Devotional Practice
Scrying
A divinatory or visionary practice involving a reflective surface, crystal, or other focus for reported images and messages.
Results for “The Devil”
Devotional Practice
Offerings
Offerings are objects, substances, actions, or works intentionally presented to a deity, spirit, sacred power, or religious community. Across religious history offerings have included food, drink, incense, flowers, animal sacrifice, money, vows, music, labor, art, and acts of service. In theistic Satanism, offerings are commonly used to express devotion, gratitude, hospitality, dedication, or…
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.
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
Astaroth
Astaroth appears in early modern spirit catalogues and later illustrated demonology. Source editions matter when comparing the figure’s rank, appearance, and supposed knowledge.
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.
Demonology & Spirits
Paimon
Paimon is a royal spirit described in the Ars Goetia and related literature. Musical procession and the teaching of knowledge are important elements of his received image.
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
Solomon in magical literature
Solomon’s name supplies authority to several magical and religious works. Attribution to the king must be distinguished from the date and authorship of the surviving text.
Texts & Sources
Testament of Solomon
The Testament of Solomon is a pseudepigraphal religious narrative in which Solomon questions and commands spirits. It differs from later procedural Solomonic grimoires.
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
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum is a spirit catalogue associated with Johann Weyer. Its transmission helps explain similarities and differences in the later Ars Goetia.
Texts & Sources
Dictionnaire infernal
Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal gathered supernatural traditions in a dictionary format. Its 1863 entries and illustrations remain influential in modern depictions of spirits.
Texts & Sources
Picatrix
Picatrix is the Latin title associated with an influential Arabic work of astral magic. Its cosmological and ritual framework differs from a catalogue of Goetic spirits.
Texts & Sources
Corpus Hermeticum
The Corpus Hermeticum is a collection of philosophical religious dialogues concerning mind, the divine, the cosmos, and human knowledge. It should be distinguished from later works marketed as Hermetic teaching.
Devotional Practice
Divination
Divination consists of practices that interpret signs as answers, indications, or guidance. Methods differ in their religious assumptions and in the kinds of claims they make.
Theology & Cosmology
Religious syncretism
Religious syncretism concerns the combination of ideas, figures, and practices from different traditions. Similarity of names or imagery alone does not establish identity or historical continuity.
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
Reading religious primary sources
Primary sources provide direct evidence for a text, community, or historical setting. Reading them well requires context, precise citations, and comparison with other evidence.
History
David Myatt
The life and writings of David Myatt, covering his extremist activism, later philosophy, and disputed identification as Anton Long.