concept
Animal Guides and Totems
Animal guides and totems are non-physical animal presences understood to accompany, protect, and teach individual people or communities, serving as mediators between human experience and the wider spirit world.
A pillar of the craft
Deities, Spirits & Entities
Magick is rarely practised alone. This pillar gathers the beings a practitioner may come to know: deities and the pantheons they belong to, ancestors and spirit guides, angels and the spirits of the Goetia, the Fae, elementals, familiars, and the genius loci of a particular place.
The entries describe these beings encyclopedically and respectfully. They cover who a deity is and how practitioners build a relationship, how ancestor veneration is practised, and how the spirits of grimoiric tradition have been understood across history. Demons and the Goetia are treated as part of the documented record of Western magick, described honestly and never framed as instruction to harm a real person.
Working with spirits is relational work. It asks for courtesy, clear boundaries, discernment, and patience, the same qualities any good relationship asks for. The entries here are an introduction to a wide and populated cosmos, written so that you can meet it with both openness and care.
47 entries
Concepts
concept
Animism
Animism is the worldview holding that all things, including animals, plants, rivers, mountains, stones, and weather, possess spirit, consciousness, or personhood and can be engaged in relationship by human beings.
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Brigid
Brigid is an Irish goddess of fire, healing, smithcraft, and poetry, one of the most beloved deities in Celtic traditions and the direct predecessor of Saint Brigid of Kildare.
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Changelings
The changeling is a figure from British Isles, Scandinavian, and European folklore, a fairy substitute left in place of a stolen human child, reflecting deep anxieties about illness, difference, and the boundary between the human world and the fairy realm.
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Closed Practices and Cultural Appropriation
Closed practices are religious or spiritual traditions that are not open to outside practitioners, typically because they require formal initiation, cultural membership, or genealogical descent to access appropriately. Understanding which practices are closed and why, and respecting those boundaries, is a fundamental ethical responsibility for any practitioner who works across or draws from multiple traditions.
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Daimons and Personal Spirits
A daimon is a personal spiritual being understood in ancient Greek philosophy and religion as an intermediary presence accompanying the individual, guiding moral choices and mediating between the human and the divine.
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Dark Goddesses
Dark goddesses are divine feminine figures associated with death, destruction, transformation, shadow, and the liminal spaces at the edges of life, representing the full spectrum of feminine divine power rather than only its nurturing or life-giving aspects.
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Deity Relationships Over Time
Long-term relationships with specific deities are among the most transformative dimensions of polytheist and magical practice, developing through years of consistent devotion, testing, and deepening mutual recognition.
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Demons in Magick
Demons in magical tradition are a diverse category of non-human beings ranging from pre-Christian deities reclassified by monotheistic religion, to genuinely chthonic spirits with specific powers, worked with by practitioners across several centuries of Western grimoire tradition.
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Elementals
Elementals are spiritual beings associated with and composed of the four classical elements: earth, air, fire, and water, working with the natural forces that govern the physical and subtle worlds.
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Ethics of Spirit Contact
The ethics of spirit contact encompasses the principles of consent, honesty, safety, and responsibility that experienced practitioners apply when establishing and maintaining relationships with non-human intelligences.
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Familiars
A familiar is a spiritual companion who assists a witch or magical practitioner, traditionally understood as a spirit that may take animal form, offering guidance, protection, and magical aid in exchange for care and relationship.
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Freya
Freya is a Norse goddess of love, beauty, war, magic, and death, sovereign of the Vanir and the first teacher of seidr magic, one of the most powerful and multifaceted deities in the Northern European tradition.
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Genius Loci and Land Spirits
The genius loci is the protective spirit of a place, a concept from Roman tradition that describes the living spiritual identity of a specific location, related to the broader category of land spirits found across many animistic and polytheistic traditions.
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Guardian Angels
Guardian angels are protective spiritual beings assigned to individuals as personal guides and guardians, appearing across many religious and spiritual traditions and understood in modern practice as accessible, loving presences who can be consciously engaged.
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Hard Polytheism vs Soft Polytheism
Hard polytheism holds that each deity is a fully distinct, individual being with a unique identity that cannot be reduced to an aspect or manifestation of any other. Soft polytheism holds that the many deities of human religious tradition are expressions or facets of fewer underlying divine principles. The distinction shapes how practitioners approach deity work, mythological research, and cross-tradition practice.
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Hecate
Hecate is a Greek goddess of crossroads, witchcraft, the moon, and liminal transitions, widely honored today as a patron deity of witches and practitioners of the dark arts.
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Household Spirits
Household spirits are non-human beings who attach to and assist specific homes and families, found across the folklore of Europe, Asia, and many other cultures, requiring acknowledgment and care in exchange for their help.
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Household Spirits Across Traditions
Household spirits are protective non-human beings understood to inhabit domestic spaces, attached to the family or the structure itself, and requiring regular acknowledgment and offering to remain benevolent toward the people they guard.
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Invocation and Possession
Invocation is the practice of calling a deity or spirit into oneself or one's ritual space, while possession is the state in which a spiritual being takes full or partial residence in a human body, speaking and acting through that person.
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Liminal Deities
Liminal deities are gods and spirits who preside over thresholds, crossroads, and the in-between spaces of time and place. They serve as guides, guardians, and transformative forces at every kind of boundary.
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Moon Goddesses
Moon goddesses are divine feminine figures whose domains include the lunar cycle, tides, magic, prophecy, fertility, and the rhythms of time. They appear in virtually every world mythology and remain central to contemporary Pagan and Wiccan practice.
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Nature Spirits
Nature spirits are the animating intelligences of natural phenomena and places, present in the folklore and spiritual traditions of cultures worldwide, from tree dryads and river nymphs to the spirits of mountains, winds, and stones.
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Necromancy
Necromancy is the practice of communicating with or conjuring the spirits of the dead, historically for the purpose of divination and the acquisition of hidden knowledge, and representing one of the oldest documented forms of spirit work.
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Odin
Odin is the Allfather of Norse mythology, god of wisdom, war, magic, poetry, and death, who sacrificed one eye for knowledge and hung nine days on the World Tree to win the runes.
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Paracelsus and the Four Elementals
Paracelsus systematized the Western doctrine of elemental spirits in the sixteenth century, naming gnomes, sylphs, undines, and salamanders as the animating intelligences of the four elements, a framework that became foundational to centuries of Western occult practice.
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Patron Deities
A patron deity is a god or goddess with whom a practitioner has an especially deep, sustained, and mutually recognized relationship, often understood as a divine sponsorship of that person's life and work. Patron relationships develop over time through devotional practice, attentive listening, and the accumulated weight of experience, and they are recognized across the world's polytheistic traditions.
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Polytheism
Polytheism is the belief in and worship of multiple gods and goddesses, understood as distinct beings with their own natures, domains, and relationships to humanity. It is the oldest surviving theological framework, present in the earliest recorded religious literature, and it continues to be practiced by hundreds of millions of people worldwide in many forms.
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Protective Entities and Guardians
Protective entities and guardians are spiritual beings whose primary function is the defense and safety of a person, place, or community, ranging from ancestral protectors and angelic guardians to assigned spirits and self-created thoughtforms.
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Psychopomps
A psychopomp is a being whose function is to guide the souls of the dead from the living world into the afterlife, a role found in the mythologies and religious traditions of cultures across the world.
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Psychopomps in World Religion
Psychopomps are beings, deities, or spirits across world religions whose role is to guide the souls of the dead to their proper place in the afterlife, ensuring safe passage across the boundary between the living and the dead.
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Samhain and the Veil
Samhain is a Celtic seasonal festival marking the end of harvest and the beginning of the dark half of the year, understood by many practitioners as the night when the veil between the living and the dead grows thin enough for communication to occur.
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Spirit Contracts and Pacts
Spirit contracts and pacts are formal agreements between human practitioners and spiritual beings, establishing the terms of a working relationship, including what each party offers and what each receives in exchange.
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Spirit Guides vs Deities
Spirit guides and deities are distinct categories of spiritual being, differing in scope, scale, and the nature of their relationship with human practitioners, though the boundary between them is sometimes porous and tradition-dependent.
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Syncretism in Deity Work
Syncretism in deity work is the practice of identifying, combining, or working with deities across different religious traditions, based on shared functions, mythological themes, or historical identification. The practice is ancient and cross-cultural, but it requires care, research, and honest engagement with both the similarities and the genuine differences between divine beings from distinct traditions.
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The Angelic Hierarchy
The angelic hierarchy is the theological ordering of angels into ranks or choirs, most influentially described by the fifth-century Christian writer known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, whose three-tiered nine-choir system shaped Western angelology, ceremonial magic, and esotericism for over a millennium.
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The Fae
The Fae, or Faeries, are a class of non-human spirit beings found in the folklore of Britain, Ireland, and much of Europe, ranging from tiny nature spirits to powerful otherworldly beings who occupy a realm parallel to the human world.
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The Fae Courts
The Fae Courts, particularly the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Scottish tradition, are organizing frameworks for understanding the fairy folk as two great political bodies with distinct natures, queens, and relationships to human beings.
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The Genius Loci
The genius loci, or spirit of place, is the distinctive presence and animating intelligence that inhabits a specific location, recognized across cultures and central to land-based spiritual practices worldwide.
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The Good Neighbours
The Good Neighbours is a traditional British and Irish euphemism for the fairy folk, used to avoid the dangers of directly naming these powerful beings while acknowledging their presence as part of the local spiritual community.
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The Horned God
The Horned God is a modern Pagan deity archetype representing the masculine divine in nature, the cycles of the hunt, death, and rebirth, and the untamed wild, most prominent in Wicca and related earth-centered traditions.
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The Morrigan
The Morrigan is an Irish goddess of fate, sovereignty, war, and death, a shapeshifting triple deity who appears in the great cycles of Irish mythology and continues to call practitioners to her service today.
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The Otherworld
The Otherworld is the Celtic name for the realm beyond ordinary human experience, a place of the gods, the dead, and the fairy people that exists alongside and interpenetrating the physical world. It is reached through liminal points in landscape and time rather than through death alone.
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The Triple Goddess
The Triple Goddess is a modern Pagan theological concept representing the divine feminine as three unified aspects: Maiden, Mother, and Crone, corresponding to the phases of the moon and the stages of a woman's life.
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The Wild Hunt
The Wild Hunt is a widespread folkloric motif across Germanic and Celtic Europe describing a supernatural procession of spirits, ghostly riders, and divine hunters sweeping across the winter sky. Associated most commonly with Odin in Norse tradition, it appears across English, German, Scandinavian, and related folk belief as a harbinger, an omen, and a force that sweeps mortals up in its passage.
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Thin Places
Thin places are locations where the boundary between the ordinary world and the realm of spirits, the divine, or the dead is understood to be unusually permeable, allowing for heightened spiritual encounter.
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Trickster Deities
Trickster deities are divine figures found across world mythologies who subvert order, challenge authority, and use cunning and chaos to bring about transformation. They teach through disruption rather than instruction.
26 entries
Practices
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Ancestor Shrines
Ancestor shrines are dedicated sacred spaces where practitioners honor, commune with, and receive support from their ancestral dead, drawing on traditions of ancestor veneration found across virtually every human culture.
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Ancestor Veneration
Ancestor veneration is the practice of maintaining an active, reciprocal relationship with the spirits of the deceased, particularly one's own bloodline, through offerings, communication, and ritual remembrance.
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Ancestral Healing
Ancestral healing is the practice of addressing inherited trauma, patterns, and wounds carried through family lines, working with the ancestral dead to transform what has been passed down and restore health and wholeness to both the living and the dead.
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Banishing Unwanted Spirits
Banishing unwanted spirits is the practice of removing or redirecting non-physical presences that have entered a person, object, or space without invitation and whose influence is disruptive, draining, or harmful.
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Calling a Deity
Calling a deity is the practice of formal invocation through prayer, ritual, and spoken address, creating the conditions for the deity's presence to be experienced in the practitioner's space and awareness. The practice is found across polytheistic traditions and ranges from simple heartfelt prayer to elaborate ceremonial invocation.
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Deity Altars
A deity altar is a dedicated physical space that serves as a point of contact between the practitioner and a specific god or goddess, housing images, sacred objects, and offering vessels that anchor the relationship in the material world. The altar is both a symbol of the deity's presence and an active working tool for devotion, offerings, and prayer.
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Deity Devotion
Deity devotion is the practice of cultivating an ongoing, reciprocal relationship with a specific god or goddess through prayer, offerings, ritual, and sustained attention. It differs from petition-based prayer in that its primary aim is relationship rather than specific outcomes, and it develops over time into a genuine spiritual partnership.
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Deity Offerings
Deity offerings are gifts of food, drink, incense, art, time, or other valued items presented to a god or goddess as acts of reciprocity, reverence, and relationship maintenance. The practice of making offerings is one of the most universal and ancient forms of religious activity, and it remains central to virtually every tradition that works with divine beings.
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Deity Signs and Signals
Deity signs and signals are the ways that gods and goddesses communicate with practitioners through dreams, synchronicities, animals, recurring symbols, and sudden shifts in attention or feeling. Learning to recognize genuine signals while maintaining discernment is one of the core practical skills of deity work.
practice
Discernment in Spirit Work
Discernment in spirit work is the practice of carefully evaluating the nature, identity, and intent of beings encountered in magical and spiritual practice, distinguishing genuine divine or spiritual contact from misidentification, projection, deception, or psychological material. It is considered an essential safety skill for anyone working seriously with deities, spirits, or entities.
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Drawing Down the Moon
Drawing Down the Moon is a Wiccan ritual in which the High Priestess invites the Goddess to descend into her body and speak through her, serving as one of the central acts of Wiccan group ritual and the fullest expression of the feminine divine in coven practice.
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Dumb Supper
A dumb supper is a silent ritual meal shared with the ancestors, most often held at Samhain, in which a place is set at the table for the dead and food is offered in reverent quiet.
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Fairy Etiquette
Fairy etiquette is the body of traditional rules and protocols governing respectful and safe interaction with the fairy folk, drawn from British Isles folklore and practiced in contemporary Faery and folk magic traditions.
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Fairy Offerings and Hospitality
Fairy offerings are gifts left for the fairy folk as part of a reciprocal relationship of hospitality, drawing on a long tradition of folk practice that maintained good relations with the Good Neighbours through consistent, appropriate gifting.
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Mediumship
Mediumship is the practice of serving as a channel for communication between the living and the dead, receiving and conveying messages, impressions, or the presence of deceased individuals through a range of sensory and intuitive modes.
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Meeting Your Spirit Guides
Meeting your spirit guides is the practice of establishing conscious contact with the non-physical beings who accompany and assist you, using meditation, visualization, and intentional communication to make the relationship explicit and reciprocal.
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Patron Deity Finding Rituals
Finding a patron deity involves a combination of attentive self-reflection, research into mythology and tradition, divination, and dedicated ritual invitation. The process respects both the practitioner's own nature and the reality that deity relationships often develop on a timeline that the practitioner does not fully control.
practice
Prayer in Polytheist Practice
Prayer in polytheist practice is direct, personal address to specific deities, offered in relationship rather than petition to an omnipotent authority. It is one of the most ancient and most intimate forms of devotional practice.
practice
Setting Up an Ancestor Altar
Setting up an ancestor altar is the practical process of creating a dedicated sacred space for honoring and communing with the ancestral dead, drawing on widespread traditions of ancestor veneration while adapting them to the practitioner's specific circumstances.
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Spirit Safety Protocols
Spirit safety protocols are the practical measures experienced practitioners use to protect themselves when working with non-human intelligences, including banishing, warding, grounding, and discernment practices.
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Trance Work for Spirit Contact
Trance work for spirit contact involves deliberately altering consciousness through rhythmic, somatic, or meditational techniques to reach states in which communication with spirits and guides becomes accessible and reliable.
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Warding Spirits from Spaces
Warding is the practice of establishing protective barriers and boundaries that prevent unwanted spirits from entering a space, maintaining those protections through regular maintenance and intentional placement of physical and energetic markers.
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Working with Angels
Working with angels is the practice of intentionally building relationship with angelic beings through prayer, invocation, meditation, and devotional ritual, drawing on traditions spanning Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Western esotericism.
practice
Working with Deities
Working with deities is the practice of establishing and maintaining active spiritual relationships with divine beings, involving research, discernment, devotion, offering, and reciprocal communication over time.
practice
Working with Spirit Guides
Spirit guides are non-physical beings who assist human practitioners on their spiritual path, offering guidance, protection, and wisdom, encountered through meditation, trance, and sustained attentive relationship.
practice
Working with the Dead
Working with the dead encompasses the practices by which living practitioners establish and maintain relationship with deceased ancestors, allies, and other spirits of the dead for guidance, healing, and ongoing spiritual exchange.
4 entries
Traditions
tradition
Ancestor Veneration in Global Traditions
Ancestor veneration is among the most widespread of all human spiritual practices, present in virtually every world culture as a means of maintaining relationship with the dead and drawing on their power, wisdom, and protection.
tradition
Demonolatry
Demonolatry is a spiritual tradition in which demonic entities are venerated, petitioned, and worked with as powerful divine beings rather than compelled through ceremonial binding, forming ongoing devotional relationships within a left-hand path framework.
tradition
Dia de los Muertos
Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican tradition honoring the dead through elaborately constructed altars, marigold-laden processions, and shared meals with the spirits of family and friends who have passed.
tradition
Orisha: An Overview
The Orisha are the divine forces venerated in the Yoruba religious tradition of West Africa and in the African diaspora religions that descended from it, including Candomble, Santeria (Lucumi), and Trinidad Orisha. These traditions are living, initiated, and community-rooted spiritual systems that are not open to appropriation or casual adoption.
59 entries
Figures
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Anubis
Anubis is the ancient Egyptian god of embalming, mummification, and the protection of the dead, depicted with the head of a jackal. He guides souls through the underworld, oversees the Weighing of the Heart ceremony, and serves as the divine guardian of cemeteries and the funerary arts.
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Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty, desire, and procreation, venerated across the Mediterranean world and later identified with the Roman Venus. She remains one of the most widely called-upon deities in contemporary devotional and love magick.
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Apollo
Apollo is the ancient Greek god of the sun, prophecy, music, poetry, healing, and truth, and one of the most complex and widely worshipped of the Olympians. His influence on Western spiritual thought extends from the Delphic oracle through Neoplatonism and into contemporary solar and divinatory practice.
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Artemis
Artemis is the ancient Greek goddess of the hunt, wilderness, the moon, and the protection of women and children. Twin sister of Apollo, she is a goddess of fierce autonomy and sovereign wildness, widely honored today in feminist spirituality and nature-based witchcraft.
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Athena
Athena is the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, craft, and civilization, born fully armored from the head of Zeus. She is a patron of reason, skilled labor, and the arts of both war and peace, and one of the most widely venerated of the Olympians.
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Baphomet
Baphomet is a symbolic figure in Western occultism whose modern form was established by the artist and occultist Eliphas Levi in 1854. The figure represents the union of opposites and has since become associated with ceremonial magic, Satanism, and transgressive mysticism.
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Baron Samedi
Baron Samedi is the Haitian Vodou lwa of death, resurrection, and the crossroads between life and death, known for his irreverent humor, his power over life and illness, and his role as the head of the Gede family of lwa. He is one of the most distinctive and beloved figures in the Vodou tradition.
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Bastet
Bastet is the ancient Egyptian goddess of the home, cats, protection, music, and fertility, depicted as a cat or as a woman with a cat's head. Originally a lioness-goddess of fierce solar power, she became associated with the domestic cat and with the warmth and protection of the home, and she remains one of the most beloved Egyptian deities in contemporary practice.
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Brigid
Brigid is the Celtic goddess of fire, healing, smithcraft, and poetry, one of the most beloved and enduring figures in the Irish mythological tradition. She governs the sacred flame of inspiration and the practical arts of making, and her feast day, Imbolc, marks the first breath of spring.
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Cernunnos
Cernunnos is the antlered Celtic god of wild nature, animals, and the deep forest, one of the most visually distinctive and spiritually compelling figures in pre-Roman Celtic religion. He is the patron of wild creatures, the turning of the seasons, and the fertile abundance of the untamed world.
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Demeter
Demeter is the ancient Greek goddess of grain, agriculture, and the harvest, and the divine mother whose grief at the loss of her daughter Persephone gave rise to the seasons. She stands at the center of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most important initiatory rites in the ancient world.
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Dionysus
Dionysus is the ancient Greek god of wine, ecstasy, fertility, theatre, and religious frenzy, associated with transformation, dissolution of the self, and the mysteries of death and rebirth. His cult was among the most emotionally intense in the ancient world and remains influential in contemporary ecstatic and mystery traditions.
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Djinn
Djinn (also jinn) are a category of spiritual beings in Islamic theology and pre-Islamic Arabian tradition, understood as beings of smokeless fire who inhabit a parallel world alongside humans and who range from benevolent to malevolent in their dispositions toward humanity.
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Ereshkigal
Ereshkigal is the Sumerian queen of the underworld, the Great Below, whose realm is the final destination of all the dead and whose encounter with her sister Inanna forms the heart of one of the oldest mythological narratives in the world. She governs death, grief, and the transformative darkness that precedes renewal.
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Eshu
Eshu (also called Elegba, Legba, or Elegua) is the Yoruba Orisha of the crossroads, communication, and possibility, the divine trickster and messenger who must be greeted before any other Orisha in ritual. He stands at every threshold between worlds and governs the movement of all things through time and space.
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Freyja
Freyja is the Norse goddess of love, beauty, fertility, gold, war, death, and seidr magick, and the most prominent of the Vanir gods. She is a fierce and sovereign deity who chooses half of the battle-slain for her hall Sessrumnir, taught Odin the art of seidr, and weeps tears of gold for her absent husband.
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Freyr
Freyr is the Norse god of fertility, abundance, sunshine, and prosperity, the most prominent male Vanir deity and twin brother of Freyja. He rules the realm of Alfheim, governs the growth of crops and the pleasures of the earth, and gave up his magical sword for the sake of love, a sacrifice with consequences at Ragnarok.
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Gabriel the Archangel
Gabriel is the archangel of divine messages, prophecy, and revelation, the heavenly herald who announced the births of John the Baptist and Jesus in Christian tradition, revealed the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic tradition, and appears as an interpreter of prophetic visions in the Hebrew scriptures.
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Ganesha
Ganesha is the elephant-headed Hindu god of beginnings, wisdom, and the removal of obstacles, one of the most beloved and widely worshipped deities in Hinduism. He is invoked at the start of every venture, ritual, and journey as the one who clears the path and grants auspicious beginnings.
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Gnomes
Gnomes are the earth elementals of Western occult tradition, first systematically described by Paracelsus in the sixteenth century as beings inhabiting the element of earth, governing underground processes, and associated with the physical world's stability and hidden treasures.
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Hades
Hades is the ancient Greek god of the underworld and the ruler of the dead, eldest son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. Often misunderstood as a death deity in the modern sense, he is more accurately the sovereign of the realm of the dead rather than a bringer of death, and he embodies principles of finality, hidden wealth, and impartial justice.
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Hathor
Hathor is the ancient Egyptian goddess of love, beauty, music, motherhood, and joy, one of the most beloved and widely worshipped deities in the Egyptian pantheon. She is the celestial cow whose milk nourished the pharaohs and whose generosity extended to all living things.
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Hecate
Hecate is the ancient Greek goddess of crossroads, witchcraft, the moon, and the liminal spaces between worlds. One of the oldest and most powerful figures in the Western esoteric tradition, she is the divine patron of witches and a guardian of thresholds between the living and the dead.
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Hel
Hel is the Norse goddess and ruler of Helheim, the realm of the dead who did not die in battle. Daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda, she governs the vast majority of the Norse dead and is depicted as half living and half dead in her appearance, a figure of impartial sovereignty over the cold realm of ordinary death.
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Hermes
Hermes is the ancient Greek god of messengers, travelers, commerce, thieves, crossroads, and magick, and the divine guide of souls to the underworld. He is one of the most widely venerated gods in Western esotericism, directly linked to the Hermetic tradition.
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Horus
Horus is the ancient Egyptian sky god and divine king, whose falcon form embodies the span of the heavens and whose battle to reclaim his father Osiris's throne made him the mythological archetype of rightful sovereignty. Every pharaoh of Egypt was considered the living Horus.
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Inanna and Ishtar
Inanna is the Sumerian goddess of love, war, and the planet Venus, one of the most powerful and complex deities in the ancient Near East. Her Akkadian equivalent Ishtar shares her attributes and myths, and together they constitute one of the earliest extensively documented divine feminine figures in world history.
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Isis
Isis is the great Egyptian goddess of magic, healing, motherhood, and divine sovereignty, whose cult spread from Egypt across the Roman world to become one of the most widespread mystery religions of antiquity. She is the devoted wife who restored Osiris from death and the fierce mother who protected and raised Horus, and she remains one of the most actively venerated goddesses in contemporary practice.
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Kali
Kali is the Hindu goddess of time, death, and liberation, a fearsome yet deeply compassionate figure in the Shakta tradition whose destruction of the ego and illusion is understood as the highest form of grace. She is worshipped extensively in Bengal and throughout the tantric traditions of India.
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King Paimon
King Paimon is the ninth spirit listed in the Goetia, a powerful entity of knowledge, arts, and secrets who travels with a great train of attendant spirits and is among the most frequently worked-with Goetic kings in contemporary practice.
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Kitsune
Kitsune are fox spirits in Japanese folklore and Shinto tradition, known for intelligence, shapeshifting, and magical power. They range from mischievous tricksters to divine messengers of the rice deity Inari.
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Lakshmi
Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of prosperity, beauty, fortune, and spiritual abundance, the consort of Vishnu and one of the central figures in the Vaishnava tradition. She represents the grace that sustains the world and the abundance that flows to those who live in righteousness and devotion.
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Lilith
Lilith is a figure of ancient Near Eastern origin who appears across Jewish folklore, Kabbalistic mysticism, and modern occultism as a spirit of the night, a dark goddess, and a symbol of feminine autonomy and primal power.
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Loki
Loki is the Norse trickster god, a shapeshifter and agent of chaos who is both a companion of the Aesir and the architect of their undoing. His role in Norse mythology is deeply ambivalent: he solves problems through cunning and creates far worse ones through the same faculty, and he stands as one of the most psychologically complex figures in world mythology.
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Lucifer in Occult Tradition
Lucifer, the "light-bearer," is a figure whose identity in occult tradition is sharply distinct from the devil of Christian popular culture, understood instead as a spirit of enlightenment, intellectual illumination, and the sacred fire that awakens human consciousness.
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Lugh
Lugh is the Irish god of skill, craftsmanship, and the sun, a master of all arts whose name may mean "shining" and whose festival Lughnasadh marks the first harvest of the year. He is among the most heroic and accomplished figures in the Irish mythological tradition.
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Metatron
Metatron is one of the supreme angels in Jewish mysticism, identified in some traditions as the transformed prophet Enoch, serving as the celestial scribe and keeper of the divine throne.
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Michael the Archangel
Michael is the archangel of protection, divine justice, and spiritual warfare, the commander of the heavenly armies and the champion who expelled the rebel angels from heaven. He is among the most widely invoked angelic figures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and throughout the Western esoteric tradition.
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Norns
The Norns are the Norse weavers of fate, three great female figures who sit at the Well of Urd beneath Yggdrasil and determine the destinies of gods and mortals. Named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, they represent past, present, and future, and their concept of wyrd, the woven web of fate, is one of the most significant ideas in Norse cosmology.
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Odin
Odin is the chief of the Norse Aesir gods, the Allfather, god of wisdom, war, poetry, death, and magick. He is the divine seeker who sacrificed his eye and hung on the World Tree for nine days to gain the runes, and he governs the mysteries of fate, the dead, and the art of seidr.
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Oshun
Oshun is the Yoruba Orisha of rivers, fresh water, love, beauty, and sweetness, one of the most beloved and powerful figures in the Yoruba religious tradition and its diaspora forms. She governs the life-giving quality of water, the force of attraction, and the abundance that flows when the world is in right relationship.
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Osiris
Osiris is the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, resurrection, and the afterlife, and the divine king who was murdered by his brother Set, restored by the magic of Isis, and became the lord and judge of the dead. His myth of death and renewal is one of the oldest and most influential religious narratives in human history.
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Persephone
Persephone is the ancient Greek goddess of spring growth and the underworld, daughter of Demeter and Zeus, and queen of the dead alongside her husband Hades. Her myth of descent and return is one of the central stories of ancient religion and remains a powerful template for spiritual transformation.
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Ra
Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god and the supreme deity of the solar disc, whose daily journey across the sky and through the underworld formed the central cosmic drama of Egyptian religion. He is the source of light, life, and royal authority.
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Raphael the Archangel
Raphael is the archangel of healing, guidance for travelers, and the restoration of sight and wholeness, whose name means "God heals." He appears most extensively in the Book of Tobit, where he accompanies the young Tobias on a journey and heals blindness and demonic affliction, establishing his character as a kind, practical, and generous divine helper.
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Salamanders
Salamanders are the fire elementals of Western occult tradition, described by Paracelsus as beings who inhabit flame, associated with will, transformation, passion, courage, and the consuming, purifying power of fire.
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Santa Muerte
Santa Muerte is a Mexican folk saint of death whose veneration has grown dramatically since the late twentieth century, drawing on pre-Columbian death reverence and Catholic devotional practice to produce one of the most vital and rapidly expanding popular religious movements in the Americas.
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Sekhmet
Sekhmet is the ancient Egyptian lioness goddess of war, fire, and healing, whose dual nature as destroyer and physician reflects the Egyptian understanding that the power to wound and the power to cure are inseparable. She is one of the most formidable deities in the Egyptian pantheon.
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Sylphs
Sylphs are the air elementals of Western occult tradition, first named by Paracelsus as beings who inhabit the element of air, associated with thought, communication, inspiration, and the airy realms of mind and breath.
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The Banshee
The banshee is a supernatural figure from Irish and Scottish Gaelic tradition, a female spirit whose keening announces the imminent death of a member of certain old Irish families, occupying a unique position between fairy being, ancestral spirit, and death messenger.
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The Morrigan
The Morrigan is the Irish goddess of war, fate, and sovereignty, a shape-shifting figure who appears over battlefields in crow form and offers warriors both prophecy and challenge. She is among the most complex and powerful figures in the Celtic mythological tradition.
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Thor
Thor is the Norse god of thunder, strength, and the protection of humanity, and the most widely worshipped of the Norse deities among ordinary people in the Viking Age. He wields the hammer Mjolnir, fights giants to protect the world, and is the patron of farmers, craftspeople, and those who do honest work.
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Thoth
Thoth is the ancient Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, and magic, credited with inventing language and the sacred arts of the scribes. He serves as celestial record-keeper, mediator of cosmic order, and patron of all who work with words or esoteric knowledge.
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Tyr
Tyr is the ancient Norse god of justice, law, and honorable sacrifice, whose most famous mythological act was placing his hand in the mouth of the wolf Fenrir as a guarantee of good faith, knowing it would be bitten off. He is the deity most associated with oaths, binding agreements, and the principle of upholding a commitment at personal cost.
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Undines
Undines are the water elementals of Western occult tradition, named by Paracelsus as beings who inhabit the element of water, associated with emotion, intuition, the unconscious, and the flowing, receptive qualities of the watery realm.
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Uriel the Archangel
Uriel is the archangel of wisdom, light, and divine fire, known across Jewish, Christian, and esoteric traditions as a guide who illuminates the mind and reveals hidden truths.
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Valkyries
The Valkyries are divine female figures in Norse mythology who ride across battlefields choosing which warriors will die and escorting the slain to Valhalla or Freyja's hall Folkvangr. They serve Odin as both battle-maidens and cup-bearers in Valhalla, and in later poetry they appear as noble shield-maidens with distinct individual characters.
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Yemoja
Yemoja is the Yoruba Orisha of the ocean and all waters, the great mother whose body contains and sustains all life. She is worshipped across West Africa and throughout the African diaspora as a fierce and tender deity of motherhood, the sea, and the deep unconscious.
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Zeus
Zeus is the ancient Greek king of the gods, ruler of Olympus, and god of the sky, thunder, law, and divine order. As the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon, he governed both cosmic order and human justice, and his influence extends through Roman religion and Western thought to the present.
3 entries
Texts & grimoires
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The Goetia
The Goetia is the first and most influential section of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth-century grimoire listing seventy-two named demonic spirits along with their offices, seals, and methods of ritual evocation.
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The Goetia: 72 Spirits
The Goetia is the first and most famous section of the Lesser Key of Solomon, a seventeenth-century grimoire cataloguing 72 spirits or demons with their ranks, seals, and offices, and providing detailed instructions for their evocation.
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The Shem ha-Mephorash
The Shem ha-Mephorash is the kabbalistic system of 72 divine names derived from three verses of Exodus, each associated with an angelic intelligence and used in high ceremonial magic and Jewish mysticism.