The Spiritual Satanist Blog offers a great little "how-to" kind of post entitled "5 Ways to Improve your Occult Practice."

I highlight it for a couple of reasons. First, it's a pretty mundane list. No "recite the names of 42 demons while standing on your head" or other Hollywood nonsense.

Two, while it's written by a Satanist, it's certainly usable by anyone following an occult path.

Third, the list is so mundane, it doesn't even have to be applied to the occult. Occult practices don't have to be big and scary. The writer here suggests things like daily meditation and focus on goals, creating a visual reminder of the goal, and actually going out there and working on your goal rather than just saying you'll get around to it.

CNN ran an article this week on how non-Christians in America deal with Christmas, which is pretty ever-present in American society regardless whether or not you're into the whole Jesus thing.

Take, for example, the dreidel-shaped stockings featured in an image of a Jewish family's home. The family still celebrates Hannukah rather than Christmas, but it's picked up some of the Christmas trappings from the surrounding culture. (Which seems fair, since a lot of Christmas traditions were originally adopted the same way.) There's nothing particularly Christian about stockings, so why not?

Then there's the Hindu-Jewish interfaith couple who put up a holiday tree and decorate it with symbols of their respective faiths.

"But why would they do that if they are not Christians?" some would ask. Because Christmas is about more than just the birth of Jesus. It's about community identity, relationship bonds between family and friends, thankfulness and gift-giving. Historically, it's not even always been a huge Christian celebration. The big Christian celebration has always been Easter. Christmas has often been more about merry-making and minor troublemaking.

I've got neighbors who have lawn signs that say "keep Christ in Christmas." Certainly I don't begrudge them for celebrating the religious aspects of the holiday, but I am terribly tempted to point out to them the repeated efforts of die-hard Protestants in history to cancel Christmas. In England in the mid 17th century, it was actually illegal to celebrate it. Not Christian enough, was the argument.

he new Sherlock Holmes film featuring Robert Downey Jr. pits the Victorian detective against the villainous Lord Blackwood and involves an occult order known as the Temple of the Four Orders.

While the Temple of the Four Orders is an invention of the film, it clearly draws from sources such as the Freemasons and the Golden Dawn. Indeed, publicity concerning the film repeatedly compares Blackwood to onetime Golden Dawn member , although i personally find such a comparison to be rather stretching things.

Regardless, I have to applaud the film writers for doing a bit of homework! While occult scribbles abound throughout the film, there's no references to Satan or demons. (A couple quick images of Baphomet are seen, but those are historically appropriate.) Imagery does include sphinxes, alchemical symbols, pentagrams and crosses, all of which make sense for a 19th century occult group. Their uses of layered symbolism in complex images likewise is congruent with what real world magical orders were creating at the time.

In short, the film largely abandons the usual exaggerated hysterics and instead builds a relatively believable occult group, while of course taking certain liberties for the good for the story.

An English community is attempting to get down to the bottom of a peculiar set of incidents that some link to Satanism, neopaganism, gypsies, the occult or natural occurrence.

The issue? Twelve horses have been found with braided manes.

"It is most confusing and it is worrying horse owners. I am web mistress for the riding club's website and I've had a lot of people ask what's going on. Some have mentioned satanic ritual and others that this is what gypsies do to identify horses they later want to come back a steal," says Harriet Laurie.

To add to the hysterics, the police have consulted a "warlock" (note: most serious magical practitioners do not call themselves warlocks, which is generally considered highly derogatory) who claims the braids are a part of white witch knot magic.

All of this over a phenomena that some horse owners are attributing to the wind.

I'd love to know how the police even got involved. Can you imagine that call? "Um, yes, I'd like to report an incident. Someone has braided the mane of my horse."