Partzufim
Also: Partzuf
Faces or countenances. In Lurianic Kabbalah, configurations into which the sefirot are regrouped as personified aspects.
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.
24 terms · page 1 of 2
Patriarchs
Also: Patriarch
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the founding fathers of Israel in the biblical narrative. Three of the seven guests welcomed into the sukkah.
Patronage
The support of a wealthy or powerful backer, without which most of this material would not have been copied, printed or translated.
Pentacle
A marked ritual emblem or medal in the Key of Solomon. The word does not always mean a five-pointed star.
Pentagonal Figure of Solomon
A ritual tool in Ars Goetia. A solar or lunar figure worn on the breast with the selected spirit's seal on its reverse.
Philology
Also: Philological, philologist
The study of language in historical texts — what the words meant, and what the manuscripts actually say.
Philosopher's stone
Also: Philosophers' stone
A sought-after material said to enable metallic transmutation and, in some accounts, other transformations. Its identity and preparation were deliberately obscured in many texts.
Pip card
A numbered suit card whose value is often shown by repeating its suit emblem. Some later decks illustrate its scene instead.
Pisces
The Pisces sign of the zodiac. Pisces is mutable water: the loosening of borders through sympathy, imagination, devotion, dream, and the return of separate currents to a larger sea.
Planetary hour
One of the unequal day or night periods assigned in sequence to the seven classical planets for timing astrological or magical work.
Planetary intelligence
A named being printed alongside a planet's numerical square in Agrippa. It should not be silently identified with his separate lists of planetary angels.
Planetary magic
Magical procedures keyed to the seven planets of premodern astronomy, including election of times, images and numerical squares in Agrippa's account.
Planetary square
A numbered grid assigned to a classical planet; Agrippa's seven grids are magic squares whose rows, columns and diagonals share a total. The arithmetic can be checked without accepting the magical claims.
Pleroma
The 'fullness': a term for the divine realm or totality of divine emanations in some Gnostic accounts, particularly Valentinian ones.
Pneumatic
In some Gnostic schemes, a person or aspect described as spiritual; the classification is a historical doctrine, not an assessment of people today.
Poimandres
The revelatory figure or divine intellect in the opening treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum, which presents a vision of cosmic origins.
Potency
Also: Potencies
A power or capacity rather than a thing. The sefirot are usually described as divine potencies.
Prima materia
Also: First matter
The starting material or first matter of an alchemical work. Authors often described it indirectly, so it should not be treated as one agreed chemical substance.
Procession
Also: Proodos
The movement by which each level of reality proceeds from the one above it in Neoplatonic thought, paired with a return back toward the source.
Provenance
Where a text, object or attribution came from, and the chain by which it reached the present.