Results for “aim”

Modern Paganism

An introduction to contemporary Pagan traditions, including Wicca, Druidry, and Heathenry, and their different uses of older sources.

Witchcraft

How witchcraft has meant an accusation, a magical practice, and a modern identity, with examples from museums and trial records.

Folk magic

Protective charms, witch bottles, and everyday materials in local magical traditions, with documented British museum examples.

Ouija board

The patented talking-board game, its pointer and commercial history, and research on ideomotor movement and implicit memory.

Salem witch trials

The Massachusetts prosecutions of 1692-1693, the spread of accusations, spectral evidence, and the surviving court archive.

Black Mass

A term for ritual inversion of Christian worship, with Huysmans's literary portrayal and a modern distinction from Satanic Mass.

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.

Church of Satan

The Church of Satan is the organization founded by Anton LaVey in 1966. Its official account describes Satanism as atheistic and gives Satan a symbolic role.

Temple of Set

The Temple of Set is an initiatory organization whose identity centers on Set and Xeper. Its relationship with Satanism requires attention to both historical origins and later self-description.

Gnostic Mass

The central public liturgy of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, written by Aleister Crowley as Liber XV.

Johann Weyer

The physician and author whose Pseudomonarchia daemonum supplied an important source for later spirit catalogues.

Éliphas Lévi

A nineteenth-century French occult author associated with ceremonial symbolism and the influential image of Baphomet.

Anton LaVey

The founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals.

Kenneth Grant

A British occult writer associated with the Typhonian current, Thelema, and the work of Austin Osman Spare.

Satan

Satan is a figure whose meaning has changed substantially across Jewish, Christian, Islamic, literary, esoteric, and modern Satanic contexts. In contemporary theistic Satanism, Satan may be understood as a real deity, spirit, adversary, initiator, or metaphysical intelligence. Those modern interpretations draw on, but are not identical with, the much older history of the word and character.

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”…

Grimoires

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.

Left-hand path

The left-hand path is a modern esoteric category used for religious and magical currents that emphasize themes such as individual self-direction, antinomianism, self-deification, initiatory transformation, or deliberate engagement with symbols rejected by dominant religious culture. It overlaps with some forms of Satanism, Luciferianism, Setianism, and modern occultism, but the terms are not synonymous.

Acausal (David Myatt)

Azazel

Azazel is a figure associated with the Day of Atonement in Leviticus, a rebellious Watcher in 1 Enoch, and a demonological and occult figure in later traditions. This article traces the development of Azazel from ancient Jewish texts through later demonology and modern Satanic interpretations.