Cadent house
A house falling away from an angle in traditional chart structure, distinct from angular and succedent houses.
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.
32 terms · page 1 of 2
Calcination
Strong heating that leaves a powdery residue or changes a material's properties. An alchemical operation, not a universal spiritual stage.
Cancer
The Cancer sign of the zodiac. Cancer is cardinal water: the instinct to gather, shelter, feed, remember, and make a living enclosure around whatever is tender or still forming.
Capricorn
The Capricorn sign of the zodiac. Capricorn is cardinal earth: ambition in its old sense of undertaking a climb, accepting weight, and building something that can bear consequence and time.
Cartomancy
Divination by cards. Tarot cartomancy is one form, but ordinary playing-card decks have also been used.
Cast
The initial production of four Mother figures in a geomantic reading, traditionally from sets of marks made without counting in advance.
Celestial magic
Agrippa's branch concerning stars, numbers, images and their proposed influence on earthly things.
Censer
A ritual tool in Key of Solomon. The fire-vessel that turns prepared aromatics into fumigation and marks the outer geometry of the circle.
Ceremonial magic
Agrippa's branch involving religious names, rites and spiritual beings; the category is historical and does not describe one uniform modern practice.
Charm
A spoken formula or small object used with an intended protective or beneficial effect; context determines which sense a source means.
Chasadim
Also: Hasadim
Mercies or kindnesses. The plural of Chesed, used for the expansive or giving forces set against the Gevurot.
Chorography
The description of a region and its places, including which parts of the earth an astrological sign or planet was held to govern.
Christian Cabala
Also: Christian Kabbalah
The Renaissance Christian reading of Kabbalah, begun by Pico and pursued largely to argue Christian doctrine from Jewish sources.
Chrysopoeia
The making of gold: a traditional name for the gold-making ambition within alchemy.
Chymistry
An early modern name for practices that combined what later became chemistry with alchemical theories, medicine, metallurgy and craft.
Cipher
Also: Ciphers
A system for writing something so that only an intended reader can follow it. Magical alphabets are often ciphers of the Latin or Hebrew one rather than scripts in their own right.
Citrinitas
The yellowing named in some four-color alchemical schemes; many other accounts use different stages or images.
Coagulation
Thickening or solidifying a material; one of the operations named in alchemical accounts of transformation.
Codex
Also: Codices
A manuscript in book form, with leaves bound along one edge, as against a scroll.
Collation
Also: Collated
Comparing copies of a text against one another to establish what it says and where they differ.