Essays & Opinion Archive

Where Do Demons Live?: Everything You Want to Know About Magic is a recent book by Frater U.’. D.’. released by Llewellyn Worldwide this time last year.

It’s written in a Q&A agony aunt style, in some ways reminiscent of Aleister Crowley’s Magick Without Tears, resulting in a collection of brief essays on a wide variety of topics.

I’m in the midst of reading it for review for SpiralNature.com, and and one of the questions concerns workshops, and one of the points of advice given reads as follows:

4. Pay close attention to the terms of cancellation; this is often the snag to such seminars. Although it is understandable that the event organizers should want to ensure a certain degree of commitment from the participants, it is nonetheless possible that a person might become sick or have another valid reason for cancellation. Only pay the full amount in advance as an exception and not as the rule; generally no more than half in advance is appropriate.

This surprised me, and I’m not sure if it’s a regional thing (Frater U.’. D.’. hails from Belgium), or something that’s more widespread?

In all the workshops I’ve attended and given myself, I always either paid or requested the payment up front.

Perhaps this is a strange thing to be hung up on, but it struck me as the first bit of odd advice in an otherwise excellent book. What’s your experience with this, do people not pay up front anymore?

Practical magicians deal with a lot of unknowns when it comes to getting results in the “real world”. Sometimes a magickal operation will be met with stunning and hard-to-doubt success, sometimes with an ambiguous success (the old “would that have happened anyway?” or “just a coincidence” conundrum), sometimes with a totally unknown degree of success (for example, if it is possible that the operation succeeded in an unobservable way), sometimes with an apparent failure. Navigating through the jungle of mixed results can be a real headache, especially where a magickal operation has apparently failed when it (of course) should have succeeded.

When testing out or trying to perfect a new technique, these kinds of issues can cost a lot of time and effort. If you have Continue reading »

Every solstice and equinox my husband and I host a large dinner party for our friends. Or, as near to the date as we can, usually whichever Saturday is closest.

This year was no exception, and though I failed to get a picture of it on Saturday, I did have a go at making Riz Aleister Crowley, Crowley’s recipe for pilaf.

Crowley’s original recipe doesn’t give quantities for the ingredients he lists, so I’ve made my best guess, and detailed my process here. It was delicious.

For the bakers among you, there’s also an awesome shortbread recipe you should totally try out.

My husband and I also woke up in the middle of the night to watch the eclipse. Continue reading »