Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Philip H. Farber, author of Brain Magick and the new High Magick: A Guide to Cannabis in Ritual & Mysticism. Right now, as I write this, the state in which I live is about to have a historic vote on the legalization of cannabis. The vote narrowly missed passing last year—and it wasn't because anyone in our state legislature was outright opposed to legalization; they were essentially quibbling over the details. Which means that it's going to pass, maybe this time, maybe the next time. It's all a very good thing—people will cease to be jailed and persecuted over their own cognitive choices, the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to all of

[caption id="attachment_7924" align="alignright" width="180" caption="The Yulish Tree by DairDair"][/caption] It’s that time of year again…time for gift shopping! Whether you celebrate Yule, the Winter Solstice, Christmas or Hanukkah with your family and friends, the season has come to be synonymous with the giving of thoughtful gifts, trinkets or tokens of goodwill. This puts some degree of stress on all of us; though giving is joyous, often the expense and energy spent on tracking down “the perfect gift” is not. I am a book lover, so I happen to think books always make good gifts. There’s no need to worry about whether it fits or is the right color; no need to buy

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Philip H. Farber, author of Brain Magick: Exercises in Meta-Magick and Invocation. When I was younger I took a perverse pleasure getting into religious arguments. While I’ve always tended toward agnosticism and never felt very strongly one way or the other about organized religions, I took it as fair game that anyone coming to my door trying to convince me to join their religion was a ripe target. I was often amazed at how proselytizers could ignore simple logic and profess faith in what I considered to be pretty far-fetched ideas. It was fun, but I eventually grew out of it. These days, the dialectic between religious zealots and

[caption id="attachment_7630" align="alignright" width="300" caption="photo by Kashirin Nickolai"][/caption] I saw a very interesting article this morning on what is purported to be the “most relaxing song ever created.” I highly recommend reading the whole article here, but to summarize with a quote from the article, The band worked with sound therapists to get advice on how to make the most effective use of harmonies, rhythms and bass lines. The result on listeners is a slowing of the heart rate, reduced blood pressure and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. This proves, once again, that our environments have profound effects on our brains, and thereby our entire bodies.