ABBREVIATIONS — Occult literature, particularly contemporary magic literature, teems with abbreviations and initials which the general reader may or may not always readily identify. Examples:
AAA - Anti-Authoritarians Anonymous
AAB - Albigensian Anti-Procreation
AB - Alice Bailey
AC - Aleister Crowley
ADE - After Death Experience
AP - Astral Plane
BCE - Before Common Era
BEM - Bug-Eyed Monster
BHM - Big Hairy Monster
BVM - Blessed Virgin Mary
DOR- Deadly Orgone Energy
EA - Era Apocalyptica
EBE - Extraterrestrial Biological Entity
ELF - Extremely Low Frequency
EOW- End Of the World
FTL - Faster Than Light
FTT - Faster Than Thought
GOO - Great Old Ones
HGA - Holy Guardian Angel
HPB - Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
HPL - Howard Philips Lovecraft
IFO - Identifed Flying Object
JJ - Jumping Jesus
KG - Kenneth Grant
LLLL - Life, Liberty, Light, Love
LOT - Lamp of Thoth
LRH - L. Ron Hubbard
MAM - Malicious Animal Magnetism
MIB - Men In Black
NPG - Negative Population Growth
OT - Operating Thetan
PK - Psycho-kinesis
PKD - Philip K. Dick
RAW - Robert Anton Wilson
RPN - Ring-Pass-Not
SLB - Superluminal Being
UE1 - Universal Eschatonic Implosion (End of World)
TP - Teleportation
XID - Christian Intelligence Detection
ZAG - Zero Automobile Growth
ZPG - Zero Population Growth
ZOK - Zero Over-kill
ABDUL AL-HAZRED — (”Slave of the Presence.”) The “Mad Arab” of Damascus, poet and supposed author of Al Azif (730 A.D.), which Lovecraft translates as the Bedouin word for the sound of nocturnal insects or the howling of demons. All of this is fairly fanciful Arabic Al Azif is better known as The Necronomicon and is about the “Forgotten Ones.”
ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION — The mysterious indicator of the Apocalypse as mentioned in the Book of Daniel and Mark 13. It was mistakenly believed by the writers of the New Testament to be a future event that would be self-explanatory once seen. The truth is other. It had actually already taken place in Daniel’s own time, for it referred to a pagan altar erected in Jerusalem, 168 B.C. by King Antiochus Epiphanes. Or at least, so states G. A. Wells in his Historical Evidence for Jesus.
ABRACADABRA/ABRAHADABRA — The former is the traditional magical word, the latter is Crowley’s mutation, for the sake of its “proper” numerological value (418), which was also the number for Boleskine, his castle, and for AIWASS, his Holy Guardian Angel. Originally the intention of the word was to cause ailments to diminish and death to be vanquished as letters were progressively removed from either end.
ABRACADABRA
BRACADABR
ACADA
CAD
A
As an amulet it should, therefore, be worn with the point downward. Similar traditional magical words were Shabriri (for banishing the demon of the same name) and Ochnotinos (for diminishing fever). The Gnostics used Ablanathanalba, a palindrome, meaning “The Father hath given to us.” With Crowley, however, Abrahadabra meant “The Great Work of the Aeon of Horus.” (See ABRAXAS.)
ABRAXAS (Or Abrasax.) — Probably derived from the same word as ABRACADABRA, (Heb. Ha-b’rakah, “the blessing” or “the sacred name”). He is the ultimate God beyond good and evil (for that matter he is even beyond being and non-being). On ancient Gnostic amulets he appears as rooster-headed, with two serpents for legs and bearing in one hand a whip and in the other a shield with the word “IAO.” Occasionally he appears as a charioteer. He is the source of the 365 emanations of the Divine Pleroma. The Creator God (See IALDABAOTH) is much inferior, hardly more than a Demiurge. It is said that, in the 2nd Century, the Gnostic, Basilides, coined the name in order to express the important number, 365 (”the Divine Cycle”), in Greek letters. Abraxas has that many Gods or “Aeons” (or “Archons”) under him.
ABYSS — The gulf between the individual mind and Cosmic Consciousness, between manifestation and non-manfestation, or between life and death. The plane that the magician must cross on his own, without any assistance whatever.
ACCIDIE — Heedlessness, torpor, sloth. In the 14th-15th Centuries it was a malady generally ascribed to hermits and monks who fasted too much and fell into mental prostration. Later it gradually came to mean simply the common sin of sloth.
ACELDAMA —The name of the land that was purchased with Judas’s thirty pieces of silver. Means “field of blood.”
ACTEON — A hunter who chanced to see the chaste goddess, Diana, nude in her midnight bath. Diana, being also the bright light of the Full Moon and its nearly hallucinative brilliance, he was immediately struck by anamnesis and “remembered” the naked omnipresence of pantheistic Divinity in all creatures, including himself — so that, in this amazing illumination, he literally became one with everything, including the stag he had been chasing, whereupon his own dogs (not being in on the revelation) tore him apart.
’AD — Mythical giants of Arabian pre-Islamic history.
ADONAI — (Greek, Adonis.) Hebrew for “Lord,” but in Thelemic practice it can stand for the HGA, the Augoeides or “Higher Self.”
ADYTUM — A temple, oracular shrine or holy of holies which only priests may enter.
AEON — The personification of an age. New Aeons are referred to as “Equinoxes of the Gods.” Power exradiating from Divinity, sharing in the creation & government of the universe. Most founders of religions or fully initiated magicians attempt to inaugurate their own personal aeons or “ages.” (See AGE OF AQUARIUS.)
AETHYRS — (Or Aires.) Each of us stands at the center of the Universe, within a four-part series of tablets, cornered by the elemental Watchtowers. Beyond lie the aethyric dimensions of the Astral, the mental circle,