ASURAS —The “sunless ones” who inhabit dark, joyless realms.
ATHAME — Consecrated, black-handled knife, used for drawing circles to invoke spiritual entities. Implements for performing M/magic(k)al acts must, themselves, be M/magic(k)al. Ordinary tools do but ordinary jobs.
ATHEISM — Can be divided roughly into two phases — Sartrean Atheism and Post-Sartrean Atheism. For Sartre, raised in the Catholicism of the 19th and early 20th Century, God was the meaning of life and the world. Once God was proved not to exist, meaning also ceased to exist. The universe for Sartre was hence absurd and nauseating. We now recognize that meaning and purpose can be present even if Creation is self-created — either as the original cause of self-creation or as its ultimate result.
ATHTAR — One of the Arab Trinity, the male Venus, destroyed by Mohammed.
ATLANTIS — Plato’s legendary continent “West of the Pillars of Hercules” which achieved great technological heights of civilization and then sank beneath the sea. Whether or not we choose to lend credence to its historical reality is less important than what it symbolizes — the incessant rise and fall of civilizations in the past, as “scientifically advanced” as our own. Indeed, many of these are said to have been further advanced than our own by several leagues. Thus, Atlantis warns us to avoid unnecessary futility.
ATTENTIONALITY — The quality or degree of that which is capable of bringing other minds to attention. From a subjective point of view, anything to which we give our attention becomes interesting. When you begin to understand something, if you deliberately concentrate on the problem more deliberately, that will cause a feedback with subsequent intensification of the attention and understanding.
ATTRIBUTE —That which is assigned, ascribed or considered as belonging to, as a familiar is an attribute of a witch or the thunderbolt is an attribute of Jupiter. A person’s attribute can be anything traditionally associated with him, such as Don Quixote’s horse (Rosinante) or Hitler’s dog (Blondi), or even inanimate objects such as Thor’s hammer or Mercury’s caduceus.
ATUM — (Sometimes identified with the Hebrew “Adam.”) Egyptian God often depicted as masturbating, since he is self-created and as he is also credited with pulling the whole of creation out of himself. He also represents the return of the Cosmos to its origins, as the serpent devouring its own tail. By masturbating in Heliopolis, his brother and sister Shu and Tefnut were produced by ejaculation. Sometimes, he was described as “spitting forth” life from his mouth, as though he is himself one entire penis.
ATUS — < French àtous (trumps) < Egypt. Aat, “mansion,” Aatu, “mansions.” Refers to the Tarot trumps.
AUGOEIDES — From Greek meaning “light vision” or “bright shape,” refers to the luminous nature of the higher self. The Causal or Egoic Body. First used by Iamblichus. In Crowley’s case this was the mysterious Aiwass. In Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni it is rendered as the “Higher Ego.” The knowledge of the Augodeides is one of the major goals of the magician. (See HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL.).
AUM/OM — This is the holy word in its tripartite form, representing the Hindu Trinity. A = Vishnu (the self). U = Brahma (Not-Self). M = Shiva (location).
AUTISM — A mental state in which one fails to discern even the slightest meaning or purpose in other people, or indeed in anything outside the self. If there were such a thing as the opposite of a “magical” mind, such would be the autistic personality.
AUTOCTHON —That which has sprung from the earth itself.
AUTOPOETIC LAPIS —Terence McKenna’s psilocybic revelation from Magical Blend, April 1989: “The ‘autopoetic lapis’ is the ingression of novelty to concrescence, a ‘tightening gyre’. Everything flows together and coalesces in the alchemical stone at the end of time ... when the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. In 2012 our species enters hyperspace, but it will appear to be the collapse of the state vector, the end of physical laws and the release of mind into itself.
“All these other images — the starship, the space colony, the lapis — these are precursory images. They follow naturally from the idea that history is the shock wave of eschatology. As one closes distance with the eschatological object, the reflections it is throwing off resemble more and more the thing itself. In the final moment The Unspeakable stands revealed. There are no more reflections of the Mystery. The Mystery in all its nakedness is seen, and nothing else exists. But what it is, decency can safely scarcely hint at; nevertheless, it is the crowning joy of futurism to seek anticipation of it.”
AUTOPROSSING — Using a word-processor for automatic writing. The first channeled entity (1988) was Thurmon of Xoros-Eridanus 14.
AVATAR — Incarnation; Descent of a deity into a visible form. Rama Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu. (See VISHNU.)
AVIDYA — Lit. “not knowing.” The ignorance of non-enlightenment. Normal intellectual state. Ignorance comes in two flavors: simple “non” knowing vs. the more complex “wrong” knowing. Both kinds obscure illumination.
AVOIDANCE FIXCATION — Habits and addictions are escape mechanisms for coping with deprivation, restriction and monotony.
AWAR — Son of Iblis, Arab demon of laziness.
AZATHOTH — Lovecraft’s ultimate blind chaos at the center of infinity.
AZAZEL — (“Strength of God.”) The Angel who refused to worship Adam, renamed “Iblis,” the Arab demon. Aaron paid equal tribute to Azazel and Jehovah.
AZOTH — The jewel of Paracelsus. Alchemist’s mercury. According to some, from Arabic Az-zaug, “the quicksilver.” According to others, the word comprises totality from A to Z, from Alpha to Omega, from Aleph to Tau. Salt, the passive principle, is joined to Sulphur, the active principle, by the catalyst Mercury. Azoth is thought to be the creative principle itself. It is usually symbolized by a cross or circle with the letters TARO at the 4 termini.
AZTEC ASTROLOGY — Based on the 52-year revolution of the Pleiades, the calendar is divided into four 13-year quarters. A religious year consisted of three concentric cycles: the Tonalpohualli of 260 days, the solar year of 365 days and the Venus cycle of 584 days. The earth has survived 4 “Suns” or eons, called Nahui, which destructions were characterized by earth, air, fire and water (Thus the most recent End of the World coincided with the biblical flood.)
The fifth Sun, Nahui Ollin or “Movement,” which we now inhabit, is the aeon of the calendar in question. It was divinely created in 13 Acatl at Teotihuacan and will end in 2011, with the beginning of the 6th Sun. Precisely how the current aeon will collapse is anyone’s guess.
B
BA — The Atman, the Egyptian soul, depicted as a bird with a human head, though apparently not the very similar bennu-bird. After death it splits apart into the akh which is a temporary spirit in the form of a bird that flies to the Afterworld where it turns back into the ka, or double. The ba remains behind with the