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The Crooked Path Journal is finally - after a minor technical hitch at the printers - a reality, and the first copies will be shipped out over the next few days. Issue 1 isn't as diverse as I would have liked: there must be five articles from me alone! But it does have some good stuff, and I've already started receiving articles for issue 2, so that should be even better.

Four more books are in the works for Pendraig for the immediate future. the first is from my illustrious brother, Dr. Colin Paddon, and it is Anatomy For Holistic Therapists. Following that is Radomir Ristic's Balkan Traditional Witchcraft, translated from the Serbian - a very popular book in his homeland. eric De Vries is a newcomer, but his book, Hedge-Rider, is a must-have for the Euro-centric Crafters among us. Last, but very much not least, Robin Artisson's new book, The Flaming Circle, is in my opinion his best work so far.

Future works involve new titles from Raven Womack, my own books on the Crooked Path and Ancient Egyptian Mysteries, and three more books on Holistic Therapy from Dr. Paddon. Rumor has it that Veronica Cummer's successful book, Sorgitzak: Old Forest Craft, will be followed by at least two more (one will be a sequel), and Ann Finnin is working on a follow-up to The Forge of Tubal Cain, all about The Clan of Tubal Cain's history and practice.

As if that weren't enough, Raven and I will be making a series of DVDs on Feasting Round The Wheel, essentially a Sabbat-based Pagan cooking show...

Oh, and Pendraig now has an online store.

Bendith,

Peter 

Pendraig Publishing is proud to announce the release of Sorgitzak: Old Forest Craft by Veronica Cummer.

This is a book about the religion once practiced ages ago in the Old Forest region of Europe. The book contains channeled messages from the Gods of the Old Forest and from the fey, as well as stories, myths, legends, and bits and pieces of the old witch language. It is not meant to be a “Wicca 101” book, but the next stage towards witches, in particular those of European descent, being able to reclaim their heritage. In this regard, there is no other book currently out there quite like this one. Not only does it provide a link to the past, but it also gives witches a potential focus for the future.

The book is divided into four parts. Part one is about witches, including where they came from and why they are here, what it means to be “of the Blood,” why witches work in covens, and the origin of the Witches’ Sabbat. Part two contains information regarding 22 of the Gods of the Old Forest, as well as invocations which can be used to call Them. Part three has a basic ritual and other magickal rites and techniques, including three guided meditations, “Riding to the Sabbat,” and connecting to the spirits of the land and to the fey. The final part includes information on the Elemental beings and the Gods in regards to the Quarters and Cross-Quarters, why we do ritual, the link between the arts and the Muse, as well as some of the steps needed for witches to find their way back to the power and knowledge of the Old Ones.

The book is available from Amazon and all good booksellers.

Bendith,

Peter 

Right at the point where the Crooked Path starts to really take off, my host company decided to pull the website down. Why? Despite only using 10% of my bandwidth allocation, I apparently committed the crime of having too many simultaneous downloads! they made me jump through multiple hoops to get it back up, then took almost a week to restore it... all while I was away at PantheaCon, too.

so now I have a new host company, and a dedicated server too. It is costing me, so I'm going to have to bite the bullet and put ads on the site, but it will be faster and more reliable. Right now, I have an "upgrading" message on the site, but it will be all ready in a day or two, then I can see how things go.

Bendith,

Peter

Pendraig Publishing is proud to announce the imminent release of "The Forge of Tubal Cain" by Ann Finnin.

From its earliest days to the present, Ann and Dave Finnin have been at the center of the Pagan community in Southern California. Here is the story of the groups and covens that came and went, and those that grew into thriving Traditions.

In particular, this is the story of the Roebuck, how it came to be, and the influences that led to its creation. Ann writes about all the 'Big Names' in the Craft from Los Angeles and beyond from personal experience - she was there, working with and interacting with the people and the groups that are legendary in Craft circles.

With foreword by Ed Fitch.

The release date is this weekend, on February 17th. Ann, Dave and I will be at PantheaCon in San Jose this weekend, and will be networking and celebrating!

Bendith,

Peter

This Thursday (January 31st) will be the first of our monthly live phone-in shows. This time it is about Wortcunning hints and tips. You can phone in at 8:00 PM (Pacific Time) on

(646) 200-0776

if you want to ask a question or share a tip, or you can listen online here:

The Crooked Path on BlogTalkRadio

or you can listen when it is posted to the podcast feed this weekend.

Enjoy!

Ever since I came to the US, I have been searching for somewhere that does justice to the one British dish I really miss - and now I've found it.

The King's Head in Santa Monica does a decent fish and chips, but it isn't quite right. The Robin Hood does an excellent restaurant version, but it is the "chip shop" version that I crave. Until tonight the closest thing to a real chip shop portion of fish 'n' chips I could get in Los Angeles was a Red Robin. Ironically this chain restaurant does a decent job, fairlyclose to the original. But now I know where to get the best - and it is the real thing too, closer to home than I ever expected. Where is it?....

... it it right here, in my own kitchen! Courtesy of Jamie Oliver and www.foodnetwork.com, I found a recipe that, after watching Jamie make it on Iron Chef America, looked like it might do the job. And it did. Perfect fish, perfect batter, and the chips... I never expected to get chips that taste like English chips from an American potato. They don't grow or sell King Edwards over here, so I had to use the humble russet. But following Jamie's instructions to the letter, I got chips that looked and tasted perfect. Now to create the perfect chip buttie...

This movie comes out next week, and I am truly looking forward to it. I read the trilogy while in Seattle last year on a Java bootcamp, and I enjoyed it immensely. The trailers - and the sneak peek on the Hairspray DVD - look lavish and wonderful, and I just can't wait.

Meanwhile the author, Philip Pullman, is complaining about the religious themes being watered down in the movie (he portrays the Church as the "evil empire"), while the Catholic Church is asking Catholics to boycot the film, in case people like the movie and then read the books. Haven't they learnt yet that this sort of behavior just encourages more peoplew to see the movie? I swear that both Pullman and Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) owe the Vatican a hefty commision for all the publicity they got... I've believed that screaming long and loud about blasphemy is a major incentive for people to see a movie or read a book, ever since Salman Rushdie had his mediocre novel "The Satanic Verses" propelled into the Best Seller list by the Fatwah death threat imposed on him by the Ayatollah Khomeneh... yet another commission earned...

On Wednesday evening, I had the honor and pleasure of attending an invitation only screening of the newly restored "The Godfather" on the Warner Brothers Studio Lot. It was a brilliant evening, with good food, the screening itself, and a Q&A session after. Copolla himself was rumored to be in attendance, though I never saw him, though I did try a glass or two of the wine from his vineyard.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie - it's been a long time since I last saw it - and it looked truly magnificent. But I noticed an interesting phenomenon that I've been pondering the last few days...

You see, the movie is 39 years old, and despite ( or perhaps because of )being universally hailed as a masterpiece, it has probably been parodied in more comedy sketches and scenes than any other movie ever made. As a result, whenever a well-known line, such as "make him an offer he can't refuse" or "its just business", cropped up, the audience laughed. It seems that these lines have been parodied so often that we automatically respond to them as a joke, even though in this, their original context, they are not.

I even found myself having to dig beneath the layers of remembered parodies of Brando's performance. We were fully ten minutes into his first scene before I could erase the SNL-esque veneer of the cotton-stuffed cheeks and affected voice to appreciate what a truly magnificent acting job Brando actually did. Those afore-mentioned cotton swabs in his cheeks immobilized the lower part of his mouth as efectively as any botox injection today, yet he conveyed full and complex emotions through masterful use of his surprisingly prehensile eyebrows and the angles og his head.

The restoration team at Warner Brothers did a marvelous job - I'm sure that Paramount are very pleased with the result, and that the other studios will be pushing similar projects towards Warner (the point of the invites, probably). But what stood out for me was the timeless quality of the movie - its humanity amidst inhumanity - and above all, its unique place in the psyche of 21st century humanity. And let's not forget - a 39-year-old movie that is three hours long, consists mostly of scenes of people sitting around talking, interspersed with violence, and it held an audience of over 400 jaded industry professionals spellbound from start to finish. Now that is movie magic!

I can't believe how much of Southern California is burning around us. But what I find even more unbelievable is the crass discrimination shown by the local TV stations reporting on the fires.

With something like 1 million people displaced from their homes, it seems like the only ones who matter to ABC, KTLA, FOX, NBC and CBS are the ones with money.

Malibu caught fire first, and it had celebrities, so it recieved the lion's share of media attention. Now is is under control, but they still have regular reports from there.

Now the main focus is on San Diego, where the largest fires have done the most damage and many many peoiple are refugees. I can go along with that.

The Santa Clarita fires threatened some very expensive houses, but are largely under control now. They are still reporting from there.

But Running Springs is where I want to hear reports about. My friends Raven and Johnny are sleeping on my livingroom floor while the fire rages 300 yards from their house, and a small but close-knit community has already been devastated, and evacuees anxiously await news of whether their home is one of the lucky ones. The network? When they show it at all, it is old footage, old news... on both KTLA and ABC's websites the pages for the fires up there are TWO DAYS out of date!!! The only reason we have any news at all is because the local online network, www.rimoftheworld.net, is keeping up to date with the progression of the fire and plans to fight it.

Frankly, I am disgusted. I know that they can't get new people or cameras up there because the roads are closed, but they could at least give up-to-date information, if only from the community's own website. But I guess it isn't worth it, because the only people interested are those who live there and those who have family and friends there. The sherrif even arrested an arsonist trying to light another fire up there, but no sign of that on the news, or of the truckloads of looters who have been busy up there.

I'm so steamed, I'm likely to spontaneously combust myself, and I'm sitting in the building ABC report from. I bet they'd put that on the news...

Karen and her boyfriend, Russ (aka fizzyland) at Disneyland.

A very dear friend and circle sister passed into the Summerland this morning. Karen Lichtman, Guardian of Briar Rose, fought a valiant fight against breast cancer, but it finally claimed victory at around 5:30 this morning.

I will always remember Karen as a vibrant and enagaging person. Even while undergoing her first round of chemo, we would struggle to keep up with her on trips to Disneyland.

As a Guardian of our Coven, she was dedicated and protective, doing her job to the hilt without succumbing to the pitfalls of the position. She maintained contacts with many in the wider Pagan community, and was much loved wherever she went.

Karen's boyfriend, fizzyland, has a beautiful and moving post on his LiveJournal, and I think there would be the ideal place for condolences to be left.

Karen, you were and are my sister on this Path, and I know we will meet again, but until we do, may your journey be filled with wonder.

Bendith y cariad, Kestrel!

Peter

The second release from my publishing company will be out soon:

The Raven's Flight Book of Incense, Oils, Potions and Brews

Written by our dear friend Raven Womack, owner of Raven's Flight Apothecary, this will be the first of four proposed titles from one of the finest wort-cunners I have ever known.

And who knows, maybe after this book I'llget my butt in gear and get my Crooked Path book finished...

As the publisher of Robin Artisson's new book, The Horn of Evenwood, I find it amusing that there are already negative reviews on both the British and American Amazon websites.

I believe that everyone has every right to dislike his book for whatever reasons they may have, but to review a book in a vindictive, negative and childish way before a single copy has reached the hands of anyone outside of the publisher is both inappropriate and childish in the extreme.

By all means, hate the book. By all means hate Robin, or even my company for publishing him. But at least wait until you SEE the book before you pan it! I really try to maintain the belief that humans are basically good, but when I see the bile and petty vindictiveness they throw at each other, I wonder if I'm not overly optimistic...

Yesterday provided entertainment at two ends of the spectrum for me.

My step-daughter and her husband got tickets to see Chris Daughtry as a Father's Day gift, so we went up to Palmdale yesterday for the concert at the County Fair in Lancaster. More about the concert later.

First, we went to their house. The plan was to go have lunch, and then head off to the fair. But our grandson had a request - he wanted us to watch High School Musical 2 with him. Now you must realize that this particular piece of TV fluff has been the bane of my life for the last month or so. At work I look after the system where we keep all the scripts and other assets for everything that Disney makes. Certain folk at ABC were being more than paranoid about their little gem, and I've been a combination of Security Chief, nursemaid, father confessor and whipping boy to these people and their precious scripts, lyrics and lead sheets, to the point where I cringe when I hear the name "High School Musical 2" or the initials by which it has come to be known - HSM2 (imagine my joy at hearing about HSM3 and 4 being in the works...). How was it? Not bad actually. As campy and cheesy as the first one, but strangely appealing. On Friday I saw the male lead (I forget his name) driving a BMW Z4 around Burbank, so I guess they were all paid well, and it is certainly an energetic, fun sort of thing. Our grandson has now seen it five times...

So, on to the concert. It was a free concert, but there were paid seats at the front, so we found ourselves in the fifth row - close enough to feel the base beat reverberating in our sternums. Now Chris Daughtry is a true rocker - surprisingly considering he came out of last year's American Idol. His new band, Daughtry, rocks hard and tight, and if you like Fuel, you'll like them. They played songs from their debut album (also called Daughtry), which I happen to like, and Chris' fine vocal skills were matched by classic rocker showmanship. I was very impressed.

To sing the way he does, Chris had to keep his vocal cords moist, and he frequently chugged water and sipped tea between songs. On several occasions, he threw almost-finished bottles of water into the crowd, towars the end he was actually squirting water at those in the mosh pit before throwing the bottles. Imagine our joy when we saw a close-up on the video screens of Chris holding waterbottled by none other than Big Rock Springs, my son-in-law's company. You can believe that I'm goingto track down a screenshot of that, as I know that the concert was webcast on at least one Daughtry fansite...

It feels like it took forever, but Robin Artisson's new book, The Horn of Evenwood, is available to buy on Amazon US, Amazon UK and Amazon Japan. You can see it on Amazon Germany, France, and Canada, but cannot buy it there yet, and China doesn't seem to be able to find it.

Robin says that he is very happy with it, and I am too. Now to get my butt in gear and get my next book up and running... and Raven's first book is coming along nicely!

So the day has finally dawned - Pendraig Publishing is proud to release it's very first book to the world, The Horn of Evenwood, by Robin Artisson!

Hopefully it will be the first of many... it will be available from www.amazon.com and www.bn.com as soon as their systems download the data. It will also be available in Canada, the UK, Europe and eventually pretty much everywhere.

Now to finish my own book...

It seems incredible, but some people out there are hellbent on spoiling the fun when it comes to the last Harry Potter Book. Must be Death Eaters...

the publishers (Scholastic in the US ans Bloomsbury in the UK) are quite right to prosecute those who are selling the book early or leaking information about its contents. But there is one particular situation where I believe they are getting their knickers in a twist for no good reason.

The New York Times published a review of the book, based on a copy they bought from a bookstore (in New York, of course). The publishers are rightly incensed at the bookstore, but they are also coming down like a ton of bricks on the NYT. I disagree with this - I read the review (which is here, if you want to read it too), and it made me want to read the book even more.

I guess the review does let a few plot points out, but nothing that a Potter fan wouldn't already be expecting. They certainly don't give away the answers to the important questions, and the review is well-written, but more importantly, it fuelled a hunger for the book beyond what I had already been experiencing.

As part of the marketing for the Simpsons Movie, 7-11 changed 12 of their stores across the country into Kwik-E-Marts for the month of July. One of them happened to be on Olive in Burbank, down the road from where I work.

So Ben, Mike (my assistant) and I decided to take a look today. It was a lot of fun, and we got Simpsons bobble-heads and a Squishy cup as souvenirs, as well as a special edition of the Radioactive Man comic. Here are some pics:



Bart's graffitti on the side of the building


First Bank of Springfield sign. It says "Misplacing the decimal point since 194.5"


Ben with Marge Simpson


Homer - I mean Peter - with Marge


Farewell sign


Itchy and Scratchy Bobble-Heads


More Simpsons Bobble-Heads


A Cop and a Cool Dude...


Ralph


"Back by popular indifference" These items were actually on sale... though the donuts were all gone...


This sign says it all

A series of hand-drawn cartoons done yesterday by artists from the show:











The Kwik-E-Mart sign


... and again...

Despite the sound-effect like parody of the movie's title, the latest Disney/Pixar offering is awe-inspiring! I just saw it at the El Capitan with my son, and even though I work for Disney, it is no hype when I describe this movie as being as close to perfection as any movie I have ever seen. I predict this movie will be a huge hit - every one in the audience, from little kids to adults and geriatrics, loved it and gave it a standing ovation!