Esoteric Glossary

This Glossary contains most of the more important terms used in this series of works. The meanings assigned to these words are as eso­tericists understand them, and thus may not necessarily agree with the strict literal meanings as defined by some other authors. Most of the technical terms are Sanskrit, unless otherwise stated. We have omitted the grammatical marks given to most Sanskrit words for the most part, as they are con­fusing to the average reader, who does not have the neces­sary grounding in classic Sanskrit, and they add little to the meaning of the word. For more obscure terms, and sometimes further detail, stu­dents should refer to the Theosophical Glossary and the Glossary at the back of the sixth Volume of The Secret Doc­trine, both by H.P. Blavatsky, and from which my glossary has partly been culled. Failing this, good Sanskrit, Mythological, Bibli­cal and Kabbalistic dictionaries could also be consulted. We have added little mythological or astrological detail in this glossary, for such in­formation is readily available from other sources.

It should also be noted that there are various ways of spelling many of the Sanskrit terms, mainly because of the pe­culiarities of the silent “h”, thus cakra, meaning “wheel” is also more usually spelled chakra, Shambhala, becomes Shamballa, sakti, becomes shakti etc. There is no real uniformity of spelling, each author using his own system as to which of the various grammatical marks to use or omit. This thus al­ters the spelling, which after all is based on the phonetics of the word translated into the English. We have used the most common mod­ern ren­ditions of the various Sanskrit terms.