I have been up in the country a fair bit, practicing and doing cunning craft bits and bobs, and only just catching up on things in magical cyberspace.
For those who have not seen them, here are some links to some great GD and Magic blogs recently.
- Olen Rush continues to shine with a number of posts on the RR et AC material. Check out the Cross of Victory slideshow links. While at his blog, also look at the Enochian Vault and Sigils of the Scales posts. All of these posts are excellent and show the depth of the GD / RR et AC tradition and how an adept interacts with it. Olen himself is wise, passionate, committed and shares deeply and freely his ideas and extensive knowledge. Not bad for someone who some folk hint does not exist! So, a virtual raising of the glasses to Olen, please
- Morgan over at Gleamings from the Dawn has released some serious magical material here. He also has been posting in his normal clear and no nonsense way in response to some of the weirder GD silliness that’s appeared recently. I really appreciate Morgan’s honesty and refusal to whitewash or make excuses for himself in the present or the past.
- Nick Farrell has shared a couple of really cool posts recently, one on banishing after talisman construction (do or don’t) and one on the GD Diagram of the Seven Branched Candlestick. Both are well worth checking out.
- Sandra Tabatha Cicero has reactivated the official blog of the SIRA (America) with some articles by their most famous initiate, Israel Regardie, one on Reincarnation and the first part of one on Occult Philosophy. Tabatha has not been idle herself, giving us a post on the Colour Scales. This is actually a teaser for her brilliant article in the equally brilliant, Hermetic Virtues magazine, whose latest edition is now available and well worth buying.
- Mike continues to ‘prattle’ on with the first part of a personal post on the interconnections between visionary experience and magic. Mike has also completed and shared 50 lovely art pieces inspired by our magical traditions. Check them out here. Thanks, Mike
- As well as defending common sense, courtesy, rationality and decency in her blog, Path to the Stars, Deanna Bonds has found time to write a truly engaging post, The Dark Side of Light. It reminds me of the old meditational point, “Light is the shadow of God” which really did my head in as a young neophyte.
- Finally, Dean Wilson has reviewed By Names and Images on his excellent blog here. Thanks, Dean
If I’ve missed someone, no offence is meant. There is a lot of great GD and magical stuff out at the moment. Of course, there is the normal trash too, of which the less said the better. Thanks
"We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured." ~
“A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism” ~
How does my spiritual practice and daily life serve the earth?
How does my spiritual practice and daily life affect the poorest third of humanity?
How will my spiritual practice and daily life affect the generations to come in the future?
"It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity."
“For most of us, however, we only think seriously of food or sex or money when it becomes a problem, which is to say when we feel we are not getting our share. When we find ourselves in that situation then I regret to say that meditational visualisations are really not the best way to remedy the lack. … We are here in a physical condition in a physical world and while in that state we have to abide by the laws appropriate to it.”
"The biblical texts have been strained out through a Greek/Latin mindset, which is very surface and static. I sometimes think it would have actually have been better if Western culture had based so called "Western religion" on Greek philosophy, rather than middle-eastern, because then at least you'd have all one thing. It would be eternally consistent. But what we have now is sort of half of each. And you're left with a basically schizophrenic tradition." 
"Can a horse tell you what it means to be human? How can a horse get beyond the boundaries of being a horse and say what it means to be human? Why do we think a human being can say what it means to be God? And yet we’ve done that; we’ve done that and we said that we’ve got it so right that if you don’t believe it we’ll burn you at the stake. That’s a very strange idea." ~
