Texts & Sources
Reading religious primary sources
Primary sources provide direct evidence for a text, community, or historical setting. Reading them well requires context, precise citations, and comparison with other evidence.
Results for “Religious experience and discernment”
Texts & Sources
Life of Adam and Eve
The Life of Adam and Eve is a group of related apocryphal narratives about the first humans. Its versions expand the Eden story through accounts of repentance, the Devil’s hostility, illness, burial, and hoped-for restoration.
Texts & Sources
Revelation and the dragon
Revelation 12 identifies its dragon with the Devil and Satan. The chapter’s imagery should be read in its apocalyptic narrative before being used to interpret other passages.
Demonology & Spirits
Demonology
Demonology is the study, classification, and interpretation of demons and related spirits. In Western religious history it has included theological arguments about the nature and powers of demons, lists of named spirits, explanations of possession and temptation, magical techniques for summoning or constraining spirits, and folklore about dangerous supernatural beings. Modern theistic Satanists and…
Texts & Sources
Corpus Hermeticum
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of philosophical religious dialogues concerning mind, the divine, the cosmos, and human knowledge. It should be distinguished from later works marketed as Hermetic teaching.
Devotional Practice
Divination
Divination consists of practices that interpret signs as answers, indications, or guidance. Methods differ in their religious assumptions and in the kinds of claims they make.
Theology & Cosmology
Spiritualism
A religious movement centered on mediumship and continued personal identity after death, with church teachings and spirit photography.
Theology & Cosmology
Lucifer
Lucifer is a name whose religious meaning developed from an ancient expression for the morning star into one of the best-known names associated with the Devil, fallen angels, occult illumination, and modern Luciferian religion. The word itself is Latin: lūcifer means “light-bringer” or “light-bearer” and was used for the planet Venus when it appeared before sunrise. The later equation “Lucifer = Satan”…
Culture & Ethics
Unverified personal gnosis
Unverified personal gnosis identifies a spiritual claim or interpretation whose source is personal experience rather than established textual or communal authority.
Texts & Sources
Book of Abramelin
A grimoire built around religious preparation, the guardian angel, and subsequent work with spirits and magical squares.
Devotional Practice
Offerings
Offerings are objects, substances, actions, or works intentionally presented to a deity, spirit, sacred power, or religious community. Across religious history offerings have included food, drink, incense, flowers, animal sacrifice, money, vows, music, labor, art, and acts of service. In theistic Satanism, offerings are commonly used to express devotion, gratitude, hospitality, dedication, or…
Theology & Cosmology
Wicca
Modern Pagan religious witchcraft, its Gardnerian and Alexandrian traditions, ritual practice, and relationship to Satanism.
Devotional Practice
Altar
An altar is a designated place or surface used for religious devotion, ritual, offerings, sacred objects, or symbolic focus. Altars occur in many religious traditions, but their forms and meanings vary widely. In modern theistic Satanism an altar may function as a place for Prayer, Ritual, Offerings, meditation, spirit work, or the display of symbols connected with Satan and other beings.
Demonology & Spirits
Andras
A Goetic marquis portrayed with a bird's head on a wolf, associated with discord and a warning of danger.
Theology & Cosmology
Setianism
The religious philosophy associated with the Temple of Set, the Egyptian name Set, and the idea of Xeper.
Texts & Sources
Grand Grimoire
A grimoire best known for its staged encounter and pact with Lucifuge Rofocale.
History
Aleister Crowley
The author and religious figure associated with Thelema, The Book of the Law, and a large body of magical instruction.
Demonology & Spirits
Belial
Belial appears in biblical religious language and later spirit catalogues. These uses should be distinguished rather than treated as one unchanged biography.
Demonology & Spirits
Andrealphus
A peacock-shaped Goetic marquis associated with geometry, measurement, astronomy, and bird transformation.
Demonology & Spirits
Andromalius
The final Goetic spirit, associated with stolen goods, concealed wrongdoing, and hidden treasure.