5x5 magic word squares are incredibly rare, with the Pompeiian Sator / Arepo / Tenet / Opera / Rotas being the best known by far.  (Futility Closet featured the Revel / Evere / Veoev / Ereve / Lever grid, which reads as a palindromic sentence though not as a magic square.)  But there are three other 5x5 word squares explained in The Young Wizard's Hexopedia, including this one: Balam / Avada / Labal / Adava / Malab.  Balam is a name for supernatural intuition, derived from the diviner called Balaam in the Torah.  Avada is an Estonian word that means "open."  Labal is the occult name for the revealer of all the mysteries of the Earth (described in The Lesser Key of Solomon).  Adava is a Marathi word for a winding road.  And Malab is a Somali word for honey, which is a code for "alchemical gold," which itself is a code for immortality.  Woven together into a grid, these words form a charm that conjures magic insight so as to reveal the mysterious pathway toward everlasting light.

From Belle and the Dragon by Arthur Edward Waite, 1894.

An Indian Wizard by Arthur Lillie, 1887.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Here's a random page from The Young Wizard's Hexopedia, our painstaking reconstruction of a tome that wasn't in the window display of a spooky old bookshop.  (See the very strange history of this book here.)

Here's the macabre genie of knowledge (???) from The Booster, yearbook of the Morristown High School (Indiana, 1917).  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

"He fetched a dummy figure of Viola, and tossed it into the knife-lined globe, addressing it: 'There, my fair Viola, I shall bind you, of course!'"  From Thrilling Life Stories for the Masses, 1892.

A soul thirsting for the ideal, from Belle and the Dragon by Arthur Edward Waite, 1894.

The great transformation from Belle and the Dragon by Arthur Edward Waite, 1894.

We're honored that the renowned philosopher of magic Robert E. Neale (author of The Sense of Wonder) thinks we've stumbled upon the secret to world peace with our Seance Parlor Feng Shui project: 

Prof. Oddfellow has carried the logical approach to nonsense to even greater heights than before. The logic of two absurd systems logically joined into a masterpiece of faith for fools that could stop us from killing each other. My delight lies in making up meaning, but his talent in this is unsurpassed. This treatise will lurk about on our coffee table waiting to preside over a promising guest. In the meantime, I might play with feng shui myself.

Woohoo!

"Arise!  Arise!"  From The Decameron of a Hypnotist by Ernest Richard Suffling, 1898.

"From these strange essences of life / May crystallize the white pearl which I seek!"  From Symphonie Symbolique by Edmund John and illustrated by Stella Langdale, 1919.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook.  [Inspired by and for William Keckler.]  The text reads, "It would be wrong of us to interrupt the cat seance."  This should also be of interest: How to Be Your Own Cat.

"Within this awful volume lies the mystery of mysteries."  From Golden Thoughts from Golden Fountains, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, 1868.

From Wehman Bros.' New Book of One Hundred and Fifty Parlor Tricks and Games, 1905.

An illustration from Világtörténelem a Polgári Fiúiskolák Számára by Gyula Kozma (1888).