Imagine a time when the only popular reporting about ceremonial magick involved rituals that involved sex. In a repressive society—one which denounces sex while hypocritically leering at it—this will always be a problem. I remember when the news media only seemed to be interested in Wicca's "Great Rite." Today that has changed (thankfully!), but there's another fad that seems to have replaced this: Tantra. Tantra is actually an ancient spiritual tradition. It may be the world's oldest form of Paganism that has been continually practiced by a large population. It includes rituals, deities, a sigil that can be used like the Kabalistic Tree of Life, divination systems, magickal

As promised, I’m going to share some ideas about extrapolating the painting over journal pages technique to tarot readings. These are just ideas and I’ve not really worked with them enough to know which ones (if any) will prove useful. But that’s the great thing about a public forum, isn’t? We can share ideas and lots of people can play with them—and hopefully share their results and insights. I’ll keep you posted on my progress and hope you’ll do the same. For our experiment, let’s say you’ve done a five-card reading and are dissatisfied with the outcome. We’ll assume a belief that the “outcome” cards in a tarot reading are true if all things remain as they are.

Probably my favorite occult magazine of all time was Llewellyn's Gnostica. It covered virtually all aspects of the occult world, from Wicca and Paganism to the paranormal, and on to ceremonial magick. Later, when I came to work at Llewellyn, while looking through files, I discovered that a letter I had written was scheduled to be published in the next issue, an issue that was never printed. It would have been my first writing published in a major magazine. Many people confuse that magazine with Gnosis, another excellent magazine (often reading more like a scholarly journal). It's now gone, but you can get back issues from Fields Book Store in San Francisco. I hope at some time in the future