THE MAGICIAN'S DICTIONARY
An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced M/magic(k)al Arts and Alternate Meanings
Second Edition 1996

die jovis, xxxi oct. mcmlxxxxvi, minvs iii: era apocalypt.
LUNAR YEAR OF THE FIRE MOUSE 4694
11 chicchan 8 zac 12.19.3.11.5
3468 Timescape Countdown
Julian Day 2,450,230
Heshvan 17, 5757
2749 Rom.A.U.C.
AN XCII AC
Reed 3
89073 CE

Everywhere we can see now how the trappings of M/magic(k) are strewn around with such mindless and perfunctory
abandon that it's obvious to everyone that the morning of barbarism is well advanced. Moreover, the so-called "New
Age" (which is anything but) has produced already so much over- merchandised junk and shadow without substance,
that it's clear no mere grain of salt, appearing alongside that sea of sugar, can expect much attention.
In only the most ordinary sense are we "already" magicians. It's true that only deliberate action which produces a visible
ripple over the surface of reality is a magical act. Nature itself endlessly engages in creatively magical acts every
moment. But what we are painfully learning for the first time is that magic comes out of our connectedness to the world
and is in no way whatsoever the wielding of some mystical power over things from "outside" them. Thus, neither
ordinary religion , with its parched, subnatural separation from physical, supposedly "unclean" bodies, nor science with
its tedious and incessant denial of all "taint" of self, can be called magic.
Continuing in the spirit of that Renaissantial pizzazz which began in the 1960's to raise Hermetic studies from their
immemorial grave, we are now entering a much more psychically advanced era. . . ready, as greater and greater numbers
of seekers are putting it, for "specific" instruction, even though postmodern minds scarcely understand the words.
Where the wise of the past and present fail to provide, I've interpolated my own quirky insights. Avoiding as much as I
can the words and concepts which are abundantly defined elsewhere. I've made it a practice to concentrate on the more
esoteric arcana and most misunderstood philosophical or related terms. On the other hand, there are a good many
magical buzz words that everyone takes for granted as self-evident, when the truth is, hardly anyone really understands
them at all, so I've included some of those as well.
Despite our infatuation with contemporaneity, magic must be tied to tradition - for, once stripped of tradition, it
immediately and bleakly sheds all meaning and quickly degenerates into "black" magic, or the search for private power.
In all magic, the figures summoned, *daimones* (good and bad), are summonings from the self, but that is not to say
that they don't have their own steam and direction.
The goal of the magician, or one might also say the alchemist, is psychic transcendence and not just the manipulation of
the material world for the puffing up of the ego or for changing the outward face of things. The magician's aim is to
recognize that we are in now way separate from the universe and need to reaffirm our direct and total connection to it.
Therefore, we are able to cease acting horizontally in the hopeless trap of cause and effect and can begin acting
vertically to link the celestial to the terrestrial, avoiding, if possible, the much easier connection of the infernal to the
terrestrial.
Many of us have, with monumental smugness, shoved magic into one corner, metaphysics into another and religion into
a third. Magic in particular, we've all secretly fantasized, is a search for "powers". We tend to imagine that it's just the
childlike, fairy-tale belief in the ability to work miracles - as though ordinary reality isn't miracle enough. Or, even
worse, we act as though magic were just another toy - a superbot, an FTL spacecraft, a cybernetic data cruncher, a
revolutionary dimension-splitter, a meta-matter transmogrifier - that we confidently expect some great cosmic Santa
Claus to deliver, once we've achieved, say, celibate purity or some pinnacle of self-hypnosis. This is all rather like a dog
complacently assuming that you will give him the whole turkey if he merely sits on his hind legs and limps his forepaws.
True, we've been admonished time and again that the genuine traveler shouldn't be distracted by mere conjurings. The
yogi must not succumb to the call l to develop siddhis. And even Christ refused to be daunted by Satan's insistence that
stones are not easily turned into bread. In fact, we have been warned that we would do better to avoid conjuring
altogether. But of course warnings serve only to sharpen all the more the appetites of callow youth. Let's grab the power
first, they say, and worry afterwards about whether we have acted wisely or not. Such is the nature of Time that

eventually it delivers all things. Such is the nature of man that he can't wait.
Yes, there are the two famous opposing systems: "black" magic versus "white" magic. And yes, there is a gulf between
them. For the most part, however, these labels derive from our ordinary religious background, which serves merely as a
convenient hook to fetch up the metaphysically unsophisticated. The genuine magician is undaunted by labels. Black
and white are no more than reflections of one another.
Magic's inner meaning is more valuable than its outer glamour. If you suddenly found a priceless diamond in the gutter
that would be a perfect example of how the ordinary world is the source of the transcendental. Unfortunately, for those
who are not initiates, such lessons go unheeded. "Ordinary" reality continues to bore hoi polloi to death.
Madame Blavatsky, G.I. Gurdjieff, Aleister Crowley and the like were wise enough to ignore the multitudes and to write
directly to their small circles of friends who sought truth and did not beg to be flattered. I find little reason to stray from
that course. In any case, there are but ten remaining years for the world (as of 1989, when this was written) and it would
not be seemly to waste them trying to interface with hostile technocrats, "impious xtians", prime-time consumer units or
any of the rest of the millennial rag-tag rabble.

It cannot be said often enough, M/magic(k) does not tolerate belief. Therefore, we must neither cater to popular
superstition nor seek to avoid offending it. Nor shall I apologize for exercising prejudice. Although all are potentially
suspect, despite a widespread misconception, not all religions are equally virulent. And why should we be tolerant of
intolerance? Christians refer to all non-Christians with the prejudicial labels of "heathen" and "damned". Muslims betray
their intolerance by referring non-Muslims as "infidels". Comitas adfabilitasque contra barbaros? But my objection to
Christianity is more subtle and harder to explain than the usual reasons people give. I object on the grounds that
Christianity per se has a habit of pretending to "live and let live" while insinuating itself into other practices and beliefs,
like a tumor, growing until it gradually takes over entirely. It then rejects the shell, the original teaching as having been
but a poor and shameless imitation of Christianity (as, it insists, all alternatives are) henceforth to be replaced by the
orthodox Church.
In any case, the proselytizing religions of Yeshu's Galileanism and Mahomet's Allahism exercise vast control over the
minds of hopeless billions and do more irreparable harm to the human spirit than any force on this planet, including
nuclear fission.
(June 24, 1989)

Brother of Moses and the "Adept of the Adepts". The first high priest and magician (through Jehovah's power).
Introducer of the "golden calf." HPB explains Aaron's rod, which turned the water to blood, as a magnetic pole acting
upon red lichen in fusoria.

Guardian of the 26th tunnel of the Tree of Death, in Grant's teaching. "The Lord of the Gates of Matter". Corresponds, in the Tarot, to The Devil's atu. Its magic, indicated by the letter Ayin, is the "evil eye" or Eye of Set ("The Diamond in the Night"). Its disease is priapism.

Egyptian "heart". The source of life amongst the Nilots. Considered the center of the conscious mind. It as essential that
the Ab survive death through physical embalming, because even if the physical heart was "dead" the spirit still had to
derive its post mortem existence from it. Metaphysically, the heart is the center of the innermost self, which is
simultaneously the innermost center of the universe, not to mention Ra, the Sun, as being the objective counterpart.

Extremely Low Frequency
EOW End of the World
FTL

"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".