Remodeling update (production schedule delay)

A quick update for those who are curious about the house and yard remodeling.

The fallen tree was removed.

A metric ton of newspapers have been culled from the house.

This is despite the fact that I got sick the week and a half before the windows and doors were due to be installed. (Actually I am still slightly sick, but I did manage to get a lot of stuff done.)

Just the tip of the trash iceberg.

For those who don't know, our house is almost a hundred years old, and therefore automatically has lead paint. All of which means that everything had to be boxed up and/or wrapped in plastic.

Oh look, a thin layer of cement over brick--no wonder I can't hammer nails into the wall. 

Yes, I know that I "could have" done it "cheaper" by doing it myself. But my wife decided to spring for professionals, and who am I to argue with her? Especially given the fact that I really want to start to work on Icarus.

Here is to paying professionals to deal with the job.

The advantage of hiring professionals is that they can do it faster and better. So instead of taking a thousand years doing it myself, they managed to get the three new doors and the four upstairs windows done in three days.

Still have the four basement windows to do, but that needs to wait until I finish boxing up the basement. I have decided to do that in two stages because of how much plastic wrapping needs to be done downstairs.

We still have to get the new sidewalk in (goodbye Sidewalk of Death) and the outside painting done--it is scheduled to be done before the Fourth of July.

Both me and Khari are looking forward to the work being done, and our first garden (drumming) party later this summer.

(And I am thinking about the possibility of teaching a few occult and witchcraft classes...we will see how it goes.)

How many cats can fit in the window?

For those who are eager to see me get more stuff done (Esoteric Comedy Show, Great Gherkin/Sister Seuss, the expansion of the three officer ritual book, etc.), everything is being delayed. Besides the outside work still to be done, it has been decided that some of the rooms in the house are going to get painted, and new bookcases built--mainly because this is the first time, Khari has seen me be able to deal with such things without suffering blinding panic attacks (ask me about how meds can help).

And then there is Icarus... (which deserves its own post.) Oh yes, Icarus is coming.

How is the writing going (NaNoWriMo update)

As my regular readers know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)--that delightful time when ambitious crazy writers attempt to hack out fifty thousand words in the space of thirty days. My regular readers also know that this is my eleventh year of doing NaNo. My regular readers may even know some of the signs that the writing is not flowing as quickly as it could.

For instance...

This is the cleanest that the stove has been in an year.

...my cleaning the stove is a sign that the writing is not going as well as it should be going. It is also the sign that I am struggling with a plot problem.

It is normal for me to do some extra cleaning in November--cleaning that I did of my own free will.

I am basically that breed of human being that is a-okay with a dirty kitchen, moldy leftovers in the fridge, dishes stacked to the ceiling, mountains of laundry, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, a layer of dust on everything, unvacuumed floors, and piles of books everywhere.

Please note that I am not a complete slob; I do clean the litter boxes daily...basically my level of dirt tolerance is on the same level as a cat.

So it is a red letter day whenever I do some cleaning. And often it happens when I am working hard on a project and having one of those days when the words are coming at the glacier speed of one per hour.

I first noticed the habit when I was managing restaurants. I would take "vacation days" where I was in the store, but the employees were going to deal with everything except emergencies (such as fires) because I had no desire to deal with customers. And the employees better be okay with it because otherwise the cleaning that I was doing would become their job. Cleaning such as scrubbing out the oven, cleaning the air vents, degreasing the walls and fan chutes--you know, the fun stuff that would never get cleaned under normal conditions.

When I quit restaurant work, so I would not kill anyone, the habit of "vacation days" taking the form of cleaning stuff that had been dirty forever followed. As a result, my friends can tell when I am seriously working on a project, but having a day when the words are just not coming (typically because of a plot problem).

So here is to my much cleaner house.

(On a bright note, I think I figured out this particular plot problem. Too bad, there are sure to be at least three more. Well, at least, it will make my wife happy that I did some cleaning.)

What is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)

For those who are curious, National Novel Writing Month is basically a bunch of writers (both professional and amateurs) who attempt to write fifty thousand words without any editing in the space of thirty days in order to create a rough draft of a novel.

The preceding sentence was forty-five words. That's like 2.9 percent of the 1667 words one needs to write on average every day to hit that goal. Or in other words, I would need thirty-eight more sentences of that length to complete today's word count goal. Provided that these were actually words that belonged to the horrific novel that I was working on.

But I would never do that; I would never count the number of words that I used to explain NaNoWriMo to pad out my rough draft and hit my goal. That would be cheating.

No, instead I would write "The Great Gherkin has a small pickle" two hundred and fifty-four times to make up my daily word count. Do that thirty days in a row, and behold a novel that is as intelligent as anything a Big Name Occultist/Magician/Witch/Shaman/KarmaCoach has ever said.

In fact, if you read the sentence "The Great Gherkin has a small pickle" out loud seven thousand one hundred and forty-three times, you will become enlightened. You can trust me on that one, for I am a novelist and not the Great Gherkin.

Or so you would think.

Does historical fiction need to be accurate? (Especially if I am the writer)

One of the things that I have been kicking around is a story set in Ancient Egypt. Now I will probably never write it because I have now mentioned it on my blog which usually kills off any project that I discuss...because of...I am not sure--it may simply be that my brain says "You have told that story already--move on."


Of course, it may also be my perfectionist nature, or maybe there is a voodoo doll out there of me with lots of pins in it, or the fact that I worry about how other people will react to my work--who knows.


The big question that I am asking about this project is "How much actual historical accuracy do people expect?"


If readers expect a hundred percent accuracy, then let's be honest, they will be sadly disappointed in my work--because I have never allowed the truth to get in the way of a good story. That is a nasty habit that I picked up from my father, who used to tell jokes about the Polish (including the famous short runway pilot joke).


There is also the little fact that my degree is in general history, and not a deep degree focused on any particular time period.


Plus to use the best research and knowledge available on Ancient Egypt costs an arm and a leg. Doing research, I learned that many of the books that would be particularly useful to me, have price tags in the hundred of dollars (and one topped a thousand dollars).


And then there is the other side of the question, which is "Do Golden Dawn members expect fiction written by an Order member to reflect the teachings of the Golden Dawn tradition, even when the current academic research says that the Golden Dawn lore is completely and utterly wrong?"


For the one person who just said, "What? Golden Dawn is not historically accurate? That can't be true--the Imperator of Golden Dawn insists that the teachings of Golden Dawn are one hundred percent true to the Ancient Egyptian mysteries because our Order lineage goes all the way back to Ancient Egypt and beyond."--Sorry, someone has lied to you.


But none of these questions matter because I am probably not going to do any more work on the project--because that is the curse of mentioning it--which I am quite sure will make my favorite critic happy.

One of my favorite scenes from Stargate: "Why do they keep reprinting Budge?"

Should Merriam Webster Online Dictionary change their definition of Heathen?

Today in one of the many Facebook groups that I am in, someone shared a link to a petition demanding that Merriam Webster Online Dictionary change their definition of Heathen.

The petition demanding Webster change the definition of the word Heathen. 

So how bad is Webster's definition of Heathen?

First part of the Webster's definition. 

The first part is ok (I guess), and the second part is traditional. Many writers insisted that Heathens were uncivilized.

I just happen to know a worse definition of Heathen (from the 1982 edition of the Random House College Dictionary): "an unenlightened or barbaric idolater."

Oh look, the defintion of Heathen goes back to the 12th century. 

These "insulting" definitions have been in play for a long time. At one point, the term Heathen also applied to the Muslims. Today, it is more or less, everyone who is not a Jew, Christian, or Muslim. I guess that someone decided that the Muslims are civilized.

Definition by rejection of the Bible.

One of the complaints of the petition is that the definition is based on "rejection of the God of the Bible," a god that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share...uncomfortably, but it is the same baseline god if you follow the lines of transmission and origins of these three religions. They argue that Christianity (and the rejection of) should not be in the definition....which ignores why dictionaries get used in the first place--when using a dictionary, you want them to tell you the most likely ways that a word is being used (not some idealized seldom encountered in real life definition).

But look, it is a Christian definition of Heathen.

The synoyms include Pagan which is also defined by its rejection of the god of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Quran.

The definition of Heathen for kids. 

Yes kids, Heathens are uncivilized; Christian writers have been saying that for centuries. And writers do use the term to describe people who have no civilizations or wildly different ones.

Webster would like to know why you are looking up the word Heathen.

Can we at least agree that Webster asking why you are interested in the word Heathen is at least an attempt by them to stay current with its modern usage?

The two things that are to be included in the new definition of Heathen.

Gythja Dearbhla actually says in the petition that not only does they want the reference to the Bible removed, along with the insulting "uncivilized" definition, but they also want the definition to be "a convert of the Aesir and Vanir [ancient gods of the Norse religion]" and "a Norse polytheist."

(By the way, one of my favorite definitions of Cat is actually a definition by what it is not: Cat--not a dog.)

Here is your laugh out loud moment of the day. 

The best comment (for its humor value) was someone saying that "I agree whole heartedly with this action. I do believe the wording needs the approval of a heathen majority."

I presume that Scott Mattis means ONLY Norse pagans are to be consulted.

And this is where I have to ask, "Can you even get a dozen Heathens to agree what type of light bulbs to buy?" And what about all the non-Norse Heathens? Why don't they also get a vote?

As a writer and a scholar, let me be the one to break the bad news to you. Dictionaries reflect how writers actually use words, not how you think the words should be defined by your own particular religion. If religions were allowed to pick the definitions of words, we would get stuck with the following definition of Heathen (buckle in):

Heathen: an ignorant uncivilized person who absolutely is going to Hell for refusing to accept the one true God of the Bible.

And why would we be stuck with that definition? Simply because there are far more Christians than pagans and heathens in English speaking counties, both in the present and in the past. The definitions that Webster and Random House are using are not nearly as bad as the ones that we would get if a committee got to define the word to their satisfaction.

So how do we get the definition changed? Well, a petition is useless. What changes the definition of the word are writers using it in a different manner than it was previously used. So instead of signing a petition, go to Webster Online Dictionary and tell them about instances that Heathen (and for that matter Pagan) are being used in a modern sense of "someone civilized who believes in gods other than the Jewish Christian Muslim god." If enough people do this, they will add a new section to the definition reflecting its new use. Why? Because that is how dictionaries actually define words--by how people are actually using them.

(Please note that the current definitions will remain simply because there is a few centuries of usage that says that all heathens need to be saved by the civilizing force of the one true God. Also note that I am a Heathen and Pagan...not that it will stop you from calling me bad names in the comment section.)

Sale for first five days only (Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year)

As part of my "fund me to write more nonsense" campaign, I am pricing the just uploaded Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year at 99 cents for the first five days. After that it will go to its normal price of $2.99 USD.

The ebook is the text of a ritual I did for Hearthstone Community Church in June 2013, using the Wiccan magical images that I was developing. It is a Golden Dawn inspired Wiccan ritual. Also included are a couple of newsletter articles I wrote in connection with the ritual, and the introduction I wrote for the ritual when it was supposed to be included in a book of rituals project (a project that switched hands, and was then decided that it was only going to include pure Golden Dawn rituals--therefore, my hybrid ritual no longer fit into the focus of that project).

Just published today--Rite of the Magical Images of the Wiccan Wheel of the Year. 

Send me a muse (HP-31 Day 27)

[Inspired by classical mythology]

Mighty Apollo, shining one
Send me your muses to inspire and enlighten me
To quicken my thoughts and guide my hand
As I pick up pen and paper, and keyboard too
To write and entertain, to convince and inform.

Calliope, bearer of the wax tablet
Guide my hand and steady my mind
When I bend my attention
To the writing of epics
And the woobly bits of science.

Euterpe, bearer of the double flute
Guide my hand and attune my ear
When I form lyric poetry
Forming the medicine of the mind
And distilling the magic of the soul.

Erato, bearer of the small lyre
Guide my hand and enflame my heart
When I inscribe erotic enchantments
Of flaming desires and heaving bosoms
Of love overcoming all obstacles.

Melpomene, wearer of the frowning mask
Guide my hand and humble my soul
When I record tragedies great and small
Birth, death, and the life between
All is sorrow, all is waste.

Thalia, wearer of the laughing mask
Guide my hand and quicken my tongue
When I become the jester among the grim
Precious stones, metals rare, exotic life
None are as valuable as a smile.

Polyhymnia, veiled thinker
Guide my hand and correct my soul
When I expound upon sublime mysteries
Heaven, hell, purgatory, all the manifold worlds
Reflect the truths of the human spirit.

Teripsichore, bearer of the large lyre
Guide my hand and expand my breath
When I write of songs and dancing
Gravity and motion, cause and effect
All things spring from the first point.

Clio, bearer of the ancient scroll
Guide my hand and sharpen my reason
When I trend upon the march of history
Of great men and the myth of progress
Coincidence and flawed minds drive us all.

Urania, bearer of the celestial globe
Guide my hand and extend my imagination
When I create stellar empires and alien civilizations
And myths of star ships crossing the abyss
The stars incline, they do not compel.

Oh mighty Apollo, shining one
Oh great muses, daughters of lightning
I call upon you to inspire and enlighten
For I am a writer, an artist, a creator
A child of the imagination with ink-stained hands.

A Mystic Tarot Feast

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Welcome to the Lammas 2013 Blog Hop. The subject for this blog hop is "What we can share from our table with the community." Which led me to make a joke about some tasty cat food...which led to a reminder that this blog hop was about Tarot...which led me to offer the cat food served on the Fool card...no one thought that this exchange was funny, other than me--which is why it was best that the whole exchange only happened in my head.

And the point of that imaginary story?

I will get to it eventually. Promise. Provided that it actually had a point. And maybe even if it didn't have a point.

One of the weird things about my childhood is that I grew up reading Emma Bombeck. Well, I find it weird because it makes me sound like I had a normal childhood. For those who do not know, Emma Bombeck was humor columnist (back in the stone age of actual newspapers); she wrote a twice weekly humor column about being a mother in suburbia.  It is estimated that Emma Bombeck had thirty million readers across the nine hundred plus newspapers that her column appeared in, and had written four thousand columns over the course of her thirty-one year career. It is from her that I got the urge to be a newspaper columnist.

I didn't get the chance to be a newspaper columnist until I was in my forties (late to college I was). When I was first asked to work on the student newspaper of the Community College of Denver, I attempted to talk my way into doing a column--but they needed reporters more than columnists. Ironically, I did end up being a columnist within the first semester--I ended up writing an astrology column. It might have been better than my proposal to write about college life as a non-traditional college student.

And I made a lot of stuff up, starting with the very idea of the columns in the first place, and quite often ending with at least one sun sign being pure imagination and/or inspiration from an astrology or Tarot book. Occasionally, I would make up a story about the associated trump card to figure out what the sun sign was like in a given situation. It amused me that readers thought that my made-up nonsense was the truest part of the columns ("That is so me." "I know someone exactly like that.")

Being a columnist is much like being a blogger...except that the pay is slightly better. You have a deadline; you scour the neighborhood for an idea; you start off a column positive that you can finish it; and you struggle to finish it before you submit it.

Being an astrology columnist led me to doing a monthly column for the Hearthstone Community Church's newsletter (the Open Full Moon People). It was a matter of money--as in I had no money to toss into the cauldron to help pay the church's rent. So kicking it around, I realized that I could do a monthly column for the church. Hence, I started to do a monthly column about Wicca...and other stuff.

Three and a half years later, I am still going strong. Well, strongish. And some columns start off with me having to pull a Tarot card to spark my imagination. Which often involves conversations in my head--I told you that I was going to get back to the imaginary story--I talk to myself a lot as a writer. Of course, I always wondered how many of the stories Emma Bombeck told were true, and how many of them only happened in her head.

And that is what I believe that I am sharing from my table with the community: My charm and wit in humor form...or is it lunatic form? Besides people locally reading the column for free, three of the articles have been collected into a free ebook by me (Barnes & Noble; Smashwords; Kobo).

And here, you thought that I was only inflicting my opinions on people though a blog--silly people. Of course, I am not sure how many people know that some of the columns I do have their origin in a deck of Tarot cards. Perhaps, we should keep that secret between ourselves.

 

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Oh goody Purification

Hi and welcome to this stop on the Autumnal Equinox Tarot Bloghop. If you are a hopper, you probably came from Christiane's post. If you are one of my regular readers, you are probably coming here from the Big Bang Burger Bar where you nourished yourself on the veal burger...hey, it could be true.

Today's topic is purification...and to a lesser extent, the Tarot and alchemy.

On my property, there are currently three compost piles. And at least one of them is about to grow larger as I rake more leaves into it. This year was not a good year for my compost piles--it was just too darn hot and dry for them.

One of the things that non-gardeners may not realize is that a compost pile requires a delicate mixture of ingredients. It has to be the right temperature, the right moisture level, the right mixture of organic material, the right amount of circulation; otherwise it either burns or stinks to high heaven.

Even when it looks like it is going ok, things can still be wrong. For instance, I have a black walnut tree on my property; a black walnut tree produces a chemical that many other plants find toxic (for instance, rose bushes do not like black walnut trees), so I have to be careful where I use the results of the decomposing black walnut leaves.

Having a compost pile really puts you into direct contact with the process of purification. If you do it right, you end up with something that your garden will thrive on. Do it wrong, and all you made is a big old mess.

Now, in my profession--I am a writer by trade (woe be me)--there is a stage in the process (or at least, my personal process) where everything that one has written reads like pure sewage. One needs to leave the writing sit for awhile when it gets to that point to create some form of distance between oneself and the writing, especially if one is hoping to wrestle the good bits out of the rubbish of your latest draft.

While dealing with compost piles and my horrible drafts, I tend to think about the process of purification. Especially now that I am doing make-up work on the subject. It is the closest that I get to lab alchemy--I have cats and a god-daughter; I am not about to use dangerous chemicals around them.

Now, one of the modern things that occultists have done is attempt to associate alchemy with the Tarot. There are many ways to do this. But I am a Golden Dawn member, so I have to work with the Golden Dawn version of this arrangement. Now, the best known version of Tarot to alchemy is Pat Zalewski's version--perhaps merely because he actually published his version.

Now in his version of alchemy to Tarot correspondences, he uses a 3-7-12 system. Therefore, the process of alchemy is not assigned to a single card.

On the three scale, purification is assigned to Last Judgment. On the seven scale, it is assigned to the High Priestess.

The twelve scale is touch more complex--for purification is divided into three parts: Separation (Filtration and Distribution) assigned to the Lovers; Circulation and Digestion assigned to the Chariot; Fermentation and Corruption to Death.

So we end up with five Major Arcana that could indicate purification if they came up in a reading...more if we open the door to other assignment systems. Of course, given the fact that Tarot reading is such a personal art, I lean towards two cards over the rest--Judgment and Death. I might remember that the High Priestess is also involved, but I better have a muse whispering in my ear to remind me of that fact.

Then again, I need a muse to remind not to dump fresh cut grass into my compost pile, and not to shred my rubbish drafts.

(For the one person who will be curious--no, I do not have one of these composting barrels; I want one--I just can't afford one at the moment.)

For those of you who are continuing with the Mabon Tarot Bloghop, the next step is Joanne Sprott's blog.

Salt Mine Publications (Smashword sale and a free book by Alex)

A few years ago, I decided that if I was to ever run a publishing house that I would call it Salt Mine Publications. This past weekend, this insane dream took a step forward towards actually happening. Details are still being worked out, but it looks like I am going to be entering the occult ebook market as a publisher.

In related news, Smashwords is having their annual Summer/Winter sale. Two of my ebooks (Five Reasons Why Magic Fails and Shakespeare's Monkey) are fifty percent off until the end of July 2012. In a couple of days, I hope to get version one of the ebook edition of the Three Officer Version of the Golden Dawn Neophyte ritual also up on Smashwords.

In other news, Alex Sumner is giving away copies of his ebook novella Shall We Kill The President? (Just in time for Independence Day. Alex also has a couple of ebooks in the Smashwords Summer/Winter sale (I forgot which titles).

I need a stylebook for occultists

One of the things that I wish that I had was a stylebook designed for occultists. It may sound like a strange desire. But given the material that I write, I could really use one. I sometimes wonder if Llewellyn and other occult publishers have an in-house stylebook.

Has anyone seen something along these lines? How about one that is focused on astrology? Or the kabbalah?

Or do I need to create my own?

What is up with the Three Officer GD Neophyte Ritual book?

As some of you know I was originally planning on correcting and reissuing my little book containing the Three Officer Version of the GD Neophyte 0=0 Grade Ritual this summer. So what happened? And why did it not get done?


(For the record, I still consider this version Golden Dawn despite what some people say.)

First, Lulu decided to make me add more pages to the book (which is why the revision did not happen earlier in the year). This involves deciding what to add, and then actually writing the pages. People who know me, and other writers, will immediately see the problem with that.

Second, I chose to have a personal problem during the five weeks that were blocked out for the most serious work of the summer season. No writing got done. Moral of the summer season: Morgan Drake Eckstein is still pretty screwed up in the head, and really needs to learn how to write while feeling suicidal.

So no work actually got done on this project…and that might have been a good thing.

Repeat---might have been a good thing.

My original goal for the reissue was to clean up the spelling and grammar mistakes. Then it was to add forty pages…without feeling that the pages were needed.

(The real reason that I needed to add forty pages was that Lulu no longer supported hard-covers for the size of book that I originally done. And Lulu would not let me change the cover style to a paperback---not that I actually wanted a paperback for this…I chose hard-cover because of how much I will abuse a copy of the ritual script.)

Sometime after my personal problem ended (more or less), and it was too late to actually fix this before the winter season, a part of me decided what needed to be added to the book. This is one of those times I get to say, “Everything went wrong, and that was the best thing that could actually happen at the time.”

So yes, my book Golden Dawn Rituals Volume One, Neophyte Ritual, Three Officer Version is going to be reissued. It is just taking longer than I thought it would.

(And if you are really desperate to get your hands on it, there is the promotional preview copy pdf floating around on the internet which will be followed by a couple of other promotional preview pdfs because I know that most people believe that a writer should never profit from writing about the occult, especially if it is about Wicca or Golden Dawn---I will save you the time it takes to scan my book. Just don’t expect them to be exact copies of what is actually being shipped---for instance, the Order name is being changed [long story short---the name my lodge started out with was chosen before we became aware of certain events going on in the Golden Dawn community; back in the nineties, I was told that I was a member of the Hermetic branch; today, we know better].)

Differing definitions of magic

Today, I spent the day writing Law of Attraction articles in my mode as a copywriter. (To the person, who thinks that the Law of Attraction is just a New Age gimmick, just remember that there is a market for these articles and I do need to make a living---who am I to deny myself a living?) Or to be more exact, I finished one five hundred word article (pending cool-down and final edit before submission) and started several others. (I also pulled some weeds, did some laundry and dishes if you are curious.)

During the writing of these Law of Attraction articles, I caught onto the fact that I am using at least two definitions of magic. Around ordinary non-magical people, I am using magic to mean "instant results"; with students of the occult, I am using magic to mean (more or less) "a tool to manifest coincidences."

Either definition will make everyone happy. And I am quite sure that the students of the occult will be more upset with me...especially considering both definitions will be viewed as completely wrong by the most vocal of magicians. For the record, I was copywriting with the expected audience being normal everyday people...you know those people who have never see the inside of a lodge or circle (those whom the only experience they have with magic is the Harry Potter Hollywood Dungeons and Dragons style).

I did find it interesting that I was insisting that the Law of Attraction is not magic, despite the fact that it sure seems to work by the same laws. Again, I was copywriting (my name is not going to be attached to this stuff) for ordinary people...I have to use the vocabulary and definitions that they are familar with.

Anyway, now that you know what my definitions are, I am curious about yours---please leave your definition of magic in the comment section---and if you are using a different definition depending upon who you are dealing with.

Even the computer dislikes part of my latest book review

I spent the day working on a book review of Darcy Kuntz's The Historic Structure of the Original Golden Dawn Temples. It turned out to be an all day project (lots of words for a 48 page booklet). When I got done writing it finally, I thought that the worst of it was over.

Boy, was I wrong.

Turns out the uploading it to the internet was a bigger pain in the #$%*! than the actual writing was.

For one thing, I tried to use bold in a few places to make it easier to read. The system decided that it wanted to just bold the entire last half of the article. It also decided to change "Ordinis AO [Alpha et Omega] in the Outer, Amen-Ra Temple, No. 6, Extract from Bye-Laws (GH Frater Sub Spe [J.W. Brodie-Innes], 7=4) Edinburgh (C. 1910)" to simply "Ordinis AO."

I backtracked though the submission process a half dozen times, trying to get the system to do it right. In the end, I gave up on the bold and trying to correct the Ordinis AO to what it actually was supposed to read; hence the book review as it appears on Associated Content is not exactly how I meant it to look. *sigh*

So if you read my review of Darcy Kuntz's The Historic Structure of the Original Golden Dawn Temples, please bear that in mind. Thank you.

Am I antiTarot?

There are times I really love the comments I get to some of my occult related articles. Today, I got one on my Divination Adddiction article that said that the article was "just pretty much mindless anti-tarot propaganda and not much else." And I found myself trying to remember if that article was anti-Tarot.

It has been awhile since I wrote the article; it was written in September 2008 for Campus Connection (the student newspaper of the Community College of Denver). So I had to go look at it and double-check to see if it was nothing more than anti-Tarot propaganda.

Ok, I am not happy with the article; I think that I have grown as a writer since then. But I think that it is more than just anti-Tarot propaganda. I honestly think that divination addiction is a real problem for some people. And I think that you can tell that I am not anti-Tarot.

(This article is one of the two that started to shift me towards writing about my speciality for the college newspaper. The editor was not unfriendly to the possibility of having an astrology writer on the staff.)

I guess that this article falls under the same category as writing book reviews. If you do not completely agree with the beliefs of your reader (or the person that you are talking about), then you are biased.

It is a wonderful world where those who are supposed to be the most neutral about things end up being labeled the most biased by everyone that they disagree with. And yes, there is something seriously wrong with me because I find this amusing.

The Great Denver Substation Explosion of 2010

At about 6:30 today, there was a flicker in the power here at the house. I was on the phone with a friend at the time. Her power went completely out. She mentioned that there were a lot of sirens to the east of her house. So I went outside.

There was a giant plume of black smoke to the south. It looked like something had exploded. And was burning hot and fast.

It turns out that one of the power substations that gone up. Fortunately, the building was close to a fire station.

Also all three back-up generators at Rose Medical failed during this crisis.

Now what does this have to do with the subject of magic? Well, nothing...I hope.

It was just that last night I started to seriously work upon a demonic/alien/other-worldly tale about a beast that has a fondness for eating nuclear reactors. And last night, I dreamed of it deciding to eat part of an ordinary power plant.

Hopefully, it is just a coincedence. I don't want to be like the prophet in the TV series, Supernatural. But my regular readers will remember the last time, I wondered something like this---it involved an airplane.

It is probably just a coincedence, but one really wants to be sure on days like this.

Fees, dues and donations

In the little section of the blogosphere that I read, this week there has been a lot of rumbling about whether occult teachers, the wiccan clergy and craftspeople (including writers) should be paid. I have kept my head down...there is no way to please everyone, or anyone, involved in this particular issue.

Nevertheless, I think that perhaps I should toss out my personal opinion (or is it a business practice?); after all, I don't want anyone to be surprised by my attitude problem (someone is going to say that I have an attitude problem).

Here is my policy: Outside of lodge, my time is worth twenty-five dollars an hour.

It is a simple policy. The only free work I am obligated to do is for my fellow lodge members and that is only during the bimonthly lodge meetings (readings, teaching, spell-work, rituals, treatments, writing, etc.). Everyone else needs to be aware that my time and energy has a value, and that I can and have charged people for services rendered.

This has not always been my policy. This policy comes from coming home exhausted from doing freebies, and not having enough energy and time for my own personal work. This policy is to keep the leeches and freeloaders at bay. If you have money to spend at the mall, or for other things beyond the bare necessarities, then you have enough money to pay the expert to do their job.

You would not ask a plumber to do their work for free, including providing the materials to do the job. So why should I be treated any different?

Oh, my religion and lodge involvement (someone is sure to say). Honey, I do not belong to a branch of the religion that thinks that there is any virtue in being poor. I spent my entire childhood being poor, and I know first-hand that there is no virtue in being poor (there is also no virtue in being rich either based on my encounters with the wealthy, but given a choice...). Nor did I swore any oath that forbids me from taking money from anyone who is not a member of my own lodge (or any member who cannot be bothered to actually show up at the regularly scheduled meetings).

I spent a decade running a business. I know the value of my time and energy. And I am not going to change my mind about its value, no matter how much people think that I am wrong. Especially those people who believe that their time is more valuable than mine is.

Ye has been warned!

Hearthstone Community Church OFM newsletter articles by Me!

Today, I had someone else inquire if the articles that I have been writing for the Hearthstone newsletter were online. This has been a regular occurrence since I started writing articles for the newsletter starting in January. It has been a slight dilemma for me...mainly because I am a working writer.

My original plan for the series of articles that I am writing was to bundle them together at the end of this year into a single pdf, and use them as part of my advertising kit next year. This idea came out of the pro-blogging community. Basically, you take some of your best posts and articles, lace them with links leading back to your site, and let it free out into the internet. I thought it was a good idea for helping build a following for my own writing...someday, I would like to make a living wage as a writer.

Because of this, I was caught off guard by the first request for the articles to be posted online. It happened on one of the Yahoo groups. Basically, I dropped back behind the "I am not sure if shameless self-promotion is allowed on this group" defense. That was partially the truth...I am still not sure if it is completely legit or not.

Since then, the dilemma has been nipping at the edges of my consciousness. Today, when yet another friend asked if the newsletter was online, I had a few minutes to think about it and actual time to follow though once I decided what to do.

One idea was to simply put them up on Associated Content. That is what I am doing with the astrology articles (and anything else) that I am writing for Campus Connection, the student newspaper of the Community College of Denver. Unfortunately, with the new format that AC recently put into play, putting up a set of related articles requires some twiddling around as the newer ones are finished; it is either twindle ar hope that the readers can figure out the search function to find the rest of the set.

And this is definitely a set of related articles, the first three all have something to do with positive affirmations in a ritual and day-to-day life. The second article also has something to do with the practical uses of secrecy, which is going to tie into the next set. All this is leading up to what I am doing at the June Open Full Moon Ritual.

In the end, I decided to do a temporary archive of the articles that I am writing on the Bast Temple website. It will make it easier for people to find the articles in the same set; it will help the lodge's page ranking (or I hope it will); and make sure that I am updating the website at least once a month.

Of course, the term "temporary" is a relative term. I decided that I am going to leave up the January 2010 article up until February 2011, when it will be replaced with the article from the January 2011 newsletter. The same pattern will apply to the rest of the months. At the moment, I only have January and February 2010 articles up. I do not plan to put up March's article until I am approaching the deadline for April's newsletter. This is how I am doing it with Campus Connection; when the new issue goes live (hits the stands), I invoke my reprint rights.

(The only exceptation I might make is the article for June, which will be heavily related to the OFM ritual that I am leading.)

Webmasters will spot the advantage to archiving it by the month, rather than by the month and the year...yes, I am lazy and am going to recycle the page addresses as I go along. Plus, by rotating the content (and limiting the amount of duplication), I am hoping to recieve some of that Google Love.

Anyways, if you are curious to read the first article in the set, it is The Use of Positive Statements in Ritual. The link for the second article is hopefully findable in the sidebar...if I am wrong about how easy it is to find the second link, please feel free to complain in the comment section.

Book Review Link: Tarot for Writers

You can read my latest book review, Tarot for Writers, on Associated Content.

Piracy Part 1

Last night, I was looking though the torrent requests over on The Occult Bz. It is a private (limited membership) torrent tracker devoted to occult material.

And I discovered a request for Golden Dawn Rituals Volume One: Neophyte Ritual Three Officer Version.

I experienced mixed feelings about finding this request.

For those who are unaware, this particular book is my creation. Hence the mixed feelings.

I would like to note that the harsh comments that I am about to make do NOT apply to everyone in the file sharing community. There are just a few bad apples that sour my cider.

On one hand, I am flattered that there is any demand for the book. On the other hand, I honestly wish that people would be willing to actually shell out money for the book.

Now, I was not surprised to discover the request. As a writer/artist working on the internet, I realize that the modern idea that no occult writer deserves to be paid for their work has became the rule.

Somewhere along the line, some people decided that being a cheapskate and a pirate is a spiritual virtue. To justify the unwillingness to pay artists for their hard work, we ended up with the theory that charging for spiritual and magical teachings is a vice.

(Actually, the theory says that all artists, writers and creative people should be happy with the virtue of creating and giving away their work, no matter how much time and energy they pour into their creations. None of us, according to the justification, should stoop down and accept payment.)

Now, I have some problems with this modern idea. The least of which is that I have few marketable job skills.

I think that my biggest problem with this theory is that the people who shout this theory the loudest became the people who shout the loudest once they have a creation of their own to profit from. I am sorry: if it is a virtue for others to give up income from their hard work, then it is a virtue for you to do likewise.

Yes, if people actually stuck to this theory when they created things, I would be more open to buying into it.

Now, I will admit that I am involved in the P2P, torrent scene. I got involved because I was looking for some rare, long out-of-print books. I have a tendency to be interested in books that are no longer being supported by a publisher. Often, you are faced with the choice of shelling out hundreds of dollars for a book, or hunting down a PDF of it.

I can see the benefits and uses of the P2P community while at the same time, being well aware that abusing it might result in some bad effects in the long run.

One of the effects is that we are seeing already is that some occult writers are leaving the field (aka will never write a book ever again): "Why write something if it is going to be pirated within a month of publication? It took me a year (or more) to write that book." This is especially true of specialized writing, such as Golden Dawn.

The other effect we are seeing already is writers going to smaller publishers. A result of this is that the prices of occult books are actually going up. (For those who do not know, the price to print a copy of a book actually goes down when you print a bigger number of copies. The smaller the print run, the higher the price tag on a book.)

Now, in my case, I suspect that there will never be a great demand for my work. After all, I am not a dead old guy, nor am I an officer in a Big Name Order.

Despite having some concerns about the effect of the torrent community, I have decided to make a PDF version of my book available to The Occult Bz torrent community. If nothing else, I want the bloody upload credit.

There are other reasons to give my work away; if you are curious, go over to my writing blog and check out why I decided to give some of my work away for free.