Up-Front Disclosures: all of the guys in this post are friends of mine- but please don’t hold that against them; they are also three really talented people, each making important contributions to modern Paganism. My good pal, Luckylicious, for instance, presents the Eat My Pagan Ass  podcast, with an always hilarious and highly irreverent take on Pagan issues, Pagan foibles, and Pagan stuff in general (I know a lot of folks do podcasts, but I don’t think anyone embraces the Pagan Irreverent with Lucky’s panache and flair).

Lucky’s project comes up because his most recent episode (podisode?: #0039), is titled “Gay! Gay! Gay!,” and (appropriately) features my other good friend, New York City fashion designer Gary Suto  (also known as Ocymvio, who introduced Jugglers to the 2011 Lagerfeld Mythology calendar and who was a media spokesman during the near-Stonewall riot  following the passage of New York State’s Marriage Equality bill). Gary is a very fitting candidate for the “Gay! Gay! Gay!” podisode of Eat My Pagan Ass, as he has been instrumental in building Gay male Magickal community in NYC for many years; he and Lucky discuss all sorts of things Queer-male-related, including the Minoan Brotherhood, a Magickal Tradition founded specifically for Gay men by early-on-the-scene NYC Magickal hipster Eddie Buczynski. Gary, in fact, has- since the interview- been elevated by his Minos (High Priest in the Minoan Tradition) to Third Degree (so now Gary is a Minos, or Minoan High Priest, in his own right), and is in the process of starting his own Minoan Grove here in the City (interested individuals can check out Gary’s Witchvox Profile above).

Lastly there is my friend Omri Navot, the talented author of  Where Spirits Live, a really excellent and affecting book (which I reviewed for the Juggler earlier). Omri’s novel can appear a bit of a fake-out: it’s ostensibly a very sweet “early Tweener coming-of-age” story (quite well-written; I was impressed how easily Omri’s prose could transport me back to that terribly unique mindset of the eleven/twelve-year-old period). However, its true purpose is to to explore the Metaphysical Consciousness that results from the Spiritual Soul-Journeying of astral travel (it is Omri’s talents as a writer that pull off this kind of unlikely premise). Where Spirits Live works as both a spiritually oriented Young Adults book and as a marvelously Magickal consideration of the Astral Planes and the Worlds beyond the World; I urgently recommend it to folks looking for good, interesting, provocative (spiritually oriented) fiction- as apparently so did the good people at Eternal Haunted Summer,   an excellent online journal dedicated to original poetry and fiction, and offering reviews of literary works of interest to Pagans. Omri came to their perceptive attentions, hence their interview with him here.

My friends- they can be talented; please check out their stuff.