[caption id="attachment_3466" align="alignleft" width="176" caption="Isaac Bonewits at the Gnosticon Aquarian Festival III, held September 20 - 23, 1973 in Minneapolis"][/caption] One of the first things Isaac said to me when he came to work at Llewellyn was to explain that his name, Bone – wits, meant “smart bones”—that he was smart. In many ways I think he set out to live a smart life no matter what profession or subject he was interested in. When he was allowed to major in “Magic” at UC-Berkeley, he went about the streets of Berkeley wearing a ceremonial sword knowing he would be attract attention and many opportunities to explain what a magic ceremonial sword was. I

By now, you probably know of the passing of a true giant, Phillip Emmons Isaac Bonewits. I did not know Isaac all that well, be we did spend many hours together at various festivals and I will always consider it an honor that he called me his friend. Actually, I knew Isaac long before I met him. He graduated from UC Berkeley in 1970 with a degree in magic and thaumaturgy, the only person to ever receive such a degree from an accredited university. The following year he published Real Magic. It was something incredibly new. Until that time, books on magick had primarily been either the mocking and debunking, or the repetition of historical texts. In this book, Isaac revealed his

In 1925, T.S. Elliot wrote a poem that is considered a classic, The Hollow Men. It's last two lines are the most quoted: This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. You may not have noticed it, but one of the greatest attempts to terrorize you has officially ended. On August 10, 2010, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, said that the world pandemic of Swine Flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, "has largely run its course… [and we] are now moving into the post-pandemic period." Many people thought this illness was going to decimate the world. But it has left with barely a whimper. The story above didn't even make the front

There have been very few movies that illustrate Paganism. The few that do show Paganism have fleeting glimpses of Pagan practices most often taken out of context, used as mere plot points rather than presenting real Pagan practices, and are usually given a very negative light. There is only one film I've ever seen that reveals what it might be like to live fully in an actual Pagan world and that presents real Pagan practices. That film, of course, is Robin Hardy's 1973 movie, The Wicker Man.* Warning! Spoiler Alert! This post reveals what happens in the movie. Although supposedly based on a 1967 novel by David Piner called The Ritual, at best it can be said that Piner's horrific novel