Sublimation
A laboratory operation in which heated material rises as vapor and is collected after cooling. Alchemists also used the word metaphorically for refinement.
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 16 of 18
Succedent house
A house following an angular house in the chart's order, a traditional structural class distinct from cadent houses.
Suffumigation
A historical word for perfuming or treating an object or place with ritual smoke; often used in grimoire directions.
Sukkah
Also: Sukkot
The temporary booth dwelt in during the festival of Sukkot, and the tractate of the Talmud concerning it.
Sulfur in alchemy
A combustible material and, in some alchemical theories, a name for a principle involved in how metals behave. It is not always literal sulfur.
Sun
A classical astrology planet. The Sun marks the chart’s centre of gravity: the part of a life that seeks coherence, visibility and purposeful expression.
Supernals
The uppermost three sefirot — Keter, Chokhmah and Binah — taken together, and separated from the seven below them by the Abyss.
Syncretism
The combining or reinterpretation of ideas and practices from different religious or philosophical sources; it does not imply that the originals said the same thing.
Talisman
Also: talismans, talismanic
An object made or marked to carry a proposed protective or beneficial influence. Its design and claimed powers depend on the text and tradition.
Tarocchi
An Italian name for the tarot card game and its special trump cards.
Tarot
A pack of playing cards developed in fifteenth-century Italy with four suits and added trumps. Its use for fortune-telling and occult correspondences developed much later.
Tarot spread
An arrangement of drawn cards with positions assigned interpretive roles in a reading. Spreads are methods of later divinatory practice, not a fixed property of the early game.
Taurus
The Taurus sign of the zodiac. Taurus is fixed earth: the work of taking root, keeping faith with the senses, and giving something enough time and care to become substantial.
The Arabic Plotinus
Also: Theology of Aristotle
The ninth-century Arabic paraphrase of parts of Plotinus's Enneads, which circulated under the title The Theology of Aristotle. The misattribution gave it Aristotle's authority.
Theurgy
Also: theurgic
Ritual action aimed at relation with a divine realm in some ancient and later philosophical traditions; authors distinguish it from other forms of magic in different ways.
Tikkun
Also: Tikkun olam
Repair or mending. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the restoration of what was scattered when the vessels broke; the work assigned to human action.
Tincture
A preparation that colors or alters another substance; in alchemical prose the word can also name the supposed agent of transmutation.
Transcendent
Also: Transcendence
Beyond and outside the created order, as against immanent — present within it. Most of these systems need their God to be both.
Transliteration
Writing a word from one script in the letters of another. It converts script, never meaning.
Tree of Life
Also: Etz Chaim
A biblical phrase with several Jewish uses; in Jewish mysticism it can also name a diagram of the sefirot. The diagrams used by later Hermetic writers are not one global tree.