Topic: The Magickal Web

With religion immersed in culture and politics, atheists boost efforts to ensure their side is heard.

Evident from the success of films like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and The Da Vinci Code, religion is as much a cultural discussion today as it is spiritual. Religion is also incredibly political in the 21st century, when coupled with the ascendancy of the religious right, a post-9/11 rise in spirituality, and a President who speaks candidly about his faith.

Shawn Poirier talked to the dead for a living. Now he is among them.

After a rocket-propelled grenade struck Army Sgt. Patrick Dana Stewart's helicopter Sept. 25, 2005, in Afghanistan, his widow, Roberta, faced religious prejudice.

Kyabje Khyentse Chokyi Lodro of Dzongsar was the greatest master of many lineages of this century. He was born in the Water Snake year of the fifteenth Rabjung (1893) at Rekhe Ajam near Kathok Monastery. His father was a tantric master called Gyurme Tsewang Gyatso, the grandson of Terton Dudul Rolpatsal of Ser Valley of Amdo, and his mother was Tsultrim Tso of Ser Valley of Amdo. His father named him Jamyang Chokyi Lodro.

Theban script was created by Honorius in the 12th century as a way to encode other writing (likely Latin at the time). This alphabet is also sometimes called the Runes of Honorius, or the Witch's Alphabet because it's been adopted by many modern-day witches.

This is the year of the departed. On July 21, fateful day, we learn whether Harry Potter lives or dies. Two deaths are predicted by his creator, J.K.Rowling, but will one of them be Harry’s? Even as we wait, breathless with anticipation, Inspector Rebus is shuffling off into an uncertain future; Ian Rankin is writing his world-weary detective out of the script. To die, to sleep? Only the author knows. But Rebus, it seems, has solved his last case. From now on, we will have to be content with Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s indefatigable lady detective, still ticking over at the end of Alexander McCall Smith’s latest volume, like the engines her husband repairs at the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The well-oiled storyline runs smoothly on — “like life”, she remarks contentedly. But for how long?

In my last two posts on Islamabad I talked about the woods and the forest trails that I love so much and take to them whenever I can.

In all of the magical arts, there exist two basic types of magic used today in witchcraft and in in the occult societies. These are Traditional Magic, also known as Folk Magic, and Ceremonial Magick, also known as High Magick.

Eleven years ago, I first traveled to Nepal, for the first of three subsequent trekking holidays. As so often is the case with American tourists who first visit South Asia, I was drawn primarily by geographical considerations: the scenery, terrain, and relatively remote location. Additionally, as a student of comparative religions, I was fascinated with Hinduism and Buddhism and wished to gain a deeper understanding of these faiths.

My first winter in Eastern Washington was bitter. I had lived in California previously, and I didn’t know how to function in really cold, snowy, weather. I wandered bewildered through a world blanketed in white. Large, soft, snowflakes fell on my head, and my feet sank deep into the powdery coldness. Snow slid over the tops of my boots, encrusted the hems of my jeans and soaked my feet. It was cold, miserable and hard to get around. But it was also beautiful. The snow caused the land around me to shape shift into a pure, white, sparkling expanse. I got to know a phenomenon called “freezing fog,” when the fog moves in despite the low temperatures, and freezes onto everything it touches, coating the branches of trees with crystals of ice. The ice, though slippery and dangerous, had a beauty that caught my breath. It was powerful, and because it is a force of nature, I began to wonder how its power could be used magickally.