Sam Webster - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Sam Webster is a writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

, Thelemite, a member of the Golden Dawn

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...

tradition, and Bishop Tau Ty of Ecclesia Gnostica Universalis, as well as an initiate of Wicca

Wicca

Wicca , is a modern Pagan religious movement. Developing in England in the first half of the 20th century, Wicca was popularised in the 1950s and early 1960s by a Wiccan High Priest named Gerald Gardner, who at the time called it the "witch cult" and "witchcraft," and its adherents "the Wica."...

. Webster holds a Master of Divinity degree from the Starr King School for the Ministry

Starr King School for the Ministry

Starr King School for the Ministry is a Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, California and part of the Graduate Theological Union. Starr King School opened in 1904 as the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry...

at the Graduate Theological Union

Graduate Theological Union

The Graduate Theological Union ' is a consortium of nine independent theological schools, and eleven centers and affiliates. Eight of the theological schools are located in Berkeley, California. The GTU was founded in 1962. It maintains the Graduate Theological Union Library, one of the most...

in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

. He is notable as one of the pioneers of open source religion

Open source religion

Open-source religions attempt to employ open-source methodologies in the creation of religious belief systems. They develop their systems of beliefs through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among the believers themselves...

- the use of the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

paradigm

Paradigm

The word paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts. It comes from Greek "παράδειγμα" , "pattern, example, sample" from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" , "exhibit, represent, expose" and that from "παρά" , "beside, beyond" + "δείκνυμι" , "to show, to point out".The original Greek...

in the field of spirituality

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

.

He has authored a number of articles and essays on occult and Pagan

Neopaganism

Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...

topics, publishing both online and in periodicals such as Green Egg
Green Egg
Green Egg is a Neopagan magazine published by the Church of All Worlds from 1968 through 1976 and 1988 through 2000, and restarted in 2007. It was created and edited for most of its existence by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart....

, Mezlim, Gnosis
Gnosis (magazine)
Gnosis was an American magazine published from 1985 to 1999, devoted to the western esoteric tradition.Gnosis was published by the Lumen Foundation, a non-profit organization incorporated in California by Jay Kinney and Dixie Tracy-Kinney. It had offices in San Francisco. 5,000 copies were...

and PanGaea. Many of his essays on Pagan

Paganism

Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....

Dharma

Dharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...

and Thelema

Thelema

Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...

have also been made available online. In 2001, he was one of a number of Neopagans interviewed in Modern Pagans - An Investigation of Contemporary Pagan Ritual, a feature article in the counter-cultural journal RE/Search
RE/Search
RE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded and edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale in 1980. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanzine Search & Destroy , and was started with $100 from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti...

.

He has founded (or cofounded) several occult and Pagan organizations, including the Chthonic-Ouranian OTO

Ordo Templi Orientis

Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal and religious organization founded at the beginning of the 20th century...

(1985), and the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn (2002).
Webster's book Tantric Thelema was published in January 2010.

Writings

Constellation, 1984.
Abyss and Back, 1988.
A metaphor is something like a bucket, 1988.
What's Crowley got to do with Thelema, Anyway?, 1988.
The Rite of the Milk of the Stars, 1990.
"The Spell of Ra-Hoor-Khuit" in Mezlim, Beltane 1990.
"The House of Khabs" in Mezlim, Samhain, 1991.
The Star Child, 1991.
Process in the Symbolic Re-Creation of the World, 1992.
Rite of Passage Structure in the Japanese Accession Ceremonies, 1992.
Changing Society through Ritual, 1993.
What is Polytheism and how I became Polytheistic, 1993.
"Working Polytheism" in Gnosis #28, Spring 1993.http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents28.html
The World as Lover Working, 1993.
"Structural Implications in the Sepherot", 1994.
"Pagan Dharma" in Gnosis #39, Spring, 1996.http://www.lumen.org/issue_contents/contents39.html
The Bones of Sex and Spirit, 1996.
"Why I call Myself Pagan", 1999 in Reclaiming Quarterly http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/web/spiraldance/spiral13.html
"Pagan Dharma 2" in PanGaea, 1999.
A Thelemic Ganachakra, 2001. (see Ganachakra
Ganachakra
A gaṇacakra is also known as tsog, gaṇapuja, cakrapuja or gaṇacakrapuja. It is a generic term for various tantric assemblies or feasts, in which practitioners meet to chant mantra, enact mudra, make votive offerings and practice various tantric rituals as part of a sadhana, or spiritual practice...

)
Entering the Buddhadharma, 2002.http://www.osogd.org/library/biscuits/enteringBuddhadharma.html
Preliminary notes towards an understanding of the Neophyte Hall in the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn., 2002.http://www.osogd.org/library/Ydocs/Ydoc1.html
Towards a General Theory of Divination, 2002. http://www.osogd.org/library/biscuits/divination.html
Ritual, Magick & How Pagans will Save the World, 2004.
The Pagan Agenda, 2005.
Tantric Thelema, Concrescent Press (2010) ISBN 978-0-9843729-0-4

Sources

Free Encyclopedia of Thelema (2006). Sam Webster. Retrieved June 1, 2006.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Writings

Sources

Further reading

External links