[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

The Perseid meteor shower can be viewed this year in the early morning hours of Friday, August 13. Observed for about two thousand years, the Perseid meteor shower is associated the comet Swift-Tuttle; the point they appear to come from (radiant) is in the constellation Perseus (hence the name Perseids). The Perseids peak in late July and early August, and can be seen across the sky (but the path of Swift-Tuttle's orbit makes them more visible in the Northern Hemisphere). So, how can you get the best seat in the house to watch this spectacular sight? Your best bet to view the shower, which generally produces between 50-75 meteors an hour (in the Northern Hemisphere; Southern Hemisphere

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