Reminder: don’t forget to sign up for this year’s Salem Witchcraft & Folklore Festival!

As I scramble to finish putting my presentation and notes together (and trying to figure out how to fit three hours of content into two), it would be remiss of me to not forget to let all my good readers know that we’re just one week away from this year’s Salem Witchcraft & Folklore Festival, hosted by the good people at the Salem Summer Symposium!  Unlike last year, due to the obvious influence of the presiding Reign of the Lady of Crowns, this year’s event is going to be all-online, and the good people in Salem have done an amazing job putting this all together.  While we’ll all certainly miss being able to hang out in person and frolick with abandon across Salem in its myriad haunts and bars, this is still gonna be a time you don’t want to miss!

With thirty classes being offered this year from some of the best and brightest occultists, witches, and magicians out there—including one by yours truly, of course, on Greek alphabet divination and magic from 1 to 3 pm EDT on Saturday, August 15—you can sign up for the online classes individually, or with bulk rates per day or for the whole weekend.  What’s more, you’ll have access to the recordings of whatever classes you sign up for (or whichever days, or the whole weekend) through the rest of 2020, so if you can’t make the live class or if you have a schedule conflict between two amazing presenters, you can still take the class at your leisure.  (This is something I wish they did last year, since there were too many great things to be present for without mastering bilocation, but they’re investigating ways to do this in the future for both online-only and in-person classes, too.  The recording and accessing of recordings, I mean, not the bilocation.)

There’s still time to sign up, of course, so head on over to the events page and book your tickets today!  From decans to demons, qigong to qabbalah, Saturn to seidr, this is gonna be a festival you won’t forget soon!

An Online Introductory Course on Geomancy

Many of my readers come to my blog for geomancy and related information.  This post isn’t really going to give them much on that, but there’s something I can proffer to sate you all the same.  I would like to bring your attention to an online class, Geomancy for Astrologers by Dr. Alexander Cummins:

Considered a “daughter” to astrology, the system of divination known as geomancy was an incredibly popular and well-regarded form of divination in early modern Europe. It applied what occult philosopher Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa called the “use and rules of astrology” (which is to say, the symbolism but none of the astronomy of astrology) to create answers using a process both apparently simple and deceptively subtle.

Geomancy as a system consists of only sixteen figures, each attributed an astrological identity. These figures are combined in specific charts (known as shields) to render very particular answers, often using versions of the Houses of the Heavens. These shields are set by various means of generating random numbers and developing them using mathematical operations.

Dr. Alexander Cummins – a historian of magic and a practicing geomancer – will introduce the history, practice and magic of this art. Whether you are a professional astrologer, a seasoned card-reader, or a newcomer to divination tools and techniques, this class will offer you further useful skills and resources for your own practice and understanding.

I’ve personally met Dr. Cummins, and have deep respect for his research and work in the history of British and Western occultism, as well as his work in geomancy, which he’s finally getting around to sharing through online classes and informative videos.  I’m planning on sitting in on the class, myself, because no matter how much you might know, you always stand to gain from another person teaching.  Besides, if I were to trust anyone to put the obnoxiously sesquipedalian and floridly overwrought language of John Heydon into something intelligible and palatable, it’d be Al (who, for some reason, adores Heydon), so I’m excited for that alone.

The class is US$29 per seat, and is held this Saturday, June 18 from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT.  You can register online through Kepler College through this link, which I highly suggest you do so.  If you’re on the Facebook, you could do worse than participate in the event page for the same thing, where there’s a bit of discussion and resource sharing already going on.  Hurry up and get your tickets today!