The Lexicon of the Occult

A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V W X Z

Abracadabra: A word-charm first recorded by Serenus Sammonicus in the third century, written in a diminishing triangle against fever. Etymology unknown. → Amulets and Talismans
Adept: One who has attained the higher grades of an esoteric discipline; in alchemy, one who has made the stone.
Aeon: In Gnosticism an emanation of the divine; in Thelema an age of two thousand years, the present being the Aeon of Horus begun in 1904. → Ritual Magic
Agathodaimon: The good spirit of Greco-Egyptian religion, credited as an authority in early alchemy and figured as a serpent. → Alchemy
Akashic records: A Theosophical notion, popularised by Rudolf Steiner and Edgar Cayce, of a record of all events impressed on the akasha or ether. → The Orders
Alchemy: The art of transmuting metals and perfecting matter and soul, from Hellenistic Egypt to the eighteenth century. → Alchemy
Amulet: A protective object worn or kept against harm, working passively by what it is or depicts. Contrast talisman. → Amulets and Talismans
Anima mundi: The world-soul of Plato's Timaeus and the Neoplatonists, animating the cosmos as the soul animates the body. → What the Occult Is
Ankh: The Egyptian hieroglyph and amulet of life, held by the gods; adopted by the Coptic church as the crux ansata. → Amulets and Talismans
Apotropaic: Turning away evil: said of any object, gesture or image meant to repel harm. → Amulets and Talismans
Arcana: Secrets. In tarot, the twenty-two trumps are the major arcana and the fifty-six suit cards the minor, terms coined in the nineteenth century. → The Tarot
Ars Notoria: The Notory Art: a thirteenth-century Solomonic text of prayers and figures for the instant acquisition of learning. → Ritual Magic
Ascendant: The degree of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth; the pivot of the horoscope. → Astrology
Aspect: An angular relationship between planets in a chart: conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition in the Ptolemaic scheme. → Astrology
Astral light: Éliphas Lévi's universal medium of imagination and will, which the adept learns to direct. → Ritual Magic
Astral plane: In Theosophy and later occultism, a realm of subtle matter between the physical and mental planes, visited in dreams and projection. → The Orders
Athame: The black-handled ritual knife of modern Wicca, derived from the knife of the Key of Solomon. → Witchcraft
Augury: Roman divination by the flight and behaviour of birds, performed by the college of augurs before public business. → Divination
Automatic writing: Writing produced without conscious direction, by hand, planchette or keyboard; attributed to spirits, the subconscious, or both. → Spirit Communication
Azoth: An alchemical name for the universal medicine or for mercury as the first matter, composed of the first and last letters of several alphabets. → Alchemy
Baphomet: An idol the Templars were accused of worshipping in 1307; given its winged goat-headed form by Éliphas Lévi in 1856. → Ritual Magic
Bibliomancy: Divination by opening a book, usually a sacred or classic one, at random. → Divination
Book of Shadows: The handwritten book of rituals of a Wiccan coven, first compiled by Gerald Gardner and revised by Doreen Valiente. → Witchcraft
Cabala: The Christian adaptation of Jewish Kabbalah begun by Pico della Mirandola in 1486. → Kabbalah
Cartomancy: Divination by playing cards, including but not limited to tarot. → The Tarot
Chakra: In Indian yoga a wheel or centre of subtle energy in the body; systematised for the West by Theosophy and by Arthur Avalon's The Serpent Power of 1919. → The Orders
Chaos magic: A late twentieth-century current treating belief as a tool; formalised by Peter Carroll's Liber Null of 1978. → Ritual Magic
Chiromancy: Palmistry: divination by the lines and mounts of the hand. → Divination
Circle: The protective boundary drawn by the operator of ceremonial magic, inscribed with divine names. → Ritual Magic
Clairvoyance: Clear seeing: perception of distant or hidden objects or events without the ordinary senses. → Psychical Research
Cleromancy: Divination by casting lots. → Divination
Cold reading: Techniques by which a reader produces apparently specific information from general statements and the sitter's reactions. → The Mediums
Control: In mediumship, the spirit or secondary personality that speaks through an entranced medium and manages communication. → The Mediums
Correspondences: The doctrine that all levels of reality are linked by real likenesses: planets to metals, signs to organs, letters to numbers. → What the Occult Is
Coven: A group of witches; given the canonical number thirteen by Margaret Murray in 1921. → Witchcraft
Cross-correspondences: Fragmentary scripts produced by several automatists after 1901, which fitted together and were attributed to the dead founders of the SPR. → Psychical Research
Cryptomnesia: Hidden memory: the reproduction of forgotten material as though it were new, a standard explanation of mediumistic information. → The Mediums
Cunning folk: Popular magical practitioners of early modern Britain who found lost goods, healed and countered witches. → Witchcraft
Daemon: In Greek thought an intermediate spirit between gods and humans, not necessarily evil; Socrates had one. → Ritual Magic
Decan: One of thirty-six divisions of the zodiac of ten degrees each, derived from Egyptian star-clocks and given images in astral magic. → Astrology
Demiurge: The craftsman who shapes the world in Plato's Timaeus; in Gnosticism an ignorant or malevolent lesser god. → Hermeticism
Divination: The attempt to obtain knowledge of the unknown or the future by supernatural or non-rational means. → Divination
Dowsing: Searching for water, minerals or objects with a rod or pendulum; explained since Chevreul by the ideomotor effect. → Divination
Ectoplasm: A substance said to be exuded by physical mediums to form materialisations; term coined by Charles Richet. → The Mediums
Egregore: A collective psychic entity said to form around a group or order and to act on its members. → The Orders
Elementals: Spirits of the four elements: gnomes of earth, undines of water, sylphs of air and salamanders of fire, in Paracelsus's scheme. → Alchemy
Elixir: The alchemical medicine of life, identical with or derived from the philosophers' stone. → Alchemy
Emerald Tablet: A short Hermetic text first known in Arabic c. 800–950, the source of 'as above, so below'. → Hermeticism
Enochian: The angelic language and magical system received by John Dee through Edward Kelley in 1582–87. → Ritual Magic
Esbat: A regular Wiccan meeting, usually at the full moon, as distinct from the eight festival sabbats. → Witchcraft
Esotericism: Knowledge reserved for the initiated; in modern scholarship the field of 'rejected knowledge' of the West. → What the Occult Is
ESP: Extra-sensory perception: J. B. Rhine's term of 1934 for telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition. → Psychical Research
Evil eye: The belief that envy conveyed by a glance causes harm; guarded against by eye-amulets, the hamsa and the fascinus. → Amulets and Talismans
Evocation: Calling a spirit to appear outside the operator, typically into a triangle. Contrast invocation. → Ritual Magic
Extispicy: Divination by the entrails of sacrificed animals. → Divination
Familiar: A spirit, often in animal form, said to serve a witch or magician. → Witchcraft
Fascinus: The Roman phallic amulet against the evil eye; source of 'fascinate'. → Amulets and Talismans
Fuji: Chinese spirit-writing with a suspended stylus in sand, practised since at least the Song dynasty. → Spirit Communication
Futhark: The runic alphabet, named from its first six letters; the elder futhark has twenty-four. → Divination
Ganzfeld: A uniform sensory field, and the parapsychological experiment built on it. → Psychical Research
Gematria: Interpretation of words by the numerical values of their letters. → Kabbalah
Geomancy: Divination by sixteen figures generated from random marks; Arabic ʿilm al-raml. → Divination
Glossolalia: Speaking in tongues: fluent speech-like sound without the structure of a known language. → Spirit Communication
Gnosis: Saving knowledge of the divine, gained by revelation or experience rather than instruction. → Hermeticism
Goetia: From Greek goēteia, sorcery; the first book of the Lesser Key of Solomon, cataloguing seventy-two spirits. → Ritual Magic
Golden Dawn: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888; the great synthesis of modern Western magic. → The Orders
Golem: A figure of clay animated by divine names in Jewish legend, associated with the Sefer Yetzirah. → Kabbalah
Grimoire: A book of magic, from French grammaire. → Ritual Magic
Hamsa: The open hand amulet of the Middle East and North Africa, the hand of Fatima or of Miriam. → Amulets and Talismans
Haruspex: A Roman or Etruscan diviner who read the entrails, especially the liver, of sacrificed animals. → Divination
Hepatoscopy: Divination by the liver of a sacrificed sheep; the Liver of Piacenza is its best-known object. → Divination
Hermetic: Pertaining to the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus; hence 'hermetically sealed', after the alchemists' sealed vessel. → Hermeticism
Hexagram: In the I Ching, a figure of six broken or unbroken lines; in magic, the six-pointed star of two triangles. → Divination
Hierophant: Revealer of sacred things; the priest of the Eleusinian mysteries; the fifth tarot trump in English decks. → The Tarot
Homunculus: An artificial little man said by Paracelsus's circle to be generable by alchemy. → Alchemy
Horary astrology: Astrology that answers a question by a chart cast for the moment it is asked. → Astrology
I Ching: The Book of Changes, a Chinese divination classic of sixty-four hexagrams, core compiled c. ninth century BC. → Divination
Ideomotor effect: Involuntary muscular movement produced by expectation; named by W. B. Carpenter in 1852; explains pendulum, board and table. → Spirit Communication
Illuminati: The Bavarian secret society of 1776–85, and the conspiracy legend that outlived it. → The Orders
Initiation: Ritual admission to a grade or mystery, usually through symbolic death and rebirth. → The Orders
Invocation: Calling a power into oneself or into the circle. Contrast evocation. → Ritual Magic
Kabbalah: Jewish mystical theology from the twelfth century, centred on the sefirot; see also Cabala and Qabalah. → Kabbalah
Kamea: A magic square, especially one of Agrippa's seven planetary squares. → Amulets and Talismans
Kybalion: A 1908 New Thought book presenting seven invented 'Hermetic principles'; not an ancient text. → Hermeticism
Lapidary: A treatise on the properties, often the occult virtues, of stones. → Stones and Materia
Left-hand path: From Tantric vamachara; in Western occultism a path of self-deification or antinomian practice, contrasted with the right-hand path. → Ritual Magic
Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram: The foundational daily ritual of the Golden Dawn, tracing pentagrams to the four quarters with divine names. → Ritual Magic
Lot: A marked object drawn or cast to decide a question; the instrument of cleromancy. → Divination
Magic square: A grid whose rows, columns and diagonals sum to the same number. → Amulets and Talismans
Magnum opus: The Great Work of alchemy: the making of the philosophers' stone. → Alchemy
Magus: A wise man of the Persian priestly caste; by extension the learned magician of the Renaissance. → Ritual Magic
Maleficium: Harmful magic, the core of the legal crime of witchcraft. → Witchcraft
Malleus Maleficarum: The Hammer of Witches, Heinrich Kramer's treatise of 1486–87. → Witchcraft
Materialisation: The alleged appearance in physical form of a spirit or body part at a séance. → The Mediums
Medium: A person through whom spirits of the dead are said to communicate. → The Mediums
Mesmerism: Franz Anton Mesmer's therapy of animal magnetism, investigated by a French royal commission in 1784. → Spirit Communication
Mezuzah: A parchment of the Shema in a case fixed to a Jewish doorpost, in obedience to Deuteronomy 6:9. → Amulets and Talismans
Microcosm: The little world: the human being as a miniature image of the macrocosm. → What the Occult Is
Monad: The One; in Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica a single glyph compounded of the planets and elements. → Ritual Magic
Necromancy: Divination by the dead; in the Middle Ages extended to demonic magic generally, as nigromancy. → Spirit Communication
Nekyia: The rite of calling up the dead, after Odyssey 11. → Spirit Communication
Nigredo: The black stage of the alchemical work: putrefaction. → Alchemy
Notarikon: Kabbalistic interpretation of words as acronyms, or forming words from initial letters. → Kabbalah
Numerology: The attribution of meaning to numbers derived from names and dates; a modern popular derivative of gematria and Pythagorean number mysticism. → Kabbalah
Occult: Hidden; originally a property whose cause is not perceived; since the nineteenth century a body of rejected esoteric knowledge. → What the Occult Is
Od: A vital force proposed by Baron von Reichenbach in the 1840s, perceived by sensitives in the dark. → Psychical Research
Oneiromancy: Divination by dreams. → Divination
Oracle: A shrine where a god answers questions through a priest or priestess, and the answer so given. → Divination
Ouija: The talking board patented by Elijah Bond for the Kennard Novelty Company in 1891; a registered trademark. → Spirit Communication
Ouroboros: The serpent eating its own tail, symbol of eternity and of the one; first in the Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra. → Alchemy
Pentacle: A talismanic disc or figure, especially the forty-four pentacles of the Key of Solomon; in Wicca a disc bearing a pentagram. → Amulets and Talismans
Pentagram: The five-pointed star, symbol of the microcosm and of protection; inverted, associated in the nineteenth century with evil. → Ritual Magic
Philosophers' stone: The goal of alchemy: a substance that transmutes base metal to gold and heals all disease. → Alchemy
Picatrix: The Ghayat al-Hakim, the Arabic encyclopedia of astral magic, translated for Alfonso X in 1256. → Ritual Magic
Planchette: A small board on castors or feet with a pencil or pointer, moved by the hands to write or spell; French, 1853. → Spirit Communication
Planetary hours: The division of day and night into twelve unequal hours each, ruled by the planets in Chaldean order. → Astrology
Poltergeist: Noisy spirit: disturbances of thrown objects and noises, often centred on an adolescent. → Psychical Research
Possession: The displacement of a person's own agency by another spirit or personality. → Spirit Communication
Precognition: Knowledge of future events not inferable from present information. → Psychical Research
Prisca theologia: The ancient theology descending from Hermes through Orpheus and Pythagoras to Plato, in Ficino's account. → Hermeticism
Psychokinesis: The direct influence of mind on matter; abbreviated PK. → Psychical Research
Psychometry: Reading the history of an object by touching it; term coined by J. R. Buchanan in 1842. → Psychical Research
Pythia: The priestess of Apollo at Delphi. → Divination
Qabalah: The Hermetic and magical Kabbalah of the Golden Dawn and its successors. → Kabbalah
Querent: The person who asks the question in a divination. → The Tarot
Quintessence: The fifth essence, the celestial aether beyond the four elements; in alchemy, the purest extract of a substance. → Alchemy
Rebis: The double thing: the hermaphroditic product of the alchemical union of opposites. → Alchemy
Remote viewing: The perception of distant targets under controlled conditions; studied at SRI and in Project Stargate. → Psychical Research
Rosicrucian: Pertaining to the fraternity of Christian Rosenkreutz announced in the manifestos of 1614–16. → The Orders
Rubedo: The red stage of the alchemical work, in which the stone is perfected. → Alchemy
Runes: The letters of the Germanic futhark; in modern practice also a divinatory set. → Divination
Sabbat: The nocturnal assembly of witches in early modern demonology; in Wicca one of eight seasonal festivals. → Witchcraft
SATOR square: The palindromic word square SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS, attested at Pompeii before AD 79. → Amulets and Talismans
Scrying: Gazing into a crystal, mirror, water or other surface to obtain visions. → Divination
Seal: A figure or signature identifying and binding a spirit, drawn in the Goetia and Key of Solomon. → Ritual Magic
Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Formation, third to sixth century: creation by ten sefirot and twenty-two letters. → Kabbalah
Sefirot: The ten emanations or attributes of God on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. → Kabbalah
Shekhinah: The indwelling divine presence; in Kabbalah the feminine tenth sefirah, Malkhut. → Kabbalah
Sigil: A symbol created for a magical purpose: from a magic square in Agrippa, from the letters of a statement of intent in Spare. → Ritual Magic
Sortes: Divination by random selection from a text: sortes Vergilianae, sortes Biblicae. → Divination
Spiritism: Allan Kardec's doctrine of spirit communication and reincarnation, from The Spirits' Book of 1857. → Spirit Communication
Spiritoscope: Robert Hare's name for his dial instruments of 1855, built to take the medium's hands off the letters. → Psychical Research
Spiritualism: The religious movement founded on communication with the dead, begun at Hydesville in 1848. → Spirit Communication
Sympathetic magic: Frazer's term for magic by similarity and contagion. → Ritual Magic
Synchronicity: Jung's term for a meaningful coincidence connected by meaning rather than cause. → The Tarot
Séance: A sitting held to communicate with the dead through a medium. → Spirit Communication
Talisman: An object made and consecrated at a prescribed time to attract a power. Contrast amulet. → Amulets and Talismans
Talking board: The generic name for a lettered board with a pointer, including the Ouija. → Spirit Communication
Tarot: A deck of seventy-eight cards with twenty-two trumps, originating in Italy in the 1440s as a card game. → The Tarot
Tefillin: Phylacteries: leather boxes containing scriptural texts, bound on the arm and head in Jewish prayer. → Amulets and Talismans
Telepathy: The communication of impressions from one mind to another without the known senses; coined by Myers, 1882. → Psychical Research
Temurah: Kabbalistic permutation of letters by systematic substitution, such as the atbash cipher. → Kabbalah
Tetragrammaton: The four-letter name of God, YHVH. → Kabbalah
Thelema: Aleister Crowley's religious philosophy, from Greek for will, founded on The Book of the Law of 1904. → Ritual Magic
Theosophy: Divine wisdom; the teaching of the Theosophical Society founded in 1875. → The Orders
Theurgy: God-working: the ritual practice of late Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus to unite the soul with the divine. → Ritual Magic
Tikkun: Repair: in Lurianic Kabbalah the restoration of the shattered world by human action. → Kabbalah
Tree of Life: The diagram of ten sefirot and twenty-two paths. → Kabbalah
Tria prima: Paracelsus's three principles: salt, sulphur and mercury. → Alchemy
Triangle of Art: The figure outside the magician's circle into which an evoked spirit is constrained. → Ritual Magic
Trigram: A figure of three broken or unbroken lines; two form an I Ching hexagram. → Divination
Triquetra: A three-cornered interlaced knot, found in insular Christian and Norse art.
Tulpa: A thought-form made real by concentration; a twentieth-century Western notion popularised by Alexandra David-Néel, loosely from Tibetan sprul pa. → Ritual Magic
Tzimtzum: In Lurianic Kabbalah the contraction of the Infinite to make room for creation. → Kabbalah
Voces magicae: The unintelligible 'magical words' of the Greek papyri and later grimoires. → Ritual Magic
Wand: The instrument of the operator's will in ceremonial magic; the suit of batons in tarot. → Ritual Magic
Wedjat: The eye of Horus, the most common Egyptian amulet. → Amulets and Talismans
Wicca: The modern witchcraft religion made public by Gerald Gardner in 1954. → Witchcraft
Witch bottle: A counter-magical jar of urine, pins and nails buried under English hearths in the seventeenth century. → Amulets and Talismans
Xenoglossy: Speaking a real foreign language one has never learned; claimed but not convincingly documented. → Spirit Communication
Zener cards: The five-symbol cards of Rhine's ESP experiments: circle, cross, waves, square, star. → Psychical Research
Zodiac: The band of twelve signs of thirty degrees along the ecliptic, first attested in Babylon c. fifth century BC. → Astrology
Zohar: The Book of Splendour, the central text of Kabbalah, written in Castile in the 1280s. → Kabbalah

The Lexicon

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