The God-Forms of the Water Army

The Water army in Enochian chess carries five divine names. Its King is Ptah, its Knight is Sebek, its Queen is Thoueris, its Bishop is Hapimon, and its Rook is Shooen. These are the god-forms: the images the player was meant to hold in mind while moving the pieces, so that the force of Water on the board stayed tied to a face and a story. The published Golden Dawn papers set these five over the Water pieces, and that is the whole of the authority here. This article names them, gives the little that can be said plainly, and marks the obscure ones as obscure.

Where the Water army sits

Water takes the corner at h8 and belongs to the receptive side of the board, allied with Earth. Its partner sits at the opposite corner across the long diagonal, never beside it, so the two receptive armies work the board from far apart. Water's pawns march toward file a, which is the army's promotion edge. If you want the geography before the pantheon, the Water board lays out the corner and its direction of play, and the wider set of names across all four armies lives on the Egyptian god-forms page. The five names below sit on top of that geography.

Ptah, the King

The King of Water is Ptah. He is one of the two names in this army that need no special introduction: Ptah is the creator god of Memphis, the patron of craftsmen and builders, imagined as the maker who thinks the world into being. Setting him at the head of the receptive element fits the papers' habit of pairing the Kings with a large, foundational figure. As a piece he moves like any Enochian King, one square in any direction, and he begins doubled on his throne with a major-piece partner set by the chosen opening array. If you want the mechanics of that first square, the general King in Enochian chess page covers how the doubled throne works.

Sebek, the Knight

The Knight of Water is Sebek. This is the second well-known name in the army: Sebek is the crocodile god of the Nile and its marshes, a fitting rider for the watery corner. The Golden Dawn spelling is Sebek, and the same god turns up in modern books under other renderings, but the papers use this one, so this article does too. On the board he makes the ordinary chess knight's jump, an L that no other piece imitates and that no blocker can stop. That leaping quality gives the Water Knight a reach the sliders lack, which the Knight, Bishop, and Rook guide sets against its cousins.

Thoueris, the Queen

The Queen of Water is Thoueris. Here the safe ground narrows. Thoueris is a genuine Egyptian goddess, a protective figure associated with women and childbirth, but the spelling in the papers is its own thing, and beyond that basic role this article will not build out a mythology the sources do not give. What can be said is how she moves, because the Enochian Queen is unlike any chess queen you know. She leaps exactly two squares in any of the eight directions, jumping clean over whatever stands between, and she cannot move a single square at all. She is a short-range leaper, never blocked, and she stays on one color for the whole game. The Enochian chess Queen page is worth reading before you trust her with anything, because the two-square leap surprises everyone at first.

Hapimon, the Bishop

The Bishop of Water is Hapimon, and this is where the names grow obscure. Hapimon is one of the renderings the order carried over from the Egyptology of its day, and it does not map neatly onto a figure a modern museum label would name. The honest course is to take it as the papers give it: a working label in a symbolic system rather than an entry in a dictionary of Egyptian religion. As a piece the Water Bishop is an ordinary diagonal slider, moving any distance along the diagonals until something stops it, and like every Bishop it is bound to one color for the game. A frozen piece still blocks its line, which matters more in Enochian chess than in the ordinary game because whole armies can freeze.

Shooen, the Rook

The Rook of Water is Shooen, and it belongs to the same obscure family as Hapimon. It is presented here exactly as the papers render it, without invented backstory, because the sources do not support one. On the board the Water Rook is the familiar orthogonal slider, running along ranks and files until a piece or an edge halts it, blocked the same way the Bishop is, frozen pieces included. Its pawn, like every pawn in the army, belongs to it and normally promotes back into a Rook when it reaches file a, though the game's delayed-promotion rule can hold a pawn waiting on the edge until the army has lost one of its own.

Reading the five as a group

Two of the Water names are broadly known, Ptah and Sebek, and three are obscure renderings that the papers set down without much explanation, Thoueris in part and Hapimon and Shooen almost entirely. That mix is normal for this game. The Golden Dawn worked from the Egyptology available in the late nineteenth century, and its spellings do not always match what you would read today. The point of the god-forms was never scholarly accuracy anyway. It was to keep the living symbolism of Water in front of the player, so that moving the Queen felt like moving Thoueris and not just a token. The names sit inside a larger stack: every Water piece also reads as a tarot court card in the suit of Cups, and every square underneath carries attributions of its own, which is what lets a finished game be read as an oracle. The pieces page walks through the tarot layer, and the divination page covers the reading.

Keep reading

The god-forms are one layer of a deep board. See the whole cast across the four armies, walk the geography of the Water board, or start with the plain rules if the pieces are new to you.