Notice — We are aware that no one can currently log in (27 October, evening); the webmaster is offline (he lives in the UK and is asleep) and will get to it in the morning. We apologize for the delay.

This website turned one year old on September 23! Yule will mark one year’s worth of issues. Welcome to the Mabon issue — now groan-inspiring-pun free! This issue is a bit thinner than we’ve had before, but we are striving to make up for it with the upcoming Samhain issue. Samhain is the favorite holiday of many pagans (and regular spooky people), and we’re working hard to make that issue particularly interesting. However, as you may have read or heard by now, this issue does contain something very special. Sheta finally managed to pull together an interview, but rather than featuring a revealing look at one of our own writers, she’s scored an exclusive interview with Henry Rollins! Don’t miss this, as it focuses on Henry’s views on Christian Fundamentalism and its role in current politics.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by the lack of available words to label or describe your practices, experiences, or path, you’ll be interested in this issue’s Into the Aethyr, which presents the start of an ongoing project in finding new and unfettered terminology. Get involved, or pass the information on to a friend with a language fetish.

As always, former, expired issues of Rending the Veil have been relocated to the archives, and all prior content (articles and columns alike) is accessible from the Site Map. The site map is being renovated for ease of locating material as our archive grows, and you will find the title index and author indices ready. We’ll have the subject index done as soon as possible, and a general search feature as well.

The Rending the Veil Magical Blogs feature is only days away. We tried very hard to implement them using the LiveJournal source code, but it proved too buggy and unstable to be a good choice. After months of debugging, we scrapped it and instead are using a very similar, but modern and clean code called Elgg. Final tweaks for appearance are being made as this issue goes live, and you’ll be able to set up your new, non-Six Apart home base very soon. Also coming very soon: Downloadable PDFs of previous issues.

This story, our second fiction offering, comes to you from Peter Gutiérrez, noted author and Eisner Award-nominee for his ghostly Japanese anthology entitled Shi:Kaidan. His story is called “Dearly Departed,” and offers an unusual look at “passing on.” Take the journey…

“This article examines the subject of black magic. Before beginning, it seems necessary to make the observation that to talk about a thing is not the same as advocating that thing. It should not be needful to say this, but many persons seem to assume that the discussion of any topic is a kind of advocacy. For the benefit of those individuals – even though I am writing about black magic, that does not mean I want you to go out and practice it.” read more…

“This issues’s Rapier’s Edge features the opinions of Henry Rollins – renowned ex-frontman for Black Flag and the Rollins Band, actor, TV talk show host, radio personality and political activist. I contacted Henry a week prior to his 9-20 Houston appearance, via email, to request an interview during his stay here. He obliged instead with an email interview …” read more …

“On the Irreality.net forums, a discussion recently came up about how a person knows if s/he has attained enlightenment. This discussion got me to thinking about what enlightenment might be and its relationship to magical practice. There is an implied connection between magical practice and enlightenment. That connection is a belief that magical practice, i.e. the great work, can be used to attain enlightenment.” Read more…

“The obvious problem with moving Magick out of the sphere of personal understanding and into scientific scrutiny is the absence of a technology that will allow man to measure magical force and/or energy. Until then, we should learn to observe phenomena instead of ignoring things that lack explanation. Until then, we should refrain from attempting to reduce the entire Art of Magick to simple psychological terms that can be easily understood.” read more…

“Opinions vary on the validity of the aura, and there is often a great deal of skepticism regarding aura reading and interpretation. MSN Encarta defines aura diagnosis as, “the process of ascertaining a person’s state of health from the color and luminosity of the aura, the ‘energy envelope’ of the physical body commonly claimed to be seen by psychics.…” read more…

“Isaac Bonewits did a wonderful job in his book Authentic Thaumaturgy describing to gamers and role-players how magick works in the real world, and the means to adapt real magick to work in their games. But what about the opposite side? Can we adapt role-playing to work with real magick? This article will explore the possibility that role-playing can be an adjunct to any system of magick. …” read more…

“Curses! Foiled again! Oops. Wrong curses. But in all seriousness, I’d like to talk about curses. This is yet another one of those 101-level topics that I see pop up every so often in discussion, particularly online. Pop culture is full of references to dirty deeds done dirt cheap with a wave of the wand or a little extra eye of newt in someone’s coffee, and so when newbies encounter magic, curses are an inevitable topic of conversation.” read more…

“Evil is perhaps the most problematic of all ontological concepts for Neo-Pagans. The notion of Evil strikes at the very heart of many of the tacit assumptions that form Neo-Pagan spirituality. Historically, these have been formed out of a rejection of Judeo-Christian values, beliefs, and practices. This rejection is then followed by a rather subjective, post-modern approach to what is “good.” With the active assumption and re-framing of a role and identity that is classically evil or bad…” read more…

“What’s better for a magazine about magick than a book on being able to have a portable altar and a spell process to allow nearly infinite variety in casting spells? The answer is having all that written down in one place as a reference. I’ve played with Chaos magick for many years and I have done many successful processes and …” read more…