A Totally Normal Weekend

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Isaac Bonewits

Arthur and I had a blast on Saturday (into the wee hours of Sunday) at Jeff Mach’s Totally Normal Event. The vendors room had art, musical instruments, jewelry, furry/erotic costumes, books, video games, and some of the most amazing, er, “toys” I’ve seen in a long time. I did a number of tarot readings with the erotic Nybor Deck and the brand-new Pirate Tarot (which Arthur had given me for Fathers Day), both of which worked very well.

By a bizarre series of “coincidences,” the other people that were supposed to appear on the Magic for World Domination panel never showed up, so I was “forced” to reveal the secrets of the Illuminati all by myself. Later that evening, I moderated a panel on Magical Mavericks with Deborah Friedman, a gender-bending Wiccan priest/ess and heretical Hebrew Kabbalist on my right, and Arthur Moyer, inventor of Omnimancy, a completely intellectual system of magic in which deities and other spiritual entities are unimportant, on my left. Deborah was horrified to find herself the magical conservative on the panel, but we had a lot of fun arguing.

My son Arthur didn’t make it back to our room till 6:00 am or so, but he had a smile on his face, so I didn’t ask any questions that a parent wouldn’t want to hear the answers to.

On Sunday morning, I was videotaped by a team from Vidgle.com called Con Goer doing a tarot reading for their interviewer. This should be up on their site by July 3rd or so (I’ll post a direct link when it is).

If you’re looking for subculturally friendly fun in New Jersey, stay in touch with Jeff Mach’s posse.

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RMS News

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Isaac Bonewits

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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Weekend Plans

Posted on June 27, 2008 by Isaac Bonewits


Visit A Totally Normal World
This is the Ning group set up for the extravaganza where I’ll be spending my weekend. On Saturday I’ll be riffing on “Magic for World Domination!” I wonder what I’ll say…

(See the blog post about The Totally Normal Event below for more info.)

What kind of bizarre mind conceives of such an event? Here is Jeff Mach’s “About Me” from the organizing site that the picture above sends you to:

Past the blasted barrens, beyond the goblin heath
Where all light is from fire, and even time has teeth,
Beyond the sight of sanity–where all things may occur,
Where smoke takes shapes which waken memories that never were,
Sitting on a medium-sized bluish rock
is a fax machine.
It works pretty well, considering that it’s plugged into a
basilisk,
but it’s very rare for a moment to go by
without it being chewed by a hydra,
stepped on by a brachiosaur,
cursed by the Warlock of the Everpain Tower,
hacked by the Cyberfreaks,
molecularly displaced by freakish atom storms,
worshiped by 13th-century Flemish knights,
dusted for fingerprints,
mind-melded,
shot at,
nibbled on,
or sliced into sushi and thrown, at random, through the
gateways of a billion pinstriped alternate worlds.
Which means that sometimes, just sometimes, the message comes
out a little funny.
So. That’s where I get my ideas.
Where do you get yours?

So now you know!

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Teachers: Real Magic School needs you!

Posted on June 23, 2008 by Isaac Bonewits

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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