Holy art Thou, Lord of the universe! Holy art Thou, whom nature hath not formed! Holy art Thou, the vast and mighty one! Lord of the light and of the darkness! The above expression of honoring the Divine is found in rituals of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It has been held up as showing that ceremonial magick is sexist. Some Golden Dawn temples have changed the vocabulary so it is not what they consider sexist. For example, the first line might be changed to "Holy are Thou, Source of the Universe!" and the last line might be changed to "Lord and Lady of the light and of the darkness!" To discuss this I would like to introduce you to a philosopher named Jacques Derrida

In my previous blog post I presented the idea (for those of you looking to sources, it comes from Neuro-Linguistic Programming) that there is no failure, only feedback. If something doesn't work it doesn't mean that you've "failed." Rather it gives you feedback on what you need to do to achieve success in the future. Of course, some of you might joke about this, wondering why you get so much darn feedback? The simple answer is that while feedback is wonderful, it won't do you any good at all unless you learn from it. Every week I receive questions from people asking if it's "okay" to do something in magick. Just today I received an email from a person wanting clarification as to the

There's something about the word "failure." It looks sad. It looks depressing. It literally reeks of the smell of...well...failure. The mind is a marvelous thing. Although I would contend it is unitary, we can define that aspect of the mind that takes care of everything we're not aware of as the unconscious. This unconscious does a lot of things. It controls our balance. It keeps the heart going. And wow, does it remember things! Even things you are not consciously aware of, it remembers. And it acts on them. And it's powerful! If you think you are a success, it will help you achieve success. But if you think you're a failure, your will sabotage your actions and lead you to wrong

There is a famous song by George and Ira Gershwin called "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" which they wrote for the 1937 movie, Shall We Dance? It was originally sung by Fred Astaire. In the song, they lyrics discuss two people who argue over the pronunciation of common words: "You like potato and I like potahto..." I remember seeing a comic who did a routine about this song, wondering what it would be like if a singer who was hired to sing it had never heard it before. Instead of the differing pronunciation, he sings: "You like potato and I like...potato." I still remember the uncomfortable look on the comic's face as he pretended to be the singer trying to figure out what this all meant. I