Many of our readers are energy workers, or have studied metaphysics. They have a much better chance than most people to realize that the world of the materialist is ludicrously incomplete.

We who have read many books give eager lip service to the doctrine of positive mental attitude, because we all know intellectually, to some extent, that it is the inner attitude and thought that produces the experience of the outer world for each of us. Our world is actually as we see it, as the wise have said for centuries.

But our faith in this principle can be sorely tried when life produces its periodic tests to see if we can graduate to the next level. This is usually because our principles are merely mental property and have not been practically applied in the game of life.

I remember an animated conversation between two people at a pagan meeting. One was a Celtic Wiccan and the other a Kabbalist ritual magician. The Wiccan was insisting that doing a money ritual was best organized using green as the color motif. The Kabbalist was insisting that for prosperity the best color was blue.

Neither noticed until much later that they were not talking about the same thing. There is a fundamental difference between doing a ritual to manifest money and doing one to manifest prosperity.

The difference is in the difference between High and Low Magick. There are no Wiccans from far Northern countries or from arid deserts. Wiccans and the four seasons go together.

In 1991 I was talking by invitation to a group of pagans, mostly Wiccans, and someone raised the question of rituals like the Banishing Pentagram and Hexagram and other practices which seemed to be connected to magickal work based on the Kabbalah.

His question was: What does Kabbalah have to do with Wicca? Isn’t that all just Jewish stuff? My reply, though necessarily long, is still relevant, and may interest some readers. Here it is.

Josh Billings once said “It isn’t what folks don’t know that’s the trouble…it’s what they do know that ain’t so.”

EVERYBODY knows that witches worship Satan, kidnap babies for sacrifice, desecrate the Host, and enjoy cursing their innocent neighbors and anybody who offends them. And none of this is true.

Seminar question: I don’t seem to have the will-power to do some of the work. Any suggestions?

Reply: In most folk-based magickal work the cultivation of the will is usually left to chance, or to the hope that it will improve with practice. And that usually does happen. Craft people and others who do ritual group work can usually rely on the power of the circle, and for such folks it isn’t a matter of much concern. But in Enochian magick or any serious solo ritual work the story is different. And what benefits the soloist will obviously help the circle folk so these suggestions could well help everybody.