Topic: The Magickal Web

Meditation is a way of manufacturing what we call ojas. When we eat food, digestion manufactures the body in a certain way. This is important for our physical existence, but the body by itself does not serve any purpose. The body can be a means of great suffering. The body is capable of pleasure also but its limitations will be unfulfilling over a period of time.

Romanian witches are carving out a lucrative new business - concocting spells to help locals get EU grants.

Buddhist chaplain Frank Tedesco has instructed murderers to "feel the cool air over the tip of their nose."

I am a witch. I do not worship Satan; I am not interested in Satan. Satan was invented by the Christians. Satanism is a form of Christianity. I am not a Christian. I don't go to church on Sunday. Jesus is NOT my savior. He was simply a holy man who lived 2,000 years ago. I am not afraid of going to Hell because I don't believe in Hell any more than I believe in Satan. I believe in reincarnation; that I will come back to this world or another and live out another life. I am not evil. Telling people I am a "good witch" or asking me if I am a good witch implies that there are evil witches. There are evil people in the world and there are people who chose to work with the forces of nature in a way that harms others; those people are NOT witches.

When I first read this passage I was thinking of western occultism, and the relationship between Aleister Crowley, his own followers, and the New Age movement in general. The former have a tendency to try and take on Crowley’s own role and pretend to discover some new formula to turn whatever has been taught and accepted in ceremonial magick upside down, and the latter merely reject or ignore Crowley, blissfully ignorant that whatever little substance Wicca, Neo-Paganism, “Shamanism,” and the Golden Dawn style ceremonial groups that exist today have, they owe absolutely to Crowley and his work. In a larger, socio-political sense, however, we see that egocentric service to the Good is probably the most dangerous form of double-mindedness that is identified by Kierkegaard, because it combines genuine sincerity and idealism with the desire to truly act in service of good.

We've been had. We buy expensive bottles of water when we could just turn on a faucet. How expensive? According to The Sierra Club, bottled water costs 1,000 times more than tap water.

The garden in front of Estrella Benavides' house on Cottage Grove Avenue is neatly pruned. Inside, her home is spick-and-span. On Friday afternoon, a breeze ruffled the lace cloth on her dining room table and her waxed wood floor gleamed in the sunlight.

Gianna Altano carries a pill case the size of a laptop when she goes on overnighters. Gianna has cystic fibrosis, so some of her overnighters are at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford.

The Lone Ranger's faithful Indian companion debuted in the 1930s, an age not known for its enlightened attitudes toward minorities. And writers like Sherman Alexie have pointed out Tonto's more problematic aspects, like his stereotypical broken English. But from the beginning, Tonto was depicted as a heroic figure in his own right, and not so much the Lone Ranger's assistant as his friend. Tonto was saddled with pidgin dialogue, but he wasn't dumb, and could track bandits and right wrongs with a skill equal to the masked man's. Also worth noting: The similar character dynamic in the Lone Ranger spin-off The Green Hornet, between the Hornet and his Asian sidekick Kato, led to Bruce Lee's American breakthrough role on the short-lived 1966 TV series. And few people, sidekicks or not, are cooler than Bruce Lee.

Lobsang Norbu Shastri stood, clicking the mouse of his laptop, and turned, smiling at the PowerPoint that was displayed on the wall behind him. Shastri began his lecture with a traditional Buddhist prayer and then joked about his seemingly paradoxical situation. "This is the product [of the exchange program] that you see, a Tibetan monk, using a Macintosh, [giving] a Powerpoint," Shastri laughed along with his enthralled audience.