W_The 23rd letter. Has no equivalent in Hebrew. In Western Occultism some take it as the symbol for celestial water, whereas M stands for terrestrial water.

Wala (Scand.). A prophetess in the songs of the Edda (Norse mythology). Through the incantations of Odin she was raised from her grave, and made to prophesy the death of Baldur.

Walhalla (Scand.). A kind of paradise (Devachan) for slaughtered warriors, called by the Norsemen “the hall of the blessed heroes”; it has five hundred doors.

Wali (Scand.). The son of Odin who avenges the death of Baldur, “the well-beloved”.

Walkyries (Scand.). Called the “choosers of the dead”. In the popular poetry of the Scandinavians, these goddesses consecrate the fallen heroes with a kiss, and bearing them from the battle-field carry them to the halls of bliss and to the gods in Walhalla.

Wanes (Scand.). A race of gods of great antiquity, worshipped at the dawn of time by the Norsemen, and later by the Teutonic races.

Wara (Scand.). One of the maidens of Northern Freya; “the wise Wara ”, who watches the desires of each human heart, and avenges every breach of faith.

Water. The first principle of things, according to Thales and other ancient philosophers. Of course this is not water on the material plane, but in a figurative sense for the potential fluid contained in boundless space. This was symbolised in ancient Egypt by Kneph, the “unrevealed” god, who was represented as the serpent—the emblem of eternity—encircling a water-urn, with his head hovering over the waters, which he incubates with his breath. “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (Gen. i.) The honey-dew, the food of the gods and of the creative bees on the Yggdrasil, falls during the night upon the tree of life from the “divine waters, the birth-place of the gods ”. Alchemists claim that when pre-Adamic earth is reduced by the Alkahest to its first substance, it is like clear water. The Alkahest is “the one and the invisible, the water, the first principle, in the second transformation”.

We (Scand.). One of the three gods—Odin, Wili and We—who kill the giant Ymir (chaotic force), and create the world out of his body, the primordial substance.

Werdandi (Scand.). See “ Nörns ”, the three sister-goddesses who represent the Past, the Present and the Future. Werdandi represents the ever-present time.

Whip of Osiris. The scourge which symbolises Osiris as the “judge of the dead ”. It is called the nekhekh, in the papyri, or the flagellum. Dr. Pritchard sees in it a fan or van, the winnowing instrument. Osiris, “whose fan is in his hand and who purges the Amenti of sinful hearts as a winnower sweeps his floor of the fallen grains and locks the good wheat into his garner ”. (Compare Matthew, 12.)

White Fire (Kab.). The Zohar treating of the “Long Face” and Short Face “, the symbols of Macrocosm and Microcosm, speaks of the hidden White Fire, radiating from these night and day and yet never seen. It answers to vital force (beyond luminiferous ether), and electricity on the higher and lower planes. But the mystic “White Fire” is a name given to Ain-Soph. And this is the difference between the Aryan and the Semitic philosophies. The Occultists of the former speak of the Black Fire, which is the symbol of the unknown and unthinkable Brahm, and declare any speculation on the“ Black Fire” impossible. But the Kabbalists who, owing to a subtle permutation of meaning, endow even Ain-Soph with a kind of indirect will and attributes, call its “fire” white, thus dragging the Absolute into the world of relation and finiteness.

White Head. In Hebrew Resha Hivra, an epithet given to Sephira, the highest of the Sephiroth, whose cranium “ distils the dew which will call the dead again to life”.

White Stone. The sign of initiation mentioned in St. John’s Revelation. It had the word prize engraved on it, and was the symbol of that word given to the neophyte who, in his initiation, had successfully passed through all the trials in the MYSTERIES, it was the potent white cornelian of the mediæval Rosicrucians, who took it from the Gnostics. ‘ To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna (the occult knowledge which descends as divine wisdom from heaven), and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written (the ‘mystery name’ of the inner man or the EGO of the new Initiate), which no man knoweth saving him that receiveth it.” (Revelation, ii. 17.)

Widow’s Son. A name given to the French Masons, because the Masonic ceremonies are principally based on the adventures and death of Hiram Abif, “the widow’s son”, who is supposed to have helped to build the mythical Solomon’s Temple.

Wili (Scand.). See “ We ”.

Will. In metaphysics and occult philosophy, Will is that which governs the manifested universes in eternity. Will is the one and sole principle of abstract eternal MOTION, or its ensouling essence. “ The will”, says Van Helmont, “is the first of all powers. . . . The will is the property of all spiritual beings and displays itself in them the more actively the more they are freed from matter.” And Paracelsus teaches that “determined will is the beginning of all magical operations. It is because men do not perfectly imagine and believe the result, that the (occult) arts are so uncertain, while they might he perfectly certain.” Like all the rest, the Will is septenary in its degrees of manifestation. Emanating from the one, eternal, abstract and purely quiescent Will (Âtmâ in Layam), it becomes Buddhi in its Alaya state, descends lower as Mahat (Manas), and runs down the ladder of degrees until the divine Eros becomes, in its lower, animal manifestation, erotic desire. Will as an eternal principle is neither spirit nor substance but everlasting ideation. As well expressed by Schopenhauer in his Parerga, “ in sober reality there is neither matter nor spirit. The tendency to gravitation in a stone is as unexplainable as thought in the human brain. . . If matter can—no one knows why——fall to the ground, then it can also—no one knows why—-think. . . . As soon, even in mechanics, as we trespass beyond the purely mathematical, as soon as we reach the inscrutable adhesion, gravitation, and so on, we are faced by phenomena which are to our senses as mysterious as the WILL.”

Wisdom. The “ very essence of wisdom is contained in the Non- Being ”. say the Kabbalists; but they also apply the term to the WORD or Logos, the Demiurge, by which the universe was called into existence. “The one Wisdom is in the Sound ”, say the Occultists; the Logos again being meant by Sound, which is the substratum of Âkâsa. Says the Zohar, the “ Book of Splendour” “It is the Principle of all the Principles, the mysterious Wisdom, the crown of all that which there is of the most High”. (Zohar, iii., fol. 288, Myers Qabbalah.) And it is explained, “Above Kether is the Ayin, or Ens, i.e., Ain, the NOTHING”. “It is so named because we do not know, and it is impossible to know, that which there is in that Principle, because . . . it is above Wisdom itself.” (iii., fol. 288.) This shows that the real Kabbalists agree with the Occultists that the essence, or that which is in the principle of Wisdom, is still above that highest Wisdom.

Wisdom Religion. The one religion which underlies all the now-existing creeds. That “faith” which, being primordial, and revealed directly to human kind by their progenitors and informing EGOS (though the Church regards them as the “fallen angels”), required no “grace”, nor blind faith to believe, for it was knowledge. (See “Gupta Vidyâ,” Hidden Knowledge.) It is on this Wisdom Religion that Theosophy is based.

Witch. From the Anglo-Saxon word wicce, German wissen, “to know”, and wikken, “to divine”. The witches were at first called “wise women”, until the day when the Church took it unto herself to follow the law of Moses, which put every “witch” or enchantress to death.

Witchcraft. Sorcery, enchantment, the art of throwing spells and using black magic.

Witches’ Sabbath. The supposed festival and gathering of witches in some lonely spot, where the witches were accused of conferring directly with the Devil. Every race and people believed in it, and some believe in it still. Thus the chief headquarters and place of meeting of all the witches in Russia is said to be the Bald Mountain (Lyssaya Gorâ), near Kief, and in Germany the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains. In old Boston, U.S.A., they met near the “Devil’s Pond ”, in a large forest which has now disappeared. At Salem, they were put to death almost at the will of the Church Elders, and in South Carolina a witch was burnt as late as 1865. In Germany and England they were murdered by Church and State in thousands, being forced to lie and confess under torture their participation in the “ Witches’ Sabbath ”.

Wittoba (Sk.). A form of Vishnu. Moor gives in his Hindu Pantheon the picture of Wittoba crucified in Space; and the Rev. Dr. Lundy maintains (Monumental Christianity) that this engraving is anterior to Christianity and is the crucified Krishna, a Saviour, hence a concrete prophecy of Christ.
(See Isis Unveiled, II., 557,

Wizard. A wise man. An enchanter, or sorcerer.

Wodan (Saxon). The Scandinavian Odin, Votan, or Wuotan.

The Soma, the sacrificial drink of the Hindus, is that sacred beverage. For, at the creation of the prima materia, while the grossest portions of it were used for the physical embryo-world, its more divine essence pervaded the universe, invisibly permeating and enclosing within its ethereal waves the newly-born infant, developing and stimulating it to activity as it slowly evolved out of the eternal chaos. From the poetry of abstract conception, these mundane myths gradually passed into the concrete images of cosmic symbols, as archæology now finds them.” Another and still more usual prefix to all these objects is
“Mundane”. (See “Mundane Egg”, “Mundane Tree”, and “Yggdrasil”.)

Worlds, the Four. The Kabbalists recognise Four Worlds of Existence: viz., Atziluth or archetypal ; Briah or creative, the first reflection of the highest; Yetzirah or formative; and Assiah, the ‘World of Shells or Klippoth, and the material universe. The essence of Deity concentrating into the Sephiroth is first manifested in the Atziluthic World, and their reflections are produced in succession in each of the four planes, with gradually lessening radiance and purity, until the material universe is arrived at. Some authors call these four planes the intellectual, Moral, Sensuous, and Material Worlds. [w.w.w.]

Worlds, Inferior and Superior. The Occultists and the Kabbalists agree in dividing the universe into superior and inferior worlds, the worlds of Idea and the worlds of Matter. “As above, so below”, states the Hermetic philosophy. This lower world is formed on its prototype—the higher world; and “everything in the lower is but an image (a reflection) of the higher”. (Zohar, ii., fol. 2oa.)