You do a magick ritual, spell, technique, etc., and to your amazement (or maybe not) it works. In fact, it works very well. So you mark this in your magickal journal as a method you can use to achieve successful results. Each time you use the technique it's successful. Woo-hoo! This is something that works. So you use this method repeatedly. You don't notice that the degree of success slowly decreases. In fact, you may be puzzled when you notice that this technique—a magickal system that had worked so well—isn't working at all. How can this happen? In a word, the answer is probably "focus." When you do something repeatedly, it is common for it to become a habit. You do the

This has been a year with numerous losses to our community. Not long ago, Ted Andrews, author of such popular and well-respected books as Animal Speak, left this world for the next one. Now, I am sad to report the death of actor Edward Woodward (June 1, 1930–November 16, 2009). Woodward began his career as a Shakespearean actor, performed in films such as Breaker Morant, Becket, and Hot Fuzz, and starred on television in the long-running British spy show, Callan, and in the U.S. show, The Equalizer. But for magickally-oriented people, the movie he'll be most known for is the original 1973 film, The Wicker Man. In the film, he plays a contemporary, straight-laced Scottish

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the many magicians who follow in that tradition, used wands for many purposes. The most common wand is used to control the Element of Fire. You can see this mentioned briefly in Regardie's book on the subject, and more fully described, including methods of construction, in the Cicero's book. The wand is the archetypal tool of the magician. Certainly, wands are used by Pagans in forms of simple tree branches (perhaps from different types of trees for different purposes) and by new agers made with complex crystal compositions. But to my knowledge, only the Golden Dawn required the use of a wire (or thin rod) of metal through the length of the

I'm back from Florida and the Samhain Florida Pagan Gathering. It was great! The weather was perfect and the people were wonderful. The music group, Coyote Run, really rocked the place. It turns out that one of the members had been to a lecture I gave (on Linda Falorio and Fred Fowler's Shadow Tarot) many years ago when I lived in Minnesota. Singer Kellianna was a down-to-earth delight with a powerful voice. Thanks to everyone who made FPG possible. I hope they'll bring me back sooner than nine years. The people at FPG put me up in a large and airy bunk room (the site is a 4H club campground). The land was grassy, gentle hills, with a large lake on one side. Every so often an alligator