From New Dawn 142 (Jan-Feb 2014) It is one of the most familiar and reassuring lines in scripture: “The Lord is my shepherd.” But when you think about it, the metaphor is a disturbing one. It’s true that a shepherd […]
Richard Smoley
Will Thinking Make It So? An Interview With Mitch Horowitz
This article was published in New Dawn 142 (Jan-Feb 2014) Much of today’s writing about spirituality is loaded with nonsense. Often it consists of little more than wild speculation, shoddy reasoning, and the repetition of a few stale truisms. A […]
The Secret History of Astrology
From New Dawn 141 (Nov-Dec 2013) The history of astrology is in many ways the history of a polemic. The question of whether astrology works, as crucial as it is, is soon buried under other issues, such as what this […]
The Dual Search for the Philosophers’ Stone
To say what the Philosophers’ Stone – the great goal of alchemy – is, one has to know. And to know, one must have attained it. I cannot claim to have done this, so what follows must be speculation. The mystery grows […]
Ritual Magic in Theory & Practice
Several years ago I decided to do an evening-long introduction to ritual magic at the New York Open Center, one of the city’s best-known gathering places for mind, body, and spirit activities. Soon before it was about to start I […]