Archive for the ‘Real Magic School’ Category

Real Magic School Closed

Monday, August 24th, 2009

RMS Logo

Isaac and Phaedra Bonewits are sad to announce that Real Magic School is now closed. It was a wonderful experiment but it turned out to be too much for our time commitments to handle. We have arranged with the Grey School of Wizardry to take transfer students from RMS. It is likely that Witch School International will also take transfer students. We highly recommend both schools.

We apologize to everyone, but especially our lifetime members, that the life time of Real Magic School was so short. In the meantime, if you have subscriptions to Real Magic School via PayPal, please cancel them immediately.

It just turned out that there were not enough hours in the day to do what we needed to do, to do justice to the school.

We should make it clear that the wonderful folks at Witch School International covered all the direct expenses of running Real Magic School. We simply couldn’t afford to spend time writing new lessons when the income from the school did not match our (or WSI’s) needs.

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Spells for Democracy: Special Alert

Wednesday, October 15th, 2008

Based on the violent hate speech coming from the lunatic fringe on the right wing, I’d like to ask everyone to put extra energy into spells of protection for Obama and his family. Let’s make his Secret Service detail so darned intuitive that they are downright psychic!

I’m feeling very concerned for his safety and that of his family. No one wants to kill John McSame (though a few folks might want to gag Sarah Palin), but the first African-American candidate for President is a prime target of all those ignorant, bigoted folks who still think it’s 1860.

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Posted in Magic, Politics, Real Magic School | 3 Comments »

RMS News

Monday, June 30th, 2008

The server that hosts Real Magic School came down with a virus this weekend while I was at the Totally Normal Event, but the techs are busy injecting cybernetic penicillin and the site should be back to perfect health in a day or two.

In the meantime, we’ve been contacted by several excellent teachers who want to join the faculty — including a real rocket scientist! We’ll be sending out responses to them in a few days as soon as we finish the syllabus guidelines, but we’re thrilled at the response so far. Stay tuned for more news as it happens!

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Teachers: Real Magic School needs you!

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Real Magic School has really taken off and we now have over 1700 students! Phae and I can’t write enough new course material fast enough for all these eager students, so we are looking for qualified people to join our faculty. We need folks who can write both beginning and intermediate courses on all the mundane arts and sciences as they relate to magic, parapsychology, Paganism (Paleo-, Meso- and Neo-), mysticism, and “the occult,” especially from non-monotheistic points of view.

At Real Magic School we prefer teachers to have at least Bachelor-level degrees in mundane topics and a decade or three of study and practice in their fields of expertise. Unfortunately, like our friends at the Grey School of Wizardry during their first years, we have as yet no funds for faculty salaries, though we hope to have them within five years. Authors will, however, find the process of writing classes to be a very helpful way to get feedback on first drafts of manuscripts, as the Grey School teachers have discovered.

We would like to attract Pagan scholars of many different points of view to join the adventure of creating a body of academically sound, yet magically and spiritually useful, materials to educate future generations of Pagans and occultists. Our long-term goal is academic accreditation as an online college offering Associates and Bachelors Degrees.

We have nine academic departments at Real Magic School:

Dept 01: Magic and Ritual Arts
Dept 02: Psychic and Divinitory Arts
Dept 03: Mundane Arts and Sciences
Dept 04: Traditions of Magic and Mysticism
Dept 05: Philosophy and Polytheology
Dept 06: Pagan Studies
Dept 07: Magical History
Dept 08: Clergy Training
Dept 09: Weird Studies

If you would be interested in teaching at Real Magic School, send an email with your background and the topic of your proposed course to me via “Headmaster AT RealMagicSchool.com” or to Phaedra via “Headmistress AT RealMagicSchool.com” with “Teacher Proposal” in the Subject line.

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What’s happening in late June 2008

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

I am currently working on two books: a full-length work on the laws of magic for Llewellyn Worldwide and a guide to Neopaganism for Red Wheel/Weiser (both coming out in 2010). While I own a lot of books on these topics already, I would love to hear of new anthropology and sociology texts that would be useful. The Laws of Magic will be the more formal of the two, while the Field Guide to Neopaganism will be a short, breezy look at all our colorful subspecies and habitats.

I’m also working on two new sites to offer my wedding officiant and other ceremonial services (child blessings, funerals, etc.). The sites will be Unusual Ceremonies.com and Hudson Valley Civil Ceremonies.com (there’s nothing at either site yet but a parking page). For the former site, I’m looking for good (royalty free) subcultural wedding photos I can use to illustrate my willingness to do pirate, sci-fi, medieval, leather, naturist, or other sub-culturally themed weddings (most clergy are much too stuffy to serve these subcultures). The latter site will be aimed at folks wanting secular, agnostic, or atheist ceremonies and will be a bit more sedate! :)

Phae is working on cataloging our ten-thousand book library at Library Thing (search under both our names), and is about halfway done. She’s also collecting notes for a book on magic and the senses (as yet unsold) and selling Select Comfort Sleep Number™ beds (send her an email via “phaedrao AT aol.com” for info on these).

We’re both working hard on writing new classes for our RealMagicSchool.com online school of Pagan and General Occult Studies. We’ve started recruiting other teachers (see next post) to help with the workload of 1700+ students.

I’m waaaaaay behind on keeping up with my pages at Facebook, Linked In, Live Journal, MySpace (two pages!), Tagged, TG Alchemy, etc. Search for me and you’ll probably find me.

And in my copious free time, I read tarot cards at a local restaurant (Reality Bites) in Nyack, NY and on-line via various chat programs (email me for details, put “tarot” in the Subject line).

And that’s why it takes so long for me to answer my email!

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1001 Students, Online Chats, and We’re #1 Again!

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

Tonight we passed a milestone with Real Magic School — we now have 1001 students who have signed up for our classes in Pagan and General Occult Studies!

We will be doing bi-weekly online chats at the school. The next one is March 26, from 9:00 to 10:00 pm EDT. Of course, you do have to be a registered student to attend … :-)

In other news, Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism has been revisiting #1 territory for books on Druidism at Amazon.com. It’s been in the top ten books on the topic for weeks now, so if you haven’t checked it out, you might find it a perfect purchase for the aspiring Druid.

Posted in Druidic/Celtic, Products, Real Magic School | No Comments »

Real Magic School Unveiled at Winterstar Festival

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Phae and I had a wonderful time at Winterstar this year. Not only did we get to present workshops on healing and liturgy, but also one officially opening our Real Magic School. There was a great deal of interest from the audience, with several participants saying they would sign up as soon as they could.

Ed Hubbard and his techmeister Michael showed us how Phaedra and I could use the site to post new classes, set up quizzes, and manage a staff of teachers (though there’s only us at the moment). While there are still a few glitches to be ironed out, the site is looking pretty good.

So far, nearly 800 people have registered as students — and that’s just in the first two weeks! We think as the word spreads, we may have several thousand by the end of the year.

Right now we have introductory classes in a couple of departments started, one on Spheres of Comprehension (approaches to magic), an Introduction to the Laws of Magic, an Introduction to What is Paganism, and one on Basic Vocabulary people should know. Others on different topics have been written and will be online soon.

After we finish these introductory, non-credit classes, we’ll be doing advanced, for-credit ones. This should keep us busy and out of mischief for a while!

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