Have you attended festivals or conferences put together by hard-working volunteers and organizers? Have you mingled at Pagan Pride Day, learned something new from an excellent workshop at a local store, chanted under the moon with close friends, felt energy coursing through hands of strangers on either side of you? Have you been entertained and enlightened by bloggers musing on topics you once thought only you thought about, and followed it up with a lively discussion with others in the comments section? Pagan community permeates our lives in so many ways, both online and offline. Even if you don’t think about it often or meet with “actual Pagans” in your community every day, you can

[caption id="attachment_8046" align="alignright" width="300" caption="by John-Morgan on Flickr"][/caption] Two weeks ago, I posted a Holiday gift guide for Pagans, Wiccans, and cool people, sharing some of the books I've acquired that were published within the past year or so that I figured would make nifty gifts for your favorite witches. (Only the ones who've been really good and bad this year!) But what if you don't want to give the gift of books, but you still have Pagans in your life you'd like to shop for? Cara Schultz at PNC Minnesota has very kindly done all kinds of research to round up the ultimate giving list. So much so that it had to be divided into two parts! In part

As I reported in a previous post, author and occultist Kenneth Grant left his current incarnation last month. I never met him. I wish I had. My copies of his first trilogy of books are well worn from study. There was a time when he only had a few books published and nothing new had appeared for several years. I used to say that more people talked about what they thought Grant had written than had ever actually read anything by Grant. Today, a lot of his books are available—some quite expensive—and if you're interested in reading his works I would strongly urge you to read them in their order of publication. I wish I'd met him and had a chance to talk with him. Reading is one thing,

Sexuality, Magic, and Perversion is the name of a book by Francis King that was originally published in 1972. It was eye opening for the time because it revealed practices of sex magick that had developed over the previous century or so. It is more of a historical and theoretical book where my Modern Sex Magick is far more practical. But the thing I'd like to point out is that although it is a good book, it still has a very moralistic sense to it. The title itself shows what is being implied, that the use of sex and magick is somehow a perversion. A recent post by Frater A.I.T. in his blog, "Heavens Within Earth," offers another view, that sex magick is fine, but that watching porn can