Wands (suit of)

The Minor Arcana Cards The Suit of Wands (14 cards) represent the following:* The three fiery astrological signs of Leo, Aries & Sagittarius* The element of fire* The career aspect of our daily lives* The letter Yod (Primal Energy) of the Tetragrammaton.

The suit consists of :

The Ace of WandsThe Root of the Powers of Fire

The Two of WandsThe Lord of Dominion

The Three of WandsThe Lord of Established Strength

The Four of WandsThe Lord of Perfected Work

The Five of WandsThe Lord of Strife

The Six of WandsThe Lord of Victory

The Seven of WandsThe Lord of Valour

The Eight of WandsThe Lord of Swiftness

The Nine of WandsThe Lord of Great Strength

The Ten of WandsThe Lord of Oppression

The Page of WandsThe Princess of the Shining Flame; The Rose of the Palace of FireAppropriate CharacteristicsHair Colour: Red or BlondEye Colour: Blue

The Lord of the Flame and the Lightening; The King of the Spirits of FireAppropriate CharacteristicsHair Colour: BlondEye Colour: Blue or Grey

The Queen of the Thrones of FlameAppropriate CharacteristicsHair Colour:Red or BlondEye Colour: Blue or Brown

The Prince of the Chariot of FireAppropriate CharacteristicsHair Colour:Red or BlondEye Colour: Grey or Hazel

Warlock

Warlock n : the official dictionary definition of a warlock is as follows: "a male version of a witch, wizard, magician or conjurer."

However there is much debate about the real meaning of the word among witches, many of whom find the term that is often applied to a male witch, grossly offensive.

Exactly how the word became associated with witches remains one of speculation. The term "oath breaker" may have been applied to witches as they "broke their oaths with the Christian church".

However some modern witches may apply the term "warlocking" to the ejection of a member from a coven.An alternative theory about the association of the word warlock with witchcraft, lies somewhere in the late 1500's. The story goes, that a Scot went against the wishes of his clan to become a Catholic priest.

This resulted in his expulsion from his clan. Also at that time the term warlock was applied to him (which in Gaelic, has the meaning of traitor). This same priest was subsequently named in a 'witch hunt' and may have perished along with 50 others that were persecuted and burned for being witches, as was the usual punishment for the time. From that day, his clan branded him a warlock or traitor and never ever spoke his name.The term has also been used as an "epithet for the 'Devil'." However the modern idea of an evil sorcerer did not emerge until the 14th century.

Weeping Statues

Weeping Statues : are statues that have the ability to display certain aspects of human behaviour, such as weeping or bleeding. There have also been reports of paintings that can exhibit this unusual phenomenon.

Although this phenomenon is not exclusive to the Catholic Church, most of its reports in the past have tended to originate from Catholic countries in Europe. An example of a weeping statue is contained in the newspaper report below.

"A six-inch-high porcelain statue began weeping tears of blood. The liquid staining the image is genuinely blood, and human at that. The Santiago coroner's office pronounced the substance is type O-4 human blood. The statue weeps regularly, particularly in the presence of children."

Werewolves

Werewolf n : These are creatures that are said to turn from humans into wolves. The plant wolfsbane (monkshood) and shooting the animal with blessed silver bullets, were said to be a deterrent for these creatures.In the middle of the Dark Ages, Europe’s population lived in very real fear of werewolves.

The signs that were used to determine whether or not someone was a werewolf included:

hairy hands or feet-

small and pointed ears that were generally sited quite low and towards the back of the head-

thick eyebrows that meet in the middle-

protruding teeth- red tinged, curled fingernails-

long third fingers-

persons who drank at a wolves watering hole.-

persons who ate wolves or their brains-

persons who were killed by wolves

Whistling Ghosts

Whistling Ghosts : are a phenomenon that is native to a tiny coral isle in the Southern Gilbert Group. The whistling ghosts are also known as the taani-kanimomoi or whistlers.

They are believed to be the ghosts of newly deceased relatives, who live in the air and fly up and down the islands learning everything that is going on. They are said to pass on their knowledge to anyone capable of understanding their whistling speech.

Witchdoctor

Sangomas are the traditional healers in the Zulu, Swazi, Xhosa and Ndebele traditions in southern Africa. They perform a holistic and symbolic form of healing, embedded in the beliefs of their culture that ancestors in the afterlife guide and protect the living. Sangomas are called to heal, and through them ancestors from the spirit world can give instruction and advice to heal illness, social disharmony and spiritual difficulties.

Sangomas have many different social and political roles in the community: divination, healing, directing rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witches, and narrating the history, cosmology, and myths of their tradition. They are highly revered and respected in their society, where illness is thought to be caused by witchcraft, pollution (contact with impure objects or occurrences) or by the ancestors themselves, either malevolently, or through neglect if they are not respected, or to show an individual her calling to be a Sangoma.

For harmony between the living and the dead, vital for a trouble-free life, the ancestors must be shown respect through ritual and animal sacrifice.

White Magic

White Magic, sometimes known as sorcery, is a conceptual system that asserts human ability to control the natural world (including events, objects, people, and physical phenomena) through mystical, paranormal or supernatural means.

The term can also refer to the practices employed by a person asserting this influence, and to beliefs that explain various events and phenomena in such terms. In many cultures the concept of magic is under pressure from, and in competition with, scientific and religious conceptual systems. This is particularly the case in the Christian West and the Muslim Middle East where the practice of magic is generally regarded as blasphemous or forbidden by orthodox leadership.

White Noise

White noise is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency. White noise draws its name from white light in which the power spectral density of the light is distributed over the visible band in such a way that the eye's three color receptors (cones) are rather equally stimulated.
An infinite-bandwidth, white noise signal is purely a theoretical construction. By having power at all frequencies, the total power of such a signal is infinite. In practice, a signal can be "white" with a flat spectrum over a defined frequency band.

Wizards

Wizard : is a term that comes from the Old English 'wis', meaning "wise", adept, a sage, or a magician skilled in the summoning of supernatural powers. Possibly one of the best known wizards in the occult tradition is Merlin who appeared in the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Xanadu

Xanadu n : as well as a place described in the 1980's hit of the same name, sung by Olivia Newton John; Xanadu is a fictitious place found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's wonderful but incomplete poem, Kubla Khan, which was published in 1816. Xanadu was in fact a place called Shang Tu, the Upper Capital and summer capital of Kubla Khan who was the founder of the great Mongol (Yuan) dynasty.

It was located about 180 miles north of Beijing. Legend has it that Kubla Khan built a great 'garden of delights' with a hedonistic 'pleasure dome' at the centre. It was here that soldiers were drugged and convinced that they were waking up in paradise. This was a clever ruse used to ensure that they would happily fight in the emperor's battles, under the mistaken belief that eventually they would return to the decadent 'pleasure dome' forever.

Coleridge and his poem helped to immortalise this. n : as well as a place described in the 1980's hit of the same name, sung by Olivia Newton John; Xanadu is a fictitious place found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's wonderful but incomplete poem, Kubla Khan, which was published in 1816. Xanadu was in fact a place called Shang Tu, the Upper Capital and summer capital of Kubla Khan who was the founder of the great Mongol (Yuan) dynasty.

It was located about 180 miles north of Beijing. Legend has it that Kubla Khan built a great 'garden of delights' with a hedonistic 'pleasure dome' at the centre. It was here that soldiers were drugged and convinced that they were waking up in paradise. This was a clever ruse used to ensure that they would happily fight in the emperor's battles, under the mistaken belief that eventually they would return to the decadent 'pleasure dome' forever. Coleridge and his poem helped to immortalise this.

Xenoglossy

Xenoglossy : is the ability to speak or write in a language that has not been learned and appears to be fabricated and non meaningful.

This type of speech can be associated with a trance state or certain schizophrenic syndromes. : is the ability to speak or write in a language that has not been learned and appears to be fabricated and non meaningful. This type of speech can be associated with a trance state or certain schizophrenic syndromes.

Yeti

Yeti : is a creature usually described as a shaggy man-beast that is only ever briefly seen moving across snow swept landscapes, leaving behind very large footprints.

Yin Yang

Yin & Yang : are two primal forces controlling the whole of the universe according to Chinese philosophy. It is thought that everything can be categorized by this balancing system of Yin and Yang. Indeed everything from people, houses and animals, to nations continents and the entire universe, may be determined by the balance or lack of balance of the Yin and Yang.

The ideal balance of Yin and Yang can be summarized in this diagram. The white (Yin) part of the diagram increases as the black (Yang) part decreases. When one part is at its height then the other is at its lowest ebb. Sometimes it is assumed that Yin is female and Yang male, however, this is not strictly true. For example, even though Yin is thought of as a predominantly feminine force, men can still possess it too.

Within Yin is the seed of Yang and vice versa, and as such, they form two complementary, yet also opposing forces. Together Yin and Yang make a whole, neither one is more important than the other. Below are some examples of how Yin and Yang appear and the opposing natures of these forces.

Yoga

Yoga : or union with the soul is popularly thought of as either a series of deep breathing exercises or, perhaps a rather strange set of holding postures. However, there is a lot more to it than that.

Although Yoga is not a religion itself it is sometimes referred to as the art of living based on the science of living, and can enhance sincerely held religious beliefs. There is certainly no incompatibility between the basic principles of yoga and those of the main religious doctrines.

In the textbooks it is variously described as a philosophy, an art, a healing therapy or an ancient classical science dealing with the search for and union with the soul. It is all of these. About 2000 years ago an Indian sage named Patanjali, wrote a treatise on yoga which had been practiced for many hundreds of years with no formal written texts.

In this treatise Patanjali defined yoga practice as stilling the fluctuations of consciousness, sometimes more simply interpreted as thought control, and set out the foundation and philosophy of Astanga yoga, the eight limbs of yoga, to achieve this aim.

Yoga Physiology

In simple terms yoga tradition maintains that the human body consists not only of the physical structure but also the electrical emanations from the whole being, with varying degrees of density, known collectively as the aura, in a ratio of 2/3 physical and 1/3 electrical.

The densest radiation of the aura consists of the etheric, which is contained inside the astral body, and extends just a few inches out from the skin, and the finest radiation forms the outer level of the aura, called the causal body. (In some religious disciplines this is also referred to as the nerve body and/or the akashic record.)

Yoga is sometimes referred to as the science of religion with the view that the human body is a vehicle for the spirit and soul (perhaps best viewed as the passenger and chauffeur!) It offers a number of tools with which to tune and rebalance the ‘vehicle’, so that it is able to attract the appropriate level and quantity of prana, and fulfill the human function.The full extension of the aura is usually judged to be approximately 3 ft. but is variable according to process, general health and spiritual enlightenment.

Yowie

Yowie : a longhaired, gorilla-like creature that walks on its hind legs. It is described as very muscular, with a black shiny face, two big yellow eyes, a short thick neck, a hole for a mouth with human-like fingers.

The yowie is to Australia and Australians what the yeren is to the Chinese.Some cryptozoologists believe that it could be some form of marsupial like an ape-man or ape, or that it is a modern-day descendant of Homo Erectus.

Zenna Cards

Zenner Cards n : these are a set of 25 cards made up of the following symbols: These cards are used in a card-guessing game to help test for the presence of ESP in an individual.

They are also known as ESP cards and were devised by the perceptual psychologist Karl Zenner. If you would like to try a computer generated zenner card test please click on the link at the bottom under useful links. There are more similar tests to be found on this site under Online-Esp Tests.

Zermatism

Zermatism : is a form of pseudoscience which was intended to show that all languages came originally from a single ancient language and that all art could be distilled down to a single series of universal symbols.

The theory was conceived by a man called Stanislav Szukalski who was born in Gidle in Poland around 1893 and died in 1987. "According to his theory, differences in races and cultures were due primarily to inter-species breeding between near-perfect ancestral beings and the Yetinsyn (humanoid creatures reputed to live in remote Himalayan valleys which some people call Abominable Snowmen".

Zeuglodonts

Zeuglodonts : these creatures are supposedly extinct serpentine whales, able to move about on land for short periods of time and for short distances.

Zodiac

The Zodiac : is an imaginary belt-shaped region in the heavens, 16[deg] broad, or 18[deg] broad, in the middle of which is the ecliptic, or sun's path.

It is made up of and divided into 12 constellations or signs for astrological purposes. In (Western) astrology it is represented as a circular diagram representing the 12 zodiacal constellations and showing their birth signs.

Sometimes the zodiac in conjunction with astrology is used in the production of a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly horoscope - this is a method of using the relative positions of the stars to predict a person's future it is a method of divination.

Zombies

Zombies : are a very real phenomenon typically associated with the voodoo practicing, West Indian country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola. Zombies are persons who have ‘died’ but are not really dead, they are alive in a state of being, referred to as the undead.

Evil sorcerers called bokors bring their victims back to a zombie state of life. This life is not a full life but a weird half-life where the zombie is incapable of thinking for itself, and it has no prior knowledge as to who it was. The bokors take their victims to remote areas where they are put to work as slaves. The whole idea of zombies is so ingrained in the psyche of the locals, that even the poorest of peasants are willing to pay quite large amounts of money to have heavy slabs placed on the coffins of their loved ones. This is thought to deter the bokors.

Zooform Phenomena

Zooform Phenomena : is a term coined by Jonathan Downes, an Exeter-based investigator of mystery animals. The term describes entities that outwardly resemble animals, but appear supernatural rather than corporeal.