Spiritual traditions tend to follow a specific path: growth, stagnation, death. During the stagnation period, spiritual traditions lock down their beliefs, put them in stone, refuse to change (or are exceedingly slow to change), and attack anyone who dares to challenge the leaders' orthodoxy. We see this now in many spiritual traditions. Some major traditions even have supposedly separate organizations that attack those who dispute their power and position as head of the tradition. You can see this now in some Christian sects that cling to the past. One even has a separate "league" to protect their closed version of spirituality. The period of growth, on the other hand, is often one of

My friend, the late Scott Cunningham, was born today, June 27, in 1956. He would have been 56 years old today. Instead, he passed on my birthday, March 28, in 1993. He was just 36 when the Goddess called him to the Summerlands, and that was far too soon. Before Scott, Wicca was primarily passed on within the coven structure. In order to become a Wiccan you had to find a coven and study with them. If you couldn’t find a coven, or there was no coven near you, well, you were just out of luck. Scott’s book, Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, gave instructions on how any individual could come to love the Goddess and become a Wiccan. In the years that followed, Solitary

Last night, I had a dream. In it, I was observing a friend as she astral projected. Now, that was interesting enough, but suddenly, I saw, superimposed, the backs of Tarot cards. I immediately knew what this meant: a design for a new Tarot spread. First, here was something like the image I saw: This image is a modification of a photo I took as a design basis for illustrations in the latest edition of Modern Magick. My model was Regan, known as High Priestess, who is a talented dancer, actress, composer and musician. In this style of astral projection you visualize your astral self turning to face your physical self and pushing up and away from the physical body. This method is

If you've ever seen a "slasher" film, this scenario is going to be familiar to you: The mad, "pure evil" slasher comes after his victim with an axe. There's a loud "thump!" and a scream. The victim looks in horror at his shoulder, now issuing copious spurts of fake red blood. Jason Voorhees character from the Friday the 13th Movies © 2003 New Line Cinema There's no doubt. The mad monster is evil. Pure evil. There's no way he or his actions could be described other than calling him evil. *   *   *   * Let's move to a different film, a Western. It's been a long cattle drive. Curiously, the never-shoot-first hero's clothes are still white while everyone else's are dusty and dirty.