The Magician's Dictionary

AARON

Brother of Moses and the "Adept of the Adepts". The first high priest and magician (through Jehovah's power). Introducer of the "golden calf." HPB explains Aaron's rod, which turned the water to blood, as a magnetic pole acting upon red lichen in fusoria.

A'ANO'NIN

Guardian of the 26th tunnel of the Tree of Death, in Grant's teaching. "The Lord of the Gates of Matter". Corresponds, in the Tarot, to The Devil's atu. Its magic, indicated by the letter Ayin, is the "evil eye" or Eye of Set ("The Diamond in the Night"). Its disease is priapism.

AB

Egyptian "heart". The source of life amongst the Nilots. Considered the center of the conscious mind. It as essential that the Ab survive death through physical embalming, because even if the physical heart was "dead" the spirit still had to derive its post mortem existence from it. Metaphysically, the heart is the center of the innermost self, which is simultaneously the innermost center of the universe, not to mention Ra, the Sun, as being the objective counterpart.

ABBREVIATIONS

Occult literature, particularly contemporary magic literature, teems with abbreviations and initials, which the general reader may or may not always readily identify. Examples:

ABDUL AL-HAZRED

"Slave of the Presence". The "Mad Arab" of Damascus, poet and supposed author of Al Azif (730 A.D.), which Lovecraft translates as the Bedouin word for the sound of nocturnal insects or the howling of demons. All of this is fairly fanciful Arabic. Al Azif is better known as The Necronomicon and is about the "Forgotten Ones".

ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION

The mysterious indicator of the Apocalypse as mentioned in the Book of Daniel and Mark 13. It was mistakenly believed by the writers of the New Testament to be a future event that would be self-explanatory once seen. The truth is it had actually already taken place in Daniel's own time, for it referred to a pagan altar erected in Jerusalem, 168 B.C.E. by King Antiochus Epiphanes. Or at least so states G.A. Wells in his "Historical Evidence for Jesus". (The title is a misnomer).

ABRACADABRA/ABRAHADABRA

The former is the traditional magical word, the latter is Crowley's mutation, for the sake of its "proper" numerological value (418), which was also the number for Boleskine, his castle and for AIWASS, his Holy Guardian Angel. Originally the intention of the word was to cause ailments to diminish and death to be vanquished as letters were progressively removed from either end.

ABRACADABRA
BRACADABR
RACADAB
ACADA
CAD
A

As an amulet, therefore, it should be worn with the point downwards. Similar traditional magical words were Shabriri (for banishing the demon of the same name) and Ochnotinos (for diminishing fever). The Gnostics used Ablanathalba, a palindrome, meaning "The Father hath given to us". With Crowley, however, Abrahadabra meant "The Great Work of the aeon of Horus". (See ABRAXAS).

ABRAXAS (or Abrasax)

Being the unreachable, unknowable and unmanifested "God" beyond existence and non-existence, beyond good and evil, beyond all dualities, "he" may be considered the ultimate synthesis. Since the Judeo-Xtian God is a monad, He must have an opposite (Satan), in company with Zoroaster's Ahriman and Ahuramazda, Abraxas does not require opposition.

The Gods are the original essences of Reality and as such are limited to the manifestation of the processes of Nature or Subnature. Therefore, they are necessarily below Abraxas.

Budge is the only Egyptologist who presents us with the Egyptian word:

Abraskkiaks (Leemans Papyrus, III, 210- ). Probably derived from the same word as ABRACADABRA (Heb. Ha-b'rakah, "the blessing" or "the sacred name"). He is the ultimate God beyond good and evil (for that matter he is even beyond being and non-being). On ancient Gnostic amulets he appears as rooster-headed, with two serpents for legs and bearing in one hand a whip and in the other a shield with the word 'IAO'. Occasionally he appears as a charioteer. He is the source of the 365 emanations of the Divine Pleroma. The Creator God (see IALDABAOTH) is much inferior, hardly more than a Demiurge. It is said that, in order to express the important number 365 ("The Divine Cycle"). In Greek letters, Abraxas has that many Gods or "aeons" (or "Archons") under him.

ABYSS

The gulf between the individual mind and Cosmic Consciousness, between manifestation and non-manifestation, or between life and death. The plane that the magician must cross on his own, without any assistance whatever.

ACCIDIE

Heedlessness, torpor, sloth. In the 14th and 15th Centuries it was a malady generally ascribed to hermits and monks who fasted too much and fell into mental prostration. Later it gradually came to mean simply the common sin of sloth.

ACELDAMA

The name of the land that was purchased with Judas' thirty pieces of silver. Means "field of blood."

ACTEON

A Hunter who chanced to see the chaste goddess, Diana, nude in her midnight bath. Diana, being also the bright light of the full Moon (as Hecate is the dark of the moon) and its nearly hallucinative brilliance, he was immediately struck by anamnesis and "remembered" the naked omnipotence of pantheistic divinity in all creatures, including himself - so that, in this amazing illumination, he literally became one with everything, including the stag he had been chasing, whereupon his own dogs (not being in on the revelation) tore him apart.

'AD

Mythical giants of Arabian pre-Islamic history.

ADONAI

(Greek Adonis). Hebrew for "Lord", but in Thelemic practice it can stand for the HGA, the Augoeides or "Higher Self".

ADYTUM

A temple, oracular shrine of holy of holies which only priests may enter.

AEON

The personification of an age. New aeons are referred to as "Equinoxes of the Gods." Power exradiating from Divinity, sharing in the creation and government of the universe. Most founders of religions or fully initiated magicians attempt to inaugurate their own personal aeon or "age" (see AGE OF AQUARIUS).

AETHYRS (or Aires)

Each of us stands at the center of the Universe, within a four-part series of tablets, cornered by the elemental Watchtowers. Beyond the aethyric dimensions is the Astral, the mental circle, the Abyss, the spiritual circle and the divine. The aethyrs themselves are Dr. Dee's thirty otherworldly dimensions of consciousness, which he describes as "angelic" (or Enochian). They can be reached, however, only through the 19 "Keyes" or "Calls", the first 18 of which summon the Angels of the magic squares. The 19th call lifts the magician's mind to the �thyrs and can be used to summon any one of the Aires. Actually there are 49 Calls (Zero being the first), but only the latter 30 are the �thyrs themselves. There are also 92 Governors, whose names can be found in the Watchtowers. At least 3 Governors are assigned to each aethyr. There are also 24 Seniors, 4 Kings, 192 Angels and 128 Demons in the 4 Watchtowers.

It is in his writings about the aethyrs (The Vision and the Voice) that Crowley hides the most important of his teachings. From my own meditations it occurs to me that had Dee received tablets from different angels, such as the fiery, watery or material universes, he might have had real power and not merely airy or "mental" power (not to disparage the power accruing to Knowledge, it being the strongest known to man!). He'd have had Will, Daring and Silence as well. Just so, of Water we cannot speak and of Fire we have not prepared. But of Earth, who has endured preparation and initiation, can venture a call for materialization of a universe. Such possibilities should cause the magus to feel a strong shudder of fear, for according to Babylon, to create a world is to destroy a God.

Thus for "materialization" we'd need new vocabularies to correspond to the hooks (vavs) of the �thyrs. The build-up would be similar, but the "Aires" would now be "Earthes". For instance, PAZ (In Enochian, "Be as they"), might be PAGZ ("Be NOT as they").

Since the Aires are all 3-lettered, presumably Earthes would be 4-lettered, Waters 2-lettered and Fyres 1-lettered. However, if the Ayres all have 3-lettered names, there is a reason for that. The other elementals might have different numbered names only if we think of them as separate and perhaps the 4th is simply the "understood" rest of the quaternity. At any rate, now we see why there are only Aires. We'd better learn their meanings before we attempt any materializations.

AFFA

The name of an ET intelligence said to have contacted the U.S. Army sometime in the early 1980's, apparently not one of the guests in the Secret Exchange Program.

AFFECTLESS

Making no pretense of feeling or reaction to anything. The common condition of 20th century mankind. Magicians encountering this condition are sometimes enraged by it, but they should remember that to awaken those sunk in apathy, despair and ignorance is a grave responsibility. What profit is there in awakening sheep if the sheep have nowhere to go?

AGE OF AQUARIUS

The (approximately) 2000 year cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes and the end of the Piscean or Christian aeon. Characterized by Humanism as opposed to religious dogma. Its beginning is sometime in the 19th-21st Centuries. In the year 1995, Uranus , the ruler of Aquarius, after entering that sign for the first time since 1920, must remain there well into the 21st Century. According to some authorities, however, the Piscean Age did not begin until 80 A.D. and so we cannot observe effects of the New Aeon prior to 2068. Such a view ignores common sense, because macroscopic celestial events cannot be earth-synchronized precisely and all ages overlap considerably. Moreover, the signs of the zodiac do not correspond to the constellations and if we force astrology to conform to the positions of the constellations we jam it into an unbecoming strait-jacket. The signs were never intended to correspond to the positions of the constellations and are of uniform length to accommodate solar/lunar mansions within 360 degrees. As in determining degrees and aspects in a horoscope, so the Grand Horoscope of the Universe must be interpreted with wisdom as well as with mathematical exactitude.

The Ages are derived from the fact that the Great Year, or Platonic Year, is 26,000 years long, which roughly divides into twelve periods, twelve being conveniently (though inaccurately) the number or zodiacal signs. A more accurate division, of course, would be 13. (See NEWTIME).

AGE OF HORUS

Another 2000-year cycle beginning in 1904 when Crowley received the Book of the Law from Aiwass (some say the age began with the birth of Crowley's son). Stands for constant progress. Horus grows from a helpless infant to the highest seat of the gods, whence integrating with Ra. Horus, as the impulse to manifest, is the constant enemy of his brother, Seth, who represents the inexorable dragging down of negation and nothingness.

AGE OF ISIS

Precedes Age of Osiris. The Wife-Sister of Osiris seeks his bones throughout the universe, finding all but the phallus. All this cosmic traveling suggests that Isis must be identified with Sirius, the Dog Star.

AGE OF MAAT

Supersedes Age of Horus (via Frater Achad) in 1948.

AGE OF OSIRIS

Equivalent to the dying Age of Pisces. God of vegetation and cycles. Osiris is very earthy (compare the Capricorn birth of X). Osiris is also a Christ-figure, who, though murdered by Typhon, cut to pieces and his bones scattered in the Nile, yet was reassembled and born again. Osiris, in short, is the Conquest of Death, whereas Horus, in a more subtle sense, is the understanding that Life and Death are equivalent. Vita quidem nomen vita, opus autem mors est.

AGE OF PISCES

The ending processional Age, Pisces, was the sign of X, characterized by ignorance, slavery and materialism. According to Jung, the first fish is the first thousand years of Christ. However, the second millennium's fish is under the rule of the Devil.

AGON

In the Mysteries, this is the battle with the adversary.

AIDS (GENETIC WAR)

Since some believe that the virus is man-made, specifically designed to attack the most important alternative to procreation (male homosexuality), we cannot see it as responding to psychic suggestions to change its habits. If it were a naturally occurring life-form, it would be automatically part of the evolutionary stream and quite attuned, even ready for "mental" implementation of punctuated morphogenesis. We are beginning to see that this is indeed a "war" and learning at the same time that war at every level derives from a basic misunderstanding of human social interaction and hardly occurs at all within the biosphere itself.

Evolution is neither a battle for the survival of the fittest, nor is it the chaotic result of random mutations. We now know that the origin of species proceeds in cooperation with and as part of the conscious continuum of all life. Evolution, when the time is right, moves by quantum leaps to sudden new stages, as if by common consent. It's only through human interference that some single, bizarre weed winds up choking everything else out. In the highly unnatural case of the HIV virus, what we are seeing is a device specifically designed to pollute all the streams of life at once (generation, nurture and maintenance). It is a quite human-like biological tyrant bent on specific genocide.

In studying Sheldrake's "punctuated evolution" we suddenly understand why our intuition has already told us that the HIV virus was man-made (or engineered). As a naturally-occurring genetic leap, HIV is too fantastic to consider. Even if abrupt evolutionary leaps were the rule, not the exception, and even if evolution itself is part of the omni-conscious sphere of synchronous reality-alternation, it's still too giant a biodic jump for a virus suddenly to decide to take up residence within the human DNA factory merely in order to bypass that annoying (to it!) "somatic individuation" phase. Viruses don't become that sophisticated that quickly. It's the equivalent of the next generation of the human race suddenly to be born with fully-functioning wings sprouting out of everyone's shoulder blades.

The theory, or course, amongst bio-metaphysicians, is that the body is merely a highly practical mechanism for the housing and passing on of the genetic code. One of the body's more clever defenses is the brain, designed to repair itself, built to last at least twice as long as any other organ and encased in a hard, nearly impregnable shell (the skull). But the cerebrum isn't just a defender of the body. It has, so to speak, a mind of its own and its own goals preempt the instincts. What's more, cerebral goals conflict with the goals of the genes. AIDS and the whole contemporary world of the 90's - with its pollution, rain forest depletions, baby boom, etc. - constitute the casualties of a genetic war directed specifically against the cortex, occurring on a deeply subnatural level of the global collective unconscious.

As there are mental and spiritual planes, so there are various material planes. The "common consent" of the whole earth consciousness has been shattered in our time and the result is an insane interplanary (sic) war between the goals of the DNA and the goals of the human brain. Ideally, these goals should coincide, as with planned eugenics. Instead, we have mindless acquiescence to the genetic urge to procreate at any cost - regardless of the hideous consequences of overpopulation. Genetic consciousness knows only bodily success. It has no way of perceiving the larger context which is visible to the cortex: pollution, famine, despair, etc.

AIN

The Hebrew version of "the Void". Nothingness (i.e. "The Other Universe" whence this one derives).

AIN SOF

The Infinite or Unlimited Absolute. Qabalistically, that which cannot be encompassed by understanding, but whose existence we readily acknowledge.

AIR

In physics, vacuum interference. In metaphysics, air is the element that pertains to dimensions and represents the tendency towards dispersion. Alice Bailey describes air as "the bridge between high and low" (I would call all bridges "air"). Commonly, air is the element attributed to the intelligence.

AIWASS/AIWAZ

Crowley's alter ego. One of the 3 keywords of the Aeon of Horus (with Thelema and Agap�). Its number is 418. Aiwass has been attributed to Satan or Lucifer.

AKASHA

The fifth tattwa (Hindu Element). The black egg of the spirit, i.e. the ether, whereby everything is written down. In the Akashic records, found on every plane, no event, however insignificant, goes unmarked. If time be not a closed, self-repeating cycle, then the Akashic Records are of infinite length, having no beginning. The Guardians of the Akashic records have been equated with Thoth and Hermes as well as with Mnemosyne and the Muses. These were the guardians of the Well of Memory, from which the initiate must drink. In Norse mythology, the Guardian of the Well of knowledge, beside the root of the world-tree, Yggdrasil, was Mimir (to whom Odin paid his eye).

HPB describes Akasha as "The Second Differentiation of evolving substance Chaos, Aether, Matter of the Monadic Plane...often used where chaos or aether would be indicated. Akasha is located in the sphere of Vibratory Sound, whence all auras derive.

Lest those who feel they have contributed positively or negatively to the Akashic records be prideful on the one hand or discouraged on the other, it should be understood that all such actions are dualistic and the expansion of the darkness automatically ensures the expansion of the light and vice-versa.

AKHENATEN, AKHNATON or IKHNATION

(Means "Glorious Spirit of Aten") King Amenhotep IV - revered by many as the first Christ, the first monotheist, etc. (actually a maniac much hated by his people). While still alive incorporated himself as a God, along with Ra and Aten, forming a Trinity. All other Egyptian Gods were banished and their names removed from national monuments.

ALAYA

Universal soul or self of all things. Nyingpo amongst the Tibetans.

ALCHEMY

Chemistry is the child of the Alchemists. It's the legacy of "the puffers," those charlatan imitators who tried to fake the production of real gold. Alchemy was called "the Hermetic Science" because it supposedly began with Hermes (or Thoth). Paracelsus saw it chiefly as a means of producing medicine. The classical goals of Alchemy, however, have been to transmute lower metals into gold, to prolong life via an elixir, to search for the Mysterium Magnum, to create a homunculus and to find a universal solvent. This was to be accomplished via the manufacture or discovery of the Lapis Philosophorum, The Sophic Hydrolith, "Our Mercury" or "Philosopher's Stone." Other names for the "Stone" (achieved through the hieros gamos "marriage" of opposites) are: Virgin's Milk, Cock's Egg, Dry Water and similar contradictions. Generally, a cryptic vocabulary is used to disguise psychological and materialistic parallels, e.g. "red lion", "nigredo", etc. There are supposedly seven stages of the alchemical Great Work, which are symbolical as well as chemical/metallurgical steps: Calcination, Putrefaction, Solution, Distillation, Conjunction, Sublimation and Philosophic Congelation. There are also minor, intermediary steps, such as Coloratio, Corrosio, Ceratio, Extractio, Separatio etc.

We should bear in mind, however, that true alchemists consider the Great Work to be not merely aureofaction or the transmogrification of matter, but rather, as Alice Bailey points out "to transfer consciousness to one of the higher vehicles..." In other words, the integrity of the inner transformation is more important than any flashy theatrical results.

According to some theories alchemy is the raising of vibrations. The vegetable kingdom resonates at the lowest level. In between vibrates the animal kingdom. It is for this reason that the extraction of plant essence is easy, while the extraction of mineral essence is extremely difficult. This is also why man, situated midway between the two kingdoms, can, by simultaneously distilling his own essence, assist the mineral.

From a psychological standpoint, any work, on the most general level, is the process of separating the important from the non-essential and the decision as to whether to continue further to distill that residue to any degree of perfection and finally the determination of when the whole is of a piece and completely finished. This process can apply to a work of art, to self-analysis, to the quest for the elixir of life or even, for that matter, to metallurgy - because (according to the Emerald Tablet) all things are one.

It is no accident or coincidence, for instance, that there is a correlation between the atomic numbers of modern physics and the ancient progression of metals in their metamorphosis into gold:

                Lead	      82
                Thallium      81
                Mercury       80
                Gold	      79
                Platinum      78

The most important alchemical instruction is "Solve et Coagula", but an even more specific hint is "Flee contraction, seek dispersion."

ALICORN

Unicorn horn. Another corpse in the bloody wake of Belief. Certain superstitious parts of the world already crowded to the point of asphyxiation (chiefly China, supplied by Islam) still insist that powdered rhinoceros horn will give them the one thing they crave above opium and gold, reproductive fertility. Thus, to screw their propagating mania to the sticking point, vast nations will spare nothing to render this unique beast extinct, to turn the unhappy pachyderm into a fable.

ALLAH

The idol of Islam. "There is no Allah but Mohammed" - Al-Caphir.

ALLAT

Ancient tribal Bedouin goddess whom Muhammad drove out of the Ka'aba.

ALLITERATION

Beginning every word with the same letter. A means of generating poetic expression or magical cachets, e.g. *Biceps, bestiaque blatimus bibiendi biblioi Beelzebubi ("By swallowing demonic books, we, the two-headed and the beasts, commence to babble.").

ALMUCHEFI

Roger Bacon's magic mirror - for reading the future - composed in accordance with the laws of perspective under the influence of a benign constellation and after corpus modificatum per alchemiam est.

AL USSA

Another ancient, angelic goddess whom Mahomet drove out of the Ka'aba.

AMBROSIA

The Greeks confused nectar with ambrosia exactly as we do. Originally it was thought that this "drink (not food!) of the gods" derived from some such word as ambrotos, that is "immortal", similar to Hindu amrita, "deathless". We now know that the source is the Greek word for "blood" or "gore," brotos (a cognate of our word "blood") referring to the blood sprinkled upon altars and idols in ancient times - as our word, "to bless", derives from Anglo-Saxon bletsian "to sprinkle with blood."

This, combined with haoma > AM (Gk. hemo), formed the bloody "unguent" of religious ritual.

AMDO

Sino-Tibetan language of Eck.

AMENTA

In Grant's reversed vision , Hell or the hidden (Amen) land (Ta).

The hiding place of the midnight sun, Khephra, which is overseen by Set. In psychology this is the subconscious or dream (REM) state. Think of the Devil, however, i.e. the "Dual" or "Double", as the antithesis of being. Thus the epitome of or the ultimate subconscious, is the True Will or "Hidden Sun," the son (sic) behind the Sun. This is none other than Sothis or Sirius. To understand why this is so it is necessary to see that the spheres of influence are infinite and as the planets of the solar system determine the course of our lives, so the Sirius complex governs our solar system in turn.

AMENTI

In Theosophy, the Realm of God. "Those only who know the names of the seven janitors will be admitted into Amenti forever", i.e. those who have passed through the seven races of each round - otherwise they will rest in the lower fields. In Amenti one becomes pure spirit, for eternity; while in Aanroo the soul of the spirit or the defunct is devoured each time by Uraeus - "the Serpent, Son of the Earth". Soon the astral body 'fades out' and the soul quits the fields of Aanroo and goes on earth in any shape one likes to assume." - HPB, The Secret Doctrine.

The Egyptian who entered Amenti was led by Anubis to Osiris's court of 42 judges, whence he either passed on to Aaru or was thrown to the hippocrocodile, Ammit. In Amenti the Egyptian soul was required to till the fields and for this reason kings had buried with them in their tombs figures called Ushabti who were translated into replicas of the king who could do the work for him.

AMITABHA

The Buddha who protects the present era. In Japan he is the Buddha of Truth.

AMPRODIAS

The qliphotic guardian of the 11th Tunnel, sometimes connected to Nyarlathotep. He's not the "opposite", but a distortion of The Fool. Instead of being about to walk off the edge of a cliff, here he's seated at the bottom of a crater, at the edge of a pit, whence issue inane bubbles of nothingness. Instead of his warning dog, here we see the idiot flute-playing demons seeking not to advise, but to distract and confuse. Worst of all, the Fool is beyond mere "Folly", because as anyone can plainly see, he has no head at all.

His disease is diarrhea. His path is that of reversal. Since 11 is the general number for magic and since 11 is also the number of Daath on the Tree of Life, i.e. the "non-existent" sephirah and the gateway to the "other side", Amprodias also has The Fool's number. Zero (the Void) is the number that precedes One (Manifestation). The Zeroeth Level is also the level that precedes even the must elementary level of consensual reality. That is it even precedes solipsism and madness.

AMULET

Any unusual object or token whose fascination is intended to fascinate the Fascinator and thereby distract the Fascinator from wreaking his destruction. It is an occult charm serving as a protection against evil. Quite different from a talisman. Although one's own tailored creation is always best, there are a few traditional amulets, such as the kamea, holy inscriptions, idols, garlic, crucifixes, rose madder, etc. In order to provide its protection, the amulet must be worn (and preferably should be clearly visible) or remain in contact with that which is being guarded, such as the animal heads hanging over doorways that the druids and others used.

The value of quartz as an amulet is twofold: it bestows vitality and, as Antitoxin, routs evil spirits. It is effective because it derives from the detritus of other, possibly malignant spirits, in dark mineral springs. However, quartz crystal has been so exploited by New Age merchants that it is rapidly losing its meaning and power.

The most popular origin of the word (Arabic: hamala, "something carried") is the least correct. Latin amuletum, which was a little case or receptacle for carrying magical objects (like the Judaic mezuzah), derives from ampla, ama ("bucket" or something with handles, like a jug). The ama was also a bucket used in putting out fires.

ANALOGY

Eliphas Levi considers analogy to be the root principle of all wisdom, the mainspring of science and the link between "finite and infinite". At bottom is a fundamental Unity and rising out of that, everything is connected to everything else (only superficially via analogy). Balance and harmony derive from the analogy of opposites. In the Orient, this same balance is the basis of the martial arts, such as jiu-jitsu.

The modern temperament has made idols of pragmatism and progress, while rejecting analogy to the backwaters of fable and poesie. We equate metaphysical depth with children's stories and make simple-minded mechanics the criterion of mature wisdom.

ANAMNESIS

Curing of Amnesia. "Remembering" both past and future, as well as parallel worlds. It is orthogonal as well as linear. Its most common and least interesting manifestation is the d�j�-vu. In full anamnesis there is an awakening to omniscience and immortality.

ANARCHS OF THE NEW PARADIGM

(Hakim Bey's term). The quantum social paradigm, with decidedly anti-authoritarian flavor. The old "measuring" consensus of objective reality and relativism must now make way for post-modern, "shamanic" quantum mechanics. Chaos expects an alchemical social order, a world accepting of all alternate universes with ranomicity at the center, particles moving backwards in time, non-locality throughout, etc.

ANASTASIS

The resurrection of Osiris in the mysteries.

ANCIENT OF DAYS

Supreme judge, another name for "The Almighty" of conventional and pedestrian religion.

ANGAKOK/ANGAKUT

Amongst the Eskimos there are two Gods, a God of Good and a God of Evil. The good God, Pirksama, is given scant attention, since good takes care of itself, whereas the evil God must be dealt with. His name is Angakok and all witch doctors are named after him. When, therefore, Angakok comes to visit, he frequently meets with criticism, even when he comes to help the community. The Angakok derive their power to hear and restore life from the polar bear.

ANGELS

Purely mental entities acting as messengers between biodes (flesh-entities) and theodes (spirit-entities)

ANIMAL MAGIC

Jacob von Uexk�ll has shown that animals live in quite separate numinous worlds defined by the nature of their species. The elephant lives in an elephant universe, the butterfly in a butterfly world. They inhabit separate spheres of consciousness. Says Uexk�ll, "when a dog runs, it moves its legs. When a sea urchin runs, it is moved by its legs." Uexk�ll even distinguishes between acts of individual superstition (or "ritual") - bird pecking at empty pavement, dog licking newly washed dinner bowl - and genuine "species environment" magic that involves entire herds or flocks, performing purely symbolic acts.

ANKH (Crux Ansata)

The hieroglyph of a sandalstrap or knot, indicating "life". When the knot is fully undone, life is done. Ankh is the "knot" linking the Uas (a forked stick) and the Djed (Osiris's spinal column). The uas is the first manifestation of life (fire), as it arises naturally out of the void. The Egyptians made a practice of elaborately ornamenting and gilding this stick to show the inevitable corruption of life. Thus it is transformed from a natural branch into a "wand" or sceptre. To emphasize even more completely the fall of spirit the top was carved to resemble an ass's head. The ankh follows the uas and represents the continuity of life - the sandal used in walking. Finally, at death, comes the dismemberment of the God. Being divine, however, even the dismembered bones of Osiris are immortal. Hence the djed is the support , or pillar of eternity. When these three are contained within the Nebet or "basket", the four all together become the four elements. The nebet is "earth," which contains and gives form to the elemental potentialities of uas, ankh and djed. When held by Ptah, the four together become the tools with which he creates the world.

ANKH-F-N-KHONSU

"His life is in Khonsu" (that is, in the Moon God of Thebes), title of a high priest in Temple of Amen-Ra, the sun god, 26th dynasty. Crowley's former incarnation. His stele in the Cairo museum of 1904 was numbered "666".

ANKH, (W)UDJA(T), SENEB

"May he live, be prosperous, be healthy". A common Egyptian salutation appropriate for kings - abbreviated to L.H.S. (Life,Health, Strength).

ANODOS

In the Mysteries, the "Ascent" to the upper chambers.

ANOMIE

Lack of purpose, identity or ethical values in a person or society; Disorganization; Rootlessness. This pervasive poison underlies contemporary inability to alter the course of our downward-spiralling civilization.

ANSIBLES

Superluminal signaling devices based on FTL or telepathic particles. They contradict the theory of randomicity which latter suggests that non-local phenomena must remain inaccessible.

ANTHROPOPHUISM

The ascribing of human qualities to the Gods.

ANTHROPOSOPHY

A movement of illumination, split from Theosophy. Lit. "Knowledge of Man" as opposed to "Knowledge of Divinity". Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) is its originator, though the word itself was used in the 17th Century, by the Rosicrucian, Thomas Vaughan. Steiner emphasizes the fact that man urgently needs to come into harmony with the world, himself and the universe, through a spiritual science specifically tailored to his nature. Anthroposophy is an attempt to create such a science.

ANTI-CHRISTIAN STRATEGIES

"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years," said Abraham Lincoln, a century and a half ago. "What are the fruits of Christianity? Bigotry, superstition and persecution," said President James Madison some two centuries ago. "For seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm" said Voltaire 230 years ago. Quotations of this sort by the wisest of thinkers and leaders, extending as they do back through the millennia, should serve as a skull and crossbones over the door of the church.

Xtianity, obviously, is the worst of all worlds (with the possible exception of Islam). On the one hand, it exhorts its believers to live vicariously, to reach for nothing, inasmuch as Christ has done all the work of redemption for them. In this way it thoroughly discourages individualism, especially in its most creative aspects. On the other hand, it pledges salvation to the dregs of mankind - the lowest ranks of morality - to the mindless and the vicious. Thus it espouses egoism at the cheapest level.

Arrogant Xtians are fond of saying, "You can't have it both ways." By that they mean that you can't accept the interconnectedness of everything and at the same time believe in the separation of the individual. But Xtianity, founded as it is on the veneration of stupidity, has always confused paradox with inconsistency.

The wise man leans neither on belief nor on non-belief. The whole issue of God/Not-God is unnecessarily dichotomous, as is our analysis of morality/immorality. The Either-Or world is dangerous. Indeed, it is so dangerous that even to proceed in a line midway between this Scylla and Charybdis is to hem oneself in by unwanted limitations. "God" is a word that has yet to be defined and even the certainty of divine singularity vs. plurality is debatable. It is a common conceit that monotheism is a step is a step forward from polytheism and one which some serious metaphysicians are finally beginning to question. The initiate may declare that there is but one "God", but he means that in a quite different sense from the common notion of exclusivity.

Monotheism (see MONOLATRY) always leads to monolithism. We are one another only be differing from one another. It is uniqueness that makes us divine. It is quite possible to deny the existence of "God" without elevating man (in his present condition) to apotheosis. There is, for example, the teaching of Pantheism, in which all plants, animals and, in fact, matter itself, are all equally God. This is also one God.

Anti-christians are admittedly defensive about "Salvation through Christ". First of all, non-Christians insist, there can be no salvation without one's own immolation - not the crucifiction of some 2000 year old personage of legend. Secondly, Christ is a type of supraconsciousness already potential, but undeveloped, in all men and women. It must not be confused with the self-pitying figures depicted in stained glass windows. The Christ level of consciousness is, in fact, certainly not available to the average, plastic-coated, postmodern illiterate, whose vision scarcely extends beyond that of an insect and whose tenacity is no firmer than a worm's pull. Therefore, to make salvation available to all men on a believe-as-you-go basis is idiotic. And finally, the Galilean mode is only one of many modes of consciousness - most of which are a lot more interesting. (See 666.)

ANTI-OCCULT STRATEGIES

Because of Hitler's occult interests, anti-occultists have tried time and again to establish that all those from whom he adopted his twisted ideas were themselves fascist and racist. Similarly, in the 1930's everyone was tagged with either the Communist or Fascist label, whether deservedly or not. Attempts to link Hitler to the sympathies of Aleister Crowley, HPB, Jung and the rest are constantly being forced upon gullible and confused people. The fact is, the Nazis used anyone and anything they could to gain power, as do all villains. Accusations against the occult, however, invariably come down not to anti-semitism practices, but, on the contrary, to a tendency to question Christian authority. Even Nietzsche, the 3rd Reich's most esteemed philosopher, though a strong enemy, it turns out, of the Catholic Church, was deeply opposed to Anti-semitism.

Jung's essay in 1936 on Wotan is often cited in which he simply stated that the God of the German people was not Jesus, but Wotan. That the Nazis could take inspiration from that is hardly Jung's fault, as he merely pointed out the obvious. Evil imagination can take what it needs from any source and we might with far more justification have accused the Vatican of Pro-Fascist tendencies. The charge against Mme. Blavatsky is equally irresponsible. A careful scrutiny of her writings will reveal a deep and abiding affection for the jews, alone with an equally strong antipathy for Xtianity. Attempts to link Blavatsky to "master race" ideas would seem to fare somewhat better, until we learn that she considered the Aryan, Semitic and Turanian branches to have derived from a common pre-Abrahamic source. And when she speaks of races, she really refers to the reincarnated human race itself.

It is true that Gurdjieff spent the war in Paris and survived the German occupation, but he did not survive through collaboration and he undoubtedly put himself in great danger by devoting his time to caring for elderly, impoverished refugees. As for Crowley, the fact that Mussolini shut down his Cefalu Lodge and that the German Gestapo put his Golden Dawn Society on the "Enemies of the Reich" list speaks for itself.

ANTISEMITISM

Why is the occult sometimes accused of anti-semitism?

Since the occult comprises a huge number of different arcane studies, it is hard to see how its being associated with such an unlikely and general characteristic as anti-semitism could arise. It is, in fact, a complete contradiction of its origin. Most of this misconception began in 1920 with a certain Miss Stoddard and Dr. and Mrs. Felkin, who were the temple heads of the Stella Matutina. Miss Stoddard felt herself persecuted by "black Rosicrucians" and turned to Nesta Webster. Ms. Webster, in turn, a right wing fanatic, accused all these organizations of being agents of the International Jewish conspiracy - especially the Golden Dawn and Stella Matutina. Because of its association with the Qabalah and its rejection of orthodox Xtianity, the Church is always ready to accuse the Occult of being pro-Jewish. Soon after this, however, Hitler, who considered Xtianity to be merely a Jewish offspring, turned to the neo-pagan elements of the occult. This Nazi endorsement, for most people, tarred all occult studies with the same tainted brush. The popular mind, in its total and abysmal ignorance of such things to start with, sees no contradiction in condemning the accused of the very crime of the accuser!

ANUBIS

The dog or jackal-headed Egyptian God who served as guide to the underworld and weigher of the dead man's heart for its truthfulness.

APO PANTAS KAKODAIMONES!

False banishing mantram ("Away all evil demons!")

APOCALYPSE

We are aware that the muslims insist that there can be no Universal Eschatonic Implosion until the world has endured "40 years of rain." We would remind them that we have endured *more* than forty years of the "rain" of nuclear radiation and pollution. Aztec prophesies place the end of the world in the 20th Century (who can doubt it?). The Great Pyramid is said to contain, in its mystical measurements, similar predictions in stone of which the last is Sept. 17, 2001 A.D. Two thousand is commonly believed by western civilization to be the year of the Eschaton. The date given by Nostradamus, on the other hand, is slightly pre-millennial: 1999. This is just 13 years prior to the end of the great 160,000-year Mayan Cycle and Terence McKenna's Timescape Zero (based on Ancient Chinese cycles), both at 2012 C.E. And although many others cite 2020, there are interesting reasons for seizing on 1999.

First of all, there is a scientific reason. As meteorologists have noted, the 11-year sunspot cycles which serve to heat the earth, have not only been increasing in severity, they have progressively exacerbated the greenhouse effect. This resulted, during the drought of 1988, in the first of the summer-long record-breaking temperatures that continue to plague us. In '99 the sunspot activity could well have a cataclysmic effect.

Metaphysically, however, there are more compelling reasons. Since the exact interface betweeen the end of the Christian Aeon of Pisces and the beginning of the Humanist Aeon of Aquarius is impossible to pipoint, we are thrown back on sheer numerology. 1+9+9+9 = 28 = 2+8 = 10; numerologically and Pythagoras-wise ten is the number of perfect completion. In other words 1999 is the natural culmination of the Aeon, whereas 2000 is simply a thousandfold manifestation of the Duality: Two - that epitome of evil amongst numbers (from the cosmic point of view, the end of the world isn't necessarily evil). The date, January 16, 1999 adds up to 9. That date is also Julian Day number 2,451,195, which adds up to 9 as well. Ironically enough, most computer projections of disaster, based on current ecological trends, ozone depletion, demographic patterns, etc. predict the peak somewhere between January, 1999 and September, 2013 - by which time the population of the earth will be nine billion and the "end" of the human yardstick on this planet will have come.

And although the Bible stipulates that "no man knoweth the day or the hour" of the last day, I do not hesitate to name the 9th second of the 9th minute of the 9th hour of January 16, 1999 as the eschaton (or the 9th day of the 9th month September).

As one of the Archons of the Ending Aeon, however, I have chosen 999 as my personal sigil, not 1999, because I want to ally myself with the spirit of the ending process, rather than with the End itself. Moreover, from an opitimistic point of view, 999 is qabalistically virginal - it has nothing written on it. Yet I see no reason to dispute '99 as the Climax of the Apocalypse, and I take that most useful point of the Eschaton as the date of my own eschaton-count. My Newtime (13 month) calendar begins approximately on the winter solstice of 2000 (Newtime Year Zero), displacing Gregorian time forever. Hence I count forward from 1999, calling 1997 "Year Minus 3", etc.

It should be noted that "end of the world" predictions are always cropping up. For instance, there was Rev. Whisenant's eschatonic prediction that September 13, 1988 would be the Great Day. Newspapers were gleeful in reporting that the date came and went. What they failed to realize was that 1988, in fact, the beginning of the end - since it was in that year that the greenhouse effect was finally accepted by the planetary powers and acknowledged as the harbinger of the end. If nothing else, 1988 was the year in which the Shroud of Turin was finally pronounced an error by the Vatican. At any rate, the good Rev's numerology may have been naive and the particular fate he chose may have had little synchronistic sparkle, but his prediction wasn't entirely off the wall. Isn't it always the 11th hour? At least sub specie aeternitatis?

But with the 20th Century we leave eternity behind and enter the dimensional worlds. The date Whisenant gave has another meaning. As you know, we stand in the slough of time and at the perimeters of various magico/religious aeons - including the multitudinous segments of the Galilean era - all of which end at different points. The prophecies are fulfilled at different velocities in different ways. The world "ends" perennially because "World" derives from Anglo-Saxon wer-�ld ("Man's Era" or "human time.")

Part of our confusion has to do with the fact that we tend to use "the world" and "the earth" as though they were synonyms. The earth is merely one of the stages on which the drama of the world is enacted. From the Olympian point of view, the end of a world isn't a tragedy. Everything has its �ld. Even the gods have their time. Even the dinosaurs had an "Age" so the toymakers tell us. The word for "world", in every language, is invariably linked to the notion of time. Arabic duniya, "the present (world)", Hebrew olam "eternity", Latin mundus, originally a division into sections (of time), like the Greek kosmos. Religion is always, sooner or later, part of that chronometry.

It amazes me that people, especially gullible Xtians, can be so blind as to expect everything to go on as it has done for millions of years when the end has, in fact, arrived. By now it should be clear even to rotting elephants and establishment flakes that the fulfillment of the prophesies is at hand. Even technocratic corporationism concedes that any time between now and the early 21st Century pollution, population, drought, disease and famine will have hit their strides (the "four horsemen" as the four elements: polluted air, sewage-laden water, barren earth, radiocative fire). Therefore 2000 also marks the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and the official end of the Piscean "Age of Jesus". After that date the Christians (all of whom by then will have been swept up into the arms of their Redeemer) will find themselves, or so asserts self-styled Neo-Xtian, Constance Cumbey, "preserved in their own bubble of spiritual sterility on the dimensional shelf of an alternate reality," where they may eternally contemplate the wonder of their salvation. Meanwhile, mankind's post-holocaustic, enlightened remnant (should such a remnant, by any miracle, remain) will be free to move ahead...to? Incidentally, by the word "holocaust" I do not refer to war but to the destruction of the biosphere by the ravages of unchecked human growth.

For remarks on the return of Christ or "Second Coming" (see PAROUSIA). Meanwhile, the elect, who are still being sacrificed, already inhabit the New Jerusalem. The safe and sound remainder are not saved at all, despite their belief. They call themselves Xtians, but they are Philistines. The zealous guardians of the faith are precisely those about whom Matthew was shouting: "Not everyone who saith unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!", and of whom Mark said, "But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days." Those who remain are increasingly damned to the hell that earth is henceforth becoming. September 13, 1988 was the last day before it would be too late to begin the task of repairing the biosphere and reversing daily descent to terracide. So the jubilant laughter of Whisenant's scoffers begins to sound increasingly hollow, doesn't it?

Obviously, there are many of us who, though raised in the Xtian tradition, can view the Apocalyptic experience which the world is undergoing even now, without falling gibbering to our knees in a final paroxysm of millennial conversion. . . No matter what happens henceforth, will retain our Neo-Gnostic and Neo-Pagan allegiances and avoid the horror of "Salvation."

Other cultures are more confrontational. Coinciding with the Xtian Apocalypse is the Hopi ending of the "Fourth World". In their system, evolution produces new strengths but also creates new bad habits which must periodically be burned away. Those who have not been corrupted will become the seed people of the next world. Hindus and Yogis (q.v.) rather than living in the world, tend to think of themselves as living in an "age" - at present, that age is the evil "Kali Yuga" (quite similar, in fact, to our own "apocalyptic era" and not necessarily lengthier). The Chinese also live in an older world. As of this writing (1988), this is the year 4686 for them. And for the Jews it's 5748. But the Mayans (q.v.) dwell in almost inconceivably vast ages, called baktuns and the current one ends in 2012, our time. The "Harmonic Convergence" of July, 1987, marked the entry, for the Mayans, into the final lustrum of the penultimate 20-year period, before the "hotting up" time of 1992, which is the beginning of the final 20 years of a 160,000 year cycle!

The "world" is, in a very real sense, however, the creation of those who inhabit it. Thus, when our forefathers created the United States, they quite deliberately and correctly referred to this as a "new world" and gave the Great Seal the designation NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM ("New Order of the Ages"), which you can still read on every dollar bill. But every maker of a "new" world, whether secular or religious, brings in his own "Age." The makers of the R_publique Fran_aise, after the Revolution of 1789, even came up with a brand new calendar to mark their "new age," complete with new names for the months. Anton LaVey, high priest of the "San Francisco Church of Satan", proclaimed 1966 as the beginning of the "New Satanic Age". Jesus Christ, arriving at the beginning of the Piscean Age, brought with him an automatic 2000-year non-renewable lease on time, which runs out in this century, the beginning of the Aquarian Age. Magicians also fabricate their own elaborate times - Aleister Crowley, for instance, began his "Age of Horus" in 1904. Moreover, although it might be expected to have ended at his death in 1947, his followers, seeing him as an immortal, still maintain Crowley's "Thelemic" calendar in that system, 1996 C.E. would be AN 72.

Crowley's aeon was itself superseded in 1947 (the year of the saucers) when the doorway to the Hell of Universe B was opened by Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, whence the "Forgotten Ones" are now penetrating this world.

In 1980 Mickey Mouse and Jesus joined forces to end personal liberty in the United States (the end of the Democratic Party forever). In 1983 the Hopis announced the end of the 5th World - henceforth man would be obliged to boost his own stock, somehow. In July of 1987, the world entered the final lustrum of the penultimate katun of the Mayan aeon - another time of tribulation. 1992 was the beginning of yet another 20-year battle of armageddon. On January 6, 1999 Julian Day 2,415,195, the world will end by Nostradamus's calculation. Few will notice, perhaps, sind the "end" refers merely to the official passing of the Galilean Age and the world will be so desperately struggling to survive that there will be little time for outmoded messiahs.

Zoroaster, who died in 1000 B.C., will be reborn and complete the end of futility and Ahriman's rule. His seed at the bottom of a lake, it was prophesied, would thrice conceive maidens at three millennial points. The final chapter in the Zoroastrian cycle and yet another eschaton in our time.

Finally, it should be noted, in 2012, Terence McKenna's Timescape reaches Absolute Zero, the point of infinite novelty (See AUTOPOETIC LAPIS). And, interestingly, Jung also predicted the outer limit as occurring approximately fifty years after his death, which was in 1961.

You will understand that these 'end of the world' dates constitute a map of reality, but are obviously not Reality itself (apart from the fact that there is no "reality", as such). One doesn't necessarily visit every town on the map. We can choose to live out our allotted span to 1999 or 2012, and perhaps save the world, after all, or we can commit mass suicide beforehand in any of a hundred different ways, thus escaping the horror that is building up. The date of the Apocalypse isn't important. What matters is its immediacy. We have to understand that we've reached the outer limit of our dimension - THERE IS NO FUTURE - or at least very little. Like the amoeba in his drop of water it's time to turn away from the edge and move back to the center.

At any rate, by now it should be clear that we're moving quickly, not only metaphysically and synchronistically, but literally into the charged nexus of all the "ending aeons", into a kind of central transformer which is approaching its limit like an overworked fuse. The task of the archons of the ending aeons is to guide the confused through the wreckage of our disintegrating society.

APOCATASTASIS

A closed reincarnated loop wherein the same lifetime is reexperienced over and over again with no alteration of details. Says Nicoli in "Living Time", "...it is in life that we have to 'perfect' ourselves. If we limit 'this life' to one single journey between birth and death there is not enough time. People give up trying just because of this appearance of things. They do not bend the life round in a circle, but leave the whole matter to the 'hereafter'. We cannot grasp that beyond the 'end' lies the beginning. Natural understanding will not conceive this. It can only conceive that beyond the end lies either nothingness or something entirely new. Beyond our life we meet - our life. We cannot turn in any other direction! Plato did not believe that the dimension of time in which life occured was absolutely apocatastic or needed to be "traversed endlessly without change." But to continue... "If the same time recurs and one remembers the same moment and changes something belonging to one's former experience of that moment, must it not follow that one changes what has been done in the former experience of that moment, because the time is the same?"

Thus it is always the same life that we repeat, but it can be an eternal, self-polishing jewel or self-perfecting work of art. On the other hand, if we so choose, it can be no more than a dreary and monotonously unvarying routine.

APOLLONIUS OF TYANA

Greek philosopher and magician, credited with healing miracles, feats of bilocalism, raising of the dead, etc. An actual historic personage, who was the contemporary and rival of the merely legendary Jesus Christ. He is said to have observed, "Common men see the present, sages that which is about to happen, the theoi see the future."

APOPHIS

("The Destroyer"). Ancient left-hand adversary, Set. KG says he is Set in his "Ophidian" (serpent) form. A huge Nilotic serpent that attempted to devour Ra, he figures strongly in the left-hand path. Also "Apopsi".

APOPSI

Anti-psi power. Word invented by Bonewitz.

APORIA

The state of not knowing which way to turn. Philosophical doubt or confusion arising from the difficulty of reconciling contradictions or incomplete ideas. From Gk. aporos "impassable, perplexing".

APOTHEOSIS

Becoming a god, in the historical sense. Usually it refers to Roman Emperors or Egyptian Kings being given divine attributes after they had died. In the superstitious or drugged mind, Ascension necessarily accompanies apotheosis. That is, the spirit of the dead person, having been made into a god, is seen to rise visibly into heaven. Initiates think of apotheosis as everyone's task while still alive: to achieve the literal transmogrification of the human condition.

APOTROPAIC

Lit. "turning away", descriptive of any protective device (such as garlic worn around the neck to fend off vampires). It applies to the "Eye of Horus", which is a wooden phallus used to ward off the "evil eye". All apotropaics, however, are defenses against some sort of "eye" and the purpose of such an object is to engage the attention of said eye and thereby detour its malevolence. Hence, the more startling or original the device, the better.

AQUARIUS

The 11th sign, the number of wizardry - electronic as well as esoteric. The sign of astronomy, no less than astrology, and above all the sign of independence and service to the world. The new precessional beginning of the zodiac, heading the New Age. It is the emblem and inspiration of "Man": "Henceforth the Son of Man appeareth in the heavens..." In 1929 Jung wrote that we would enter the first star of Aquarius in 1940, adding "That would be the turning point. We may look for a new development about that time." The fact that 1940 marked the entry into a lustrum that encompassed the nadir of humanity indicates that the "Age of Man" is the Kali Yuga.

Famous Aquarians are Lincoln, Thomas Paine, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Edison, Lindbergh, Dickens, and Jules Verne.

ARACHNE

The Spider. 13th month of the proposed "Newtime" calendar to begin at the winter solstice of 2000 A.D. From a possible corruption of the early pagan or Druidic "Aranea". 13th zodiacal sign, Auriga, the Charioteer. That there were originally 13 signs in the zodiac goes back, among other possible source, to Osiris' body being dismembered into 13 parts. Or rather, the other way, around: this myth, amongst others, should perhaps be seen as celestial in origin. References should be made to James Vogh's "Arachne Rising", wherein he points out that Auriga (or Arachne), lying as it does midway between Taurus and Gemini, is the logical place for the 13th sign and appears to have been so designated by the Druids.

There are others who cite Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder, as the more logical 13th month. Ophiuchus (between Scorpio and Sagittarius) is even cited by some as the Age we are now inhabiting, rather than Pisces or Aquarius, and that it began in the early 1940's. (See AQUARIUS).

ARCHANGELS

Guardians of the ten sephiroth of the Qabalah: Metatron, Ratziel, Tzaphidel, Tzadkiel, Chamael, Raphael, Haniel, Michael, Gabriel, Sandalphon. It is useful to know their names in order to work gematria, temurah and notariqon which will yield furher information about the sephiroth.

ARCHON

On the mundane plane, a temporal ruler. Each magician has his own dimension over which he is its Archon. In Gnosticism, the Archons were planetary rulers - the planets representing as they did spiritual worlds which the soul, as in Ancient Egypt, passed after death. In order to pass from one sphere to the next, the soul has to bew able to recite the proper password, or give the "name" (i.e., the understanding) of the corresponding Archon. This is the "sacred knowledge" that Gnosis comprised. Archons, however, are rulers of the earth and universe, which are the evil, inferior realms composed of souls imprisoned in matter - that's why special or privileged knowledge is necessary to get past them.

ARIES

The Ram, first sign of the zodiac in the mundane chart, and sign of all beginnings. The Great Beginner, sign of spring, freedom, leadership and emblem of the initiator in all things. The ram's horn or shofar is still the rallying call of Judaism, which began at the beginning of the Arietian Age over 4000 years ago. The Ram is the unifying Emperor because he is the head of the world, the mansion of the exaltation of the Sun. The most powerful number is One, the Ace that tops the multitudes.

Aries, being the individual, represents the uniqueness of all monads and all mortals: what men have in common is their difference. Famous Arietians: Charlemagne, Bismarck, Jefferson, Cesar Chavez, Raphael, Swinburne, Wilhelm Reich, Dane Rudhyar, Houdini, Hans Christian Andersen, Rachmaninoff, Descartes, Joseph Campbell.

ARITHMOSOPHY

Numerology, but specifically Bertiaux's breaking down of words into numbers for one of his alternate universes.

ARMAGEDDON

The Plain of Meggido, a site of traditional battles in ancient Canaan. According to the Bible, this is where the last mighty battle in the war between the armies of Light and Darkness will culminate and climax in the Day of Judgment. It should be understood that this is not an ordinary war between nations, but a spiritual conflict occuring within the human collective unconscious. Meggido is the symbol of the world and it is in the world that the Great War is now being waged. Its effects are felt when Megiddo is recognized as a place of mourning where great kings of Judah were slain and it seems therefore that error has taken the place of ideals.

ARMANISM

Ancient Teutonic pagan priesthood exterminated by the Xtians. One of the streams that was diverted by the Nazis to feed directly into their metaphysics.

ARRA (or "Ur")

Star-stone of the covenant of the Elder Gods - as in the Necronomicon's Chaldean oath, "They who gave it to us will not forget us. They have sworn: Spirit of the Skies, Remember!"

Also known, says HPB, as the "Elder Sign", the five-pointed sigil "carven of gray stone from ancient Mnar", glyph of the Elder Gods whose sway over the Great Old Ones remains incontestable. The star-stone spells and incantations are only stand-ins for the Elder Gods themselves. They may not therefore be strong enough, in the end, to resist the Great Old Ones, but who holds the Arra can command any lesser creature. And such also are legion.

AS IF

In Eckankar, chelas are taught that the senses contain all manifestation. Imagination, in the field of Maya, if exercised properly will create an effect by the chela "as if" it has already happened. We have only to recognize that we have already reached "God-consciousness".

ASPECT

One of the forms or faces of a god (Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva or "Father Son and Holy Ghost). A human being's aspect can be considered one of his traditional roles, as an actor has certain well-chosen "character" parts.

ASTRAL LIGHT

(HPB calls it "astral fluid"). In Hinduism this is an invisible aura surrounding the earth and is the life-energy of the cosmos itself. It acts as a storehouse for all the energies of the cosmos and contains (eternal?) "holograms" of everything that transpires (or has transpired?) on the physical or astral planes.

Others refer to it as the "cosmic switchboard" or the "collective unconscious" that connects all individual minds to Mind, or Omniscience. The magician operates within it always inside a consecrated bubble so as not to be influenced or harmed by its infinite cross-currents.

Is is so fluid and tenuous that the slightest act of the will or imagination can cause it to bend in the magician's desired direction.

ASTRAL PLANE

A mental world shared by dreamers, OOBE travelers, perichoretic visitants, newly dead, beings/spirits from other worlds who have lived lives on other planets and so on. Here are also the formidable, native "Kamadevas" and finally the lower devic orders, including the Elementals and those who provide us with the spirit of a place (genius loci). Alchemical "elementals" also exist here, as do all the undispatched, artificial creations of magicians (Tibetan magi, for instance, are adept at creating thought-creatures known as tulpas). Many of the astral creations become powerful symbols or Jungian archetypes - collectively created.

We already exist on the Astral Plane as we exist on the physical plane. We have but to experience it consciously. Marc Edmund Jones says that it is the level of experience for simple individuality or is our "first transcendency of physical cause and effect". The Astral Plane is constructed by the mental imagery of those who travel there. (Xtians think themselves in heaven, others imagine they are wherever their fancy takes them). Astral is the first type of matter, much more subtle than our present version, of course. As far as we're concerned, on the astral plane, there is no "material reality, even though everything vaguely resembles our world. Things behave like the material world, except that the character of things is worn on the outside, rather than hidden inside as on earth. This is because the Astral lies midway between material earth and the spirit worlds, qabalistically on the Yesodic level. Classically, it is characterized (for the newly dead) by a central courtyard or "receiving field" receding into "the hills beyond" - beyond which lies the capital city: Sahasra Dalkenwal. This "courtyard", plaza, precinct, garden or whatever is generally considered to be merely a way-station or transfer point.

Most authorities are agreed that the first experience after death is total and absolute darkness, often accompanied by panic. As in every manifested thing, positive or negative, the mirroring of similarities takes place - so death, being similar to sleep, begins with darkness. Finally, again as in waking, appears a light as the world left behind begins to remember itself. One now enters the "desire world" or Kamaloka. It is in Kamaloka that the spirit creates the idealized world described above. Sooner or later we realize that eating, drinking, sleeping, making love are merely phantom acts because we have no physical body. At this moment comes a second surrender and we recapitulate our lives backward from death to birth, suffering or enjoying the effects of our actions while we lived in the world. So we experience for ourselves, first-hand, the harm we have done and recognize how we must compensate for it. Animals, of course, never get this far, but quickly lose their individuality, such as it is. Family pets may last a big longer because they have been so strongly individualized.

At any rate, we are now ready to present this refined and reformed earth-life personality to our higher self (Atma-Buddha-Manas). A separation of "I" and astral body is the Second Death. The self, rid of ego and earth-impedimenta can now ascend to the spirit world, as Osiris. The lower self is cast to the serpent, Urekh, to be consumed, while the spirit enters the clear sky of Sekten. The cast-off, ego-shorn astral husk, still contaminated by desire may hang around the borderland where it masquerades as some famous spirit or makes itself available to mediums and such.

Devachan is a mental plane in a world considerably higher than the astral, where the "I" then proceeds after its "second death."

At the apogee from earth the soul fills with desire (Trisha) for a personality. So we plummet down again through the seven levels. The Dhyan-Choans decide where the wheel of reincarnation will stop - but thereafter it's up to the individual. Gradually, as one falls into materialization, one forgets his old experiences and focuses on the life to come. At this point we call karma voluntarily to help us redress the past imbalances. Passing over into the conditional sphere of Space/Time (Samsara), we reincarnate over and over (Samtana) until ultimate deliverance (Moksha). Life is thus a system of checks and balances between Activity (Pravritti) and Renunciation (Nirvitti).

There is a parallel Battle of Armageddon now taking place on the Astral Plane that is experienced only in shadow on earth - resulting in our breakdown of civilization and planet wide pollution. Eventually, as the war breeches the spirit membrane separating our world from the Astral, the celestial war will break out on earth as well.

A rather interesting analog of the Astral Plane is given by C.S. Lewis in his "Pilgrim's Regress". Another, more satisfying version, is recounted by Tolkien in his story, "Leaf by Niggle". There are also Franz Werfel's "Star of the Unborn" and Sacheverell Sitwell's "Journey to the Ends of Time". Finally, it must be pointed out that there are many planes, of which the astral is only the first. The magician "rises through the planes", the astral, the magician's plane, the alchemist's plane, the Aethyrs, the God-planes, to the highest and innermost dimensions. (See DEVACHAN).

ASTROSOME

The astral, "healing" body that can leave the body when not busy and which destroys the body after death. (Also, a bad example is the vampire).

ASTROSOPHY

Astrology has frequently been criticized for offering proofs of its validity on single examples, as though it were some sort of faulty science. Astrology, however, does not rest upon cause and effect, but is based on the hermetic principle of Correspondence, exemplified by synchronicities and other simultaneous parallelisms. Mind is the link between the body and the Cosmos. Astrology is the recognition of this connection. When the psyche descends to the sensory world, its celestial planets are drawn inward, i.e. earthed, and they become cramped, distorted, negative reflections - faint echoes of what they were. So the planets become their own inversions. Saturn, for instance, is originally divine intelligence, but in man it now settles for putting ordinary "reason" on the throne of Transcendence. Since Saturn is the heaviest of the planets, its gravity pulls down all the others which in turn become inversions of themselves also. Hence confusion grows on what it feeds and since astrology fights a failing battle in its effort to keep the psyche's Cosmic connection, it is subject to endless criticism.

With the dawn of the "Age of Reason", we imagined that we had found the solution to our problems by rejecting the celestial link altogether and by exalting "Rationalism". This was the opposite direction from the one we should have taken. Now, feeling the lack of the "Spiritual" we seek it where we can - and, to our regret, now find outside ourselves only "irrationalism". With that we can no proceed to exclude the natural world as well as the transcendental, pathetically turning to the computer, robot and artificial intelligence as our highest goals.

ASURAS

The "sunless" ones who inhabit dark, joyless realms.

ATHAME

Consecrated, black-handled knife, used for drawing circles to invoke spiritual entities. Implements for performing M/magic(k)al acts must themselves be M/magic(k)al. Ordinary tools do but ordinary work.

ATHEISM

Can be divided roughly into two phases - Sartrean Atheism and Post-Sartrean Atheism. For Sartre, raised in the Catholicism of the 19th and early 20th Century, God was the meaning of life and the world. Once God was proved not to exist (or murdered as Nietzsche put it), meaning also ceased to exist. The universe for Sartre was hence absurd and nauseating. We now recognize that meaning and purpose can be present even if Creation is self-created - either as the original cause of self-creation or as its ultimate (not-yet-completed) result.

ATHTAR

One of the Arab Trinity, the male Venus, destroyed by Mohammed.

ATLANTIS

Plato's legendary continent "West of the Pillars of Hercules" which achieved great technological heights of civilization and then sank beneath the sea. Whether or not we choose to lend credence to its historical reality is less important than what it symbolizes - the incessant rise and fall of civilizations in the past, as "scientifically advanced" as our own. Indeed, many of these are said to have been further advanced than our own by several leagues. Thus, Atlantis warns us to avoid unnecessary futility.

ATTENTIONALITY

The quality or degree of that which is capable of bringing other minds to attention. From a subjective point of view, anything to which we give our attention becomes interesting - BEWARE OF FOOTBALL. When you begin to understand something, if you deliberately concentrate on the problem more deliberately, that will produce a feedback with subsequent intensification of the attention and understanding.

ATTRIBUTE

That which is assigned, ascribed or considered as belonging to an entity, as a familiar is an attribute of a witch or the thunderbolt is an attribute of Jupiter. A person's attribute can be anything traditionally associated with him, such as Don Quixote's horse (Rosinante) or Hitler's dog (Blondi), or even inanimate objects such as Thor's hammer or Mercury's caduceus.

ATU

The tarot trumps are called atus, which is Egyptain aat "mansion", aatu "mansions." Erroneously, atu is thought to derive from French � tous, since trumps are above all other suits.

ATUM

(Sometimes identified with the Hebrew "Adam"). Egyptian God often depicted as masturbating, since he is self-created and as he is also credited with pulling the whole of creation out of himself (precursor of Adam's rib?). He also represents the return of the Cosmos to its origins, as the serpent devouring its own tail. By masturbating in Heliopolis, his brother and sister, Shu and Tefnut, were produced by ejaculation. Sometimes he was described as "spitting forth" life from his mouth, as though he himself were one entire penis.

AUGOEIDES

From Greek meaning "light vision" or "bright shape", refers to the luminous nature of the higher self. The Causal or Egoic Body. First used by Iamblichus. In Crowley's case this was the mysterious Aiwass. In Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni it is rendered as the "Higher Ego". The knowledge of the Augoeides is one of the major goals of the magician. (See HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL).

AUM

This is the holy word (OM) in its tripartite form, representing the Hindu Trinity. A = Vishnu (the self). U = Brahma (Not-Self). M = Shiva (location).

AUTISM

A mental state in which one fails to discern even the slightest meaning or purpose in other people, or indeed in anything outside the self. If there were such a thing as the opposite of a "magical" mind, such would be the autistic personality.

AUTOPOETIC LAPIS

Terence McKenna's psilocybic revelation from "Magical Blend," April, 1989: "The 'autopoetic lapis' is the ingression of novelty to concrescence, a 'tightening gyre'. Everything flows together and coalesces in the alchemical stone at the end of time ... when the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. In 2012 our species enters hyperspace, but it will appear to be the collapse of the state vector, the end of physical laws and the release of the mind itself.

"All these other images - the starship, the space colony, the lapis - these are precursory images. They follow naturally from the idea that history is the shock wave of eschatology. As one closes distance with the eschatological object, the reflections it is throwing off resemble more and more the thing itself. In the final moment the Unspeakable stands revealed. There are no more reflections of the Mystery. The Mystery in all its nakedness is seen, and nothing else exists. But what it is, decency can safely scarcely hint at; nevertheless, it is the crowning joy of futurism to seek anticipation of it."

AUTOPROSSING

Using a word-processor for automatic writing. The first (known) channeled entity (1988) was Thurmon of Xoros-Eridanus 14.

AVIDYA

Lit. "not knowing." The ignorance of non-enlightenment. Normal intellectual state. Ignorance comes in two flavors: simple "non" knowing vs. the more complex "wrong" knowing. Both kinds obscure illumination.

AVOIDANCE FIXATION

Habits and addictions are escape mechanisms for coping with deprivation, restriction, monotony and apprehension. We should understand, however, that addiction is the way of Nature. The "laws" of Physics are such embedded addictions that they can scarcely be broken at all. Plants live lives of total fixation. Animals are governed by strict instincts and gravitate naturally to routine. Man is so addictive that almost anything can become an obsession or a compulsion.

AWAR

Son of Iblis. Arab demon of laziness.

AZAZEL

("Strength of God") The Angel who refused to worship Adam, renamed "Iblis", the Arab demon. Aaron paid equal tribute to Azazel and Jehovah.

AZOTH

The jewel of Paracelsus. Alchemists' mercury. According to some, from Arabic Az-zaug "the quicksilver". According to others, the word comprises totality from A to Z, from Alpha to Omega, from Aleph to Tau. Salt, the passive principle, is joined to Sulphur, the active principle, by the catalyst, Mercury. Azoth is thought to be the creative principle itself. It is usually symbolized by a cross or circle with the letters TARO at the four termini, so that the final T is the same as the initial T and thus can be seen to constitute a wheel:

AZTEC ASTROLOGY

Based on the 52-year revolution of the Pleiades, the calendar is divided into four 13-year quarters. A religious year consisted of three concentric cycles: the Tonalpuohualli of 260 days, the solar year of 365 days and the Venus cycle of 584 days. The earth has survived four "Suns" or eons, called Nahul, which destructions were characterized by earth, air, fire and water. (Thus the most recent End of the World coincided with the biblical flood).

The fifth sun, Nahul Ollin or "movement", which we now inhabit, is the aeon of the calendar in question. It was divinely created in 13 Acatl at Teotihuacan and will end in 2011, with the beginning of the sixth Sun. Precisely how the current aeon will collapse is anyone's guess.