VE-VE (Or Vever)

Voodoo sigil or depiction of a deity or magical force. It is the Voodoo equivalent of a yantra, but whereas a yantra is a geometric design, a veve is a sigil within a circle and serves an entirely difference purpose. The veve attempts to capture the movement or sound of an energy, Loa or god by means of a stylized linear drawing on the ground (or in cornmeal) with a stick. When successful, the veve will assist in the evocation of the desired spirit.

(See also: VE-VE, Vever, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

ZOTHRYIA

According to Bertiaux, this is the name of the alternate universe. Voodoo Gnostics who investigate (via telepathy) its magical culture refer to is as "Zothyrian." Its "primordial element" is Time.

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

HOODOO: An American magickal system drawn from African magickal practice, Native American botanical healing knowledge and European folklore. It is often confused with Voodoo and it's practitioners are called Hoodoo, Hoodoo Doctors, Hoodoo Men/Women, Conjure Men/Women Conjurers, Root Doctors or Root Workers. Also known as Rootwork.

(See also: HOODOO, Magickal Traditions, Magickal Paths, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

ROOTWORK: An American magickal system drawn from African magickal practice, Native American botanical healing knowledge and European folklore. It is often confused with Voodoo and it's practitioners are called Hoodoo, Hoodoo Doctors, Hoodoo Men/Women, Conjure Men/Women Conjurers, Root Doctors or Root Workers. Also known as Hoodoo.

(See also: ROOTWORK, Magickal Traditions, Magickal Paths, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

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)

Zombie

In Haitian and West African folk belief, a soulless corpse reanimated by a Voodoo preist, known as a bocor. A zombie moves listlessly in a trancelike state and does the bidding of the bocor. The term is apparently derived from Nzambi, a West African deity.

Most cultural anthropologists working in Haiti discount stories about zombies. Some researchers, however, claim that the stories are true and that a bocor's victims are administered a powder containing a powerful neurotoxin derived from the puffer fish. The powder is alleged to paralyze the victim into a deathlike state. The bocor later revives the victim. Pharmacologists who have tested samples of the alleged powder found little or no poison in them.

Zombie was originally a python god of certain West African tribes, and its worship was carried to the West Indies with the slave trade, and still somewhat survives in Voodoo ceremonies in Haiti and some of the southern states of the USA.

(See also: Zombie, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Poppet

A magical doll (also known as ritual effigies, voodoo dolls, Kolossos and Kolossoi) made for the purpose of spell-casting and/or ritual magic in Witchcraft and Voodoo.

Poppets are usually made to represent someone or something that for some reason is not present at the ritual performance, or it is the object of the spell-casting. If the spell is a curse, the poppet is either pierced with pins, nails or shards, bound with cord, covered with hot candle wax or hung by the neck.

This actions are supposed to bring death, misfortune, illness, or to bind and stop someone from a particular activity.

(See also: Poppet, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Poppet

A magical doll (also known as ritual effigies, voodoo dolls, Kolossos and Kolossoi) made for the purpose of spell-casting and/or ritual magic in Witchcraft and Voodoo.

Poppets are usually made to represent someone or something that for some reason is not present at the ritual performance, or it is the object of the spell-casting. If the spell is a curse, the poppet is either pierced with pins, nails or shards, bound with cord, covered with hot candle wax or hung by the neck.

This actions are supposed to bring death, misfortune, illness, or to bind and stop someone from a particular activity.

(See also: Poppet, New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

OBEA, OBEAH, OBIOBY: The polytheistic religion and magickal system of West African origin found in the Caribbean, South America and North America today. It recognizes that there are a multitude of gods and ghosts who each have their own myths, rites, offerings, taboos, and magical forces. Obeah is a healer god, who can also be invoked to bring illness and other calamities to one's own enemy. Also known as Obi, Oby, Jamaican Voodoo.

(See also: OBEA, OBEAH, OBIOBY, Magickal Traditions, Magickal Paths, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

Witchcraf Immigrant, “Imm-Trad Witchcraf"

Refers to the customs and beliefs of Mesopagan peasants and supposed Fam-Trad members who immigrated to the Americas and mingled their magical and religious customs with each other, the Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and the previous immigrants, helping to produce the dozens of kinds of Voodoo and Hoodoo,along with Pennsylvania “hex” magic and Appalachian magical lore.

(See also: Witchcraf Immigrant, Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

BAT

(See CHIROPS.) The bat is also the glyph of the pathway of the Hanged Man, and the totem of the Voodoo worshipers. In popular thinking it is the soul of the unenlightened, because it dwells in darkness and feeds indiscriminately on all life. In China, however, where many things are reversed, the word fu means either a bat or a blessing.

Since the bat sleeps upside-down he affords an important avenue to reversion of consciousness. (See VAMPIRE.)

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

ZOMBIE

A Vodoun (Voodoo) creature. According to Wade Davis, "Zombie powder," a neurotoxin that lowers the metabolism enough to resemble death, is used by the Bizango "societies of the night" to bury the victim alive and then bring him back to half-life. The Zombie powder is a blend of human bones, spiders, lizards and toads. Zombiefication is a punic measure designed to teach the meaning of freedom and to make natives conform to society. Originally Zombi was the python god whose spirit can enter and empower a corpse.

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

Vodun or Voudoun:

(1) A West African word meaning “deity” or “power.”

(2) General term for a variety of eclectic religions and associated magical systems practiced throughout the Americas, consisting of mixtures of various African tribal beliefs with various Native American tribal beliefs, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Spiritualism, Theosophy and other systems (including Hinduism, Islam, Neopagan Witchcraft and anything else that seems useful). Different names include Candomble, Macumba, Santeria, Hoodoo, Voodoo and many others.

(3) In the United States and Canada, systems of thaumaturgic magic and religion practiced by people who are usually poor, uneducated and nonwhite. Therefore, see Black Magic.

(See also: Vodun, Voudoun, Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

SYMPATHETIC MAGIC

Based on the sympathy between similar things, even at a distance. What is done to one happens to the other. If the wife of a sailor breaks a water jug, her husband's ship may go down. Eskimo boys are forbidden to play cat's cradle, lest their fingers someday get entangled in the fishing nets. In the natural world these common qualities are called "signatures". A cause introduced into the one results in an effect on the other. It is on this principle that Voodoo curses kill, that rain dances produce rain and that watching television teaches us what the real world is like.

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

PHEONISME

(Bertiaux's terminology.) A private, internal god's or elemental's manifestation or "initiation" within consciousness which may take over the body and soul temporarily. Common in Voodoo possession. According to Bertiaux, Legbha is the supreme God of all magical systems. Bertiaux in his Voudon Gnostic Workbook writes, "There comes a time when the God Legbha takes notice of the magician and seeks to bring the magician closer to the higher powers. At that time, Legbha sends a pheonisme of himself to the magicians and awakens them so that they possess a desire to sexually unite with Legbha. When this happens, the magician is then taken into very high worlds and experiences initiations which cannot be described. Legbha has always had a feeling of lust for the human race. His concern is then to bring humanity closer and closer to the mysteries of Legbha."

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

HOODOO: Like Santería, Hoodoo is a blending the worship of traditional Catholic saints, Christ and the Gods (loas) of Africa, for example, the Hoodoo practitioner could beg for intercession from St. Patrick and really be calling on their serpent God, Danbhalah-Wedo.

Hoodoo worshippers believe that the work of the loas appears in every facet of daily life and that pleasing the loas will gain the faithful health, wealth, and spiritual contentment. The loas speak to their devotees through spirit possession but only for a short time during ceremonies and manifest to protect, punish, confer skills and talents, prophesy, cure illness, exorcise spirits, give counsel, assist in rituals and take sacrificial offerings.

The priest (houngan) or priestess (mambo) acts as an intermediary to summon the loa and help the loa to depart when his or her business is finished. Magick, for both good and evil, is an integral part of Hoodoo. Evil is merely the mirror image of good, the magick of the spirits is there to be used, and if that is for evil, so be it. Also known as Vodoun, Voodoo, Voudou, Voudoun.

(See also: HOODOO, Pagan Organisations, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary, Wicca, )

Fairy, Faery, Faerie Trad Witchcraft:

(1) Any of several traditions of Mesopagan and/or Neopagan Witchcraft started by the blind poet and scoundrel guru Victor Anderson since the 1970s, mixing British and Celtic folklore about the fairies, Gardnerianism, Voodoo, Hawaiian Huna (itself a Mesopagan invention of Max Freedom Long), Tantra, Gypsy magic, Native American beliefs, and anything else he was thinking about at the time he was training the founders of each trad.

(2) Varieties of Neopagan Witchcraft focused around homosexual or bisexual images and magical techniques rather than the heterosexual (and often homophobic) ones used in most Wiccan traditions.

(3) Other sects of Neopagan Witchcraft focused around real or made-up fairy lore, often taken from romantic poems, plays, and novels about the fairies. In most of these traditions, there is usually an assumption that the ancient associations between fairies and witches were true, and that the fairies were originally the Paleopagan nature spirits and/or deities.

(See also: Fairy, Faery, Faerie Trad Witchcraft, Pagan, Paganism, Pagan Dictionary)

13 MAJOR TYPES OF MAGIC:

         Divination     The Occult      Thaumaturgy

         ESP            Theurgy         Yoga

         Religion       Voodoo          Ceremonial or Ritual

         Black Magic    White Magic     Tantra

         Legerdemain

(See also: 13 MAJOR TYPES OF MAGIC, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

13 MAJOR TYPES OF MAGIC:

         Divination     The Occult      Thaumaturgy

         ESP            Theurgy         Yoga

         Religion       Voodoo          Ceremonial or Ritual

         Black Magic    White Magic     Tantra

         Legerdemain

(See also: 13 MAJOR TYPES OF MAGIC, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

NIANTIEL

The watcher of the 24th Tunnel. This figure from The Nightside of Eden corresponds to death in the conventional Tarot In Kenneth Grant's distortion, however, this is the path of sodomy, the reverse of Tiphareth, the "infernal sun in Amenta, the phallus in anus as distinct from the supernal sun." He also includes the scorpion and beetle as symbols of the "Dark Sun." The mysteries here evoked are sex magic and death magic, naturally, as well as "black magic" and Voodoo generally.

The sickness attributed to Niantiel was cancer, even before the advent of AIDS. The engineers of this disease, however, have sealed themselves off from all possibility of Salvation. The evil that Kenneth Grant saw -- to turn the Qliphah of Death into sodomy -- has at last been realized and the Kingdom of Hell is complete. The path between Tiphareth and Netzach is now the paved highroad between Belphagor and Baal.

999

Eternal Evolution (past, present, future). This is the most mystical number of all. It is the number of the Archon of the Ending Aeons. 999 is the year in which Kukulcan (Quetzalcoatl) died. It is the name of a very high IQ Society. 999 is the final transmutation of the current that began with 333, reached its culmination of evil mysticism in 666 and which will unlock the gates of the Otherworld at the end of this cycle's unfolding. It has also been appropriated by the J. R. "Bob" Dodds mock-cult (The Church of the Sub-Genius) as its seal, but is (for them) totally without significance or occult purpose, except as another symbol to subvert in their addiction to chaos.

9 to the 9th power is 387,420,489, which is sure to have some important meaning. Breaking that

down, 3 + 8 + 7 = 18 = 9; 4 + 2 + 0 = 6; 4 + 8 + 9 = 21 = 3; and ultimately 9 + 6 + 3 = 18 =

1 + 8 = 9. (See NUMEROLOGY.)

(See also: NIANTIEL, 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)