This post is coming out late because I was in Las Vegas giving workshops over the weekend. Sometimes, in the most unlikely of places, I get an epiphany. In this instance my received information occurred in a most unlikely place: Caesar's Palace…or rather, next to it. I needed to get a replacement battery for my laptop, and one of the places that had it was in a high-end mall known as the Forum Shops that had been added to the Caesar's Palace hotel and casino.  Photo by Pedro Szekely under Creative Commons license This giant, indoor mall currently has over 160 high-end shops and 11 gourmet restaurants. It brings in more money than any other mall in America—including Minnesota's

Environmental Awareness No, I don't mean keeping track of the natural world and our impact upon it (although that is a good thing). Rather, I mean being aware of things immediately in your surrounding area. Perhaps you've been to a party or club where someone just keeps bumping into people and things. That person is not aware of their environment. It's important to keep this awareness. I believe it's a function of being focused on the present rather than having your attention in other places. Living in the present, in my opinion, is an important part of magick. In my experience, people without environmental awareness tend not to be good magicians. For the most part, I have avoided

Spiritual Intimidation In my previous post, I described why I decided to quit a small, Crowley-oriented group from when I lived in the San Diego area: First: One of the leaders attempted to cover up his clear lack of knowledge. There is so much information available today, it is quite impossible to know everything. One of the great values of groups is their ability to bring together people with a wide range of interests and centers of knowledge. When you don't know something it's quite likely there will either be someone else who does have that knowledge or who knows how to access it. But when a supposed leader gives a talk on a subject with superficial preparation and the inability to

Delta T and Delta C One of the challenges of being involved in the study of occultism is to find people with similar interests. The pool of occultists interested in studying magick is even smaller. The pool of magickal students who want to practice magick is smaller still. It is true that today you can find people on the internet who are practicing magicians…at least they claim to be practicing magicians. However, the truth is the so-called "social media" is antithetical to actual socialization. Besides, the time I'm talking about in this True Tale was pre-WWW, so other than through the use of "snail mail" and telephones, the only way to be part of a group  was to actually meet