The Magician's Dictionary

F FACTOR

The "F" stands for futility. It is the common sense (which negative thinking perpetuates), that everything is bound to fail unless unflagging energy, perseverance and will are brought to bear. The strong derive their strength from this. The weak derive their weakness from it.

FAIRY

One of the reasons that "fairy" became a derogatory epithet for homosexual is that ordinary society pretends to pride itself on its own ordinariness and lack of originality and is afraid to confess any interest in the possibility of the extraordinary. Beyond that, the Celtic Irish believe(d) that the "little people" inhabit a beautiful land of "the ever young". These and similar notions led to the natural association of one with the other. Wm. Butler Yeats and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, however, claimed to have incontrovertible evidence in support of the existence of fairies. More recently, Jacques Vall�e has advanced the idea that today's ufos are the descendents of yesterday's fairies.

FAITH

Current sloppiness of language attaches the same simple-minded and lackluster meaning to "belief" and "faith" alike. Faith is not a synonym for superstition, nor does it even mean strong belief. It is a state of mind characterized by a supreme trust in the rightness of whatever may happen and a sublime indifference to one's future well-being or survival. It need not be based on any religion at all. It doesn't even have to be specific.

FANG SHU

Ancient, pre-Taoistic Chinese magic. Practitioners were known as Fang Shih and were skilled in summoning spirits and casting spells.

FAMILIAR

Any spirit or demon which can be summoned by a sorcerer to do his or her bidding, hence anyone well or long acquainted, such as a pet (or such as the officer of the Inquisition who interrogates the one accused of sorcery). Amongst witches, who are often lonely, they are generally small animals (frogs, lizards, cats, dogs, rats, moles, ferrets, etc.). They tend to be given barbarous names like "Pyewacket" or "Dandiprat", or semi-descriptives: Buzz, Digger, Tit, Bonecracker, Little Rat, Thistlepurr, Hop-Moon. It is understood that even plants or inanimate objects can serve as familiars.

FARADAY CAGE

Andrija Puharich's box for enclosing psychics. It screens out all electromagnetic waves except E.L.F. ("Extremely Low Frequency"). Used for increasing ESP ability up to approx. 1000x.

FEI CHI

(Chinese) Flying Chariot.

FIBONACCI SERIES

1. . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 5 . . . 8 . . . 13 . . . etc. This is the number series by which things are generated of themselves. Here is a computer program (in Basic) to produce the series ad infinitum:

10 LET F = 0 + 1
20 LET N = N + F
30 PRINT N
40 LET F = F + N
50 PRINT F
60 GOTO 20

FICINO, MARSILIUS

15th Century philosopher best known for having translated Plato and the Neoplatonists, as well as Hermes Trismegistos. He thought that the world was an "emanation of God" and that one could draw heavenly influences by simply meditating on the planets.

FIRE CIRCLE

Egyptian term for UFO.

FISH

In The Vision and the Voice we learn that the fish was associated with Xtianity by the Romans because the Xtians came from Syria and brought with them a new strain of "leprosy" (actually syphilis), thought to be caused by eating fish. A. C. goes on to say that the Greek letters spelling out "fish", ichthys, do not correspond, as popularly believed, to Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter (J.C., Savior, Son of God), but to a notariqon of 5 Egyptian Gods. Undoubtedly, these would be: Isis, Khepri, Thoth, Hu (or Horus) and Set.

FLAT EARTH SOCIETY OF COVENANT PEOPLES CHURCH (International Flat Earth Research Society)

Also called the "Society of Zetetics". It is the conviction of this group that the sphericity of the world is merely a scientific theory inconsistent with the facts. Science, as opposed to pragmatic technology, is an unfounded religion, and its teaching that the earth is a spinning ball is mere superstition. Apart from obvious mountains and valleys the continents form virtually a planar disc, with the north pole as the center and the south pole as the circumference -- airplanes "all fly level on the Plane Earth".

The question as to whether reality conforms to consensus or to individual conviction is less important than the fact that the Flat Earthers represent to the majority of people (occult-minded and otherwise), the epitome of "nonsense". A proper subject for meditation, therefore, might be to learn how to view "error" from unconventional points of perspective.

FLATTENED CHAOS

The squashed victim of the Juggernaut, the result of Saturn in Sagittarius.

FLOOD

The Flood or Deluge that encompassed the ancient world can be seen as an analogy for a flood of ignorance that engulfed civilization and wiped out the wisdom of the ages. Perhaps the same may be said of Atlantis and Lemuria. Noah and Deucalion are repositories of the ancient traditions and the "ark" that saved the animals is nothing more than Nature itself, which was not involved (as it is today) in the destruction of man's world.The Flood was the Ending, also, of the Mayan 4th Sun.

Manetho, in Sothis, concurs in relating the Flood to the "Flood of Ignorance" which has been increasingly shittifying the world for century after century.

FLUDD, ROBERT (Robertus Fluctibus)

Elizabethan "philosopher by fire", necromancer, astrologer, physician, alchemist, magnetist, musician, Rosicrucian and Hermetist who lived 1574-1637. Author of Summum Bonum and Mosaical Philosophy. Taught that each disease is caused by a specific demon (and cured via magnetism). That he espoused Gnostic beliefs is evident from his saying, according to HPB, "Darkness adopted illumination in order to make itself visible."

FOCUS OF INFECTION

Another name for the Superluminater.

FOHAT

(Chinese). It is odd how we think we understand cause and effect, when there's no logical reason to expect any given act to have an effect on anything else. Only repeated experience tells us that A acting upon B produces C. But obviously, there must be something that links the cause to the effect. Fohat is the link between spirit and matter, subject and object, cause and effect. It is the "Prince in the Chariot", the primordial LUX, the cosmic electricity energy polarized and born anew at every juncture point of opposites. It is the vital bridge provided by "Divine Intelligence" in action, the force behind the manifesting One Cosmos and that "oneness" which glues the very atoms together. It is the consciousness that is the origin and end of all transient forms. According to the ancients it is the gliding, hissing serpent of the Hebrew letter Teth . The fohatic impulse not only "hardens" the atoms, but it also injects mind into matter.

FOOL, THE

Arcanum number zero, lettered Aleph, the 11th Pathway between Kether and Chokmah. The designation is not so much one of folly or mindlessness, but rather of the Buddhistic or Taoistic "No-Mind". He is thus an exponent of the Unmanifest or Transcendent. We might also remember that the Tarot first came to light in Italy and Italian word for this Arcanum is il Matto, "The Madman". Only madness can permit me to risk life, happiness, salvation and sanity itself on the thin promise of enlightenment, much less on the chimaera of magic. On a lower level of understanding, The Fool is the psyche between incarnations, recently divested or not yet possessed of earthly qualities. As such he represents ultimate faith in whatever comes, total freedom from the "lust for results". At the lowest level of understanding, The Fool is simply one who has no ambition or status and thus serves as an exemplar of social rebellion.

Just as the black dog is our guide through the darkness of the unknown, so the white dog is the conscious (and annoying) intrusion, usually ignored, that reminds us of impending danger. The conscious mind is our companion in the journey to the higher self.

Crowley calls this one of the three forms of "Light" (in which no evil is possible). It is the hidden light, "wisdom of God", and is mere foolishness to men.

FORGOTTEN ONES

The Great Old Ones, the Maatians, of the Lovecraftian system, sleeping restlessly "outside" in the Ophidian current, Universe B, or the sunken city of R'lyeh. They await the unholy hour when they can seize rulership of the earth. The names of some of them are She, No, Nexhagus, Loroo, Nagrikshamish. There is also Hastur, "Him who is not to be named, who shall come again from the dark star which is near Aldebaran in the Hyades. " There is Shub-Niggarath, a "horrible travesty on a fertility god or goddess". And there is Yig, the terrible snake-god, Atlach-Nacha of the spider shape, Gnoph-Hek the hairy thing otherwise known as Rhan-Tegoth, Caugnar Faugn theVampire feeder, the Hell hounds of Tindalos which "prowl the angles of time" and the monstrous Yog-Sothoth, whose iridescent globes conceal the primal horror beneath.

Out of the fearsome abysses of the unconscious and its primitive pulsations rise these dark Gods. They are related to the elements and their media, "supramundane faculties", liberating them from the restrictions of time/space. Indeed, they existed before Space itself. They created the Chaos from which they created themselves, by their own bootstraps. Far, far from the Tree, they slumber amniotically in the watery abyss.

"The Ancient Ones who remained on earth were imprisoned forever, exiled from the star-kingdom of Betelgeuse, under the 5-pointed star (see ARRA) which was the seal of the Elder Gods, " says HPL. The "Elder Gods" are beneficent, unlike the Great Old Ones.

Insofar as it even knows of their existence, Xtianity must obviously consider the Forgotten Ones "Satanic". But we made the mistake of deliberately ignoring them, says Grant and others, which now allowed them to flourish quietly, unchecked until they are now vast and menacing to all of life. Worship by multitudes of "inferior stock and physiological mutation" has fortified them grotesquely. Any barricades betwen mankind and the "paralysing horror they represent" are imaginary or crumbling. The Forgotten Ones have cut gigantic archways through which the GOO and their extraterrestrial allies can march on their own or can be summoned. Continue to repress them, we may, but they will eventually burst free and take over our minds. They can shower us with magical powers, so tell us the black brothers, but the higher we reach for the light, the farther down into the darkness our foundations will sink.

FRACTALS

One's life, the history of the world, everything moves towards deeper complexity, to an endpoint of total complexification, in fact. And yet this same complexification is merely the result of an endless repetition of an individual pattern -- unique but infinitely regressing. "The creation of extremely complex structures from simple, similar operations is the essence of fractal progressions," explains Terence McKenna. "Time also has this fractal quality -- self-similar processes are imbedded in similar natural fractal processes at higher and higher levels of expression in space and time -- the larger implication of this fractal perspective is that the whole history if humanity is moving towards an endpoint -- an apocalypse, a momentous event which will cast everything that preceded it in some kind of new light, make everything new and morally exonerate the historical horror that is necessary to reach that moment." (See TIMESCAPE.)

FREEMASON

One is to think of man as the actual builder of the universe. The Freemason is liberated from the concept that man is the prisoner of physical and metaphysical laws and restrictions.

FULMEN

In the alchemical process, clouds of smoke, thunder and lightning are not invariably the trappings of charlatans. The fulmination of metals is a means of purging them of gross elements (iron and copper feces) through smelting. The degree of perfection obtained is indicated by the color and strength of the explosion.With the final educement of all foreign substances there is a radiant purple splendor, lightning, reverberation and a release of vast clouds of sulphur.

FULMINATE OF MERCURY

The explosive that killed Jack Parsons. (Hg(ONc)₂H₂O) is used as a detonator for other explosives. Obtained from Ethyl Alcohol + Mercuric Nitrate. Silver Fulminate, a similar chemical, is used in firecrackers. Hunchback: If a very drunk person were to swallow Mercuric Nitrate, would he explode?

FUTANT

A throw-forward mutant, born ahead of his time (e.g. Nicola Tesla, Giordano Bruno, Leonardo Da Vinci, etc.)