Mercury in alchemy
A metal and a recurring theoretical or symbolic term in alchemical writings. Context matters: an author may mean the material, an imagined principle or a coded ingredient.
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 11 of 18
Merkavah
Also: Merkabah, Merkava
Chariot. The throne-chariot of Ezekiel's vision, and the name given to the earliest Jewish mystical literature built on it. The noun is not in Ezekiel 1 itself; it reaches that vision from elsewhere in scripture.
Microcosm
The notion that a human being reflects the larger cosmos in miniature. The exact analogy changes by author and tradition.
Midheaven
Also: MC, Medium Coeli
The point connected with the upper culmination of the ecliptic in a chart, commonly used as a house angle, though house systems place it differently.
Midrash
Interpretation. Rabbinic commentary that reads scripture by expanding its narrative and language, and the body of literature doing so.
Minor Arcana
A later term for tarot's four ordinary suits, each with numbered and court cards; it is not the medieval name of those cards.
Monism
The position that everything is finally one substance or principle, however many things appear.
Moon
A classical astrology planet. The Moon describes habit, appetite, memory and the quick adjustments through which a person meets ordinary life.
Mother figure
One of four initially cast geomantic figures from which the rest of a shield is derived.
Mundane astrology
Astrology applied to nations, weather and public events rather than to a person's nativity.
Nag Hammadi library
A group of Coptic codices found near Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, preserving many previously little-known early Christian and related writings.
Natal chart
Also: Birth chart, nativity
A map of calculated celestial positions for a person's birth time and place, interpreted by astrologers through planets, signs, houses and aspects. It is an astrological practice, not a scientific personality test.
Natural magic
The branch of Agrippa's scheme concerned with properties of natural things such as plants, stones and animals. Its historical claims should not be confused with experimentally demonstrated effects.
Neoplatonism
A family of late-antique philosophies developing Plato's ideas of a supreme principle, intellect, soul and the ordered cosmos; later esoteric writers drew on it selectively.
Nicolas Flamel
A historical Parisian scribe later recast in legend as an alchemist. The legend is not evidence that he made the philosopher's stone.
Niece figure
A geomantic figure derived by adding two preceding figures line by line and reducing the result to odd or even marks.
Nigredo
Also: blackening
The blackening named in some alchemical descriptions of a work's changing colors. It is not a universal first step in every historical recipe.
Nous
Greek for intellect or mind; in the philosophical Hermetica it can name divine intellect rather than everyday reasoning.
Occult
Hidden or concealed; in early modern 'occult philosophy' it often referred to qualities thought to act without an obvious visible mechanism.
Occult philosophy
The study of hidden qualities and relationships in nature, the heavens and religious rites as organized by Renaissance writers such as Agrippa; 'occult' here means hidden, not automatically evil.