Incense Magick: Art & Ritual of Incense

Incense fanatic Carl Neal walks you through the joys, wonders, and science of making and using natural incense. From making your first basic cone to creation and use of elaborate incense rituals, Incense Magick is your guide to the sometimes secretive world of incense and incense making. Every article explores different facets of incense, incense making, ingredients, rituals, tools, or techniques.

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Love for Orlando

I am going to delay the next article in the series "Blurring the Lines of Community" for an obvious reason.

The LGBT community has been deeply wounded.  That community has been the inspiration of many of the things we have been trying to do over the years in the Pagan Community.  I have often held up the LGBT Community as an example of what can be accomplished by a repressed, suppressed, and marginalized community.  Same sex marriage is now the law of the land.  Battles over equal rights continue, but the LGBT Community has done an amazing job over the last few decades of moving the discussion from one of pure hate and complete lack of understanding to an emerging view in America that their members are simply other members of the larger community.  There is still far to go, but the LGBT inspiration has had a massive impact on the Pagan Community and how we are now attempting to become more accepted by the legal system and American society as a whole.  There would be no "Pagan Pride Day" if it weren't for the LGBT Community blazing a trail for us.  

 

Although I am not part of the LGBT Community, many of my friends are.  Today we bleed with them in the horrific aftermath of the shooting at Pulse in Orlando.  We will never know how many of the dead and wounded might have been Pagans, and really that doesn't matter.  In a way, considering they were part of a marginalized community openly opposed by some in America, all members of the LGBT Community are Pagans in some respects.  Many in the Pagan Community are also part of the LGBT Community and we can feel your anguish.

I do not pretend to speak for all Pagans...not even all Solitary Pagans.  But for myself, and the others in our community who agree with me, our community is weeping alongside all of those who were attacked this weekend.  That attack was not limited to Orlando - it is felt around the planet.

I wish love, healing, and hope for the people of Orlando, the LGBT Community in America and around the world, and for anyone who feels the intense pain, sorrow, and sense of loss as a result of this act of hatred.

In the end, love defeats hate.  Hate may have the guns, but love is more powerful than any bomb or firearm.  I remember after the terrorist attacks in Paris that I saw a father talking to his young son who was frightened.  He explained to his father that the bad people had the guns and all we have are flowers.  I will never forget hearing his father say that flowers will defeat guns in the end.  I believe he is right.

We grieve for those who were lost.  We celebrate those who survived and we will stand beside you and help you to find peace and joy again.  You are our brothers and sisters no matter which deities, if any, you worship.

We love you and will never forgot the suffering inflicted upon you this weekend and the centuries that came before.

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  Carl Neal has walked a Pagan path for 30 years. He is a self-avowed incense fanatic and has published 2 books through Llewellyn Worldwide on the topic. For many years (and even occasionally these days) he was a vendor of altar tools and supplies which led him to write The Magick Toolbox for Red Wheel/Weiser  

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