Category: Commentary

This week, our editor Christine Hall asks the question often asked by new magicians: Does Magick really work?

For the last month or two, I've been leading our magickal group, the Guardians of the Phoenix Star (GPS), through a series of planetary workings. The purpose of the workings is to expose our group to the energies of the planets, hoping that they will balance themselves within the planetary energy by the time we are through. We started with Saturn and are working our way down the tree in order.

Our editor reports that this hasn't been the best of summers for her - and offers some advice on how you interpret your stars.

As I usually do on my birthday, when I turned 57 on May 27th I figured out my "life lesson" number for the upcoming year. This is the number that gives me a clue as to what will be my major lesson to learn during the upcoming year, until my next birthday. This year, my lesson number is a six, which corresponds to The Lovers card in the Tarot, which I thought was great. The Lovers is Gemini, and since I'm a Gemini this would be a pie year. All I'd have to do is to just learn to be myself - and I've already had 57 years experience doing that.

What impresses us the most about this quick look at Facebook is that the writer, a resident of Stockholm, is just as concerned about the CIA as we, even though he's well outside the "official" grasp of the U.S. government. Perhaps we're not so paranoid after all.

What is Facebook? Is Facebook an idealistic social project allowing people to become friends worldwide or an American company making money?

Here in the West, we take our freedom to openly practice meditation for granted. However, on some parts of our planet, people are forced to meditate in secrecy.

Each one of these healing methods is thousands of years old. The exact origins of meditation and self-hypnosis are not known. We do know that Yoga existed over 5,000 years ago in the Indus Valley. Despite the evidence that each of these methods creates peace of mind, within the practitioner, they have only recently gained worldwide attention for their results.

It's often been noted that sometimes we miss out on the incredible beauty of the journey by focusing on reaching our destination. Kaya McLaren illustrates this point beautifully.

I love to paint, to feel the creamy goo under my brush. I spread it out like butter across canvas. I turn the music up loud and almost dance with my brush. I paint about simple things that make me happy, or simple things I find beautiful. Georgia O’Keefe is my hero for that reason - for taking the simple beauty of a flower and using paint to make it obvious to even the busiest and most distracted person, for using paint to help everyone see the beautiful colors of dirt. I love how paint allows the painter to editorialize her perception.

The rapidly emerging, exceptionally well-financed, and theologically questionable megachurches in our country have been debated and examined recently by journalists, lawmakers and theologians alike.

The rapidly emerging, exceptionally well-financed, and theologically questionable megachurches in our country have been debated and examined recently by journalists, lawmakers and theologians alike.

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Inside the Crystal Cathedral megachurch.

No longer is the problem just that we need to slow down. Now we need to quit trying to do twenty things at once and learn to focus on the task at hand.

A few weeks ago, I returned to the classroom of Dennis Dalton, the most important college professor of my life. From the back of an amphitheater seating several hundred students, I realized how much things had evolved at Columbia and Barnard. The lecture hall was now equipped with a wireless sound system, webcams, video projectors, wireless internet. Students were using computers to record the lecture and to take notes. Heads were buried in screens, the tap tap of hundreds of keyboards like rain on the roof.

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Josh Waitzkin's latest book, The Art of Learning.

Frank C. Bucaro, business ethics expert, explains why unethical behavior in corporate America has reached pre-Enron levels. In reaction to a study just released by The Ethics Resource Center, Frank explores mistrust in leadership, the real truth about ethics training programs and the difference between what is legal and ethical.

If we are to glean anything from new studies and findings on business ethics, it is that we should strive to figure out the reasons why trends are happening and adjust our practices accordingly. If we do not learn from studies like The Ethics Resource Center's recently released '2007 National Business Ethics Survey', certainly we will witness more and more American companies fall to unethical practices. Let's take a look at why it appears that nothing has changed since Enron's fall from grace.

As our world slips deeper and deeper into decadence, it becomes essential that we renew life with a newfound sense of spirit.

We live in a world which can best be described as a dystopia. The nation states of the world have devolved to an extent that social mobility in many regions of the planet is non-existent. The disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” grows globally at a steady and insidious pace.

Evidently the Internet isn't as safe for anarchy as we thought. It's certainly not a safe haven for those who work and slave in the webcomics industry.