some occult catalogues is a modern invention on an ancient name, and it is worth saying when each thing dates from. What did happen after Hermon, the punishment and a repentance no other Watcher had, belongs to his second entry.