While reading Mongoose's Infernum, I came across mention of "iliaster." One google search led to another, and I found myself referring to Paracelsus, Steven Brust's To Reign in Hell, Carl Jung, and so on. The search results have been screwed up by extraneous anime garbage, but I managed to find the origin and etymology of these words.
Iliaster and cagaster, also known as iliastrum and cacoastrum and other permutations, (the former sometimes spelled with a "y" at the start) are neologisms from the work of medieval alchemist Paracelsus. I've been completely unable to determine what they actually represent in his works due to a lack of reference material (fuck you internet), but I have been able to determine their etymology.
Iliaster, iliastrum, yliaster, or yliastrum et al comes from Latin hȳlē ("fundamental matter") + -aster/-astrum ("incomplete resemblance") or astēr/astrum ("star"). Possibly a play on the resemblance between the latter. Therefore, it means something like "matter of the stars" and/or "matter-like." Wikipedia calls it a synonym for prima materia.
Cacoastrum, cagaster, or cagastrum et al comes from Greek-derived caco- ("bad") and/or Latin cacō ("to defecate") and the same suffix as above. Again, possibly a play on the resemblance between the two. Therefore, it means something like "an ill star" and/or "shit of the stars." The former sense was used as a term in medicine relating to germ theory.
Fiction goes in completely different directions:
- Infernum used iliaster as the name for the power source used by demons and angels, which was only produced by God and human souls.
- To Reign in Hell used cacoastrum as the name for the substance of raw chaos and iliaster for the stuff of order.
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