The Pagan community, the world, and my friends and I lost a insightful, brilliant, and beloved elder, Isaac Bonewits, on August 12th, 2010.
I knew him from his work, of course...How can you spend decades as a pagan in America and not read
Real Magic, or come across the ABCDEF (Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Framework), or stand slack-jawed in admiration at the chutzpah needed to pull off getting a degree in Magic and Thaumaturgy From U.C. Berkeley?... but I had only recently begun to know him as a human being. Some of us in my shamans' group had begun writing to him when we learned of his battle with cancer, realizing that if we ever wanted to ask him anything, or share our thoughts, the time had best be soon, and his letters opened up another dimension of him to me.
He was a voice of reason in an arena often filled with violent emotion, and an excellent representative of minority religions to the wider culture. He was also a really cool guy, one I wish was still around. He died two days before the Slacker's Jubilation, also known as the Feast of Saint Adamus
http://adamusatlarge.blogspot.com/2006/08/st-adamus-day-or-slackers-jubilation.html. He never got a chance to celebrate it with us, but as we acknowledge the Feast tonight by doing not much of anything, I like to think that he is lounging around, taking a well-deserved rest and enjoying it too, wherever he may be.
L'chaim, Isaac, here's a toast to a life well-lived, and a wish and a hope that you may inspire the rest of us to do so well.
Farewell.
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