Amulets are often worn around the neck or as rings. Virtually anything can become an amulet, depending on the different beliefs in different cultures. Some are designs or symbols on buildings, holy places and tombs. Semiprecious stones were particularly common as amulets, as were eyes; the best known eye amulet being the ancient Egyptian Eye of Horus. Organic amulets, such as fruit, vegetables, berries, nuts and plants are also common in certain parts of the world, as in the use of garlic to ward off vampires. Various metals are also commonly ascribed amuletic powers against evil, for instance, iron is universally believed to guard against demons and witches.

Backward Blessing
The practice of saying of the Lord's Prayer backwards. It is said to invoke the Devil and is sometimes mentioned in accounts of the Sabbat as one of the numerous profanations.

Black Mass
The blasphemous parody of the Christian rite and defilement of holy substances alleged to occur during the witches' Sabbat. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries accusations of attendance at such devilish occasions became increasingly common. According to the theologians, demonologists and other experts on witchcraft, who derived their information from witchcraft confessions obtained by torture, the unorthodox ritual involved naked virgins on altars, backward blessing, the sacrifice of toads and chickens, the host being desecrated and made of noxious substances, the sprinkling of the congregation with urine instead of holy water and other such practices.

Bokkor
Practitioner of black magic in voodoo.

Brothers of the Shadow
Sometimes also called the Dark Brothers or the Grey Brothers, terms used in occultism to denote those men and women who consciously choose to follow the practices and ethos of black magic, in what is called the Left-hand Path or the Path of Shadows. Their work is contrary to the work of white magicians, sometimes called 'Sons of Light', who are claimed to follow the pathway of evolution, self-perfection and self-sacrifice.

Calundronius
A magic stone said to ward off every kind of evil and giving its owner the advantage needed over his enemies.

Ceremonial Magic
The art of Dealing with or Controlling Spirits or Demons by means of supposed religious rites.

Charm
A magical formula either recited or sung to bring out the powers of an Amulet.

Magic Circle
A protective area or the boundary of a sphere of personal power cast by wiccans, ceremonial magicians and the like before performing their rituals. These rituals are usually performed within these magical circles. Also, attendees at a séance often form circles. See also crop circles.

Cocytus
Meaning "river of wailing", in classical usage is the name of one of the five rivers of Hell, along whose banks the unburied would wander for a century.

According to Dante, the Arch Traitor Satan is forever immersed in this frozen marsh up to his breastbone, uselessly trying to free himself by flapping his monstrously sized wings, producing nothing more than freezing winds that make the ice even harder.

Conjuration
The practice of raising or evoking spirits, demons and storms by means of carefully formulated rituals.

These rituals take many different forms, many of them described in the grimoires, especially the Grand Grimoire, which contains probably the earliest printed account of the manufacture of pacts with demons. Its practitioners are known as conjuretors.

Also known as conjuring is the art of seeming to execute genuine magic; performers are known as conjurors. The art supposedly dates back to events that are said to have occurred 4500 years ago in Egypt, during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, most likely the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza. This art should not be mistaken for a paranormal performance; it uses sleight of hand, special props and equipment, secret technologies and many illusionary methods.

Death Prayer
This term has two different senses.

First, in regard to 'praying for the dead', the death prayer is used either to help the departed soul in the spiritual abode or to request help from such souls on behalf of the living.

Secondly, the term is used to describe a special technique designed to deprive a person or persons of life. The ability to command demons to kill the living is supposedly one of the most terrible powers of black magicians. It is a technique widely practiced by witch doctors in primitive tribes, and is one for which the Voodoo cult in particular has gained a certain notoriety.

Evil Eye
In witchcraft and black magic it is said that certain individuals have the power to cast evil spells or to project evil thought forms simply by looking at another person. The idea of this evil power is practically universal, and there exists in virtually every language an comparable term — the boser Blick in German, malocchio in Italian, mauvais veil in French; and from the Latin fascinum, which was originally associated with the idea of binding, is derived the English 'fascinate', which was originally connected with such ideas as binding by means of diabolical powers or pact.

The fact of the evil eye has given rise to numerous protecting devices against it. These incorporate a wide range of magical signs and amulets, reflective surfaces, and, in particular, a number of obscene or phallic figures and amulets which are intended to ward off evil — such as the corno, a curved horn, and the peculiar gesture involving a clenched hand with the thumb stuck through the middle and fourth fingers.

Familiars
According to English witchcraft handbooks of the early seventeenth century (familiars do not appear in Continental witchcraft trials and literature), the name given to spirits attendant upon witches or magicians.

It was held that the familiar, usually in the form of a small domestic animal, was given to the witch by the Devil as companion, helper and adviser, which could be used to perform malicious errands, including murder, and other feats of black magic.

Usually familiars are visible to ordinary sight, as, for example, in the form of dogs or cats, but in some cases it was claimed that witches were followed by a swarm of invisible familiars. The word is from the Latin familiars, but alternative Roman names were magistelli and martinelli, while the Greeks called them paredrii.

Goetic
Pertaining to that magic involving the evocation and binding of evil spirits to the service of humans. The Göetia is the first of four parts of the Lemegeton, or Lesser Key of Solomon, a medieval manuscript regarding the invocation of the hierarchies of the abyss by legions and millions. It contains forms of conjuration for seventy-two demons with an account of their powers and offices.

Grand Grimoire
The name given to a collection of invocations, spells and elementary magic, supposedly from the pen of King Solomon, but almost certainly no older than the sixteenth century.

Grimoires
A general name given to a variety of texts setting out the names of demons, along with instructions for raising them to do the bidding of the magician or 'operator'. The Grimoirium Verum lists seventeen of the names and characters of such spirits, each with its own particular field of interest: for example, Glauneck, who has power over riches and hidden treasures; Bechard, who has power over winds and tempests, and so on.

The Lesser Key of Solomon gives the names and symbols for seventy-two spirits. For example, Agares is a duke who rides a crocodile and carries a goshawk on his wrist; his main function is to stop runaways, teach languages, destroy spiritual and temporal dignities, and to cause earthquakes. Behemoth is a demon concerned with the pleasures of the belly. Sytry is a great prince with a leopard's head; his function is to procure sex or love for the magician. Bune is a powerful duke with the heads of dog, griffin and man; his function is to change the place of burials and to answer all questions put to him by the magician. Astaroth is a powerful duke, appearing in the guise of an angel or a dragon, with a viper in his right hand. The magician must not permit him to approach because of the stench of his breath, and must protect himself with a special magical ring. Astaroth will answer truthfully about all manner of past, present and future questions. Similar grimoires are the grand grimoire, the heptameron, the Enchiridium, the Grimorium Verum, the Grimoire of Honorius, the Galdrabok and the Key of Solomon.

Hexagram
A mystical symbol of a six pointed star.

High Magic
Magic performed through complex rituals involving movement of planets, day and time and other such observations of the physical world.

Incantation
Words or phrases linked together to perform feats of magic.

Invoke
To call upon a specific spirit for aid through the use of its name.

Ley Lines
Alignments and patterns of powerful, invisible earth energy said to connect various sacred sites, such as churches, temples, stone circles, megaliths, holy wells, burial sites, and other locations of spiritual or magical importance.

The existence of leys is controversial. If they do exist, their true age and purpose remain a mystery. In 1925, when Alfred Watkins, an English beer salesman and amateur antiquarian, published his research and theory in his book, 'The Old Straight Track'. Watkins suggested that all holy sites and places of antiquity were connected by a pattern of lines he called 'leys'. Mounds, barrows, tumuli, stones, stone circles, crosses, churches built on pagan sites, legendary trees, castles, and holy wells were all thought to stand in alignment. Using the Ordnance Survey, Watkins claimed that the leys were the 'old straight tracks', which crossed the landscape of prehistoric Britain and represented all types of early human activities.

After Watkins's theory was published, public fascination with leys remained high until the 1940s, when it began to decline. Interest revived in the 1960s and 1970s, as part of the New Age movement. While Britain has been the chief site of investigation, there also is interest in France, the United States, Peru and Bolivia. Many archaeologists and other scientists dispute the existence of leys and say the theory originated by Watkins was contrived because Watkins aligned secular and sacred sites from different periods of history. Even ley enthusiasts are divided into differing camps. Some hold that the prehistoric alignments can be statistically validated. Others agree but say that alignments continued in historical periods. Still others contend that leys mark paths of some sort of earth energy that can be detected by dowsing, and perhaps was sensed by early humans. The energy is compared to the flow of ch'i, the universal life force identified in ancient Chinese philosophy. Points where the ley energy paths intersect are said to be prone to anomalies such as earth lights and poltergeist phenomena and reported sightings of UFOs.

Loa
Voodoo practitioners do not worship gods in the traditional sense of the word. Instead they worship a large family of spirits some of which are tied to nature or to magic like Demballah the serpent, Ogun Badagris the lord of destruction, Baron Samedi lord of the grave yard and the underworld, and humans who have passed on a tribe will typically worship great priests and chiefs from there history.

Low Magic
Magic through the means of symbolism, chanting and less involved rituals than high magic.

Magic
The use of a certain ritual to bring about the intervention of a supernatural force, either in human affairs or in the natural environment, for a specific purpose. Magic has existed universally since ancient times, and varies in form from primary rituals involving the well being of an entire community, to minor, peripheral, private acts of magic.

All forms of magic are traditionally secret arts taught only to initiates, although in some cultures magical knowledge can sometimes be bought and sold or can be passed on through inheritance. A distinction is usually made between black magic, used destructively to bring misfortune or death, and white magic, which are used to ward off such attacks as well as to prevent natural calamities. In itself magic is not good or evil, it is the magician's intentions that make the difference. In some societies, associations of magical specialists exist. Magical practitioners may be called witch doctors, wizards, sorcerers, diviners, witches, warlocks, and so on.

The Middle Ages in Europe had divide magical arts between low magic, such as sorcery, and high magic, which meant exploring the esoteric traditions of the kabbalah and hermetica, often through elaborate ceremonial magic. In ceremonial magic the aim of the ritual is to commune with God or a deity to achieve a higher consciousness. The spiritual and mystical elements of hermetic knowledge and the Jewish kabbalah were aimed at facilitating the communication between human beings, spirits and the Divine at different levels of spiritual consciousness.

Magic was discredited by the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but interest revived in the nineteenth century, and various occult societies and magical fraternities were established. Modern neo-pagan witchcraft known as Wicca, includes both low sorcery and high ceremonial magic.

Magic Square
A magic square is a square array of numbers with the property that the sum of each row, each column, and each diagonal is the same. Magic squares have been found in ancient writings from many parts of the world, and in some cultures they were thought to possess magical or supernatural powers.

A n-by-n magic square (magic square of order n) contains n rows and n columns of numbers, which make up its n x n (n squared) elements. A magic square remains a magic square if the same number is added to each element or if each element is multiplied by the same number. Adding corresponding elements of two magic squares produces another magic square.

Mamaloa
A female voodoo priestess.

Maori Magic
Practiced by the Maoris of New Zealand. The priests, or Tohungas, are very like Spiritualist mediums in many ways acting as a bridge between this world and the world of the dead. The Tohungas are usually trained from early childhood, being presented for this training by their parents. Through years of prayer, fasting, chanting, and meditation, they acquire a "power" for prophecy and spirit communication.

Merlin
An ancient magician of Britain, who supposedly dwelt at the court of King Arthur. His origin is obscure, but he was probably an early Celtic god, who with the passage of time ended up being regarded as a great wizard.

There appears to have existed more than just one Merlin, the welshman who became a bard of King Arthur (and supposedly died after a terrible battle between Britons and their Romanized compatriots circa AD 570) and the warlock Merlin Caledonius. A probability is that both characters sprung from the same origin or idea.

In Arthurian legend Merlin was a sorcerer and counselor of Uther Pendragon and his son Arthur. It was on Merlin's advice that Uther established the Round Table and found his true heir through the sword-in-the-stone test.

According to legend, immediately after his birth, Arthur was given into the keeping of Merlin, who then took him to Sir Hector, who brought the child up as his own son. Later, Merlin tutored and prepared the young lad for his future role as king.

Merlin disappeared forever when Viviane, the Lady of the Lake, using magic he taught her, betrayed and imprisoned him in an enchanted thorn bush (some say a rock, and others a tower). The Arthurian Merlin probably represents an amalgamation of a Celtic sky deity and a Welsh or British bard who lived about AD 500. According to some legends, Merlin was the offspring of an unholy union between an incubus (from whom he inherited his supernatural abilities) and an unsuspecting, sleeping human female.

Necromancy
The conjuring of spirits of the dead for the purpose of divination or black magic.

Ritual
An organized set of practices for the purpose of veneration of a deity or for the practice of magic.

Ritual Magic
Magic that uses standardized rituals.

Runes
An ancient Norse and Germanic alphabet the symbols of which were ascribed magical properties and used mainly for charms and inscriptions, on stone, wood, metal, or bone. In Britain the earliest alphabet had 24 letters divided into three groups of eight. The groups were named after Norse deities: Freya, Hagal, and Tiu. Derived from the Etruscan alphabet.

In the late nineteenth century German occultists revived interest in runes, which became associated with Teutonic racial superiority. The Nazi swastika is the runic symbol for Thor's hammer, also symbol of the Earth Mother, and the runic S symbol was used by the SS, the Nazi secret police.

Scrying
Using magic to see into the past or future through a clear or shiny surface such as a crystal ball, mirror, pond or other still source of water.

Spell
Using magic towards the achievement of a specific goal.

Sorcery
A very ancient form of magic, designed to produce some desired effect, such as rituals for successful hunting or harvest; a process of casted enchantments to alter natural events. This simple magic involves practices such as tying and untying knots, blood sacrifices, and sticking pins in wax images or little dolls or puppets. It is also called sympathetic magic.

Sympathetic Magic
Type of magic where any action inflicted upon a representation of a person, animal or thing, it is simultaneously experienced by the real person, animal or thing. It is best exemplified by the myth of the voodoo doll.

Talisman
Specially prepared objects of stone, metal, wood, parchment and so on inscribed with magical signs, characters or drawings. Once endowed with magical properties, the object is believed to bring the owner good luck, success, health and virility. The power of a talisman can derive from nature, directly from God, or from a magical ritual, such as those described in the grimoires, textbooks of ceremonial magic.

Warlock
Commonly erroneously believed to be a reference to a male witch it can actually refer to either gender. In actuality it's a reference to a person who practices black magic. The word represents Old English wærloga, 'traitor', 'the one that breaks faith', literally 'oath liar'. The term was used to describe men who pretended to be witches in order to penetrate covens and betray them during the Burning Times. There are black and white magicians.

The white magician
Who uses his powers and knowledge to help others, humankind in general, and the universe. His goal is to further harmony and enlightenment too as many and as far as he possibly can; and above all, to ward off calamities and misfortune.

The black magician
A man who wants power for himself, for self-aggrandizement. He wants to be able to vent his spite on enemies and to satisfy all his desires, with complete disregard as to the amount of suffering and agony he unleashes upon the innocent. They are usually defined as those who have made a pact with the Devil but this is not necessarily the case. A magician or warlock may summon the Devil or one of his demons and remain a white magician, so long as his purpose is benevolent. On the other hand, a magician may have no interest in the Devil or may even deny his existence, but if his intentions are malicious and self-centered, he is a black magician.

White Witch
A person who practices magic for the benefit of others.

Wicca
A collective term for a grouping of pagan religions that gathers traditions from Greek, roman, Celtic, Egyptian and middle eastern beliefs. They are topically characterized by the practice of white magic and the belief in both a male and a female god. Comes from old English meaning essentially the practice of magic.

Witchcraft
The word for the practices of magic in a variety of forms.

Wizard
One skilled in wizardry. A magician, a sorcerer, a warlock, one adept in the black arts; the male counterpart of a witch. The word is derived from 'wise', and still means a very clever and/or skillful person.

Witch
A practitioner of magic or more specifically a member of Wicca. A person who practices witchcraft, popularly believed to have supernatural powers and to also perform sorcery, and often believed to be aided by spirits or a familiar.

According to the Malleus Maleficarum, witches, men or women who have entered into pacts with Satan, are capable of changing themselves into other creatures, raising storms, bringing sickness to human and animals, causing sterility, and flying. They consort carnally with demons and even with Satan himself.

Zombie
A corpse that rises from the grave to do the work of a bokkor. This involves the use of a drug that places the person in a coma for a period of time through the use of tetrotodtoxin (the poison in puffer fish). This state is indistinguishable from death even by modern medical science. The person wakes up a few days later in a grave and is then beaten into submission and forced to serve the bokkor.