110 Years of Spiritual Development Part 2 of a 3-part Series Read Part 1 HERE Preparing the Ground. Planting the Seeds. Nursing the Seedlings. In the beginning of my first post on this history, I mentioned the concept of The Enlightenment. Part of the concept of The Enlightenment was that people no longer needed kings or religious authorities. They could rule themselves. This was highlighted in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution which used the biggest words on the page to declare that the U.S. was being founded not for religion, not by kings, but by “We the people.” In 1901, 117 years after the Constitution was created, countries of the world were still controlled by kings

It is important for people who practice magick to be true skeptics. Too often I have seen people perform a ritual and then get swept away into a world where chance and mere happenstance are attributed to their magickal working. Such people constantly see magickal forces (often working against them) rather than more common explanations. If you're feeling sick, assume flu first, magickal attack last. As any person who regularly works with magick knows, most people don't believe in magick. Those who go around saying that every creaking sound in an old house is the sign of a ghost or the failure of a politician is due to their magickal ritual only make the doubters laugh more heartily. And

I attended Daniel Webster Junior High School (now Middle School) for 7th–9th grades. The school had a student newspaper. While I was working on that paper I learned a lot about journalism, from the "6 Ws" that need to be covered (Who, What, When, Where, Why, hoW) and the technique of writing (cover the most important concepts first and give details later), to how to paste the final copy on boards (now obsolete thanks to computers). I furthered my training in journalism while working for the UCLA "Daily Bruin" newspaper as a reviewer and columnist. Although I didn't take any college courses in journalism, I learned it from working with experienced and ethical journalists, editors and

Most people reading this will know that adding the "k" to "magic" is not merely an affectation. Rather, it is a way to discriminate between the entertainment known for pulling rabbits out of hats (magic) and techniques for harnessing internal and external energies that will help us change ourselves and our environment (magick). I like to define the difference simply as "Magic is an attempt to imitate magick, by artificial means, as part of entertainment." Although the spelling with the "k" has a long history (there was a time when manuscript copyists were paid by the letter, resulting in the many words with needless double and multiple letters), it was Aleister Crowley who is credited with