As you know from an earlier post, the occult community recently lost a great contributor and author, David Godwin. And now, over the past few days, including Samhain, the "Frankenstorm" Sandy has decimated parts of the U.S. Eastern Seaboard with a calamity that will reverberate for years to come due to loss of life, loss of property, loss of community, and more. If you can contribute to those in need, I urge you to do so. Unfortunately, there are individuals who would take advantage of those who are willing to give, so please check out any group to which you plan to donate before giving a donation. Although some people do not like the Red Cross, they are currently providing strategic

November is National Novel Writing Month. People all over the world are busy typing up their stories with the goal of 50,000 words by November 30. You can find out more HERE. In honor of NaNoWriMo, we'll look at some exercises from Corrine Kenner's Tarot for Writers using The Steampunk Tarot. In today's exercise, we'll look at gathering a cast of characters. In later posts, we'll flesh out one character and then give them something to do (plot). The first spread Kenner gives in the chapter on Character Creation is a simple line of five cards. They represent, in order: Protagonist, Antagonist, Protagonist's Foil, Antagonist's Foil, and Supporting Character. Protagonists,

There are magicians and there are those who play at magick… I was once participating on an internet forum discussing chaos magick. One person posted that the great thing about magick [meaning chaos magick] is that you didn't have to accomplish anything, you could just do it. I asked why go to all the bother of doing magick if you didn't accomplish anything? I also pointed out that one of the earliest names of what is now called chaos magick was "results magick," indicating that obtaining results through magick was the purpose of doing the magick. He didn't respond for a few days. I imagine several of his friends PMed him about this. Eventually, he posted that I "just didn't get it"