Outside the Charmed Circle
It's time to get down to brass tacks... but first, I apologize for any misapprehensions the title may give. When I said "easy," I meant "easy to outline." In practice, they may be much more difficult. Read more
It's time to get down to brass tacks... but first, I apologize for any misapprehensions the title may give. When I said "easy," I meant "easy to outline." In practice, they may be much more difficult. Read more
It's not surprising that our ancestors came up with the idea of using sex as the bridge between the material and the spiritual, uniting the quotidian and the numinous. Read more
Magic is notoriously one of those words where, if you ask any ten practitioners, you'll get thirteen different answers, some of them mutually exclusive, after which the respondents will start arguing about whose definitions are correct, whose are utter tosh, and whose are just reheated Crowley... Read more
Coming up with a universally-accepted definition for sex is a fool's game, but I've never been shy about rushing into rhetorical situations where even angels are giving each other dubious looks and muttering "I dunno, man, that looks sketchy to me" in Enochian. Read more
Sexual abuse and sexualized violence are very real problems in our communities, as in our cultures, and we all have a responsibility to see that reality and respond to it... but we also have a responsibility not to let our activism and our agony over the injustices in the world overshadow our own hearts. Read more
Words are magic, and yours no less than mine. Our words and actions together change reality, every moment of every day. That’s not a new-agey placebo or pseudo-spiritual platitude; it’s a simple, obvious fact. Read more
If we want to our communities to be the safe, welcoming spaces we tell ourselves they are, we can't just wring our hands and point fingers. We have to address the core issues which make them unsafe. We have to change, both individually and communally, and proactively rather than reflexively. Read more
I ended my last post by saying I know about missing stairs from personal experience. Today, I'm writing about that experience. It's a dismayingly common story—one of complicity and community failure—but I'm telling it anyway, because I think it's necessary. Read more
The missing stair is that problematic person we all know is a problem, but who none of us is willing to confront directly or talk about openly. Instead, we whisper in corners, warning people away from them. Read more
The responsibility for preventing abuse in our communities doesn't lie with the victims or the perpetrators. It lies with us. Read more
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