Essays & Blog
Four decades of essays.
Sam's own writing since 1984 — Pagan practice, ritual theory, Thelema, dharma, and the Golden Dawn, plus the running blog. Looking for the books instead? Go to The Press →
A Milarepa verse on refusing to conform to prevailing social norms.
Blog 2014 I will not conformA short vow against conforming to conventional expectation.
Blog 2014 Pantheon Foundation Announces Pagan Activism Conference Online 2014Announcing the Pantheon Foundation's online Pagan activism conference.
Blog 2014 Accountability in Pagan LeadershipOn what accountability should mean for leaders in Pagan communities.
Blog 2014 The Wild Hunt's 2014 Fall Funding DriveSupporting The Wild Hunt, the Pagan news site Sam wrote for.
Blog 2014 Origins MatterOn why the origins of a tradition matter to its present practice.
Blog 2005 The Pagan AgendaWhat Sam believes the modern Pagan movement should actually be organizing toward.
Pagan 2004 Ritual, Magick & How Pagans Will Save the WorldAn argument for ritual practice as a civic, not just personal, technology.
Pagan 2002 Entering the BuddhadharmaWritten for the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn's own library of teachings.
Dharma 2002 Towards a General Theory of DivinationWritten for the OSOGD library — what divination systems share beneath their symbols.
Golden Dawn 2001 A Thelemic GanachakraBlending the Tantric feast-offering with Thelemic ritual grammar.
Thelema 1999 Why I Call Myself PaganA personal accounting of the word "Pagan" — first published in Reclaiming Quarterly.
Pagan 1996 Pagan DharmaFirst published in Gnosis #39 — the essay that opened Sam's ongoing Pagan-Buddhist synthesis.
Dharma 1993 What Is Polytheism, and How I Became PolytheisticOn the difference between believing in many gods and actually practicing that way.
Pagan 1993 Changing Society through Ritual: A Theory & A MethodHow ceremonial technique might scale from the individual to the collective.
Ritual 1993 The World as Lover WorkingA ritual working exploring erotic relationship with the living world.
Thelema 1991 The Star ChildEarly Thelemic ritual theory, written the year after "The Rite of the Milk of the Stars."
Ritual 1990 The Rite of the Milk of the StarsA ceremonial working built around the Egyptian sky-goddess Nuit.
Ritual 1988 Abyss and BackOne of Sam's earliest published essays on the Thelemic Abyss-crossing.
Thelema 1988 What's Crowley Got To Do With Thelema, Anyway?Separating the philosophy of Thelema from the biography of the man who named it.
Thelema 1988 A Metaphor Is Something Like a BucketOn symbol, correspondence, and why magical metaphors have to actually carry something.
Golden Dawn 1984 Constellation: one star in the company of starsSam's first published essay, from 1984 — the individual star held within a wider company.
Thelema — On LineageWhat it means for a modern order to claim, or set aside, an unbroken lineage.
Golden Dawn — We Dwell in the Living WorldOn the world as animate and inhabited rather than inert — a core statement of Sam's Pagan cosmology.
Pagan — How Close the Gods? Transcendence, Immanence and Immediacy in Pagan ReligionHow near the Gods actually stand in Pagan practice — transcendence, immanence, and immediacy compared.
Pagan — The Bones of Sex and SpiritOn the relationship between sexuality and spiritual practice.
Pagan — Review — The Goddess HekateSam's review of The Goddess Hekate.
Review — Review — Whispers of the MoonSam's review of Whispers of the Moon.
Review — Theurgy in Iamblichus, Agrippa, and the Golden DawnTraces the theurgic thread from Iamblichus through Agrippa into Golden Dawn ceremonial practice.
Ritual — A Dark Moon Ritual of Offering to Hermes and HekateA working dark-moon offering rite for Hermes and Hekate, written to be performed.
Ritual — A Tantric Invocation of Hermes Pantos ApolytosAn invocation of Hermes in tantric form — Sam's own god, worked in the method of Tantric Thelema.
Ritual — Rite of Passage Structure in the Japanese Accession CeremoniesA ritual-studies reading of the Japanese imperial accession ceremonies as a rite of passage.
Ritual — LIBER XXV: The Star Ruby (Webster's hack)Sam's reworking of Crowley's Star Ruby banishing ritual.
Ritual — Analyzing Liber AL vel LegisA close analytical reading of the Book of the Law, the root text of Thelema.
Thelema — Review — Angels, Demons & Gods of the New MillenniumSam's review of Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium.
Review — Most Basic Tantric Practices for PagansAn entry-level set of tantric practices adapted for Pagan practitioners.
Dharma — Pagan Dharma 2The second part of the Pagan Dharma essays, continuing the Buddhist–Pagan synthesis.
Dharma — The Dharma WrapperOn carrying dharma practice inside another religious form.
Dharma — Process in the Symbolic Re-Creation of the WorldHow ritual symbolically remakes the world — process thought applied to practice.
Dharma — The 100 Syllable Mantra of VajrasattvaOn the hundred-syllable Vajrasattva mantra and its use in purification practice.
Dharma — On the General Guidance and Purification of the Soul v2.0A revised OSOGD teaching document on guiding and purifying the soul.
Golden Dawn — Y Document 0.1 — Notes Toward the Neophyte HallPreliminary notes toward understanding the Neophyte Hall in the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn.
Golden Dawn — The House of KhabsOn the House of Khabs within Golden Dawn and Thelemic symbolism.
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