History
Nephilim
The Nephilim appear in brief biblical passages and in later traditions about giants. Different texts should be distinguished before their accounts are combined.
Results for “religious encyclopedias”
Devotional Practice
Sigils
Sigils are graphic signs used in particular magical systems. Historical spirit seals, ceremonial figures, and modern personal signs should be distinguished.
Demonology & Spirits
Cimejes
A mounted Goetic marquis associated with grammar, rhetoric, logic, and hidden treasure.
Organizations & Traditions
Ordo Templi Orientis
An initiatory organization associated with Thelema and the public celebration of the Gnostic Mass.
History
Rosicrucianism
Traditions associated with the rose and cross, the early modern Rosicrucian manifestos, and later initiatory societies.
History
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
A Renaissance author whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy became a major source for Western magical systems.
History
John Dee
An English scholar whose records of spirit conversations became a major source for later angelic magic.
History
Michael Aquino
A founder and major author of the Temple of Set, associated with the modern Setian interpretation of Xeper.
Demonology & Spirits
Samael
Samael appears in Jewish interpretive literature in roles that vary between texts. His relationship with Satan, the serpent, and other figures should be described source by source.
Texts & Sources
Key of Solomon
The Key of Solomon is a transmitted family of magical texts concerning preparation, ritual, and ceremonial instruments. It should be distinguished from the five-part Lesser Key of Solomon.
Texts & Sources
Satan in Job
Job 1–2 presents Satan in a heavenly assembly and in a dispute about Job’s righteousness. The passage should be read before later accounts of Satan’s origins are supplied.
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.
History
David Myatt
The life and writings of David Myatt, covering his extremist activism, later philosophy, and disputed identification as Anton Long.
Texts & Sources
Book of Giants
The Book of Giants names a fragmentary Jewish Enochic work represented at Qumran and a related Manichaean adaptation. Its surviving witnesses concern the offspring of the Watchers, ominous dreams, Enoch, and impending judgment.
Texts & Sources
Temptation of Jesus
The temptation of Jesus is an encounter with Satan in the wilderness narrated by Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Its differing forms connect hunger, divine sonship, scriptural argument, worldly rule, and worship.
Theology & Cosmology
Iblis
Iblis is the figure who refuses God’s command to bow to Adam in the Qur’an. Islamic commentary and Sufi literature explore his pride, his relationship to the jinn, his role as a tempter, and the meaning of his disobedience.
Culture & Ethics
The Devil (tarot card)
The Devil is a tarot trump commonly numbered XV. Its imagery and interpretation vary between decks and writers. Waite and Papus connect it with material constraint, fatality, and occult forces, while tarot’s history begins in the world of playing cards.
Devotional Practice
Folk magic
Protective charms, witch bottles, and everyday materials in local magical traditions, with documented British museum examples.
Organizations & Traditions
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.
Organizations & Traditions
Builders of the Adytum
A school of the Western mysteries associated with Paul Foster Case, Ann Davies, Tarot, and Qabalistic study.