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A Guide

Occult Glossary

The words practitioners actually use, defined without mystification.

Athame
A ritual knife used to direct force and mark boundaries. It cuts nothing physical; the edge is symbolic.
Banishing
Clearing a space or a person of unwanted presence and residue before or after a working. The standard opening and closing move of ceremonial practice.
Binding
Work intended to restrain a specific behaviour rather than a whole person — a tongue that will not stop, a hand that keeps reaching. Narrow bindings hold; vague ones do not.
Cord cutting
Severing a live energetic tie to a named person so your own attention returns to you. Acts on your field, not on theirs.
Correspondence
The traditional table linking a planet to its metals, herbs, colours, hours and spirits. It is how a practitioner chooses materials instead of guessing.
Demonolatry
Devotional practice directed toward daemonic beings as objects of reverence and relationship, rather than commanded servants.
Egregore
A thoughtform sustained by a group's sustained attention — a lodge, a fandom, a movement. Treated as a real actor in ritual once it is large enough.
Enn
A short repeated invocation used in Demonolatry to open contact with a particular spirit.
Evocation
Calling a spirit to appear outside yourself, in a defined space. Contrast with invocation.
Goetia
The tradition of the Lesser Key of Solomon and related grimoires: seventy-two spirits addressed by name, seal and office under formal constraint.
Grimoire
A book of ritual instruction — names, seals, timings, and the words to speak. The Key of Solomon, the Grimorium Verum, the Picatrix.
Heka
The Egyptian conception of magic as an inherent creative force, exercised through speech, naming and image rather than borrowed from elsewhere.
Hoodoo
African American folk magic of the American South, distinct from Vodou: rootwork, oils, candles, and Psalms.
Invocation
Drawing a power into yourself and speaking with its voice, rather than calling it to stand apart from you.
Jinn
In Arabic tradition, a created order of beings addressed under names and seals in the operative literature. See our guide to Arabic magic.
Necromancy
Work with the dead — ancestral, graveyard, and oracular. In practice it is more courtesy and offering than horror.
Petition
The written statement of intent placed inside a working. Specificity here matters more than any material used.
Planetary hour
The division of daylight and night into seven unequal hours, each ruled by a planet. The commonest timing tool in Western ritual.
Poppet
A figure made to stand for a person in a working, linked to them by a taglock.
Reversal
Returning pressure to its source rather than merely blocking it. Heavier than warding and not a first move.
Ruqyah
Recitation used for cleansing and protection in Islamic practice. Religious rather than magical in its own framing.
Sephiroth
The ten emanations of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, used in magic as a classification system for intent.
Sigil
A designed glyph condensing a name or an intention into a single figure that can be charged and carried.
Sihr
The Arabic term for magic or sorcery, broad enough to cover both love work and harm.
Subliminal
Affirmation audio mixed beneath music or noise, used for repeated daily reinforcement of an intention.
Taglock
A physical link to the person a working concerns — hair, a signature, a photograph, a full name. A working without one is aimed at a category, not a person.
Taweez
A written Arabic amulet, folded and worn or hung, carrying divine names, verses or letter squares.
Warding
Setting a boundary against what has not yet entered. Always preceded by cleansing, or it seals the trouble inside.
Wortcunning
The practical knowledge of herbs in the older Craft — which plant serves which purpose, and how it is gathered.

Where to read further

Browse the ritual catalogue or ask a question by private message or email admin@spellsbysaturn.com. Adults 18+.