It is a common complaint among various pagans, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, Muslims and New Agers that whenever the U.S. media mentions "religion" it always refers to Christianity as though that's all there is. Even the existence of other major religions has been erased from much of the public mind unless you count Muslim extremists, as a religious group.

December 12th is coming up and is the day specially devoted to Tonantzin the goddess renamed as The Lady of Guadalupe by the Spaniards. Here is a behind the scenes look at the famous incident of the one I always regard as the Lady Sophia.

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.”

Chanting the name of a God or Goddess is a world wide activity. Sometimes I join my Indian friends in their temple and we chant Kali Durge or Shiva Shambo in call and response fashion for an hour or so and everyone goes up tone and feels wonderful. I have taught people how to do this in meditation using the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic, a prayer that energizes and cleans out debris in the chakras, a fine piece of magick in the language that Jesus…Yeheshuah would have spoken.