ZAX is the tenth 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, ZAX, 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 tenth Aethyr, ZAX, is the one later associated in Thelemic practice with the Abyss and its dweller Choronzon, from Aleister Crowley's account of scrying it in 1909.
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.