Leo
The Leo sign of the zodiac. Leo is fixed fire: warmth held at the centre, made visible through courage, play, performance, loyalty, and the desire to create from the heart.
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.
342 terms · page 10 of 18
Liber Loagaeth
A manuscript collection of complex letter tables associated with Dee's angelic sessions, distinct from a straightforward translated vocabulary list.
Libra
The Libra sign of the zodiac. Libra is cardinal air: the opening of a conversation, compact, or courtship, and the search for a proportion in which more than one party can stand.
License to depart
A formula dismissing a spirit after a rite in some ceremonial magic texts.
Liturgy
Also: Liturgical
The fixed order of public worship — what is said, when, and by whom. A good deal of this material is liturgical before it is anything else.
Locator
The reference that says where in a source a passage is — a page, a chapter, a section — as distinct from the source itself.
Lotus Wand
A ritual tool in Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn adept's general-purpose wand, banded with the twelve zodiacal colours between white and black ends and crowned by a twenty-six-petalled lotus.
Macrocosm
The larger ordered cosmos invoked when writers compare the world with the human 'microcosm'.
Macroform
Also: Macroforms
A large and unstable textual unit that circulated in varying arrangements rather than as one fixed work. The Hekhalot writings are usually described this way.
Magic square
A grid of numbers arranged so each row, column and main diagonal has the same sum. In planetary magic such grids are assigned to planets.
Magic Sword
A ritual tool in Golden Dawn. A scarlet-and-emerald sword of Mars and Geburah, used for forceful banishing and defence and kept distinct from the yellow Air Dagger.
Magical circle
A marked ritual boundary within which the operator stands in many grimoire instructions; its markings and claimed role differ by text.
Magician's Crown
A ritual tool in Crowley, Book 4. A gold band, crimson cap, and uraeus representing attainment, with pentagrams, a hexagram, and a central jewel.
Magick Fire and Thurible
A ritual tool in Crowley, Book 4. A three-legged censer on open brasswork, where charcoal and incense stage the passage from aspiration through smoke to consuming fire.
Magnum opus
Also: Great Work
The 'great work' of an alchemist, often the long process imagined to yield the philosopher's stone. Texts do not agree on one recipe or sequence.
Malkhut
Also: Malkuth, Malchut
Kingdom. The tenth and lowest sefirah, where everything above it arrives in the world.
Mars
A classical astrology planet. Mars shows directed force: the capacity to cut, compete, defend, pursue and act before consensus has formed.
Measuring cord
A ritual tool in Key of Solomon. The practical radius-line that turns the quill knife's centre point into a measured ritual circumference.
Mediation
Also: Mediating
The role of whatever stands between an unknowable source and the world, making action possible without compromising the source's simplicity.
Mercury
A classical astrology planet. Mercury concerns exchange: speech, writing, calculation, curiosity, dexterity and the way one thing is translated into another.