The trip up the I5 to Pantheacon was smooth and uneventful. As we have done for the past several years, Holly—now my wife—and I went with our friend, Lon Milo DuQuette.

Lon Milo DuQuette—Master of Magick

There is pass through some mountains as you drive north of Los Angeles on the I5. We stopped for a bite to eat and before getting back into the car I was surprised to see that there was some snow on the tops of some of the mountains. There hadn’t been much snow all season.

There were more almond trees in bloom than I’ve seen in any year on our trips to the convention. They white flowers were beautiful! Anyone for making magick wands?

I apologize for the quality of the pictures, but we were moving at 70 MPH!

Finally, we pulled into San Jose and quickly found the hotel.

I wanted to take pictures of everyone and everything, but they have rules against it. I had to ask permission of everyone. So here are some of the people you might know whom I saw on Friday at Pantheacon:

Raven Grimassi—Master of Witchcraft and Strega
Taken in front of a booth at the shopping area.
There are lots of great booths with everything from incense to steampunk hats.
Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero—Chief Adepts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
Photo also taken in the shopping area.
Mary Greer—Tarot Grandmaster
Photo taken in the room where Chic gave his workshop.
Christopher Penczak—Master of Witchcraft
Photo taken in front of the hotel’s bar and sushi restaurant.
Elysia Gallo—Llewellyn Acquisitions Editor Extrordinaire
Photo taken looking toward the hotel’s high-end restaurant.

These were just some of the wonderful people at Pantheacon. So far I’ve only attended one workshop.  It was given by Chic Cicero (with Tabatha on tech) on the meaning of the Vault of the Adepti as part of the Rosicrucian and Golden Dawn tradition. It shared lots of concepts that magicians would love to have heard. You shouldda been there!

I’m giving two workshops tomorrow, one at 7:00 pm and another at 11 pm, so I’m gonna be exhausted. One of the tricks of a good presenter, in my opinion, is to make a workshop look effortless even though you do a lot of work. At least that’s what I try to do.

I’ll make another posting Sunday.

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Written by Donald Michael Kraig
Donald Michael Kraig graduated from UCLA with a degree in philosophy. He also studied public speaking and music (traditional and experimental) on the university level. After a decade of personal study and practice, he began ten years of teaching courses in the Southern California area on such ...