“I know what it’s like to feel unequal to the task required of you… to feel incapable. I’ll never be the man I was, but I’ve come to embrace those parts of my mind that are… peculiar and broken. I understand now that’s what makes my mind special. I wish you could see yourself [...]
This isn’t so much a full Guttershaman installment as a kind of “DVD extras” post for the talk I gave to the Omphalos pagan moot in Bath today. The set-up was: “Stories and myth are the ground that magic, and culture in general, are rooted in. Although many magicians and pagans endeavour to base their [...]
“…stories dramatize ideas and truths that we all intuitively recognize. Although these stories are not exactly ‘true’, they nonetheless offer a kind of Truth that is more compelling than hard facts.” Rabbi Cary Friedman, ‘Wisdom from the Batcave‘ “Believe nothing, No matter where you read it, Or who has said it, Not even if I [...]
Found this excellent piece on Electric Children on the subject of (specifically comic book) creators who have spoken of fictional characters as being in some sense real – and those who have met them. The classic example is Alan Moore’s oft-told story of having met his creation John Constantine – twice. The article doesn’t accurately [...]
Back in the good old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was on LiveJournal, I ran an occasional series called Xtianfuckwitwatch. This was news posts (and, I confess, some ranting) about the type of idiocy that seems particular to certain extremists of the Christian persuasion. (Now, as then, I emphasise it’s not that [...]
“At the end of the day, it’s all just weird shit.” — Me, quoted in Sandman by Neil Gaiman. One of the main reasons I put up this blog is for my thoughts about magic. I have considered myself as a magician for pretty much my whole adult life – and the seeds of that [...]