Air
(Alchemy) One of the Four Elements of alchemy believed to carry the archetypal properties of spirit into the visible world. It is linked to the process of Separation and corresponds to the metal Iron.
Cassock
(Ecclesiastic) A full-length gown with sleeves and collar worn priests, bishops and helpers.
Nephesh
(Qabalah) Hebrew The animal soul that corresponds to animal/ vegetable [...]
I picked up all of Fries works a few years ago at Edge of the Circle, an occult bookstore in Seattle, which happens to stock these otherwise hard to find books. The main reason these books are hard to find is they are published by a U.K. publisher and have to be special ordered. However, [...]
In my decade-plus of being a pagan and magician, animal magic and animal totemism have always been my main focus regardless of what paradigm I was working in. Since I began practicing shamanism in earnest back in 2007, I’ve become much more aware of how interconnected everything really is. While I was already an active [...]
William G. Gray’s books on magic have been one of the foundations of my own practice since 1998, when I was first given his book Ladder of Lights by a mentor of mine. What I’ve found so fascinating with his work is its concise and thorough focus on the process of magic. Gray doesn’t embellish [...]
When I moved to Portland, OR in 2007, one of the first locals to greet me wasn’t human. Instead, I found the trees outside my first apartment to be full of scrub jays. These gray and blue corvids have a similar place in the urban ecosystem here that their cousins, the blue jays, did back [...]
AIN SOF
(Qabalah) Hebrew “Without end.” A reference to God, who is everywhere and in all things. If Ain is the number 0, then Ain Sof is the number 1 and represents creation as it is about to manifest. Because Ain Sof represents a pre-existent state and is infinite, it can have no attributes. Ain Sof [...]
Ain
(Qabalah) Hebrew Literally, “no thing.” Some texts suggest that this is the condition of being that is God. Or, to put it another way, God is absolute nothingness or negative existence. No thing that can be understood. Ain represents the first Veil of Negative Existence.
Cherub
(Qabalah) Hebrew The four powers of the Universe, corresponding to the [...]
Shrine to Dead Critters
Recently, my husband Taylor and I moved to a new home. This, of course, meant uprooting everything, packing it into boxes, bins and bags, and trucking it across town (thankfully the day before Snowpocalypse 2008 hit the Pacific Northwest!). After about a week of recovery, I had the time and energy to [...]
Franz Bardon
I first encountered Franz Bardon’s works approximately five years ago, and was amazed I hadn’t read or explored his concepts earlier. It likely didn’t help that until recently his works were out of print or printed only in German. In 2001, Merkur Publishing translated all of Bardon’s works and re-published them in the U.S.
Franz [...]
