Glossary of Left-Hand Path Terms

This glossary defines the terms used throughout the Library, together with a number of terms common in left-hand path and occult literature generally. Where a term has a particular meaning in the Order's own texts, that meaning is given.

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Adversary: A figure who opposes an established divine or cosmic order, such as the serpent of the garden, the rebel angel, the bringer of fire, or the chaos dragon. On the left-hand path the adversary is usually honored as an image of the questioning intellect and the refusal to submit, whether understood as a real being or as a symbol. See Philosophy.
Aeon: In several esoteric systems, a great age of the world, governed by its own principle or deity. Some modern currents date a new aeon from the founding of their own tradition. The Order's texts make no use of the idea.
Anticosmic: Describing currents that regard the ordered universe as a prison or an error, and seek release from it. The Order does not share the view. See Currents of the Left-Hand Path and The Blind Maker.
Antinomianism: From the Greek for "against the law." The rejection of received moral law as binding simply because it was received. On the left-hand path, antinomianism does not mean the absence of ethics, but the insistence that ethics be examined and chosen rather than inherited.
Apotheosis: From the Greek for "making divine." The elevation of a being to the status of a god. On the left-hand path, often used as a synonym for self-deification.
Archon: Greek for "ruler." In Gnostic myth, one of the powers who govern the spheres beneath the demiurge and keep humanity in ignorance. In The Blind Maker, read as the unexamined habits that govern a life without being seen to.
Banishing: In many magical traditions, a ritual intended to clear a space of unwanted influences before or after a working. The Order's own practice uses no banishing. Its Gesture of the Open Ring marks the boundaries of a working without claiming to expel anything.
Baphomet: A goat-headed, winged, androgynous figure drawn in France in the 1850s as an image of opposites joined, and named for an idol that a medieval military order was accused of worshipping. In the twentieth century its goat's head, set in an inverted pentagram, became the best-known emblem of the adversary. See Faces of the Adversary.
Black Flame: In several currents, the self-aware and questioning intellect, pictured as a fire and often understood as the gift of the adversary. The Order's texts do not use the term, but they honor the same faculty in the serpent. See Symbols of the Left-Hand Path.
Black Magic: In common speech, magic done to harm. In some currents of the left-hand path, magic done by the self's own authority and for its own becoming. The Order uses the phrase in neither sense, and its texts contain no curses. See On Magic.
Blind Maker: The Order's name for the demiurge of Gnostic myth, read as the part of the mind that assembles a world and takes it for the whole. Also the characteristic error of the left-hand path: the self that mistakes its own horizon for the edge of reality. See The Blind Maker.
CC0 1.0 Universal: A legal tool by which an author waives all copyright and related rights in a work, to the extent the law allows, placing it as fully as possible in the public domain. The Order has used it for all of its works since 1 March 2019. See the License.
Chaos Magic: A movement begun in England in the late 1970s that treats belief as a tool, to be taken up for a working and then set aside, and that judges methods by their results. See Currents of the Left-Hand Path.
Chthonic: From the Greek for "of the earth." Relating to the underworld, the dead, and the powers beneath the ground.
Circle: In the Order's usage, a small and informal group of practitioners who work together without a head, dues, or grades. The Order began as one. See Working With Others.
Coil: In the Order's texts, one of the seven stages of self-initiation described in The Seven Coils. A coil is recognized by the practitioner who is in it and is never conferred, certified, or sold. Also the name of the fifth coil, the stage of integration.
Commons: The body of knowledge, works, and resources that belong to no one and may be used by everyone. Works in the public domain form part of the commons. The Order dedicates everything it publishes to it.
Current: A tendency of thought and practice within the left-hand path, held by many people and belonging to no single organization. The Order describes currents and names no organizations. See Currents of the Left-Hand Path.
Daemon: From the Greek daimon, a spirit intermediate between gods and humans. In modern esoteric usage, often an inner genius, guiding intelligence, or higher self. Distinct from the later sense of "demon" as a purely malevolent being.
Dakshinachara: Sanskrit for "right-hand conduct." In the Indian tantric traditions, the conventional, orthodox mode of practice, as distinct from vamachara. The source of the Western term "right-hand path."
Degree: A rank in an initiatory order, usually conferred by its officers and tied to a body of teaching. Also called a grade. The Order confers none, and the Seven Coils are not degrees.
Demiurge: From the Greek for "craftsman." In Gnostic myth, the lesser power who made the material world and, knowing of nothing above himself, declared himself the only god. See The Blind Maker.
Descent: The second working in First Workings, in which the practitioner deliberately meets an ordinary fear in stillness and observes it without fleeing. The Order's introduction to nightside work. Read Venom and Remedy before attempting it.
Draconian: Of the dragon. Describing the current that takes the dragon or serpent as the image of a primordial power to be awakened in the practitioner. The Order shares its emblem but not its cosmology. See Currents of the Left-Hand Path.
Egregore: A collective thought-form or group mind, said to arise from the shared attention, belief, and practice of a group. The Order keeps no membership and holds no group rituals, in part so that no such group mind forms around it.
Evocation: The calling of a spirit to appear outside the practitioner, to be questioned or instructed. Compare invocation. The Order's texts contain neither.
Faustian: Describing a hunger for knowledge that will pay any price, after the legend of the scholar who made a pact with the devil. Applied to the left-hand path as an insult and as a boast.
First Circle: The seven practitioners who founded the Order of the Serpent on 2 October 2010 and adopted The Shed Skin. At their own request their names are not recorded.
Five Disciplines: The five practices that support the work at every coil: the Record, Study, Stillness, the Working, and the Nightside. See Practice.
Gesture of the Open Ring: The Order's simple gesture for opening and closing a working: a ring traced in the air with the left hand, left open on the left side. It marks a boundary in time and does nothing more. Described in First Workings.
Gnosis: From the Greek for "knowledge." Direct, experiential knowledge of spiritual reality, as distinct from belief or learning received from others.
Gnosticism: A modern name for a number of religious schools of the first centuries, which taught that the world was made by a lesser and ignorant power and that knowledge frees the spirit. In some of their texts the serpent of the garden is the instructor of humanity. See Origins of the Left-Hand Path.
Goetia: From a Greek word for sorcery. The art of calling the spirits cataloged in the old grimoires, and by extension any magical work with daemons and the dead.
Grimoire: A book of magic, containing instructions for rituals, invocations, and other operations. In the Order's usage, a "locked grimoire" is any body of teaching withheld behind fees, oaths, or grades. See Against the Locked Grimoire.
Ground: The second coil: the building of discipline through the record, stillness, and study, kept until they are no longer effort but habit. Its characteristic danger is ritualism.
Hatching: The first coil: the moment a question about received belief is asked in earnest and cannot afterward be unasked. Its characteristic danger is mistaking novelty for transformation.
Hermeticism: A tradition founded on Greek texts composed in Roman Egypt and attributed to a legendary thrice-great sage. It describes the cosmos as the expression of a divine mind and the human being as its image. The source of the maxim "as above, so below."
Inflation: The swelling of the self, as distinct from its growth: the belief that one is already superior, chosen, or beyond the judgment of others. The danger of the sixth coil, and the characteristic error of the left-hand path as a whole. See The Blind Maker.
Initiation: A real and lasting transformation of consciousness and character. Ceremonies may mark it, but on the left-hand path initiation is ultimately undertaken by the self. The Order recognizes no initiation conferred by another person.
Inventory: The first working in First Workings: a written list of beliefs received before one could choose, read aloud and marked keep, release, or unknown. The Order's basic method for the Shedding.
Invocation: The calling of a figure or a quality into oneself, so that for the length of a working the practitioner speaks and acts as it. Compare evocation.
Keepers of the Library: The small, changing group of volunteers who maintain the Order's library and this site. Being a Keeper carries no rank and no authority over anyone's practice. Journal entries are signed by the Keepers collectively.
Kheper: An ancient Egyptian verb meaning to come into being or to become. Used in one current of the left-hand path as the name for the self's deliberate and unending becoming. See Self-Deification.
Kundalini: Sanskrit for "the coiled one." In the tantric traditions, a power pictured as a serpent lying coiled at the base of the spine, which the adept awakens and raises. The Order teaches no practice of this kind.
Left-Hand Path: A family of esoteric approaches whose aim is the strengthening and sovereignty of the individual self, rather than its union with or submission to something greater. See The Left-Hand Path.
Lodge: A local body of an initiatory order, and by extension the form of organization, with its grades, oaths, and dues, that Western occult orders inherited from the nineteenth century. Other orders give their local bodies other names.
Luciferian: Describing the current centered on the light-bearer: the figure of illumination, and of knowledge sought against prohibition. See Currents of the Left-Hand Path.
Magical Record: The written journal of a practitioner's workings, dreams, and observations, kept immediately and honestly. The most important tool in the Order's practice. See The Nightside Record.
Mask: A figure of the adversary taken on by a practitioner for the length of a working, with no claim made about what stands behind it. One of three ways of reading such figures. See Faces of the Adversary.
Night Pages: The Order's name for dream entries in the magical record, written immediately on waking and kept clearly separate from entries for workings.
Nightside: The hidden, feared, repressed, or forbidden side of existence and of the self. Nightside work is the deliberate engagement with it. In the Order's practice, one of the five disciplines.
Open Ring: The sigil of the Order: a serpent forming a ring that does not close, with the opening on the left and a single point at the center. Also the name of the seventh coil, the stage at which the practitioner gives their work away. See The Serpent and the Open Ring.
Open Working: A working announced publicly, with its full instructions, which anyone may perform during a set period without joining anything. See Working With Others.
Ophite: From the Greek for "serpent." A name given by their opponents to certain Gnostic schools that honored the serpent of the garden as a bringer of knowledge.
Ouroboros: The ancient image of a serpent swallowing its own tail, forming a closed circle. A symbol of eternity, self-sufficiency, and the cycle that renews itself. The Order's Open Ring deliberately leaves the circle unclosed.
Pentagram: The five-pointed star. With two points upward it is called inverted, and has been used since the nineteenth century as a sign of the adversary. The Order does not use it. See Symbols of the Left-Hand Path.
Pharmakon: Ancient Greek for a drug, meaning both poison and remedy. In the Order's texts, the image of transgression: a dangerous substance that transforms in the right measure and destroys in the wrong one. See Venom and Remedy.
Psychodrama: The understanding of ritual as a drama performed for its effect on the mind and emotions of the performer, with no further cause assumed. See On Magic.
Public Domain: The status of works that are not owned by anyone and may be used by anyone, for any purpose, without permission. See Open Access.
Qliphoth: In Kabbalistic thought, the "shells" or "husks": the shadow side of the sacred order, associated with the forces it excludes. Some left-hand path currents work with the Qliphoth as a map of the nightside. The Order's texts do not use this system, but practitioners are free to study it.
Recognition: In some initiatory orders, the term for a degree, on the view that the order only acknowledges a change the initiate has made alone. The Order holds that recognition, too, belongs to the practitioner and to no one else.
Right-Hand Path: In Western esoteric vocabulary, the family of spiritual approaches that seek union with the divine, dissolution of the ego, or submission to a higher law. The counterpart of the left-hand path.
Rising: The sixth coil: the stage of creation, in which the practitioner makes methods, works, and understanding of their own. Its characteristic danger is inflation.
Satanism: A family of currents within the left-hand path that take the figure of Satan as their central image, whether as a symbol of human nature or as a real being. The left-hand path is wider than Satanism, and the Order is not a Satanic body in the usual sense.
Self-Deification: The aim, on the left-hand path, of developing the self to the point where it is effectively its own god: sovereign, self-aware, and self-governing. Understood literally by some practitioners and figuratively by others.
Self-Initiation: Initiation undertaken by the practitioner without a conferring authority. The only kind of initiation the Order recognizes.
Seven Tenets: The seven statements of orientation that make up the Order's philosophy, from The Self Is the Center to What Is Gained Is Given Back. They are meant to be tested, not merely accepted. See Philosophy.
Shedding: The examination of beliefs and values one was given before one could choose, and the release of those that do not survive the examination. The third coil. The image is taken from the serpent, which grows by leaving its old skin behind.
Sigil: A symbol made or adopted for a magical or emblematic purpose. The Order's sigil is the Open Ring.
Simony: The buying or selling of sacred things, named for a magician in an early Christian story who offered money for spiritual power. Applied, in the history of the left-hand path, to the sale of degrees. See Origins of the Left-Hand Path.
Sovereignty: The condition of a self that governs itself, accepting no authority it has not examined and chosen. The central aim of the left-hand path.
Stillness: The training of attention through simple daily meditation, such as counting the breath. One of the five disciplines, and the first exercise in First Workings.
Tantra: A body of Indian religious traditions, Hindu and Buddhist, that use ritual, the body, and the imagination as means of liberation. The source of the terms "right-hand path" and "left-hand path." The modern Western left-hand path is not a continuation of it.
Theurgy: From the Greek for "god-work." The ritual art of the philosophical schools of late antiquity, intended to raise the soul toward its divine source. A right-hand discipline whose methods passed into nearly all later Western magic.
Three Tolls: Money, secrecy, and obedience, when any of them is asked in exchange for teaching. The Order advises leaving any group that demands them. See Working With Others.
Transgression: The deliberate crossing of a forbidden boundary. In the Order's practice, always directed at one's own conditioning and never at the rights or safety of others. See Venom and Remedy.
Vamachara: Sanskrit for "left-hand conduct." In the Indian tantric traditions, a mode of practice that made deliberate ritual use of substances and acts forbidden by orthodox religious law, in pursuit of liberation. The source of the Western term "left-hand path."
Venom: The fourth coil: the deliberate, measured confrontation with what one fears, forbids, and avoids in oneself. Its danger is poisoning, through recklessness or through cruelty. See Venom and Remedy.
Will: The capacity of the self to choose and to act on its choices. On the left-hand path, the faculty to be strengthened above all. In the Order's fourth tenet, the will is required to answer to reason.
Working: A structured, deliberate, symbolic action undertaken for the purpose of transformation. The Order's term for what other traditions call a ritual, rite, or operation. See Practice.