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.
Results for “new religious movements”
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.
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.
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.
Devotional Practice
Chaos magic
A modern approach to magic that treats techniques and belief systems as tools for practical experimentation.
Texts & Sources
The Satanic Bible
Anton LaVey’s 1969 book of Satanic philosophy and ritual, foundational to the Church of Satan.
Texts & Sources
The Satanic Rituals
Anton LaVey’s collection of ceremonial material, published as a companion to The Satanic Bible.
Demonology & Spirits
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.
Organizations & Traditions
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
A late nineteenth-century British initiatory order that shaped modern ceremonial magic, Tarot, and Hermetic Qabalah.
Theology & Cosmology
Hermetic Qabalah
Western esoteric systems that adapt Kabbalistic ideas through ritual, correspondence tables, and symbolic interpretation.
Texts & Sources
The Book of the Law
The three-chapter revelatory text at the center of Thelema, also titled Liber AL vel Legis.
Texts & Sources
Ars Almadel
An angelic art in the Lemegeton, using a wax tablet, candles, and a hierarchy of heavenly altitudes.
Texts & Sources
Third Enoch
The Hebrew Enochic work associated with heavenly palaces and Enoch’s transformation into Metatron.
Texts & Sources
Book of Jubilees
A retelling of Genesis and early Exodus arranged through jubilees, with angelic revelation, calendar teaching, and expanded narratives.
Texts & Sources
Gospel of Judas
An early Christian revelation dialogue preserved in Coptic, known from the manuscript called Codex Tchacos.
Demonology & Spirits
Ereshkigal
A Mesopotamian queen of the underworld, known through myths of descent and traditions concerning Nergal.
Devotional Practice
Talismans
Objects prepared or used for a particular effect through inscriptions, images, materials, and ritual meaning.
Demonology & Spirits
Bael
Bael is a ranked spirit in early modern magical catalogues. The Goetic figure should be distinguished from the wider use of the ancient title Baal.