Faust is the scholar or magician at the center of a European legend about bargaining with the Devil. The 1587 Faust book, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and Goethe’s Faust give the story different treatments of knowledge, desire, damnation, and human striving.
A Goetic president associated with logic, ethics, plants, stones, longevity, and lost things.
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.
Mastema is a leader of harmful spirits in the Book of Jubilees. His appearances in the stories of Noah, Abraham, and Moses connect temptation, accusation, and hostility with a power that remains subject to divine limits.
Modern Pagan religious witchcraft, its Gardnerian and Alexandrian traditions, ritual practice, and relationship to Satanism.
The public holiday of 31 October, including lanterns, visiting customs, disguise, and its Celtic and Christian histories.
Freedom of religion and belief in international human rights texts, including minority religions, nonbelief, and religious expression.
A nineteenth-century French occult author associated with ceremonial symbolism and the influential image of Baphomet.
The founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals.
An ancient Egyptian deity associated with conflict and disorder, also reinterpreted in modern Setian religion.
A grimoire is a book or manuscript containing magical knowledge, ritual procedures, charms, conjurations, talismans, spirit catalogues, astrological instructions, prayers, or other techniques intended to produce supernatural or occult effects. The term is most strongly associated with European magic, but scholars use it within a much wider history of magical books and written ritual technologies.
The Ars Goetia is the first section of the Lemegeton or Lesser Key of Solomon, an early modern English compilation of ceremonial magic. It is famous for a catalogue of seventy-two spirits, each described by name, rank, appearance, abilities, and a seal or character. In modern occultism the term “Goetia” is often used loosely for demon-summoning or work with these spirits, but historically the Ars Goetia…
Beelzebub and related spellings appear in distinct biblical contexts. Later demonological interpretations should not be retroactively read into each earlier occurrence.
Tarot developed as playing cards before becoming an influential tool of occult interpretation. The history of the cards differs from later claims about their hidden origins.
Ceremonial magic uses formally organized ritual actions. Its historical systems combine preparation, symbols, instruments, and accounts of spiritual authority in different ways.
Polytheism involves belief in multiple deities. The existence of several gods does not by itself settle their relationships, moral authority, or the forms of devotion directed toward them.
A Goetic duke associated with herbs, precious stones, and sudden travel between countries.
A grimoire built around religious preparation, the guardian angel, and subsequent work with spirits and magical squares.
A Renaissance author whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy became a major source for Western magical systems.