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

Last Saturday morning my wife Holly and I drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to attend the Pagan Pride day celebration. It was small, but diverse, and there were some great workshops. The area was covered for shade, but still hot and very dry. I hope next year the attendance will be even better. After the event my wife and I went to a party being held by some friends we hadn't seen in years. Sunday morning we got up early and took the drive home. As I wrote, the weather was incredibly hot and dry, and with stops (such as in the city of Baker where one shop is decorated in an alien—from outer space, not terrestrials from outside the U.S. borders—motif and they sell a wide variety of

Secrets of the Kabalistic Cross Part 1 In my previous blog post I described why the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram remains a valuable rite. In this post I'm going to begin looking into the first section of the ritual, known as the Kabalistic Cross. According to Regardie's The Golden Dawn, the book responsible for originally revealing the LBRP to most people, here are the complete instructions for performing this part of the ritual: Take a steel dagger in the right hand. Face East. Touch thy forehead and say ATEH (thou art) Touch thy breast and say MALKUTH (the Kingdom) Touch thy right shoulder and say VE-GEBURAH (and the Power) Touch thy left should and