Culture & Ethics
Tarot
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.
Results for “religious encyclopedias”
Devotional Practice
Ceremonial magic
Ceremonial magic uses formally organized ritual actions. Its historical systems combine preparation, symbols, instruments, and accounts of spiritual authority in different ways.
Theistic Satanism
Demonolatry
Demonolatry refers to devotion to demons or daemonic beings. Modern accounts vary in theology, authority, and their relationship with historical grimoires.
Theology & Cosmology
Polytheism
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.
Culture & Ethics
Satan in Paradise Lost
Milton’s Paradise Lost gives Satan an influential literary characterization. His persuasive speeches must be read alongside the narrator’s account and the consequences of his actions.
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.
Organizations & Traditions
Theosophical Society
A modern esoteric society with stated aims of fraternity, comparative study, and investigation of nature and human capacities.
Organizations & Traditions
Global Order of Satan
A nontheistic Satanic organization whose public principles emphasize self-determination, compassion, and responsibility.
History
The Devil
The Devil is the principal personification of evil in much of Christian tradition and a major source for later Western images of Satan. The term is not identical with every historical use of Satan, nor does it describe one unchanging character across the Bible, theology, folklore, literature, art, and modern religion. In contemporary speech “the Devil” often functions as a proper name for Satan, but…
Demonology & Spirits
Asmodeus
Asmodeus appears in the narrative of Tobit and in later magical and demonological literature. His different roles reflect the purposes of those texts.
Demonology & Spirits
Buer
Buer is a spirit associated in magical catalogues with learning and healing. The well-known radial illustration belongs to later printed demonology.
History
Satanic Panic
The Satanic Panic refers to a wave of allegations concerning organized Satanic abuse, especially in the late twentieth century. Actual evidence of harm must be distinguished from expansive conspiracy claims.
History
Witch trials and Devil worship accusations
Witch trials produced records of accusations about harmful magic and the Devil. Those records require attention to how testimony was obtained and to the purposes of judges and writers.
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.
Devotional Practice
Black Mass
A term for ritual inversion of Christian worship, with Huysmans's literary portrayal and a modern distinction from Satanic Mass.
Organizations & Traditions
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.
Devotional Practice
Gnostic Mass
The central public liturgy of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, written by Aleister Crowley as Liber XV.
History
Anton LaVey
The founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible and The Satanic Rituals.
Demonology & Spirits
Lilith
Lilith is a figure whose history spans ancient Near Eastern demonology, Jewish folklore, medieval protective magic, Kabbalah, literature, feminist reinterpretation, modern occultism, and contemporary Satanic or Luciferian religion. She is often introduced today as “Adam’s first wife,” but that familiar story is medieval rather than biblical. Earlier sources describe beings called lilith or lilin in…
Texts & Sources
Book of Enoch
1 Enoch brings together accounts of heavenly beings, judgment, celestial order, and righteousness. It is a composite work rather than a single continuous biography of Enoch.