Introduction and links to related topics Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.
Gnosis - Knowing (with certainty, as opposed to Agnostic) or a specific teaching. Originally, Gnosticism was a pre-Xtian eclectic system with roots going back to Babylon, Egypy, Judaism, Zoroaster and the Greeks. It sprang up in Xtianity, probably through the Essenes. Their belief, essentially, is that the universe was created by an evil Demiurge (Yaldabaoth) and the real God dwells in a higher region of light completely out of touch with us. Since the world is evil, procreation is a great sin, because to bring children into the world is to perpetuate the evil condition. Arabic for Gnosis: Ma''arifat.
The chief difference between Xtians and Gnostic Xtians, however, was that the Gnostics insisted that Jesus was but a symbol of the cosmic consciousness already present in everyone. They insisted on the maxim, Know thyself and, for them, to be a Christian meant to become a Christ oneself. Orthodox Xtians insisted upon making Christ into an historical, flesh and blood personage called Jesus. Henceforth the argument of the priests would be that their God was genuine because he had historical reality, whereas all other gods were only myths. As our gods are assimilated by us, they inevitably become symbols while the common man worships his gods as idealized bodies of a philosophy he can never hope to understand.
The original and most fantastic Gnosis (out of which the Xtian version arose) derived from leakages from the Egyptian mysteries. The main body, however, died out with the priests who kept their silence.
Mesopaganism - A general term for a variety of movements both organized and nonorganized, started as attempts to recreate, revive or continue what their founders thought were the best aspects of the Paleopagan ways of their ancestors (or predecessors), but which were heavily influenced (accidentally, deliberately and/or involuntarily) by concepts and practices from the monotheistic, dualistic, or nontheistic worldviews of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or early Buddhism.
Examples of Mesopagan belief systems would include Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, etc., as well as those forms of Druidism influenced by those movements, the many Afro-Diasporatic faiths (such as Voudoun, Santeria, Candomble, etc.), Sikhism, several sects of Hinduism that have been influenced by Islam and Christianity, Mahayana Buddhism, Aleister Crowley’s religion/philosophy of Thelema, Odinism (most Norse Paganism), most “Family Traditions” of Witchcraft (those that aren’t completely fake), and most orthodox (aka “British Traditionalist”) denominations of Wicca.
Some Mesopagan belief systems may be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. There are at least a billion Mesopagans living and worshiping their deities today.
See Paleopaganism and Neopaganism.
Taro - (See AZOTH.) The Great Wheel or "Book of Thoth." The letters form a magic square, thus:
ORAT
ROTA
ATOR
TARO
Which possibly means, "Ator (darkness) speaks through the wheel of Tartarus." (See TARTARY.)
In the psychedelic days of 1970, the more daring experimenters used to remove The Tower, the Nine and Ten of Swords, the Reaper and other disagreeable cards from the deck. Then they would pass out (not necessarily at random) the remainder, one by one, to those whom they met during the course of a few days. Whichever card you received was yours to keep because it was your fortune. Any left-over cards at the end of the "experiment" were the Reader''s fortune.
Since we keep forgetting even the very survival lessons and pragmatics we''ve learned through bitter misfortune and ordeal, once we memorize the arcana, its 22 terse encapsulizations of perennial wisdom will serve as permanent and ready memory-joggers for all occasions thereafter.
Madame Blavatsky points out that anyone can visit the British Museum and read the signs of the tarot easily enough in the ancient Babylonian Cylinders, the Chaldean antediluvian rhombs, referred to by De Mirville as the "rotating globes of Hecate." The cards that fortune-tellers shuffle today are far, far removed from their origins and most of the meanings ascribed to them are but modern fairy tales...
Meanwhile, we are beset by a maze of false trails. According to Idries Shah, the 14th Century Italian word, Tarocchi, derives from Arabic turuq, i.e., the (4) "PATHS" (corresponding to the 4 suits) and the Tarot is therefore of Sufic rather than Judaic origins. The Judaic elements are therefore, according to him, superimposed Since, however, in known history, both the Qabalah and the Tarot arose simultaneously within the Italian-Jewish community in the 13-14th Century, its Jewish significance cannot be discounted. The Hebrew connection is clear from the number of the trumps alone (22), which is the number of letters in the alphabet -- each of which, in Qabalah, is a facet of Briah, or "Creation." Moreover, the most distinguished scholars insist it is far older than two millennia, hence the supposition of its Egyptian origin as The Book of Thoth, which we can also support by various etymological clues.
In any case, although Orthodox Jews tend to downplay any connection, the trumps are now fairly well associated with the 22 pathways between the sephiroth of the Qabalah as the Ze''ir Anpin (lit. "microcosm"), i.e., the letters of the alphabet, with Malkuth, form the "language" of Qabalah. As time has passed, the Tarot has become more and more mystical. In the Middle Ages, the suits merely stood for the Military (Swords), the Clergy (Cups), the Intellectuals (Wands) and the Merchants (Coins).
There are, in all, 32 paths, just as the brain, divided into three parts, spreads through the body in 32 pairs of nerves. The sephiroth themselves comprise the first ten "paths" and the remaining 22 are the links of the Atus (major trumps) themselves, the Fool being pathway 11, the Magician pathway 12, The High Priestess pathway 13, etc. The paths, as we''ve seen, are the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, which are the building blocks of Creation.
Excommunication - A religious sanction that removes an individual from the ritual and social community of the church when that member has transgressed some law or regulation of the church. In some churches, upon repentance, the person is welcomed back into fellowship within the church.
Because Judaism has no central authority, excommunication, forced isolation from the Jewish community to punish improper behavior or belief, is usually decreed by a local rabbinical court and applies primarily within that community. There is no formal court procedure or presentation of evidence for excommunication, and any rabbinical court can lift a decree.
Under the ordinary form of excommunication, called nidduy (Heb. ), the excommunicant behaves like a mourner (except for the ritual tearing of clothes), lives only with family, is shunned by others, and is not counted for the quorum required for worship. The excommunicant''s coffin is stoned at burial.
Nidduy is announced by the head of the court. A more severe form, called herem ("devoted thing," something forbidden for common use) requires, in addition, that the excommunicant study alone and make a living only from a small shop.
The procedure for decreeing a herem entails a proclamation in the synagogue either before the open ark or with Torah scroll in hand, the sounding of the shofar (ram''s horn), the congregational extinguishing of candles, and the recitation of biblical curses against and warnings about associating with the excommunicant. In medieval times, the excommunicant was treated as a non-Jew. That status often was extended to the excommunicant''s spouse and children, who might also be ostracized.
Talmudic and medieval rabbinic literature lists various reasons for excommunication. Among other causes, a person could be ostracized for causing the public profanation of God''s name, ignoring prescribed religious behavior or hindering the public performance of it, incorrect business practices, breaking a vow, improper sexual conduct, violating the Torah on the basis of spurious analogies, insulting a scholar, or decreeing excommunication without sufficient reason.
Over time, particularly in Orthodox communities, excommunication was applied so routinely and automatically to any unacceptable behavior that it lost its punitive and coercive effect.
Gnosticism - (from Gk. gnosis, "knowledge")
A pre- Christian category of religions which emphasizes that a personal experience, or knowlege, is essential to salvation.
The oldest oldest known Christian scriptures, The Nag Hammadi Library, are Gnostic. Neither unequivocally Christian, Jewish, Greek, nor Iranian, Gnosticism is not a clearly delineated religion, but rather a specific religious interpretative perspective.
Gnosticism lives mainly in or on the edges of Christianity and Judaism and it bears a number of philosophical, astrological, and magical marks loosely belonging in the Near Eastern and Inner Mediterranean areas.
Common to many Gnostic texts and systems are an emphasis on dualistic speculations (e. g. , light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, the earthly realm vs. the heavenly world, or the Lightworld); a reevaluation of many biblical traditions (especially Genesis and the New Testament) so that the Old Testament God, for instance, becomes an inferior figure ignorant of Lightworld entities above and prior to himself; and a keen interest in the salvation of the human soul, which, due to its Lightworld origin, is opposed to the body it inhabits and possesses a superior knowledge.
Gnostic mythologies offer intricate, detailed speculations on cosmic geographies, provide emotional descriptions of the fate of the soul in its material prison, and, in frequently impressive poetry, describe the soul''s journey back to its lofty home.
In brief, Gnosticism exemplifies the common religious and creative response of Late Antiquity to a feeling of alienation toward bodily, material, even social existence, and a burning interest in arriving at a higher, more authentic level of life. Far from leading to paralytic pessimism, this orientation caused Gnostics to create mythologies, ideologies, rituals, and organized communities.
Subversive Gnostic interpretations, especially of the biblical traditions, elicited horrified, swift denunciations from the early fathers of the church, who rightly perceived the Gnostics as a menace to the budding Christian orthodoxy. Much of what we know about Gnostic doctrines and practices comes from these church fathers, but their accounts are unavoidably colored by a strong hostility toward Gnostics.
Idol - Idol, Idolotry (from Greek eidolon image, idol)
The use of images of divinities, which pertains to exotericism, as do visible symbols, ceremonies, and rituals in general. Attitudes vary among religions: Judaism, Islam, and Protestant Christianity absolutely forbid it; Orthodox Christianity permits icons, such as pictures of saints; Roman Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism permit it altogether.
Varying degrees of ignorance or enlightenment may regard an idol as in itself a species of imbodied divinity, as transmitting the influence of a divinity or, more spiritually, as a reminder of a divinity. In a real sense, idolatry is the attaching of undue importance to the form rather than to the spirit, and often becomes degraded into worshiping the images made in our imagination and imbodied in work of the hands.
"Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship dies out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, etc.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do" (SD 2:723).
Communion - The Lord''s Supper The central rite of Christian worship, called variously the Eucharist, Holy Communion, Divine Mysteries (Eastern Orthodox), and the Mass (Roman Catholic)
This ritual is said to have developed out of the Last Supper of Jesus and his Apostles just before the crucifixion. Some Christians believe that the wine and bread actually transmutate into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus (see transubstantiation), others do it in memory of Jesus'' passion.
The practice is believed by Christians to have evolved from the Jewish Passover. Many scholars claim that communion, also with the word Mass, is derived from the practice of the Zoroastrians. New Agers celebrate a similar ritual which is called Communion with All Life.
Antisemitism - Why is the occult sometimes accused of anti-semitism?
Since the occult comprises a huge number of different arcane studies, it is hard to see how its being associated with such an unlikely and general characteristic as anti-semitism could arise. It is, in fact, a complete contradiction of its origin. Most of this misconception began in 1920 with a certain Miss Stoddard and Dr. and Mrs. Felkin, who were the temple heads of the Stella Matutina. Miss Stoddard felt herself persecuted by "black Rosicrucians" and turned to Nesta Webster. Ms. Webster, in turn, a right wing fanatic, accused all these organizations of being agents of the International Jewish conspiracy - especially the Golden Dawn and Stella Matutina. Because of its association with the Qabalah and its rejection of orthodox Xtianity, the Church is always ready to accuse the Occult of being pro-Jewish. Soon after this, however, Hitler, who considered Xtianity to be merely a Jewish offspring, turned to the neo-pagan elements of the occult. This Nazi endorsement, for most people, tarred all occult studies with the same tainted brush. The popular mind, in its total and abysmal ignorance of such things to start with, sees no contradiction in condemning the accused of the very crime of the accuser!
Ain Soph - Ain Soph (Hebrew, Jewish). The "Boundless" or Limitless; Deity emanating and extending.
Ain Soph is also written En Soph and Ain Suph, no one, not even Rabbis, being sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction, like Parabrahmam, though modern Kabbalists have succeeded now, by dint of mere sophistry and paradoxes, in making a "Supreme God" of it and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean Kabbalists Ain Soph is "without form or being", having "no likeness with anything else" (Franck, Die Kabbala, p. 126).
That Ain Soph has never been considered as the "Creator" is proved by even such an orthodox Jew as Philo calling the "Creator" the Logos, who stands next the "Limitless One", and the "Second God". "The Second God is its (Ain Soph’s) wisdom", says Philo (Quaest. et Solut.). Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain Soph; the word Ain meaning NOTHING. (See Franck’s Kabbala, p. 153 ff.)
Samaritans - Samaritans The Shemitic people inhabiting a restricted portion of central Palestine west of the Jordan, Hebrews with their own special doctrinal beliefs and perhaps practices.
Following Josephus and the New Testament, the term covers that portion of the Israelites who regarded themselves as descendants of the ten tribes of Israel, claiming to possess the orthodox religion of Moses in their manuscripts of the Pentateuch. The Samaritans, however, regarded the Jewish temple as well as the Jewish priesthood as having broken off from the orthodox law of Moses which they represented: they declared, further, that Mt. Gerizim overhanging Shechem was the true choice for the sanctuary of God, and not Zion.
The idea familiarly connected in the West with the term of a compassionate, humanitarian person, as in the good Samaritan, is based upon the parable in the New Testament (Luke 10:30-37).
Disk-worship - Disk-worship. This was very common in Egypt but not till later times, as it began with Amenoph III., a Dravidian, who brought it from Southern India and Ceylon. It was Sun-worship under another form, the Aten-Nephru, Aten-Ra being identical with the Adonai of the Jews, the " Lord of Heaven" or the Sun.
The winged disk was the emblem of the Soul. The Sun was at one time the symbol of Universal Deity shining on the whole world and all creatures; the Sabeans regarded the Sun as the Demiurge and a Universal Deity, as did also the Hindus, and as do the Zoroastrians to this day.
The Sun is undeniably the one creator of physical nature. Lenormant was obliged, notwithstanding his orthodox Christianity, to denounce the resemblance between disk and Jewish worship. "Aten represents the Adonai or Lord, the Assyrian Tammuz, and the Syrian Adonis"(The Gr. Dionys. Myth.)
Gilgoolem - Gilgoolem (Hebrew, Jewish) The cycle of rebirths with the Hebrew Kabbalists; with the orthodox Kabbalists, the "whirling of the soul" after death, which finds-no rest until it reaches Palestine, the "promised land", and its body is buried there.
Virgin - Virgin In ancient mystic philosophy the feminine potency of nature as well as cosmic space which is often referred to as the immaculate celestial virgin (cosmogonically undifferentiated cosmic matter, alaya, mahabuddhi, etc.), or the astral light which is sometimes called the celestial virgin. Again, it refers to the numerous Queens of Heaven, such as Isis, Moon, Ashtoreth, Nuah (the Chaldean feminine Noah considered as one with the cosmic arc), Belita, Diana, Artemis, Ark, etc. -- most of these names having reference to the moon.
However, a sharp distinction should be made between the idea of the virgin connected with the lower planes of matter, including celestial bodies such as the moon, and the immaculate or undifferentiated cosmic virgin which is the immaculate spatial mother of the cosmic deep. On lower planes the Mother-Virgin is the various wombs of hierarchies, a feminine Manu or Prajapati, through whom pour the seeds of life from higher cosmic planes. The cosmic virgin is immaculate, and the zodiacal sign Virgo is her emblem; in human affairs she represents the nature of humanity before the division into sexes, in commemoration of which the sign Virgo became divided into Virgo and Scorpio. The name may also be used of a virgin male such as a kumara.
The ideas of the Virgin Mary in orthodox Christianity have been taken over from the pagans, as for example from the mother in the triad which heads all cosmogonies of the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea (Isis, Juno, etc.). The word Mary from the Hebrew would seem etymologically cognate with the Latin mare (sea); the Hebrew word meaning bitter, and the sea likewise being bitter it is also cognate with other words meaning water, as in the Jewish expression, the waters of space, or the feminine productive principle.
See also IMMACULATE CONCEPTION; VIRGIN BIRTH
College Of Rabbis - College of Rabbis. A college at Babylon; most famous during the early centuries of Christianity. Its glory, however, was greatly darkened by the appearance in Alexandria of Hellenic teachers, such as Philo Judeus, Josephus, Aristobulus and others.
The former avenged themselves on their successful rivals by speaking of the Alexandrians as theurgists and unclean prophets. But the Alexandrian believers in thaumaturgy were not regarded as sinners or impostors when orthodox Jews were at the head of such schools of "hazim".
These were colleges for teaching prophecy and occult sciences. Samuel was the chief of such a college at Ramah; Elisha at Jericho. Hillel had a regular academy for prophets and seers; and it is Hillel, a pupil of the Babylonian College, who was the founder of the Sect of the Pharisees and the great orthodox Rabbis.
Ehad - ''Ehad (Hebrew) One, first, alone, single; used by Orthodox Jews in relation to Jehovah as the one and only god. The feminine form is ''Ahath.
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