Poimandres
The revelatory figure or divine intellect in the opening treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum, which presents a vision of cosmic origins.
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 13 of 18
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.
Pseudepigrapha
Also: Pseudepigraphic, pseudepigraphal
Writings attributed to someone who did not write them, usually a figure of great antiquity. The attribution is part of the work rather than a forgery in the modern sense.
Pseudepigraphy
Writing under the name of an earlier or authoritative figure. The name on a magical text does not by itself establish its historical author.
Psychic
In some Gnostic schemes, a soul-oriented category between material and spiritual; it does not mean the modern idea of paranormal ability.
Purification
Preparatory cleansing of a person, space or object described in many ritual sources, by different material and verbal methods.
Qabalah
A spelling often used for Western esoteric adaptations of Kabbalistic vocabulary. On this site Hermetic Qabalah and Jewish Kabbalah remain separate traditions with separate data.
Quadrant
Also: Quadrants
A quarter of a chart, bounded by the angles. Also the four quarters into which Malkuth alone is divided in the Queen scale.
Quill knife
A ritual tool in Key of Solomon. The artavus: originally a small scribe's knife for shaping quills, and in the circle chapter the centre peg for a measuring cord.
Rabbinic
Of the rabbis and their literature — the Mishnah, Talmud and midrash — as against biblical, Second Temple or later kabbalistic material.
Recension
Also: Recensions
A version of a text as edited or revised at some point in its transmission. Two recensions of one work can differ substantially.
Reception
Also: Reception history
What a later tradition made of an earlier one — which is a different question from what the earlier one said.
Redaction
Also: Redacted
The editing of existing material into the form a text now has, often by someone other than its original author.
Retort
A vessel with a bent neck used for heating and distilling materials.
Retrograde
Apparent backward motion of a planet against the zodiac as seen from Earth, caused by changing relative positions rather than a planet reversing its physical orbit.
Rider–Waite–Smith
A twentieth-century tarot deck designed by Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, notable for its illustrated suit cards.
Ring of Solomon
A ritual tool in Ars Goetia. A silver ring held before the operator's face in encounters the text associates with noxious fumes.