The Magician's Dictionary

CACABUS

Greco-Roman equivalent of Hebrew kochav or "star".

CADUCEUS

(keryx, "herald - a herald's wand, kerukeion). Representative of the spinal column: matter and spirit intertwining to produce the manifest world and to create a channel for the sexless Sushumna power. Pingala and Ida, the two serpents, are male and female. Ultimately, the embodiment of Kundalini: the sexual, hence vital force or "healing power." The doubled serpent is unconditional, absolute wisdom. A herald's wand confers immunity in all regions - protection from attack (especially since the serpents are vipers).

Apart from being the emblem of the wandering healer, the caduceus also stands for the Qabalah as a whole. The staff itself is the middle pillar and the serpents are the two flanking pillars, representing the slippery extremes that reflect one another back and forth. A recently unearthed hieroglyph depicts Thoth with a staff surmounted by two cobras bearing, respectively, the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt (the conscious and unconscious mind). In medicine, the black and white serpents signify disease and health.

CANCER

The fourth sign of the Zodiac (June 22-July 23). The Crab is the final resolution of material manifestation, symbolized by the depth of the sea or the lake between the mountains. It is the sign of the soul's incarnation and the beginning of material life.

All the other creatures of the Zodiac move in a forward direction, but the Crab is able to move backwards and sideways as well. This indicates that Cancer is the sign of the time-traveler. (The Chariot is a time machine). Colin Wilson (a Cancerian himself) believes that the Crab symbolizes the fact that when we have our skeletons on the outside we are undeveloped followers of the will of others and must learn to grow our own skeletons on the inside so that we can become leaders. Thus Cancer is the sign of both slaves and rebels.

For the Egyptians, Cancer, coinciding with the rising of Sirius, was the "Theme of the World", the universal horoscope (what today we call the "mundane chart") in which, according to Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos, the planets, etc. were in the position they occupied at the very beginning, long before the Age of Aries. It is therefore, associated with Sirius, the Dog Star, or beginning of the Egyptian year.

Famous Cancerians: Alexander the Great, John the Baptist, Count von Zeppelin, Mary Baker Eddy, George Orwell, Helen Keller, P.T. Barnum, Jean Cocteau, Rousseau, Pirandello, Charles Laughton, James Cagney, Buckminster Fuller, Ingmar Bergman, Jerry Rubin, Hermann Hesse, Kafka, Hawthorne, Proust, Thoreau, Rembrandt, Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, George McGovern, Marshall McLuhan, Rube Goldberg and Nicola Tesla.

CAP OF MAINTENANCE

(Like that of St. Nicholas). Worn before nobility, as a show of respect - sometimes worn by nobility as well.

CAPRICORN

The tenth sign of the Zodiac (Dec. 22 - Jan. 20). As symbolized by the mountain-top, the Fish-Goat is the culmination of all the signs (as its opposite, Cancer, is the origin and Nadir of all the signs). At this point materialization is complete and it is time to enter the spirit. It is the sign of kings and messiahs who sacrifice themselves for the common people.

Famous Capricornians: Tycho Brahe, Carlos Castaneda, Alan Watts, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich, Gurdjieff, Mao-Tse-Tung, Matisse, Nostradamus, Paracelsus, Pasteur, Woodrow Wilson, Stalin, Loyala, Joan Baez, Nixon, Albert Schweitzer, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Benjamin Franklin, Poe.

CARPOCRATES

A 2nd Century Gnostic, who advocated promiscuity and thereby earned the hatred of orthodox Xtianity, which in turn delighted in distorting his philosophy. What Carpocrates intended to show was that the flesh is of so little importance compared to the soul, that it can be used and abused for a higher purpose. Since the body is a prison, it is necessary to transcend the flesh through experiencing it and thereby free oneself of all desire. Any human experience missed will simply cause reincarnation in another body. If we do not break all the divine laws, we cannot free ourselves to return to the Unbegotten. Carpocrates is credited with having said, "Nothing is evil by nature" and his ideas can be traced to Plato and Pythagoras. Another thing that made Carpocratians unpopular with the orthodox Xtians was their idea of communal property, an early form of Communism.

CASSANDRA

This daughter of Hecuba who had inherited her mother's gift of prophecy rejected Apollo who, in revenge, caused her predictions to be disbelieved by everyone. Just as no one rejects Apollo who expects to attain popular success, so no one who cruelly paints the truth always in harshest colors or without some artfulness will be heeded.

CASTANEDA, CARLOS

Author of many books on Mexican brujer�a, centering on the Yaqu� sorceror, Don Juan Matus, a healthy championer of mescalito and peyote.

Don Juan considered himself a "warrior", patiently awaiting the opportunity to use his will. He taught that we must learn how to see correctly. His four overcomings for the warrior are: Fear; Power; Calrity; Old Age. We still ignore the lesson of the success of Xtianity, which failed to historify Jesus, yet prevailed all the same. Similarly, critics attempt to prove that Don Juan never existed, hoping thereby to discredit the teachings. Perhaps it's time we admitted that fiction can take many forms, including philosophy and metaphysical initiation.

Don Juan is much like Jesus Christ: an entity of tremendous mythic power who is only diminished by attempts to over-authenticate or historicize him.

CATECHUMEN

A pagan who has been chosen for Xtian brainwashing.

CATHARI

In 12th Century France, the Cathars were also known as the Albigensians, elsewhere sometimes equated only slightly less accurately with chiliastic Manich�anism (the belief in a dualistic universe ruled by Good and Evil) and early Gnosticism. They held that the world was created by a blind demiurge and is under the dominion of Evil. The Albigenses (from the town of Albi), believed that Lucifer was God's first son and Christ his second son, whose role was to bring spiritual order to Lucifer's evil domain. Most historians persist in describing the Cathari as sexual "puritans" but it was actually reproduction that they condemned. Their priests did not eat eggs or milk because they are the by-products of reproduction.

It is most curious that contemporary mention of this sect almost always ignores this most important aspect, viz. their insistence that human reproduction or procreation is the only unforgivable sin. Since this world is hell, to foist existence on innocent beings is a crime. Hence, they were the first practitioners of compulsory birth-control.

Some of the Cathari were quite ascetic frequently fasting, always chaste and were called Parfaits or "Perfects", hence the modern French dessert. Others believed that sodomy was a logical way of avoiding procreation. In Bulgaria, where Cathari were equated with the Bogomils, sodomy was routinely practiced as an alternative to reproduction hence the origin of the word "bugger" from Bulgar.

The Cathari (and other Gnostics) understood what our postmodern world has forgotten. A society that puts all of its meaning, purpose, faith and future into its children, is a society that has lost touch not only with the present and with its sense of responsibility it has lost touch with life itself. Those least qualified to teach are those who are most fertile. Those who grind out children like links of sausage cease to take the slightest interest in the very things that their children value the most and those things that most ought to concern society, what most needs to be preserved. People who have had children no longer demand of themselves the time, energy, courage or inclination to attempt the rigorous, perilous and unpredictable experimentation essential to authentic personal, social and racial growth.

As the Catholic Church was considered by the Cathari to be strictly "the work of the Devil" and the Cross an affront to God, the Cathari were universally despised. The Church opposed this heresy vigorously through pogroms and massacres, so that by 1330 there were no more of them left to persecute.

CATHEXIS

Projection of psychic energy inappropriately onto some other unrelated person, thing or idea.

CAVE SEDEM

Lat. "Beware of the chair!" An ancient reminder to keep fit, because medieval scholars tended to forget to exercise. Today, in light of the fact that everyone and his backup has to make a spectacle of jogging and yet cannot discuss any subject but the latest football scores, I would suggest to them that it is not the lard on their asses that should concern them, but the lard in their heads!

CERBERUS

Twin of Orthrus, who is symbol of Set. The tri-cephalic dog with the dragon's-tail guarding the gate of Hades, who permits entry but prevents exit, is probably derived from pre-Hellenic Ker + bero (pherontes), meaning simply "head-bearing", for originally he had a hundred heads and not merely three. His three heads stand in parallel to and midway between the three rivers leading to Hades (Phlegeston, Styx and Lethe, which divide the dead from the living) and the three judges within Tartarus Rhadamanthus, Minos and Aeacus who judge men's souls. He is the Greek equivalent of the jackal-headed Egyptian God Anubis (or the wolf-headed deity of Abydos, Wepwawet, "Opener of the Ways"). Proof of this can be seen in the fact that whereas Cerberus is the offspring of Typhaon (the terrible stormcloud or cyclone, and the last of the titans) and the serpent-woman, Echidna, Anubis is the son of Osiris and Nephthys (sister of Isis), who assisted in the putting back together of the parts of Osiris and his resurrection. As Gods descend from one people to another, they usually degenerate into monsters. We see this readily in the transformation of pagan deities into Xtian demons. Anubis is god of the three processes of death, resurrection and reintegration, who leads the soul to the underworld under his protection, but Cerberus is merely a monster who guards the pathway. Mention should also be made of the three ultraexistential "beyond" Gods: Ain Soph, Tao and Abraxas.

CETOGENIC

Of cetacean origin (as psi force, mass hallucination), according to Swigart, UFO's are cetogenic, the last desperate cry of the whales to man.

CHALDEAN

A synonym for "astrologer", since it was the Chaldaeans who were most advanced in this art. The following alphabet is one of 20 or 30 different Chaldean alphabets in Edmund Fry's Pantographia (1799); it is called "celestial" because it was believed to have been designed by ancient astrologers "from the figures of certain stars" (i.e. constellations):

CHANNELING

Very popular practice of the 1980's. To channel is to act as an amanuensis or vox for an "etheric world intelligence". If one acts as such a channel, one allows one's own voice to speak in a relaxed and non-interfering way. The channeler is often not aware of the meaning of the message until it has been completely written down or recorded. The knowledge so transmitted is generally of an intellect much beyond the channeler's. Automatic writing and ouija contact were formerly rather rare talents, but almost anyone can learn how to channel. We spend most of our time, in fact, forcing the conscious mind to close (and lock) doors to the unconscious, to deny intuitions, to ignore telepathic intrusions, to block out all inner and outer "voices".

CHAOS

The first step away from the Unknown Absolute. HPB says it is "the impenetrable veil between the incognizable and the Logos." Apart from its ordinary meaning, Grant calls it "the ultimate substance of anti-matter." Its number is 156 (same as Babalon). Mostly what we call "order" is but an arbitrary arrangement of chaotic elements, as when we give an arbitrary frame of stars the name of a constellation.

Chaos is an endless fount of original realities in which anything is possible at random. Who hath in himself no chaos hath no power to create a star! However, since all things are but a repetition of the one, all things have the same creative handle on them. That is, our worlds are unpredictable as to form, but not to content - or vice-versa, depending on the morphogenetic rules. Science says of chaos, "Highs are followed by lows. Lows are followed by unpredictability." (Which, or course, is to say nothing).

CHAOS MAGICK

Basically, it is that aspect of magic that deals with entering the "Abyss" or, on the common level of understanding, facing the unknown Chaos being simply "The Unknown" as apparently devoid of meaning. Chaos Magic was largely the invention of artist Austin Osman Spare in his Zos Kia Cultus. Later, a form of Chaos Magick was developed by a few others in the 1980's as a form of the magic of solipsism. It was best expounded in the 1980s by Pete Carroll in his Liber Null & Psychonaut and comprised the magic of the "Illuminates of Thanateros", and in the 1990s is best exemplified by such groups as AutonomatriX and Z-Cluster, and moreover by myriad individual (or rogue) practitioners such as Andrew Chumbley and Stephen Mace.

The very mystery of being itself, said Carroll, is fundamentally connected to how we deal with chaos. We react to chaos by earthing it to its opposite. Once an action or result enters consciousness, then the chao-energy or "cause" has to be carried all the way through to its end "effect" and hence is already implicitly manifest in the thought, even as it rises. If the impulse, however, is thwarted for any reason or scattered by ignorance, it falls back and disappears into its opposite polarity, i.e. its concealment in chaos. Hence pre-meditation is the bane of action and Crowley used to warn against the "lust for results." (The action is the result!).

CHAOSPHERE

It is hollow and contains all implements. One of the spikes can be withdrawn as a weapon. Greg Bear (Aeon) says the chaosphere should be used as the signifier for information that is not accessible to the unauthorized.

CHAOS PREDICTION

Mathematical Chaos Prediction is the next step after Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, now used partly (in ignorance) by computers, stockbrokers and oil-dowsers. If the wrong people get hold of this key they will be able to control all random factors in the world to their advantage. James P. Crutchfield say, "Innate creativity may have an underlying chaotic process that selectively amplifies small fluctuations." The amplification of small fluctuations (characteristic of Chaos) and its bibranching can be examined by values of growth factors at which bifurcations take place using "Feigenbaum's Number": 4,669.

Its whole number factors are 7, 23, 29, 161, 203 and 667. Note that 23 is already claimed by R.A. Wilson as the "number of synchronicities" and 7 is the mystical number par excellence, the "Holy Merkabah", the zodiacal sign of Cancer. 29 = Hebrew Dacha, "Crushed". Further, from A.C.'s 777: 161 is the Heavenly Man or Exalted Man, the "Congregation of the Eternal", 203 = Initials of the Trinity: dead; feather: created; ambush : foreign; esoteric. 667 = "oil for lighting". It is fortunate that 4 + 6 + 6 + 9 = 7. Thank Gods, it doesn't add up to One! Then we would be in trouble!

CHAOTE

A person who recognizes the chaotic nature of our world. Most post-modern chaotes know that consensual reality is doomed. Hakim Bey refers to chaotes as "anarchs of the new paradigm."

CHARACITH

The 18th Kala. A distortion of The Chariot. The magic is the power to cast spells and the sickness associated with Characith is the danger of becoming a vampire.

CHARIOT, THE

The seventh Arcanum, lettered Cheth. The path connecting Binah and Geburah, hence, according to Nevill Drury, the warrior-like aspect of the Emperor, who, in contrast, is thought of more as a father-God. Here his role would seem to be that of the Destroyer. Since most authorities assign Cancer to this Enigma rather than Aries (which would be more fitting for The Emperor), such a role seems questionable. Others see the Charioteer as simply the passenger of the Merkabah. The chariot in its historical sense is the vehicle of triumph.

The sleeping (referring to the unconscious mind), black and white (positive & negative) sphinxes represent the two-headed earth god, Aker. His two heads are now sphinxes, now lions (the latter are reminiscent of the hieroglyphic "lions of yesterday and tomorrow", facing opposite directions on the horizon). Bicephalous Aker guards the eastern and western doorways to the Underworld. He is the outer "limits" of earth (that is, limitations of matter).

For Crowley the Charioteer is the balancer and controller of opposing forces - the opposite of opposing forces going awry, as in The Tower.

CHELA

(Hindu). A disciple or follower of Yoga, associated with "guru", the teacher, hence, by extension, any student.

CHERNOBOG

The old, Pre-Vladimir Slavic black demon (lit. "Black God") of the Varlagi Russians, represented by a black dog. The similarity of the name of this demon with Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant disaster of 1987, caused great distress amongst the Russian people. Premier Gorbachev's forehead birthmark did not help to allay slavic uneasiness, since it was read as the Apocalyptic "mark of the beast."

CHESED

(Or GEDULAH). The fourth qabalistic power zone of the Tree of Life. It is the top of the pillar of "Mercy", the feminine counterpart of Geburah on the other side. The rule of the manifest universe.

CHESS

Several metaphysicians (Crowley, Shallis, Carroll, etc.) have suggested that chess is really a medieval computer simulacrum, a magical model of the world, or of Time, in which various forces confront one another. The black and white squares are happenings of evil mixed with good. The pieces are fixed stages of mental development. The pawns are ordinary mentalities, with few choices open to them, who can move but forward in hope of eventual enlightenment (embodied in the queen). The knight is the initiate, the bishop ecclesiastical power, the castle or rook temporal power. The king, of course, is the inner self or life-force revealed at death or apotheosis, depending on whether one wins or loses. One's opponent king is the source of the tyranny of the outside world, the "other" that the self must battle. Originally the game was played with four players, each having four pieces and four pawns - with no queens.

Ithell Colquhoun notes that Yeats and the Celts before him (fidchell) had a chessboard representing the four gates to the cities of the four elements and in which the squares were cromlechs - mystic, upright stones. Gwenddolen, in Arthurian legend, is said to have possessed an enchanted chessboard that played by itself.

CHIROPS

Bat God - one of the mysterious "supreme" deities. (Cf. Satan's batwings and the triliteral Arab root kh-f-sh, which depending on the vowels can mean "bat" or "ruin", destruction"). In Mesoamerican religions, the bat stands for enlightenment, since it awakens in the darkness. The Mayan god is Camazotz.

CHOKMAH

The second power chakra of the qabalistic Trinity of the Tree of Life. The male principle of light that goes out to uncover the "Hidden" Wisdom (Lux in Tenebris). It is the zone of the Magician and Ra.

CHORONZON

Guardian of and "Dweller in the Abyss" (Demon of Dispersion) = 333 (Noznoroch). Crowley called him the "first and deadliest of all the powers of evil", sole inhabitant of the Abyss, capable of assuming any shape, the very Lord of Chaos. In 1909 Crowley and Neuburg did battle with him on a mountaintop in Algiers, thus making Neuburg a "secret chief". The reason he is so deadly is that his force is the opposite of M/magic(k) and he is therefore a special threat for the Magician who has to grapple with him on his own. Choronzon's open sesame to Hell is "Zazas, Zazas, Nasatanada, Zazas!"

CHOZZAR

The "Pig God" - Blavatsky says it is the God of the magicians of Atlantis, one of Grant's Typhonian Teratomas or symbols of Set.

CHRISTIAN, PAUL

French occultist (1811-1877), best known for his Histoire de la Magie (1870). He regarded the "Book of Thoth" as containing, in its 22 arcana, "The Science of Will, the principle of all wisdom and the source of all power."

CHRISTOS

(Greek: "anointed"). This is a direct translation of the Hebrew meshiach, "annointed, "which designates a king or venerated person. The Jews were looking for such a "king" who would lead them out of servitude. The practice of smearing kings and priests with fat, oil and blood goes far back into deepest Africa, where conquering warriors painted themselves with blood and witch-doctors ritually smeared themselves with semen.

CHURCH OF SATAN

Founded by Anton Szandor LaVey, in San Francisco. His aeon (Anno Satanas) commences on Walpurgisnacht, 1966. It is LaVey's contention that Satan is the "spirit of progress and liberation" and that Xtianity, sanctimonious and hypocritical, is opposed equally to the body and the intellect. The traditional Black Mass, however, is outmoded, both in form and intention, and LaVey's rituals are refreshingly different. The Church of Satan is not altruistic, is frankly selfish, however, as LaVey says, "Evil is live backwards." The Satanic Rituals, which is the companion to the Satanic Bible, contains virtually all that any modern magician might require by way of invoking the dark gods.

CLAIRVOYANT THEORY OF PERCEPTION

(Title of a book by M.M. Moncrief). Even in the "easily accessed" areas of cerebral/somatic color memory, the speed of response can't encompass the range of input. We don't always perceive which color is actually there. For instance, if you're looking at a scene bathed in blue light, an object that is supposed to be pure white will appear blue enough, but you'll see it as "white". In other words, the merely objective color is meaningless alongside the actual subjective experience.

If the latter is true, then perhaps we do a lot more "compensating" than we generally acknowledge. A person who is hard of hearing provides a common example of ambiguous perception. How much of what he hears is actually perceived and how much is "reconstructed"? My father, knowing my proclivities, might hear "All seems well within the dozen adjacencies!", but suspecting that I am honoring his interests will correct that to what I really said, "Our team will win the A series."

Some ultra-pragmatic, super-materialistic people can be exasperating when they insist on rigid adherence, without interpretation, to strictly sense-perceived data. Arsenic in the soup would simply indicate careless cooking habits. A burning cross on the lawn would be a "fire hazard."

The point is not so much that we're all psychic, as that we've almost lost the faculty through total reliance on logic and analysis. The senses were originally designed to serve as microscopes and telescopes for zeroing in specifically, to fine-tune what we already know in a general way. This is,of course, the reason you experience ESP in the twilight zone near sleep. The normal brain is like a cat that as a kitten allowed to suffer touching privileged paw to common earth, so that now it can't walk!

CLOACONIMBUS

A permanent smog overhanging heavily polluted areas (such as Mexico City), composed of dried or vaporous fecal and other excremental materials.

COBRA

The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo Nilous explains the metaphorical aspects of the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The first entry is about serpents. It seems the Egyptians used the cobra to designate royalty because of its power over life and death. Since, when coiled, its tail disappears, it is also a fitting symbol for eternity. The Greeks called the serpent oura, or "tail", whence the "Uraeus", which is the Greek word for the cobra-shaped crown worn by kings and gods alike. To demonstrate its "eternal" aspect, the Greeks depicted the serpent devouring its own tail (Ouroboros "tail-devouring"). Oddly enough, the Greek letter rho is similar in shape to the beta, and some scholars think oura (read ouba) is taken from an old Hebrew word for sorcery ob. (See OBEAH).

This is all very instructive, to be sure, but what interests us is that the Egyptians believed that the cobra was so deadly that it didn't even have to sink its fangs into a person. It barely needed to graze him. In fact, it merely had to "breathe" on someone to inflict its venom. Now, since we already know that the "king" cobra was associated with royalty, its not surprising that the Greeks should call it, in their language, "the little king" or basilisk, bringing along with the word the Egyptian version of its natural history.

By the time we reach the Middle Ages in Europe, the basilisk (since cobras don't exist in Europe) had turned into a fabulous beast with wings and a fiery breath fatal to every living thing. A similar transformation happened to the poor white rhinoceros of Africa; in Europe the unicorn was turned into a fabulous horse with a horn. And when we learn that the most fearsome of sea serpents, the Nichus, was born of a medieval monk's mistranslation of an original misspelling of the Latin version of the "Nile" river (Nilus), an obnoxious pattern emerges: the decay of truth into superstition, simply because of linguistic ignorance.

COMITY OF STARS

Refers to our planet's entry into post-historical galactic union after the Ultimate Temporal Culmination of 2012.

CORYBANT

Priest of Cybele, characterized by noisy music, wild abandon.

COSH

An acronym for "Church of Secular Humanism," Xtians refer to Secular Humanism as a religion. COSH is the hyperbolic, cosine-haversine function of celestial navigation and engendered by transcendental numbers e and pi, which in turn derive from Gaussian complex numbers involving i, the irrational square root of minus 1 (that is to the power of pi to the power of i = 1 or {[(e to the power of x) - (e to the power of -x)] divided by 2}.

This is fitting enough, since calling secular humanism a church is also hyperbolic, deriving from transcendental irrationality. Since Gauss's parents were "liberated from the shackles" of the Xtian religion it gives the ultimate origin of COSH an infinite lineage. Since the fundamentalists have themselves conferred religious status upon Secular Humanism, it is the opinion of COSH's founder, Gerald Baker (1984 Iowan candidate for the Big Deal Party), that it ought to be given tax-free status so as to empower it to solicit funds for the purposes of widespread evangelism.

COSMIC SWITCHBOARD

1. The Grid of Omniscience or "Universal Mind" into which anyone may tap at any time to obtain any datum or understanding of past, present or future. We are all eventually hooked into omniscience, but in order to avoid being overwhelmed by a chaos of information and meaning we set up a thick wall between ordinary consciousness and omniscience. For the uninitiated, the light of omniscience is so glaring that picking and choosing specific information is impossible.

2. On the assumption that extraterrestrials who desire to contact Earth would probably avoid conventional electromagnetic technology and obviously prefer to communicate directly with human beings of choice, an intake must be devised for those who ordinarily and unconsciously repress all telepathic reception. A series of dice throws, in which several letters of the alphabet are assigned to each side of the die, will result in a choice of letters which are then translated into words by the use of intuition alone. This is not a very dependable or pragmatic method, but at least "chance" provides something received that is not totally due to the imagination.

CREED

My own belief, eminently mutable and if belief it be, is this: I am a God containing within myself all the Gods - because the part is equal to and more than the whole. Both the universe and myself I created and I dwell forever in Eternity, as I was, from the beginning, that very maker of the Original Void whence all Gods flow. The Self, my selves, the ordinary and Higher, the soul and Lower, are but changing, lambent tongues of Spirit. I do not worship, for this is none but myself. Instead, I invoke the presence of the Archetypes at will. I do not repeat, but only create. I metamorphose myself and transform the world.

As a God is not his robes, nor a serpent his cast-off skin - as the Earth itself, in becoming corrupt, is cast out like so much rotten fruit, so this body is subject to corruption and death. Yet I am not this body.

To be is to know. My purpose in coming into existence is to know myself. There is no other reason for birth. Know this, then:

Each God-Person is a center, focus and collection of power-embued matter transforming itself. Within that self-universe, from the star at its center, radiates a confluence of materia, yods, animals, plants, machines, chariots and other orders of being in one Microcosm infinitely opening inward, rising like a bubble within the vast Macrocosm, below as above, the One in dazzling simultaneous parallelism with the All.

COURT CARDS

The royal cards of the Minor Arcana. Pages represent "establishing", Knights stand for "initiation", Queens indicate "desires" and Kings are "controls". Kings are sometimes referred to as Princes - that is, son rather than spouse of the Queen. In addition, the Pages are earth, knights fire, queens water, Kings air.

CROSS

Ancient symbol, far predating Xtianity, and taking many forms, such as the swastika and the Egyptian Ankh. It symbolizes, amongst many other things, centrality and the union of male and female in divine conjunction. When circled it symbolizes the earth and serves as an apotropaic. Most of the associations attributed by the Galileans to the cross of their crucified god have been lifted over the centuries from concurrent pagan sources.

CRYSTAL

Crystallized rock, quartz and gemstones are the highest forms of the mineral kingdom. If you accept the fact that the earth is alive, as the entire manifest universe is alive, then crystals, although not biodes, are centers of mineral "intelligence", deriving from elemental proto-evolution. It is through crystal that messages are broadcast via the air-waves and as earth is the amalgamating force, crystallization precedes formation of the most primitive amino acids of life. Thus, for the adept, crystals are avenues of cosmic information, quantum change and negentropy.

CRYSTAL SKULL

A replica of an ancient human skull hewn out of a single rock crystal and found by Anna Mitchell-Hedges in 1927 in the Mayan burial-ground, Labaant�n, British Honduras. Light reflected from the zygomatic arch and funneled along the optic bridge causes the eye-sockets to shine brightly. The skull also emits concentrated pinpoints of light and serves as a magnifying glass and scrying ball. If suspended properly, the jaw will open and close, the eyes will flash and it will easily nod yes or no. Tests reveal that it was not carved by metal tools.

Small crystal skulls have throughout the past couple of centuries been unearthed in Central America and a large one, similar to the Michell-Hedges skull, was already in the British Museum. The M-H skull is of far superior quality, however, and the British version is derived from the former.

CSICOP

"Committee for the Scientific Investigation Of the Paranormal," founded in 1976 by New York professor of philosophy, Paul Kurz. Its membership originally included many well-known, rigid authority figures from the scientific establishment, such as B.F. Skinner, Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan. It is dedicated single-mindedly to the discrediting of any technically unsubstantiated, over-imaginative or simply "unscientific" point of view.

CTHULHU

(H.P. Lovecraft's cosmology). Great Evil One, dead or asleep and dreaming beneath the sea in the sunken city of R'lyeh (Atlantis?), revived by Kenneth Grant. As the powers of evil and darkness threaten to break through into this world, this great "behemoth of the deep", awakens to lead them. His totem is the Egyptian hippo goddess, Ta-Urt. His number is 52, the same as Semitic K-L-V or "dog", referring, no doubt to Anubis. (Ta-Urt, however, be aware, is a secret aspect of Isis).

CYBERPUNK

Timothy Leary, in an article in Reality Hackers magazine #6, compared the computer to Tarot and the earth pantacle to "stored algorithms". For him the Baby Boomers are recapitulators of theology, having grown up with Zen, Yoga, Crowley, etc. in minihistory and graduated to the cognitive world of Artificial Intelligence.

CYCLOPS

(Pl. Cyclopes) The monocular giant sons of Gaea and Uranus who forged the thunderbolts of Zeus: Arges the brightness, Brontes the thunder and Steropes the lightning bolt itself. Poseidon also had one-eyed giant sons who were shepherds and cannibals. One of them, Polyphemus, was blinded by Odysseus.

CYNICS

(From Greek kynikos, "canine"). They were so called by Aristophanes in the 5th Century because they were critical of materialists and "snarled at worldly conceits". Interestingly enough, today's cynics tend to snarl not at materialists but at idealists and visionaries. Increasingly, however, in the postmodern world, cynicism directed towards the most firmly established segments of society is coming to be seen as the highest mark of intelligence.