Magic has always served the practical and spiritual needs of everyday people. Magic loses its way when it becomes over-complicated or serves only the people in power. I work to:

  • re-Paganize Ceremonial Magic
  • update Western Traditional Magic to serve the needs of all people who wish to use it
  • return the tradition to its practical roots.

Ceremonial lodges such as the Golden Dawn, Aurum Solis, Ordo Templi Orientis, Stella Matutina, and Society of Light grew out of Freemasonry in the late Victorian era. What we now practice as Witchcraft developed out of the marriage of the forms of Ceremonial Magic with European Folk Religion.

This traditional magic met the challenges of the modern age: reshaping the Western spiritual core away from Christianity toward a more diversified spirituality; the development of science as a legitimate standpoint; the increasing demands of women to be included in fraternal life.

Western Traditional Magic has not yet met the challenges of the 21st century:

  • the historical challenge: reframing the universalizing mythologies of the past as responses to their own context
  • the academic challenge: confronting the legacy of the academic frame which negatively contrasted magic with science and religion, and the contemporary academic colonization of magical groups and texts as material to be analyzed
  • the scientific challenge: the competition of astrophysical cosmology with religious cosmology
  • the religious challenge: articulate religious meaning in the context of the conflict between world religions
  • the gender challenge: meet the increasing demands of women, not just to be included in fraternal life, but to be included on an equal footing with men
  • the cultural challenge: acknowledging cultural appropriation in the tradition and ensuring equal access to the tradition for people of color and native people.
  • Addressing these challenges will transform Magia Traditionis into Magia Humana. This is an ambitious project which a number of magicians work toward today. My work is to articulate Magia Humana.

    Books

    For The Love Of The Gods

    Bringing Race to the Table

    Feature Archive

    Possession and Power in the Worship of Dionysus
    Wiccan Devotionals
    Invocation of Deity
    Open Circle Ethics