After Modern Magick was originally published, I began to receive a flood of questions. First they came by what we now call "snail mail." I've received questions from all over North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Southeast Asia. Over the past decade the number of those letters has decreased, but it's been replaced by email. Although many of those questions are unique, after a time I started to note that some questioners were asking versions of the same question. In the second edition of Modern Magick I addressed this problem with a new section called the "Modern Magic FAQ." FAQ, of course, is an acronym (or in the Kabalah, a Notarikon) for "frequently asked questions," and in that

Herbert who? There have been many magazines about the paranormal, UFOs, ESP, mysterious animals, ghosts, magick, the occult, etc. To the best of my knowledge, the magazine of this type that has lasted the longest is FATE magazine. It has now been in print for over 60 years and now, as a bimonthly, it continues better than ever. What does that have to do with this Herbert Spencer guy? I had the priveledge of being the Editor-in-Chief for FATE magazine for three years. During that time we increased the circulation four-fold and ran numerous articles from a wide variety of authors. The publisher of the magazine at that time, Carl Llewellyn Weschcke and Llewellyn Worldwide, gave me

I want to take this opportunity to talk about a couple of books. A mere 10 or 15 years ago, Enochian magick was a deep and convoluted secret. A few people dabbled in it. Most, if anything, just included a few aspects of it in their magick. For example, even the mighty Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn used Enochian magick as part of their system, but not as its own system. Frankly, it was such a complex system that I pretty much followed along in that tradition. But slowly, things began to change. Gerald and Betty Schueler showed how to completely separate the Enochian entities from the Enochian system, allowing people to experiment with those entities in ways that were comfortable to

As we come to the Winter Solstice, it is interesting that so many cultures around the world have found this astronomical event to be so important to their spiritual systems. Certainly it was important for ancient cultures, as the hope for a return of the Sun and the eventual growth of plants and increase in the number of animals meant their very survival. Although survival today requires much larger societal cooperation rather than simply a tribal ritual, it is amazing that many such rituals remain today. For example, one of the most popular festivals in Hinduism (the world's 3rd largest religion with about 1.4 billion followers) is Diwali (or Deepavali). There are a lot of reasons given