The Magician's Dictionary

PAGAN HOLIDAYS

The four "Sabbats" (Summer/Winter solstices, Spring/Fall equinoxes), and Imbolc/Oimelc (Candlemas) -- Feb. 2; Beltane -- May Eve; Walpurgisnacht -- May 1; Lugnhassadh (Lammas) -- August 1; Samhein/Samuin (Hallowe'en) -- Oct. 31/Nov. 1.

PALINDROME

A phrase that runs the same backward as forward, e.g., Miser saturni tu sumus ut in rutas resim or En giro torte sol ciclos et rotor igne, etc.

PALINGENESIS

Recurrence of historical events in the same order, in an infinite series of cycles.

PANDEMOPLASMODIUM

The ultimate fusion of the entire earth into one giant mass of writhing human flesh with no remaining space for anything but humanity drowning in itself and its waste products.

PANGENESIS

Theory that each separate cell of a whole organism reproduces itself.

PANSPERMIA

Bacterial spores in outer space.

PANTACLE

(Not to be confused with pentacle.) A figure depicting the "All" of the magician, a microcosm (omnis in par vo). "The food of the Magus." A pantacle is a depicted symbolic summation of an entire magical dogma. Says Crowley, "Every fact, and even every falsehood, must enter into the Pantacle; it is the great storehouse from which the magician draws." Often made of beeswax. The bread of the Xtian sacrament can also be stolen and used in a pinch, whereupon it must be cannibalized. A pantacle derives its power from cosmic forces, rather than from the magician, as in the case of a talisman.

PANTHEISM

The belief that everything, without exception, is part of divinity or is a manifestation of God. A form of monism identifying mind and matter. Xtians hate pantheism because if everything is God, then nothing needs salvation. Moreover, if everything is God, then nothing is God, just as if everything were blue, there would be no color at all, least of all blue!

PARABLES OF THE AYATOLLAH HAKIMA

The following are presented without comment:

A certain Bedouin went into the desert without water. When thirst overcame him he prayed for the miracle of rain and it did not come. Finally, remembering that water always moves downward, he fell to digging feverishly until at last he reached a well. As he bent over gratefully to drink, a few drops of rain began to fall upon his head.

The angel Gabriel, hearing the prayers of a mortal, sought to manifest and award his supplicant the joy of beholding seraphic splendor in the flesh. But no matter what he did, the mortal still saw the angel only in his mind's eye. Finally, Gabriel puckered up his lips and, in imitation of the evening breeze, riffled the pages of a bible that lay on the mortal's table and the holy book fell open at a lovely picture of the angel. This proves that everything in the universe is material.

Once there were two philosophers. The pessimist preached that all human life is miserable and on his door hung the word, "Repent!" The optimist taught that human life should be devoted to pleasure. On his wall he hung the word "Rejoice!" The pessimist inherited a good deal of money and lived to a ripe old age. The optimist died at an early age from a painful disease.

Two souls appeared at St. Peter's Gate. One was the innocent soul of a 3 year old child who had died in an accident. The other was the soul of a 99 year old man who died of tertiary syphilis. Why did St. Peter let in the old man first?

An old native came to the missionary doctor with a baffling fever. The doctor was unable to diagnose the case and none of his medicines worked. Finally, the old man went to the tribal witch doctor for advice. The witch doctor looked at him for a long time and asked, "Is there anything that you can eat?" And the old man shook his head and said, "I can keep nothing down."

"Can you keep pawa berries down?" the witch doctor asked. "Perhaps I could keep pawa berries down," the old man admitted.

"Then eat nothing but pawa berries for the next two weeks," suggested the witch doctor.

At the end of two weeks, the old man was still sick. So he got up, turned around thirteen times, made the sign of the cross at the sun, spat on the ground and then sat back down again. In that instant, the fever broke and the old man was well.

PARACELSUS

The famous 16th Century physician and alchemist who taught the maxim, "As above, so below." Born in Einsiedeln, Switzerland, 1493, the full glory of his name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. He taught (before the word was invented) that man is "hologram" of the universe -- the macrocosm dwells within the microcosm. His medicine was based on the observation that health requires the proper balance of sulphur, salt and mercury (male, neutral, female). His understanding was that alchemy was not chemistry so much as an inner human process, yet his pharmacology is still amazing and effective and he is credited with having discovered nitrogen (azote). The secret of the lapis philosophorum was said to have been conferred on him by Solomon of Trismosin. Disease, according to Paracelsus was caused by the separation of man's three elements (sulphur, salt and mercury) from Universe.

Smaragdine, yet Venusian Falling


As yods but green indicating

Undulating flesh-sperm

Pushing forth in microposopic splendor vectored

in the Four
under the Three Substances


under the Two Hypostatic Principles


under the One Reality




And lifting upward in vaster arc from Kingdom to Crown
From vacua no more to Gods no less
Thus silk primordial
Divine foreteller.

PARACLETE

The Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor, Holy Ghost.

PARALEIPSIS

A figure by which one fixes attention by saying one will not speak about a certain matter and then goes on to do so.

PARASEMIOTIC SYMBOL

A figure or talisman displaying an obscure "message" or indecipherable picture in an effort to draw attention to the importance of form over content. Contemporary society suffers from a scarcity of vehicles of form.

PARFAXITAS

Grant's sentinel of the 27th tunnel. The "Red Temple." Its sickness is the festering arising from wounds.

PAROUSIA

The 2nd Coming (of X). The return of Christ is, as it was in the beginning, the return of the Christ consciousness -- for there is no historical Christ, (unlike, let us say Thoth or Hermes). Minions of the historical Church will wait in vain as the Xtian Age of Pisces draws to an end at last with nary a glimmer of suburban yuppie Jesus in tennis shoes and pink jogging shorts. Technically, in eternal terms, the three "days" of Christ's death are eons. The first day was the day of his crucifixion, yesterday, which took place 2000 years ago. The second day is the entire span of time since then, taken as a single day. During all this day, Christ has been in Hell. The third day is the millennium, tomorrow, when he will "rise" up out of Hell. In fact, the real meaning of Parousia (in Greek) is a "remaining beside" and really has nothing to do with "coming back" at all.

PARSONS, JOHN WHITESIDE

I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote,
marijuana, morphine and cocaine,
I never know sadness but only a madness
that burns at the heart and the brain
I see each charwoman, ecstatic inhuman,
angelic, demonic, divine.
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
that brims with ambrosial wine.

So goes a poem written by magician Jack Parsons, head of the California lodge of the O.T.O. (1944-52), as privately printed in a 1943 issue of The Oriflamme. This was, synchronistically enough, as Robert Anton Wilson has pointed out, but a few weeks before the discovery of LSD.

All of Crowley's disciples struggled valiantly to "discover the identity of the hidden God" within them, their "True (Thelemic) Will" and to find a way to implement their knowledge. Their endings were mostly dismal. Those who claimed success in the Great Work ceased all further activity and led lives thereafter of total obscurity. One of them, Frater 210, Jack Parsons, claimed success, only to go up in flames shortly thereafter.

Jack Parsons was a co-founder of The California Institute of Technology. His contributions to the aerospace industry and nuclear research were so considerable that he has the unique distinction of being the only North American sorcerer in the 20th Century to have had a mountain on the moon named after him. He was also one of Aleister Crowley's more bizarre disciples.

He was born on October 2, 1914, in Los Angeles, California. The only offspring of divorced parents, he spent a solitary and uneventful childhood. He devoted himself, as solitary children do, to reading and daydreaming. He also harbored a grudge against authority and interference and nursed a rebellious spirit. His studies led him into aerospace technology, but by temperament he was apparently not a scientist and his life did not truly begin until 1939, when an acquaintance, Wilfred T. Smith, introduced him to Aleister Crowley's writings and invited him to join his Agap� Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis.

Wilfred T. Smith, or Frater 132, had ostensibly been a special protege of Crowley's, who had decided for astrological reasons that Smith was a god imprisoned in human flesh. This seems curious to us now, because Smith's behavior was totally psychopathic. The truth is that Smith had fallen into disfavor with Crowley, who had decided the man was turning the O.T.O.'s California Lodge into a cheap love cult, which Crowley considered a "slimy abomination." As soon as Parsons came into the order, Smith grabbed Parson's wife, Helen, as his very own familiar and had a child by her. Thereupon Parsons abandoned her and took her younger sister, Betty, as his mistress and magickal partner. This arrangement appeared to work well enough for him and he soon advanced into the inner circles of the lodge. Meanwhile, Crowley very cleverly gave Smith a specific formula for his apotheosis and ordered him to resign in order to identify this God within. This was the easiest way of getting Smith out of the Lodge so that Parsons could be put in charge. Immediately, Smith's star began to fall. He conceived a hatred for Parsons and "attacked him astrally." Kenneth Grant in his Magical Revival recounts a curious hallucination or dream that Parsons underwent with a black-caped figure whom he transfixed with knives and eventually drove away.

But now Parsons, determined to repeat his initial disasters, brought in a mysterious "Frater X" as his secretary and who seemed a promising candidate for the lodge which Parsons had now taken over. His new friend, however, also proved to be a rogue and quickly wormed out of Parsons the top-secret psycho-sexual and magical techniques of the Agape Lodge. Soon thereafter, Frater X got him to enter a business venture with him, with Parson's money as the lion's share of the investment. Next Frater X persuaded him to sell the property that was the headquarters of the Lodge. Then he and Betty went on a yachting cruise around the world. Now that Frater X had reduced him to poverty, Parsons had to earn his living in an "aircraft company." What it is about the occult that could possibly interest dreary U.S. government agents defies the imagination, but Parsons was, after all, working for the government. So by now the O.T.O. was swarming with U.S. intelligence agents posing as members!

Since his mistress had also been stolen from him, Parsons set about, by evocation (and ritual masturbation supervised by Frater X), to obtain an Elemental Spirit to take the place of Betty. And in 1946 he wrote to Crowley that he had actually found such an elemental -- a woman named Marjorie Cameron. She soon became his second wife. Crowley wrote to warn him to avoid excessive devotion to an elemental, but his warning had little effect... Now Parsons contacted an "Intelligence" who spoke to him, directly at first. It was not long, however, before he began speaking through Fr. X, who, it seems, had returned and been forgiven! This time Frater X informed Parsons that he was "overshadowed by an Angel with flaming hair." Parsons now set about to make a Moonchild -- a procedure that must take place at a time when the moon is "void of course" or without earth influence. This endeavor annoyed the dying Crowley very much. In fact, by now, Crowley was thoroughly disgusted with Parsons and the Californians. At this point Parsons took the "Oath of the Abyss" and the magical name of "Belarion Armilus All Dajjal Anti-Christ." In 1948 he took the oath of the Antichrist and in 1949 penned his autobiographies. Finally he took up the "Black Pilgrimage," a terrible path forcing him to chose between suicide, madness and the Oath of the Abyss. In this endeavor he would open himself up to the influence of the demon, Choronzon.

Not long after that, in June of 1952, Parsons began a dangerous invocation in a last ditch effort to release his Will. He called upon an Aethyr who had already brought disaster to a fellow magus (Kelley), backed up by a sexual magick of his own. In his further rituals with the woman of the flaming hair and the invocation of the Lady of Babalon (not to be confused with "Babylon") there are constant calls to fire and flame, "Flame is out Lady, flame is her hair. I am flame" (In this case, "fire" refers to its opposite, "blood.") Suddenly, while working in his lab in Pasadena, he dropped a phial of fulminate of mercury and burst up in a terrible explosion -- ordinary fire being the opposite and balancing complement of blood.

Twenty years after his fiery death, official maps depicting the dark side of the moon prominently honored his many aerospace contributions with "Parson's Crater." Perhaps this act was fully intended as a deliberate pyrrhic mockery, suggesting mythic figures of old who were translated to the skies as immortal stars. Parsons is not the only mortal to have achieved celestial recognition without apotheosis, but he's the only one who deliberately tried, failed and then made it by default.

What makes Parsons so intriguing, no doubt, is that he appears in so many footnotes by so many different authors and yet hardly anything is known about him. Moreover, trying to cut a path through his zigzagging life is extremely frustrating for the biographer. Most lives, whether dull or interesting, tend to tell us something about the person, but Parsons' life seems almost deliberately labyrinthine. His writings are not easily unearthed and jealously guarded. The reason for that isn't hard to discern. Parsons was a social and intellectual rebel during an era of rigid conformity. He was not only the author of the two-volume book about the Anti- Christ: The Black Pilgrimage and The Manifesto of the Anti-Christ (which eponym he conferred on himself) but also claimed, says Colin Wilson, that he had been advised by a Higher Power "to declare war on all authority that is not based on courage and manhood... the authority of lying priests, conniving judges, blackmailing police and to call an end to restriction and inhibition, conscription, compulsion, regimentation and the tyranny of the laws."

The "Higher Power," it turned out, was an even more elusive character: our old friend, the sinister Frater X.

Until quite recently the Identity of Frater X remained unknown. Rumor had it that he had lived to a very old age in fame and luxury from the misuses of the magickal secrets that he had stolen. His identity remained a mystery until the late 1980's when it was revealed in several places at once that Frater X was none other than L. Ron Hubbard, father of Dianetics and Scientology.

Even initiates may not always recognize the daring, inspired and cosmic scope of Parson's effort. How much Hubbard was involved is uncertain, but that extraterrestrial contact of some kind was made through Parsons' rift in the wall between worlds was revealed, according to Kenneth Grant, by the Babalon working. He and Achad began this only a year before Crowley's death in 1947 and that year coincided with the first wave of ufo "invasions." "Parsons opened a door and something flew in" says Grant. Whatever that may be, something more than Babalon and channeled writings, we now realize, erupted into our world and continues to pour in, moving at weird and mocking variance to our sublunary science and reality systems. Crowley's and Achad's initiations, says Grant in his Outside the Circles of Time, led up to the "40's framed by AL. III. 46, the number of Mu, Cry of the Vulture of Maat and key of the mysteries" and that in turn finally "fulminated in Hiroshima of 1945." Grant wrote those words in 1980, before AIDS and the greenhouse effect, quoting from Crowley: "Now the 80's cower before me and are abased."

Ego and Initiation run the same hurdles. Ego interferes with the natural course of apotheosis. And for Grant, psychiatry is out of the question. It exposes the sensitive, personal and private talismans and techniques needed for reshaping social progress to the killing glare of mindless immediacy and expediency. Initiation, says Parsons himself, must proceed as best it can through and past the barriers... "until the misty bastions of infantile Trawenfells change into the rocks and crags of eternity; the garden of Klingsor into the City of God."

The Xtian idea of a God descending to become a man is the exact reverse of Magick. If Crowley's goal was to release the God hidden inside every human being, Jack Parsons dared to go a step further. His intention was to raise Hell to earth's level, to elevate our hellworld a step closer to Heaven! Since he was by nature a quiet and humble man, such a fusilary and hubristic ambition proved so powerful a charge for him that it burst out of the astral plane and destroyed him on the physical plane.

PATAPHYSICS

The invention of late 19th Century French humorist, Alfred Jarry, which he defined as follows:

"Pataphysics, whose etymological spelling should be epi (meta) ta physika and actual orthography 'pataphysics, preceded by an apostrophe so as to avoid a simple pun (patte� physique), is the science of that which is superinduced upon metaphysics, where within or beyond the latter's limitations, extending as far beyond metaphysics as the latter extends beyond physics. Ex: an epiphenomenon being often accidental, pataphysics will be, above all, the science of the particular, despite the common opinion that the only science is that of the general."

According to Jarry, Pataphysics is the science of exceptions, and explains the universe beyond this one, or imagined to lie beyond this one, dealing entirely with accidental data comprising no "rule." Jarry's exact definition of pataphysics is: "The science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments."

Jarry proposes, for instance, that we should think of a vacuum as a "unit of non-density" rising outward, rather than of an object falling to the center. He observes that the shape of a watch is not any more round that it is rectangular (in profile). This is obviously typical 19th Century "objectivism" carried to an absurd extreme.

PATHWAY XI

Grant's vision of the Eschaton as the opening of the Arcanum XI (Waite = Justice/Crowley = Lust) and the release of the demons of Hell into our world through this bridge.

PAZUZU

Demon of recklessness. In Babylonian demonology, the son of Hanpa, brother or father of Humwawa. King of the evil spirits of the air, fearful of countenance and bearing rotting genitalia: "Lord of the wind demons," spreading fever and cold and horrible diseases. Loosely, one might designate him as "Bringer of Plague." The following Exhortion to Pazuzu derives from personal meditation:

O nimble God of Pestilence and Woe


of bogs from which pollutions blow

Snuff not this my hope to turn
Thy demon winds all loose to burn


(no help to martyrs, but to makers)

Those original Red Night Shapers
Who mixed the sacred rivers, Milk & Blood
With thanatic-knotting, wicked-plotting Club
And made of Life its Death and Menstr'al Flood

PEGASUS

The flying horse of Greek mythology. An important symbol representing the transition from one plane to another. Meditation on the Greek myth itself will shed some light on the means of transition between planes. Pegasus was born of the blood of the decapitated Medusa, and mounting the Medusa's head upon Pegasus enabled Bellerophon to slay the Chimera. Since the Medusa was death, Perseus could "overcome" her only by looking at her image in a mirror.

PELICAN

Alchemical symbol for the stage known as mortificatio, the breaking open of the outer shell to reveal the inner man. As the mother pelican was believed to feed her young from blood pecked from her own breast, she is also sometimes used as a general symbol of self- sacrifice.

PENETRALIA

Deepest recesses of a building; secrets sacred or profane.

PENTACLE

In a general sense it stands for all magical symbols and talismans. Specifically, as the pentagram, or five-pointed star, it is the symbol of itself. Therefore, it is the magician's sine qua non. It is the representative of the material world and human mastery over it -- hence when it is depicted on a coin or disk it is the element of "earth." When it points upward, it refers to "white" magic, or self as part of the world. When it points downward, it indicates "black" magic, self opposed to the world. The stars in the American flag are based on the same Masonic principle. Each state is an independent sovereign, master of its own destiny, in the same way that the magician is master of his own world.

The Magician must understand that he lives on earth, encased in flesh, and that is only through matter and material reality that he can operate. The pentacle reminds him that philosophy and abstract principles are useless without concrete material implementation.

PERICHORESIS

The word is Greek, as you might imagine: peri "around" + choreio "dance." But for the Greeks "dancing" wasn't the aimless shuffling we do. It was more like ballet. "Choreography" is a lot closer to the idea -- in which particular movements are carefully planned and executed. Travel from one dimension to another occurs simultaneously on all levels of reality. We travel in and out of the astral during sleep every night and think nothing of it. And, as you know, when the shaman interfaces with the earth by taking narcotic mushrooms or cacti into his system, he's moving deliberately and consciously between universes.

Parallel worlds stretch horizontally from sinister to dexter, or rather, from increasing shades of darkness to increasing degrees of light. Beings entering from the darkside are perceived by us not as merely ignorant but as demonic, whereas the wisdom of the beings from the lightside stands so far beyond our recognition that we see them simply as angelic beings. Depending on the level of reality that we happen to occupy, the dark and light worlds are perceived as more or less similar to the world we currently inhabit. On some levels of reality, the transfiguration is reversed and we perceive them as inhabiting regions above and below a horizontal plane of reality that stretches into inaccessible temporal limits of Past and Future. In such a world, reality is a given that is perceived as revealing itself only at such Past and Future vanishing points -- Alpha and Omega.

Everywhere horizontal parallel plane meets vertical parallel levels and an Aeon is established, symbolized by a cross. If the cross, however is not circumscribed by a circle (the familiar symbol of cross in circle, representing "earth"), there is no cohesion and the center does not hold. The so-called "extremes," in fact, are not extremes at all, but merely their own opposites in a spinning circle.

Because of the nature of infinity, we have to recognize that we may never stand at any of the four extremities, but always only at the exact center of the omniverse.

Notice also that in any formal religious painting, the god or saint is always placed in the exact center. If he is raised too high from the center, the lower world is given undue importance and power, because, after all, in completely "secular" pictures, the God has been raised so high as to have been left out of the picture altogether! Placing the God too far down divests him of his divinity because his intensity looks, on our level, simply grotesque. Likewise, if the God is placed too far to the left or right, an imbalance is also created.

Thus, uncircumscribed, the ends of the cross stretch unchecked into the infinite four directions and an uncontrollable wickedness is set forth into all manifestations. Without the "earthing" of the cross, there is no manifestation. The extremities lead only into infinite "otherness" and delusion. It is the inner being at the solar plexus that is the heart of the universe. When we nail (i.e., Christianize) the higher spirit of man to an ancient quadratic event, the center is blocked and closed forever. Moreover, the center has been locked in the past, away from the Eternal Now. Until the nail (Xtianity) has been pulled out, no further evolution is possible and Death will prevail.

The way out is toward the central, innermost point.

The parallel world-planes are accessible at all times. We move in and out of them constantly, but are mostly unaware of having done so. Occasionally we get the feeling that "things are suddenly different" or that "something is about to happen" and that means we've inadvertently stepped into a new probable world that is much different from the ones we've hitherto occupied. You can move back into the world you've just left, only if you do so at once.

Whatever can be imagined, exists, will exist or has existed. Whatever has existed or will exist continues to exist now because time is one of the four real dimensions of things. Alongside this Reality there are an infinite number of co-existent realities of equal "solidity" and "substance." There are also an infinite number of "probable" realities and an infinite number of "possible" worlds. A moment's reflection will show that if this is so, then, obviously, available access to them must not be merely possible, but inevitable. Jane Robert's Seth describes the infinite "probable worlds" stretching out in either direction from this one. The closest ones being hardly distinguishable from this, as we progress outward, the probable worlds become stranger, increasingly incomprehensible and frighteningly unpredictable. In the fifth dimensional world, four dimensional objects have their own much more complete and solid "substance" which we cannot perceive so long as we inhabit lower planes of being.

You can, however, willingly and deliberately get up and walk from this world into the nearest adjacency and from there to the next, and the next. The only problem is that you're playing roulette. There's no way of telling what kind of world you are moving into.

If you are seeking to avoid some trouble in this world, be advised that things could be a lot worse in the world next door. Moreover, if you leave unsolved problem behind, your karma will continue to take you back there in future lives until eventually you are forced to solve them. On top of that, if you leave muddy footprints behind you as you run through world after world, you'll have added onto your present karma the extra burden of going back to mop them up.

Actual entrance/exit sites are a matter of intuitive perception. Dimensional doorways are not likely, for instance, to be found in your living room. They need to be places you've never crossed before (except as interdimensional thresholds). It's best to look for two pillars to pass between -- a couple of tall trees in a forest or park make excellent pillars. The more difficult the access the better. And the direction and angle of entrance are crucial. Select a "picture" framed by the trees as most nearly representing the world you want to leave behind you and before you a picture of what intuitively or esthetically looks to be an improvement of that. Make sure that nothing passes across your line of vision as you are actually walking through. If necessary, keep your eyes closed or look down at your feet.

At first the difference between adjacent worlds is scarcely discernible. Variations only become immediately evident at some distance. But if you are observant, you will eventually begin to notice tiny, subtle changes for the better (or worse). By the time these changes become evident, it's already too late to go back where you came from. The metaphors of artistic symbolism, religion and magic can also assist in perichoretic travel. With the enhanced ability to will and to imagine, the human mind can perceive parts of alternate realities with increasing clarity and may begin to see how to transform the reality we normally inhabit. In fact, so many are the pathways to alternate experience, it's a wonder anyone still believes that reality has but a single face!

There is, to be sure, ultimately only the One Plenum in which everything else transpires, but that sphere transcends experience in the Void of Nirvana.

Although, as we've seen above, there are relatively easy methods of interplanary travel (between planes), the ability to discover significant doorways into alternate dimensions, advanced perichoresis, not only requires an out-of-the-ordinary state of consciousness, but is a difficult technique in its own right, mastered properly only by experienced shamans. For instance, travel through time in the past requires us to move "forward" (i.e., towards the Beginning of Time) simply by ignoring vast areas of experience and being -- as we also do in the present -- in order to maintain a strict continuity of our own. Travel from the future (i.e., the End of Time), however, even though employing the same declination, creates an ever-thickening wall behind us, preventing all possibility of return to the starting point.

Kenneth Grant (Outside the Circles of Time) provides us with insights into the sexual avenue of interdimensional perichoresis and at the same time describes the procedure for creating a "moonchild." In his system, the door to our world opens inward in order for us to receive extratellurian immigrants.

Bipolar human sexuality, explains Grant, parallels cosmogenesis and the sacred void corresponds to the female vagina. Everything comes out of and falls back into this same eternal darkness. The creative light is sucked into its bottomless depths where it is swallowed up by vampiric blackness. Therefore, the doorway to the vacuum or zero of space is a priestess who has been chosen for her "master of the art of dream control." By allowing herself to become a mirror of impression-reception, she is able to generate illusions, "for all form is fantasy, and exists only in the dreaming mirror of the mind."

A material looking glass is placed above her, slanted to receive the starlight. Now, by her psychic ability she can project whatever star morph the magician requires onto the looking glass. A second mirror, creating an infinite regression reflection is placed 11 feet away, eleven being the number of the famous 11th Pathway of Black Magic. The circle of Daath is the corresponding doorway in the Qabalah.

Thereupon the priest uses his penis as the intergalactic conduit of the astro-seminal energy. His vibrations and invocations encourage the dream-manipulating priestess to focus the desired star-morph entity onto the mirrors. In the ultimate orgasm of priest, priestess and dream-entity, the eldolon rises briefly to life and erupts from the mirror as its starseed transmission runs down from the star to impregnate her. The zygote achieved by this cosmocopulation is a unique blend of human and extraterrestrial "genes."

According to most students, monstrous beings invisible to ordinary consciousness are entering our universe in unprecedented numbers, through this same interdimensional sexual doorway. (Apparently our time is a vector of unique significance.) The fantasy film, Ghostbusters, was a facetious rendering of this understanding, but revealed a good deal more than most viewers realized. Kenneth Grant teaches a heterosexual tantrism by which one may ride out again through the same door on the back of one of these demonic beasts and thereby escape. He calls this, again, the 11th Pathway. Others propose that there are homosexual and even solitary practices what serve this purpose equally well.

Sex and death are the two most common and well-known methods of conveyance between worlds, but such exclusively Scorpionic merkabahs are by no means the only ones. All of these methods follow the horizontal direction of planes to left and right, from darkness into light, or vice versa. There is also travel in the vertical direction from layers of reality and consciousness above and below. These cris-crossing horizontal and vertical planes endlessly extend out and recede into the vastnesses. Some of the planes are commonly thought, by the average person, to be "schizophrenic" because they appear to leave the traveller suspended in his "own little world." But such planes are of great importance to the magician or yogin. Reality, we must understand, is entirely a matter of the manipulation of illusion. The teacher, Gurdjieff, once pointed out that there is only one thing in the entire universe, but it is repeated endlessly in order to provide the illusion of "difference." Even chemistry and physics bear this out. The difference between each element is simply a difference in the number of their atomic electrons: Hydrogen 1, Helium 2, Lithium 3...

Some writers believe that there are denizens of other dimensions who use various perichoretic chariots that resemble the astral projections of those whose time and locality they visit. For Ezekiel and Daniel it was a fiery wheel bearing the tetramorph. For the Dogons it was a star ship. For our great grandfathers in the 19th Century it was frequently an airship. But they aren't just psychic experiences, say the witnesses, ufo's leave evidence behind ... a burned-out circle on the lawn, a map with indecipherable writing, MIBs, etc.

My own interdimensional visits to "the Other Side" have been neither A.D.E.'s nor OOBE's. They have occurred either through true-dreaming or by psychotropic methods, i.e., strictly via astral travel. In all, I have several times visited the "conventional" Astral Plane -- or abode of the (after-dead) spirits, three or four times encountered higher beings (although only at a distance), dwelt in the All-Consciousness of All-Phyla and once visited a previous time. Lately I have begun experimenting with ordinary consciousness as a routine means of perichoresis. The occult path I've travelled (until now) has always been the lonely one of the hermit. The beings I've encountered have been the traditional custodians of the pathways, that is to say, those archetypes hovering somewhere between being and non-being. Else they comprise the angels, Gods and daimones of pantheons we already know. But I have increasingly come under the purview of something more important: the existence of what seems to be an infinite number of Eternal Doorways between worlds. These doorways are available to us, of course, under very special circumstances -- that is to say, in altered psychic states lying clearly outside normal consciousness: Yoga, Tantra, sex magic, primitive rites of passage, repetitive rhythms (micro-events), sensory deprivation or stimulation, pain, extreme trauma, trance, all the multifarious REM/sleep/hypnotic states, rushes of adrenaline or fatigue intoxication, epilepsy, metamorphic anomaly, drug intoxication, illness, psychosis proper, thanatolepsy and death. (See SOLIPSISM.)

PERPLEXED

Crowley's last words were, "I am perplexed." Many have speculated idly as to what that meant, but it seems merely to derive, as Aurora Borealis, January '87 suggests, from the final portion of Crowley's pet project, the Tao Teh King:

Bowed down, then preserved;
Bent then straight;
Hollow then full;
Worn then new;
A little then befitted;
A lot then perplexed;
Therefore the Sage embraces the One and is a model for the Empire.

From this we can see that Crowley was obviously in full and conscious harmony with his death, as he followed the Tao out of this life into the next.

PEYOTL

The Huichol religious cactus of inner discovery. About a dozen buttons are necessary for the visions, though over-dosages can occur at any level. (Mescaline is one of the distilled ingredients.)

PHALLUS

It may be seen as an emblem of the present moment, whose worship is a denial of past and future. That's also why the "historical" west fears it so, but Carpe diem ("Seize the day!") was the classical rule. For Aleister Crowley, just as the Sun was the supreme deity whence all life derives, so on earth the phallus was its "vice-regent" and the supreme power as giver of life.

With the advent of monotheistic religions, the phallus became an object of taboo in an effort to disguise its "holiness." But this was not everywhere true. Until recently in Naples and other Italian cities, giant images of the phallus were carried in religious processions, along with the saints and other holy artifacts.

The God Priapus, attempted to rape the sleeping goddesses and mortal maidens after an Olympic feast. In punishment by Zeus he was banished to his bees and vines, to hide himself forever from the sight of men. Ever since, in revenge, winged phalloi have surreptitiously dominated historical erotic art. The wings portray the phalloi in their extremis as totally liberated and unconnected to any distracting mere person. The phallus is, in fact, the destroyer of ego and individualism bar none.

Of course the phallus remains an object of fascination and obsession for homosexual and savage alike. Even for the ordinary man, however, it engages him for life in an unconscious participation mystique with his brothers, from which he never really departs. It is symbolized by an endless parade of objects: the key, the wand, the baton, the scepter, the sword, the maypole, the battering ram, the Tibetan stupa, the Egyptian obelisk, the cathedral, the American skyscraper, the automobile, the airplane, the horse, the serpent, the bull, volcanoes, monoliths, trees, flowers of all kinds and even fire. In the modern American male's domain, also loom large the pistol and the rifle -- serving in countermeasure, as instruments capable of expelling the seeds of death, as the penis expels the seeds of life.

For the magician the phallus is much more than an organ of generation or a source of debauchery. It is a font of energy that can be channeled and funneled in a variety of ways. On the other hand, the power of the witch sometimes, though not as a general rule, derives from an astute understanding of how to subvert or divert this organ to her own purposes. The feminine mystique, however, is infinitely more complicated than males understand and finds its center far beyond the genital zone.

In our era of total damnation, however, since semen now carries death as well as life, the scientists who created the HIV plague have made a mockery of procreation. (See NIANTIEL.)

PHARZUPH

The angel of fornication.

PHEONISME

(Bertiaux's terminology.) A private, internal god's or elemental's manifestation or "initiation" within consciousness which may take over the body and soul temporarily. Common in Voodoo possession. According to Bertiaux, Legbha is the supreme God of all magical systems. Bertiaux in his Voudon Gnostic Workbook writes, "There comes a time when the God Legbha takes notice of the magician and seeks to bring the magician closer to the higher powers. At that time, Legbha sends a pheonisme of himself to the magicians and awakens them so that they possess a desire to sexually unite with Legbha. When this happens, the magician is then taken into very high worlds and experiences initiations which cannot be described. Legbha has always had a feeling of lust for the human race. His concern is then to bring humanity closer and closer to the mysteries of Legbha."

PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

A hint as to what it is can be suggested by observing that philosophy is abstract and a stone is concrete. It is therefore a paradox, or contradiction in terms, as is further indicated by its allonyms: Shadow of the Sun, Permanent Water, Fiery Water, Hermaphrodite. When alchemists refer to it as "Our" Mercury, they mean something not different from the scientist's definition of Hg but more inclusive, because Mercury stands for the human mind as well as for the God Hermes/Thoth and the heavenly planet. The lapis philosophorum (see QLIPHOTH) is therefore arrived at on simultaneous parallel levels via meditative and metallurgic techniques: Metallurgy is meditation and meditation is metallurgy. If you do one without the other you get either "philosophy" or "a stone," but not "the philosopher's stone."

PHILOTANUS

Demon that leads men into pederasty, A minion of Belial, according to Baskin.

PHOSTER

A recurrent "illuminator" that visits mankind from time to time as a "Redeemer," such as Seth, Melchizedek, Zoroaster, Jesus....

PHOTON

Particle of zero rest mass, capable of travelling infinite distances, or until it meets an "eye."

PHREN

The perceiving mind (as opposed to nous, the thinking mind): Anthropophrenon -- The Racial Mind; Aphrenia -- Mindlessness; cosmophrenosis -- Cosmic Consciousness; Encephalophrenic -- Brain-Centered; Entomophrene -- A Hive Entity; Geophrenon -- Whole Earth Consciousness; Hylophrenic -- Matter Conscious; Idiophrene -- An Individual Mind; Metaphrenosis -- Mind Evolution; Metatheophrenic -- Beyond God-Mind; Protophrenon -- Original Mind Being; Theriophrenic -- Animal Conscious; Teleophrenon -- Ultimate Mind.

PHRYGIAN CAP

Conical cap with top turned forward. It is red to signify circumcision and is the origin of the bishop's mitre and the Rosicrucians' hat.

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

Count Giovanni PDM (1463-1494), Italian philosopher and Cabalist. Studied with Raymond Lully. Knew Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Chaldean and Arabic. Wrote Strige, a book about witches, Heptaplus and a qabalistic version of Genesis. His Conclusiones, Philosophicae, cabalisticae et theologicae was posthumously published in 1495. Amongst these, his most important Hermetic statement was: "Magicam operari non est aliud quam maritare mundum." Also, "As the wheel turneth, so increaseth its circumference by as much."

PIEZOELECTRIC

Squeezing out electricity -- emitting electricity when compacted -- like jovian thunderbolts. Also Piezophotic -- "Acting like a laser." Other "piezo-" words: Piezodaimonic -- Forcing daimon into a thing; Piezoideative Expression -- communicating with compressed ideas (such as microfiches); Piezodynamic -- Endowing something with power; Piezocosmic -- Compressing universe, as in black holes.

PISCES

(Also see FISH.) The dual sign of Past and Future, Flood followed by resurgence. The ending precessional Age that began with the invitation to join Christ and leave the Arietian Age behind ("Come, I will make you fishers of men...") Pisces is the sign of suffering, governing the 12th house of incarcerations, restrictions and bondage -- hospitals, nunneries, prisons, etc. It is ruled by Neptune, poisons, liquids and narcotics. Pisces always, in some way, manages to hobble the native so that his progress is crippled either by external or internal conditions.

Some well known Pisceans include: Ernest Renan, Frederic Chopin, Elizabeth Taylor, George Washington, Patty Hearst, Schopenhauer, Giuleta Masina, Meher Baba, Anthony Burgess, Jack Kerouac, B.F. Skinner, Ibsen, Nijinski, Einstein, Ravel, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Jean Harlow, Queen Mary I, Cyrano de Bergerac, Claire Trevor, L. Ron Hubbard.

PISTIS SOPHIA

(Lit. "Faith-Wisdom.") The great Gnostic text from Egypt discovered and translated from the Coptic in the 19th Century. Deals with the banishment of Sophia to the material sphere.

PITRIS

"Fathers." Superior lunar and solar beings who assisted in our evolution.

PLANES

The 7 Hindu planes of being: Rupa -- The Body; Prana-Jiva -- Vitality; Linga- Sarira -- Astral Body; Kama-Rupa -- Animal Soul; Manas -- Human Soul; Buddhi -- Spiritual Soul; Atma -- Divine Selfhood.

PLASMATE

In Philip K. Dick's mythology: "The living information, the physician" (which we think of as The Holy Spirit or X discorporate). "These are the 2 principles, the dark (The Empire) and the light (the Plasmate). In the end Mind will give victory to the latter. Each of us will die or survive according to which he aligns himself and his efforts. Since universe is composed of information, it can be said that information will save us. This is the saving gnosis. The Empire is a streak of insanity in Mind and needs a physician, of which there have been many: Asklepios, Elijah, Buddha, Jesus. The Empire rejected them."

PLENUM

Material universe.

PLEROMA

In Gnosticism, divine being, the Universal Soul, including all aeons which emanate from it. Hence, it is a realm of pure light and the abode of all the Gods.

PLOTINUS

3rd Century Egyptian-born Greek philosopher and mystic, considered to be the father of Neoplatonism. An early hologrammatist, he sought the Oneness underlying the Everything and taught that every idea is contained in every other idea and that we are microcosms. Through meditation we can return to the unity.

PLUTO

The planet that rules Scorpio, the sign of Mystery, and where it is located from 1984 to 1996. It moves backward into the past, displacing death forward. Amongst other things, Pluto affects those changes on earth that come after the death of those who have struggled against them. Pluto isn't just the underground, it's one's own "underground."

POPUL VUH

(Lit. "Book of Written Leaves.") The sacred book of the Quich� Mayans, divided into the "Creation" and the "War Between the Gods and the Giants."

PORTA LUCIS

Another name for Malkuth. (Lit. "Doorway of Light.")

POSITIVE THINKING

The mistaken belief that all difficulties will vanish if we simply ignore them. To ignore the shadows of things is to drift inexorably into carelessness and torpor.

POST-APOCALYPTIC

A hopeful adjective, not really justified. It indicates a refusal to acknowledge the finality of this aeon.

PRACTICALITY/PRAGMATISM

The things that most make life worth living are the things least necessary for continued existence. No perfect thing or priceless thing is of any practical or pragmatic use whatsoever: Virtue, Love, Happiness, Art, Philosophy, Gold, etc.

PRALAYA

The night of Brahma, when the universe ceases to exist.

PREMISE

This is the flawing point of logic. Premises are the bedrock upon which logic is based. They are not themselves subject to logical proof, however, hence their validity is always questionable. From an old, anonymous BBS message: in primitive healing, sacred mustard seeds are thrown in the face of sickness, but "if the seeds are themselves infected..."

PRIAPUS

An interesting poem of Petronius from the PRIAPEIA:

The Complaint of Priapus for being Veiled

The Almighty's image of his shape afraid,
And hide the noblest part e'er nature made,
Which God alone succeeds in his creating Trade!
The Fall their fig-leaved modesty began,
To punish woman by obscuring man;
Before, where'er his stately Cedar moved
She saw, ador'd and kissed the thing she lov'd.

Why do the gods their several signs disclose,
Almighty Jove his Thunder-bolt expose,
Neptune his Trident, Mars his Buckler show,
Pallas her spear to each beholder's view,
And poor Priapus alone confin'd
T'obscure the woman's god, and parent of mankind?
Since fire-born brute their liberty attain,
T'obscure the woman's god, and parent of mankind?
Since fire-born brute their liberty attain,
Long hast thou journey-worked for souls in vain,
Storm the Pantheon, and demand thy right,
For on this weapon 'tis depends the fight.

This was found in an obscure book, privately printed in 1906 {The Masculine Cross - author unknown}. The author goes on to describe circumcision, male and female, and also a practice in Dahomey described as Prolongatio, videlicet, artificialis labiorum pundendi, capellae mamillis simillima. (the prolongation artificially of the labia so as to resemble goat teats!). There is a companian volume, entitled Ophiolatreia, as well as other volumes (Tree Worship, Flowers & Fire, Phallic Worship).

PROBE

("Programmed recreation of brain emissions.") The encoding of brain waves emitted during the thought of certain words in order to computerize the data for two-way transmission.

PROMETHEUS

His name means "forethought." The theft of fire for the benefit of man, despite the hideous punishment meted out for that crime is a mark of sublime courage and represents the kind of sacrifice that only a semi-divine being is capable of. Fire, of course, is technology, and whether Prometheus' sacrifice was justified is still a question.

PROPAGANDA

Propaganda serves two purposes. It dupes the unsophisticated and it keeps those busy who recognize it for what it is. Enemies of propaganda are effectively neutralized by forcing them to deal with the propaganda first. Undoing the deleterious effects of propaganda takes time and energy away from the achievement of legitimate goals.

"People usually require something that they will accept as proof before they incorporate radical changes of view. They ask for miracles (Religious, Political or Economic), masterpieces of art, conclusive experiments and so on. Political groups and organized religion reject this request and resort to the argument of faith. To protect yourself from this form of intellectual and spiritual imperialism, critical analysis is a valid weapon."

-- Druid Spechtold

PSI-GUERILLA

Or "Urban Psi-Guerilla," a variation of "Poetic Terrorism." This sticker in 1988 was still being put out by The Lamp of Thoth, a British occult magazine, under the auspices of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Its purpose was to subvert the infamous "NATO Psi Research Threat" and to undermine the possibility of government restriction on psychic research by registering this design with the U.S. Copyright Office "so that attempts by the military/government to define their own are thereby thwarted and controlled."

PSILANTHROPISM

The belief that Christ was just a man.

PSYCHISM

The belief that there is a universal soul animating all things.

PSYCHOPANNYCHISM

The sleep of the soul until Resurrection.

PSYCHOPOMPOS

Soul guide to the other world; Hermes, Virgil, etc.

PYRAMID

Pyramids dating back as far as 6000 years ago encircle the globe in England, Mexico, North America, Polynesia, China, the Himalayas, etc. Some believe them to represent the ancient world's equivalent of a world-wide cargo cult whose temples atop them catered to fearsome gods from outer space. The symbolism of the pyramid is that of a tree in which, unlike Darwinism, evolution proceeds downwards, with the root in heaven and the branches extending into deeper and deeper concretizations and complexities of matter. The "eye in the pyramid" is merely the awakening of consciousness in the midst of the descent into matter. "Light in extension" is the hope of enlightening the base of the pyramid.

PYRAMID POWER

(Also cone headgear). In mimetic magic the pyramid serves as a parallel funnel or horn to draw down the powers of the heavens onto all that which lies inside or under it. Its base is a perfect square, representing the earth and its four corners - or a circle, deriving from infinity, the point.

The cone is nearly as effective as the pyramid, so a hat in the shape of a cone also has beneficial effects on the wearer, curing headaches, stress and even slow-healing head-wounds. The effects of a cone device, as far as I know, have not been compared to those produced by Reich's Orgone box.

In contemporary "pyramid power" theory, the convection of the cosmic energy derives from its inversion and the subsequent compression (like laser) of the lines of force - as images are similarly inverted by a lens. Think of an hourglass or how the sun's rays stream out like a cone through a small opening in the clouds. It has been observed that concentration is increased and a sense of well-being occurs amongst subjects placed under a tent pyramid or cone device for the head. Even 10 or 15 minutes under the pyramid can increase energy, intelligence, concentration, self-confidence, optimism, sense of well-being, etc.

The tent pyramid is an attempt to realign imbalanced centers, just as in olden days the dunce or "thinking cap" was administered by impatient teachers in an effort to quieten children and heighten their attentionality. It was intended to help the child regain control of his center. For the same reason the conical hat or hood was forced upon criminals and heretics in a final stab at restoring them before their punishment or sacrifice. We think of wizards, warlocks and alchemists wearing these conical devices chiefly as physical enhancers (to make them appear taller than normal people), but obviously, their actual purpose was to increase not their stature but their powers of concentration. Witches' hats are defective, because they have brims that deflect the celestial currents. In very ancient times priests and kings wore head dresses bearing legends and symbols of their rank. These legends could serve as mantras as well, to further enhance the restorative powers of such devices.

The materials (metal, stone, glass, wood) seem much less important than the shape itself, although reason would suggest that the desired effects would also be assisted by the proper material: metal for sealing, stone for durability, glass for transparency, wood for organic purposes. But it seems that the power lines move in the desired directions regardless of the material. The results of experiments involving keeping meat fresh or razor blades sharp under pyramids seem rather suspect, but it must be borne in mind that experimental data need not invariably lead us to random or impractical conclusions in order to honor their authenticity. Indeed, anyone can say anything about reality, including that it is random or meaningless.

PYTHAGORAS

Greek philosopher, born circa 572 B.C. on the island of Samos. Taught mathematics, reincarnation, meditation, psychic immortality, the "music of the spheres" which related celestial orbits to the musical scale, vegetarianism and a system of geometric archetypy. His religious community and school in Crotona, Italy lasted his lifetime and Pythagorean societies continued well after his death into the 3rd Century, based on the original (ipse dixit) teachings. It is important to remember, however, that Pythagoras himself separated his own teachings into "exoteric" and "esoteric."