Best Viewed with Netscape                                                  Content Revised July, 1998

Greetings and Welcome to my Smoking, Ritual, and Magic home page, a site dedicated to a fun, offbeat, and somewhat metaphysical look at the experience of smoking. Besides wanting to share my interest in smoking, this site is also, in part, an attempt to disseminate information about smoking which illustrates it’s connection to ritual and magic. Specifically, I'd like to point out that cultures which have used tobacco far longer than our own have come to very different conclusions about this mysterious and powerful plant. You can find a brief synopsis of this cultural paradox in In a Nutshell, and a more detailed description in The Basics. My hope is that, after visiting my site, you’ll at least pause and consider whether there might be more to smoking tobacco than an unnecessary health risk and questionable personal habit. This site is also about magic, the notion that there is more to life than meets the eye. In this case I'd like to propose that tobacco is an element of magic, in that there is more to smoking than meets the eye, and also, that it is an agent of magic, in that for centuries tobacco has been used to see beyond the appearance of things. Perhaps the very reason smoking is being persecuted today is because of its inherent connection to spirits, ritual, and magic.

It would probably be a good thing to mention at this point my distinction between what I term Ritual Smoking and Habitual Smoking. While I suppose the boundary can only be a somewhat arbitrary one, I think it’s important to point out that I’m not talking about nor endorsing anything which leaves you hopelessly dependent upon a debilitating behavior which has long since lost any sense of special pleasure and appeal in your life. Ritual Smoking is a conscious and appropriate use of tobacco and as such is a choice, something done at special times and in a special places, maybe with special smoking accessories, and maybe in the company of others who share and know how to participate in smoking as a ritual as well. Above all, Ritual Smoking is done for pleasure, for the connection to spirits it invokes, and as a wholly positive experience about which you do not even consider feeling guilty. Specifically, Ritual Smoking is not done on the sly or in shame, nor huddled under a shelter which your employer has provided as a concession until you successfully complete their stop-smoking program. Nor is it something you do while attempting to accomplish anything else. Ritual Smoking is a singular activity: It calls for your complete and focused attention and rewards that attention with an experience which expands the boundaries of awareness and pleasure.

I’ve tried to make this site an intelligent, informative, entertaining, and responsible discussion of the experience of smoking. I’ve provided pages which offer instructions for Creating and Participating in a Smoking Ritual, a guide to Choosing Cigarettes for Ritual Smoking, and a discussion of the connections between Ritual Smoking and Magic, which includes instructions for expanding your Ritual Smoking to incorporate a magic and spiritual dimension. Whichever catches your interest, thanks for stopping by and feel free to email me at mrtedd(at)ellensburg.com in you have any suggestions. Enjoy!

Ó MrTedd 1998