Adept
One held to have reached a degree of attainment in a practice; in the orders, a formal grade rather than a compliment.
Reference · Glossary
Glossary
A guide to the words used across this site and in the texts behind it. Definitions describe historical usage, not proven supernatural effects. A term may mean different things in different traditions; the tradition label tells you which sense is meant here.
Looking for a sign rather than a word? Symbols draws the signs of astrology, alchemy and geomancy and links each to what this study says about it.
29 terms · page 1 of 2
Aeon
Also: Aion
A divine emanation or being in some Gnostic mythologies; the number and names of aeons differ between schools.
Aggadah
Also: Haggadah
The narrative, ethical and interpretive material of rabbinic literature, as distinct from its legal rulings.
Air Dagger
A ritual tool in Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn's Air implement: a short blade with a bright-yellow hilt and violet or purple names, sigils, and motto.
Akephalos
Also: Headless one
Headless. The epithet of the god invoked in a Greek magical papyrus, and the word later printings replaced with “Bornless”.
Albedo
Also: whitening
The whitening named in some alchemical color sequences, after blackening in the sequence discussed by this source.
Alchemical transmutation
The proposed change of one substance or metal into another. Making gold from a less valued metal was a famous goal, not an established result of the old recipes.
Alchemy
Also: alchemist, alchemists
A historical family of practices and theories about changing matter, especially metals. Its laboratory work, coded language, medicine and philosophical aims varied considerably across places and centuries.
Alembic
A distilling vessel or still, used to heat substances and guide the vapor toward collection.
Allegory
Also: Allegorical, allegorically
A reading that takes a text to mean something other than what it says, systematically. Much of the alchemical corpus has been read allegorically, and the argument over whether it should be is live.
Altar
A ritual tool in Crowley, Book 4. Book 4's double-cube centre: the fixed basis of the work, the law under which it proceeds, and the container of every temple implement except the lamp.
Amulet
A carried or worn object credited with protection; unlike a general talisman, the protective purpose is central to the word's common use.
Angelic alphabet
The special letterforms recorded for Dee's angelic language. Their names and shapes are matters of textual witness, not ordinary English translations.
Angular house
A house connected with a primary chart angle. Traditional astrology distinguishes angular, succedent and cadent places.
Apocalyptic literature
Also: Apocalyptic, apocalypse
Writing that reveals what is hidden — the heavens, the end, the throne — usually through a vision given to a named ancient figure. The throne visions behind the chariot literature are of this kind.
Apocrypha
Also: Apocryphal
Writings outside an accepted scriptural canon. Which writings those are depends on whose canon is meant.
Apocryphon of John
A late-antique revelatory text whose myth of divine realms and the lower creator is central to many modern studies of Sethian material.
Apophatic
Also: Via negativa, apophasis
Saying what something is not. A way of speaking about a God held to be beyond description, and the manner in which Ein-Sof is usually approached.
Apotropaic
Intended to avert danger or harmful influence, for example when a text prescribes a protective sign or object.
Aquarius
The Aquarius sign of the zodiac. Aquarius is fixed air: a sustained idea, rule, or common cause, with the distance to see a social pattern and the stubbornness to keep testing it.