Western Esotericism

Tradition224 entries

Symbol · Esoteric Symbols

Philosopher's Stone

Lapis Philosophorum

Alchemy's goal read as the soul's own: making the stone is the making of the one who makes it.

What it meansThe adepts called it the stone that is not a stone. Its formula, solve et coagula, dissolve and recombine, applies to the operator as much as the metal — which is why the literature insists the work cannot be done by a man who has not been changed by it.

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Tarot · Major Arcana

The Fool

Beginnings, Innocence, Spontaneity

The card of new beginnings, innocence, and taking a leap of faith into the unknown with an open heart.

What it meansWaite's Fool is not a simpleton. He is a spirit entering the world rather than failing in it — a traveller from elsewhere, numbered zero because he precedes the sequence instead of starting it. The precipice is the descent into matter, and the step is taken deliberately.

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Tarot · Major Arcana

The Magician

Manifestation, Power, Creation

Skill and will turned on the world — the same power that manifests can also manipulate.

What it meansOne hand to heaven, one to earth: the figure is a conduit, not a source. The four suit emblems lie ready on his table and the lemniscate floats above his head, so the power is borrowed and unlimited at once — which is why the same gesture reads as creation or as conjuring.

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Passages 1

Books and texts 26

Teachings 3

Practices 6

Symbols 45

Tarot cards 78

People 23

Beings 1

Places 1

Objects 2

Movements 11

Threads 27