Glossary

The 70 terms that recur across the tools, each explained once with its source, and the tools that use it. The same words open from a term in a tool’s note.

Code

Base64base 64, b64: Bytes written with 64 printable characters, six bits to a character, so that three bytes become four characters and “=” pads the end. The commonest wrapping for data sent as text, and the first layer of many puzzles.RFC 4648, The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data Encodings (2006)Base Converter, Layer Decoder, Cipher Identifier, Character Map, File Forensics, Hash Generator, AES & HMAC, Cipher Pipeline
Chi-squaredχ², chi-square, chi square: Karl Pearson’s measure of how far counts lie from what is expected: the sum of (observed − expected)² ÷ expected. Frequency Analysis gives it for a text against each language’s letter frequencies; the chi-square attack on images applies it to the pairs of pixel values that hidden bits even out.Karl Pearson, “On the criterion that a given system of deviations from the probable … can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from random sampling”, Philosophical Magazine, 5th ser., 50 (302), 1900, pp. 157–175; Andreas Westfeld and Andreas Pfitzmann, “Attacks on Steganographic Systems”, Information Hiding (IH 1999), LNCS 1768 (Springer, 2000), pp. 61–76Frequency Analysis, Image Stego, Vigenère
Cribprobable word, known plaintext: A piece of plaintext known or guessed to be in a message. Tried at each position, it can give the key away; at Bletchley Park routine phrases such as weather reports were the cribs that opened the day’s Enigma settings.David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Substitution, Enigma, XOR & One-Time Pad
EnglishnessEnglish score: Unveil’s scale from 0 to 100 for how much a text reads as English, from its quadgram score per letter: English with its letters shuffled scores about 0, ordinary English 100. The keyless solvers rank the keys they find by it.Peter Norvig, “Natural Language Corpus Data”, in T. Segaran and J. Hammerbacher (eds.), Beautiful Data (O’Reilly, 2009) — code and dataM-94 Cylinder, Vigenère, Null Cipher
EntropyShannon entropy, bits: Claude Shannon’s measure of unpredictability, in bits per symbol. Random bytes have 8; English letters, counted singly, about 4.2. Compressed or encrypted data comes close to the maximum, which is how File Forensics finds it; for a password, the bits say how many guesses it would take.C. E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, Bell System Technical Journal 27 (3), 1948, pp. 379–423Frequency Analysis, File Forensics, Passwords, Cipher Identifier, XOR & One-Time Pad
Equidistant letter sequenceELS, skip, Bible code: A word read from every n-th letter of a text, forwards or backwards; n is the skip. Witztum, Rips and Rosenberg claimed in 1994 that Genesis hides names this way beyond chance; McKay and others showed in 1999 how the result follows from choices the authors made.D. Witztum, E. Rips and Y. Rosenberg, “Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis”, Statistical Science 9 (3), 1994, pp. 429–438; B. McKay, D. Bar-Natan, M. Bar-Hillel and G. Kalai, “Solving the Bible Code Puzzle”, Statistical Science 14 (2), 1999, pp. 150–173ELS Search
Error level analysisELA: Saving a JPEG again at a known quality and showing how much each part changes: areas edited since the image was last saved tend to change by a different amount from the rest.Neal Krawetz, “A Picture’s Worth: Digital Image Analysis and Forensics”, Black Hat Briefings USA (2007)Image Stego
Frequency analysisletter frequency, frequencies: Reading a cipher from how often each of its symbols occurs, matched against the letter frequencies of the language: in a simple substitution the commonest symbol is likely to stand for E. Al-Kindi’s ninth-century treatise is the earliest known description.Ibrahim A. Al-Kadi, “Origins of Cryptology: The Arab Contributions”, Cryptologia 16 (2), 1992, pp. 97–126Frequency Analysis, Substitution, Cipher Identifier, Enigma, M-94 Cylinder
Hash functionhash, digest, SHA-256, MD5: A function that turns any input into a digest of fixed length, made so that it cannot be run backwards and two inputs practically never share a digest. Collisions have been found for MD5 and SHA-1, none for SHA-256.FIPS 180-4, Secure Hash Standard (NIST, 2015); RFC 6151, Updated Security Considerations for the MD5 Message-Digest and the HMAC-MD5 Algorithms (2011)Hash Generator, File Forensics, AES & HMAC, Cipher Identifier
Homophonic substitutionhomophones, homophonic: Substitution in which a common letter has several symbols, so that the symbols occur about equally often and simple frequency counts fail. The Zodiac 408 and 340 are homophonic; Substitution’s solver reads them by quadgrams.David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967); David Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke, “The Solution of the Zodiac Killer’s 340-Character Cipher”, arXiv:2403.17350 (2024)Substitution
Index of coincidenceIoC, IC, kappa: The chance that two letters drawn at random from a text are the same. English gives about 0.067, letters at random 0.038. A simple substitution keeps the value of its language; a polyalphabetic cipher pulls it toward random, and splitting the text by the right key length brings it back.William F. Friedman, The Index of Coincidence and Its Applications in Cryptography, Riverbank Publication No. 22 (Geneva, Illinois: Riverbank Laboratories, 1922)Frequency Analysis, Cipher Identifier, Vigenère, Substitution, Layer Decoder
Kasiski examinationKasiski, Kasiski test, repeats: Finding the length of a repeating key from repeated stretches of ciphertext: the same plaintext under the same part of the key gives the same ciphertext, so the distances between repeats tend to be multiples of the key’s length. Published by Friedrich Kasiski in 1863.David Kahn, “Kasiski, Friedrich W.”, Neue Deutsche Biographie 11 (1977), p. 317 — on Die Geheimschriften und die Dechiffrir-Kunst (1863)Frequency Analysis, Vigenère, Cipher Identifier
Least significant bitLSB, low bit: The lowest bit of a number: changing it moves a pixel’s colour or an audio sample by one step, which nobody sees or hears, so it can carry a hidden message. Westfeld and Pfitzmann’s chi-square attack (1999) detects it from the pairs of values it evens out.W. Bender, D. Gruhl, N. Morimoto and A. Lu, “Techniques for data hiding”, IBM Systems Journal 35 (3–4), 1996, pp. 313–336; Andreas Westfeld and Andreas Pfitzmann, “Attacks on Steganographic Systems”, Information Hiding (IH 1999), LNCS 1768 (Springer, 2000), pp. 61–76Image Stego, Audio Stego
Null cipheracrostic, nulls: A message hidden in an innocent text by a rule, such as the first letter of each word or line; the other letters are nulls. The Sibyl’s verses Augustine quotes, whose initials spell ΙΧΘΥΣ, are an early example.Augustine, The City of God, Book XVIII, ch. 23, trans. M. Dods (1887), New AdventNull Cipher
One-time padOTP, Vernam: A key of random symbols as long as the message, combined with it once and never again. Shannon proved in 1949 that the ciphertext then tells nothing about the plaintext; used twice, the two messages can be read against each other.G. S. Vernam, Secret Signaling System, US Patent 1,310,719 (granted 22 July 1919); C. E. Shannon, “Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems”, Bell System Technical Journal 28 (4), 1949, pp. 656–715XOR & One-Time Pad, Cipher Identifier, Frequency Analysis, Cipher Pipeline
Polyalphabetic cipherpolyalphabetic: A cipher that changes its substitution alphabet as it goes: by a repeating key in the Vigenère family, by the motion of rotors or wheels in Enigma and the cipher machines. Alberti described the first about 1467.Paolo Bonavoglia, “Trithemius, Bellaso, Vigenère: Origins of the Polyalphabetic Ciphers”, Proceedings of HistoCrypt 2020, pp. 46–51Vigenère, Cipher Identifier, Frequency Analysis
Polybius squarePolybius, tap code: A grid of letters, five by five, in which each letter is named by its row and its column; Polybius describes signalling with torches this way. It underlies the tap code, ADFGVX and the Nihilist cipher.Polybius, Histories X.45–46, trans. W. R. Paton (Loeb Classical Library, 1925), LacusCurtiusPuzzle Codes, Grid Ciphers, Cipher Identifier, Layer Decoder, Cipher Pipeline
Quadgramtetragram, n-gram, ngram: Four letters in a row. A solver scores a trial decryption by adding the logarithms of how often each of its quadgrams occurs in English — a far finer test than single letters, which lets a search tell a nearly right key from a wrong one. Unveil counts them over 55 public-domain books.Peter Norvig, “Natural Language Corpus Data”, in T. Segaran and J. Hammerbacher (eds.), Beautiful Data (O’Reilly, 2009) — code and dataSubstitution, Playfair, Transposition, M-94 Cylinder, Frequency Analysis, Shift Ciphers
Simulated annealinghill climbing, annealing: A search for an unknown key: change the key a little and keep the change if the text scores better. Annealing also keeps some worse changes — often at first, rarely as the search “cools” — so it does not settle on a false peak; hill climbing keeps only improvements.S. Kirkpatrick, C. D. Gelatt and M. P. Vecchi, “Optimization by Simulated Annealing”, Science 220 (4598), 1983, pp. 671–680; Michael J. Cowan, “Breaking Short Playfair Ciphers with the Simulated Annealing Algorithm”, Cryptologia 32 (1), 2008, pp. 71–83Playfair, Transposition, Substitution
Standard deviations from chancez-score, z score, standard deviation: How far a result lies from what chance gives, measured in standard deviations: (observed − expected) ÷ standard deviation. ELS Search compares its finds with the same search on shuffled text this way; within two standard deviations is ordinary.Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller, “Methods for Studying Coincidences”, Journal of the American Statistical Association 84 (1989): 853–861ELS Search
Steganographystego, hidden message: Hiding that a message exists at all, where cryptography hides only what it says: invisible characters, the low bits of pixels, a pattern in innocent words. The word is Trithemius’s, the title of a book he wrote about 1499.David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Text Stego, Image Stego, Null Cipher, Cipher Identifier
Transpositioncolumnar, rearrangement: A cipher that rearranges the letters of a message without changing them: written in rows and read off by columns, along a route, or round a staff. The letter frequencies stay those of the language, which is how a transposition is recognised.David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Transposition, Cipher Identifier, VIC Cipher, Cipher Pipeline, Anagram

Occult

Abjad numeralsabjad, abjadi: The Arabic letters numbered in the old Semitic order — alif 1, bāʾ 2, jīm 3, dāl 4 … ghayn 1000 — used for numbers and for chronograms, which give a date in the letters of a phrase.Georg Krotkoff, “Abjad”, Encyclopaedia Iranica (1982)Isopsephy & Abjad
Aiq BekarKabbalah of nine chambers, nine chambers, Aiq Beker: The Kabbalah of nine chambers: the Hebrew letters set in nine cells by the digit of their value — aleph, yod and qoph (1, 10, 100) together, then beth, kaph and resh, and so on. Agrippa uses it to bring a name’s numbers within a planetary square.Agrippa, De occulta philosophia (1533), Book III, ch. 30, in Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. Joseph H. Peterson (Esoteric Archives)Kamea Sigils, Temurah & Notarikon
Anno LucisA.L., year of light: Freemasonry’s “year of light”, counted from the Creation set 4000 years before the Christian era: AD 2026 is A.L. 6026. The York and French rites use it; other rites count other eras.Daniel Sickels, The General Ahiman Rezon and Freemason’s Guide (New York, 1868)Calendar Systems, Date Resonance
Annual profectionprofection, profections, lord of the year: Moving the Ascendant on one sign for each year of life: at 1 the second sign, at 12 back to the first. The sign reached belongs to that year, and its ruler is the lord of the year.Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune (Amor Fati Publications, 2017)Hellenistic Astrology
Aspectaspects, conjunction, opposition, trine, square, sextile, quincunx: An angle between two planets measured along the zodiac and taken as meaningful. Ptolemy names four — opposition (180°), trine (120°), square (90°) and sextile (60°) — and the conjunction is counted with them; the quincunx (150°) is later.Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, tr. F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtiusNatal Chart, Transits & Synastry, Progressions, Ephemeris, Electional Search
Ayanāṃśaayanamsa, ayanamsha, Lahiri, sidereal zodiac: The angle between the tropical zodiac, counted from the equinox, and a sidereal zodiac fixed to the stars; it grows about 50″ a year with the precession of the equinoxes. India’s Calendar Reform Committee adopted Lahiri’s in 1955.Report of the Calendar Reform Committee (CSIR, New Delhi, 1955; M. N. Saha, N. C. Lahiri), pp. 109–110; Indian Astronomical Ephemeris 2025 (India Meteorological Department, Positional Astronomy Centre), pp. 372–374Vedic Chart
Behenian starsBehenian, fifteen stars: Fifteen fixed stars to each of which Agrippa, after Hermes, gives a planetary nature, a stone and a plant, from Algol and the Pleiades to the tail of Capricorn.H. C. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (London, 1651), I.32 and II.31, pp. 63–64 and 281–282Fixed Stars
Changing linemoving line, old yang, old yin: A line cast as old yang (9) or old yin (6), which turns into its opposite and so gives a second hexagram. Zhu Xi’s rules (1186) say which texts to read for any number of changing lines.Zhu Xi, Yixue qimeng (1186), “Kao bian zhan”, in Hu Fangping’s Yixue qimeng tongshi (1289)I Ching
Daśādasha, Vimshottari, Vimśottarī: A period of life ruled by a planet. The Vimśottarī system divides 120 years among the nine grahas, beginning with the ruler of the Moon’s nakṣatra at birth, the first period shortened by as much as the Moon has already crossed.Bṛhat Parāśara Horā Śāstra, trans. R. Santhanam (1984) and G. S. Kapoor: the navāṃśa (ch. 6) and the Vimśottarī daśāVedic Chart
Decandecans, face, faces, decanate: A third of a sign, 10°. The 36 decans began as Egyptian star groups rising one after another through the night; the faces give them to the planets in the Chaldean order, beginning with Mars at 0° Aries.O. Neugebauer and R. A. Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts, 3 vols. (Providence: Brown University Press, 1960–1969)Zodiac, Date Resonance, Natal Chart
Digital rootreduction, reduce, theosophical reduction: The single digit left by adding a number’s digits until one remains: 1987 → 25 → 7. For any positive number n it is 1 + (n − 1) mod 9. Numerology reduces names and dates this way.Eric W. Weisstein, “Digital Root”, MathWorld (Wolfram Research)Root Numbers, Date Resonance
Exaltationexaltations, fall: The sign in which a planet is held strongest after its own: the Sun in Aries, the Moon in Taurus, Mercury in Virgo, Venus in Pisces, Mars in Capricorn, Jupiter in Cancer, Saturn in Libra. The opposite sign is its fall.Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, tr. F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtiusZodiac, Hellenistic Astrology
Gematriamispar, gimatria: Reading a Hebrew word by the sum of its letters’ values — aleph 1 to tav 400, the final forms 500 to 900 in one system — and relating words with equal sums. The rabbis count it among the rules for interpreting Scripture.Solomon Schechter and Caspar Levias, “Gematria”, Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)Gematria, Gematria Nexus, Temurah & Notarikon, Isopsephy & Abjad, Tree of Life, ELS Search, The 231 Gates, Kamea Sigils
Great TableEnochian tables, Watchtowers, Black Cross: The four tables of letters John Dee and Edward Kelley received at Cracow on 25 June 1584, joined by the Black Cross into one and reformed in 1587. Dee drew names of God and of angels from it by rules the angels gave; the Golden Dawn later called its quarters watchtowers.Meric Casaubon (ed.), A True & Faithful Relation … between Dr. John Dee … and Some Spirits (London, 1659), pp. 168–189 and part 2 pp. 12–16; Getty Research Institute copy, archive.org; Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn, 4 vols. (Chicago: Aries Press, 1937–1940)Enochian Tables
Hexagramhexagrams, trigram, trigrams, gua: A figure of six lines, each whole (yang) or broken (yin), counted from the bottom; its lower and upper three lines are trigrams. The Zhou yi names the 64 and gives each a judgment and a text for each line.James Legge, The Yî King, Sacred Books of the East XVI (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882)I Ching
Ingressingresses, enters a sign: The moment a body enters a sign. The Sun’s ingress into Aries is the March equinox.Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed. (Willmann-Bell, 1998)Ephemeris
Isopsephyisopsephia, Greek gematria: Gematria in Greek: each letter is a number — alpha 1 to omega 800, three old letters kept for 6, 90 and 900 — and a word is read by its sum. Suetonius quotes a Roman lampoon that makes Nero equal to “killed his own mother”.Suetonius, Nero 39, tr. J. C. Rolfe (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), LacusCurtiusIsopsephy & Abjad
Julian DayJD, Julian Day Number, JDN: A count of days from noon UT on 1 January 4713 BC in the Julian calendar, without months or years, so that any two dates can be subtracted. Astronomy’s common time scale.Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed. (Willmann-Bell, 1998)Calendar Systems
Kameaplanetary square, magic square, kameas: A magic square given to a planet, its rows, columns and diagonals all adding to one sum: 3 × 3 for Saturn, rising to 9 × 9 for the Moon. Agrippa prints the seven with their seals and the numbers of their intelligences and spirits.Agrippa, De occulta philosophia (1533), Book II, ch. 22, in Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. Joseph H. Peterson (Esoteric Archives)Magic Squares, Kamea Sigils
Life pathlife path number, Path of Life, birth number: The number of a birth date, reduced to one digit or a master number: Balliett’s birth number (1904), Cheasley’s Path of Life (1916); the name “life path” first appears in Campbell (1931).L. Dow Balliett, How to Attain Success Through the Strength of Vibration (Atlantic City, 1904); Clifford W. Cheasley, What’s in Your Name? (New York: Edward J. Clode, 1916)Numerology Chart, Root Numbers, Gematria Nexus, Date Resonance
Lotlots, Lot of Fortune, Part of Fortune, hermetic lots: A point found by adding to the Ascendant the distance between two planets. Fortune is the Ascendant plus the Moon less the Sun by day, plus the Sun less the Moon by night.Paulus Alexandrinus, Introduction, tr. Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum, in Late Classical Astrology: Paulus Alexandrinus and Olympiodorus (ARHAT, 2001)Hellenistic Astrology, Transits & Synastry
Lunar mansionmansions, manzil, manāzil: One of 28 divisions of the zodiac, 12°51′26″ each, about a day’s motion of the Moon. Agrippa, after the Arabic tradition, gives each its name, its virtue and an image to make while the Moon is in it.H. C. Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (London, 1651), II.33 and II.46, pp. 285–289, 304–307Lunar Mansions, Ephemeris, Electional Search
Major and Minor Arcanaarcana, trumps, Major Arcana, Minor Arcana: The two parts of the tarot: 22 trumps, the Major Arcana, and 56 cards in four suits of fourteen, the Minor. The names are later than the cards, which began as a fifteenth-century Italian card game.Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot (London: Duckworth, 1980); A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica copyTarot, Tree of Life
Master numbersmaster number, 11, 22, 33: 11, 22 and 33, kept whole rather than reduced to 2, 4 and 6. Balliett set 11 and 22 apart in 1904; the three together as master numbers first appear in Taylor and Settles (1956).L. Dow Balliett, How to Attain Success Through the Strength of Vibration (Atlantic City, 1904)Root Numbers, Gematria Nexus
Mothers, doubles and simplesmothers, doubles, simples, mother letters, double letters, simple letters: Sefer Yetzirah’s three classes of the 22 Hebrew letters: three mothers (aleph, mem, shin: air, water, fire), seven doubles with a hard and a soft sound (the planets, the days, the gates of the face) and twelve simples (the signs and the months).Isidor Kalisch, Sepher Yezirah: A Book on Creation (New York, 1877), archive.orgThe 231 Gates, Tree of Life, Correspondence Atlas
Nakṣatranakshatra, nakshatras, lunar asterism: One of the 27 parts of the sidereal zodiac, 13°20′ each, through which the Moon passes in about a day apiece. Each has a ruling planet, which sets the order of the Vimśottarī daśās.Bṛhat Parāśara Horā Śāstra, trans. R. Santhanam (1984) and G. S. Kapoor: the navāṃśa (ch. 6) and the Vimśottarī daśāVedic Chart
Navāṃśanavamsa, navamsha, D9: A ninth of a sign, 3°20′. The 108 ninths are counted round the zodiac from Aries, so each sign’s begin at the movable sign of its element — Aries for fire, Capricorn for earth, Libra for air, Cancer for water — and the navāṃśa chart places each planet by its ninth.Bṛhat Parāśara Horā Śāstra, trans. R. Santhanam (1984) and G. S. Kapoor: the navāṃśa (ch. 6) and the Vimśottarī daśāVedic Chart
Notarikoninitials, acronym: Reading a word as the initials of other words, or a phrase from its initials. The Talmud reads the first word of the Ten Commandments, anokhi, this way.Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 105a: notarikon (William Davidson edition), SefariaTemurah & Notarikon
Orborbs, moiety: How far from exact an aspect may be and still count. Lilly gives each planet its own orb and adds half of each; Unveil’s charts give each aspect one orb: 8° for conjunction and opposition, 7° for trine and square, 5° for sextile, 3° for quincunx.William Lilly, Christian Astrology (London, 1647), Book I, Wellcome Collection copyNatal Chart, Transits & Synastry, Progressions, Fixed Stars
Paths of the Tree of Lifepath, paths, 32 paths: The 22 lines joining the sefirot, each with a Hebrew letter; with the ten sefirot they make the “thirty-two paths of wisdom” of Sefer Yetzirah 1:1. The Golden Dawn numbers them 11 to 32 and gives each a trump.Sefer Yetzirah 1:1–2, Sefaria; Aleister Crowley, 777 (London: Walter Scott Publishing, 1909)Tree of Life, Tarot, Correspondence Atlas
Placidus housesPlacidus, quadrant houses: Houses that divide into thirds the time each degree takes to rise to the meridian, and to set from it; named for Placidus de Titis (1657). They cannot be drawn beyond about 66° of latitude, where some degrees never rise.Placidus de Titis, Tabulae primi mobilis (Padua, 1657)Natal Chart
Planetary hoursplanetary hour, Chaldean order, unequal hours: Twelve unequal hours of daylight and twelve of night, each ruled by a planet in the Chaldean order — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon — beginning at sunrise with the ruler of the day. The order gives the weekdays their names, as Cassius Dio explains.Cassius Dio, Roman History 37.18–19, tr. Earnest Cary (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), LacusCurtiusPlanetary Hours, Electional Search
Pythagorean letter valuesPythagorean: A = 1 to I = 9, J = 1 to R = 9, S = 1 to Z = 8: the Latin alphabet counted round in nines, as Balliett printed it in 1904 under the name of Pythagoras.L. Dow Balliett, How to Attain Success Through the Strength of Vibration (Atlantic City, 1904)Root Numbers, Gematria Nexus
Retrogradestation, stationary, retrogradation: A planet’s apparent backward motion along the zodiac, seen as the Earth passes it or it passes the Earth. It begins and ends at a station, where the planet seems to stand still.Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd ed. (Willmann-Bell, 1998)Ephemeris, Transits & Synastry, Electional Search, Date Resonance, Progressions
Sectday chart, night chart, diurnal, nocturnal: Whether a chart is of the day, the Sun above the horizon, or of the night. The Sun, Jupiter and Saturn belong to the day, the Moon, Venus and Mars to the night, Mercury to either; a planet of the chart’s sect is held to work better.Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, tr. F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtius; Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune (Amor Fati Publications, 2017)Hellenistic Astrology, Natal Chart
Sefirahsefirot, sephirah, sephiroth: One of the ten sefirot, “numbers”, of Sefer Yetzirah 1:2, which the later Kabbalah reads as ten emanations, from Keter to Malkuth, drawn as the Tree of Life.Sefer Yetzirah 1:1–2, SefariaTree of Life, Correspondence Atlas
Shem HaMephorash72 names, Shemhamphorash, explicit Name, seventy-two names: “The explicit Name”: 72 names of three letters drawn from Exodus 14:19–21, three verses of 72 letters each, the first read forward, the second backward, the third forward, one letter from each. Agrippa (1533) gives each name an angel, from Vehuiah to Mumiah.Rashi on Sukkah 45a, Sefaria; Agrippa, De occulta philosophia (Cologne, 1533), III.25, McGill copy, archive.orgThe 72 Names
Shield chartMothers, Daughters, Nephews, Witnesses, Judge, geomantic figure: Geomancy’s chart of figures of four rows: four Mothers cast, four Daughters read across them, four Nephews, two Witnesses and a Judge, each added from the two above. The Judge answers; Cattan reads the right Witness as the one who asks, the left as the thing asked.Christopher Cattan, The Geomancie, tr. Francis Sparry (London: John Wolfe, 1591)Geomancy
Significatorsignificators: In tarot, the card chosen to stand for the person asking, laid down first in Waite’s Celtic Cross; in horary astrology, the planet that stands for a person or a matter.A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: William Rider & Son, 1911), Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica copy; William Lilly, Christian Astrology (London, 1647), Book I, Wellcome Collection copyTarot
TemurahAtbash, Albam, Atbah, letter exchange: Exchanging each letter for its partner in a fixed scheme: Atbash pairs the first letter with the last (aleph with tav), Albam the two halves of the alphabet. Jeremiah writes Sheshach for Babel, by Atbash.Jeremiah 25:26, SefariaTemurah & Notarikon, Shift Ciphers, Cipher Identifier, Cipher Pipeline, Layer Decoder, Gematria
Termsterm, bounds, Egyptian terms: Unequal parts of each sign given to the five planets, the Sun and Moon having none. Ptolemy reports the Egyptian and the Chaldean terms and sets out his own.Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, tr. F. E. Robbins (Loeb Classical Library, 1940), LacusCurtiusZodiac, Hellenistic Astrology
The 231 gates231 gates, gates, gate: Every pair of the 22 Hebrew letters, 231 in all, which Sefer Yetzirah calls gates: set round a circle, each letter joined to every other.Isidor Kalisch, Sepher Yezirah: A Book on Creation (New York, 1877), archive.orgThe 231 Gates
The four worldsAtziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah, Assiah, worlds: Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah and Assiah — emanation, creation, formation and action — matched with the four letters of the Name. Mathers (1887) places Keter in Atziluth, Chokmah and Binah in Beriah, the next six in Yetzirah and Malkuth in Assiah.S. L. MacGregor Mathers, The Kabbalah Unveiled (London: George Redway, 1887), Introduction §§ 67, 72 (the four worlds)Tree of Life, The 231 Gates, Correspondence Atlas
Tithilunar day, tithis: A lunar day: the time the Moon takes to gain 12° on the Sun. Thirty make a lunar month, and a tithi can begin and end within one civil day.Indian Astronomical Ephemeris 2025 (India Meteorological Department, Positional Astronomy Centre), pp. 372–374Vedic Chart
Triplicitytrigon, triplicities: The four groups of three signs a trine apart: Aries, Leo, Sagittarius (fire); Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn (earth); Gemini, Libra, Aquarius (air); Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces (water). Ptolemy gives each its rulers by day and by night.Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, tr. J. M. Ashmand (London: Davis and Dickson, 1822), Book INatal Chart, Hellenistic Astrology
Void of coursevoid-of-course Moon, VOC: The Moon from its last Ptolemaic aspect to a planet in a sign until it leaves that sign. Lilly holds that a matter begun while the Moon is void of course comes to little.William Lilly, Christian Astrology (London, 1647), Book I, Wellcome Collection copyEphemeris, Electional Search
Whole Sign houseswhole sign, whole-sign houses: Houses that are whole signs: the sign rising is the first house, the next sign the second, and so on round the zodiac. The earliest attested system, used in Hellenistic and Indian astrology.Chris Brennan, Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune (Amor Fati Publications, 2017)Natal Chart, Transits & Synastry, Progressions
Zodiacal releasingreleasing: Vettius Valens’s way of dividing a life into periods: from the sign of the Lot of Fortune or of Spirit, each sign in turn rules for the minor years of its planet, with shorter periods nested inside.Vettius Valens, Anthologies IV, trans. Mark T. Riley, pp. 70–77Hellenistic Astrology