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snake worship

(Encyclopedia)snake worship. The snake has been variously adored as a regenerative power, as a god of evil, as a god of good, as Christ (by the Gnostics), as a phallic deity, as a solar deity, and as a god of death...

spiritism

(Encyclopedia)spiritism or spiritualism, belief that the human personality continues to exist after death and can communicate with the living through the agency of a medium or psychic. The advocates of spiritism ar...

node

(Encyclopedia)node, in astronomy, point at which the orbit of a body crosses a reference plane. One reference plane that is often used is the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun (ecliptic). Since the moon's o...

synodic period

(Encyclopedia)synodic period sĭnŏdˈĭk [key], in astronomy, length of time during which a body in the solar system makes one orbit of the sun relative to the earth, i.e., returns to the same elongation. Because ...

sundial

(Encyclopedia)sundial, instrument that indicates the time of day by the shadow, cast on a surface marked to show hours or fractions of hours, of an object on which the sun's rays fall. Although any object whose sha...

city

(Encyclopedia)city, densely populated urban center, larger than a village or a town, whose inhabitants are engaged primarily in commerce and industry. In the United States a city is legally an incorporated municipa...

meteor

(Encyclopedia)meteor, appearance of a small particle flying through space that interacts with the earth's upper atmosphere. While still outside the atmosphere, the particle is known as a meteoroid. Countless meteor...

heating

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Typical warm-air heating system heating, means of making a building comfortably warm relative to a colder outside temperature. Old, primitive methods of heating a building or a room within it ...

aurora borealis

(Encyclopedia)aurora borealis ôstrāˈlĭs [key], luminous display of various forms and colors seen in the night sky. The aurora borealis of the Northern Hemisphere is often called the northern lights, and the aur...

Slavic religion

(Encyclopedia)Slavic religion, pre-Christian religious practices among the Slavs of Eastern Europe. There is only fragmentary and scattered information about the myths and legends of the pagan Slavs, and it is not ...