It was 35 years ago. A young and dumb kid—we'd call him a "geek" today—went to the newsstand to pick up some of the latest issues of Thor, The Avengers, Doctor Strange, Conan, and the Fantastic Four. He also looked quickly through the rest of the magazines at the large newsstand, seeing one he'd never seen before. It was called Gnostica, and it was published by Llewellyn. Yes, that geeky kid was me. I was also going to Gilbert's Books around the corner. They had one of the best new and used occult sections in town, and it was rumored that Israel Regardie used to hang out there. Gilbert's is long gone. A smaller version of the newsstand is still there. Gnostica was just amazing. I

Many years ago I briefly studied Kung Fu with one of the great masters of the art who, at the time, was teaching in the San Fernando Valley of California. One of the things he stated was that the hardest opponent to face would be a big, powerful, untrained bully because he had no fighting pattern to counter. Another thing I learned was never get into a fight when you are angry. If you get into a fight when you are angry, the anger will take over your mind. Rather than fighting instinctively based on your training, your actions will come from your rage. A lot of people think that it's good to get into a rage in order to prepare for a fight as it will increase your endorphins resulting in

One of the questions I'm most frequently asked is, "How do I improve my ability to visualize? I can't see anything." And it's no wonder that people ask this. Practically every book that covers magic and spellcraft, as well as books on the Law of Attraction and those that disguise their occult links by calling what they describe as "visioning" or something else, not to mention all of the books on creative visualization, are rife with techniques that begin each exercise with "visualize…" What most of them don't describe is the very nature of visualization. How can we visualize without a specific definition of what visualization is? You may be thinking that this is kind of a stupid

Names and Magick One of the strongest aspects of magick is the use of names. By this I mean the use of one word or phrase to represent something much grander. For example, if someone were to mention my name, you might think of a blogger, a writer, a workshop leader, a hypnotherapist, an occultist, a magician, a Tantric, a musician, or something else. Perhaps you might think of several of those things. To me, my name is a representation of all of those things and more. The same is true of designing a word to represent a magickal goal. You don't have to think of "After doing a divination to show a positive outcome of doing a ritual, I'll be doing that planned rite to obtain $1,000 to