The other day I was at a friend's house and we began talking about books. I have several thousand books on various occult topics. Some are very old. Others are quite new. My friend and I both knew of people who had well over ten thousand books, although most were fiction, especially fantasy or science fiction. I started wondering about why people keep large quantities of books. For me, it is so I can do research. Why people keep vast quantities of fiction, since I don't do that, I can't say. But when you go into someone's home and there are shelves that make the place look like a bookstore or library it's, I don't know, impressive? weird? It certainly tells you a great deal about the

Good News I begin this post with some good news. Twenty-five years ago, while I was deeply studying the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, I was looking for aspects of the tradition that few people were researching. I came across a complex divination system used by that Order known as Enochian Chess. Enochian Chess is a completely unique system. Although it uses a standard-sized chessboard, each square was seen as a "truncated pyramid," looking like a pyramid with a square bottom and its top cut off. That resulted in each square having five spaces for information on it. Truncated Pyramid as Seen from Above But that's not all. Enochian Chess has four players instead of

It's my observation that many people are looking into their pasts. These pasts may be genetically based ("My great-great grandparents came from…") or spiritually based ("I feel such a pull to the ________ tradition…"). This can be a great thing or it can be a horrible thing. This was brought up in a wonderful post by Taylor Ellwood entitled "Cultural exchange vs cultural appropriation." Although I agree with Mr. Ellwood's conclusions, we have some disagreements over the details that get there. He states that "[c]ultural appropriation is the wholesale stealing of a given culture's practices." I respectfully disagree. For example, if someone who was not of a particular culture

Although I have been studying and practicing hypnosis and hypnotherapy for a long time, I took my first formal training in hypnosis just 15 years ago. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are unbelievably powerful tools for personal change. It can help people change beliefs they no longer want to have. It can help people overcome behaviors that are hurtful to themselves or others. The list goes on and on. One of the most difficult concepts a new hypnotherapist has to learn is what is called the scope of practice. Its formal meaning concerns what you legally may and may not do. For example, legally I cannot cure any phobia. Some people call any personal fear a "phobia," but legally the term is a