Topic: The Magickal Web

The persecution of witches - the Great Burning, it was called - had all the hallmarks of an episode of mass mania. There was popular hysteria and unpopular victims; there were sensational pamphlets, misbegotten theories… sex, lies, and… devils. It could have been mistaken for a session of Congress.

It is often said that the three things you should never talk about with strangers are politics, sex and religion. On our beloved Facebook, we have totally ignored that warning.

THE ESALEN INSTITUTE on California's rugged Big Sur coast first entered my consciousness as a teenager in the psychedelic '60s. There it flitted for 30-odd years, an enigmatic place cloaked in "alternative" jargon, secretive smiles and suggestions I couldn't quite process.

Ever since folklorist Lewis Spence published his "Occult Causes of the Present War" in 1940, historians have noted the Nazi hierarchy's loony dependence on runes, mysticism, esoteric rituals, worship of the war god Odin and even Satanism. High officials in the party justified eugenics and genocide with crackpot theories such as "theozoology," which maintained that interstellar deities electrically sired the so-called Aryan people while ethnically inferior races were the progeny of humans who had consorted with apes.

In the new film adaptation of "Casino Royale," James Bond has been reimagined as nasty, blondish and short. In The Jennifer Morgue (Golden Gryphon; 313 pages; $25.95), his follow-up to "The Atrocity Archives," Charles Stross gives his readers a British super spy with a long-term girlfriend, no fashion sense and an aversion to martinis. What's more, disaffected information technology specialist "Bob Howard," as he's known, mixes computer savvy with firsthand experience battling supernatural entities from another dimension.

Yes, Harry Dresden, lead character in the new Sci Fi Channel series "The Dresden Files," is a sorcerer (not to be confused with a magician or illusionist) who helps people who are beleaguered by unexplained phenomena. He even advertises in the Chicago Yellow Pages.

It is just another 17-inch-by-13-inch cross-legged low silver stool, in a small office in Bal Mukund Makar Road, off Chittaranjan Avenue. Till you rewind to the ballroom sequence in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with 250 such stools, upholstered in green and gold trimmings, in the Great Hall of Hogwarts for the Yule Ball where Harry dances with Parvati Patil.

For those seeking the romantic gesture to end all romantic gestures, there's still time (a minimum 15 days' notice is needed) to arrange Valentine's Day nuptials on the ancient site that once held the world's biggest engagement ring.

A former Starbucks barista in Hillsboro has sued the coffee giant, saying it discriminated against her based on her Wiccan religion.

The most important thing for a religion to remain strong and be able to grow is that it follow "reason" which requires the leaders to stay current with new knowledge so the teachings are in tune with the changing world-view of the masses.