Voodoo or Voodooism [from Fongbe dialect vodunu from vodu moral and religious life of the Fons of Dahomey]

A definite system of African black magic or sorcery, including various types of necromantic practice. It reached the Americas with the African slaves brought from the West Coast, and in and around the Caribbean various degrees of the cult persist and constitute a recognized if little understood social feature in the history and life of the people.

Especially significant in the original Fon religion are the principal temples in the sacred forests, with symbolic hieroglyphics on the walls, depicting the exploits of their kings, voodoo legends, etc., and explaining their belief in the unknowable god Meru (Great Master); this unmanifest god, too far removed from men for them to give to him any form, dealt with them through lesser gods and nature spirit, i.e., voodoo; the priestesses serving the temple in a secret cult with four degrees of initiation, and having passwords unknown to laymen; the cult of the snake or adder as the most primitive form of the religion.

Such findings in voodoo history, however degraded in course of time and overlaid by beliefs and customs of cruder native tribes, have the basic elements of a hierarchic religion so enveloped in mystery as to indicate an origin far beyond the creative imagination of any people. Rather, here in strange temples of dark mystery, were the lingering echoes of some ancient wisdom teaching of those who were truly "as wise as serpents." The least altered of the original system is probably the voodoo music with its solemn, insistent rhythm in the mood of prayer or an invocation. This rhythm persists, even when the ritual songs in Haiti are composed entirely of Creole words, or of a series of unintelligible sounds.

Counterparts of the debasing and malign system of voodoo are found elsewhere under many different names, like the left-hand Tantrika of India, and the Dugpas of Tibet. In general, all of these unholy practices date back to the abuse of spiritual knowledge and power by the late Atlanteans.

(See also: Voodoo, Voodooism , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Hypnotism (from Greek hypnos sleep)

One name for an artificially produced somnambulistic, entranced, or psychologized state. A better word for the procedure is psychologization, hypnotism being but one phase of the general subject which includes fascination, multiple or double personality, some religious ecstasies, and different methods of psychic healing. All these things operate in and upon the important intermediate part between our spiritual and physical-astral self and usually affect the latter self very strongly. This intermediate part is the human soul of the reincarnating entity -- the man or woman we see and know. As this includes the psychomental-emotional powers and faculties, it is intimately related to intelligence and sanity, to emotions and conduct, and to health.

Theosophy holds that mesmerism is not hypnotism. In hypnotism the subject's intermediate nature is disjoined from its natural relations with his physical and astral body and put out of the control of the person himself, becoming susceptible to other influences. This process is a reversal of all evolutionary currents which in every being unfold and manifest from conscious centers within. Such a reversal is dangerous and far-reaching in its results, spiritually, mentally, morally, psychically, and physically.

Moreover, the hypnotizer endangers himself by such intimate linking with the lower mind and feeling of his subject -- whose spiritual nature is always beyond another's control. From the operator's entrance into, and operation of, the subject's physico-astral body, there results a mutual infection with each other's faulty human nature. Whoever thus changes the forces and trend of another's life, obligates himself to share karmically in those changes to the end.

Psychologizing a person to heal him of disease or rid him of some injurious habit is also harmful. Bodily ills, in themselves, are the cleansing processes by which past inner wrongs of thought and feeling, having reached the material plane, can be worked out of the system. As for karmic faults and failings in character, the person restrained from them by hypnotism or psychologization merely loses a timely opportunity to develop his spiritual will by which alone every human being must consciously work out his own destiny. The apparent cure of disease, or of a weakness, means that these have been driven inwards, dammed back, inevitably to reappear with accumulated force at a less opportune time in this or a future life. Nor does the practice of self-hypnotization or self-psychologization prevent a disjunction of the person's intermediate nature from his immortal self. The results finally appear as mental disease resulting in crime or as physical disease which is the minor evil.

Suggestion has a dual power: for good or for ill, the results depending upon both the motive and the method of its use. The conscious and unconscious use of it for self-interest is unfortunately met with everywhere; as a part of modern training in high-power salesmanship, it pervades the methods popular in both commercial and professional circles. However, suggestion has a power of noble appeal to the intelligence and spiritual will of others whose better nature responds to a good example, impersonal teaching, and pure and helpful thoughts and feelings. Hypnotism and other such practices are dangerous because they so often fall into black magic or sorcery.

(See also: Hypnotism , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Prayer As usually understood in the West, prayer implies the existence -- whether actually so in nature or not -- of a divine entity, such as God, Christ, an angel or saint, to whom petitions may be addressed and by whose favor benefits may be obtained, a view of prayer held in nearly all exoteric religious systems. Yet even among those who believe in personal divinities, some take a higher view of prayer than that of asking for special favors, rather looking upon it as an act of resignation to the divine will: "Not my will, but thine, be done."

Theosophy speaks of this as the endeavor of the aspiring human mind to establish individual communion between the personal man and his spiritual counterpart or inner god, the true meaning of the injunction to pray to our Father which is in secret. Thus prayer takes the form of aspiration combined with deep meditation, as has been the case with mystics, Eastern and Western. This involves a laying aside of personal wishes and a conscious desire for intuitive perception of the truth and for the power to follow it.

If a personal wish is present, precisely because all personal wishes in the last analysis are restricted, and hence either physically or spiritually selfish, the act becomes one of black magic, for the person is seeking to evoke interior powers in furtherance of his own purposes, which in such cases are usually founded in self-seeking of some kind. Also, a well-intentioned person, praying on behalf of another, may unwittingly exercise on that other an interference with the latter's will, similar in many respects to that of hypnotism.

The absurdity of warring nations praying to the same God for victory over each other is often commented on; and the practice of many people combining together to pray for the conversion of people of another sect, or even for worse objects, is equally open to reprobation. This kind of prayer is merely a survival of one of the lower magic arts, where religious practice consists mainly in the invocation of tribal and local deities.

(See also: Prayer , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

VAMPIRE

A demon, succubus, incubus, bat, zombie or night-thing between being and non-being who lives off the stolen "blood" of the living. Such blood can be literal blood, divine "Ambrosia," soma, physical energy, menses, semen, life itself or merely the mind or psyche. In languages around the world, words for "cruelty", "red" and "blood" have similar roots: Ainu fure ("red"); Latin burrus ("reddish"); Albanian vras ("hurt"; "kill"); Finnish verta ("blood"); Serbian vampir (vampire); Turkish uber ("witch"); Hungarian vé'r ("blood") and so on.

In his novel, Bat Wing, Sax Rohmer describes a particularly intelligent and horrible Central American vampire bat that has learned how to crawl under the mosquito netting of its sleeping donor.

Vampires, along with other automata and hell-beings created by the sick fantasies of human invention, swell in the qliphotic regions of the nightside of the Tree of Life. The magician crossing the qliphotic path of Characith (whose kala is cunnilingus) is warned to avoid lingering here too long lest he become an addict and vampire. In some black magic practices, the priestess is sacrificed and her soul turned into a familiar for the magician. Here the line between vampire and zombie has been almost deliberately blurred.

(See also: VAMPIRE , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Blood The vital fluid circulating through the heart, arteries, and veins, supplying nutritive materials to all parts of the body, and receiving elements of waste for later discharge from the system. Occultism enlarges upon the truism that the blood is the life, by relating it to the spiritual and psychic life-forces circulating in the solar system. Blavatsky says

that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and (b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue those life currents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing on Earth. . . .

"Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart -- the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during the manvantaric solar period, or life; . . . Could the human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made visible . . . then every one would see the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the rushing of the blood" (SD 1:531, 541-2).

The analogy is seen in these streams of solar living fire stepped down into vital electricity on earth, and also in the psychic and astral-physical currents of lunar life which influence generation and all terrestrial growth. In chemical composition, the plasma or fluid part of the blood is said to be identical with that of primordial sea water, ocean water having since become more concentrated.

The blood is actively protean in representing on this plane the streams of higher vitality manifesting in body, soul, and spirit. Thus, its pranic oxygen is the agent of the solar fire; its white and red corpuscles represent the psychic life-force and the red kamic energies, all acting together in their material forms. The leucocytes or white corpuscles are formed in the lymphatic glands, in the spleen, and in bone marrow. They correspond in a sense to the lunar chhayas or builders of the ethereal forms of the second and early third root-races which "needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding" (SD 1:609). These spherical ameboid cells have both the primordial, changeable pudding-bag form and the autogenerative type of propagation. Their relation to the formation of the red cells typifies that of the early astral forms which, gradually becoming physicalized, evolved into the red-blooded, bisexual, manas-endowed beings of the later third root-race. The red cells, without autogenerative nuclei, are born in special leucocyte cells of red bone marrow, where they are produced at the rate the effete red cells are destroyed.

In human beings the pranic life-currents become impregnated with the manasic quality conferred by the agnishvattas. The lower elements of kama-prana are used in the blood offerings and sacrifices of voodoo rites and other forms of black magic:

"Blood begets phantoms. . . . Paracelsus writes that with the fumes of blood one is enabled to call forth any spirit we desire to see; for with its emanations it will build itself an appearance, a visible body -- only this is sorcery" (IU 2:567).

The old Greeks said that a divine fluid or ichor ran in the veins of the gods. It is also our physical destiny in the far distant future to evolve into bodies without blood as we understand it, in which nobler currents of conscious life will circulate.

(See also: Blood , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Svara (Sanskrit) [from the verbal root svri to utter sound]

Sound, tone, voice, noise; tone in recitation, a note of the musical scale (seven tones being enumerated: nishada, rishabha, gandhara, shadja, madhyama, dhaivata, panchama). "I am informed by persons competent to judge of the matter, that the Vedas have a distinct dual meaning -- one expressed by the literal sense of the words, the other indicated by the metre and the swara (intonation), which are, as it were, the life of the Vedas. . . . Learned Pundits and philologists of course deny that swara has anything to do with philosophy or ancient esoteric doctrines; but the mysterious connection between swara and light is one of its most profound secrets" (Subba Row, Five Years of Theosophy 154).

While this is true enough, it is more important to understand that everything great or small, high or low, has its own keynote of sound, its mathematical number, so to speak. Hence every atom has its own particular characteristic sound or note; and it is possible to control such atom, or any other entity, provided one knows the characteristic sound which mathematically represents such entity. We

See here one reason the mysteries of sound have been so carefully guarded, because "control" combined with knowledge would throw wide open the door to black magic of the worst kind, were such knowledge and power to fall into the hands of those morally unfit to possess it. The secret of all mantras, from the standpoint of practical magic, is not so much the words themselves or the letters they hold, although these latter have a certain meaning, but rather the finding of the keynote and chanting it. Rhythm, of course, is of the very essence of harmonic sympathy.

(See also: Svara , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Gyan (Persian) Also Gian-ben-Gian, Gyan-ben-Gian. According to the Persian legend, Gyan was king of the peris or sylphs. He had a wonderful shield which served as a protection against evil or black magic -- the sorcery of the devs. Blavatsky remarks that Gyan might be spelled Gnan (which corresponds to the Sanskrit jnana), meaning true or occult wisdom. His shield, "produced on the principles of astrology, destroyed charms, enchantments, and bad spells, could not prevail against Iblis, who was an agent of Fate (or Karma)" (SD 2:394).

(See also: Gyan , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Vetala Siddhi (Sanskrit). A practice of sorcery; means of obtaining power over the living by black magic, incantations, and ceremonies performed over a dead human body, during which process the corpse is desecrated. (See "Vetala ".)

(See also: Vetala Siddhi , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

HEMLOCK SOCIETY

There are those who believe that suicide is never an option and death "advice" is strictly black magic. But this world is not the Garden of Eden. The Cathari were right to teach that reproduction is a crime on this plane of reality. The Buddha was right to offer Nirvana as an escape from the wheel of incessant life and rebirth. The only reason for anyone to remain in Hell (which is what our world is) is if he is capable of transforming it -- however slightly, however temporarily. Those who merely suffer or who only make others suffer need not be encouraged to remain.

At any rate, the American Hemlock Society publishes a book entitled Let Me Die Before I Wake containing accounts of those who chose suicide when they had a fatal disease. The British Hemlock Society's publication, we've been told, is quite explicit, but we understand that if we peruse the watered-down American version carefully enough, we can extrapolate medications and dosages from it. Datura, which is easily obtainable, is apparently the poison of choice. The problem with most poisons is proper dosage. Too much may be rejected before it does its job and too little can cause such permanent and incapacitating brain or liver damage that further opportunities for experimentation may lie beyond the subject's capacity. There is said to be an acupuncture point that can cause instant death, but its secret is most fiercely guarded.

(See also: HEMLOCK SOCIETY , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Sorcerers [from Latin sors lot]

Those using occult powers and arcane knowledge for evil purposes. It covers various degrees of black magic, from ignorant practitioners -- such as the followers of Voodoo -- to others who, with greater knowledge and a larger intellectual development, are often called black magicians instead of sorcerers, though these terms are virtually synonymous.

(See also: Sorcerers , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Sod (Hebrew) Originally to appoint, place, or found; later an assembly, people placed or appointed or founded to do some duty or work; hence a secret or occult assembly or company of individuals united for some specific purpose, corresponding almost exactly to the Greek mysterion (mystery).

Sod occurs frequently in the Old Testament, translated as secret or assembly, where Mysteries would be a more correct rendering: e.g., "Jacob called unto his sons, and said . . . Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. . . . come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly" (Genesis 49:1, 5-6). The Bible is "a series of historical records of the great struggle between white and black Magic, between the Adepts of the right path, the Prophets, and those of the left, the Levites, the clergy of the brutal masses. . . . The great schism that arose between the sons of the Fourth Race, as soon as the first Temples and Halls of Initiation had been erected under the guidance of 'the Sons of God,' is allegorized in the Sons of Jacob. That there were two schools of Magic, and that the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is shown in the words pronounced by the dying Jacob" (SD 2:211).

The secret learning of the Hebrews was often termed Sod (plural, Sodim), Sodei Torah (secrets or mysteries of the Law), or Razei Torah.

(See also: Sod , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Jadoo jadu (Hindi) Sorcery, black magic, or the power of casting enchantments as practiced by the jadugars, wizards, or sorcerers in India.

(See also: Jadoo, jadu , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

White Regarded as the source whence the seven prismatic colors diverge, it stands for the Logos of a hierarchy. Nearly all the archaic religio-philosophies state that light or white is born of darkness, the incomprehensible deeps of universal life which is darkness only to our poorly evolved sense and mind. In this sense, darkness may often be spoken of as absolute light.

As opposed to black, it mystically signifies pure and good: for example, white magician or white magic.

(See also: White , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Faith Healing, Drugless Healing Apart from the regular medical and surgical practice, widespread forms of drugless healing are employed today. Public opinion generally is either frankly skeptical about the whole matter, or believes that such afford safe and easy means of relief and escape from suffering and disease.

As a whole, these forms of faith or magnetic healing depend on the "inborn or inherent, ability of the 'healer' or practitioner to convey healthy life-force from himself to the diseased person. This is the key to success, or the lack of success, in all cases, and in all kinds of healing of whatever so-called 'school'" (SOPh 622). If the practitioner succeeds in conveying the vitality of the pranic fluids from his own healthy body to the diseased body or organ of another person, that healthy life-force "expels" or changes the inharmonious vibrations in the afflicted part and, by restoring harmony there, brings about health. Such cures can be permanent; usually they are temporary, lasting from a few days to a few years.

All these methods were known to the ancients. Unfortunately, the Western lack of any true psychology leaves unexplained the rationale of these healing systems -- whether by hypnotism, magnetism, mesmerism, or healing by faith as practiced by the Christian Scientists and faith-healers -- and gives no hint of their end results. The potential dangers incurred, both physical and superphysical, are unsuspected. The magnetic healer's emanation of his vitality and will-force inevitably carries and implants in the person it affects something of his own quality of mind, heart, and body. The germs of any latent disease, hidden vice, or mental bias will complicate any supposed cure.

Moreover, the subtle infection on inner lines karmically links for the future both healer and patient in the outcome. Even diseased or evil-minded persons of strong will and animal vitality can displace a disease and, by driving it back onto some inner level of the sufferer's constitution, can make a seeming cure. Howsoever it is displaced out of sight, it cannot be denied out of existence, and sooner or later it will reappear in a more untimely, unnatural, and probably a more dangerous form because of its suppression at the moment of its endeavor to exhaust itself in physical expression. Physical disease, originating in wrong thought in this or a former life, becomes visible on the most material level in working its way out of the system for good. It is positively pernicious for a healer to act upon the will, conscience, or moral integrity of the sick person by hypnotizing his mind, will, and conscience into believing that sickness does not exist, or that he is a victim of fate instead of suffering from his own past actions. Any such control of another's conscious life is a form of suggestion or hypnotism, and falls under what was formerly called black magic.

On the other hand, we are morally obligated to help the sick and suffering in the right ways of treating the body, mind, and soul; right because involving the arousing of the patient's own inner powers of spiritual, moral, and intellectual resistance against the weaknesses in himself. The wrong ways consist in the overpowering -- however good the motive of the practitioner may be -- of the moral instincts, will, and conscience of the sufferer, thereby rendering him weaker than before. In genuine mesmerism the vital emanation from a pure-minded, unselfish, healthy operator arouses the inert or disordered forces of the diseased organ or body, causing them to vibrate harmoniously and naturally. Thus the sufferer makes himself whole or healthy, and has no bad reaction. The best of all drugless healing methods is where the sufferer is brought into a state of hope, self-confidence, and the higher kind of resignation bringing peace and inner quiet, all of which works in harmony with the body's natural resources of health and healing. This is the kind of faith-cure used by Jesus and others of similar spiritual and intellectual stature.

(See also: Faith Healing, Drugless Healing , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Brothers of the Shadow. A name given by the Occultists to Sorcerers, and especially to the Tibetan Dugpas, of whom there are many in the Bhon sect of the Red Caps (Dugpa). The word is applied to all practitioners of black or left hand magic.

(See also: Brothers of the Shadow , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Ri-thlen (East Indian) Snake-keeping; "a terrible kind of sorcery practised at Cherrapoonjee in the Khasi-Hills. . . . As the legend tells us: ages ago a thlen (serpent-dragon) which inhabited a cavern and devoured men and cattle was put to death by a local St. George, and cut to pieces, every piece being sent out to a different district to be burnt.

But the piece received by the Khasis was preserved by them and became a kind of household god, and their descendants developed into Ri-thlens or 'snake-keepers,' for the piece they preserved grew into a dragon (thlen) and ever since has obsessed certain Brahmin families of that district.

To acquire the good grace of their thlen and save their own lives, these 'keepers' have often to commit murders of women and children, from whose bodies they cut out the toe and finger nails, which they bring to their thlen, and thus indulge in a number of black magic practices connected with sorcery and necromancy" (TG 278-9).

(See also: Ri-thlen , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Necromancy:

Black magic practices involving communicating with the dead.

(See also: Necromancy , Psychic, Psychic Dictionary, Parapsychology, Parapsychology Dictionary)

HELL-HOUND

There have been many. Cerberus and Orthos, the guardians of the Gates of Hell are notorious enough, but there was also Garn, the Moon dog; the hellhound of Arwan; Falinis, the hound of Lush; the Hound of the Baskervilles; the whelp of King Ioruaidhe (who turned water into wine) -- and numerous others, from Egypt's most exalted Psychopomp of the Dead, the Dog-God, Anubis, to Walt Disney's gentle pup, Pluto, who was indeed named (tongue well in cheek) after the self-same God of the Underworld.

Dogs are quite naturally associated with death and the lower reaches. It is fitting that it should be they, after death, who conduct us who led them in life. Not only do our canine friends watch over us by night, guarding against every intruder and nocturnal peril that menaces the sleeping household, but they are quite at home in underground caves and even expert at digging. They are unperturbed by corpses or corruption. And, although their vocabularies of human words are exasperatingly limited, they are, as every dog owner knows, fluent in the silent, non-linguistic communication of ESP.

For the above and many other reasons, demons were once believed to take the form of dogs, especially black dogs. The Devil himself, in fact, has a black dog as his companion. White dogs are more likely the companions of white magic.

(See also: HELL-HOUND , Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul,)

Black Magic:

A racist, sexist, creedist and classist term used to refer to magic being done for “evil” purposes or by people of whom the user of the term disapproves.

(See also: Black Magic , Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Black Magic (Occult.). Sorcery; necromancy, or the raising of the dead, and other selfish abuses of abnormal powers. This abuse may be unintentional; yet it is still "black magic" whenever anything is produced phenomenally simply for one’s own gratification.

(See also: Black Magic , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

Black Magic. (Vide Supra.)

(See also: Black Magic , Theosophy, Spirituality, Body mind and Soul, Spiritual Dictionary,)

A critical in-depth analysis of the differences and similarities between the New Age movement and the Vedic traditions by Henry Makow PhD

Read more here: » New Age Spirituality: New Age vs. Vedic tradition