Pagans have always lived in cities. The great city-states of the ancient world, from Rome to Athens to Cairo to Babylon and beyond, were places of teeming humanity — places where men, women, and children of all ages came to live within the places and practices that defined their existence. Polytheists, then as now, are not all “pagan” in the old sense of the word as in ”country dweller.” What was true about pagan practice then is just as true now — we make reverence wherever we are — to our ancestors, to the spirits of the land, and to those forces that hold sway over hearth and home.

I write articles in various places including on HubPages.  While on these various sites, I will read what others are sharing in their articles and comment at times. Recently there has been quite a bit said about President Obama and his recent support of Gay Marriage.  His support stems from a change of perspective brought on my a recent conversation with his daughters who could not understand the reasoning behind not supporting such a thing as gay marriage.

From my perspective, as a Wiccan High Priest and author of numerous pagan based spiritual writings, I feel that this is a wonderful thing, that the President has "come out" openly supporting Gay Marriage.  When the leader of the Free World, so to say, speaks, people listen.  This recent change of opinion has had a very positive impact on the nation and world as a whole by keeping the media and the public focused on a very vital issue, gay marriage.

Sybil Leek (the subject of a recent biography, Sybil Leek: Out of the Shadows, by Christine Jones) was once known as the “World’s Most Famous Witch”- or at least, as the Witch most famous in the world for self-promotion, as well as for the promotion of modern Witchcraft or what we tend to call “Wicca.” To judge from her book The Complete Art of Witchcraft (first published in England in 1971, then in America in 1973, and written as follow-up to Diary of a Witch), Ms. Leek was routinely on the lecture circuit, habitually giving interviews, and regularly keeping up with prodigious volumes of correspondence from folks anxious to know more about what she calls “the Old Religion” and the “Craft of the Wise.”

Over the last thousand years there have been several distinct streams of Western magical practice. Running parallel are the Grimoires, which focus on preparation and complex procedures to produce effective communication and interaction with spiritual beings, and the Books of Secrets, full of simple techniques using easily available ingredients.